Dealing with Overwhelm from Being Asked Questions

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LurkingTank
Butterfly
Butterfly

Joined: 2 Sep 2020
Age: 28
Gender: Female
Posts: 14
Location: Ravenclaw Common Room

18 Sep 2020, 3:06 am

I frequently struggle with overwhelm from being asked questions in casual settings. Oddly enough, I don’t experience this issue in interviews; with formal settings like them, there is usually a clear-cut protocol that I can plan for.

However, casual questions pertaining to small talk conversations and requests to hang out often make me feel I am being scrutinized and inspected intensely, and I tend to shut down when I am asked more than one of them at a time. I also have yet to overcome my anxiety about knowing how to respond when asked to spend time with someone. After all, “Whether or not I will be available to hang out with you depends entirely on my energy levels, the amount of executive functions I have to exercise in order to transport myself to you, whether I will be able to eat when I’m with you to avoid hypoglycemic rage, how comfortable I feel around you, how crowded where we are going will be, and whether or not I feel up to seeing another human five minutes before I go” usually doesn’t fly in the NT world.

How do you folks manage your anxiety about being asked casual questions or requests to hang out without feeling like you are being scrutinized?


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Fireblossom
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 18 Jan 2017
Gender: Female
Posts: 3,577

19 Sep 2020, 3:14 am

Yeah, that's hard, and even when I manage to somewhat handle a situation, I always end up thinking either "I shouldn't have said that", "I should have said this" or if I'm really unlucky, both. I just... well, I suppose I've just come to accept that that's just how my life is. Stressing, but since the other option would be to just shut myself inside of my apartment...