Autism, thought process, and cognitive reconstructioning?

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I have read about 2-3 books on helping defeat personal anxiety, and I've learned some basic things about what causes anxiety among most people. This topic is VERY applicable to aspies and slightly autistic people, because we ALL have dealt with anxiety due to autism.

Now, from what I've read, anxiety comes from one source, our own negative thoughts. That is the thesis of the cognitive restructuring theory, which states that our own negative thoughts and beliefs about ourselves causes our bodies to physically react to our negative thoughts, in the form of anxiety, among other things.

What occurs is that when we have negative thoughts, a message is directly sent to the brain. The message is that there is a possible threat to the body, and the brain reacts by releasing adrenaline and cortisol, which are two hormones that deal with stress. Your body immediately goes into the "Fight or Flight" response, in the body provides extra oxygen to the blood to flee from the stimulus, or to fight it.

The way that most psychologists try to deal with this kind of anxiety is by getting their patients to realize their negative thought habits, figuring ways of controlling those thought habits, and finally replacing the negative thoughts with positive, reassuring thoughts.


Now that leaves me to wonder about aspies and those with slight autism. Considering that we have difficulty understanding people's emotion and nonverbal cues off their voice and body language, it is easy to become confused by what people mean. I wonder whether or not it is really negative emotions that cause autistic people to panic, or if it is a state of confusion that induces the anxiety. What are your thoughts- Do you feel that you get most anxious when you are having negative feelings and thoughts, or do you have anxiety at other times without explanation?

Negative thoughts about myself actually relax me; it offers a sort of fatalism that offers minimal confusion. This of course is not healthy and I'm trying to work on that.

Negative thoughts directed at things external to me make me anxious; like thinking negative about another person or of an idea not of my own. I get anxious because I feel guilty or embarrassed for being judgemental and feel must hide both the judgement and the guilt/embarrassment from myself and others.

When my mind goes blank, i get real anxious. It feels like the universe is waiting for me to jump out of my "blankness" because it disturbs the universe somehow. And of course, the universe must never be "disturbed"

Classic panic attacks simply occur - not necessary to have a negative thought or situation trigger.

What happens is the body's "fight or flight" mechanism is triggered without cause. It's like when the kid pulls the fire alarm - but there is no fire.

Increasing serotonin levels to normal will stop these. Serotonin is also useful in other anxiety spectrum phenomena.

This is weird.

Up until recently, I was very positive about myself, so positive in fact that I thought I could do no wrong, so I placed the blame on other people. This is why positive self esteem isn't always a good thing: if expressed in the wrong way it can get people's backs up and you can be accused of being arrogant. This perplexes me and I feel anxious when people shout at me in anger because I honestly can't see what I've done wrong.

I've felt anxious when I've been socially confused or I have no control of the situation.

I feel bad, not because I have a negative opinion of myself, but because I'm confused or because the situation doesn't pan out exactly how I saw it in my head.

This is why creative visualisation can be dangerous sometimes.

In my head, I'm brilliant at everything, have fantastic self esteem, good social skills and everything goes right 100% of the time. People do exactly what I say and fully understand me. Pity real life isn't like that.

My self esteem and positive attitude were absolutely fine until other people started bringing me down, acting in ways I didn't expect or couldn't fathom or ignoring me.

I don't think that this is a self esteem issue for me, it's more of a social confusion and joining in issue. It's people's reactions to me in the past that cause the anxiety, not the other way round. I have no negative thoughts until people start openly criticising me.