When Anxiety Is Inevitable
By: Justine L
Tags: Self Care, Anxiety, Mental Health, Psychology, Autism

When Anxiety Is Inevitable

Taming the uncertainty, chaos and mental noise that fuels it

Photo by BERTRY Nicole on Unsplash

Ever since I can remember, I’ve shared my life with a low-level hum in the background. Growing up, it was as amorphous and nameless as the strange electrical buzz that filled my head as I tried to sleep.

At times I’ve felt a sense of impending doom; a worried edginess that may or may not attach itself to something specific. When things really get out of balance, an unsettling feeling rises up and dominates every part of my being.

It’s only as an adult that I’ve been able to name this thing as anxiety and identify the ways it affects my life. Being autistic means that I perceive, process and respond to the world differently to others. Getting by in a world that’s built for neurotypical people is hard work and I’m never quite sure if I’ve got it right. It’s no co-incidence that I was diagnosed with Generalised Anxiety Disorder at the same time I was diagnosed autistic.

For me, anxiety means never fully inhabiting the moment. It’s always there siphoning off my attention and preventing me from being present. It’s a nasty parasite, a cruel thief, robbing me of my enjoyment of life. I have hated myself for not making the most of life; of failing to find the joy in it that other people seem blessed with.

Anxiety also lives in the memory. When I look back on ‘happy’ times I also see the dark cloud looming in the background. Pushing my baby daughter on the swing in the park, driving in the country, travelling the world — they are all tainted. I look back and puzzle over what it was that prevented me from owning these experiences. It’s difficult to think of a time when I fully inhabited happiness.

I’ve lived a life on the outside looking in, marvelling at the apparently seamless way that other people’s lives come together. It amazes me how they seem to take it for granted that it will all work out: friendships, relationships, work, buying a car, finding somewhere to live, being an adult. By contrast, I often feel like my life is one step away from spiralling out of control. So I am ever-vigilant in the attempt to hold it all together.

Anxiety gives my life a level of difficulty that has become my ‘normal’. It’s the expectation that nothing will ever be straightforward but instead fraught with complication. Sometimes I feel that I’m a magnet for complication.

Even the most simple social interaction or errand is a multi-step exercise, each step representing the possibility of something going awry. If something goes wrong or there is some unanticipated factor thrown in, I can end up stressed out and unhinged. Sometimes for fun I revise my to-do list at the end of the day and fill in the actual steps involved. It is strangely validating to see just how much I did and realise why I feel burnt out.

I live with a constant internal monologue and only realised recently that by and large, other people don’t. It seems that they just get on with things and immerse themselves in whatever is happening. It’s probably the same people who tell me not to overthink things. Like it’s a choice. Like it’s not my default in the same way that other people’s is zoning out.

Even when things are going well, my brain will be in overdrive. Not being able to switch off can be really annoying at 4am. I wish I could chill out or go with the flow or whatever it is that people do. It would make my life a lot easier.

My brain is constantly working to make sense of things that are self-evident to other people. Being autistic means that I lack the intuitive understanding that many neurotypical people have so my mind needs to put in the extra work.

I’ve never really been able to trust my judgment. Not having an organic understanding of social communication and relationships means having to compensate cognitively to make sense of it. I’ve become quite good at applying my powers of observation and analytical skill to people and situations. The effort some autistic folk put into reading people makes us amateur psychologists — some actually go on to the formal study of psychology.

If there’s a social event involving anything other than a catch up with a close friend, I can expect to expend a vast amount of energy. I’ll be mentally casing the joint in the lead up — will it be crowded? Will it be too noisy for me to have a conversation? Will there be somewhere to escape to? It doesn’t end after the event either because I will fixate on how it went — whether I did the right thing, what else I could/should have done and how I came across, what the other people were thinking and whether there might be any implications for me.

So many times I’ve put myself into uncomfortable situations because I thought I had to. I felt that if I couldn’t cope with things other people didn’t give a second thought to, I must be feeble-minded and less of a person. I thought that I had to cope so I did whatever it took. I tried to push through the surging anxiety. Even if things went well, I would be exhausted from the effort required. If the experience brought awkwardness and social faux pas, I would spend days steeped in self-loathing rumination.

But to stop trying to cope would have been to give the game away; to admit that I just wasn’t up to it. So I kept pretending that I was just as capable as everyone else. To some I would have looked perfectly calm and in control because I was keeping such a tight rein on the chaos within. To others, I’m sure it was clear that something was a bit off. I was always afraid of being ‘found out’ although I never really knew what for. By continuing to turn up I think I managed to maintain the illusion that I was coping just enough.

There’s a lot of power in being able to name something. Discovering I was autistic meant that I could own the fact that I experience life differently to many other people. It meant that it’s okay to set limits. I now give myself permission to avoid situations that I know will take too much from me.

When I examine what is most likely to trigger my anxiety, it’s uncertainty and the lack of control that this brings. Not feeling in control makes me freeze and takes away my voice. It’s a common misunderstanding that the need for control is about wanting to control other people but this couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s about having a level of self-agency that enables me to have my needs met.

The anxiety isn’t necessarily tied to the magnitude of the event either. When I had shoulder surgery recently, I did experience considerable anxiety due to the date being changed, throwing my plans into disarray. However, once it was rescheduled and I was confident it would go ahead, I barely gave a through to the actual surgery. I trusted my surgeon who had explained everything to me and patiently answered my questions. I knew exactly what was going to happen. I could then just direct my anxiety to getting to the hospital in time for admission.

There is a cruel paradox in having a greater need for order and certainty but being less equipped than the average person to achieve it. Most autistic people struggle with uncertainty. The world is chaotic and processing whatever it throws up requires constant effort — whether we’re aware of it or not. Unfamiliar situations equal high anxiety. Autistic people are fond of routines, structures and plans because they minimise uncertainty and anchor us in a chaotic world.

I’m not someone who requires a strict routine but I do need to feel that I’ve got some measure of control over my immediate circumstances. I write things down. I make lists, I maintain calendars and I have several notebooks on the go. Usually if I can map out in my mind what is going to happen and feel reasonably confident that’s how things will pan out, I’m fine. Of course I rely on certain things being in place or being able to adapt if they aren’t.

So I know that minimising the uncertainty in my life will help keep the anxiety under control. But the knowledge that life is inherently uncertain is pervasive. People are unpredictable and communication is variable. Some things are just out of everyone’s control.

I will live with anxiety for the rest of my life but there are things I can do to at least keep it to the low background hum most of the time. I’ve realised how important it is to me to feel grounded. To feel attached to the here and now. To feel that I exist.

For me self-care is about the things I need to do to feel grounded. Self-care is not what a lot of people think it is. It’s essentially about arranging your life in a way that adds to rather than takes from your capacity to deal with it.

Self-care is about knowing your limits and setting boundaries. It’s understanding how you operate and putting strategies in place that support it. It’s prevention rather than reaction. It needs to be integrated into your life rather than an afterthought. It’s too late by the time you feel burnt out and need a week off.

There is no set formula to self-care. Beyond eating well, sleeping and exercising, the things that count as self-care for different people vary enormously. For some people it might be spending time with friends or family. These things make demands on me. It’s solitude and space that recharges.

If I’m doing self-care well, I’m aware of what’s going on for me on an emotional level. It gives me a good basis to identify and articulate my needs and feel that I am in control of my life. These are the things that help me:

Being immersed in nature, especially taking long walks

Spending time at home doing things like gardening, cooking, sorting shelves

Being creative — drawing, painting, sewing, writing — anything involving self expression

Meditation and reflection

All these things give me a sense of inhabiting myself and being at home with who I am. They make me feel grounded and ready to put myself out in the world.

Everyone deserves the time to explore what self-care practices work for them and to be supported to maintain them.