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McGroo

Aspergers and General Anxiety

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Happy New Year everyone!

 

I had a nice christmas without any upsets- Hooray! And New year was great - had a fantastic full moon party round a bonfire.

But now I'm swinging round to reality and having to get to grips with this rich tapestry called life.

 

So where did I leave off? Ok so I've been diagnosed with general anxiety, which is something that I've been dealing with on-and-off through the medical profession and counselling since my early 20s (I'm now 35).

 

I've always had a sneaky feeling that aspergers might have something to do with it, or autism or whatever, but not until now have I looked into it more closely and gone "Aha! - that's like me, so's that and that and that". So what I'm looking at are the symptoms of anxiety and the symptoms of asperger's and realising that anxiety is a sub set of aspergers, so the symptoms are fairly similar.

I'm asking what are the symptoms of aspergers which aren't related to anxiety? if that makes any sense... And also do the symptoms of asperger's cause the anxiety?

 

I realise that anxiety has the habit of making things a lot more complicated than necessary, which is why I'm not going into all the details otherwise it would take forever.

 

Cheers ears!

 

Hugh

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Hi, it could be that if you do have AS this triggers the Anxiety, a lot of the triggers for my son are sensory, smells, sounds, taste, as well as tasks he knows he is going to struggle in so, interaction, communication, socialisation, and processing the input and output, my son has also been dx with Anxiety and panic disorder when younger but since then has been dx with High functioning Autism and Sensory Intregration Disorder, but a lot of his symptoms of these come in the form of physical anxiety and noticable panic.

 

So it could be that they set each other off, which is exhausting on the body as well as the mind.

 

If you begin to understand AS and Sensory needs more you may be able to help reduce the triggers and also have stratagies to help control your anxiety with breathing exerciseS, mediation and other support as well as recieving support for your AS needs such as social and communication support.

 

If your AS needs have been unmet then this will almost certainly cause additional mental health problems.

 

JsMumxxx

 

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Anxiety seems to be extremely common in Asperger's. The two are quite separate conditions, but I am sure there is a close link. Asperger's causes certain difficulties, but anxiety is what makes you fear the situations when those difficulties might occur. It can be a vicious cycle because that can lead you to avoid the situations you find hard, and then you never get the opportunity to learn and practice new coping skills.

 

A lot of my anxieties result from a one-off when a situation has gone badly. I might have muddled through that situation many times before, but when something goes wrong I feel like I can't cope with trying it again and try to avoid it in case the same thing goes wrong again. It takes a lot of times going right to undo the anxiety which can result from one incident.

 

I personally find that my anxiety is considerably more disabling than the difficulties caused by Asperger's.

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There are probably a few reasons why people with ASD also have anxiety, some of which have already been mentioned. Probably the key reason is because people with ASD are 'hard wired' to notice details and think about them, this means that various things in the environment that a NT person would overlook are fretted over.

 

It should also be remembered that anxiety is typically strongly associated with depression (hence why treatments for anxiety and depression are often one and the same).

 

The good news is that there are a host of treatments available (it isn't just a question of being dosed with drugs, though for some that is the optimal solution). It's thus worth discussing things with a sympathetic GP.

Edited by ian stuart-hamilton

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There does seem to be a close link between anxiety and aspergers particularly in autistic females.

There are a few books that help, one focusing on "aspergers and anxiety" another one aimed at kids "when my autism gets too big" (but that could be anger rather than anxiety). i have 16 different phobias far too many to list on here.

 

i find gaba, taurine and 5htp help with my anxiety related aspergers. Problem with treating anxiety before an ASD assessment is that the aspergers could be missed if the anxiety is masked too well.

 

Alexis

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Dear Js Mum, Tally, Ian and Trekster,

 

Thanks very much for your help and advice. That's all making a lot of sense. I'd like to talk about some of these issues in a bit more detail but I've got a lot to do now so I'll be back in a while.

 

Hugh :-D

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Interesting question. I've been told my son's autism is due to 'anxiety'. He is sometimes anxious, but I haven't been able to find any research on a possible physiological link between autism and anxiety or showing that people with autism are physiologically more anxious than the rest of the population, as distinct from showing more behavioural signs of anxiety. Anyone come across any research on this?

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Interesting question. I've been told my son's autism is due to 'anxiety'. He is sometimes anxious, but I haven't been able to find any research on a possible physiological link between autism and anxiety or showing that people with autism are physiologically more anxious than the rest of the population, as distinct from showing more behavioural signs of anxiety. Anyone come across any research on this?

 

http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=auti...amp;oi=scholart

 

For scholar articles on "autism+anxiety+book"

 

Alexis

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