Anxiety disorder is a collection of various types of disorders that cause excessive worrying, resulting in significant impairments and a decrease in the quality of life and overall happiness.
My anxiety primarily revolves around two categories:
Handicaps and their resulting impairments: The limitations imposed by my handicaps greatly incapacitate me, causing significant challenges and difficulties in various aspects of my life. These limitations and impairments become a constant source of worry and anxiety for me.
Loss of primary, secondary, and tertiary human needs: I experience anxiety about the potential loss or unmet fulfillment of essential human needs. This includes concerns about not having access to necessities such as food, shelter, and safety (primary needs), as well as the potential loss of social connections, emotional support, and meaningful relationships (secondary and tertiary needs). The fear of losing or being deprived of these fundamental human needs weighs heavily on my mind and contributes to my anxiety.
My handicaps are already a challenge to tackle on their own. But combined, they make me almost impossible to help. This causes major anxiety for me because it means society has "given up" on me. The feeling of being abandoned (even if I have people that want to help me but don't know how) is crippling.
I have had a bad youth, of which the primary factors would be:
Difficult youth (including being often bullied at school)
Domestic violence (especially during my teenage years until 15)
Child protection services sent me to a crisis center, which in reality was a juvenile detention center.
My additional handicaps (such as migraines, anxiety, and bitterness) I developed when I was 22 and have been battling since then.
The failing social workers are always doing what they want except helping me (causing a lot of arguments, abandonment, and disappointment).
The utterly illegal eviction of me from the protected residence made me, for the first time in my life, homeless.
Currently, my handicaps force me to stay close to home, requiring me to listen to my handicaps rather than to me.
And as for the loss of my human needs, I feel people have become so fed up with me that they have given up on me. This would slowly descend into a loss of human needs for me. Not to mention, there are currently some circumstances going on that threaten my primary needs as of today, such as my broken agreement with social housing.
Anxiety is often found in people who have autism. I have a very high need for clarity and stability, but reality always brings me instability and uncertainty. Since I am unable to provide myself with the stability and certainty I require, I am forced to rely on others who have failed to deliver, even when they promised to do so.
This is in combination with my autism, so I am always on guard, wondering "what will happen to me?" Due to my hyper-awareness, I process information differently, which leads to a different output. I often find myself quickly overstepping boundaries with others, which is my blind spot. As an adult, I can face severe penalties for upsetting others, making this a serious threat to me on a daily basis. I struggle to trust my own judgment without constant overthinking.
I am not as sharp as I used to be and often find myself at a loss for words. This decline in cognitive ability has worsened over the years, resulting in gaps in my memory and an inability to effectively, quickly, and accurately store information. While these changes may go unnoticed by the untrained observer, for someone like me who knows my memory capacity was once higher (scoring 150 compared to the average of 100), a score of 130 represents a significant loss. Losing this cherished strength is deeply painful and is a reality I attribute to anxiety.
Right before crucial moments, which I refer to as "do-or-die events," the stress I have accumulated in the preceding days becomes so overwhelming that it manifests physically in my stomach. This intense stress often leads to an upset stomach that I can no longer control. As a result, I find myself spending 20-30 minutes on the toilet, causing me to be consistently late for important engagements. Unfortunately, proactively going to the toilet does not alleviate this issue, as anxiety-induced diarrhea does not work that way.
In addition to having anxiety, I also experience panic disorder, which differs in that when my anxiety becomes overwhelming, it can trigger a panic attack. During these episodes, I involuntarily adopt a physically intimidating posture, with my muscles tensing up. This leads to muscle cramps and headaches later on. I also become highly aggressive, often resorting to yelling as a misguided attempt to alleviate stress, even though it doesn't actually work. In such moments, I experience a state of blind rage. While these episodes are not frequent, when they do occur, they are destructive for both myself and those around me in the immediate vicinity.s.
This anxiety disorder significantly contributes to my existing problem of procrastination. Due to my uncertainty about the next step, particularly the correct one, I find myself stuck in a cycle of procrastination. It's important to note that I genuinely do not want to procrastinate, but the lack of a clear solution and the inability to seek out necessary information to find a solution further perpetuate the problem. As a result, tasks and responsibilities automatically get delayed and postponed.
Despite my efforts to enhance focus by using tools like noise-canceling headphones or creating silent environments, I continue to struggle with a significant loss of concentration. This difficulty is so severe that I find it challenging to sustain focus for more than 2-5 minutes at a time.
Though I have by default a lower threshold of being patient, when my anxiety is blending into the mix, it acts as a timer, and when it runs out, I will explode.
What's interesting (and, at the same time, potentially dangerous) is that any wrong move made by a third party in that process will eat away more from that timer than a natural countdown.
This explosion goes hand in hand with any of the following:
A declaration of war
Reporting them to official authorities for condemnation and punishment
A campaign of public shaming
When I ask something, it is meant to get it, and being obstructed is causing me to get impatient really quickly.
Despite employing strategies such as utilizing noise-canceling headphones or creating quiet environments to improve my focus, I still face a pronounced loss of concentration. This challenge is so severe that I find it extremely difficult to maintain sustained focus for more than 2-5 minutes at a time.