Small mistake, big effect

My anxiety is back once more.

Anxiety is my big co-morbid condition. I’m fairly certain these days that it has been caused and reinforced over the years because of my Asperger’s and my reaction to a world that has never quite made sense or felt predictable to me.

I’ve had a few days feeling very positive and confident, and all of a sudden it’s all evaporated again.

I can see the trigger this time. I was given a bit of investigation to do at work, which involved calling someone I don’t know. I’m not great with these situations, as I feel like I need to map out the conversation and all the twists and turns it could make first before I call, so that I feel prepared. This, it would seem, is a very typical Asperger’s trait.

I’ve learned a trick since I started to tackle my anxiety issues a year or so ago that helps – instead of sitting and mapping the possible conversation out, and feeling anxious about where it will go, just call without thinking about it. This feels very much in at the deep end, but it does, for the most part work.

I used this trick yesterday, but I made a faux pas very early on in the conversation. My mistake was protocol related – I asked for some information in a way that wasn’t within the security rules of my job. As the person I was talking too said he couldn’t tell me over the phone, and then discussed how he might let me have the information, I was spinning into a spiral of anxiety fuelled despair.

How could I have been so stupid! What must he think of me? Then there was the feeling. It was like I’d committed the most heinous crime imaginable – I felt extreme guilt. I also felt completely flustered all of a sudden. When asked if I could accept the information in a particular format, I literally ummed and erred for a good minute, unable to make a decision as to whether that method of data transportation was sufficiently secure. I felt a fool for my lack of decision. I felt overloaded too – perhaps this was because all of a sudden my brain was wanting to process what I’d done wrong and what it might mean instead of devoting itself to what was being said to me.

An hour later I was still churning it all over in my mind – I find it very difficult to let go when things like this happen.

Was it a huge mistake in reality? No. It was a silly slip up that I shouldn’t have made, but actually no harm was done. I was very hard on myself, but when a situation like this happens, I find it impossible to react any differently.

So the anxiety is back, and it’s continued to impact on my work today – I’ve got less done that I would do typically.

I’m going to try and get in some walks over the next few days. They usually help enormously.

Update: It’s now an hour or so since I finished writing this post and published it. I feel much better – more positive, and less anxious. It would seem that simply writing about how I was feeling has helped to reduce it’s effect. How wonderful!

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