Anxiety, my companion

There’s a medical word for it – comorbidity. I dislike the word, so I’m not going to use it. Instead, I’m simply going to talk in terms of additional diagnosable conditions that run alongside Asperger’s.

I’ve digested a lot of information about Asperger’s – from online resources, and from some books too. Something that stands out is that folks with Asperger’s have a high probability of having some other diagnosable condition as well. The general consensus would appear to be that depression and anxiety are the most common of these, with other conditions such as ADD and OCD hot on their heels.

I can’t say I’m surprised by this. I’ve suffered with anxiety from as far back in my life as I can rationally remember, and certainly from at least my early teens. Indeed it was my learning to understand and cope with my anxiety that ultimately lead to my realisation that I had Asperger’s.

My anxiety comes and goes in waves, depending on the degree to which I’m feeling stressed, but ultimately it’s never far away. At times I’ve been depressed too, and it’s not uncommon for me to find it difficult to concentrate on important activities.

Now that I understand the mechanisms of Asperger’s Syndrome, none of this surprises me.

Why? Well, put yourself in my shoes. The world has never quite made sense to me, and people have an uncanny ability to behave in ways I don’t expect. I’m different. I don’t feel like I fit in, and until recently I had no idea why any of this was the case. When the world is always at least a little perplexing to you then it’s not difficult to see how this might make you stressed and ultimately anxious.

My anxiety weaves throughout my whole life. It has a more profound impact on me than the Asperger’s itself does. My Asperger’s means that I have difficulty with many forms of social interaction, but add in a bad day of anxiety, and something simple like picking up the phone to call someone can be practically impossible.

So, whilst it’s Asperger’s that makes my life a little different from the norm, it’s actually the anxiety that the Asperger’s induces in me that makes my life more difficult than it needs to be.

I can happily embrace the Asperger’s, but I’d rather see the back of the anxiety. Whilst I have techniques these days that help me to reduce and control my anxiety, I can’t see me ever shaking it off completely. After all,  people are always going to seem unpredictable, and the world is always going to seem a little odd to me.

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