Accepting anxiety as a feature of being a woman with ASD

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I think I have always felt I needed to push and struggle at the things I find difficult. Over the last decade or so, I lean more toward spending my time at things I do well, or at least enjoy...something in which the process of learning and figuring something out is absorbing and, to my surprise, anxiety-free.

That makes lots of sense to me.

You're not hurting anybody else. You're doing what you want to do.

Thanks swordrat

^^^^^

I agree it is difficult to know where the limits are and which are important. It took a long time for me to sort those out and I am still sorting and probably will always be sorting.

That said, I have found I can let some tasks go...see how life goes in their absence...and then re-evaluate.

I don't need to know the answers to start sorting.

Anyone familiar with waking up anxious?
My sleep pattern on the nights before work have become broken and restless. I know waking up anxious has become a habit, based on bad work experiences in the past, plus other things I'm sure, but the work situation has changed and those worries are not relevent now.

It's not always like this, I sleep well for weeks at a time.

I'm trying to make more positive associations with the mornings, I think the habit part goes back to school mornings, I think I woke up anxious most of the time.
Broken sleep or light sleep doesnt help matters, but that's nearly always been a feature. I twitch a lot while asleep, it doesnt wake me, but can wake my bed partner.

I have a life change coming up and my dreams are now angsty. This morning I informed my husband I was at an agitation level of 4 right out of bed and 6 when I thought about it. Soooo, time for me to focus on "moving forward" tasks so I can tell myself: it's all in hand, reduce to DEFCON level 1-2.

This morning I've woken up relaxed, had a solid nights sleep and multiple dreams which I've remembered, all segments of making sense of recent events. If I dream on a regular basis I dont remember it happening, if do know that I dreamt I usually forget them as I wake up.
Feeling much better for it today and some things are clearer.

Excellent. I love it when a day starts well.

Today is a day for self care and forward planning

Agreed. I am looking forward also and when I can change dance partners, from anxiety to excitement, it is lots of fun!

Ok so I made some progress in therapy regarding my sleep patterns. There were segments of relevent information available to me at different points in time, but I had never held them all together in my mind to piece them together before.

I wont go into too much detail here, I will keep that for the members forum should I feel the need to write about it.

I knew the waking anxious was a habit learned from my early school years, or the light sleeping as a necessity.

What I've learned is that the waking anxious is also coming from the breakdown I experienced (even the strongest and most resilient would have had one in these circumstances... a normal human response to cumulative extreme/traumatic situations).

The morning fears are that people will realise that my outward presentation does not match my abilities. I've written before about the difference between skills and abilities. A few years after my brain flipped the safety switch and shut down parts of itself per se, I learned that I had previously mistaken learned skills for innate abilities.

The learned skills were something I grieved the loss of, also that so much energy, a short lifetime of it was wasted on transient skills.

On an aside and focusing on moving forward, I've narrowed down the options and I'm applying for further study to facilitate a career change (I'd rather not say what just yet)

Be well to anyone reading and thank you for the responses BlazingStar and SharonB