Scared too frequently?

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Is this an autism thing or a general thing? I get scared just by thinking about the future. When we talk about global warming in class, I start to get worried and block everything out. It seems like there's so much negativity, I'm not sure what to do.

Its probably not an "autistic" thing because I dont do that. And Im dxd as aspie.

When I was your age I would take road maps of my home town (which happens to be the capital of the USA), and take a compass, and draw circles on the map of various radii to see how much of our city would get incinerated by various nuclear bombs. The focus of the circle would be the Capitol building- a mile-and-a-half out from the Capitol would be the radius of total destruction created by a Hiroshima type 14 kiloton bomb, and one megaton H bomb would flattened everything out to the DC/MD state line, and a more powerful H bombs would extend out into the Maryland and Va. suburbs. Far from "blotting it out" I thought it was a fun puzzle to work out. Was concerned about nuclear war in an intellectual way. Not in a personal "its gonna happen any minute to me personally" kind of way.

In fact (now that I think about it) an offical report by a shrink I went to when I was like 9 actually listed "having a detached attitude" as being one of my distinctive traits.

I tend to catastrophize a lot, and I can really get myself worked up. I'm really not sure whether it comes from my AS, or maybe from my depression or anxiety, or, if as you say, it's common in the general population.

I've had all kinds of abnormal fears and anxieties ever since I was a little kid. Autistic people often suffer anxiety and have a hard time with just small stuff they can't control, so the BIG stuff is even worse. For nearly the past two decades it feels like every week there's a terrorist attack, an outbreak of a deadly infectious disease, the climate is going to a hot place in a hand basket but the government and most other people are in complete denial, and that people on the spectrum have nothing to look forward to but being bullied, abused, unemployed, alone, or murdered by their own parents.

But now I feel so old and tired and cold and bitter and cynical that I'm hardly even surprised by any of that any more. In fact I'm almost looking forwards to our doom.

I am rather fond of the earth, it's the people on it that suck so much. Except the people here on WP, of course.

Yep, it's Aspergers. There is no limit to the amount of nothing I have spent my life worrying about. It's part of the obsessive side of ASD.

I don't think it's an aspie thing, and I've heard some NT's say similar things.

At the same time I know many AS who don't get (that) worried about the future. Certainly people want to change the course of human direction (global warming, famine, war, etc) but I don't often hear of people becoming scared and blocking everything else out.