Often people may ask what is anxiety? People have different thresholds, strategies, internal somatic experiences, and interpretations of what words means to them.

Some when breaking down the different types of anxiety we can explore the different potential experiences that are going on.

• Social Phobia/Social Anxiety Disorder – in which person may be avoidant of social activities and/or deeply analyse their perceived faults.
• Obsessive Compulsive Disorder – in which person repeats actions (movements, songs, checking) to “feel safe” this experience is usually temporary and short term
• Exposure Anxiety – in which person’s nervous system is triggered by awareness of self that leads to compulsive reactive retaliation responses
• Analysis Paralysis – in which person may overthinking multiple strands of information and not coming to decision and/or looking at too many variables.

So, when we look at autism and anxiety, we must take time understand what type of anxiety is present, what triggers the person’s nervous system and taking into account their information processing, language processing, mentalising and learning styles when supplying information to them.

Paul Isaacs 2022