I had kind of an interesting and educational experience last Tuesday. Briefly, I was invited to help lead and speak on a panel to educate med students about autism. It was myself and three other autistic people. This was, thank God, the last major thing this month besides a dual party for myself and a friend.
I wrote the bones of my speech the day before, the speech itself the day of, and then I spent another hour or so putting together a handout with further reading and the main points of the speech. Because I've been a student and I swear to you, lectures are the least useful way to convey information.
After all this was done, I had about two hours before I needed to leave. This left me sitting in anticipation. I assessed the emotion absently, labeled it anxiety, and proceeded to put on depression music to shift my emotional state. Basically it's the kind of sad/angry music you can kind of drown in, which helps you feel understood and also feel calmer, though not better. I've done this before, and it works quite well.
But I thought about it as I listened to the music, and realized that I was probably going about things wrong. The anxiety feeling was uncomfortable in its strength, but the situation I was heading to wasn't really a bad situation. It was simply new and important. If I kept the depression music on, I would be less anxious, but I'd also approach the situation with resignation and sadness. That wasn't a good attitude to bring to these medical students.
I also recalled the podcast I'd listened to a few months back, which mentioned that emotions can be boiled down to two spectrums: wound up-calm, and positive-negative. Excitement, you see, is merely positive anxiety. Physiologically, they're exactly the same. The difference is in how you mentally view the situation.
This realization made me realize I honestly don't do excitement. I do anxiety. All excitement in my life has likely been mislabeled anxiety or worry because it's what I'm used to. Granted, the excitement-to-anxiety ratio is probably heavily skewed toward the latter, but I don't honestly know.
The end result was that I was so used to feeling bad and reading wound up as anxiety, that it didn't immediately occur to me that I should maybe just be happy for myself that I had this opportunity.
After I thought about this for a while, I put on some more neutral, semi-wound-up music and sniffed my calming perfume scent to take the edge off my wound-up-ness. I then began playing a favorite puzzle game on my phone until I could be distracted with other things and needed to go.
I did manage the speech, though I was still pretty...well, it felt like anxiety again frankly, because there was a whole classroom of college-age students looking back at me. I was a bit busy just trying to read the speech and not rush to question whether it was excitement or anxiety.
That's something I'll have to look for, going forward. I'm not sure if I'll continue to have to do it via deductive work (i.e.: this situation is positive, I should be excited not anxious), or if I'll eventually develop a sense for the difference.
Either way, this is progress.
I wrote the bones of my speech the day before, the speech itself the day of, and then I spent another hour or so putting together a handout with further reading and the main points of the speech. Because I've been a student and I swear to you, lectures are the least useful way to convey information.
After all this was done, I had about two hours before I needed to leave. This left me sitting in anticipation. I assessed the emotion absently, labeled it anxiety, and proceeded to put on depression music to shift my emotional state. Basically it's the kind of sad/angry music you can kind of drown in, which helps you feel understood and also feel calmer, though not better. I've done this before, and it works quite well.
But I thought about it as I listened to the music, and realized that I was probably going about things wrong. The anxiety feeling was uncomfortable in its strength, but the situation I was heading to wasn't really a bad situation. It was simply new and important. If I kept the depression music on, I would be less anxious, but I'd also approach the situation with resignation and sadness. That wasn't a good attitude to bring to these medical students.
I also recalled the podcast I'd listened to a few months back, which mentioned that emotions can be boiled down to two spectrums: wound up-calm, and positive-negative. Excitement, you see, is merely positive anxiety. Physiologically, they're exactly the same. The difference is in how you mentally view the situation.
This realization made me realize I honestly don't do excitement. I do anxiety. All excitement in my life has likely been mislabeled anxiety or worry because it's what I'm used to. Granted, the excitement-to-anxiety ratio is probably heavily skewed toward the latter, but I don't honestly know.
The end result was that I was so used to feeling bad and reading wound up as anxiety, that it didn't immediately occur to me that I should maybe just be happy for myself that I had this opportunity.
After I thought about this for a while, I put on some more neutral, semi-wound-up music and sniffed my calming perfume scent to take the edge off my wound-up-ness. I then began playing a favorite puzzle game on my phone until I could be distracted with other things and needed to go.
I did manage the speech, though I was still pretty...well, it felt like anxiety again frankly, because there was a whole classroom of college-age students looking back at me. I was a bit busy just trying to read the speech and not rush to question whether it was excitement or anxiety.
That's something I'll have to look for, going forward. I'm not sure if I'll continue to have to do it via deductive work (i.e.: this situation is positive, I should be excited not anxious), or if I'll eventually develop a sense for the difference.
Either way, this is progress.
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