#865 Saturday 12 April

During the school picnic yesterday and during recent discussions with a friend, I've been pondering the nature of 'anxiety' ..... what is it and where does it come from.  We all experience anxiety ourselves .... and we tend to give other people's experience the same quality as our own .... so we can understand and empathise.  This  can be misleading ... as anxiety for another person may be very different from our own .... and may have very different causes.

When told of Kaylia's anxiety attacks, a common response is "what is making her worried?"  .... assuming that there must be an external issue that is the source of the anxiety.  For a normal person this is a valid question .... but for a person on the spectrum, I think that anxiety is the physical response to a set of emotional or physical triggers .... and many of the triggers are issues that don't register for a normal person .... such as changes in routine.  Although repeated changes get to be wearing, we usually take them as not very important.   But for Kaylia, a change in routine is a big problem and if it is not be a big source of anxiety, the change in routine must be managed very carefully.

...... or the trigger may be an internal one such as a tummy ache .... or a head ache.  For most of us, such a trigger is "just an ache" but for Kaylia, it's a change in her universe that she can't handle .... anxiety!