Autistic people are good at pattern recognition and unfortunately sometimes it means I get anxious about things that people don't understand, but then it turns out that I was right to be anxious, which actually sucks because it reinforces my anxiety.

This summer I had a few days where I became really distracted by anxiety about my friend's dad. Seems random, right? Well I was just very worried about his health and it started to really bother me. Unfortunately, during the time I was very anxious he was dying. I found out later

I've also had anxiety about the health/wellbeing about some other specific people, like a teacher I work with who is just an outstanding, fabulous, wonderful, caring, talented, creative person. Now she has covid and I'm sad to have my anxiety confirmed as realistic.

Unfortunately this is also one of the reasons that many of the traditional treatments for "anxiety disorders" are at risk of being actually oppressive and unhelpful for neurodivergent and other marginalized people. Our anxiety is not irrational: it's insightful.

To be clear I am not saying that anxiety is pleasant, fun, or cool, or desirable. Actually it sucks while simultaneously having the potential to serving a communicative or insight-developing function. Anxiety can be both shitty and useful, simultaneously.

Anxiety treatments that treat anxiety merely as a symptom to be eliminated through intentional techniques can be oppressive and ineffective because they can fail to acknowledge that anxiety can be a protective and productive response to an unsafe environment.

The good news is that therapists can actually help people explore whether there are protective or productive functions of anxiety & if so, collaborate with the client to determine how that information should be used to impact treatment, goals, and methods of evaluating symptoms.