Exposure Anxiety

[pippip]

Does anyone have any knowledge on this or have it themselves? I think its generally related to autism but not always, and I worry about being autistic anyways. I read a short description on this and now I think i have it but maybe its because it overlaps with regular old anxiety disorders?

[ocdengineer]

Nope.  Completely different animals.  Don't worry yourself over autism.  If you were autistic there would a whole host of symptoms that I have not seen in you.  Your ability to communicate would be hampered and you may have a savant like skill.  Autism I think is being over diagnosed to people who are just simply slower than others.  You would have been diagnosed as a young child.

No worries,
OE

[gloomy]

Explain further what you think 'exposure anxiety' means?

[pippip]

Thanks OE.

Gloomy, from what I read about it its just a fear of life in general and that life is just too much to handle. Sometimes i feel so overwhelmed with everything from eating to sleeping to chores its just like wow theres no way I can possibly handle everything.

[Kate1982]

Exposure anxiety was first described by Donna Williams, an autistic author.   It's true that she associates this type of anxiety disorder with the autism spectrum. Exposure anxiety can be confusing for many different reasons.  For one thing, Donna Williams isn't a psychologist or even a psychiatrist she's an author, composer, artist, screenwriter and therefore isn't exactly qualified to create a new type of anxiety disorder, and alot of the descriptions she has of exposure anxiety can fit into other anxiety disorders, personality disorders, and other psychological disorders.  All of which autistic people are prone to developing.   I personally haven't heard of or been able to find much scientific research on this as a seperate anxiety disorder, doesn't mean it's not out there at all but it seems as if a lot of research hasn't been done with it, so I'm skeptical to say much more about it other than it could very well be a description of several comorbid but seperate anxiety disorders. People without autism but who do have anxiety disorders are also prone to a myriad of comorbid disorders that could resemble exposure anxiety as described by Williams. 
That was kind of alot of rambling but I hope it made sense.   

[gloomy]

It made sense to me LOL and it was what I was going to say too, thats why I asked Pippip what exactly she meant by exposure.

I dont go for it either, there are too many subsets of disorders appearing and being given media attention by totally unqualified indidviduals, who mostly have never studied psychology in their lives.  Some of them think they can read a couple of books and that means they can then start debating years of research.  I always say there is a big difference between being an armchair psychologist, and an academic psychologist!!

[Kate1982]

I like that..."armchair psychologists".  That's very clever and accurate way of describing it I think.   

[King]

I agree, this is a point I was making in the Off-Topic area about the DSM manual. Its a "disease" (pun intended) occurring in the whole of medicine. Medical science often has so-called experts who like to segment diseases further and further - its gains academic attention.

So what used to be just an "itchy elbow" then becomes "Irritable Sebacial Humeral Syndrome" and the patient who was pretty happy before then thinks "geez, I've got something really bad becuase its got a formal name attached to it". They then become "labelled" and "medicalised" and worry about how they can live with this disorder - which if anxiety related becomes a vicious circle - when up to that point it may not have been bothering them too much.

This why as you say gloomy, these sort of areas need to be treated by experts and appropriately communicated with the patient. Worry is unfortunately a fact of life for everyone from time to time but for some of us too much worry is enough to make us reach a tipping point where we go into anxiety disorder but to tag a new disorder like Exposure Axiety is almost irresponsible in the wrong hands.

[gloomy]

Well said King, I actually didnt consider the medical fields having the same sort of problems, but as you said named 'disorders' are very dangerous when subject to bad interpretation.


And congratulations on your 500 post 'hero status' 5 stars!!  You are now among the few!!

[King]

Yay! thanks 

Hopefully I wont go from Hero to Zero now...lol