Question:
that stress is the number one killer....
is causing me stress.
all this anxiety.....over stress and how to reduce "stress".
count to ten....???
You know, people write pages about stress and stress management
without really getting specific enough is starting to become a new
source of stress in my life....all this worry about stress itself.
Can't I enjoy my stress in peace without having to stress about my
stress?
Answer:
I bet NT brains manage stress naturally using
the sociolinguistic part of them. Autistic
persons need to be taught to manage stress
using the analytical part of their brains.
That must be why cognitive/rational approaches,
such as thought replacement, work quite well
for me, but they do require thinking effort
that most NTs probably don't put into it.
Personally I didn't find this type of approach very useful. The
presupposition seems to be that either your own actions are leading to
the problem, or that your reaction to a real problem is excessive /
distorted. - There seems to be no real provision for those who have
real problems (as many ACs are going to have), and who have a
reasonably realistic appraisal of them.
It may well help those who have been lead by the expectations and
"understandings" of the NT world to believe that *they* are at fault,
lazy, "not trying hard enough", etc. - but otherwise the cognitive
approach largely involves trying to substitute a more "comfortable"
but *less* accurate description / mental model (which my own
experience makes me suspect to be more difficult / less stable of
outcome, with "concrete thinkers" as compared to the average NT).
And of course when you have real problems, often all that rational
analysis will tell you is that you need access to resources (either
internal or external) which are not realistically available to you.
IMHO (with the type of exception described above) the default
assumptions of this sort of approach simply ignore the fact that many
AC (*and* I suspect a good proportion of NTs) have real problems which
require real solutions, and to which this type of approach is problem
*avoidant* and reality denying.
Unfortunately many of the professionals seem to have learned how to do
a few things, which are useful in *some* circumstances, but for
reasons of pride, insecurity, even their own "conditioning" - won't,
can't, dare not, admit how limited their "tools" really are, how very
far they still have to go.
I learned about it from the program at stresscenter.com,
but I think the larger philosophy can be attributed to
things like RET (Rational Emotive Therapy) which I had
read about earlier, but perhaps wasn't too easy to put
the theory into practice.
A simple way to explain it is that when a scary, worrisome
obsessive, self-critical thought pops up in your head, you
recognize the irrationalities in it, and replace it with
a more truthful, rational thought.
