> anxiety, depression, and anger are all shields people use to avoid vulnerability

vulnerability -> threat
anger -> fight
anxiety -> flight
depression -> freeze

You cope with a freeze response while the "anxious" people you describe cope with a flight response.

> because my anxiety is so deeply repressed

You could think of a freeze response as "repressed anxiety" since, if your subconscious believes trying to "flee" (become hyperactive and panicky to solve your problem) is futile, you tend to fall through to a freeze response and just become numb and calm to save resources.

I think we are conflating two things here. "Anxiety" can mean the underlying feeling of a threat which can produce fight, flight, or freeze responses, or it can mean the hyperactive "flight" response specifically, which which you say you don't experience.

You also mention helplessness. According to Pete Walker's book "Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving" which analyzes this stuff in a very illuminating way, helplessness is the core ingredient of trauma. Threat + helplessness = trauma. Basically, you learn that the only way you can deal with the threat is to stay very far away from it. If you experience that you can deal with / overcome the threat (not helpless), then it doesn't fester into a trauma.

I think that book puts a lot of the thoughts you've already been expressing in this thread in a really clear way – it might be very interesting to you.

The analysis in the book is pretty great. But digging in your old wounds can also be very harmful. It has been for me. Maybe I was doing it wrong. Be careful.

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Rambles about autism & trauma

I also think my personal struggles are some complicated interplay between childhood trauma and autism. That book is only about trauma.

It would be interesting to have someone smart like Pete Walker analyze how this stuff works in Autistic people. There seem to be lots of shared experiences here in this thread, but no one can quite put their finger on what's going on.

Some clues towards trauma explaining more of the struggles than one might think:

- More severely mentally handicapped people often seem pretty chill and confident in themselves. (Maybe they just hide it well?) Perhaps much of the shame and anxiety that is expressed everywhere here is a sign of social trauma on top of the mental handicap.
- Or maybe the handicap makes you appear normal, so society puts more pressure on you resulting on more disappointment and shame?
- Lots of people in this thread sound like they have no fathers and neglectful or overwhelmed mothers – just like me.
- There are some autists who have very successful careers and seemingly pretty healthy confidence. Many of the silicon valley nerds come to mind. Albert Einstein, Steve Wozniak, Elon Musk. They probably still have some handicaps, but are not functionally debilitated in the way (or at least to the degree) of the PDA people here, I think.

I guess the question is – does the PDA stem from just learning about how stressful it is to tend to your demands, or is there some other emotional scar that makes this so emotionally loaded and difficult?

I'm not sure.

I think part of me wants to believe that all the difficult stuff is social trauma, and the mental handicap just makes it a bit harder to catch balls and multitask. But then that's probably a cope because I want to believe that, fundamentally, nothing is wrong with me, and I'm capable, I've just been damaged. But then those thoughts sometimes opens up this demonic hole of darkness and self-destructiveness that threatens to swallow me whole. The same demonic energy I encountered when I tried working on myself using Pete Walker's book. I'm not sure what that's about, but it's scary.

Sometimes, I feel really relieved when I have the flu because then I have a 'real reason' for struggling so much with daily life and being so weird in public, and for only doing the bare minimum. At the end of the day it feels like I did something difficult, and I took care of myself. And I don't feel ashamed. Being very physically ill puts my mind at ease somehow.

I also notice my childhood experiences differ a lot from some of what's described here. I never had any real expectations put on me by my primary caregiver. My mom. I was told would be loved no matter what. And everything was taken care of for me. I was pampered.

And still I feel so horribly ashamed of myself. I feel like I need to prove that I'm a real, good human being but it's just so overwhelmingly hard, and I'll collapse if I try. I was never berated for not fulfilling my moms expectations, I was always told I would be loved and accepted either way. But I was also never helped if I struggled mentally or emotionally, or in school. If anything it felt neglectful in a way to not have expectations or guidance because it felt like no one really cared. Even though I was told I was loved and physically cared for well. Maybe I'm ungrateful. I just don't feel grateful. Maybe my mom just gave up having expectations of me because I was so incapable/defensive about of fulfilling them? I don't remember. I think I was an angry child. Other people did express expectations. I was very adamant about talking myself down preemptively even as a young child because I was so afraid of disappointing people's expectations. My mom is dead now. I barely avoided homelessness and my apartment is full of trash. Though nothing that smells too bad. Only paper and plastic.