Today my psychiatrist said he thinks I’m struggling with anxiety and wanted to prescribe meds. I was confused and surprised by this and am hoping someone who has experience with anxiety would read what I gave him, which he read and then said it seemed like a textbook description of somatic symptoms due to anxiety. I guess I’m looking for something that will help me decide if I should trust this assessment or insist he has misunderstood something. There is further context at the end if you desire it. 

‘Last time you asked me to describe how it feels when I reach that point where everything feels terrible...I often have this feeling, it is usually just a matter of time till it begins to happen, usually it begins after about three hours of an activity. First I should explained I often don’t feel great inside my body, different aches and pains or discomforts or something in the world that just doesn’t feel great. To do things I have to tune this out, tune my body out, or it would be difficult to start anything. But I think I can only go for so long before I hit a wall where I can’t tune this out anymore and this moment is accompanied with an overwhelmingly horrible feeling. For example, when I sit looking down at a paper or a book my neck and back begin to ache, I can ignore this for so long and get some work done but once I hit this wall it’s like that aching discomfort goes from a 2 to an 8 and becomes so overwhelming it is all I can focus on and it’s overwhelming horrible, but I can’t get relief from it because my neck and back will continue to ache even if I stop and stand up. The things I could tune out before become overwhelming once I hit that wall, and the world outside of me can be too much, I can feel like an exposed nerve ending with everything grating on me, things around me can feel like screeching chalk on a blackboard, I have this terrible feeling from everything inside and the world around me is more than I can handle and it’s so overwhelmingly bad I just want to curl up and cry. When this happens I just want some relief, to find something that feels good to escape this situation, but usually it’s like nothing feels good anymore even if it’s something I enjoyed doing an hour ago. I feel like - if I have to take one more thing in I will fall apart, so to escape the world I often go and lay in bed in the dark to wait until it passes. If what I’m feeling inside is so overwhelming sitting in the dark with nothing to focus on can be torturous, at which point I usually end up doing something like watching tv for hours on end but I take no enjoyment from it, I just keep watching because if I turn it off I have to focus on my body and it’s so overwhelming I just keep watching tv, I still feel bad when watching but it’s like it takes the edge off the horrible feeling’

If you want more context, I’ve struggled with mental health most of my life. I had been diagnosed with chronic major depression and adhd. No ones ever really been able to explain why or what makes my depression chronic, I just accepted this was my life. Recently though I had the luck of being directed to consider autism, which was something that finally began to make sense as an explanation for my life long struggles. But I wanted to get an official diagnosis of this were the case, so I’ve been talking to my psychiatrist. I am fully aware it might not actually be autism so I haven’t actually brought it up and I’ve been careful to just describe my own experience vs textbook description of things in case it is something else. I was trying to explain to him how I get to this point of feeling horrible, which if I’m thinking it’s autism would basically be a meltdown due to the central nervous system getting overwhelmed by sensory information. I had written out an explanation, because I’m not good with commutation in the moment, and I was very surprised when he said it seemed to him it was basically a textbook description of somatic systems due to anxiety and I obviously am struggling with anxiety, he literally said ‘it probably comes at no surprise to you when I read this and think you are struggling with anxiety’. Again, I’m not good with communicating in the moment, I just sat and listened and couldn’t think of a thing to say in the moment, I just sat listening. I usually process it and think of what to say next time. One of the reasons I feel very resistant to this is I don’t understand where he came up with anxiety as the cause of this scenario when I don’t think I’ve ever talked about struggling with anything like anxiety...