Trouble doing repetitive things, anxiety related?

Hello all,

A little background before we begin. I am a 25 year old guy. I have always struggled with social/generalized anxiety as well as depression. I am also a very introspective person. Anyway...

I have always had trouble doing repetitive tasks, even really simple ones, and I'm not sure if it is purely rooted in anxiety. I was hoping to find someone with similar experience.

For example, I have been learning guitar for a while now - still I can't get through a whole song because I can't keep a simple rhythm going. I start getting inside my own head and probably over think things. I don't think this has to do with skill or practice, because, for instance, you could give me a drum and tell me to beat it in rhythm and I wouldn't be able to do it for more than a minute probably.... I would start to get very anxious and eventually mess up.

This has been holding me back. Any thoughts?

Hi, thewaffle! Do you have trouble paying attention to things too? If you get really anxious and can't do the task anymore, then maybe it is due to anxiety, though. Did you talk to your doctor about it?
If it's a problem with learning that you have, it might have to do with depression too, I think it does/did for me.

Hi,thewaffle. I just registered on this forum because I googled this condition. I have always suffered with this since being a kid, and have always wondered if anyone else felt the same.

About 10 mins ago I was just copying and pasting a load of bibliography references for an assignment I'm writing [NB: I am not stressed by the assignment at all] and as it was a repetitive mundane task I started to get anxious and feeling like I needed to stop. This also happens to me when I play repetitive parts on the guitar, and especially when I'm drumming. The repetitive motion makes me feel weird and anxious. I sometimes think it's due to smoking cannabis as a youngster but I know this can't be the cause, as I said I used to get like this as a small child too.

I have no help to offer; only that I feel like this too. It's weird isn't it.

Hi all,

I too, would like to share my experience with this phenomenon...

Some background: I am in my late 20's and while I have never been clinically diagnosed with anxiety, I feel as if I occasionally suffer from it moderately in social settings. I attribute this to being overly stimulated by noise and people.

I can remember even as a young kid that doing repetitive things would cause me to feel awkward or panicky, some examples being: Marching in the same motion, filling in bubbles on a scan tron, and for example tonight I am switching out light bulbs on Christmas lights to make them alternate in colors. About 30 bulbs in I had to stop and relax because I became overwhelmed and lost all patience due to the repetitive motion of removing them and replacing them. I'd like to note that I only experience this while doing something physically repetitive, it doesn't happen if I'm doing repetitive thinking (E.g. simple math).

Any information on this condition would be greatly appreciated. It is not something I'd consider debilitating to my life, I just would never want to be a professional light switcher .

Hi,
I've been searching for a solution or atleast an explanation for this problem for the last year but have not bee very successful. I am 20 and have all symptoms described by other above. I find that it is affecting my work, I work in software but repetitive tasks like copy and pasting a lot make me so stressed and anxious to the point that I can't continue. This has happened with many tasks since I was young and would love if anyone could shed any light on this
Thanks