So this is going to sound utterly insane, because it is, but when I’ve @ replied to somebody I care about or value the opinion of on Twitter, and they ask me to chill out or relax or say something of that ilk that makes me worry I’ve offended or irritated them, their reply telling me to calm down, or worse, no reply at all, combined with their avatar not turning up in my feed for a while… It makes me terrified that they’ve blocked me and I’ve blown my chance of interacting with another human being forever.

If this sounds like I should get out more, you’d be right. A large portion of my strong attachment to Twitter people stems from my lack of meatspace people most of the time to interact with. So if suddenly your @ reply to my panic seems like I’ve annoyed you, it makes the panic worse! And you probably don’t even mean to do it! It’s a debilitating condition and it’s affecting my recent social media interactions rather badly due to the combined factor of my high functioning autism making it hard to read tone on the Internet. Hence at the first sign of trouble I become a ball of raw panic.