Extreme social anxiety caused by certain words or topics

[sportlover88]

For a long time, I have had anxiety which means that in social situations, I get anxious that if a certain word or topic is brought up, I may start shaking, have a fast-beating heart etc. triggered by certain words or topics, because of what I think people will infer if they see me reacting to them. Some of the topics/words relate to things that I do that there is nothing wrong with, but I don't want people to know. Some of them relate to things that I don't do which are bad things, but I'm worried that if I react when they're brought up, it will make people think that I do them. And some of them relate to things which don't apply to me and aren't bad, but because I was brought up to think they are bad, they still trigger me. It can be a living hell; it's also a problem if I am watching a film with other people and one of these words or topics comes up in the film and I'm worried that people will see me reacting.

To give one example of a trigger, I'm not gay (not that it matters either way) but when I was brought up, I was made to feel as though it was a terrible thing and I was worried that people would think I was gay, so I'd get very anxious (and am still triggered by this) if someone said the word gay or talked about that topic in front of me as I worried that people would think it means I'm gay, and this worry would make me feel more anxious and more likely to react.

I also worry that if I tried to explain the problem to anyone, they would draw inferences from why I'm triggered by these things, e.g. with the gay example, think that I'm homophobic (which I'm not) or with examples where it's about terrible things that I haven't actually done, I worry that if I explained it then people might suspect that it's because I have done those things.

I have both autism and social anxiety and I'm sure that the combination of these things must be causing it. Is anyone aware of anyone having similar issues and is there anything that I can do to stop this happening? At the moment, I try to avoid social situations where I think it's likely that any of the trigger things will be brought up, and if I'm watching a film with others, I try to persuade them to watch a film which I know, which doesn't have any of those things in it, but I don't explain that that's why I want to watch that film.