Help with ND anxiety and repeating

[imabitjealousandembarassed]

Hello
My lovely best friend has has a late diagnosis of autism. (It didn't come as a surprise, she has 3 ND children)
She is also perimenopausal and has had a recent bereavement. All of this has overloaded her and her anxiety is sky high. I'm supporting and I love her dearly. Her anxiety is manifesting as repeating the same fixations. She's fixated on cleaning her car at the moment and booking to go and see ballets.
No matter what we are talking about, she interrupts and talks about the car or the ballet tickets (she talks about how she's leaving early to get there on time)
This is a massive anxiety pattern, my question is , if you have ND experience is there a way you can shift them and have a more normal conversation
I am not bashing her at all, I love her. She is having therapy for her grief at the moment

In my experience, not really. When I start perseverating it's game over until the underlying issue is dealt with. In the past, some people tried to tell me that I am doing it. It's not very helpful because I am aware and then I get even more anxious because I am now aware that they are aware ..if you know what I mean.
It's OK to keep changing the subject although I very much understand it's annoying to you.

Thanks this is really helpful. I haven't ever mentioned it to her. I have a friend whose mum has dementia and the dementia nurse told her to not correct as it stresses the person, so I sort of applied that to this situation (I'm not conflating ND and dementia- it just seemed common sense)
It's annoying I guess, but more upsetting in the way that I can see how her brain is never not worried. The underlying issue is the grief so this will take a while to shift.

Appreciating Catza's view that she says it makes her more anxious, I do try to neutrally steer my ND husband on this sometimes. Particularly the interrupting the flow of conversation to talk about something else. I try to say something like, "Could we just finish talking about x and then we can get to y?" Sometimes giving the person space to talk about the topic straightaway helps lower the anxiety, too.

To be clear, I'd be giving you different advice if she wasn't your best friend, who you were supporting. It may also be that she's not in the right place now to be steered about this.