AS and flexibility

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I don't cope. I become completely avoidant about all my responsibilities and try not to think about all the things I expected to do. I need time to regroup. I try to start over the next day. If the disruption is only minor, and I have the routine written down (for instance my morning routine -- which often takes all day -- is written in water soluble ink on my white board, so that it doesn't get rubbed off when I dry erase my checkmarks at the end of each day), I try to go back to the missed thing later in the day.

Anyone have any better strategies? I am so terrible at decision-making that if my routine gets disrupted, I turn into one of Harry Mudd's androids: "Norman, does not compute. Norman..."

Keep some things that are absolutely the same, even if your schedule and everything else around you is changing.

I have also heard, from an autistic person who was homeless (i.e. the ultimate in not having any predictability in your life) for awhile, that after awhile all the moving around and chaos and stuff develops a rhythm of its own.

At one point in my life, when things were becoming unbearably chaotic and changing all the time, I embraced the chaotic, nonsensical, and surreal, and anything connected to it, as my special interest. That was the one point in my life when I dealt best with change, because I was attached to change as my routine. (Although even then, change threw me off a fair amount, I just either embraced the being-thrown-off feeling or went and stared at one spot for a certain amount of time each day.) But after four years of rigid regimentation directly after that (during which I went back to having more and more trouble with change in part because nothing ever changed), and with different special interests now, I couldn't go back to that at will.

So it's back to trying to carry tangibly familiar objects (my favorite right now is a wooden cat) so that I can always touch something that feels the same even if sight and sound and everything else is thrown into chaotic fragments by all the new information.

I'm not sure, by the way, whether what we experience is always inflexibility or rigidness the way it would normally be defined. I mean... I used to know a blind guy, and he didn't want his stuff moved around either, because he got disoriented if you did stuff like that. But if an autistic person gets disoriented because they have trouble cognitively tracking a huge amount of new information, it's somehow a different story. Blind people are using a reasonable accommodation or whatever, so for that matter are people with movement disorders that make unfamiliar movements much harder than learned automatic ones. Yet autistic people are just inflexible when we do the same exact things for nearly the same exact reasons. Doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Last edited by anbuend on 10 Apr 2008, 11:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I don't really have a set routine, either. The only thing that's set, is that I like to go out, in the evening, with my friends.

The part of change that really throws me is the fact that suddenly, the rest of the day (or week) is unknown because it doesn't fit into the schedule that I have in my brain anymore. So I have to rethink everything and put everything back into place in my mind. This is confusing and it can take a long time. What has helped me is to shorten this thinking/restructuring period by purposely taking some time out to just think about it, process it and restructure my schedule. Making this a conscious task shortens the timing and reduces the anxiety about the change.

dont like it when ppl are late...
eat my food THEN my drink
you better have a sexy reason for waking me up

My functioning breaks down when my routine is broken; then I get nonverbal and unresponsive to all but the basic of commands (I implode rather than explode). I've tried many things; the best thing for me to do is open and close something repetitively, like a familiar lighter/pocket knife, and only focus on that. It doesn't make me function "better", but it makes me more comfortable.

In other words, carrying around a ritual I've always done.

Usually I don't mind that much, the exception is if I'm organising something at work, which involves organising half a dozen people, transport, equipment, paperwork etc etc, and it gets rescheduled at the last minute: because I have to reorganise everything and everyone again.

I don't really have a routine per se, but I do make plans for my days and if something throws off the plan, I get very frustrated and angry. It throws off my whole day, pretty much. I've found that taking a break and doing a few deep-breathing exercises helps. The problem is that I have to recognise that my reaction is out of proportion to the situation, and I don't always realize that until after I've blown up. Then I'm just embarrassed and my day is still blown.

Patricia

I deal with my feelings inside of me and I hold them in. I try not to let them out and I just do as I am told. But most of the time now I don't mind anymore when my routine gets broken at work because I worked on it at my last job. I learned to not care and to turn off my feelings.
At home, I try and stay calm and not get bitchy.
I prefer to have the day planned before it starts because I don't like it when my boyfriend comes and asks me if we should do anything because he is always stuck at home and then he goes to work and back at home again. I get all tensed inside because the day isn't going the way I had it planned because my boyfriend wants to do something and I feel like a jerk for it. But luckily he understands. We did better this week though because we planned what to do on our days off so I knew on Monday or Tuesday we have to go shopping and go the nickel arcade before my free admission coupon expires next week.

It depends on what's being disrupted. I usually prefer not to have a routine; I get upset if I have too much of a routine, in fact.

As long as I get at least a few hours notice of some impending interruption I'm fine, if not I can get extremely distressed. This is especially an issue at work. I need a set, step-by-step routine with as little multi-tasking as possible. I've been having problems at work ( a preschool kitchen) because things change too much.

I have lots of coping mechanisms that sound like others have described. A held object (just a small one in a pocket) helps a lot. I have also found out that it helps to let people know that the grimace I make, when asked to change out of my current activity, is about the heavy lifting involved in changing direction, NOT about what I'm changing to. I've had a lifetime of misunderstandings due to that grimace!

I forgot to mention, if you want to remain inconspicuous about an object that is always the same, jewelry or things that can be put on keychains can be a good option depending on your tolerance for things touching you. I used to wear what a friend described as "big gobs of necklaces" even during my embracing-chaos period... for a reason.

This is great stuff!

Exactly! (omg somebody else like me!)


This seems like a good idea.



Can you make that shorter and quippier, so that I can put it on a t-shirt?



Wow, I used to do this and I had completely forgotten. I had a ring that I used to remind me to focus on my breath, and a little plumb-bob that (symbolically) helped me when I felt disoriented. Where are these objects now? I stopped wearing jewelry when I had a baby, but maybe...

In fact, I am flexible, but I get upset when other things happen that keep me from being flexible.

I have one routine that messes up my morning if it's ruined. I get up, get ready, Mom drives me to school, I get a Coke or Dr. Pepper, I get on the bus, and I'm taken to the high school. Sometimes either Mom or I are late and Dad ends up taking me, and it makes me sullen. If I don't get a drink when he's taken me then I'll be irritable for hours.

Otherwise I can't think of any schedules I follow routinely.