coping with change

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sorry if this is in wrong place
i have autism and really struggle with change anybody have any coping tips

I have just been told by my therapist that if I ever want to get into the group therapy I have been working towards I have to improve my ability to cope with change. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to do this - I thought that was the point of the therapy! Very frustrated at the moment.

I started to ignore my feelings and told them to shut up. I would also pretend they were not there. Downside to that is, it really messes with your feeling system so it makes it harder for you to detect your feelings and you feel like a sociopath in the future because you feel nothing about stuff. I think this is why I have this issue now because of what I did to myself just to cope with change and be flexible without getting all upset and having meltdowns and being all bitchy.

I'm unemployed so I don't actually have a particular routine at the moment. But I'm not quite sure how I feel with change. When I get a job, I do want one that's regular hours, not shiftwork, unless it's still quite routinal, for example say one week being Mondays Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and the next week being Wednesdays Thursdays and Fridays, and it was like that all the time. Or spring and summer being afternoon hours and autumn and winter being morning hours. That will be OK for me, because it's predictable, and I'm quite good at keeping track of things like that, so I will be prepared.

My bus times got changed a couple of months ago, and I did get used to that pretty quickly. Sometimes you just have to quickly accept it, and just wait and see what happens. Sometimes change can be exciting, because life can get boring with the same thing all the time. This is why I want to work part-time, so that I could have the chance to do different things each week on my days off, instead of my life just being work, bed, work, bed, work, bed all the time.

I think I have learnt to cope with change better now than what I used to. Things change all the time. But I'm not coping too well with the autumn, because the nights are getting darker and I'm not looking forward to the cold, icy weather. In fact, it takes so long getting used to, that it's spring by the time I'm used to the dark nights - and by then they're rapidly drawing right out again! But I can get used to that within a week.

Redacted.

Last edited by Willard on 01 Oct 2011, 8:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Oh yes, I did think of that type of change when I was writing, but forgot to add it. Yes, I can't cope with this type of change either. When we had booked a coach holiday back in January, we got all the tickets through rather quick - then about five weeks before the holiday we got a phonecall saying that the coach holiday was cancelled because of the lack of people (even though we already received our tickets, which made us sure that we were going). I didn't take too kindly to that, but it was due to disappointment because I was getting all excited for it. I screamed and cried and cursed, and nobody got cross with me for reacting like that because they were as disappointed as I was too, but could handle it better. But later that week we went and booked another holiday for the same dates but to a different place, which cheered me up, and so we did finally have a holiday after all.

But yes, I can react harshly to sudden change. But it's usually due to disappointment, like the scenario above.