About changes and emotions.

Post Reply New Topic

Is it common for people with AS to be quite self-centered? I'm very self-centered. I wouldn't say I'm selfish but I'm very preoccupied with my own thoughts and feelings. I keep analysing myself, the situation I'm in, my emotions etc. I need things to be done my way and I need specific plans. If people then change my plans because they for example want to do something else I react in bad way (I get angry/annoyed/anxious/depressed and I often feel like I can no longer organise the day), which makes me seem selfish.

I often get annoyed with myself for reacting the way I react when changes are made. I don't understand why I get so depressed, anxious and annoyed. Can someone please explain that to me? I also react that way to changes "normal" people would be happy about. The other day my boyfriend told me he's gotten a job and that he'll move to the city where I live (we've been doing long-distance for a while). He said he's going to look for a place to live but that he needs to stay at my place until he finds something. Made me freak out on the inside (though it didn't show). I have no idea how to survive living with someone. I need a lot of time to be alone. I've been at my parent's place for two days now (I'm here for Christmas) and I'm already getting very anxious since I can't be alone.

Why do I react this way? Why can't I handle my emotions? Why can't I enjoy spending time with people? I don't understand. I don't understand why I am the way I am (I have no diagnosis yet). I'm tired of not understanding why I seem to be so abnormal in comparison to people around me.

Also, what about people who don't have AS, do they react like this? Any ideas?

Last edited by rebbieh on 21 Dec 2012, 2:57 am, edited 1 time in total.

It's all about being autistic. We don't like change nor a change in our routine. I can relate even though I am not that extreme as you. I am resistance at first so I would rather just stand and not do it because I want to be flexible by letting them do it. I have to get bribed like the time my mother decided to stop at a mattress outlet store and it wasn't even in our plans. I decided I would just wait out in the car. But she told me to come in and make sure she is quick in there. So I go in and then I am fine all of a sudden when I see they have drinks and snacks. All of a sudden I was happy and not feeling the other thing anymore. I also tend to not do things if it didn't go the way I like it nor expect it to. The funny thing about me is I only welcome change if it's my idea or something I like. Also if people ask me if they can do this or that. then I am flexible. If I don't really care what we do because I have no clue what I want to do, okay someone else can pick and I will follow it. I am so flexible. It's a plus and minus for me regarding change.

I also freak out if anyone suggests I give up my room for guests. I feel all anxious because I fear it will change my routine I do every night and i don't like that. It bothered me as a kid too when I had to give up my room except I handled it better then because I didn't have anxiety back then. But I still felt uncomfortable and not happy and every night was a bad night.

I often feel selfish whenever this happens to me. Even though I have the diagnoses, it still doesn't stop me from feeling bad about myself. I used to really freak out when my husband would ask me to take him grocery shopping or take him to the doctor or pick up his pills for him. I would start yelling and crying telling him why can't he just take the bus. Then after a while I would just moan and complain and be upset without melting down. Now it's just annoyance and I do it without a freak out. But then I feel irritable and exhausted and I just want to rest now in my comfort zone which is my own bedroom. I don't mean rest in bed, I mean do my computer and just relax. don;t even ask me to do anything else or meltdowns will come or my screaming match. I feel bad about it every time it happens. It hasn't happened in a while because my husband tries to avoid it and he doesn't make me do things unless it's something very important.

I also think you freaked out about your boyfriend wanting to stay with you rather than him moving to the area because it would change your routine.

I've heard all people dislike change. What's the difference between being autistic and not liking change and being NT and not liking change? Their reactions?



I'm also okay with changes I like them or if they're my idea. But I will react badly as soon as it's against my will or if it's something that interferes with my routines (for example being at my parent's house interferes with my routines since I'm not at home, not in my own room, around people etc).



But I should be happy. I haven't felt happy about it at all. I still don't (and he told me about 2 days ago) and I don't think I will. It hasn't got anything to do with him. I just want to be able to be by myself.

I am the same way. The holidays in particular are a nightmare for me, because everything has to be disrupted to suit everyone else (and in my family i am one of the least self-centered...) As I am off work with a broken wrist, it's a little easier this year, but my family doesn't understand that my job doesn't just stop because it is some arbitrarily declared holiday and that someone has to work that day. But even now, I have to accommodate my self-absorbed mother and her family who like to get together and pretend that we actually like each other at a time which they set without concern with what anyone else may have planned and if you aren't there, you're the horrible, self-centered one. Then there's my dad, who I never got to spend a holiday with when I was younger and who I actually get along with and want to be around who has to work around the schedule of 2 EMS workers, a cop, and a jailer to set up holidays just to get to be with me, my husband, my brother, and my stepmother. So trying to make it easier on him makes things more difficult with my mother.

Plus, they live a long way away, and EMS workers don't often get off on the proper schedule and my husband still has to work. SO I had a complete meltdown on my sister-in-law (who I adore) yesterday because as hard as she tries she just can't grasp the whole Aspergers thing and really needed to know set in stone what time we would be in town. I couldn't tell her, because my husband might be home in time, or he might be on a scene, or at a hospital or anything. My brother is an engineer who when it is quitting time hits the door and is on his way home.

I am enjoying the holidays more this year than ever, because my husband is incredibly supportive and tries so hard to help me. And once I'm there, and all the crap has been worked out, I enjoy myself (at least with my dad and brothers) but trying to rearrange everything and accommodate everyone is just crazy. If it wasn't for our boys, I might just ignore it completely...

In most ways I am not self-centered, but there is one area where I am selfish in, which is related to disliking change. Not only I like my weekly routine to be predictable, I also like my life to be predictable, meaning other people to not change their lives either. Like my aunt wants to move to my town, and I don't really want her to. I do love and respect her, and it's nothing against her personally, but she's always lived a few towns away (within reasonable bus distance), ever since the early 1980s, and so I've always been used to it this way. Plus she is a very disorganised type of person, if she lived near she'd probably be round at all times and all our routine would change. She's quite bossy aswell, and gets to kind of arrange plans and everyone goes by her rules because she just has that knack. Nothing would be quite the same again if she did come and move nearer.

Also I get all het up when my other aunt gets boyfriends. She's been with a man for nearly 4 years who was always very trusting and he wasn't too much of a bother and we all got on with him, and he became part of the family and I could relax when he came round, even when he very first came round. But now she has finished with him and is single again, and although she says ''I do not want another man, I'm happy on my own'', I do not believe that at all because she's said this all before and has got herself mixed up with a sociopath in the past, then said those same words, then got herself involved with a married man what all ended up in confusion and heartbreak. I wish she had stayed safe with this third boyfriend because he was the best. I like her either staying with him or being single. I don't want to have to get used to some other man.

I know I can't rule people's lives but sometimes I wish I could.

To be perfectly honest, I really don't give a crap about anyone else.

I've noticed with my husband and mother, when they make plans and then something changes it like let's say my mom made a plan to cook something for dinner. My husband starts cooking it for lunch and he is unaware my mother was going to cook that for dinner. My mom sees it and she says in her normal tone of voice "Oh shute, I was going to make that for dinner." She doesn't get upset and she doesn't start yelling and screaming acing like her whole day is ruined and it's the end of the world like I do. But she does keep saying "I was going to make that for dinner, now I am going to have to figure out something else to make, oh shute." She also does not decide "Okay dinner is cancelled, you are all going to have to figure out what you are going to have for dinner and make it yourselves" like I would.

Hmmm, I wonder what it means if both me and my mother scream dinner is canceled you can eat whatever you want I'm not cooking it for you. I read a paper about types of BAP people, and there were two, the socially aloof and the rigid perfectionist. I think that my mother is the rigid perfectionist who also does not like change and my father is both socially aloof and rigid perfectionist.