How do you deal with change?

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iiiiiiiiiiiii dont have any good way to deal with change,

i just decieded to move my bed to have better access to my hedgehog cage and i feel like crying, i feel homesick, even though all i did was move my bed from horizontal to vertical.

so i guess i still need some time to adjust. how about you?

Harder time adapting than most NTs, easier time than most other aspies.

That type of change you are describing would make me feel uncomfortable. I wouldn't feel like I was in my room at all.
Recently I got a new haircut and I didn't feel like myself anymore. It took a couple of days to get used to it.

But the worst change to adapt to for me is when I have to go to an unknown area of town or even into a shop I've never been in before. I will start panicking and just turn around and give up on experiencing this new thing. I can't even see a new doctor on my own. It actually is starting to affect my health. I'll have to see a dentist soon for the first time since I moved from my own town.

The family is dragging me overseas too. I've had about 10 billion panic attacks over it. They don't understand. They think change is what everyone wants. I wouldn't mind some new experiences, it's just that I break down over huge changes like travelling overseas.

I don’t have those kinds of problems with change. When I was a little older than you I inherited a new (well old) bed and I had to move the bookcases to make room for it, so my room ended up looking very different. My bed had been head towards south, feet towards north, with the position of the other one it was head towards east, feet facing west and against another wall. The moving of those 3 furniture made my room look very different, but I liked the change a lot. It also gave me a sort of cave in the corner where the bed and bookcase met, so I had a closed up space within my room. I thought it was very cool. It looked a little unfamiliar but I didn’t experience any home sickness or was upset like you describe.
Unfortunately the bed was poor quality and broke, so I had to replace it with my old bed. My old bed was better to sleep in, but due to its dimensions I had to change the room back to how it was, and I missed the corner space I had gotten.

Some changes can be harder to adjust to, but overall I do pretty well with changes. And I‘ve always welcomed some, like vacations and holidays.

I probably adapt to change better than a lot of aspies, and sometimes I even crave it, but I have a much harder time adapting to it than a typical NT. The worst is when my daily routine gets thrown off unexpectedly, that I cannot stand.

Well, I tell him that if he ever shows his face around here again, he's a dead man! And that the only person from his family I'm remotely interested in is his sister, perpetuity, whom I deeply love and am going to marry.

I don't have these issues about change, though I was dragged into and out of about 7 or 8 schools as a child which may have contributed to this. My partner does not have AS though and if you move a thing he instantly freaks out.

I wish you'd added another option - I hate change but I'm learning to cope and hope some day to take it in stride.

What I mean by that is that I've learned to *notice* that what's bothering me is change, and to bring in the thinking part of me to stop the automatic reaction. I used to go straight into meltdown. I haven't built much of a range of better behaviours but just knowing what's really bothering me gives me some comfort.

Maybe I'm treating it like a phobia.

The years I spent in IT I ended up learning the hard way: the only constant is change. Get used to it, or else. DoD was notorious for this. Just as you figured out the rules, they changed the rules. Problem is, command would seldom tell their subordinates, let alone their contractors.

Musicians have it just as bad. If you're singing or playing in a group, the conductor has the right to change his mind at any time or any reason, or no reason at all. You have to watch the stick at all times. Failure to do so results in tantrums from the conductor. At worst, you have a conductor the likes of a Von Karajan, a Toscanini, a Fritz Reiner or a William D. Revelli. At best, you could have a conductor the likes of a Sir Thomas Beecham, a Bruno Walter, a James Levine, or an Otis Kitchen.

ZombieBride, you actually have a hedgehog, that is so sweet. They are so cute!! !

For me it depends on the change. Certain changes don't bother me too much. Like if we have plans to do something and then we don't or if we don't have plans and then we spontaneously do something that's pretty much okay. Like we found out on Friday night that there was an even we wanted to attend to the next day two hours away from our house and we just decided to go and we left at 8 am. I was cool with that. Then on the way home we checked out a campground and decided that maybe we should just spend the night. I have done that before, actually ended up spending three unexpected nights at a campground we just stumbled upon a couple of years ago but this time we decided not to because I have not paid the bills yet so I did not want to risk spending money we might need elsewhere like for the mortgage!

The kind of changes that really get to me are changes in my little daily routines. Like if you change the way I do the dishes, I can really be unsettled with that. If you change where I fold laundry and how I fold it, I can be unsettled with that. My husband says that I freak out if I can't have things exactly my way and I am sure that is true. If you put certain things on my kitchen table of counters I really freak out. It's hard for me to think of stuff right off the top of my head but certain things have to be done in order or I get unsettled. So little changes like that can really bother me where big changes don't. I don't know that I have ever rearranged furniture unless I absolutely had to. Then if I do I can get used to it pretty quickly but I won't if I don't have to. I have had the same haircut for 25 years and before that I had the same haircut for about 8 years. I have only made drastic changes to my hair two or three times in my whole life. I have had different styles like different kinds of braids and things like that but those semi permanent long term "it's not going to change until it grows out" changes are very very rare.

I do have a hard time with letting go of shoes though. I wore a pair of sneakers until they were so bad that they were damaging my feet to keep wearing them before I reluctantly threw them out.

I dislike unexpected change. If I know in advance I have time to get use to the change.

I got new glasses in February and there bi-focal and I just can't adapt to them. I don't like how they feel and the bifocal is impossible for me to adjust to. I went back to my old pair today and I had much less anxiety. So, I guess it just depends on what type of change it is.

I can deal with a huge, expected change (like going to vacation or moving all stuff in my room so nothingis the same at it was) but small (moving a simple thing, changing something in my daily routine) and unexpected changes (people telling me "get ready, we are going to XYZ in 5 mins") piss me off.

Looks like I'm one of the 50% or so who can deal with change, the secret is to change your attitude to life, I only worry about things where it's possible for me to make a difference. So, for example, plans for my favorite movie theater being demolished to make way for a car park might see me in front of a bulldozer with a sign, but I'm not going to worry about some other stuff.

Maybe it's my eastern outlook on life, Buddhism teaches you to embrace change and accept it.