Change to routines and doing something different

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How do changing routine affect you/

Some thing I am fine about and somethings I don't like, if its better I am usually glad and the change was only a stressful experience because I'm doing something new.

does it depend on positive change vs negative change?

The funny thing is that I have always had my set ways of doing certain things and they can go wrong because others do things differently and they dont tell me and it messes things up for me.

Things like always returning a specific item backto a specific place after you have used it. I have had to train myself to do this or I end up losing the item and having myself a major "Off day" where I just can't get anything done and I end up giving up in frustration. It is not a temper as I don't get those. It is when everything is thrown out of synk and nothing works out the way I wanted it to work.

Others look at me strange when I do things specific ways, but my ways are logical and they work well for me.

It did not occur to me that these were routines.

Others don't seem to exactly do the same thing unless they have to. A good thing is though that it made me good at doing specific repeat tasks where others would miss stuff out and forget something if they did the same, but it takes a bit of time for me to adapt my routienes for perfection.
It is when someone interupts me half way through to do something else is where the troubles start. I have to start my whole routine again from the start, and this takes time as it is starting the same job from scratch again, and I have to because I was in full on concentration before I was interupted, and so to get the concentration to return so I can do the job and complete the task I have to start again.
An example of this is that I wanted to go to town which involves an 8 mile drive to reach the place that I wanted to go, and I wanted to get a little 000 paint brush for painting finer detail on models. It took me a year and a half of trying, because each time, as fuel is expensive, Mum would come as well, but instead of me getting my paint brush first, she would interupt me and want to call i here and there, and I would come home having not got my paintbrush. It must have been about 20 trips before I got it. I kept wanting to go straight there first but it never worked that way! And no, writing it down on paper or my hand does not work as I forget I have written it if my train of thought is interupted. I can remember it again when I get back home because it is where I was when I set out to go to but the paintbrush.
I find that if I am interupted, I have to go back to where I was when I had the origional plan or thought of what it was I was going to get or do. I have always done this as it is the only way for me to "Recapture" the thought.
I gave up writing things down as I end up with a mass of notes and I can't remember which was which etc, so I find that if I just go back to where I was I will usually remember what it was that I was doing and needed to be done.


I am not always like that in that I can change and do another thing if I have advanced warning. It is when the new thing is needed to be done straight away that gets me. This is where I can also get shutdowns as it is one of the shutdown triggers. Strange isn't it! And it took me years to figure that out! But I did not know they were called shutdowns and I assumed it was a physical thing because I listened to past doctors who told me it was "Some sort of allergy" but gave me no help whatsoever (Not even an allergy test even though for some 18 to 20 years I asked them.. Eventually tested when I changed to another doctors surgery).
But anyway....

I have trouble coming out of my comfort zone but that is due to depression and anxiety. Otherwise I do like a change in routine, in fact I crave it. I get bored of the same old routine every week.

I have samenesses and I do not mind change in some ways but hat it in others

it a processing thing

I'm a routine person but it doesn't really bother me if my routine gets interrupted at all.

I find that having a routine has helped me with depression in the past. In fact I think it was depression that caused me to get into routines.

I also find having a routine comes in handy when I get up really early and I just do things automatically without having to wake my brain up to actually think what I'm doing. I think it's a combination of routine and muscle memory in this case.

Frankly, I often get bored and frustrated with every day being the same, and sometimes I make changes just to escape from that cycle of ennuie. It's usually when other people force changes onto me that I have the most trouble with it, because I'm the only one who has a strong sense of what changes I can make without doing too much harm. I think I only need routine to keep things efficient and smooth-running. Too many learning curves and unexpected hurdles cause me a lot of trouble. I become dependent on being able to pick up a well-ingrained procedure for getting through a task, but that doesn't mean that I inherently dislike new experiences. I just have to be careful what changes I make.

I have quite a lot of routines and I think it's because most of day to day life is quite boring and if I have a routine then I don't have to think about it, my mind can be somewhere else entirely. I do get irritable if these are interrupted unexpectedly.

If I have a bit of time to process a change in advance I'm usually alright.

I also have some routine behaviours I'm not even aware of. When I worked in an office someone noticed that I stirred tea a fixed number of times in one direction and then reversed for the same number of stirs. I had no idea I was doing that