Autism and coping with change and routine

Written on 12th Aug 2020 by Alex Lowery

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As a child I was particularly obsessed with my routine. I had a schedule that I felt had to be followed and I would be most upset if the routine got ruined. Saturday was a day most kids loved because they had a day off school. I hated Saturday though because Saturday was unpredictable. Other days had a set routine where I knew what would happen whereas I didn’t know on Saturday so I didn’t like it. We would sometimes go to cities on Saturday like Chester and Liverpool. I really hated walking around shops on Saturday. I’m now told that we barely ever went to cities on Saturday but it felt like every week to me.

Even today I do take my routine seriously. If I have a set plan during the day I feel really stressed out if something happens to change this plan. When I was at College and had free time to do my own work, I would have a set thing I planned to work on but then the tutor might tell me to work on something else or I might get called into class and I wasn’t prepared. This would tend to cause me to get stressed. There was even a point when I had to do homework with a short deadline and it was homework I didn’t really understand what to do. I had support at College but I had to finish this work outside of College hours and this made me stressed beyond belief. My mum offered to help me with it though so this helped and I also coped by knowing that if I really couldn’t cope with it then I could always ask for an extended deadline.

I do find I get stressed when things don’t go to plan or when something unpredictable happens. As a result of this I’ve learned to at least try to be prepared for the unpredictable to happen so I’m not too stressed when it happens. But of course there is always going to be times when I’m not able to see what’s coming. When this happens I am usually very stressed but I try my best to cope with it by taking a deep breath and trying to calm down. I might also go to mum for support and she can give me advise on how to manage it. There are number of coping mechanisms. I also try to cope by being optimistic. I’ll try to look on the bright side so I can balance out my negative thoughts with equally positive thoughts. I also have a weighted hoody and blanket an app called ‘Brain in Hand’ which gives me a list of options to help me cope.

Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed this article.

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