Do autistic people dislike change?
Written on 28th Sep 2020 by Alex Lowery
It’s often said that autistic people really dislike it when something changes. This is very true for many but I would say it depends.
For me personally, I don’t mind change on my own terms. I really don’t like it when I have a set plan of something I’m intending to do but then something happens to change it. Even then in some cases, I can deal with it but if it’s something I’m particularly fixated on it may cause stress.
One example is when I was at College. I had a deadline for a film I needed to edit so I aimed to spend the morning editing this film but this plan was ruined because I was called into the classroom to work on a UCAS application. Not to mention to the UCAS application really stressed me out on top of this because of all the pressure I was under.
The fact that I had to stop doing one thing to do something I hated really made me full of stress and anxiety.
However, certain things I do like change for. One example is I was really excited about our church having a new Hymn book. We had always used Christian Hymns all the years I had gone to it and when I found out about the possibility of it changing, this legitimately made me full of excitement and enthusiasm.
There are other things I also like change for. When the heart reaction emoji has changed in Facebook messenger, I’ve jumped at the chance to change it because I get bored of it being the same. I will also change the chat colours as well so in certain ways I really don’t have a problem with change but in other ways I do.
Thank you for reading. If you or your child is autistic please do let me know your experience of dealing with change.
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