Enabling Autistic People to Cope with Change

It’s a well-known fact that those of us with autism have a lot of difficulty coping with any sort of change. These include changes of routine, changes of environment, and also times when things don’t happen the way in which we had expected them to. Autistic meltdowns (episodes where we may yell, thrash around, and lose control of ourselves) are almost always attached to some kind of change from our usual situation. I myself am autistic and experience anxiety from changes of various kinds, and I’ll mention a few of them in this piece.

Firstly I have to live every day by a timetable that I set the moment I get out of bed each morning. If something unexpected occurs and I have to change my initial plans, I experience an extreme level of anxiety, especially given that I have to use the time which was set for another task to create a new timetable on the spot. Thus my day gets messed up even further. If a meltdown occurs it makes the day a complete write-off as they can last for hours.

Growing up throughout my childhood was very challenging in regards to this because that’s a time in our life which involves various rapid changes. Expectations of us change between such short time intervals, we outgrow familiar clothes and shoes so quickly, and during adolescence we have to deal with changes to our physical body. Again I’ll mention that all of those changes happen within such short time intervals, and autistic people are not as quick at processing new information.

Due to the fact that I am a slower processor, I like to stick to routines, timetables, and doing the same things over and over again. It’s so much easier to continue doing things that are completely familiar and where the outcome is predictable. Whenever something unexpected (suddenly) happens it feels like we’re put on the spot and have to come up with a new solution almost instantly.

Changes are of course a part of life and are unavoidable at most times. So those of us with autism need to find a way around that, otherwise, we’ll spend our lives experiencing constant anxiety. There are a wide variety of useful exercises that can help each individual with autism. Though in this piece I will mention those that help me personally.

Something which is a huge help for me is to create several alternative timetables at the beginning of each day. I can generally cope with having a timetable A (being priority), B and C. On some days there will be something completely unexpected that happens, yet thankfully it’s not too often that such shocking things occur. Anyhow people, in general, would consider those perfectly ordinary things to get anxiety about. To prevent myself from further experiencing unexpected anxiety, I’ll examine the likelihood of tomorrow’s situations the day before.

Autism can not be cured as it is not a disease. It’s merely an alternative developmental condition that’s different from the majority of people (as is the case with anything else that’s medically termed a disability). So characteristics including our dislike of change are impossible to completely eradicate. However, the results from doing the best we possibly can (as an individual) are always a blessing.