Don’t Take Away My Routine (Or Demand Too Many Changes At Once!)
For our #AutismAwarenessMonth series, we gladly and gladly share a post from the Autism Worlds-Eye Blog.
Content warning: autism, Asperger’s Syndrome, anxiety
About the Author
Steve Thomas received a formal diagnosis for Autism (Asperger’s Syndrome) last year, at age 29. Ever since, he’s been adamant about the need for a better understanding of Autism in education, employment, and even academic settings.
Steve holds a B.Sc. in Computing and a Master in Psychology, which afforded him more freedom to create his own autism-led research sub-specialisms for five of nine topics taught, over the course of a single year.
Steve hopes to publish an autism lived-experiences book one day; coach and empower others, seek to increase awareness of autism challenges; support organizations to ensure employment practices better support autistic employee needs, and is slowly figuring out how to improve the lives of autistic individuals one step at a time
We’re pleased to present one of Steve’s posts in our series and encourage you to share and read more on your own.
Don’t Take Away My Routine (Or Demand Too Many Changes At Once!)
For many people continuity and routine are not only healthy but recommended, irrespective of whether this is derived from employment, hobbies or simply meeting the same people each week to simply catch up or discuss trials and tribulations of life. For individuals with Autism or Asperger’s, routines and consistency are much more significant, becoming a way of structuring time, mitigating the likelihood of uncertainties occurring (unforeseen events, changes or ‘disasters’) and as a way of managing stress and anxiety levels that can be higher (and more persistent) in Autism Spectrum Conditions.
Why routines may be more helpful?
Daily or weekly routines (timetables, activity logs, schedules etc.) don’t just provide meaning or purpose for many autistic people, continuity may actually help with emotional regulation, serving as a coping mechanism and an anti-catastrophizing aid, intended to make changes feel more manageable.
What too many changes may mean.
Too many changes or the absence of routines can contribute to low mood, states of overwhelming (sudden crying, anger, aggression, and bursts of prolonged rudeness) and major difficulties remembering appointments (or losing track of days, unable to tell say a Tuesday from a Friday if a key event is canceled). For many autistic individuals overwhelm (some call these ‘meltdowns’) can be more severe, seeming to be more emotionally intense and ‘out of proportion’ when viewed as tiny incidents, in reality, loss of certainty and ‘order in the world’ has occurred resulting in a fear-stress-anxiety response.
Worth noting is that not all autistic individuals are so dependent on routines and schedule continuity (autism is a spectrum condition after all!) — for some their time and daily activities must be regimented to the hour, for others a few consistent weekly events may suffice, for others this need for structure is almost non-existent until too many meetings or appointments are canceled or re-scheduled without forewarning.
Personally (as someone with autism) my need for structured is somewhere around mid-level, ideally preferring up to a week’s notice and time to prepare for eventualities, however, if changes are small and gradual the sense of temporal mal-adjustment disconnect (mentally feeling unprepared-schedules feeling behind by a week in my case) can be decreased to only a day or two. However if my daily list of tasks or meetings increases (beyond 4 major events or many smaller tasks) too much I can be very prone to overwhelm (in my case expressing excessive honesty bordering on scathing insight, experiencing adrenaline overload and anger not knowing what I have said until afterward) and missing appointments because of short-term memory, hyper-focusing (on new task) issues.
Final considerations
Knowing the signs of autism overwhelm can be invaluable — ideally before it occurs and how to respond if it does! Potential early warning signs may include (not universal definitives):
- Suddenly asking a lot more questions than usual for the individual.
- Seeming more anxious and uncertain when new demands are made.
- Expecting more tangible information and higher levels of confirmation (emails, dates and seemingly over-specific information).
- Fixating on new information at the expense of other requirements.
It is worth noting that expressions of autism overwhelm differ for each person: the famous autism advocate Temple Grandin, for example, as a child used to suddenly become very angry until she learned that crying was more socially appropriate; a personally unknown individual with more regimented autism would (apparently) take his clothes off anywhere to decrease co-occurring sensory overload (clothing-skin touch sensitivity and overheating issues); another might start shouting for no apparent reason or suddenly become very rude.
The key point is not to touch someone when appearing autistically overwhelmed, make demands of them, start scolding or blaming them and to try not to personalize their behaviour (it may be beyond their control until calm enough to discuss it). However, suggesting a de-brief of overwhelm causes and agreeing a time-out de-stressing area can be very helpful (more so if it is understood that this is a medical break intended to prevent or decrease negative behaviours).
Resources:
- Original post here.
- Read more from Steve: Autism Worlds-Eye Blog: Demystifying the world of autism one post at a time…
- Watch Temple Grandin’s TED Talks video and more from people in the autistic spectrum in our previous post from this series.
