You'll often hear it said that many people with autism struggle to quickly adapt to changing situations. Furthermore, it's often said that folks avoid change because of the discomfort that it causes. I've seen this in my kid, even into his current teenage era, and it came up today talking to my therapist. As soon as I think I can pin down my own typical situation, I think of a bunch of examples where it isn't true. Yeah, we talk about autism being a spectrum, but the nuance and variations of what any one person experiences are endless. Still, it seemed like a useful exercise when talking to the person you pay to figure out what's going on in your brizzle.
In childhood I can identify countless scenarios where change would overwhelm me. I also know that I somehow managed to internalize so much of that, until I couldn't. Others may have perceived me as able to roll with stuff. It got a little better in college, but ugh, there were so many scenarios where I did not deal. Early adulthood seemed better still, but I was so comfortable in my routines and scene that it never even entered my mind that I could live somewhere else, for example. It may be how I got married the first time, because midlife me can see the unhealthy parts of the relationship. I stayed anyway. (It wasn't all bad, but the bar is higher now, and I know it is for her too.)
Examples to the contrary are pretty big. All in the scope of a year, I got married, unemployed, re-employed, moved cross-country and had a child. Yes, I was mentally exhausted by it all, but maybe it was some bizarre flavor of exposure therapy. Once you meet your baby, you kind of run on autopilot. Having to care for a totally helpless and vulnerable human, it turns out, appeals to your lizard brain and you just do what you have to do. Since that year, change has been constant. From 2009 to 2017, I moved six times. From then to now, if you count contract gigs, I had 10 jobs, not counting the three that I bailed on after a few weeks of seeing how terrible the employers were. So I think that I can roll with change pretty well.
I still can't roll all of the time. When something doesn't go as I expect, more in the scope of a day, I can get pretty frustrated and angry. Yet there are other times when I somehow force myself to deal with it. A number of times that I've traveled alone, when delays and things affect the itinerary, I can slip into something that feels almost trance-like. But take the same scenario with my kid and wife, and I can be a hot mess.
Lately, I've almost been craving change, even though it's not really in my self-interest. I like this new found longevity in a job. I like where I live. And I have to remember that my boy will only be a boy for a few more years. That change isn't far away, and it probably comes with the usual downsizing and reprioritization of life stuff.
What spawned this discussion? Oddly enough it was a reference back to my overall psych evaluation when I got my autism and ADHD diagnoses four years ago. There were some personality conclusions, assembled from some diagnostics and many hours with the psychologist, that don't really sound like me. The social difficulties, sure, right on, that's me, but the bits about how she thought I dealt with those characteristics were pretty wrong. It was fun to talk through, because I've been with my therapist now for awhile and she has a pretty good picture drawn of me.
I don't know that I have a point here, I just find it fascinating that my story is so inconsistent. It makes it a little harder to know yourself.
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