Difficulty with breaking routine

[Keith]

If there is a certain routine I have for doing something, changing it (even for the better) is hard.

Additionally, I find myself doing all 30 of my Pandora stations over again if I can't program one to my liking (although not so much anymore).

 

[Keith]

I occasionally walk to my junior college for lunch (I'm a graduate and it takes only ten to fifteen minutes). I used to have a scheduled time as to when I left, about quarter to noon. Unfortunately, one day this didn't give me enough time to take care of some paperwork and go to an art lesson. I skipped the former and did it at a later date.

Thankfully, I'm a lot more flexible now.

 

[tlc]

I know what you mean. About 11 years ago they asked me to move to a different office at work. I kept getting started but got to where I just couldn't do it so I put it all back. I was just too comfortable in my old one that I had made just the way I liked it. But who would get in emotional wreck over a work office? I kept wondering what in the world was wrong with me, and I even tried searching google at the time but never got any answers. Guess I know now. Eventually I did end up moving since they moved me up and hired a girl to take my place. That wasn't so hard since I knew the office was going to be used the way I made it.

Same thing a bit over a year ago when I faced giving up a car I loved because it was just getting too rusty. I had welded up the trailing arms to make the axle structurally sound (like I've done on 3 of those cars now, another routine) but the floorpan that supports the gas tank) was just giving way and didn't seem like there was much left to weld to, but it was in the middle of winter. I was in emotional wreck over it for several days and it cost me the best female I had ever found because she thought I was a nutcase. Well I still have the car, and this summer I'll drop the gas tank and re-evaluate it and maybe there is enough to weld to and get a few more good years out of it. It runs perfect.

I'm the same way with lots of other things. My house is full of the same things I got when I moved in, or even before. My ex hated the fact that I liked to hang on to things that worked, and not change just for the sake of change. I use the same old tech devices that I've used forever, even if I'm way behind the times. Part of me just doesn't want change. But part of it is financial reasons. If it works, why should I throw it away, and spend more to upgrade?

 

[Keith]

Wow. I get excited, sometimes too excited, over new conveniences and priviliges. New experiences are fun for me, and I love to keep up-to-date with everything (except video games and cartoons, with which I remain in the 90s ).

 

[Aspieistj]

I don't mind if I am the one to change my routine but I am always annoyed if someone or something forces me to change. Please wait to be invited over.

 

[millie33]

People laugh at work because precisely at 12 noon I leave for lunch and precisely at 4:00 I leave the building. I have great difficulty changing focus from one thing to another, and a great deal of difficulty making changes in my day-to-day life. Routines are extremely important to me. However, I love learning and I'm a good researcher at work (I'm a computer programmer). Don't interrupt me though!

 

[Keith]

I get up at 8:59 but don't leave my room until 9:00.

I also have a half-pint of Pepsi Throwback everyday at 11:00. It's sad, really.

When I volunteer at the library, if I sign in at 2:45, I sign out at exactly 4:45.

 

[Judge]

It wasn't until I became my own boss that I realized how much I loathe breaking any routines. It's something that would happen all the time working corporate, but I never liked it.

As for punctuality, it's still a virtue.

 

[umbrellabeach]

I have a lot of trouble breaking my routines. A little over a month ago I too started volunteering at the library, and a couple of days before my first day there, the volunteer supervisor called and asked me to go in and fill out some paperwork, and I was available to do it at that moment but I was in the middle of my routine and didn't want to break it, so I said I'd come in the next day. The result was about 24 hours of really bad anxiety over not knowing what to expect. I wish I'd broken my routine and gone in that day; it would have saved me a lot of distress.

 

[Christophe]

I too can't break my routines: if my wife and daughter are 5 minutes late in the morning my hole day is up in the air, (I drive them to work and daycare). I then have to bring the dogs to the dog park which is timed perfectly so no one is there and as I leave, people show up... But if I'm late, it all goes to hell. Then I'm late in all my activities and responsibilities.

I like, no I need to do my things at a certain time of The day and night or I have massive anxiety attacks and if the disturbance is big enough, like 30 minutes off my schedule, I get massive stomach cramps and I apologize in advance (I bleed when I go to the washroom) I actually get some serious physical pains, back pains, my back seizes and I end up unable to move for hours at a time, migraines that immobilize me in my closet under mounds of clothing to block out the lights for hours at a time. Just to name a few.

It's really debilitating and I've tried medication but all of them are habit forming (just got over Clonazepam ) that was very hard to come off of!!!!

I can handle the little changes, if I'm interrupted in the shower, I have to start from the beginning... Stuff like that.

Jeaz I feel weird!!!

 

[Sander]

As far as I know I don't really have much of a routine, but the little I have, I don't like breaking. So when I have to get up and out of my bed, you have to call me 15 to 30 minutes in advance. If I break that little part in which I wake up and have to get up earlier, I am grumpy for the rest of the day, sometimes even for the next 2 days. That's about all the routine I've got.

 

[tlc]

As far as activity, yes I am the same way. Once I started something I always wanted to stick with it. In school I'd walk up town and buy the same food and drink every day, others used to criticize me for it. Listen to the same music, same seat on the bus. Order the same few things off the menu no matter where I go to eat and sit at the same seat, or eat basically the same few things all the time at home. These days it's pretty much the same, even the keeping of routine is a routine. My cars, phone, appliances, TVs, satellite, computer, sound systems and music, furniture, house, job, bicycle, etc, etc..... All the same. Places I like to visit are all the same too.

Thing is when I do discover something new that I actually like, I get all excited and want to make that a routine too. A road I'll travel over and over. Going to Save A Lot downstate after dropping off my daughter, getting the same food for work lunch, then going into the store bathroom that smells like the water is pure bleach, in the hour before they close on a Sunday night so I can savor the chlorine without being bothered. This winter I started eating my lunch at the gas station and now the people have learned my routine quite well. Back nearly 15 years ago this one worker knew my routine because someone asked and heard her say "oh he orders this and this and this all the time, made this way", she had it down to a science what I liked and what I didn't.

Then it gets interesting with say a campground I'll keep going back to, because I'll be pulled in two different directions worth of aspie traits. Part of me wants to keep using the same site over and over as routine, the other part wants to stay at every site in the campground because of the obsession to discover and experience everything possible about the place.

 

[Sander]

wow tlc, that's a lot of routine. I wonder, does it ever get boring?

 

[Keith]

LOL there was one place I frequented so often they actually knew what I wanted right when I got to the counter.

I also have a tendency to sit in the same area wherever I go. Incidentally, it happens to be the closest seat to the door. I guess that's just the first seat that's convenient, but it might make it rude seeing as how it makes it so I'm the first out the door when class ends. It also makes it easier for me to use the restroom. However, I've begun to sit at a different table in class so as not to sit next to this one kid who is a bit pessimistic or easily-confused all the time. He's always like "There are still libraries?" or something.

 

[Asterism]

I'm reasonably flexible when it comes to routines as long as I'm the one in control of the changes. And I can handle a certain amount of stress related to those things imposed upon me by things over which I have little control -- especially when I'm able to get back into my own space within an hour or two, be by myself, recharge and get back into my own routine after the diversion.

Traveling, vacations, business retreats, unstructured social parties and the like, really through me off, though. I try to structure any traveling or even right down to the point of knowing precisely what time I'll arrive, where I will park (Google satellite view), the nearest places to eat, etc. In other words, I need to control and understand the situation as much as possible to prevent the anxiety that ensues if I don't. I'll even go so far as to carefully structure detailed back-up plans in case something goes awry, like a plane being late or road construction throwing things off.

Every now and again, though, I find myself in a situation where I have little control, am just there and at the mercy of situations set up by other people. Yesterday, for example, I was on an all-day photo/video shoot trip with an ad agency we hired. It was interesting, but just tagging along with strangers left me feeling outside myself, which is difficult to explain. It's as though my sense of self starts to erode and disappear as events pull me into conversations and into places where I need to wing it and play it by ear. Sometimes it takes me a full day to pull myself back into my familiar comfort zone where my inner self starts to re-emerge from whatever hiding place it went. Changing jobs throws me completely out of whack for months until comfortable routines begin to emerge over which I have control.