Autism and Change- My Experience
I was in my fellowship program a few weeks ago, and we did a leadership activity about change. This week, I want to talk about my experience navigating change as an autistic person.
In the book "Who Moved My Cheese," four characters adjust to the location and frequency of cheese inside a maze changing. Scurry and Sniff adapt quickly; Haw eventually adapts after some time, and Hem never adapts to the changed cheese location. After reading this story, I was asked to choose which character I am, and why. I struggled with this activity because I needed to know the context of the change. When change is new and exciting, I am a Sniff. When change feels wrong, pointless, or unfair, I am a Hem. The why behind the change is really important to me because that is what I use to decide whether I support it.
In my regular routine, I have a spot at the dining room table that I sit in every day my family has dinner together. I've been sitting in that spot for most of my life, and I see no reason not to keep sitting there. In the past, if there was a party or family get-together, I was asked to take a different seat so an adult could sit in my spot. However, I struggled with this change because I didn't understand how one seat was better than the other, and I wanted to keep my routine. Even now, when I have friends come over, they know where my spot is (my boyfriend affectionately calls me Sheldon because of it). Unless there is a really good reason, I don't buy into that specific change and turn into a Hem.
However, there is other change I love! I am doing new research that isn't popular yet (more to come on that, still journal shopping). When I do my advocacy work, a lot of that work is in the spirit of promoting positive changes for accessibility and inclusion. If there is a change I can make to be more inclusive or kind, I am usually one of the first people (at least I hope) to want to embrace that change like Sniff. Using the chair example, when my mom had a friend over and needed to sit in my spot because of the craft she was doing, I embraced that change even if I didn't necessarily love it. I understood what was happening, wanted to be kind, and that was the best option.
One of the questions I was asked after thinking about how I handle change was, "What is the best way to work with you?" My lens for change is heavily influenced by being autistic. As a child, all change was scary, and I needed social stories to describe different parts of my day for me (See my past blog on social stories). Now, as an adult, I have found that it comes down to the why. If I can be told why something is happening and form my own opinion about it, I am much more likely to embrace that change. When I am strictly told to do something and am not included in that conversation, I become much more hostile to the idea of change and become stuck on how to handle it. While I'm trying to work on this, I also don't feel a need to change certain things. If I have a spot at my house, the security that brings me selfishly outweighs the stress not maintaining my spot would put on me. However, I want to be better at handling change in school, work, or personal life settings. For example, schedule changes really stress me out because they feel sudden, and I would like to be less attached to them. While I don't claim to speak for all autistic people, I hope this explanation can provide a starting point for a conversation about why schedule changes can be hard for some autistic people.
Thank you for reading about my experience navigating change as an autistic person.If you have any questions or comments, please comment on the blog, reach out at @Anniekrollblog on Instagram or Facebook, or email me at Anniekrollblog@gmail.com. I hope to see you next week!
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