Any Aspies Without "Routines"?

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I was more routine/ritual driven when I was younger...much more-so than I am now.

It's normal for everyone to have routines. Think of all of the people who go to work in the mornings, grab a cup of coffee from the same place, and get in at the same time. That's a routine. Routines work to automate functionality. In the case of the coffee example, the person doesn't have to think about when they need to get up, where they need to get coffee, whether they need coffee to think better in the mornings, etc. They can concentrate on what they specifically need to do for work that day, instead. This decreases stress.

Routines are just as functional, if not more so, for the autistic. The autistic person may rely on them to relieve stress because they don't have other ways of reliably doing so. You could say that stimming is a form of routine. So if they are under stress and can't perform a routine, stress does not decrease and can magnify at the thought of it not decreasing. Alphabetania suggested that she clings more to routines when under more stress than usual. She needs other means (routines) to help diffuse it.

Recently, I have definitely fallen into a morning routine of coffee before work. While it's from the same chain, it's not necessarily the same store, and it's not necessarily at the same time.

I have absolutely no routines, but this is actually creating problerms for me if my lif eis not extenrally structured. For example, I don't have a routine of at what time of the day I want to have dinner, when I will clean up, etc. So when there is no external structure, my living place becomes a mess, I may not have food ready, etc., and I still end up wandeirng throguh the city aimlessly because I don't know what to do. This was what happened when I lived independently. So in a sense I am not ritualistic at all, but since I don't know how to plan my activities spontaneously, either, I do need structure. IN this sense I wish I could develop my own routines.

For me, it's not so much that I need a "routine" (although I am more productive under a routine), but I would like a "PLAN".

Just as long as the "PLAN" isn't shot to hell, I can still function just fine. Minor changes to the plan, I can cope just fine with as well.

Just not "I want to go to the amusement park. But wait a minute! Now I feel like taking the both of us back to my place, and inviting strangers over for group showers! And NOW I want to drive in the middle of the night to a small town somewhere to hook up with one of those strangers! Wanna come with?"

That is interesting. I also like to have a "plan". That describes my comfort zone better than either "routine" or "ritual". If it an evening, day off, or other time without scheduled activities I will often ask my wife "what's the plan?".

By this I mean how long will we agree to watch TV, do housework, play computer and so forth. If, for example, I plan to play computer until 7:35 and my wife comes to me at 7:15 and asks if I will take her to the store, I will become agitated and say "that wasn't the plan."

Likewise, if we decide to take a nap in the afternoon, sometimes my wife becomes distracted and can not fall asleep so she will say, "I'm not tired, let's go do something." I will say something like, "No, we planned on a nap, maybe in a few hours."

(Of course part of the latter example is that I can always fall asleep quickly whenever I want, regardless of feeling "tired" or not.)

The "plan" things is interesting. I can really relate to that word A LOT MORE than "routine."

I do not have routines but I realize I'd do a lot better if I did.

I must have a plan like one poster mentioned. I wouldn't go anywhere without knowing where I'm going, and which places we are going first. If places get switched around I get upset.

I am inflexible with other things however. I just can't make up a routine-- there's too much chance it could be disrupted and then the routine would be useless.

every day is virtually the same for me - with slight variations due to extraneous demands (child, shopping etc.)

I get up. i eat and I eat a fairly limited, healthy diet with everything smothered in tabasco or chilli sauce (asian type and not what the americans call chilli.) I walk a number of times a week.
My routines all focus around my special interests....i draw, paint, read/research about art or ASD's and get on the net.
Of late I have been eradicating phonecalls and my stress levels are right down as a result. (this has been an experiment, and it seems to be having an excellent result.)

i will break this routine here and there out of necessity. But only if things are special interest related or relate to my repsonisibilities as a parent.

I have only learned to use lists the past 6 months since seeing an ASD specialist. I cannot beleive the diference it makes to me.

For the first time in my life I am getting a true measure of internal calm.

I am not socially phobic... just allergic to people.

I tend to try and do different things , instead of having a general routine or schedule, although thats easy because im unemployed at the moment.

I don't live my life by a fixed schedule, but I do have routines ... or maybe it is better to say subroutines.

It's like Tetris. I have my blocks and every day they come in a different order and are stacked in a different orientation. The blocks don't change much from day to day.

I was going to say that I don't have routines, but I've got all kinds of useless things that I feel compelled to do each day.

For instance, I feel like I have to keep coming to WP and looking at new messages. Now, WP is wonderful, and you guys rock, and all that. But why do I need to see every post as it happens? I also keep going to a message board about my favorite actor. Why? Why? I like him. I like his acting and his movies. But there is rarely any post there that I care about, and half the time they are simply annoying, and people saying the same irritating stuff over and over. And yet it's really hard to stop myself from checking. I'm not sure what I'm expecting to see. It's not like he's gonna be there posting a private invitation to see him in a play or something. (Ooh, that would be neat.)

At other times in my life, I have had other useless routines. Like when I was in the military, at an office job, I often felt insecure and nervous while I was in the office, and had to go out into the hallway. I didn't want to look like I was just going out there for no reason, so I developed this habit of buying a Diet Coke from the vending machine four or five times a day. (Which pretty much blew my paycheck!)

I've been having a tough time losing some weight, and I think a lot of it has to do with routine. My kids have a pretty rigid bedtime schedule, with all of the various things that need to be done. It's not by the clock so much as just having to do things in a certain order. One kid is AS, and he and I have this whole ritual that we do. Right before I leave his room for the night, he gets about five or ten minutes with me where he talks about his special interest in a certain format. I enjoy that time with him, but it makes me feel kind of sleepy, and it signals the end of my "mom" time for the day. After that, my husband and I sit down on the couch with a DVD and snacks. I can stick to my diet all day, and remember to pay attention to what I'm eating, but once we start our "grown-up" time, it's really easy for me to start snacking and not even think about it at all until I've eaten too much. It's really hard to break out of that routine.

It's frustrating, because there are certain things that I ought to be getting done instead of these routines. I have a beautiful sweater than I'm trying to knit, and I enjoy working on it, and yet I CAN'T, because I'm too busy checking WP 600 times a day. I can't seem to pick it up and get started on it again.

Argh.

I don't have a structured life etiher. I'm trying to get more structure in it, though not too much of course, or else it'll get boring.

My life is pretty scattered, don't have any particular routines.

Wow, I can relate to this, down to the knitting! I have a tendency to get fascinated with new projects, but when the pattern becomes irregular enough where I have to refer to it at every row, I quickly lose steam. I think that's why I prefer fair isle knitting to things with big irregular patterns on them that I can't memorize. My son's 18-month sweater is currently trapped in such a fate. I get very mono-dominant-obsessive, and right now that is WP.

I have a very regular morning routine, but I leave the rest of the day pretty loose just in case something comes along to distract me on my days off.

I don't naturally have a routine. In fact I have trouble maintaining a proper routine. I don't have as much discipline in maintaining a routine as NT's. It's something I have to work on.

What I do have are compulsions. When I go on the internet I tend to get stuck surfing through the same sites over and over again waiting for something exciting to show up. It's extremely hard to stop myself and go do something else.

I also like having a comfort zone and become distressed whenever my comfort zone is impinged on through forced changes. The need for a consistent comfort zone falls into the broader category that routines belong (general inflexibility) to but it isn't exactly the same phenomena.

This just illustrates that people diagnosing autism spectrum disorders have understand the broader scope and not focus so much on anecdotal information. Not all aspies have routines that go by the clock. Not all aspies are inflexible in the exact same way.