Dealing with change.

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I'm finding it hard to deal with the fact I've moved out of my parents house. I miss them a lot and I feel stressed from the "change".

I moved out for various reasons, including the fact that my parents aren't always going to be around, so I should learn to live more independently while they're still here to give me some support.

Those of you who have moved out, how have you coped and how did you deal with the "change"? Does it get better with time?

I'm proud of you for making the change.

If you need practical advice from us, just ask.

Yes, things do get better.

I've been independent for almost 35 years.

I really don't like change at all and I tend to get very moody at times of change.

What helped me when I first moved out was the fact that I had a routine sort of forced on me because I was working back then, full time, and had to keep to a pretty set schedule. When I build a solid routine and then immerse myself in it, I feel better.

I hope you fall into your new routine in your new home soon.

Change is part of life. You have or will have to deal with it, one way or another. It doesn't necessary get better. It could go really bad if you are not ready to. I believe it is "just" a "new part" of your life you will have to apprehend.

Congrats to you for this big step; it is a lot to handle but it's good that you've done this while your parents are still around, as you point out, it helps to become independent if they are still there to assist that process.

My process was a bit of a ruder awakening, and the loneliness I felt at times was acute. I'd gone from always living with other people to having nobody left in my life at all, even to contact.

That was a very mixed experience for me -- on the one hand, I was kind of curious and excited to meet the challenge of having to deal with things on my own. I've always been terrible with change, from as far back as I can remember, but I just took a big breath of courage and met things head-on.

On the other hand the loneliness at first was so massive I was beside myself sometimes. I remember going out to the supermarket to pick up a few things, it was nightime. The evening and night, after dark, is something I always find more depressing than the daytime. As I came out of the store and realized I was going home to...nothing and nobody, I felt like I was alone on the entire planet. It was a horrible feeling.

But over the years this has faded and I got very good at living alone. I now think I would be extremely reluctant to give it up. The freedom is great. Nobody tells you what to do, there's nobody to compromise with, everything is the way I want it to be. I run my own show; that's always been something very important to me.

So, yes, it does get better with time. You learn to positively relish the fact that your space and your life is all yours and you decide how to run things.

I've always hated change from the time I was a child to now change itself is the enemy to me personally but as the above member said you just have to deal with it it's a part of life sadly but truly

Well I know I have to deal with it, question is how. Maybe it will get easier the more I get used to it, like the others have said.

I love and need a lot of change so we're a bit different in that regard, but if it's difficult for you and you feel the need to do so as you said while your parents are still around, then maybe just make them aware that you need support while you settle in? Maybe they could check in on you a few times a week for a while until you settle down? Also -

I think this might be something of note for autistics. When I moved out years ago, I thought it would be a huge relief as I never had a problem with loneliness, I was solitary and preferred it that way and was often annoyed at my family always being in my business and crowding me. But when I moved and wasn't working, don't have any friends or contacts in life, it was surprising how crazy isolation can make you. If you're working every day or have friends to go out with, then it might be easier. But yes for a solitary person to realise that they need other people around was quite bizarre.

Yes, I know what you mean. I thought I'd be fine if I was alone, but it's one thing to be alone in your bedroom, when you know your parents are downstairs, and another to be living alone. I have my dog with me but it's not the same as having people around.

I suspect this is why I enjoy playing mmo's so much, even when I mainly solo. There's something comforting about having other people "around", even if you don't actually speak to them.

I work part-time and my hours vary week to week. I didn't have many last week, so it was particularly difficult. Also makes it hard to establish a routine.

It just gets harder and harder as life goes on.

The key to "happiness" is to find some lifelong friends that'll be there when your immediate and extended family get old and die.

Get involved with hobbies that you love, so that you can meet others who do the same thing as you and make acquaintences/friends out of that.

If you live in an apt. block you'll be more likely to meet new friends than if you were to live in a house. From an apt. block I moved into in 1990 and left in 2004, I met a handful of guys and one of them is a lifelong friend, an older man that is like a "grandpa" to me, 'cause I never had one growing up.

Of course, if you're comfortable dating and can do it and "get laid", getting a gf or bf should lead to some sort of long-term relationship. But as you may know, Aspies have a difficult time in this department usually.

"Change" is one of the Laws of the Universe. If you notice, stars, planets exist for a "short" time, and then they die. The Universe is always expanding, always being created and dying. If all of creation were just on one planet, then there'd be no reason to "move out" to others. So it is inside a family that when kids grow older they're supposed to move beyond their immediate family to elsewhere and supposed to start their own family.

But things can be difficult if that immediate family is abusive t'wards their kids, like in my situation. I've just gone NC (no contact) with mine.

For me, I've noticed the older I get, the more I really respond well to routines that I would have rejected when I was younger.

Like, I go to bed at 10:30 every night and get up around 5:30 every morning. When I wake up I always make coffee and then sit at the computer for a couple of hours and wake up (ok more like a few hours, but I'm also getting my daughter off to school). I always shower around 10am. After my shower I always do the housework, which is a chore list that I have memorized and repeat inside my head after my shower over and over as I work my way through it.

Laundry dishes cans&bottles sweeping vacuuming recyclables cooler ice cube trays litter boxes cats' room.

So every day I make it a goal to put the dirty dishes in the dishwasher (and run it when full enough), collect any laundry and put it in the baskets and run a load when it's full enough, dump the returnable cans&bottles into the big bag in the laundry room, do the same with the recyclables (like yogurt containers and cat food cans), sweep the kitchen and entryway, try to vacuum the two main rooms... try to clean the litter box and sweep the cat's area daily.. put waters and sodas in the cooler, cover them in ice, and refill the ice cube trays. This can all take a couple of hours if I do it at once, so that can carry me up to almost 1pm most days. Then I make myself eat something lunch-ish, then run any errands that I have outside the house. I try to be home at 3 because I get my daughter off the school bus. Then from 4pm onward it all falls apart and I basically decompress like a zombie in front of the computer for the rest of the night til 10:30. 6pm is always Seinfeld on channel 10 almost every night, and that generally begins a string of shows that last til bedtime that I can count on to help provide routine in the form of background sound or image without sound if nothing else.

Point in listing all this is, you can create a routine out of the most basic of things like wake up time, bedtime, shower time, food times, straighten the house time, tv time. Before you know it you will have a routine all set.

The problem I have is staying out of bed in the morning. I wake at 9am, get up and let the dog out, feed him and give him his meds. Then I go back to bed until lunchtime if I'm not working because I feel so tired. I think it's the fact I stay up late and I'm just not a morning person. Maybe if I get up earlier and sit on the computer for a while to wake up. Then I just have to force myself to go to bed earlier.

Well, there's nothing saying you HAVE to live a "first shift" kind of schedule/routine. I once worked second shift, so didn't go to work until 3pm, ad didn't get out until 11pm. Most people get out of a 9 to 5 job (first shift job) at 5 and don't go to bed for about 5-6 hours. So when I got out of work at 11pm, I wouldn't go to bed for 5-6 hours either, so would fall asleep around 4-5am. Then I would sleep 8 hours, until about noon-1pm. Then get up and be at work at 3.

That's a perfectly normal way to live - lots of people work second shift jobs.

So if you feel most comfortable/natural getting up for the day around noon and going to bed around 4am or something, that's fine in my opinion.

For example, you might decide to allow yourself to get up at noon, be on the computer for an hour or two to wake up, and then set aside an hour where you're not allowed to sit or lay down because you're making sure that you don't have any household stuff going un-done (particularly the kind that could smell later, like dirty dishes or clothes, or garbage that needs to be taken out). Then schedule in food time somewhere because it's important to not let that get forgotten about. And whatever, on from there.

Just my thoughts on the matter. If anyone tried to question you sleeping till noon I would just tell them "I work and live a second shift life".

They might interpret that to mean "I work second shift AND I live a second shift life" but you would know that it really means "I work. Also, I live a second shift life."

Its not really anyone's business anyway.

Again, just thinking out loud about how I might handle it, because I really need routine in my life to not melt down just from uncertainty/chaos, and because I have been going through routine changes myself lately and have had to try to find ways to deal with it over and over, each time something else changes significantly.

SO, feel free to ignore or whatever.