Routines, rituals & habits in Asperger syndrome

Attachment to certain rituals is reassuring and calming. People with autism are extremely anxious about the outside world, and these routines help - from an early age - to make the world more reassuring because it is more predictable. What is less unpredictable is then perceived as gentler, in the sense of being less aggressive... Less disturbing because we know precisely what is going to happen. Never lose sight of the fact that improvisation is the sworn enemy of autism. Why is this? Where non-autistic people see planning and repetition as a sea of boredom and monotony, individuals on the autism spectrum experience a reassuring sense of control. They like these habits and routines. They need them. They find them soothing. But how? It's important to remember that we autistic people are instinctively inclined to adhere strictly to our most minute habits, for example : very inflexible daily routines, with waking up at a fixed time and set times for all sorts of activities ; unchanging routes to school, work, the bakery or Auntie Paulette's house; rituals for eating, showering, getting dressed and going to bed. In the end, whatever the moment, there will always be a ritual that accompanies it, whether it's an admitted one or not... By always reproducing the events that punctuate our daily lives in exactly the same way, with a given order to be followed to the letter, we limit as far as possible all the situations that will create intense anxiety.In other words, by anticipating as far as possible everything that can create stress, autistic people help themselves to face the difficulties that frighten them, that impress them and that block them. This organisation is often perceived at best as nonsense, at worst as a robotic life devoid of any spontaneity. My rituals do no harm to anyone, and yet they irritate or are the subject of comment. [...] I've woven myself a framework of fixed milestones on which I place new ones as and when I need to. In this way, I stay in my comfort zone when it comes to the little everyday things and I free up disk space in my head for what's worthwhile. With this aim of simplifying and 'uncluttering' their brains, some aspies have a single outfit, always the same, a pair of trousers and a T-shirt, for example, in five similar versions. This way, they don't have to worry about choosing clothes. In everyday life... These habits are generally disconcerting & surprising. They also sometimes worry, like everything else that is misunderstood. In any case, they rarely go unnoticed, even if they don't necessarily find valid explanations in people's minds. However, some people who are a little more observant may wonder about these strange habits... For more than 10 years, we were customers (from time to time, but on a regular basis) of a small restaurant not far from our home. Sometimes we went as a family, three of us, sometimes two, my son and me. It was a place we liked because we knew it well! The boss was pleasant without being intrusive. The different rooms weren't too noisy and, more importantly, the sound wasn't too loud.In short, our inner balance was more on the 'friendly' side. My lousy friend, being very resistant to change, couldn't imagine going to the show without breaking his rituals. Same day, same time, same place... always, same waitress... for sure, same drink... invariably, same menu... obviously. Once - just once - our place wasn't free, it was already occupied by others. And it was, without exaggeration, a tragedy for him and for me. I spent an entire meal listening to my taciturn aspie grumbling and brooding, unable to get past this major annoyance. To tell you how important this resistance to new things is, the episode took place in autumn 2014, when he was 10 years old and starting Year 5, and he still sometimes talks to me about it, three years later, outraged as if it had happened yesterday. Getting stuck on a feeling, whether it's anger (following an argument, a misunderstanding, an attack that didn't find a response at the time) or frustration (following a routine that wasn't respected, an interruption in a monologue about a narrow interest, a last-minute change), and going over things again and again is a very common autistic behaviour. At any age. At the time, my son had not yet been diagnosed with aspie. We only knew that he had a very high IQ & we'd suspected since he started secondary school that he had, at the very least, very strong autistic traits. That's why he had been waiting for eight months at the unit for children and adolescents run by the CRA in our sector. So one day, when I went to pay the bill at the restaurant counter while the little fellow was waiting for me a little further on, the owner asked me if he was autistic, I was stunned. I replied in the negative, saying that there was suspicion but no certainty, but I asked him how he'd come up with the idea. Not that I didn't understand what had intrigued him. But so few people knew that autism didn't necessarily take the form of the caricature of the non-verbal, drooling child, whose only communication was frantic rocking, that I wondered. The interested party explained to me that his son had previously attended a state secondary school in Lyon, a pioneer at the time in accepting children with high intellectual potential in the midst of completely standard pupils. And among these youngsters, his (normal) son had made a friend who was both autistic and gifted. The restaurateur had undeniably had a good eye, and had been able to spot the similarities between this youngster's particularities & what he had observed in my son over the years, on each of our visits.Without being an ASD expert, he had noticed this boy's atypia. At the time, my son found it hard to understand what had given him away. From his point of view, there was nothing to suggest that the man was autistic... convinced that his habits, routines and rituals were imperceptible. A large proportion of Asperger's sufferers are invisible. For many, they're just weird, dim-witted or untidy. But on closer inspection, they are far from blending in with the masses: they just live out their difficulties in silence, for those who don't really enter their world.