When you live life on the autism spectrum, it’s easy to become so used to your own patterns that you miss the problems those patterns cause. You fail to see the obstacles that keep tripping you up, and why. I want to share a story of my own pitfalls when it comes to the autistic aversion to change. Maybe reading it can help you recognize your own struggles.
When we talk about life transitions for people on the autism spectrum, the first thing that comes to mind is the transition from childhood to adulthood. When a teenager finally graduates high school and is thrust out into the wider world. But there are many other transitions an autistic adult must tackle throughout their lifetime. I’m living through one right now.
Grad school is a new kind of transition all on its own. It feels different from the transition into undergrad, and not just because the work is harder. Simply getting to grad school involved challenges I would never have even considered before starting on this journey. What follows in this article is that journey to grad school, the struggles I faced making such a transition, and how most of it can all be traced back to the autistic aversion to change.
Maybe I should have seen those challenges coming. The fact that most autistic people struggle with change and transitions is not a fact that’s unknown to me. I can lose sight of how it affects me, though, as I’m someone who often craves change. And what drew me to grad school was indeed the change it represented. I’d felt increasingly stuck in a rut since leaving undergrad. I knew I wanted to go to grad school eventually, but uncertainty about the career path I wanted kept the decision at bay. Eventually, I knew I needed the change it would provide.
But while I often eagerly anticipate the idea of change, when it comes to making that change happen, I can get a bit more… stuck. I freeze up when it’s time to decide, dithering back and forth between my options. Choice paralysis can freeze me even if it’s only a choice between one thing and another.
It was the same with graduate school and my future career choices. I constantly wavered on what kind of degree to pursue and what career I thought I wanted. I sought advice from many people who had already been through this process. Yet, none of them could give me the answer I was looking for. All they did was impress upon me how important this decision was, but that never made the way forward seem any clearer.
The pandemic didn’t help matters, only giving me more time to dwell on the choices before me. And the more time I took to think about my future, the more muddled that future seemed to become. I only seemed to drift further away from making a decision. In 2024, I finally decided I wanted out of this purgatory I’d slipped into. I was going to grad school, whatever that ended up looking like.
Of course, I still dithered on the details up until the very end. I originally began with the intent of pursuing a Psy.D. degree. I researched schools, started planning for applications, and even began reaching out to people about recommendation letters. It was only then that I got advice from one of the people I asked for a letter, to consider pursuing a master’s degree first instead. Their advice made sense, especially with my continuing uncertainty about my future career path. So, once again, I was struck by uncertainty. Once again, I changed my mind. Still, at least once I decided to go for a master’s instead, I stayed firm on that decision.
But the choices I had to make were not at an end. Since I wanted to go to grad school to become a therapist, I had two main degree options before me: social work or counseling. I wanted to get a counseling degree, but I couldn’t deny that social work offered more career flexibility. Despite the fact I just said I wanted to do a counseling degree, I agonized over whether to do social work instead. It was like every time I made a new decision; I found something else to agonize over instead.
In the end, I stuck to getting a counseling degree, since that was what I wanted to do. Once the applications were in, the interviews were conducted, and the dust had settled, I found myself with two university options for grad school. One was in Philadelphia, keeping me close to home. The other was in Pittsburgh, sending me all the way across the state.
At first, I was set on the university in Pittsburgh. Yet, almost immediately, I felt that uncertainty creeping up on me again. I suddenly was filled with worry over how much more difficult it would be to make the move further from home. I worried if I was making a mistake if I left my family support system behind to move to a new city.
I had already decided while applying to schools that I was perfectly happy to go far from home. I even considered it preferable, as I’d been terrified that I’d be stuck with my safe school pick that was close enough to my parents’ house that I could drive there (thus making moving out unnecessary). It wasn’t that I was desperate to get away from my parents, but that I genuinely liked experiencing new places and didn’t want to stay stuck in the same place I already was for several more years. Yet, with the chance to move to a brand-new city, here I was suddenly thinking maybe moving far from home was a bad idea.
After much debating, I chose Pittsburgh, but not before stressing out about it more than was likely ever warranted.
Looking back now, I’ve realized that all this indecisiveness was a result of my autistic aversion to change. It was my own subconscious fear of the way any decision I made could shift my comfortable status quo. So, I kept trying to find ways to put off that decision. Even when my choice could truly no longer be delayed. I only wish I’d been able to recognize this at the time. Maybe I could have saved myself some headaches.
This aversion to change was what led me to always second-guess myself. I would feel confident in a choice of action, only to balk once I got closer to achieving my goal. Even when part of me really wanted to make a change, I couldn’t stop myself from doubting at the critical moment. That fear of what change could mean would well up as soon as the possibility became too real.
It was only by recognizing the cause of these doubts that I was able to banish them. I was able to finally gain clarity and recognize what fears were warranted and what were only the paper tigers created by my own mind. I was able to finally have full confidence in my decision. I’m happy with my choice of grad school now, and I’ve let go of lingering what-ifs and regrets.
I can’t always promise you that recognizing irrational thoughts is enough to make them vanish forever. I know from experience it’s never that simple. But for me, recognizing where my behavior may be coming from, however irrational it may seem, gives me a sense of reassurance.
Rachel Guttentag can be reached at ryerguttentag@gmail.com or by phone at (215) 913-0659.
