Settling in

I often hear other Aspies express the thought that they dislike change, and that they find change to be stressful.

I too suffer from this problem, so can empathise with all those that this problem affects.

Indeed, the very first article I wrote on this site talked about how changes to routine are difficult for me, using the metaphor that I’m a train on a track, and when the change comes along, I tend to want to keep on going on the rails.

There’s another facet to this issue that I need to talk about as well – and that’s the problems I have settling in to new places.

This issue most obviously rears it’s head when I change jobs, but equally, other big location changes such as moving house  and even things like getting to grip with my finances (which I did recently) can cause similar feelings of stress and disorientation.

I’m going to focus on what it’s like when I change job, because it’s probably the easiest of the scenarios for me to put into words.

Once I’ve been working somewhere for a while, I could just about walk around it blindfolded. I know the shape, size and layout of all the rooms, and how they fit together. I know who sits at every desk, and how best to approach them – be it in person, on the phone or by email, etc. This is the closest I come to work Nirvana – all the jigsaw pieces fit together well, and I can interact with both the work environment and it’s people efficiently. All of my jobs so far have ended up at this point, eventually.

Usually it takes me at least six months to get there. The time leading up to it is a big curved graph of decreasing stress and disorientation.

I always find my first week in a new job to be incredibly disorienting. As is the common courtesy, I’ll usually have been show round the facilities and introduced to team mates and probably others that I’ll come into contact with on my first day. I don’t know about anyone else, but this plain doesn’t work for me. I suspect that my initial stress levels are so high that I fail to take in any names – sometimes not even the name of the person who has just shown me around. I also think that I’m prioritising trying to take in the spacial arrangement of the office and the other facilities. I have some deep down need to know my surroundings, and this seems to override the perhaps more important (in a typical view) priority of getting to know those i’ll be working with.

After an hour or so, I’ll often have to ask the person on the desk next to me where the toilet is. Despite trying to take it in on the tour, I’ll most likely have forgotten if it is more than a room and a corridor away. What’s more, I’ll feel it essential to be overly polite to the person I’m talking to. I’ll most likely start my questioning with something like, “Excuse me, sorry to interrupt but…”.

Those first couple of weeks will feel like I’m an intruder in all the public spaces. Whilst I may get to feel at home at my desk in a few days, I’ll find the canteen and yes, probably the toilets too to be an alien landscape into which I’ve strayed and in which I’m not welcome. It’s not that anyone is setting out to make me feel unwelcome – that’s just how the surroundings feel – they are unfamiliar and disorienting to me.

I kept a track when I changed jobs last year of how long it took me to learn the names of those in the office. It’s not a large office in this case – only a dozen people. After a week, I had remembered the names of about half of those in the office, and after two weeks I had all bar a couple of names off by heart. First names, at least. Some surnames took many weeks to learn. Those whose first names took longest to learn were those with whom I had no reason to communicate – which is perhaps obvious.

So, after two to three weeks in a typical job I’ll know the names of those around me, and the way around the facilities. I’ll also have some idea of the roles that those around me have too, and who to approach for what. I won’t feel settled, however, nor part of the team. This takes far longer – as I have already said, typically six months or so. Until that time I feel detached – an outsider. I do what I can to fit in, but as I dislike small talk and find it difficult to do most of the time, this perhaps prolongs the length of time I spend in my detached limbo. I spend this time feeling like I’m faking it, and wondering if anyone has spotted that I don’t know what I’m doing.

Eventually, however, all the jigsaw pieces fit, and I feel comfortable and part of the team.

The same feelings apply for big events like moving house or even organising my finances. Clearly the ground rules involved are somewhat different in these cases, but the feelings of not belonging and being disoriented are the same.

I have one final example. At high school age, I chose to go to a school that was outside of the catchment area for my junior school. This meant that barring one friend who did the same thing, I moved to a school where I knew nobody. I was part of the decision making process for this, but ultimately I used my parent’s logic, and agreed with their choice. The school had a better reputation and better exam results than the local one.

I felt very alone and out of place for a long time at that school. After a term or two, my mother asked me how I was liking it. “I don’t fit in”, I told her, and it was true. I can’t imagine how that must have felt for my mother – it must have been awful to hear. Eventually I fitted in to a degree with the other misfits in my year, and had friends of sorts who would last me the remainder of my time in the school.

So, my feelings of disorientation and of not fitting go back a long way, and still show themselves frequently. Obviously everyone – Aspie or not – is going to take some time to settle into a new experience, but it certainly looks to me like it doesn’t take a typical person months. Do any of you experience similar things?

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