This is absolutely true, but Buddhism does make that connection because it posits that conscious experience necessary creates attachments and that attachments necessarily lead to suffering. You point out the example of expectations, and Buddhism posits that any and all experience leads to expectations and expectations necessarily lead to suffering. That fits directly into the assumption that change is bad, because expectation is inescapably linked to change. Thus, I am not making that argument, but Buddhism is. The only path out of suffering, Buddhism claims, is to negate the self because that is the only way to eliminate the expectations and change that necessarily cause suffering.