Hi Functioning Aspies with a Breakdown in Mid Adulthood?

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Ohhhh....that was soooo me!! !! ! I spent my entire childhood being told that I "just have to work harder" and when I would feel like people thought I was stupid, then I would be told "You'll show them." Baaaadddd advice!! !! !! I worked SUPER hard in college and graduate school, and as my mom says, seemed to have successfully made it to having a "normal" life. Only to get pregnant and have the rug pulled out from under me (sorry for the idiom...it feels like talking in pictures to me)! !! ! I got pregnant and my body started revolting against me. We had 3 pregnancies and 2 kids. Both kids ended up diagnosed with ASD, and I IMMEDIATELY PANICKED!! !! !! !! I was TERRIFIED!! !! !! !! I kept saying "I can't do this. I can't do this." Eventually I did learn that I could in fact "do this," but in order to be a better parent in our situation, I had to personally make the choice to go "backwards" as my mom would say. (She often says that I act more autistic now than I used to) I am a lot better now than I used to be, but I have significant health problems. The kids also have immune problems, but they have improved much better than I have. Adrenal fatigue is definitely one of the things that has been mentioned!! !! !

Great informative thread. I had a breakdown a few years ago at the age of 34. At the time, i knew i was burnt out but didn't see any way off the merry-go-round. I was homeschooling our 2 oldest children at the time (oldest has dyslexia so an extra layer of difficulty with schooling him) and our youngest was an adorable 4 yr old but required constant supervision and was so difficult to manage much of the time (he was later diagnosed with HFA but i didn't know it at the time). My husband was/is in a high stress job with very irregular working hours. My middle child was beginning with symptoms of Tourette syndrome...and then to top it off my parents were in a serious motor vehicle accident which resulted in the death of one of their close friends who was riding in the same vehicle as they were.

I was always on the go, always tried to fit more into a day than i probably should have, and while i knew i was a bit quirky was always striving for normal and to please everyone. Because i tended to be difficult at times (always inadvertently, always intending to be nice...but dang it, people get so easily offended and i always took the blame myself and apologized and kiss-a$$ed my way back into their good graces where possible--because i knew in my heart i was a defective human being so therefore any relational problems were always my fault), i always felt i had to go the extra mile to make up for it.

I hit a point where i could not function. Hubby insisted that the kids go to school which i was in no position to argue with. I still had youngest one at home but he was more manageable with the older 2 at school during the days.

I experienced deep depression/anxiety and could barely get out of bed. Hubby says i simply stopped talking. I remember speaking when i needed to but mostly i needed to shut the world out. I couldn't form words for my thoughts; and to put them into speech seemed terribly complex. I sought tx for what i thought was simply depression but some of the puzzle pieces just didn't fit. Psychiatrist saddled me with multiple diagnoses but none seemed to really fit totally--i think that is why so many. She loaded me up on meds, most of which i stopped after i began feeling better. She kept trying to increase my doses but i was quickly maxed out and numb, esp from SSRIs. I could not convince her of this. I think she probably just was not very educated on aspergers...at least she didn't recognize it when it was sitting in her office.

Long story short, with taking care of myself and recognizing the quirks as symptoms of aspergers, i am so much better. I do have some effects of the breakdown that have never gone away. I can't juggle multiple tasks as well as i did before; but have gone back to work for the first time in years. Part time and not stressful jobs--one at a historical center (i love history and this job lets me be a total nerd) and one doing home care for a sweet elderly lady--we get along famously. Hubby says he can see me come alive again. I do still shut down and stop talking when overloaded and sometimes wish i didn't need to speak to people at all. I used to be a motormouth and annoy people with talking too much. I still have a hard time knowing when i am boring people--i tend to go on and on about a topic of interest to me--but now speech takes much more effort. I can write much better than i can talk.

It is good to hear others' stories and know i am not the only one. thank you all.

Thank you so very much for this thread. I am 50 and had/am having such a burnout.

Does executive functioning ever improve after a mid-life burnout? Non-verbal shutdowns/sudden speech loss have increased following my own burnout, and so has the meltdowns and self-injurious fits. Wandering & bolting have increased. Executive function is challenged enough that I now need picture schedules to know when to do simple things such as eat, drink, go potty. Picture schedules also help with steps in showering and even how to fall asleep at night. Cognitive function is notably sluggish & impaired. Is the brain itself somehow damaged? Are we having lowered amounts of certain neurotransmitters, or problems with the uptake and utilization of them? Somehow, this seems like a physiological brain/neuro/neurochemical thing.

As I am currently pretty challenged in self-care, I sure hope things can improve regarding executive function. Challenges with sensory sensitivities, cognitive function, shutdowns, meltdowns, and wandering & bolting all have exacerbated, so I'm hoping someone can offer some hope of future improvement. I'm endeavoring to get some better supports in place to continue to live independently.

Last edited by Warmheart on 18 Oct 2015, 12:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Interesting thread. I have a friend whom I suspect is on the spectrum and he's close to 50 now and telling me he just can't deal with work anymore. We have always understood each other, been incredible friends, we are so much alike and we were always odd among our peers. We spoke for a while and I feel so bad for him, because I think this is exactly what is happening. I think I went through this as well, but thankfully I was not working when it really it. I think that maybe many years of attempting to fit in and trying to be something we are not eventually takes its toll on us.

Yes. I'm not dealing well with anything anymore. Burned out in anything you can name, my executive functioning has gone to hell.

A massive crisis event in my life precipitated a hellish set of circumstances for me, and my inability to get back to the way I used to be even now that it's all over and I should be on an even keel. But I had a kind of "functional breakdown" around 2010 and I still haven't managed to get back old good habits and some functioning I used to be good about.

I'm burned out and tired.

Yep, been having mini-burnouts/breakdowns for the last 10 months or so. Spent today & last Sunday curled up in a ball on the bed in a semi-fugue state accompanied by a bad tension headache which I cared nothing about.

Because of an APD I can't learn a foreign language normally(if at all). In high school, I compensated by memorizing and translating on the fly. In college, as hard as I tried, I couldn't translate in my head fast enough and eventually flunked Spanish three times.

Life right now feels like that; I can't translate & come up with the right responses fast enough.

As life builds, we compensate for our shortcomings as long as we can. And then a bit longer, because we have to.

And then, when we've gone past what we can compensate and create workarounds for...it all collapses.

Shortly after my breakdown i had an ABA psychologist tell me i had a "structural problem" in my life--at the time nothing was mentioned about ASD and i myself knew very little about it. But even for a therapist who treats and looks at life from a NT point of view, he said i was trying to fit too much into my day without any rest.

For various reasons i felt i had to do this, at that time. I did not feel that i deserved to rest. Through my childhood, i was always told i was not "working up to my potential" based on high I.Q. tests compared to my grades which were always A's and B's. My mother would tell me with a smile (and she meant well--she loves me and i never doubted that she wanted the best for me) that she knew i could get straight A's if i worked harder. What she didn't know to take into account was my poor executive function. Looking at my toys which i saved to give to my daughter, it is almost eerie. They are carefully kept and, while played with and enjoyed, were kept in such careful order that it frightens me. My mind was so disorganized that i kept my playthings in extremely exacting order. My school desk was another matter though--it was a disaster, like my overloaded mind in a school environment.

I love to read and study and am told i am quite intelligent. Now that i am away from school, one of my great delights is to read and study various topics of interest to me. I am much more scholarly now than i ever was in school.

But i digress--i felt so inadequate for my deficiencies, that, on top of working extra hard to be "normal," i felt like i had to excel because such was my "potential." No rest for the weary, even when my body and mind were so weary that i desperately needed rest (especially rest for my mind) built into my day. And then, as an adult who needed to work to keep food on the table and a roof over our heads, and then to take care of the children when they came along, i just kept on pushing myself to my limit...and when i hit a wall, just a little farther.

I think the key to my recovering as much as i have (and i do still have effects but thank God i am functional now at least) is to find the areas where one's mind is overwhelmed and specifically rest as much as possible. For me, homeschooling was a terrific stress. Sending my 2 oldest to school was a great benefit. It made it possible for me to do kindergarten at home with my youngest, who was not ready for school, even though our district has a good ASD program. He just couldn't have handled a whole day in school. Even now, a few yrs later, a whole day at school is hard for him.

I have made time in my day to be quiet because noise bothers me a lot. Even just people talking, radio or tv on, all of it quickly gets me on overload. Yesterday i spent a morning at church, an afternoon with extended family, and by evening at home i was nearly shutting down. I only spoke as much as i needed to do to communicate with my family. I was unable to form much conversation at all and could not initiate anything.

Rest is essential, IMHO, to as much healing as possible. After almost 3 yrs, i think i may be as healed as i will get. It is still hard to talk. Not to write, so much, (obviously--this is getting lengthy ) but talking is hard. The process of taking it from my brain to words out of my mouth. Noise overload is quick. Panic attacks, esp in large groups of ppl or places where i feel confined, are the norm. But in spite of this, i am pretty functional and i am so thankful for how much better i am. We all have problems, autistic or NT. This is the hand i was dealt and i will do my best to play it well.

Edenthiel, your translation analogy is excellent. That is what my speech difficulty feels like.

Thanks. My spouse used to call me, "Analogy Girl"... The persona I incrementally built to stave off rejection was/is like a layer between the outside world (other people) and my Self. A translation layer, where I had to consciously, rationally decide what was *really* meant by what was coming in based on learned rules and what should be sent out, again based on rules. With each social role I added to my life, the faster the number of rules increased and it became more complex until it overwhelmed me. Problem is, there is no simplifying it at this point...

Yes I've had 2 full on burnout/breakdowns and a fair few smaller ones. The last was at 31 and it's taken me 8 years to get back on track. I don't want to talk about what happened during the breakdowns but what you can do to help repair yourself from my experiences only - sorry if it doesn't apply to others.

1. Realise and understand your limitations and then use them to your advantage.
I can't work full time anymore because it would precipitate another breakdown through tiredness and an inability to function. What I do now is work for myself, part-time. I was feeling great and took on more clients than I could realistically cope with; I work so damned hard when I'm there, I do 6 hours work easily within 3 (that focus!). But I'm not Superman; recently my wife warned me she could see that I was overdoing it and so I'm scaling back a bit. Which leads to #2:

2. Listen to other people (if you have people who are reasonably trustworthy or better).
Since I don't recognise when I'm falling down (i.e. depressed, going through major anxiety, extremely tired), I rely on others (in my case, just my wife) to let me know that something is going wrong and most importantly, I listen to them. Slow down, don't immediately dismiss, analyse, criticise. Slow down and consider what people are telling you. I didn't realise I 'got' people wrong until my wife and mother told me that after 31 years, my equipment was faulty and my dealings and understanding of what people said to me was entirely skewed. I taught myself, without a reference manual, so there's no surprise I got things wrong.

3. Get off the ride.
A psychologist who had little genuine insight told me to read Juanita P. Lovett's Solutions for Adults with Asperger's Syndrome. Turns out she had more insight than I realised (see #2). I recognised myself finally as a "shy gorilla" type, almost a footnote in the book really. That feeling of impending doom that I was destined to fail at everything I did, that made me jump from one thing to the next in a dizzying whirl needed to stop. I had to get off and stop worrying about work, money, failure etc and give myself a chance to recover. At this point I started to recover, albeit very slowly at first. It's still not quite the same but that's not because I'm 'worse' than I was, more that I understand my limitations now and don't do stupid [edit: perhaps misguided is a better description] things guaranteed to make myself ill.

4. Understand your anxiety and depression.
Ever feel like you're losing your ability, that your mind (the one good thing about you) is slipping away from you? That's anxiety, not reality - most likely you're tired and need a break. With the right combo of meds combined with getting off the ride (small doses because I'm not that happy about medication after being misdiagnosed schizophrenic earlier in life), I've finally had a chance to see what life is like with minor depression and anxiety (as opposed to the norm that was major) and I have to say, it is completely different. I can do things I'd forgot that I was capable of.
I still can't recognise depression and anxiety in myself but I have a better idea of how they work and what they do. As the physical symptoms start to manifest themselves in a pattern I know, I can make adjustments accordingly. Depression, I've noted in NTs, is a cyclical process. Sooner or later, they don't remember or care about what caused their depressive episode and need to realise that this is an opportunity to start getting better. For me, it was so immersed as part of my life and personality that this never became the pattern. I finally realised that I needed to stop caring so damned much. Hard to put into words what gave me that understanding; just don't take life so seriously, enjoy but don't waste your time. Depression and anxiety are a waste of that precious time, aside from being utterly debilitating.

5. Try to be normal, just don't try that hard.
I tell people at first meeting that I'm autistic when going to a new client. Yes I have to fit in, but I also need to be free to do my job properly (see #7). But I also show how great I can be too. People respect it a great deal and realise that I may be a bit eccentric and not to worry. I'm honest and trustworthy and never lie. It's easier for me that way and a suprising rareity in the world today. I've not had a single bad response and if I do - that's their problem not mine. I do a great job... to #6! (wonder if anyone is still reading that this point )

6. Learn to be confident (again).
Can you do what is required in a timely and preferrably optimal way? Then be confident, in yourself and in your ability. If not, then either you're doing the wrong thing or you need to listen and/or learn (see #2 yet again).

7. Depending on your temperament, you may need to seriously consider working for yourself in some capacity.
When I was working full time the minor petty micromanagement and the mistakes they incurred by deviating off a path I could see worked brilliantly (NB. I'm a teacher) drove me round the bend. This time, I'm responsible for my failings because I'm in charge. I'm also responsible for my successes too and that feels wonderful.

There's so much more, but I've already written too much. Just understand, you can come back but it will be different because you're a different person. It was hard for me to accept limitations when I believe very little is impossible but I'm only a man. A messed up, a lunatic, mad-professor, somebodies husband, perfectionist bag of meat and bones. I want to make sure that I spend the rest of my life living it, as best as I can, my way. I've lost so many years to illness but I have no regrets, just a wish to be a happier person in the time I have left.

When I do go (can't believe I've made it to almost 39 to be honest), my body will decompose back into it's base elemental constituents and I'll be nothing more than a tiny echo of a memory in the long history of the world. In the meantime, I'd prefer to live, ok in a strange and unusual manner to the everyday person, and enjoy every minute I possibly can.

Edenthiel, my youngest who has HFA understands more complex concepts almost exclusively by analogy. I am always better with those explanations myself--after reading Temple Grandin i realized that the entire world doesn't think in pictures. I had not realized this before and had never analyzed my own way of thinking. It was a novelty to realize that most of the world does not think like i do. i think mostly in pictures, impressions, and sound bites sort of like radio or tv clips. It has always been an effort to put it into words; i think because my brain seems more autistic since my breakdown--harder to think and tune out background noise; less toleration of sensory sensitivity, etc.-- maybe that is why it is more difficult to voice my thoughts since then.

459, i read your entire post. I find it interesting that you have not had difficulty with telling people you are autistic. I have told family and close friends but mainly the reactions are non-reactions--sort of like "oh, this is the latest kick she's on. Another excuse for being a crappy human being."

(The exception is my mother who has dealt with aspie symptoms in my father for yrs and never figured out why he did some of the things he did. The more we learn about HFA because of my youngest child, the more we see it in my dad and some of his siblings and the puzzle pieces are fitting together. Interestingly enough, my dad also had a breakdown when i was in high school (i believe he was in his late 30's or early 40's--i forget exactly what year it was) and a few smaller breakdowns since then. I see a progressive decline in him too--for example, when i was a girl my parents' home was always well kept but now we have to remind him to mow yard (or sometimes my kids and i go visit and just do it ourselves), keep his shop cleaned out and get the scrap metal to be recycled, and general maintenance like that. Doesn't seem like he can get his mind around the organizational tasks very well anymore. )

So i am intrigued by how it is helpful to have it out there, right up front that you have autism. Makes sense--sets up a different set of expectations and allows for your unique abilities and strengths but also gives some leeway to work with areas of weakness. I was always under the impression that people will use it against a person if they know it up front. But maybe that is not the case.

My first breakdown was over three years ago now, when I attempted to end my life by taking a whole array of drugs. Unfortunately I lived to fight another day but life still remains fundamentally pointless to me, especially for an adult on the spectrum with few qualifications, no interests, diabolical social skills and no autistic 'gifts'.