Autistic Burnout

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The fact that you have little work history and are not able to manage your personal affairs may be enough depending on the diagnosis you are given. The inability to manage personal affairs drops you down in the functional assessment area and indicates a major impairment to daily living. Obviously with little work history you will be applying for SSI and you may depend on a Doctor from Social Security to determine your diagnosis and determine if you are qualified for assistance. It seems like I remember you stating sometime in the past that you had started or were in the stage of starting the process. Have you started it yet?

On that scale some of us talked about here a few weeks ago I think I'm at 31-40, which is pretty low.

I am in the process of starting my reconsideration, which is the second round, which will likely also be denied. Then it goes to appeal and hopefully by then I can have some fun stuff like a Vineland II assessment and documented diagnoses, evaluation of my abilities, and treatment on paper.

If I can demonstrate that my disability began before 22, I can also get SSDI. This is a big if, though, although if I am diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome and ADHD, it's probably a big sign since these are lifelong conditions, and I had academic difficulties all the way through college.

I'm just frustrated by all the paperwork.

My wife's brother went through the process using a phone interview. With a diagnosis of Schizophrenia from the SSI doctor, his outcome seemed more certain and was qualified.

Good luck to you. A benefit of SSI over SSDI is immediate medicaid coverage. Normally there is a two year wait for medicare coverage with SSDI, but this may be different for you, since you are trying to establish the condition as a retroactive one before age 22.

I feel pretty burnt out myself.....sure I am going to college at the moment and hoping to get an aparment with my sister and cousin(having second thoughts because I am afraid of pissing them off). But yeah I don't really have any 'goals' in life I have tried to think of goals but I really can't think of a single thing to strive for...other then just getting by until death. I suppose I would like to maybe have an intimate relationship.......but I doubt anyone would really want to spend their life with me unless they are just as burnt out already.

The PTSD could have something to do with this as well, because with the aspergers I have non-existant social skills which has caused a lot of lonlieness and isolation in my life.....but then with the PTSD sometimes I don't even want to be around anyone even though I dislike being alone since I experiances that far too much as a child.

They may call it SSDI as a shorthand, but what you get if you were disabled prior to age 22 and qualify for SSI and have a parent who is retired, disabled, or dead, is not SSDI and has a different set of rules than SSDI. It's actually called by several different names. The one I heard most often is disabled adult child benefits. When I get letters from the SSA, they all say "Retirement, Survivors, Disability" on them. Unlike real SSDI, I qualify for both Medicare and Medicaid because it's part of a tiny number of categories "deemed equivalent to SSI for Medicaid purposes regardless of income level". (In the Medicaid manual it's "child's insurance" or something weird like that). It's a weird little category and not a lot of people understand it. The abbreviation I use filling out housing forms is RSDI not SSDI.

Thank you, I did not know this. The woman at Social Security who talked to me about this just called it SSDI.



I think other conditions definitely have something to do with it, they can either exacerbate things as they happen or happen as a consequence and exacerbate things because having them is worse than not having them. PTSD can do a real number. That's just a lot of stress to be under. And if it makes you vigilant to threats all the time, that takes a big toll.

In my experience, there are still people who can be interested. It's just a matter of getting to know them (I know, this is not easy). I know PTSD helps make it feel like one doesn't have a future, but it's the PTSD and not the actual future that does this.

I don't mean that as blandly supportive, I mean that really is one of the symptoms.

This. Completely this. Still recovering from my burnout. I've lost my family, my job, my career, and virtually anything else you could name. What I did gain, though, was me. Not sure what the future holds, but at least I know I will live. And have a life worth living.

Looking for references about burnout, and appreciate all that was posted on this thread. Seriously, are researchers not on this one at all?

could someone please post the link to the article in a different way? i cannot connect to it as is.

The site reorganized since this thread was posted. Here's the new link:

http://archive.autistics.org/library/more-autistic.html

thank you!

I had never heard of an autistic burnout until this thread. After reading up on it, I've realized now that the past year or so of my life has been a burnout.

Around the time I turned 23, I had a full-time job as a toddler teacher, a live-in girlfriend, and friends I saw semi-regularly. My job was really hard for me, but the Monday-Friday 9-6 schedule kept me in a routine, and even my classroom of ten 12-24 month children was structured with the same general schedule, so I was capable of keeping up with the demands as long as everything stayed the same.

Well, as I've found, nothing stays the same. Demands at work began to pile up (leading conferences with parents of the children in my class, working in other classrooms, training/helping new teachers, etc) and my boss started to notice that I was buckling. Instead of finding ways to support me, she pushed me harder and became less lenient in how she dealt with me. During this time, my girlfriend told me she no longer wanted the monogamous commitment that she had initiated with me, and wanted to have an open relationship with myself and two other individuals.

Long story short, I started having non-epileptic seizures due to the stress, and POOF! There goes my job and my relationship. I had to move back in with a friend. Now, a year and a half later, I have no other friends aside from the two I've limited to online-only contact, barely speak to my family, and panic at the thought of leaving my house. I stim openly in public, wear headphones wherever I go, don't force myself to do anything that is too overwhelmingly stressful, and... overall just feel "more autistic" than ever.

I know I just wrote a TON and its possibly a little out of place, but this is a huge missing piece that I have been searching for ever since I felt this collapse of "normalcy." I'm so happy I read this.

Thank you for providing the updated link, Verdandi, and thanks for helping to revive this thread. I have been meaning to look for it to help me remember what I wrote, to make an entry in the new blog I have been writing. I thought a link to this general discussion could be very helpful to others, who might not have a link to this website.

I have heard this discussed in other internet avenues, but never discussed as informatively, overall, as in this thread you started.

This actually makes me kind of sad because it is not very easy to locate information on this, and I started this thread partly because it was so hard to find information. I'm glad it turned out as informative as you say, but I wish there were more resources available.



This is not out of place at all. I'm glad it helped. I hope you can recover from it, too.

Most of the focus on burnout associated with Autism appears to be focused on caregiver burnout. Ironically though, considering the genetic component of Autism, a significant portion of that caregiver burnout is likely similar to the experience discussed here, without any label of condition for some.

In checking Google per the key words Autistic and Burnout, which is usually only used to describe people with the actual condition vs Autism and caregivers, etc., this thread is the only substantial resource I have come across. It ranks at number two in a Google Search.

For those people that have access to Facebook, which can be a stressful place for a person on the spectrum, Karla Fisher, who was an active member here when we were discussing this issue in 2011, has developed a slide that is helpful and linked here:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid ... =1&theater

It was difficult to find the slide with a Google Search, so hopefully people with Facebook access, will come across it in this thread. In the discussion on the photo slide she provides, there are a few comments that provide perspectives from additional links from people on the spectrum and concerned family members.

I also found her slide on what she describes as "Token Theory", which many people describe as "Spoon Theory". The slide llustrates well a technique of managing stress in everyday life activities. There are also many comments on that Facebook slide, linked below, some of which are helpful, I think.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid ... =1&theater

The only problem, again, is that I believe one has to sign up for Face Book to see the comments, however I think the slide is visible without signing up for Facebook.

I named my blog post "Burnout on the Autism Spectrum", with the key words "Autism" and "Spectrum" in consideration of the new diagnostic label of Autism Spectrum Disorder, which would be another avenue for people to find this discussion, and now also Karla's slides, with a search on those keywords, instead of "Autistic" alone.

Yes, I think it is unfortunate that we and a few others are the only ones providing very limited information; however, it is much better than what was available before.

The Inter-Agency Coordinating Committee is pushing hard for this type of Adult Research to help more people on the spectrum, with these type of issues, so hopefully, eventually, it will move in a more positive direction in the future.

Here is the blog post I created to highlight it, which I will probably link in a few high traffic areas, to get the issue more exposure, among those that haven't found these limited resources that might be helpful.

http://katiemiaaghogday.blogspot.com/20 ... ctrum.html

However, one really can't improve exposure much more, at this point in time, on what already ranks at a number 2 search on Google, other than providing additional information in this link, as people have been doing through time as it becomes available.

That is what I describe as part of advocacy.

Thanks again for reviving the information.

Last edited by aghogday on 22 Apr 2013, 10:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Regarding Karla's excellent graphic, this was the fifth hit for me on google:

http://theautisticme.blogspot.com/2012/ ... -page.html

Thanks Verdandi, when I turned off my Google Plus, personal results, I was able to see it as the fifth result too. That is great because it is a secondary source, where one does not have to use a Facebook Link.