Hi Functioning Aspies with a Breakdown in Mid Adulthood?

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THIS is the thread I should have read FIRST.

All the other threads gave me a feeling that I was not alone in this world, but this one hammered it in that I was trying SO hard to be like everyone else, to have what they had, to get a career and wife and kids with a house in the suburbs and a white picket fence.

There is a certain amount of faking or putting on a mask that helps me to get through the day, but interacting with strangers for a few moments at the store is a completely different animal than doing so for hours at a time with people who, at any moment, might see through you or catch you at a bad time and wreck what you've been working toward. I used my acting and role-playing experiences to put on that mask, but didn't realize the toll it would exact.

I was thought gifted as a child, later tested to have a very high IQ, but struggled in school. I was bullied physically and emotionally throughout school. The only time I got any sympathy from my classmates is when I was hit by a car at 15 and broke my leg. Everyone was nice to me as long as I had a cast on my leg. The most frustrating part of AS is that people are willing to bend over backwards to accommodate those who are obviously handicapped in some way, but when the problem is not immediately apparent, they dismiss you as being lazy, unmotivated, too sensitive, too weak.

I've had many burnout periods throughout my life. Some of the more notable periods resulted in insomnia which lasted 10 days straight (zero sleep for over a week is the worst torture a sadist could ever come up with), a nasty lymph node infection which put me in bed for a while, and the ever-present anxiety/depression became so bad I could hardly get out of bed. I was no longer interested in my fascinations, I didn't eat, I didn't want to live. I never thought about killing myself (bad karma), but I surely wouldn't have minded if a jumbo jet would have fallen onto my house with me in it.

I had to stop working, stopped looking for work. I just gave up and gave in. My work history was so sporadic and unfocused that it got to where I never even got call backs anymore. Interviews made me so nervous that it felt as if the fate of our nation was resting on that job. I couldn't do it any longer.

I used to go months or years without losing emotional control, I was the typical "vulcan" Aspie, not too emotional about anything, but after one of my closest friends died last year, I've been a weeping wreck. I cry when I see something emotional on television. I've been more anxious, and for no apparent reason.

After I had sort of gathered myself up after a few months of mourning my friend, I decided I was no longer going to be a normal person (like I ever was to begin with, just fooling myself) and devote my life to art and writing which are my primary talents. My girlfriend (God bless her, she saved my life ) was very supportive and wanted the same for herself, so we saved up money and bought an old RV that we had planned to live in while we drove around selling our artwork.

We had just saved up the money to move out and on our journey when a "friend" of ours borrowed (unbeknown to me at the time) a large sum of money from my girlfriend - the money we had saved to move - and she hasn't paid any of it back. So my girlfriend and I are now trapped here and I'm freaking out!! !!

Sometimes I feel God has it in for me, that I have been given all the gifts of a successful person and none of the means to make them work for me or instructions on how to use them. I got an invitation to my high school 20th reunion last year and didn't go because I hated most of the people I had gone to school with and I couldn't even go back after 20 years and say I've done anything with my life.

I haven't been Dx, but judging from the 4 or 5 quizzes I took on here, and from what others have said, I should get one. I hope I can salvage what's left of me and not lose my gifts. I've already noticed a difficulty in recalling words I'm looking for.

Sorry, this went on so long, but I only discovered Aspergers and WP last week and there is a tsunami of stuff in my head. Thank you all for sharing your stories.

Thanks so much everyone who has contributed to this thread. I'm currently going through this sort of crisis myself, which is forcing me to drop out of my half-finished psychology degree. I thought it was some sort of burnout, related to my AS, but it means a lot to me to find this thread.

I think have an important contribution to make to this thread, but unfortunately it may be controversial to some. Some have mentioned seeing psychotherapists. I don't want to offend anyone or get drawn into a debate about it, but I'll say this for the benefit of fellow aspies seeking treatment: psychotherapists have low standards in training and research. The field is largely unscientific; it's a quasi-science. Practitioners aren't properly trained. See a clinical psychologist instead.

I relate to the need to distance oneself from mainstream society, being independent, and selecting associations carefully, but I think that extreme monastic isolation would be a waste. There are many wonderful NT people in the world, and life would be a greatly enriched by knowing them.

I'm confident that recovery is possible, not to the same exhilarated candle burning at both ends as previously, but to a healthy, happy, balanced lifestyle.

I had two adult breakdowns, the most noticeable was when I was 19 when I was halfway through my economics degree. Had I known about Aspergers and known how my life was going to turn out, I should have dropped out at that point. Getting that degree was a BIG mistake because it painted me into a corner I was not capable of working in. It was a warning that my life was off track that I wish I heeded before I had years of suffering to deal with.

I know I was not being true to myself and was trying to "fake" interest in economics to please my family when in reality I thought (and now know for sure) mainstream economics was mostly BS that has little relation to reality: not exactly a healthy career path for an Aspie like me.

“She had noted this same behavior and attributed it to adrenal exhaustion from years of pumping out high levels of epinephrine from prolonged severe anxiety. Not only were these AS people dealing with their regular levels of anxiety, but they were also working extremely hard to maintain a façade of normalcy.”


I just can't help reading this again and again. It describes me so well. I wish I had understood what was going on at the time. Thanks for postingit's helped seeing it acknowledged in black and white like this.

OMG. This is me. That is exactly what has been happening to me since last August. I started a breakdown, went onto medication and am only just holding it together. But I feel so disabled, I cannot remember anything short-term, I am unfocused, my executive dysfunction is much worse, I get overwhelmed so easily, I cannot cope with anything at all, and my sensory problems are even worse - as well as it having greatly affected my physical health.

I know that this is Aspie burnout now from reading this thread. I'm glad I found it.

I'm pretty sure I'm dealing with this right now. Perhaps I wouldn't go so far as to call it a breakdown, but I've definitely burnt myself out, which has ultimately led to me getting a diagnosis (I've known it for years, but didn't really think diagnosis was necessary until recently).

I started my master's degree last August and things have been slowly going down hill thanks to a couple of big stressful events in my life. I was at my worst in October when I went about eight or nine days without sleeping (I was pretty much insane by the end of that... worst thing I have ever experienced). I have been slowly trying to pull myself up out of it and have still managed to remain semi-functional at school, but it's been obvious that I'm not the same person I was a year ago. I've been much more irritable, had a lot less energy, can only handle about half of the stress that I could before, and I just plain feel like my IQ has dropped several points. I've also been much more noticeably autistic and a lot more anxious than before.

I'm still trying to recover from it, made more difficult by the fact that every time I start to climb out of the rut I fell into, yet another stressful event has knocked me right back down to the bottom of it. Thankfully, now that I do have a diagnosis, the disability office at my Uni is helping me to get some supports in place to make things a little easier at school. I feel embarrassed to even have to ask, though, because I've always been the top of my class (and still am, but it's really not sustainable at this point).

This thread has been very informative and very helpful.

I also realized a few weeks ago that I will never have any advancement in the company as I have utterly no interest in the other positions and I don't want to deal with the general public (note: I work for a big insurance company so we get a lot of cranky people, I work in IT so I don't have to deal with them). Unfortunately because of this realization, I've noticed that I have no motivation to do anything at work. I've gotten good at getting people to think that I'm actually doing anything but I know I can't keep it up for much longer. I'm afraid of getting caught and potentially fired because of it.

This is heartbreaking for me. I kept on going for all the right financle and career development reasons. I had a huge breakdown, lost a lot of years, my self esteem and a lot of important cognitive functioning. I would say, get out, get out! whatever you think of as imoportant is not as important as your health, good luck xx

Yes. Anxiety breakdown a year ago. Got my diagnosis. Recovering now.

I was NEVER "successful," but I had a period where I was driven to achieve and get ahead. A car accident made me realize I had no guarantees of a long life, and I had my "mid-life crisis" at 30. After that, I really didn't care about what I did so long as I was "happy."

Without any sense of goals or direction, I've grown worse over the years. I can't say I had a "breakdown," but the lack of focus or purpose has had a similar outcome.

In my 20's I worked hard to achieve and took on responsibility, but never made much career progress due to poor social skills. I would put in overtime and work until my health suffered, I lost my voice and had to stop to recover. But I plunged back in and was always considered a hard worker.

Then in my 40s I lost my job and my Father in the same week and I had to reassess the things I though important. I became depressed and withdrew from the world, unable to think of anything I would want to do. I was burned out and had my certainties pulled away from me.
Two years on and I'm coming out of it but my capacity to work, overcome stress, communicate and take care of myself is less- or perhaps I no longer have a false confidence that I can work my way through. Maybe I have a more realistic awareness of myself... I know that I need support from those about me, but after faking it for so long it's hard to convince them that I'm not just slacking.

I have only worked part-time, temporary jobs since and am more aware of my limitations. I'm not trying hard to appear "normal" but I'm trying to be true to myself. After unsuccessful interviews I have had feedback saying they enjoyed the interview with me and appreciated my honesty, for not saying what I thought they wanted to hear. But it didn't get me the job.

I don't know what I will do next.

I still believe that creating our own autistic community [ and others throughout the world] will greatly reduce that auistic burnout. We cannot expect to spend our entire life denying our [awesome] autistic authenticity and not expect to pay huge consequences eventually.

I am looking to start that in the next 18 to 24 months [one of the discussions at AutHaven in February] and once feeling the security from being able to be me around others who accept my uniqueness, to work BIG TIME on other issues such as accommodations, self-employment, and autistic acceptence, partially through education of NT's, which we, the autistics, will need to be the main providers of.

This thread is awesome. I bookmarked it ages ago and then forgot about it. Thank you everyone who posted their experiences. I so totally experienced this ( mid-late-20's ). And my life has never really got back on the rails or any kind of satisfying fulfilling creative/productive path since, ( I've just turned 50 ) except in fits and starts, which never go anywhere.

Vickygleitz: what is "AutHaven"?

Well, some of the responses to this feel somewhat discouraging :/

Reality is what it is, I suppose.

First breakdown in August 1998. It went completely untreated. I was off work for six months, then returned to the family company I worked for in a diminished capacity. I never felt "right" after that. Two years later I was diagnosed with clinical depression.

Second breakdown in September 2006. I did get treatment this time, but I was an undiagnosed aspie. So they treated me for the breakdown, the ongoing depression, and the ultimately diagnosed anxiety disorder. Took Effexor until Easter 2008.

I feel like I'm fortunate to have the job I have, but I have a constant sense of inadequacy, and anxiety that the job will suddenly disappear, and due to the unique nature of my job, I'd be unemployable.

I don't know how to move forward from here, particularly with the combination of the ASD diagnosis, the poor executive function and my now-terrible memory. Much like the OP, my memory is seriously flaky.

I have no formal qualifications, left high school at the end of Year 10 (extremely strong influence of my probably-Aspie father), and am unable return to the thing that I was marginally good at (technical support/customer service) - I've tried, and I melt down within two-three weeks.

I'll be 40 in a few months, and this is probably the number one anxiety-causing issue in my life.

I think I'm heading towards a nervous breakdown. I have a lot of aggressive emotions in me, and find people overwhelm me more than ever before. I feel I just want to get away when strangers stand too close to me in shops, and at the moment I have self-control (just about), but I'm scared that in a few years down the line I might suddenly snap, yell, ''f**k sake, get the f**k out of my way!! !'', and then have a nervous breakdown at home that is caused by the humiliation I gave myself and regretting doing it. And that would be another thing to beat myself up about, and it might even cause Agoraphobia and severe anxiety of facing people again.

I do not want that to happen, but I can't find the right therapy in my area, and I'm scared of meds because of the side effects.

I think I can relate to this a lot and think I might have had/having an Autistic Burnout. By the way I am 41.

Looking back at a lot of the traits and foibles I have is suggestive of Aspergers. However I was functioning pretty well in work. But over the past few years I have found my ability to cope with life events/stressful situation and dealing with people generally has diminished. I have suffered badly with depression and had more outbursts and anger management issues.

I have felt completely drained mentally and physically and am tiring out very quickly. So I am think I am in still suffering from this condition.

I actually see this is good as although I will always have Aspergers issues to deal with, I more more hopeful that I can deal with the challenges a bit better.