Burnout.

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Right. I was advised to look up energy management in regards to avoiding burnout on youtube by my local autistic support team as I saw them yesterday with an open day they usually have once a month.

I looked at one or two films people had put up. Some seemed long winded where people were talking away and not getting to the point... Much like I do!
But I saw one which was describing burnout that a young man had put up. He was good at describing burnout. He looked in his early 20's or thereabouts. I started to become aware that the burnouts that I have had are quite a lot more severe, because his very accurate description is what I was getting when burnout was starting... In other words, I was going far, far deeper into burnout and getting much more severe symptoms then he was describing, and thinking about it, his description is actually one which most people would not want to reach.
I remember thinking. What he was describing I would say was in the first quarter of my burnout experience.

I can look and post the short film he did if anyone is interested. All I know is when I went through each successive burnout I ended up in a complete mess and I found even with a long recovery, I had not been able to reach the stage where I had been before I had gone through the burnout.

Why share this information? Because when burnouts hit, they can hit hard. I have found that after each burnout, even after a long recovery I was not able to quite be back to how I was before. (Sorry. I have just said that again. But I say it, because while one is younger one may have the odd burnout and recover, and after recovery one may be back to normal, I am concerned that people can under estimate the effects of burnout as one starts to pass the youthful stages of life and they can potentially be much harder hitting. So learning to have de-stress times and saying no to taking on too much when one is not really ready is important to ones health.
Yes, when I was younger I went through some very stressful times, but every time I was knocked down I would spring back up. But I have to say when I hit the latter half of my mid 30's onwards, things began to change, though I do admit to hitting circumstances that were soo stressful that I don't know how I got through them let alone how My Mum coped, or my brothers as they went through tough situations too.

To me, the real answer I feel I need to recover, and I know this sounds selfish, is to have a years holiday at a cottage by the sea to unwind and relax and have a carefree adventure. I understand why the Victorians who were wealthy enough would do this. It makes perfect sense as after difficult stressful times, or times of burnout etc, one does need a break. Unfortunately, life may not allow for this, so my advice is to try to slow down a little and unload commitments and avoid any events which one may find stressful.

Anyway. I thought I would mention it. I will look for the short youtube film and share it, as it gives viewers an understanding of what I call the start of a burnout experience. (I say start as I pushed through this stage due to work commitments and kept pushing and pushing forcing every inch out of my body... My body was continually screaming at me and I was facing continual strings of partial shutdowns while in work along with the constant battle in avoiding full shutdowns, so my hands were worn out due to violent stimming, I was constantly feeding myself chocolate and sipping cola as this was replacing the lost energy which was draining out of my body at quite a fast rate... I was hardly getting any sleep and had to go to work at least half an hour early as due to anxiety by the bucket load, after driving to work, I could not get up out of the car until the anxiety levels reduced... Which took about 20 minutes of just sitting there until I could swing my feet out of the door and they would take my weight.

So for anyone who realizes they maybe having burnout, my advice is to take it seriously and act upon it. Don't do what I do and try to force your body to push through.

Here is the short film that I saw.

That was a very good video . I detected a Welsh accent there . But, yes, I agree totally that taking the time you need to recover is essential, and even more essential as you grow older. What we coped with as teenagers, or in our twenties can have even greater impact on an older system... I know what he means about taking on more and more, until you can cope no more, having experienced this and having a workaholic mindset. I've experienced complete shutdown of body, affecting physical health to the point of serious illness(working myself into the ground to the point of pneumonia and pleurisy developing at around the age of 26. I was healthy and fit at that time, but I pushed myself beyond all limits.

I've nursed someone for a year who has suffered complete burnout and was unable to work. They had insurance, so received a fairly good percentage of their pay, but having to see a mental health professional in London(a 45minute train journey from home), and in particular insurance assessor, was hugely debilitating to an already burnt-out and wreck of a person. They were then diagnosed with psychosis and were having panic attacks. So, having the time off that is needed can be very necessary, but hard for people struggling to stay afloat financially. Some people don't have the family or back-up care they need in these instances.

What must be frustrating is when people don't understand the shutdown and think you're just being lazy. I've not experienced being at the receiving end of that, but it must be very frustrating to not have people understand the extent of stress and life on the mind and body, especially when it's a part of the autistic experience and deserves the time to be understood by those closest to you. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for posting this. Burnout is what brought me here. I have all the symptoms of burnout, but without the high-stress life. Which meant no one but me takes it seriously, making it worse. However, realizing that I've been masking, the picture makes a whole lot more sense. (still no one takes it seriously, but at least I get it).
The video was pretty good (I agree those kinds are often way longer than they need to be), but his advice is hard to take for me. I don't have time. Parenting is a full time job one can't take a year off from (even if I could afford it). A couple times in the past 2 years I've taken 5 day vacations, and they've been helpful, but the preparation of 5 days of meals and the packing/unpacking are a bunch of work also, and I feel I need more but can't get more and so I'm zombie-ing.
I am also feeling the incomplete recoveries piling up as I age, another factor in my feeling like I don't have the time...
Too busy chopping wood to stop and sharpen my axe, but if the job's almost done...

I have experienced being at the recieving end of the illusion that one is being lazy due to partial shutdowns through most of my life. It is why I learnt to disguise them as much as possible so no one noticed I was having them... Therefore I could avoid all the "You must work harder" or "You're not concentrating" type of tellings off.
Surprizingly some of the worst criticisms came from family who don't themselves suffer from the shutdown experience.
So comments like "Ignore it and it will go away" or "He always does this (Me having to lie down on the floor to recover) when work is needed to be done" etc were quite common. It is the reason why I worked so hard to push through stages of burnout when in work, that I ended up in such a mess, because I did not want to give the impression that I was being lazy or slacking off. My body was screaming while I pushed my way through the shifts.
It is far far worse to be experiencing this for most of my life and up until about a few years ago when I changed doctors surgeries, the past doctors had me down as a hypercondriact as I kept coming back again and again with the same symptoms and they could not find the cause... So after a few years the receptionist would do all she could to stop me getting appointments and limiting them to once or twice a year... And the doctor would be looking at his watch the entire time and when 3 minutes were up he would have me out the door.
The new doctors. Oh... They are soo much better. Even though I have largely stumbled upon things myself with the help of really tallented people on this forum, I know that my current doctors are really excellent and really want to make a difference.
So the largest giant leap forwards for me was to discover my experiences were partial and full shutdowns and also, to realize that I have experienced quite somw burnouts over the last 15 years, and the last few burnouts have been quite severe as I am still feeling the effects of them and it has been four months since the last one and I have still not pulled out from the effects of it. I am better and less fragile then I was but I still keep slipping back into the fragile stage if I try to do some less strenous physical work, which is concerning!

Last edited by Mountain Goat on 01 Feb 2020, 8:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Yup. I can identify with that. I had one of those when I was 50, and saw counsellors and other people who encouraged me to think positive and go out of my comfort zone, which was the opposite of what I needed. Then I had 2½ years of my version of the Victorian Grand Tour, except in my case I bought my van and went travelling with my dog. I was totally convinced I was well on the way to being cured, and was doing things I'd never been able to do before, so I went off and did new things that got me into the biggest mess I've ever been in, and still can't get out of. I've been in a constant state of burnout for years because of it. The message from travelling should have been that I can achieve more when life is simple and organised, not that I was cured!

I've had that feeling of laziness all my life too. But why would I be lazy about doing things that are enjoyable, or would make life better?

I reached a stage after the first burnout where I started offloading everything. I quit a very well paid and secure job. I sold the house for half its value just to pay off the mortgage. I sold my classic car and camper for very little money just so I had less responsibilities. I was giving away or selling things for peanuts in an effort to offload as much as I could so I didn't have so many things to deal with.

The number of times people have said that and I have often found the people saying it arranging chores for me to do for them thinking that if I do more work, I will start to get used to it...

Once I was officially diagnosed in an attempt to decode my life I study ASD in depth and I have way more to go. One nugget I came across is two different terms. There is Autistic Burnout and then there is Extreme Autistic Burnout.I'm going to watch the video with no interruptions later; I have watched his videos before and I like his way of doing vids. I know about the deeper, further burnouts due to burnout combined with traumatic experience and required workplace extreme performance and long long hours. Going through smaller burnouts I managed in ways that I knew would sort of help me. Some previously rare others were so bad I couldn't get out of bed for (3) days (my brain refused to function and send signals to body parts) and more recently where the burnouts with no chance of rest are depleting my executive functioning and have been for years. EABO can take you permanently out of the workplace and that is whre I am at.

These types of burnouts I don't know if everyone here completely understands how damaging they truly are. If some autistics are on their own, if this hits them, it will be devastating. I've hoped and tried to get back to the pre-burnout normalcy but it never came.

We learn life stages form an NT point of view but it is not taught about losing mind power, energy, executive function, etc and how to deal with it within whatever circumstances we will face going through life. With constant bad news, increased stresses of minute to minute life, I foresee the ASD community experiencing more and more burnout. Are we prepared? It is usually not a thing until it is too late IME.

I am a caffeine abuser at this point. My tics have become worse as successive burnouts become more frequent. To anyone who thinks 'this will never happen to me', there are people who are going through this that thought the same thing.

I'm currently pushing through by using high dosages of caffeine, without it I am completely worthless mentally and have little energy to do even daily tasks, little energy meaning having to operate while completely burnt out mentally and physically.

I have seen the light at the end of the tunnel, and it is receding.

You must have been coping very well at some point to get a very well paid job . What triggered the drastic decline in your mental and physical abilities?

Do you think the decline is irreversible , or that in time you'll return to being the high functioning person you once were ?

When I was younger I worked at a very stressful job that involved lots of interaction and multitasking, I did it for years even though it took a huge toll on my mental health. My mindset back then was that if I did it that sort of thing long enough I was bound to get better at it, but what happened instead was that I suffered a burnout and had to leave. Some of my ability to function well was lost and even many years later has not returned. So now I really see the value in not pushing oneself too hard, and practising self care as much as possible.

I do think I will recover eventually but recently the more I see to offload, the more other stressful situations seem to head my way and undo any recovery that I have had. I feel it may take a long time to recover. Likely to be a few years... The issue I have is that when I have tried working when I thought I had recovered (After several months where I had no work and no income each time I took a break) , I go straight back into burnout as it was not enough time off. I would feel ok and then realize, that by taking on work again that it had been a mistake, and I could not do anything about it but I had to work through it. (As I did not know what to call the shutdowns or how to explain them to doctors, and neither did I know how to describe burnout... And I generally tried to stay away from doctors anyway... (I would be soo nurvous I would get mindblank or the doctor could say things and I would respond appropiately, but comeaway not having a clue what was said).

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I used to work on the railway. What caused the first burnout? Well. Looking back at my employment history (And it is only since joining this site and learning a lot about myself that I now understand what was happening) is that I tended to work for about two years before the ability to keep masking effectively started to break down. When this happened I would need look elsewhere for a new job. At the time I did not know what was happening as all I knew is that rhings started to get stressful for me as I started to be exposed, and I would become unhappy in a depressed way where I didn't want to be there and I was almost to the point where I was considering ending my life as a way to get out of the situation.
The point where I was no longer able to mask varied from job to job. It was usually two years. However, the well paid job on the railways... Due to the ever changing shifts where no two days were the same and I would as a guard (Conductor) have a different driver sometimes a few times a day... I could go for months sometimes before I would see certain staff again due to the changing shift patterns... This enabled me to last about five years before I started to feel cracks in the masks I was wearing, and then I pushed my way through another four years which when I was trying to keep up masking which took a lot out of me... And various other stresses at home where my father was on steroids and doctors would change his medication but not alter the other medication to compensate and he would start to change moods back and fore and then go off and we would have to look for him with the police out etc... (The mental issues first started with my Dad when drs put him on zyband to stop him smoking, and from then on he had issues, but the drs were jot allowed to listen to us as any mental issues my Dad had to tell the doctor... And my Dad was not aware he was doing it).
So anyway. I reached the point of my first burnout while working on the railways and I did not know what was happening. I remember really upsetting a work collegue when I was pulling out of a partial shutdown and my hearing had gone distorted and I seriously messed things up that he told me in confidence and I became mixed up and gave out the information as I assumed it was another aspect of what he told me was the confidential bit.
I then handed in my notice as I really could not go on. And I had become prone to catching any passing virus... And so as the company had implamented a two sickness a year maximum policy or you were out of a job... And I had one illness for a few days and the resorces were desperately trying to cover trains... And as they had a few shifts, I was phoned six times through 24 hours to see if I was ready to come back into work... I thought it was less stressful to work as even though I was ill, at least I could sleep! I came into work and signed in and the manager took one look at me and sent me home relling me off for coming in when I was ill (Is against the rules to work trains while ill). I then had a letter warning me that I had had two illnesses (As when I booked in and was sent home it was classed as a seperate illness) and even though I was only off for about five or six days that year, I was told I had to go from the summer to april without an illness... And every holiday I had I was ill straight through it! So by the end of august came along I was feeling soo tired (Sleeping just four to six hours due to reliving the shift before and planning in my mind to prepare myself for the next days shift..)... So I handed in my notice and left in September 2007. I was in such a mess. And when I left work, everything hit me in life! (43 funerals of family and friends in just a few years.. All different events. But that's another story!)

Gee Whizz! MG. No wonder you are struggling. That is a LOT of funerals.

The descriptions of burnout mirror what I went through around 2014/15.

Chronic tiredness to the point of complete exhaustion, yet insomnia at the same time. Being irritable and making lots of silly mistakes at work and a feeling that I couldn't keep up and becoming really paranoid about dealing with people.

I would say it took me a good 12 months to get over my first burnout.

End of 2018 I quit my job - walked out never to return - and handed my notice in whilst off sick. I was heading for another burnout and I feel now thinking about it after the event I'd suffered another mini-burnout the year before as well.

Took a gap year to do lots of things that had been piling up unfinished due to lack of time.

I am working again now, but I try to take things a reduced pace.

If I am sorting something at home - i.e. a long term project - I do them one at a time for as long as it takes to do them, rather than trying to do lots of long term projects piecemeal all at the same time...

When I'm burning out I get sick all the time, too. Sometimes it runs the normal course of a sickness, and sometimes all I have to do is sleep all day and the next day I'm fine, but it feels the same at the beginning.

This 'burn out' thing is completely alien to me . It could be ,perhaps, that to 'burn out' you have to have been a high achiever.The higher you climb ,the greater the effect of falling?!

Possible.

One thing I have noticed is (And this is talking in general rather then talking about autism) that the people with the highest intelligence seem to be far more prone to complete mental breakdowns. Some of the most brilliant minded people that I know who have lived or live in my area seem to have suffered this fate usually later in life. At the moment I can think of three people that this has happened to. An elderly friend of mine happened to have a stay at a mental hospital when he first became a Christian as his conversion had such a change in his character that his wife and another close relative thought he had gone insane. During his stay he met many people who were very intelligent and had had top ranking jobs who ended up with breakdowns.... And this was around 40 or even more years ago. He was declared as completely sane and was allowed to go home. He is the only person I know with a certificate of sanity! They gave him a certificate to prove his saneness when they released him out back into public. I think he is now in his early 80's.