Autistic Burnout

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Or, I guess "midlife autistic burnout" although the burnout ages people who have talked about it here ranges from 12 to to their 50s (I may have missed someone in their 60s). Mine was early 30s.

But mostly, I'm trying to find resources on this. I can find many blog posts talking about this on a personal level and they are helpful, but are there any resources aside from this article on Autistics.org:

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

Last edited by Verdandi on 28 Feb 2011, 11:06 am, edited 1 time in total.

I'm in my early 30s and I have been burned out for about a year now.

I have never been happy about being so alone, however it didn't affect me as much in the past as it has now.

I spent my 20s entirely alone without any friends whatsoever.

For some reason It didn't bother me much as I was so focused on my education and career that the social setbacks didn't get to me.

I figured that since I was smart enough to succeed tremendously in my field, that I would eventually figure out a way to succeed socially.

However as I get older, I am realizing how intractable my social problems really are.

The endless loneliness and isolation without any possible solution have slowly eaten away at my will to go on living.

The indomitable drive that saw me through my 20s is gone now, and several months ago I completely burned out at work and lost my job.

This came as a surprise to my colleagues because I had been previously seen as a "rising star" due to my successes.

Although getting another job wasn't a problem, my career is now completely shot and will never be what it could have been.

In some ways I don't really care anymore. If I am going to be forced to be alone for the rest of my life, I have no reason to have a stressful career in the first place.

Sounds like a typical depression to me, no autistic traits involved on this.

Most people get fired or have to leave their jobs at some time on their life, this doesn't mean your career is over, you just have to carry on. You should watch it as an opportunity to do something else you might like better.

give an autistic a dodge viper, and tell him that there is a crowd on it's way to see him, and you will see an autistic burnout.

That is funny!



I think i've been in a burnout the whole course of my teenage years, and i'm still going through it. Thank you for the link. It's has explained a lot.

Interesting read.

I've been feeling as if I'm getting dumber as I get older. I had my "mid life crisis" at 30, and I'm seemingly having more and more problems focusing on stuff than when I was back in college. I was wondering if it was just me.

19? Try... 12-14?

Vastly oversimplified.

By definition, autism carried with it deficits in the type of social skills that one must rely on during transitional periods in their life. If I am fired or seek new employment, my ability to network and leverage my circle of friends directly correlates to success in finding another job. If, by virtue of my autism, I have no friends (This is not an exaggeration. It is not uncommon among those on the spectrum to have a very limited number, or even zero, friends) and I am inadequately skilled at networking, any such transition between jobs will be more stressful and carry with it greater uncertainty.

To say "you just have to carry on" is a platitude, one typically used by people that confuse real deficits with character flaws. Giving up is not an option, "carrying on" is the default state. We are all carrying on, to various levels of success.

I don't know if it is burnout or acceptance or adjustment. I am no longer as worried about appearing 'normal' any more. I am not afraid of the definition of me and don't torture myself to do things I despise because it would appear weird if I opted out.
I recently moved a nice chair upstairs to put right in front of my game TV. Now there aren't many places to sit in my main room. But I hate having people over, who cares how it looks to anyone but me. It is much more open and easier on my eyes and I get to sit in the nice chair and play games upstairs where it is warmer in the winter (got games downstairs too, lol). This is my house, where I live and I'm finally brave enough to not hide who I am. To anyone else it might look like I am being more aspie, regressing into more isolation. But the truth is I have always hid these things.
I thought if I didn't hide them people would find me odd, someone who prefers to be alone. Now I make it clear I prefer to be alone. I haven't regressed, I am tired of the torture of pretending. I am not as good at pretending. Same goes for relationships. I just ended one because something was changing. Other relationships I would have entered into the 'try to figure it out, fix it' phase. I can't figure it out so why go through the hell of the long walk to the end. Bye

All of it to an outside observer would be seen as getting more autistic. I am just more honest about who I am...autistic, oh well.

This is exactly what I am trying to get brave enough to do. Until recently, it never occured to me to just stop torturing myself with uncomfortable situations and people.

When I started dropping that sort of façade, a lot of people became angry with me. In my case it wasn't even fully on purpose, I just didn't have the kind of energy and momentum it takes to keep up an act. Mind you, my act wasn't very convincing in the first place, but it still made enough of a difference that people noticed and got pissed off when I dropped it. It's like some people think autistic people have no right to look more autistic, even if it's torture and hell (and even impossible) to do otherwise.

Could "autistic decompensation" apply, along with burnout? For me, the beginning of my breakdown coincided with my diagnosis of autism. I was only diagnosed about a year and a half ago, at age 42. I am currently on sick leave from work due to the problems I'm experiencing.

Just trying to help,

Joe

I quit my full-time IT career 8 years ago because of this and much as my current financial situation demands that returning to it would be the logical thing to do, I know that doing so would likely finish me off.

This is basically it.
I was very successful in all the IT-related things I worked with but as my responsibilities became broader and my involvement became more significant to the continuing operation of some large systems, the expected managerial abilities simply didn't materialize.
I wanted to continue working under the hood but I was required to run the whole show, and my efforts at faking this became impossible to sustain. I was caving in rapidly and my embarrassing breakdowns and tears were becoming a talking point amongst others - almost to the point of being fired.

So I spent some years after ending it pretty much in a comatose state - just 'existing' and treading water while eating through my savings. This was before I had any idea about AS and for most of the time I was on anti-depressants. Yeah, like they helped.

But now I know what's going on and why things happened the way they did, I'm much less bothered by it and feel more content for knowing; more able to accept it instead of beating myself up about it.
I still have no social life whatever - never did, really - but I'm not fussed about forcing myself into difficult situations I won't be able to handle in a pointless effort at finding one, and even if I did find one I'd only break it.

So am I appearing 'more autistic' as a result? Heh, quite probably but despite the daily difficulties I feel much better for not having to pretend it's any other way.
Colour me "burned, but extinguished just in time".

So is this a nascent and unrecognized problem? Does all the behavior modification brought to bear during childhood result in an unsustainable facade rather than a real change? Will we see a wave of previously well adapted individuals crumbling under the load of maintaining something that is at odds with their intrinsic neurology?

Hmmm ...

That's a good, if slightly worrying point.
I wonder that most will just crash and burn underneath the radar.