Autistic Burnout

Post Reply New Topic

What I don't understand is the "drop the façade/mental redecoration" thing some of you are talking about.

How can I possibly do that? Putting on a very shaky "normal" act is the only way I can communicate effectively in person, which I must do in order to get by. I've been doing it so long that I don't even recognize an alternative. My differences, when I failed to hide them, were always an embarrassment and an excuse for my parents, peers, and religion to judge and reject me, and their judgments cut me to the bone. I've never healed; I just relive the pain over and over. Even now after leaving the religion, letting all my peers drift away, and limiting contact with my family, how can I simply choose not to worry about what people think of me? You can't just disregard a 29-year-old inferiority complex. I think that being myself--even if I knew how to go about it--would be even harder. It would mean communicating and venturing out even less than I do now. It might also alienate my family and cost me my job. Without income and people who can help me out, I'm screwed. Knowing that, can I ever be honest with myself?

I was in many ways very passive as a child. Not in terms of my personality, which is anything but passive. But in terms of the way I interacted with the world, both socially (I was absolutely textbook Lorna-Wing-style passive kid that way except for occasional forays into other situations) and otherwise.

I never exactly had "looking normal" as a goal, as I would never have been able to conceptualize that. But what I did have, was sort of... it felt like these forces outside of me would require me to do incomprehensible things for incomprehensible reasons. It's hard to explain in English because the concept is one that I don't think exists in this or most other languages. But anyway, these forces (coming from other people, but that's not how I experienced them) set certain requirements in my life, and I would do everything possible to meet those requirements, afraid of not doing so. But I was so oblivious to so many parts of the world that I didn't even know where these requirements were coming from, which is why it's hard to explain.

Anyway, so I threw all my energy into meeting these requirements. I did so with huge, enormous, unbelievable gaps in my knowledge and understanding of the world around me. I lacked much understanding of language, I lacked much understanding of the objects in my surroundings, things like object permanence would sporadically go missing (impermanent object permanence?!), just lots of massive gaps in my understanding. My native mode of understanding was through very concrete sensory patterns. And I used mostly that kind of understanding, coupled with "intellectual sprinting" sometimes into the conceptual world that I could never manage to stay in, to meet those requirements as much as possible.

The problem was, meeting the first requirements meant meeting even more stringent requirements. The more I did, the more people (or from my perspective, incomprehensible forces) wanted of me. They didn't realize entirely that they were wanting incredible feats from someone missing perceptions of the world that they didn't even know existed because they took them for granted so much. It was like building huge teetering towers out of blocks that were set down on very shaky foundations with massive holes in them. And the higher I built those towers, the higher these outside forces wanted me to add to them. All of these things being in areas that were about as far from my natural set of skills as possible.

So underneath all this required BS, I was a person who struggled with basic understanding of the world around me, of language, of recognizing objects, of all kinds of things, including things that most people don't even know they know, so they don't know it's possible not to know those things. I learned to parrot language at people in extremely plausible ways, by memorizing which sounds normally went after which other sounds. The actual meaning in language eluded me for a time longer than most people could have possibly been aware of. That's part of what I mean about sensory patterns. Instead of the idea of the words, I was almost always relying on the sound of the words. And I could, being hyperlexic, convert the sound of the words to the assorted squiggles-on-paper called writing, and back again. So I had many sources of words, and relied hugely on memory and sensory pattern. I didn't just do this with words, though. I did it with everything.

Anyway, eventually the towers they had me building came crashing down in a huge way. Instead of stopping and taking a look at what was going on, they decided I must just not be doing all these things because I wasn't challenged enough. What followed was a nightmare of being pushed far beyond the limits of nearly anyone's endurance intellectually, let alone someone with all these massive gaps in their understanding. And then I crashed so badly that there was absolutely no mistaking it anymore, and just about immediately got diagnosed. (I was 14 at that point, although the crashing had begun somewhere around 12. They just managed to misinterpret that so badly that they drove me into the ground until I attempted suicide, rather than letting things happen a little more gracefully.)

Anyway, none of that performing of what these requirements said was something that I had any understanding or control over. It had nothing to do with my personality, it had nothing to do with what I wanted, or what I did or didn't care about. It would have required a good deal more understanding than I had, to be able to understand and refuse what was going on.

It's extremely hard to explain what my world looked like at the time (or for that matter looks like now most of the time), to people (including many autistic people) who've likely always had understanding that I never had. It was like... there were all these sounds, sights, scents, other sensations, that were everywhere. They sort of flowed together in various ways. And that was practically the entire world. Ideas sometimes existed, but often as just these strange fleeting things that made no sense, or as what happened when I geared myself up into sprinting mode, ran up into the land of concepts, did a whole lot of incomprehensible juggling acts, and went (or fell) back down to where I usually lived.

This isn't a place where you know you have choices, or even understand what a choice is. It's a place where something happens and you react, without even consciously doing anything. Where outside forces act on you without your understanding what they are or where they come from, or what they mean. Meaning is an odd thing in this place. Meaning of the conventional kind is missing, but there are other kinds of meaning and understanding that are fully operational. But they're totally different from the usual kinds.

And that's how things usually looked from my perspective. And still look. And they look that way regardless of whether I "appear normal" or "appear autistic" at the time. Nothing in this place is changed by appearance, because appearance (of that sort) is not what this place is about. It doesn't register there. It's terribly frustrating to try to describe it though because the same word will take on opposite meanings when you try to use it, like "meaning" and "appearance". Everything comes back to these foundations. That's why I can't build very many skills, not on purpose anyway, nor in the usual manner. They go up in towers above this place, then they crash down because nothing that isn't rooted in this place ever lasts. (That's why I can seem to have to learn the same thing twenty times and only temporarily have the knowledge each time before it goes away again. Meanwhile something I'm not trying to learn can be happening in the background until suddenly a skill pops up out of nowhere.)

Going through something like this now. There is a lot of change happening at once, and a pervasive sense that "everything is wrong/upside down". I think I'm overwhelmed/overstimulated. Am fortunate to have a supportive boss, but am very worried about upsetting other work colleagues/teammates -- am worried because I work in a culture that almost competes in how much we deny sleep/self-care. I called my boss mid melt-down, explained that I was not well today, asked what was wrong, said I didn't know, and asked if I needed to take the week off to "reset". I am so very fortunate that this was offered because I was about to resign, not knowing what else to do.

Sense of "fuzziness" started about a month ago, but have been able to put one foot in front of the other. I called this morning because I absolutely could not get it together. Two meltdowns, all before 10am. Trouble functioning. Feeling very disconnected. I am on medication to manage anxiety, and I think this is helping me not to attach to suicidal thinking-loops, but this kind of thinking is there, in the background. It is different from depression, but I don't know if I can explain how. I think it is a kind of exhaustion. Like I can't turn off, and the fear of failure makes me want to die. The fear of appearing entitled, and of being misunderstood. I'm too tired to talk -- words are very heavy in my mouth.

I just moved, and my semester of school (and therefore routine) just ended for the summer. And I'm starting a new project at work (supposed to start today). Too many transitions at once, possibly. Wanting things to slow way down. Also, I don't know when my last "break/vacation" was... I tend to work until I collapse. And then there is awareness, oh! I need to rest. I’m female, 31, living alone, newly moved to a large city, work remote, demanding job, very isolated.

If one should decide to comment on this post, please do not pick it apart to diagnose me. Instead, what would be most helpful would be suggestions to support recovery to a better state, and to help prevent the next major breakdown. I am always worried that I am about to fail in my career.

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