Burn Out

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Does anyone else find that having to interact with people regularly causes them to burn out energy wise? Also is anyone else prone to depression as a result of that burn out?

I often find that I spend my life going around in circles. As I am diagnosed with Social Anxiety and have never been tested for an ASD therapists etc seem to push me to socialise etc and interact with people as a way of getting me past that anxiety. However it has the opposite effect and just exhausts me to the point where I have a series of temper tantrums followed by complete exhaustion and then a massive episode of depression during which I feel like all my energy has been sucked out of me. At which point they think more socialising will help me as they seem to be suffering from the mistaken belief that socialising helps depressed people and cheers them up.

Does anyone else have an similar issues?

Yes to the burning out. Having less energy also makes it more difficult for me to cope with other things like depression and anxiety.

I haven't been pushed to socialize recently, and never by therapists, and one thing I've done as an adult is manage my exposure to other people - and whenever I don't, I tend to crash because I will run out of energy. It doesn't really even take much. Being around a few family members for a few hours the other night left me feeling awful and exhausted.

Yes, that is precisely what happens to me. I suppose it does help extroverted people who are depressed, but they fail to realize that everyone isn't the same.

Yes. Exactly. People keep telling me "if you just get out there on a regular basis..." when experience has shown time and again this leads to horrible burnout like you describe.

When I was little and I had friends over to play I'd often leave them abruptly and go up to my room and start drawing by myself at my desk to get some peace and quiet. The overwhelmingness of socializing has never gone away for me. It's just a character trait. A lot of people do not seem capable of understanding this. Worst when it's a mental health professional. Euggh. I'm just in a really bad mood about this issue.

Same.

All though I don't get depressed so....you're alon on that bit.

But I get so tired that I get so tired and pass out....what I mean by pass out is that I fal asleep.

same

But for some reason i can socialize all day online and be alright :/ still don't understand that

I even have to take a nap whenever I get home from the grocery store. I get teased for that.

Ohhhh I can talk endlessly on the internet lol. On forum boards I have had such comments as "Excuse me, if you don't mind me interrupting your monologue", "Do you have to post EVERY thought you have" and "can you shut up please or change the subject as we are not interested".

Also common things for me to hear are "You are in a world of your own", "you are obsessed with *add present interest here* can you stop posting about it please", "are you deliberately ignoring what I was saying?" (because I fail to respond when people talk to me now and then lol), "who are you talking to (usually anyone who wants to listen and even those who don't it seems lol)" and so on.

I do talk a lot online...bit too much actually lol.

But it is vastly different to actually socialising!

Firstly its text based...that is easier to work with! I prefer communicating via text.

Secondly, you can sit behind your computer screen doing your own thing. If you want to sit in your pyjamas because they are comfortable you can. If you want to listen to the same song over and over again with your headphones on you can. If you want to spend some time on your hobby between posts you can. You don't have to worry so much about other social stuff and over all it is much less tiring!

Bravo to the internet lol.

But that is the paradox of me. In the company of people I hardly speak, let loose on the internet (where I get no social anxiety at all) and I annoy the hell out of everyone with my constant talking about whatever my brain wants to rattle on about. So when my therapists talk about solving my social problems by getting rid of the Social Anxiety I feel like I can't say as I agree with them. Either way I seem to be doomed...

Yes & Yes



Yes. Except I am not pushed by therapists (don't have one, never seen one, have a psych assessment coming up) but by myself ... I really must learn to stop doing that and just go with what I know works (solitude, indulging my special interests etc) ! !

Socializing does make me exhausted. So does going out in public, since I have to put up a "wall" so that people don't know what I'm really feeling. I always need to "recharge" after socializing or being out in public by spending lots of time by myself.

I too need a nap after going out. The drowsiness will never go away otherwise, no matter how isolated I make myself or how much coffee I drink.

Yes all of the time-and i get tired having to put on "the act" in front of people to appear like there is nothing wrong-that gets very tiring.

Hi

I have been talking to a therapist lately due the exact same thing occurred to me lately. She seemed to be hinting that I might have social anxiety, who knows?

I went to a conference for uni study, about 100 people there, I didnt talk to a single person, until i was completely trashed on the last night and no i didn't make a complete fool of my self. Any way, I went to the conference which went on for three days and when I got home I seemed completely exhausted. I thought I would recover, however, I didn't. I suddenly found little motivation to do anything, such as get out of bed or even make toast, today all I have had is two cups of coffee and nothing else.

I lost complete interest in everything such as going to the lab to research, this was something I was so passionate about, you couldn't get me out of there. However, after this I couldn't even bring my self to do simple experiments of even turn up. As a result I have fallen very far behind on my studies, assingments and research and deadlines are coming up.

Pretty much I lost motivation to do every I loved to do and as a result I saw there was little reason to exist. No I didn't try to kill my self but I did want to just vanish and get it over with.

However, things got a little better after graduation week when my family came down to attend it. You see the thing is I don't have a social life at all; I have absolutely no friends. Its that I don't like people, but rather that I have a complete inability to keep or make friends. But it was the social interactions with people that made things a little better. This was something that I completely missed; I was depressed because I didn't have any friends. Or was it, when i think about it its not having no friends that caused me to burn out; it was the complete lack of social skills I displayed at the conference that caused me to burnout and go into depression.

As you might know, when you get into a large social situations like that you simply lock everyone out. I become incredibly anxious and stressed because I can not read the social situations that are occurring and I get super paranoid.

So I guess its the stress of the inability to socialize which causes me to burnout and then because everything else around me goes downhill because of the burnout I go into depression.

Does that sound familiar?

The only way I have ever been able to avoid this occurring is to avoid large events or have a really good friend to rely on for complete honesty to explain me the current social situation at the time, or in other words, by having a good wingman or wingwoman.

I get this completely... if I spend more then a couple of hours in town by the time I get home I'm pretty much done for the day. that's why I usually save my shopping until late at night, not only are stores less crowded but I can go home and go to bed.

I have been in therapy 2 times, and both times I was pushed to socialise more. The first case was because of a depression, the second because of anxiety. I had not heard of something like ASD at that time. I believed at that time that the therapist was right and should follow the advice. But it seems like this made it worse. Especially after a bad performance review at work I had to change my behaviour and this seemed to cause a burn out later. It can be so exhausting to have to improve on things if I do not even understand what I am doing wrong. And I was still thinking that I was just a depressed and closed person, nothing more. Actually that situation caused panic attacks and anxiety, so after the depression more or less cleared, I got stuck with a new problem. All that because of having to appear normal

So, in my case there was depression and has now been replaced with anxiety. Thanks to the "healthcare".

PS: one thing I learned from my therapist is that an increase in awareness can cause more problems. I think this can be true: if you become more aware (of being different for example) but do not have the insight/skills to adjust to that new awareness, frustration will increase. What I know is that repeated frustration can cause burn out.