What does an Autistic burnout feel like?? Symptoms??

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sophaylavender
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20 Jul 2014, 9:15 am

I think I am going through a burnout.

Whenever I get home from college I feel incredibly exhausted like I've been running for an hour and I also get this crippling headache. I go for sugary foods as a quick fix and then I become so tired I struggle to keep my eyes open. Because of this extreme exhaustion, I go to bed (still in my clothes) and then I wake up 4-5 hours later. When I do wake up I feel seriously awful, like total "sugar honey iced tea" (take the first letters) and on the inside I just want to scream. This happens nearly every day and has caused disturbances in my sleeping pattern.

I have a lot of difficulties trying to fit in. I feel like there is a glass wall between me and my college peers. I want to socialise with them and I want to be good friends but I struggle to start a conversation and hold a conversation up. This upsets me a lot and I believe this could be a trigger to my burnouts.

I want to know from you guys what an autistic burnout is like; I want to know if what I'm experiencing is a burnout or something else. I am also making a film on autism and I want to include something on burnouts but I only have my own experiences to go on. I need to hear what it's like for others so that my film is accurate and fair :)



Saphie
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20 Jul 2014, 11:19 am

while old dated, this goes into the subject a lot :
http://archive.autistics.org/library/more-autistic.html

as for the whole sugar thing, and migranes and sleep and feelings.. has your bloodsugar been tested since this has began? it sounds like you could be having high blood sugar. or some sort of issue with your bloodsugar. (i normally have low. but i experience high bloodsugar from time to time (less now since i dont eat primarily sugary items or things that turn into sugar). and the times that ive been on a very high end of the bloodsugar levels, i eat the sweets, then get a migrane, and then get super sleepy.. i fall asleep as a "nap" but it ends up being more than an hour(my usual time or less in nap-wise). then when i wake up, i feel really bad(dont know a way to explain it other than "bad" feeling. but when i wake up, the headache is gone, and with time, the bad feeling goes away(unless i eat ice cream or some other small amount of dessert right affer. in that case, the process repeats).


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voleregard
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20 Jul 2014, 5:20 pm

I think I may have burned out senior year of HS. I didn't know what was happening, but the struggle to complete schoolwork became insurmountable.

I couldn't put thoughts together or gather the mental stamina or composure to come up with essay topics or ideas to present in them. I spent my evenings in the library wringing my brain for things to write in my papers -- something, anything just to put down on paper and finish the assignment. I never completed certain assignments and even though I usually got A's and an occasional high B, I finished one class with a low C.

Then in college, I was so exhausted one afternoon, I came home from class and took a nap. My roommate and his friends wanted to check to see if I wanted to go to dinner with them, and so they called to me to wake me up. I didn't wake up.

They shook me. I didn't wake up. They yelled at me, and I didn't wake up. Finally after several tries, they got me to wake up, and I opened my eyes to see three very concerned people who thought I might not have been alive any longer. That's how severely my body wanted to shut down around age 20-21.

Have you done any research into what might be the difference between Autistic Burnout and Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue? Or how one might determine which condition might be causing certain symptoms?


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brackets
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20 Jul 2014, 5:48 pm

It sounds like you may be having some kind of burnout, yeah. About two years ago I had a very similar problem -- living on my own combined with the stress of university meant that I shut down near-constantly and my self-care plummeted to zero. Couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, had to leave school because I couldn't leave my room, fainted a lot, etc.

Hopefully since you caught on earlier you can get the help you need to keep you from anything as extreme as what happened to me, lol.



voleregard
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20 Jul 2014, 6:21 pm

hey brackets, yeah, it would have been nice if someone could have identified the source of the problem, and maybe I could have found a fix for it. As it was, all the influences around me told me to just try harder in school and work.

No fainting yet, but I have had times where I feel that "drawdown" where it seems like my body and brain say, "ok, that's all for today," vision starts to tunnel, and I feel like I'm about to black out for an indeterminate length of time. But something always stops a complete shutdown.

And dizziness. It will come on for just like 2-3 seconds where everything feels unstable, and like the floor just suddenly decided to tilt at an angle, then it passes. I obviously must not be trying hard enough.


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brackets
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20 Jul 2014, 7:31 pm

Yeah, no one straight-up told me to try harder, but I had that thought on my own, so I was pushing at myself to do stuff, which I think exacerbated the problem :/



Deb1970
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20 Jul 2014, 8:55 pm

I burned out when I was 21. I too ate sweets and feel asleep and then had migraines. At one point I was rushed to the hospital because my sugar level dropped to 35. Not long after I lost my job, my apartment and then tried to take my life. I seen myself as a failure. I could not keep friends and did not fit in. I spent several years in a state of angry outburst and would sleep for days at a time. I went on SSDI and lived for awhile in a group home. If you do not get help for your burnout soon it could severally affect your life.


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Saphie
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20 Jul 2014, 9:29 pm

there was a time when i was about 22yr and i ended up heavily sleeping. my parents called and it didnt wake me up. they continually texted me and i didnt wake up. and the police knocked on the door and i didnt wake up, and the police went and got my roomate from work and i still was sleeping for a bit as she stood in my doorway knocking on my door.
took me a bit to register that she had her work clothes on, and that she was home when she should of been at work, and then i looked pasf her and saw more people which were two cops and 3 or 4 ems people. then they did an portable ekg on me, and it wasnt picking up my heartrate as i was sitting in a chair at that time.. my response was much like "WHAT?? WHAT DO YOU MEAN I DONT HAVE A PULSE?!" apparently it was a really faint pulse that could barely even be picked up by the manual way.
then they wouldnt let me get my shoes before they picked me up and carried me out an down the stairs to the abulence bed thing.
... at the er, everything was fine once i got there. and they discharged me.... barefooted... no transportation... (i was grumbling quite a lot at people who toss beer bottles out ob the side of the road for most of the way back) .. :-) i had someone pick me up and helped a lot. (the hospital was about 30 miles from our appartment).
so i can relate to the whole sleeping all comatose like, and waking up to worried people.. i wonder if its more likely in AS, because up until today i hadnt known of anyone else who had a simular incident.


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disclaimer: there are quite a few "tapp-o"s while using my phone. if i dont recognize it, and if it doesnt seem to make sense, then the chances of it being a tapp-o (typo) are very high.
*currently using iPhone 4*


ASPartOfMe
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20 Jul 2014, 10:07 pm

The normal wake up, pee, shave, shower routine takes 2 hours as I one thought reruning in my head preventing me from doing anything else.

Non interest, inability to do things that I was previously highly motivated to do.

Inability to do things I am still interested in doing.

Another words loss of the good side/superpowers of Autism.

One special interest becomes controlling.

Feeling of aging 20 years in a short period of time.


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voleregard
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31 Jul 2014, 7:35 pm

Saphie wrote:
"WHAT?? WHAT DO YOU MEAN I DONT HAVE A PULSE?!"

You made me laugh - the irony of sitting there talking to someone who is telling you that you don't have a pulse!

Saphie wrote:
and they discharged me.... barefooted... no transportation... (i was grumbling quite a lot at people who toss beer bottles out of the side of the road for most of the way back) .. :-) i had someone pick me up and helped a lot. (the hospital was about 30 miles from our appartment).

This though, is horrible. Like they're supposed to be helping, and then throw you out into a situation that is very possibly life-threatening. Nice. <- That's sarcasm.

Your similar story helps me put my experience into perspective. Thanks for that. I also have not heard of anyone else whose body shut down this way. It would seem to indicate something medically related, but I don't recall any practitioner even asking about this kind of an event, which would seem to be important. And it could help point to what is malfunctioning in the burnout process.


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rhudz419
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11 Apr 2021, 2:08 pm

I'm going threw an autistic burnout and it feels like i'm loosing my verbal skill I have a vary hard time processing my thoughts into words and mix up words all the time. one time this problem was so bad I said "we would've picked up some smokes when we go out" endstad of "we will probably pick up smokes while we're out". It feels like i'm becoming non verbal cuz I have such a hard time phrasing things nowadays and it's embracing I used to be way better at talking to people I was fairly articulate and no one could tell i'm autistic. Now I have obvious communication problems and some of my coworkers talk to me like i'm 5 but others say they can't tell i'm autistic surprisingly. I feel tired almost all the time and on the days i work i have to drink 3 cups of coffee and 3 bang energy's just to get me threw the day and then I go to bed at like 8 at night. even on the days i don't work I feel tired and I don't have the energy to do anything fun on the weekends I need at least 4 cups of coffee to stay up on my days off and all i do then is watch tv. I used to mask and fake facial expressions and other NT behaviors but I don't have the energy to do that anymore. I'm only 26 but half the time I feel like i'm 86 i'm tired all the time and i mix up words constantly i also repeat myself a lot I used to only repeat myself if i was stressed about something but now i do it even when i'm chill.