Burnout...

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I have experienced autistic burnout a couple of times and it has been serious enough to knock my progress back quite a bit.

I have been thinking about this quite a lot recently and it brought me to reading an article about it.

In short the article says that if autistic people felt easier about themselves without feeling pressured into "passing" then they would be less likely to have these burnouts which inevitably can cause them to regress and put at risk all that hard work.

I'm curious, what exactly are you burning out on?

Though yes, I agree with the idea of that article. I *hate* that type of pressure. I cant really deal with that, so I usually just plain refuse to even try to pass. Which isnt exactly helpful advice for whatever is going on, I know...

So autistic burnout is a setback to treatment, correct?

Autistic burnout is your autistic brain pleading with you to stop overdoing "pretending to be normal"
Autistic Burnout by Judy Endow

It's great that you can refuse to try to pass. You are very fortunate in that way. I am starting to recognize when I fall into "trying to pass" and I am trying to say no to that more and more. When passing has been forced and ingrained in me since early childhood it makes it hard to do that sometimes. But I try. I think it's great that you can refuse like that. Hopefully I will become more like you and be able to listen to my body better. I would really like that.

I never had the urge to pass. Only sometimes I'll build my own character. Which I wouldn't consider to be passing because in doing that I still don't act neurotypical or even try to....

Do your parents and teachers expect you to appear NT or do they let you be yourself as an Autistic person? I wonder if HFA kids now are not expected to pass as much since people know and understand HFA now.

Yep I had to learn this one the hard way too. Push burnout past that and you get complete breakdown. Nonverbal, sucked into special interest so much you do nothing but that and sleep, losing any "normal" abilities you may have had that can take years to build back up to, the works.

I don't know what to do. I micromanage myself to an absurd extent nowadays. In the past I would just not bother to make friends. Now I have to get along with other mothers, or my child suffers. What can I do?

Is there anyone you can talk to about this problem? It sounds very difficult.

There is a nice series of blog posts on the subject of motherhood by Cynthia Kim.

https://musingsofanaspie.com/aspergers-and-motherhood/

I experience this at work. I've been an actuary for 15 years and have left every company I've worked at after 2-3 years because of this. I took a new role with my current employer about 9 months ago and after just a few weeks I told my managers that "I don't know why this is happening, I can't explain it, but I'm just burned out." I spend the next few months looking for answers and it culminated with me diagnosed with ASD two weeks ago. I had no idea that the struggles I've had my entire life were due to a "disorder".

Not only is it exhausting, but the message you send yourself when you 'try to pass' is that you're unacceptable the way you are.
That's soul destroying.

I've broken my soul a number of times over the years.
It took a long time to recover and I don't want to be in that situation again if I can help it.
I've given myself permission to be autistic and I don't really care who knows it.

Are things easier for you after the diagnosis?

It certainly has provided relief, yes. There are now long-term implications I've got to work through. The actuarial profession stresses "soft skills", i.e. good communication skills, multitasking, prioritizing, doing "good enough" instead of going in depth, etc. in other words, the profession prizes the things I struggle with. I've faked it for 15 years, and some might say I've done okay, but to argue that requires a pretty low standard. The reality is that I've done fine with the technical aspects of the work, but I've struggled otherwise. The autism assessment included an IQ test, and that was really high, so I'm working towards a career change in the next few years. I'm going in the software development direction, I think it'll be a better fit for my stengths and will allow me to reach my potential without struggling to be something I'm not. So the real relief will take some time to achieve, but the diagnosis was the first step towards that.

Thank you, My friends in college were into actuarial courses. I tried a few but prefer writing software.

High level software positions require many of the soft skills that you mention. Those are the skills that turned me away from my career.

Keep us informed on your progress.

Thank you. I'm on a waiting list to see a psychologist. I really need someone to talk to, because I don't think I am being entirely rational. Kindergartens and schools trigger a special kind of claustrophobia in me, and I worry myself sick.

I've read Cynthia Kim's blog. It's excellent, really the one thing that explained autism to me and convinced me I was probably on the spectrum. I know exactly what she's talking about. I've forgotten so much about my childhood, and I don't want to remember, but every day brings up something new.

This is the main reason I want to go through the diagnostic process. As long as my kid was small, I was reasonably ok. Now I have to interact a lot more, and it's not working. Something has to change.