Hello, Friends,
I regularly feel overwhelmed by mental tasks such as reading, writing, scheduling my activities, and rehearsing for social interactions. I refer to this feeling as mental overload. When mentally overloaded, I want to cry out, “I never wanted to do all these things [mental tasks]!”; then, I seek to escape the mental tasks by “running away” on a solitary hike in nature.
Relative to neurotypicals, I seem to become mentally overloaded more easily: for example, simply keeping up with the emails and phone calls for my caregiving job can cause me to shut down. To illustrate further, when I was completing my bachelor’s degree online, I could only handle one class at a time; in contrast, neurotypical students would typically take 3 or more classes.
I believe my susceptibility to mental overload results from my autism. Autistic author and blogger Cynthia Kim explains that autistic people have less executive function, a broad cognitive ability that “helps us to regulate, control, and manage our thoughts and actions” (2015, p. 163). Based on this definition, whenever I write emails, rehearse what I will say to a friend, or plan my day, I am using up my limited autistic executive function.
So, I have two questions for readers:
1.) Do you experience mental overload in your everyday activities?
2.) How do you prevent or manage your mental overload?
Thank you!
Reference
Kim, Cynthia. (2015). Nerdy, shy, and socially inappropriate: A user guide to an Asperger life.
Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Today, 11:19 am
