Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi all,
It's over a year now since I suffered a major burnout leading to long term sick, and since I've returned to work I've been taking care of myself by not travelling and really carefully managing my sensory environment & keeping away from hubbub (lots of conversations etc.). My self care has worked really well, and I've feel that I've discovered "normal, healthy" levels of stress for the first time in my working life (healthy levels of stress for *me*, at least).
Now that I'm looking like I've recovered from burnout and I'm starting performing at 95% again, I can feel myself coming under pressure to start attending meetings in person again and travelling again. Before my burnout I was flying into Europe alone maybe every month and just feeling important rather than stressed. Now I'm very wary about returning to what everyone else will see as normal.
I don't know what I'm asking others here for - maybe just sympathy & to tell me that yes, I need to look after myself and not put myself under pressure.
By the way, one of the things I'm *really* mindful of is giving an inch and being expected to do a mile.............
I find it a mix between autistic fear of confrontation (I.e don’t mess it up as if you do you don’t like being challenged) and over working due to a profound sense of imposter syndrome.
“Yet this deficit-based mindset kept me in a perpetual state of panic of what would happen if my autistic challenges did come to the fore, creating potentially negative consequences. I have often been described as “passing” for acting “normal” in many situations. But with that comes the price of that if any of my symptoms were made apparent, I would be in huge trouble. And I have had many past experiences confirming this fear. I was forcibly put on medical leave during my freshman year in college due to meltdowns. I had lost jobs and internships over panic attacks, and lost boyfriends because they couldn’t “handle me”. These experiences caused me to develop a guarded shell to prevent anyone from suspecting my challenges. This in turn made me feel I had to work twice as hard to maintain the veneer of “normalcy”. With that challenge, it’s been difficult to appreciate what I’ve been able to accomplish because I’m constantly afraid it’ll all fall apart should something go wrong.”
https://factfamily.org/blog/2017/07/autistic-impostor-syndrome/
So feeling low self worth so over performing
from the same article:
“And then there’s the case of disability. There’s no doubt that living with a disability presents a lot of challenges that most people never think of having. And that sense that life dealt me a drastically harder hand to play has affected many aspects of my life. Autism affects my ability to relate and understand the world so being able to meet societal expectations in any area is a daunting task. What are the odds of being a “success” when you have a disability like autism? And what are the odds that you’ll keep that “success” going?
For a long time, I felt that I had to prove that I was “better” than my autism. I had such a negative perception of myself when I learned of my diagnosis that I took the idea of having autism as a deficit. Because I was so different from my peers and had social and processing challenges, I had to be better than them in pursuing the same things they were. I believed that I had the right to want the same things as everyone else, so there was no reason for me to get what I wanted. I refused to let autism “get in my way.”
Yes, this totally resonates - but these days it's pared down to wanting to be solvent - the rest of it I've given up on. I can't be a success because despite my high-level skills and education, I have no basic employability skills which seem to matter much more. Even people who like me and think I'm really effective won't employ me because they know I'll go my own way. I don't know any other way . . .