• Replies 10 replies
  • Subscribers 80 subscribers
  • Views 3133 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Options
Related
Hints and tips
  • To quote someone's message, first select/highlight the relevant text, and then use the Quote button that appears
  • To "mention" someone, type @ followed by the start of the forum name, and choose from the list; that person will get a notification of being mentioned

Burnout, butterflies and caterpillars

I'm done with Christmas Cards

Just wondering if anyone has been through burnout and feels like they are emerging from the chrysalis of burnout as a totally different being to the one that went in?

I'm still recovering - almost 2 years after the big crash - and all of the masking apparatus that I had constructed over decades was deconstructed in the chrysalis. 

I, as always, feel a need to have everything about my life to date mapped out, recorded, archived, indexed, analysed, understood, curated.

But something different is happening to me now. I'm starting to value the present moment more, and my focus is on the future. I'm starting to think "so what?" if I forget things about the way I used to be, if I fail to archive and index photographs and memories. As someone wise once said to me "Life is now".

I am caring less about what I feel I could/should have done with my intellect for e.g. and I'm more inclined to value just soaking up the sunshine.

Letting go of the need to record and analyse everything (even just mentally) is scary but freeing.

Anyone relate? 

Parents

  • I had a similar epiphany a few year ago when I had a brain injury.   I'm not the same person that I was.  It's like all my masking has been broken and I'm very aware that I'm not the same person.   I can read documents from a few years ago and I don't recognise ever writing it and it's a much higher level than I'm able to do now - like comparing Shakespeare with The Mr Men.

    My language skills are very much reduced and my memory is shot to bits.

    I actually prefer the new me.

    I'm a lot less critical and much more easy going.   I can't work any more so it's nice to let things drift.   Nothing needs to happen in a hurry.

    I spend my life planning what I can do and trying new things.   White water rafting next week - sky diving the week after....

Reply

  • I had a similar epiphany a few year ago when I had a brain injury.   I'm not the same person that I was.  It's like all my masking has been broken and I'm very aware that I'm not the same person.   I can read documents from a few years ago and I don't recognise ever writing it and it's a much higher level than I'm able to do now - like comparing Shakespeare with The Mr Men.

    My language skills are very much reduced and my memory is shot to bits.

    I actually prefer the new me.

    I'm a lot less critical and much more easy going.   I can't work any more so it's nice to let things drift.   Nothing needs to happen in a hurry.

    I spend my life planning what I can do and trying new things.   White water rafting next week - sky diving the week after....

Children
  • in reply to Plastic

    Yes, this, absolutely! I’ve had to learn to mask again since having my brain injury as it totally tore apart whatever facade I had constructed to  disguise my oddness! Losing ability is very difficult to come to terms with though, especially when you’ve previously been used to functioning at a very high and very efficient level!? Do you have difficulties with your long term memory then? My short term memory is ok and my long term memory is still extremely strong, it’s more working memory that I struggle with, which is essentially an issue with the ability to hold more than one thing ‘online’ at once, not memory per se. So previously I could have easily held 6/7 tasks online at once and switched effortlessly between them as necessary whereas now I can only really hold one thing online at a time, if something distracts me or I have to do another task then it displaces the original task and I temporarily ‘forget’ it. It does come back to me though, usually at times when my brain is not as busy or distracted, such as when I’m driving or trying to get to sleep! Personally I find that lists of everything and reminders on my iPhone are my saviour. How about you?

    It totally made me have to re-evaluate and restructure my life though. It’s stood me in good stead for getting an ASD diagnosis actually as a lot of the changes that people start making post diagnosis, I’ve already made them so I don’t need to do so again. I also find I’m more chilled out post ABI. I now have a degree of what I refer to as ‘don’t give a s£&@ness’ (non-clinical term!) it’s easier for me to just leave something rather than continuing to worry about it when there is no point and I’m not going to achieve anything by it. I also found that because of the overlap of ASD and ABI symptoms, I’ve already worked out ways (sometimes quite random) of managing ASD symptoms, which is handy! I’m better at enjoying my life now too. I think that an acute event like that gives you that new perspective, life is for living not just existing!

  • in reply to Plastic

    Yep that's kinda my thinking too. Irrespective of how I got here, I'm here. There are no rules about what I *should* do next. I'm not going to find a cure for difficult diseases or map the event horizon of a black hole with binoculars or find the missing link between relativity and quantum theory by happening on a genius analogy. I got a PhD by being in the right place at the right time with my brain in the right gear & my still-present analysis skills and doggedness. That doesn't mean I have to be a professor now.