When I speak to my autistic relative, she will often describe how she, for example, went to the bank yesterday or ran some errands, and now she needs a few days to recover. She speaks very passionately about how much she resents having to do errands because it uses time when she'd rather be doing other things. She says when she finishes such tasks, even if it's just picking up a few things in town, she is completely frazzled and needs to recover, sometimes even for several days. It's something I really struggle to understand, because there are all sorts of tasks I dislike, but I hardly think about the fact I dislike them. I just know they have to be done, and they usually don't drain me so much that I need a day to recovers. Is this a trait in some autistic people, to find such tasks exhausting and overwhelming? No judgement here, I'm just genuinely curious and want to understand her feelings better.
