advice on masking and burnout in school what was your experience?

StillLearning16 said:

Long story short, she struggled a bit in infants and junior, then she went to a secondary grammar, threw herself into it at a million miles an hour, took part in everything, tried really hard to make friends and did for a short time, then she what I have until recently called a breakdown (I have now learnt this is more accurately termed autistic burnout) had to take considerable time off and things have never been the same for her. She finds the school environment incredibly difficult to cope with.

Your daughter seems to have been having a progressively incremental and eventually culminating psychological breakdown, and the physiological burnout from which is the aftermath of that which led to it, that you continued on to describe better than you perhaps realised, with the first part as follows:

StillLearning16 said:

The school are actually incredibly kind and supportive, but I believe their knowledge only goes so far. They think that because she manages to go in and do her lessons and stuff that she is "resilient" in school.

I am assuming (due to my own and other people's personal experiences on and off the spectrum) that that involves no longer being "resilient" to anything ranging from mild psychological humiliation ~ to also severe physiological aggression, remembering of course that 'normalised abuse' involves not reporting bullying to teachers, parents or anyone else ~ on pain of the psychological humiliations or also the physiological aggressions being made worse.

Then the next part of your not realising how well you were describing things ~ is as follows:

StillLearning16 said:

I now understand that she is absolutely expert at masking (sorry, I know that term is not considered ideal but it's the only one I have) and at home I can see the damage it is causing her - burnouts, meltdowns, shutdowns etc.

In that it is increasingly difficult and eventually impossible to get along with the psychological 'dissimilarities' of being our autistic selves ~ whilst we are being driven instead to present the physiological 'similarities' of non-autistic people's cognitive re-characterisation pretences, i.e., smiling when sad and saying nothing when something needs saying and all that, which as assumed behaviourisms are generally and specifically called 'Social Camouflaging and Personal Masking' ~ as are psychologically incompatible and particularly damaging for the neurologically divergent, what with all the psychological shutdowns, breakdowns and accompanying minor and major physiological burnouts and all that.

As an analogy for the psychological and cognitive incompatibilities of autistic and allistic interactions, communications and ideations ~ the autistic mind-body relationship is like driving a manually geared articulated lorry with 21 forward gears and seven heavy goods trailers, whilst the allistic (non-autistic) body-mind relationship is like driving an automatically geared sport and utility car with one forward gear and on average no heavy goods trailers, and only a single light, medium or heavy weight trailer if required for exams, interviews, getting married, house moves, having children, getting divorced and friends and relatives dying and all that.

This means that autistic people must learn how to do psychologically gear changes going into and coming out of the tight turns and going up the inclines and down the declines of the highways and byways of a interpersonal and social life, and we are supposed to learn this social manoeuvring from people who do not really have to think much or even at all about cognitive gear changes (let alone psychological ones) as it is just a case for them of getting into one cognitive gearing and powering and steering ahead to get here, there or anywhere ~ without having to consider comprehensive payloads and catastrophic pileups.

StillLearning16 said:

School has already confirmed there will be no option for her to continue learning remotely when they go back in and she would be heartbroken to lose access to some of her teachers. I can only think that my best tactic is to try and educate the school on what life is really like for an autistic person from a sensory and social perspective as I think that would help them to try and put some things in place that might enable her to just about get through it. And then we can take stock armed with the knowledge we now have.

In my primary and secondary education days during the seventies and eighties ~ it was just a case of getting on with it by either becoming to some extent a psychological catastrophe, a sociological disaster, or something in between or thereafter as a mess in the mental health mechanism.

In terms of educational reading on getting your daughters needs met ~ I always in situations like this recommended as a tactical strategy, 'The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome', by Tony Attwood, being that in my opinion, the only thing wrong with that book ~ is that it was neither written nor published prior to or during the seventies.

It really helped me to narratively reframe and better understand my childhood development needs, and to better comprehend the necessity of slow and evenly paced regimented scheduling ~ into and through my adulthood.

The complete guide to being aspergenic was an essential read for me regarding the facilitations, identifications and affirmations that were mostly lacking in my life, so perhaps if like some of us your daughter has intellectual hungerings and thirstings for self discovery and awareness ~ give her a link to the book and she may be able to let you know what her  support needs are, just possibly.

If not, you may find everything you need to know as parent and did not think you already knew strategically set for you in specifically informative and tactical fashion. If you need a more feminine approach to things also for life in general things, you and or your daughter may find 'Females and and Aspergers: A checklist' somewhat viable, plus the authoresses' book 'Everyday Asperger's: A Journey on the Autism Spectrum - Revised Edition' could be worth at least a preview read.

StillLearning16 said:

Long story short, she struggled a bit in infants and junior, then she went to a secondary grammar, threw herself into it at a million miles an hour, took part in everything, tried really hard to make friends and did for a short time, then she what I have until recently called a breakdown (I have now learnt this is more accurately termed autistic burnout) had to take considerable time off and things have never been the same for her. She finds the school environment incredibly difficult to cope with.

Your daughter seems to have been having a progressively incremental and eventually culminating psychological breakdown, and the physiological burnout from which is the aftermath of that which led to it, that you continued on to describe better than you perhaps realised, with the first part as follows:

StillLearning16 said:

The school are actually incredibly kind and supportive, but I believe their knowledge only goes so far. They think that because she manages to go in and do her lessons and stuff that she is "resilient" in school.

I am assuming (due to my own and other people's personal experiences on and off the spectrum) that that involves no longer being "resilient" to anything ranging from mild psychological humiliation ~ to also severe physiological aggression, remembering of course that 'normalised abuse' involves not reporting bullying to teachers, parents or anyone else ~ on pain of the psychological humiliations or also the physiological aggressions being made worse.

Then the next part of your not realising how well you were describing things ~ is as follows:

StillLearning16 said:

I now understand that she is absolutely expert at masking (sorry, I know that term is not considered ideal but it's the only one I have) and at home I can see the damage it is causing her - burnouts, meltdowns, shutdowns etc.

In that it is increasingly difficult and eventually impossible to get along with the psychological 'dissimilarities' of being our autistic selves ~ whilst we are being driven instead to present the physiological 'similarities' of non-autistic people's cognitive re-characterisation pretences, i.e., smiling when sad and saying nothing when something needs saying and all that, which as assumed behaviourisms are generally and specifically called 'Social Camouflaging and Personal Masking' ~ as are psychologically incompatible and particularly damaging for the neurologically divergent, what with all the psychological shutdowns, breakdowns and accompanying minor and major physiological burnouts and all that.

As an analogy for the psychological and cognitive incompatibilities of autistic and allistic interactions, communications and ideations ~ the autistic mind-body relationship is like driving a manually geared articulated lorry with 21 forward gears and seven heavy goods trailers, whilst the allistic (non-autistic) body-mind relationship is like driving an automatically geared sport and utility car with one forward gear and on average no heavy goods trailers, and only a single light, medium or heavy weight trailer if required for exams, interviews, getting married, house moves, having children, getting divorced and friends and relatives dying and all that.

This means that autistic people must learn how to do psychologically gear changes going into and coming out of the tight turns and going up the inclines and down the declines of the highways and byways of a interpersonal and social life, and we are supposed to learn this social manoeuvring from people who do not really have to think much or even at all about cognitive gear changes (let alone psychological ones) as it is just a case for them of getting into one cognitive gearing and powering and steering ahead to get here, there or anywhere ~ without having to consider comprehensive payloads and catastrophic pileups.

StillLearning16 said:

School has already confirmed there will be no option for her to continue learning remotely when they go back in and she would be heartbroken to lose access to some of her teachers. I can only think that my best tactic is to try and educate the school on what life is really like for an autistic person from a sensory and social perspective as I think that would help them to try and put some things in place that might enable her to just about get through it. And then we can take stock armed with the knowledge we now have.

In my primary and secondary education days during the seventies and eighties ~ it was just a case of getting on with it by either becoming to some extent a psychological catastrophe, a sociological disaster, or something in between or thereafter as a mess in the mental health mechanism.

In terms of educational reading on getting your daughters needs met ~ I always in situations like this recommended as a tactical strategy, 'The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome', by Tony Attwood, being that in my opinion, the only thing wrong with that book ~ is that it was neither written nor published prior to or during the seventies.

It really helped me to narratively reframe and better understand my childhood development needs, and to better comprehend the necessity of slow and evenly paced regimented scheduling ~ into and through my adulthood.

The complete guide to being aspergenic was an essential read for me regarding the facilitations, identifications and affirmations that were mostly lacking in my life, so perhaps if like some of us your daughter has intellectual hungerings and thirstings for self discovery and awareness ~ give her a link to the book and she may be able to let you know what her  support needs are, just possibly.

If not, you may find everything you need to know as parent and did not think you already knew strategically set for you in specifically informative and tactical fashion. If you need a more feminine approach to things also for life in general things, you and or your daughter may find 'Females and and Aspergers: A checklist' somewhat viable, plus the authoresses' book 'Everyday Asperger's: A Journey on the Autism Spectrum - Revised Edition' could be worth at least a preview read.

Deepthought wow, thank you so much for sharing not only your own very helpful insights but also some great resources. As somebody who drives a lot of different vehicles, I love your analogy, I find it really easy to understand. I am hoping that I can in turn make the school understand.

It strikes me that I have so much to learn and my daughter has the opportunity to teach me. I also have the opportunity to teach her, as I discussed with her last night. For example, just as she needs me to understand that she finds making eye contact abhorrent, in the  same way I am able to help her understand that for me a conversation without any eye contact is an extremely difficult experience. I have only recently been equipped to explore these conversations with her and it is very enlightening for me as it helps me to see how she experiences the world but also to understand myself and my NT perspective.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could all just live in a world where the differences between us were accepted and embraced as a strength, not a "problem"? I think that we claim to live in that world, but since I have become immersed in the world of autism I feel nothing is further from the truth. Perhaps one day...in the meantime thank you for your advice which has been of great help to me :-)