Published on 12, July, 2020
I've heard of meltdowns and I've heard of shutdowns, but I've never heard anyone describe what happens to me. I call them sleepouts. I'm just emerging from one today. My sleepouts can go on for a day or (as is the case for this one) several days. What happens? Well, I stop functioning and have to sleep for between an hour to twenty-four hours. I then wake up, go to the bathroom, and/or make food and drink, try to attend to anything that urgently needs doing, but after an hour or so, I become suddenly sleepy again and go back to sleep. It's a bit like a lockdown. My brain issues a stay-in-bed order and closes down all non-essential activity.
Wash, rinse, repeat for a day, a few days or over a week.
I can sleep anywhere too. At a friend's, in a cafe, at work. I prefer to be at home on the sofa or in bed, but when the sleepiness comes, it comes. And it's not normally an unhappy experience (well not initially but it can be mildly frustrating if it goes on for longer than a day or two). I enjoy my sleep time. I'm usually cosy and relaxed. I've learned that these sleepouts come after any prolonged physical, emotional or psychological pressure in everyday life, or having to navigate a tricky social situation. Each sleepy period begins with the descent of a ‘brain fog’ and then an intense urge to stop whatever I'm doing and go to sleep. It's only when I try to fight against it that it becomes a problem. I did read something about ‘Autistic fatigue’ or ‘autistic burnout’ so maybe it falls under that category and is simply a response to sensory overload. Autistic people have described various ways that autistic fatigue and burnout have affected them.
I'd be interested to hear your experiences and see if there are any similarities. My normal sleeping routine us very different to most people. I function much better late at night or very early in the morning when the world is quieter.
Hello again, JT. Fancy meeting you here! Do you come here often? I've just responded to your reply about language. Yeah, I imagine that's a possibility. Usually, I attribute everything to autism - even the bad weather.
Sounds like a chronic fatigue of sorts, perhaps connected to inflammation in the body? I have IBD, but when I get overwhelmed my intestinal inflammation flares up, part of this inflammation response causes me to become very fatigued. That does does sound extreme though
Hello OblomovGood to hear from you. I am sorry to hear about your insomnia; it's no fun at all. I have had chronic insomnia too. From what my parents told me, it started as an infant. I can rarely sleep at night and am often up and active until very early morning (4am). The sleepouts I described in my post are almost always during the daytime when I'm overstimulated. Occasionally, very occasionally, do I sleep through the entire night. My bedtime routine involves earplugs and an eye mask just to get even a few hours sleep during the nighttime.
Hello, Ethan. Nice to hear from you. I hope you are well. I relate to so much of what you describe. I spent twenty years working in teams, in offices, with all the horrors you describe so vividly. I enjoy reading your posts; your writing is always engaging.For the past three years I've been lucky enough to pursue a vocation in teaching and the working environment is completely different. For 95% of the time I work alone (only occasionally do I have a teaching assistant). And the students are all focused on the activity. I control the classroom environment. I have no desire to ever return to office working or team working. It's my idea of hell.Keep your chin up!
I'm the exact opposite - I've had chronic insomnia for 20 years and struggle to sleep more than 5 hours in every 24 even with prescription pills (and following all sleep hygiene rules). It's not that I don't need it; I feel tired and have sleep-deprivation headaches most days. Last night, for example, I went to sleep at 11:30 pm, woke five times and could not return to sleep after 4:15 am, so today will probably be a write-off for doing anything productive or enjoyable.
Even though I now have the opportunity to catch up with a nap during the day, I rarely manage it and the slightest noise from outside or another part of the house wakes me, despite severe hearing loss and using a white noise-generator in my bedroom.
Although our sleep patterns are polar opposites, I suspect both are caused by autism and the overall effect - ironically - has several similarities ("brain fog", exhaustion, ceasing to function, etc.)
I completely identify with this.
I'm writing this now after a prolonged sleep since I finished work yesterday at 5pm and an early morning wake today (with a quick period of wakefulness late evening to grab some food).
What's changed over the last couple of days is that due to work demands I've been in more meetings and exchanges with colleagues at work. I function really well when a task is clear and I'm left to get on with it and exchanges are restricted to resolving the issue at hand. I become drained if I have too many social exchanges or I'm spoken to too quickly and given too much information too fast. Even working with people can be difficult if their thought process is chaotic or (as happens often) I'm sitting there while they're figuring out what to do or revisiting the same issue repeatedly.
Yesterday there was a lot of that - and with each meeting was another "task switch". Even when I build in time for breaks, gaps between exchanges and various other bits - if I have more than a couple of hour length meetings a day it'll wipe me out in the evening. Plus people I work with are sometimes rubbish at sharing information - at the moment I'm finding if I don't ask about stuff then it hasn't been done, if I do ask about stuff then those things someone has thought of - they just didn't feel fit to share it with me or my team (even though by doing so it would have made things much easier for all of us) - so I'm finding it really difficult to manage ambiguities with what information is available or whether someone is considering it.
The side-effect of this is that I go on autopilot. I don't check in with myself (my emotional awareness is non-existent), I find myself getting caught up in conversations which aren't productive. My brain goes on a churn. Tension headaches increase and I find it hard to focus on other self-care things.
All this means I'm exhausted at the moment - and that's pretty much after a 12 hour kip. I could quite easily go back to bed for the rest of the day.
Hello Pikl,
Hope you're well!
If I've had a noisy or emotional day at work then I have to take a nap. I don't know if that's similar to what you experience, I would like to know what's it about though.
I'm in the same boat, too.
I sleep for thirteen, fourteen, or even fifteen hours. Then I still feel tired.
I believe that's a type of shutdown.
community.autism.org.uk/.../autistic-shutdowns-collection---do-you-experience-these