What recharges you?

For me

Listening to music.

walking my dog

watching a film

lifting weights

running

eating a good meal

reading

making something

guitar

piano

drawing

researching some topic

I find retreating to somewhere familiar, safe and predictable is important. What I do varies, though.

It might be watching something I'm familiar with on TV, even if I've seen it before. It might be sat staring into nothing, or listening to sounds and allowing my thoughts to process and settle. Sometimes I need to follow whatever I want to do that comes up in the moment... a quick tidy up, researching something, photography.

I love time in nature, but it's not easy to do that alone without unpredictable distractions or social things. The countryside has seemed so much busier since the pandemic, too.

Sleeping in longer without distractions is important when I'm burned out. Removing commitments from my calendar (with support if I'm having trouble feeling like I'm letting people down) and having easier, quicker meals ready (yet they still need to be healthy with plenty of protein). When burned out I find it hard to sleep on time, but if I can coax myself to bed earlier with a sleep hygiene routine, that helps. Keeping my temperature optimal on a conscious level, drinking plenty of water, avoiding caffeine, alcohol and high glycaemic foods all help, too.

Basically I am focusing on getting my allostatic load down to as little as possible. Anything I do needs to require minimal mental or physical energy. This helps me redirect that energy to genuinely recharging. There can be subtle drains on that energy, though, so identifying the energy leaks helps hugely.

I need to sleep, followed by being alone where it's silent.

i used to shutdown each day for 30 min - 2 hours but that has mostly stopped now  maybe because i am working from home   but after most shutdowns i would feel great :)

Sleeping. I tend to need more sleep than other people, especially when suffering from burnout. Or just quiet time by myself with nobody else around. In lockdown I started going on walks by myself at nighttime when it was quiet and nobody was around, which was nice. It's not really possible any more because now there are always drunk people on the streets.

Also rewatching a TV show I've seen many times before is the sort of thing I can handle when burnt out. For me watching a TV show I haven't seen before can be almost like socialising, it still requires my brain to interpret relationships and speech and guess people's motives and deal with unexpected things, whereas rewatching a sitcom I've seen 10 times before is like a comfort, and calming.

I'm always watching the same shows over and over, especially when I'm stressed in life.

a 30 minute sitting meditation in my wild flower garden and stream ( water noises )--- its supposed to be the same as 4 hour sleep but i cant find the reference to that claim

For me, I've found the only recharge (and it doesn't always work) is either napping or sleeping.

being left alone after at the end of day and not speaking to me, I don't like to say I'm nonverbal at the end of a day because I know there are autistic people who cannot talk a the end of the day but I do find it extremely annoying and energy depleting when people talk to me.

Also playing video games that aren't intense like games where I can explore and look around I can really immerse myself in

Nice one - I'm not fit but I do like bush walking. From time to time a trail runner goes past me and I think that would be great!  

Going for a run especially off road