Published on 12, July, 2020
I'm writing this on behalf of my partner, who is awaiting their autism diagnosis next year. He realised he's autistic after doing research for a character (he's a writer) and suddenly found something that explained his entire life (and his lifelong suffering). He is now, about a year and a half after realising he's autistic, suffering from a really intense burnout. It started in January, when university became too much. He'd gotten behind on courses due to getting sick and general overwhelm, and then completely burnt out and couldn't do anything anymore. Since then, doing anything at all has been too much. Days in which he'd push himself to do the dishes would end up in him feeling dizzy and drained and months later, he'd struggling to find his old self back. He can't do the things that are important to him, like finding the energy to write. He's often struggled to write, due to depression, but he's always managed to push through it, but not with this burn out.
I read that many people experience autistic burnout after having masked their autism their entire life (he's 30) and this would make sense for him, especially as he went back to uni during the same period after having not been in such a setting for 10 years.
I have barely been about to find research on autistic burnout, how it works, what it actually is, what to do to help recovery from this kind of a burnout... and he doesn't have a therapist/coach for his autism now as he'd still awaiting diagnosis, so we don't know who to ask or where to go to learn more about this to help him, as this is causing so much suffering it might well burn him out all over again!
Does anyone have experience with autistic burnout? If so, please share your experiences! And if anyone knows of any articles, books, blogs, anything really, that could teach us more about it, that would be amazing.
Thanks so much! Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!
Hey, I had this about 4 years ago. Ended up a complete wreck after my mum died and being under a lot of pressure in work for a long time. I started seeing a therapist and when my therapist brought the subject of me being autistic up, suddenly my whole life just clicked into place (I was 41 at the time) and I was able to start identifying behaviour traits that I struggled with and that caused me anxiety and depression and contributed to my burnout.
What you say about your partner makes sense about simple tasks just wiping him out. For me I compared it to when you see logs getting floated down a river and the end up getting snarled and tangled up and blocking the river. I called my overloaded thought processes a log jam. I literally couldn't function and bring myself to do simple tasks when in this state which could last for days or weeks at a time. I'm pretty high functioning most of the time as I'm a senior manager in a structural engineering firm which turns outs suits who I am (some of the time). But to go from being hyper organised and dealing with complex spacial engineering problems to struggling getting dressed, doing the dishes or going out the door was strange. I'd be curled up on the floor in a ball some days crying as would be so overwhelmed.
Advice from me is to find a good professional therapist who has had experience with late diagnosis autism, even if you have to go private. For me it wasn't something me or my wife could deal with on our own as I was contemplating self harm and couldn't function. Even if the diagnosis comes back negative or inconclusive a mental health professional can help your partner and you navigate your way through things.
Then you need to look at calming strategies. For me it was meditation, yoga and rock climbing but basically anything that focuses the mind down to a single problem at a time and shuts out all outside issues.
The next is see a GP. I needed medication and still do for depression, anxiety and OCD tendencies.
The final thing is time. It's going to take time. I had my burnout 4 years ago and it was life changing. I've come to terms that my life won't go back to how it was before and I'm ok with that because I've learned a lot about myself and have accepted autism, or at least my version of it, as a positive force in my life. It's made me who I am which I'm ok with. I just need to be more self aware to catch when my behaviour traits are causing a negative impact in my life and take steps to address them
My wife has been invaluable in all this as a point of support and objectivity for my sometimes seemingly irrational behaviour.
D