Published on 12, July, 2020
I left my teaching job before the summer holidays due to autistic burnout and a complete and utter mental breakdown
I dont want to sit around doing nothing for ever and I want to do some work ( I need to to pay the bills and help my family as well, at least till I know what will happen with my UC and PIP)
Im the sort of person that needs to be busy. I go into my head when Im sitting around doing nothing and start having paranoid imaginings and all sorts of mental health issues
I do freelance writing but Im not getting enough work at it to keep me busy and pay the bills so I signed up for a couple of teaching agencies thinking if I just do a couple of days a week in a school then I can cope with it.
Heres the thing though, now its come down to it and its real I dont want to do it. I dont know if I can do it. Im remembering all the awful experiences I have had working in schools and how ill I was before the summer. I am still struggling a lot but feel I have improved a lot and slowly started to put myself back together since then and this could send me all crashing down again. Just thinking about the pressure and sensory overload of being back in a school I want to curl up on the floor again which is what I used to do every evening when I was at work. My wife would have to physically drag me off the floor to get to bed.
Yet there is another part of me that wants to put on a tweed blazer and try and inspire kids and get teaching again. So confusing!
I wonder if theres something else I could do part time, maybe work in a bookshop or for a charity a couple of afternoons a week.
Maybe theres even something at universities? Or with animals. I dont know
Anyway anyone who has any similar experiences or been through similar stuff or has any advice would be really helpful
It sounds as if you want to keep teaching but the sensory overload of the school environment is totally unsuitable for you.
Years ago I worked in huge noisy open plan offices and like you found it so overwhelming that I would just curl up on the floor each evening, increasingly dreading the next day. Sometimes on getting home from work I would just slide down behind the front door into a sobbing heap. I tried to keep going but eventually suffered a mental breakdown and had to resign. I didn't know I was autistic at the time, in order to realise it was autistic burnout. After a few months of recovery I got another job but it was also in a large open plan office. It led to an even bigger breakdown.
Trying to cope with two days a week may be possible if you were to have enough quiet recovery time at home in between. However I think you have also mentioned in another post the sensory overload from your autistic child's meltdowns. Coping with that too is likely to be asking too much of yourself and lead to another burnout.
I am wondering if there is any way you could combine your knowledge of autism with your teaching skills. Might there be any opportunities for teaching autistic children one to one or in small groups, possibly in their own homes or online?
Your experiences certainly chime with mine. Your description of burnout is very similar to what I went through. You make a good point about not having quiet to recover at home because of my autistic sons meltdowns. I think I would struggle to teach autistic kids again. I used to love doing it because they are like me but dealing with my own needs and my sons needs, Im not sure I could deal with other childrens if that makes sense
I think you are right though, i want to teach but the envioronment is totally unsuitable for me. I used to think I hated teaching but now i realise I love teaching, I just hate the envioronment