New member - can I get advice please? Severe autism burnout :(

Hi there!  I spent 24 years in advertising and  media, currently studying for a a degree, carer, full time employment and only passed my driving test 6 months ago so can totally relate! It’s exhausting physically and mentally.  I am not going to say ‘Try this it’ll work or try that’ etc. Finding what works for you is the key.  For me it was diaries and journaling.  I’d diarise everything I needed to do and note at the end of the how that day went. I had a scale for mood on awakenings and mood at the end of the day. I found that it wasn’t the usual things like target settings that were wearing me out but meetings.  Driving was fine funnily enough. Too much in one day for too long would wear out Neurotypical people let alone Neurodiverse. Keeping it as simple as allowing yourself some daily time to decompress a little without interference from anything and being strict about that might be a start. I’ve found that little bit of time helps me and being extra strict about it. Having lunch on my own with no one chatting at me also helped. Good luck. It’s a world of tiredness at times x

Hi- 18 is still very young- I'm 25 (soon 26 actually) and I still don't feel like an adult so I think wanting to ask your mum and dad for help is very understandable. I still ask my mum about plenty of things and she helps me out a lot (with simple things like rereading an email, helping me pick furniture or organise something, moral support etc), especially when I am stressed and burnt-out- I do wish I could be more independent sometimes but I struggle. I think it's perfectly fine for you to accept help from your parents especially if they are happy to offer it.

Also I just want to say you are doing so much- studying, working, lots of changes etc. I hope you can find a way to give yourself some time to recuperate. I've struggled with burnout a lot ... for me it usually gets super bad and I keep going and going until my body/physical health forces me to stop. But that is not good at all and I never really recover... I just get going again and get burntout faster and more severely. I wish I could see the signs of burnout sooner and also find a way to stop it before it gets too bad. It's hard to put into practice ... like you point out it's not easy to know "what to actually do". I sadly also don't have an answer for that, only that it's super important to do something about it as it will get harder and harder to come back the more burnt out you get. 

I am in my 50's and have had  several burnouts and lots of mini ones. Since I found out about ASD three years ago I have been a lot kinder to myself and don't push myself as much as I did. I know you are at a very diffrent stage in you life but give yourself some love. Don't push yourself hard, accept you are diffrent, don't be preassured by others to do as they do, find your own path and what works for you.

Hi there. I am going through burnout at the moment and have used google to find some sites that talk about recovery.

I've been using a particular website which I'm not sure I can post about as it contains details of using the person from the site for private coounselling and hence breaks the rules potentially of this community. But I just searched autistic burnout and found it.

I have gone to pretty much the lengths that I didn't want to go to to address my burnout:

Go off sick from work, cut out all stimuation, get bored and start thinking about 'counting spoons', avoid confrontation of any kind

On the positice side I have been trying to do gentle exercise, listen to calming music, maintain contact with people who I can myself with and getting lots of rest.

I wish you a speedy recovery

Mrs Snooks

NAS84562 said:

I know this can be a universal experience, does anyone have any advice on what to actually do?

I would recomment making notes on what you spend time doing each day and mark on these your stress levels.

Once you build up a few days / weeks of these you can use one of the superpowers on Autism and process the info - I suspect you will find where you are wasting your time on things that make stressed and can make an informed decision on whether to cut back on these or remove them altogether.

Look at the info in front of you, compare this with the tasks you need to do every day / week / month and the future events / projects and build these into a schedule that has plenty of space for your favourite decompression activities, and (important this one) make sure your partner is included so they know they are important. Make date nights a thing and once a week or so be sure to go out to do something with just the two of you - maybe just a walk, a visit to the cinema or role play night, whatever brings you closer together.

For the admin tasks like cleaning, look at your schedule and work out where you can make a routine to do these - maybe clean the bathroom & kitchen every Saturday morning before going out and keep Sunday to lie in bed late. Do the ironing while watching one of your weekly shows that does not require your full attention.

I found that by making these routine and fairly easy to do then you get into the habit of them and they become second nature after a few months, so are less of a drag.

Housework should not take more than a few hours per week for somemone your age so it can be easily integrated into your routine so long as you don't pad that routine with things like 8 hours a day gaming.

Learing to drive is most likely a finite time thing, but it gets easier quite quickly (after about 10 lessons you start polishing your weaknesses and by 20 you are probably making almost no mistakes) so allow some time to decompress after a lesson in the early stages and things are likely to improve fast.

As for asking your parents to make you calendars - this may be part of the childhood regression and I think by doing this yourself (with the help of others maybe) then you will start to rebuild control and confidence.

These are only my thoughts - you need to use your judgement but more importantly you need to own whatever you decide and make it happen.