Autistic Burnout... how do you cope?

Thankyou. Yeah the self loathing is very easy to get engulfed by :( perfect home alone analogy! It’s exactly that. 

That's plenty.  Honestly, eventually,  it comes good.

I wish I could move forward without fearing that a riot could start if I as much as made myself visible online again. I deleted my socials and I'm basically only on message boards now. I had to change my phone number, and I was one step away from changing my actual name.

Mobs like that won't let you forget it. The one person who messaged me specifically to tell me how grim I am and how "it'll never be forgotten" makes me feel like there's no point.

There was no correct way of doing it. "It's not that bad" would have made me feel rubbish and "you're a disgrace to humanity" wouldn't have been much better either, but there weren't many people striking the middle ground.

I have a therapist and one trusted contact. There's three other people who reached out to me at the time and I speak to very sparingly. That's all I have.

Thank you for your message.

Unfortunately in my case my whole job is front facing sales, which requires me to be professional at all times, e.g. masking. I enjoy helping people find what they are looking for, but I feel its gotten to a point where I can't keep up the charade anymore.

I'm getting more and more tired, and I've been getting more and more irritable at home because I have more stuff to do once I get home, which is awful for my wife to have to deal with constantly when she has her own mental health issues.

Its just a vicious cycle. This is why I've been in touch with local autism charities to seek further advice.

Thanks again for messaging!

Thank you for your message Sloan.

I've gotta be better to myself, its just finding good ground so I don't lose my job (my only income), but keep on top of my self-care.

I'll be speaking to some local autism charities this week so I hope they can give me some further advice on my particular circumstances.

Thanks again for the message!

There is an important distinction between autistic fatigue and autistic burnout. Ongoing and prolonged autistic fatigue will eventually lead to burnout.

https://www.autism.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/topics/mental-health/autistic-fatigue/autistic-adults

https://www.autism.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/professional-practice/autistic-burnout

Winter said:

the long hours of constant masking and unpredictability is really wearing me out.

Masking is not good for us and is one of the key risk factors for burnout. Do whatever you need to to keep masking to a minimum. Consider if you can get reasonable adjustments in your job, reduce hours, working from home, extra support, etc

I've been through burnout cycles in the past. You tell yourself that you need to keep going, that you have no choice, that losing your job would be the worst outcome. However there comes a point where you are simply not capable of keeping going. Your body will decide for you.

Heed the warning signs. You may think that a break, a holiday, a few weeks signed off sick may be all it takes to recover. It isn't if you just put yourself back in the same situation that resulted in the mini burnout in the first place. It's so important to work out what caused it and make changes to prevent the cycle reoccurring. Each successive cycle will become progressively harder to come back from.

Once a severe burnout hits it can affect your ability to do even the simplest things in life, that you would usually have no problem with at all. Your ability to function, both physically and mentally, will make work impossible.

Severe burnout can take a long time to recover from and you may never fully recover. It can lead to permanent regression of skills.

Sloan said:

oh how in hindsight I didn’t listen to her and just take time off and do what I needed to do before I reached this point! I’m so angry with myself. 

Oh yea - self-loathing is a key symptom of burnout in my experience.  All self-reliance, self respect and self worth seems to go on holiday - without you!!  It's like "Home Alone" as a grown-up.  Absolute nightmare !!!

I'm really pleased to hear that you have a therapist - and I wish you all the best Sloan.

Indeed.  That's rather the point mate.  That's the nature of how you feel now.

In terms of "what" happened, it is now done.  It's over.  That won't change.  It will now just fade, even though you may have trouble believing that because of "what" the "what" was.  I don't know what it was and don't want to know and nor do I believe it now has any relevance to where you find yourself and how you feel now.

In terms of my angels, they didn't know and could not possibly understand.  It didn't matter.  I was blessed.

You won't currently be able to see how things can possibly ever turn around for you.  Again, that's the point and the nature of how you feel now.  I've been there.  So bleak, and I'm not pretending otherwise for you.  That is why I want to reassure you.  No one can make it better for you in the moment (well, that was my experience anyway) and anyone who tried was an idiot (in my opinion.)

I'm happy to play the part of your idiot here.....but I'm actually only reassuring you that it will right itself if you can summon the fortitude to stay sane during these, most severely bleak times.

Hello,

Sorry you’re feeling this way. It’s a horrible horrible place to be in. 

I have been in what my therapist called ‘autistic burnout’ for weeks. She kept telling me I needed to take time off work, focus on myself, but would I listen!?

im now off work as been forced too as have physical symptom of being run down going - shingles, infection,  mouth full of ulcers etc. I am sleeping about 18 hours a day as I physically cannot manage anything else. I can’t even shower at the moment on my own as it’s too much. I’m a mess as all my normal routines and structures that keep me safe i now can’t do and in a really bad place. 

oh how in hindsight I didn’t listen to her and just take time off and do what I needed to do before I reached this point! I’m so angry with myself. 

im not telling you this to scare you, but the fact that you have insight and recognising that you’re reaching burnout is really important. Please try and put changes in places now. Whether that’s taking some time off, hiring a dog walker short term, setting up a chore rota so everyone is doing more or living off ready meals for a few weeks. Just something to take the pressure off. You’re doing the right thing by talking to your doctor. Have you got an autism therapist locally that you could get in touch with? 

look after yourself :) 

I can't have the angels if they don't know how I'm feeling, particularly in terms of how guilty I feel about what happened. I'll never get the chance to tell them because I don't believe they even want to hear from me.

I can't see how I'm not all of those things, thousands of people said I was and I don't see how I can disagree with them. 

I was hurtling towards a disaster in terms of the way I was living my life, and it ended up happening. I can't see how things ever turn around.

......so don't panic for fooks sake !  You are not all the things you think you might be.  You have worth and value, to yourself, those around you and undoubtedly society as a whole.

I have nothing practical to offer in terms of advice (apart from forward motion....but you'll find my diatribe on that elsewhere if you are so minded.)

I do have some non-practical advice for you though = DON'T panic = DO stay sane + Don't hurry yourself unnecessarily.  It just took A LOT of time for me to get functional again.

I was basically completely out of circulation (akin to how you describe above) for 12 months and only then was I able to VERY gently ease myself back into a very limited version of what I had come to understand as "life."

Like it or not HM025, there are people here that won't allow you to feel alone.....because you are not.  I neither had the knowledge of my autism nor any sort of "wider" support network at the time......but I did have a couple of bona fide angels.  Sounds like you haven;t got the angels, but you do have this network, and the knowledge to put a "name" on what you are feeling.  Use those things.

With brotherly love,

Number.

NOW THAT'S BURNOUT BROTHER !

I've had 4 months of not really feeling like an active member of society. No social media, not really speaking to many people on a personal level. I basically get to have one proper verbal conversation a week, if that.

There's times where I wanted to make things worse. I wanted people to send death threats, to abuse me further, to destroy what's left of my life. Why? Because I thought it'd validate everything I've been telling myself for many years. All of that "I'm a failure, I'm a waste of space" talk.

It's hard to not feel hung out to dry a bit, even though it was entirely my doing. It's the first time in my life where I can concretely say I have no friends and that barely anyone likes me. I didn't realise that people actually did and I didn't appreciate it enough.

I wish people were a bit more forgiving but in the heat of the moment when thousands of people online are screaming at you and calling you every name under the sun, I can't say I'm surprised that no one wanted to be the one person who would be seen to be defending me. They'd get abused too.

I try to take it on the chin but I can't ignore how awful it feels.

Here, here.  I can tell you are one of us !

I understand what you mean. I know your feeling of isolation.

You're doing the right thing talking to people about it, you don't have to go into "nitty gritty" but its good to get some of it off your chest. I'm glad you're also seeing a therapist, its good to talk about it and reflect on things.

You don't need to think to harshly on yourself for what happened in your past, what matters is what you can do to look after yourself now and for your future, and your taking steps in that direction.

Interesting HM025.

Personally, I felt like I had to step back from everyone and everything, because I felt like a toxic hot mess of disaster.....I was afraid to "infect" people I cared about with my catastrophic being !!  Most seemed VERY happy with that, but some brave (and I still don't honestly know why) souls, refused to be pushed away.  I think of them as my angels.

I totally concur with the truism you wrote;

HMO said:

It is very isolating, and when you feel like the worst person on the planet, it doesn't help.

It's a difficult one because I did screw up on a massive scale and I understand why they felt like they had to step back, but I didn't realise the repercussions until after it happened. It is very isolating, and when you feel like the worst person on the planet, it doesn't help.

The masking wore me out when I worked too, and me not knowing much about myself and my needs made everything ten times worse because I didn't know what support I could access.

Now I just feel really lost. I could probably do with a job that's not mentally taxing as it'd keep me busy.

Thank you for your advice. I understand I have a long road ahead in figuring out what to do with my work and social lives to make them more bearable. It helps to know other people's experiences with autism. Thanks again!

out_of_step said:

I didn't have a scooby doo what was going on. We mask for so long we end up gas-lighting ourselves.

That's a bit of genius insight right there chum !