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Venting on how working is hard

Deleted User

I have found the last 10 years quite tough. If I had to point just to one thing, I most commonly felt -and feel- alienated (or estranged).

There is like an oscillation: trying, failing, trying, failing...

I am exhausted, I feel an alien that doesn't quite know why it can't be fully like the others. I fear I will never be able to work, and this in turn makes me feel lazy or unworthy of love.

I have tried to cope, but this has left me quite disabled -or so I feel. And even with reasonable work experience and degrees, I feel just drained.

I was told this was autisc burnout, but sometimes I doubt it will go away. It feels like stuck with me.

I wonder how this maps to your case, or anything that comes to your mind.

If you feel so too, I share my love to you.

  • Got to say this feels so much like me. I am stuck in a vacuum in that I am waiting for legal *** to happens. It feels that I will only be able to emerge from the perpetual burnout state once there is clear direction. It is like being given a map to somewhere better but when you look the map is a blank page.

    As David Byrne wrote in the lyrics to a song "I'm not lost, I just don't know where I am"

    Hopefully things will get better for you soon. For me it's the anger of what has happen to me since diagnosis that keeps the fire in my belly alight just enough to survive day to day.

    Who said things would get easier after diagnosis!!! 

  • I reckon one of the mods will pass the NAS links on the topics you raised to you pretty soon  and there's some good stuff in there to explore.

    Personally, yep this rings true to me - tho' I'm not out of the woods yet I was able to actually see a way of coming up with a bit of a road map in one paragraph.  OK Google AI helped! - I added the "phoenix" bit (hehe and then found out someone had already got thee before me!)

    To "survive burnout phoenix-style" means to recover and rise from it by first prioritizing rest and self-care, then setting realistic expectations and boundaries, seeking support from others, and finally reflecting on and reassessing your goals to rebuild a more balanced life that aligns with your values. This process takes time and involves self-reflection, reconnecting with passions, and celebrating small wins to find renewed joy and meaning.

    I am still not out of the ashes fully yet myself but this road map seems to be working for me.

    Yep one may apply all sorts of self care strategies to moderate the stress and depression that can lead to getting overly close to burnout meditation, exercise et al - trick is to work out what the signals are for how to feel again in my experience - small smiles = small wins.  Workarounds for not having "cognitive empathy" for oneself being tuning into how the body feels and reflecting upon one's own behaviour (for example)  as indicators.

    To kind of sum it up, as the fun boy 3 put it "it Aint what you do it's the way that you do it" 

    best wishes

  • Unknown said:
    There is like an oscillation: trying, failing, trying, failing..

    I get this and it hit me early in my career so I took a very logical approach to it and worked out where I was failing or what was stressing me to fail and tried to learn how to cope with those specific things.

    Some I learned to tolerate better (meditation helps with this), some I learned different ways of doing (e.g. scripting helped a lot with user interactions at work) and some became a long, slow learning curve (becoming a manager and influencing upper management).

    For me it was realising that the common factor in all these situations was me - that meant I was the one who had to bend before I broke so developing the skills to keep going in a way I could survive helped me do this.

    When the burnout really ramps up I do find meditation can bring me down, especially with a day or so out of work (weekends are good for this) so long as you don't have commitments.

    In the end you can only every count on yourself so I found having the right tools really made the difference.