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Been in burnout for a year

k001

Hello all,

I was recently diagnosed (3 months ago) with autism at the age of 31, but I have been in autistic burnout for just over a year now. I've tried various different things and I just don't know what to do to get out of it. 

- I've tried a few different therapists/psychologists but I find they always focus on simple, surface-level things whereas I feel I'm dealing with deep issues about my identity, grief etc.

- I have sleep problems and been to the GP about this. Been given some antihistamines but they don't help.

- I have socialised only 3 times since the start of this year. The idea of socialising at the moment seems unbearable. The last time I saw a friend outside my flat was in June.

- The only person I see is my Mum every few weeks but now I'm getting quite bad shut downs every time I see her where I can't speak at all. I tried not seeing her for 3 weeks but it still happened again the next time I saw her. I don't speak to her on the phone and hardly text. I think it's happening due to feeling of mistrust and feeling misunderstood.

- I haven't been working properly since the start of the year. I'm self-employed (work from home) but struggling a lot financially.

- I've stopped responding to the few friends I have. I don't like some of the responses I got when I told them I'm autistic and I just can't face having to do more explaining. They do check in with me and I just don't know how to respond back. I feel blank. 

- I live on my own which benefits me so much, but I don't go anywhere except for short walks with my dog.

- I have tried to focus on my some of my special interests in this time but I have a constant nag that I should be trying harder to work or doing something else.

Before I was diagnosed I had slowly started to reduce social events because I thought I just had bad social anxiety. When I think of being 'out' of burnout now, I don't even know what that would look like. I don't know if this is my new norm or if I'm waiting for something to happen or how to feel better. I seem to have spent time a lot of time 'resting' but maybe I'm not doing it the right way. Any ideas would be appreciated. 

Parents

  • This resonates with me so strongly- I have been in a cycle of chronic burnout for 5 years - I ended up so physically ill from it which is what forced me to stop at times but I didn’t understand what was happening and resting didn’t seem to help much and I started to question whether I can ever recover. And like you mention that raises all kinds of questions- can I ever recover? Did resting not help as it is bad for me or as it wasn’t long enough or because I wasn’t really resting or I was not resting in the right way? The past year though I have had moments where I have felt better than in years and it has made me question a lot of things that I didn’t before because I was just trying to survive and hanging on to things like my career choices, approach to things etc. It hasn’t really solved the issue though and now I am heading into utter burnout again though it’s almost worse as I can see more of the things that are contributing to it and I desperately want to stop them but can’t so it’s almost harder to bear … but all of this makes me feel that your point about ‘not resting in the right way’ is an interesting one and I think that could be part of it- I believe that for me happiness and less burnout will only come by fundamentally changing my approach to life and a lot of things that I thought had to be like that. Also thinking back, even when resting I would still push myself to do certain things. What is super hard for me is that when I am in burnout mode then paradoxically resting is almost unbearable because that is when I really crash and physically suffer and can’t do anything- not even fun things because everything is so hard. It is so hard to go through that stage and I then have the tendency to just try to work more so my energy at least goes into something ‘useful’ - like a hamster running on a wheel … so it is very easy to get caught up. Also some of advice given can be unhelpful- people often assumed that I was depressed when I was burntout as there are similarities and in that case medical professionals often push you to try to do things anyways and to socialise etc. I now realise the reason I didn’t feel joy in doing things and seemed to have lost interest was simply because I was so utterly exhausted that anything even fun things took inhuman effort- I am confident now that this is the case as when I finally rested more in a proper way and had good moments I all of a sudden found that I enjoyed a lot of things and found new interests - but I just couldn’t have before. I am so sorry that you are experiencing burnout- it is such a horrible place to be trapped in. I don’t know if talking about my own experience is helpful to you but I just wanted you to know that you are not alone and that I believe there is a way out but that it probably involves figuring out a different way of being and questioning a lot of assumptions and all of this takes time- I certainly haven’t figured it all out yet. 

Reply

  • This resonates with me so strongly- I have been in a cycle of chronic burnout for 5 years - I ended up so physically ill from it which is what forced me to stop at times but I didn’t understand what was happening and resting didn’t seem to help much and I started to question whether I can ever recover. And like you mention that raises all kinds of questions- can I ever recover? Did resting not help as it is bad for me or as it wasn’t long enough or because I wasn’t really resting or I was not resting in the right way? The past year though I have had moments where I have felt better than in years and it has made me question a lot of things that I didn’t before because I was just trying to survive and hanging on to things like my career choices, approach to things etc. It hasn’t really solved the issue though and now I am heading into utter burnout again though it’s almost worse as I can see more of the things that are contributing to it and I desperately want to stop them but can’t so it’s almost harder to bear … but all of this makes me feel that your point about ‘not resting in the right way’ is an interesting one and I think that could be part of it- I believe that for me happiness and less burnout will only come by fundamentally changing my approach to life and a lot of things that I thought had to be like that. Also thinking back, even when resting I would still push myself to do certain things. What is super hard for me is that when I am in burnout mode then paradoxically resting is almost unbearable because that is when I really crash and physically suffer and can’t do anything- not even fun things because everything is so hard. It is so hard to go through that stage and I then have the tendency to just try to work more so my energy at least goes into something ‘useful’ - like a hamster running on a wheel … so it is very easy to get caught up. Also some of advice given can be unhelpful- people often assumed that I was depressed when I was burntout as there are similarities and in that case medical professionals often push you to try to do things anyways and to socialise etc. I now realise the reason I didn’t feel joy in doing things and seemed to have lost interest was simply because I was so utterly exhausted that anything even fun things took inhuman effort- I am confident now that this is the case as when I finally rested more in a proper way and had good moments I all of a sudden found that I enjoyed a lot of things and found new interests - but I just couldn’t have before. I am so sorry that you are experiencing burnout- it is such a horrible place to be trapped in. I don’t know if talking about my own experience is helpful to you but I just wanted you to know that you are not alone and that I believe there is a way out but that it probably involves figuring out a different way of being and questioning a lot of assumptions and all of this takes time- I certainly haven’t figured it all out yet. 

Children
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