Why does this keep happening? — Stuck in a loop

I kept ending up in the same situation.

Different job. Different relationship.

Same result. Same patterns.

 

A lifetime of repetition. Over a decade and a half in therapy. Still I couldn’t break it.

Push. Burnout. Collapse. Shutdown. Rebuild. Repeat.

 

12 months ago I started designing a system with AI to track the patterns.

Not like the therapy I’ve had. Not following any model I’d used.

 

I’m autistic + ADHD, with Complex PTSD sitting underneath it.

Diagnosed late at 47, after building a system that helped me track what was actually happening.

 

The patterns I mapped aren’t just personal.

They show up in how systems treat people too — health, money, care.

 

The same cost pushed onto people already carrying too much.

Same failures. Same negligence.

 

I’m not pitching a product.

I’m looking for people who can read this and understand what it is.

People who think like this.

Who understand it without needing it translated.

 

People who could help take this further —

people like me, like you.

 

I just want to know if you recognise it —

the loops, the repetition, the sense that no amount of effort shifts the outcome.

 

And whether seeing it mapped like this would have changed anything for you.

 

If you’re someone who thinks like this.

If you work in law, or know someone this would resonate with.

If you’re autistic, or understand masking from the inside.

 

If this lands with you, say something.

Parents
  • What’s coming up here is people already seeing the pattern in different ways — but it still getting through.

    And the question for me became: at what cost?

    Each time it repeated, it got harder.
    Harder to mask, harder to manage — until eventually it just wasn’t sustainable anymore.

    Did it feel like that for you as well — that each cycle took more out of you than the last?

  • I can definitely say the burnout I am in at the moment feels worse than the previous one and although I am past the first stage, I now feel stuck and wondering how long it will take to get back to functioning adequately.

Reply Children
  • The part where it feels worse each time is exactly what I was trying to get at. And that “stuck” point after the first stage — past the initial push, but not yet back — that’s where it seems to hold. I’ve been thinking about what that first stage used to be for me as well, and how it’s shifted since I started recognising the pattern.

    When you say you’re past the first stage, what is that first stage for you?