CW / Trigger Warning: Detailed discussion of severe autistic burnout, physical health collapse/autoimmune flare, workplace gaslighting, disciplinary stress, and statutory self-neglect assessments.
Hi everyone,
I’ve been navigating a catastrophic period of late-diagnosed autistic burnout after a massive unaccommodated crisis at work. Coming from a clinical science background, my natural instinct during this collapse was to track my own lab markers to understand what was happening to me. I wanted to share my personal experience here, as it completely changed how I look at burnout—for me, it felt less like a mental block and more like a literal, physical injury.
(Quick note on transparency for community rules: I have used an AI tool to help me clean up my wording and organise my timeline into readable bullet points while dealing with brain fog, but the data, case history, and thoughts are entirely my own lived experience).
Looking back, I realize I managed my career for decades by unconsciously forcing my body into a permanent, high-adrenaline sympathetic stress response to mask my processing difficulties. When intense workplace trauma hit, that adrenaline engine seemed to spin out of control.
When my body finally collapsed into severe executive paralysis and physical fatigue, my personal blood panels revealed a profound physical flare:
- My Serum Thyroid Peroxidase Antibodies (TPOAb) were at 267 IU/mL, with a TSH of 7.4 mU/L.
- My Serum Free T4 dropped right to the bottom boundary line at 11.9 pmol/L.
- My Vitamin B12 sat at an indeterminate 333 ng/L.
- I experienced severe multi-system exhaustion alongside stress-induced functional gallbladder stasis.
(Please note I am only sharing my own specific health data to illustrate my personal journey; I am not a doctor prescribing a framework, and anyone experiencing physical symptoms should always seek advice from their own medical team).
The institutional side of this was incredibly isolating. Traditional workplace structures seemed to have a massive blind spot for my "spiky profile." It felt like management couldn't understand how I could remain highly articulate in writing, yet be physically unable to manage daily self-care or basic independent maintenance routines at home due to somatic exhaustion. My unmasked burnout behaviours were treated entirely as a disciplinary or conduct issue.
When the employment systems completely fell apart for me, I had to look elsewhere for support. I requested a statutory assessment under the Care Act 2014 from my local authority.
In my specific case, the assessor formally designated "Self-Neglect" as a high-severity, situational risk factor, granting me legal eligibility across national outcomes. For my own journey, having that independent, statutory third-party assessment was the first time I felt objectively validated, and it provided a vital piece of independent evidence to show the true physical scale of what this workplace environment did to my health.
I am still processing all of this, but I wanted to ask the community:
- Have any of you felt that your physical health or thyroid/gut problems flared up directly alongside an intense period of autistic masking or workplace trauma?
- How do you find ways to communicate a "spiky profile" to people who misinterpret executive shutdown as a behavioural or conduct problem?
- Has anyone else looked into local authority or statutory frameworks when traditional workplace support systems completely failed them?
