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Autistic Burnout, Interoception, and the Lesson of Prometheus

Phased
Heads up to readers: Before diving into the text below, I want to be absolutely clear that I am not suggesting anyone who experiences similar physical stress patterns or muscle tension instantly assume they have Hashimoto's or a specific endocrine condition. We are all biologically unique, and my personal medical outcome belongs to my own history. What I am highlighting is that being able to identify, map, and decode the unique ways your own body holds tension and stress is a credibly powerful, transformative gateway into truly understanding oneself. It shifts us from fighting our bodies to cooperating with them.
Following a deeply resonant discussion on this forum recently—and with a nod of gratitude to   and the other contributors on that thread and others—I’ve been thinking a lot about how our physical bodies map out the trauma of chronic masking.  @Alexa’s framing of a post-diagnosis lens as a singular "medicine"—a neutral vocabulary that replaces a hundred disparate explanations of individual "failures"—has catalyzed a major breakthrough in how I examine my own physical and psychological landscape. This and other issues has forced me to look deeply at the role of interoception in how we reclaim our context.
Interoception—our conscious and unconscious awareness of internal bodily sensations, from heart rate and muscle tension to visceral discomfort—is something many of us in the autistic community experience uniquely [NAS Professional Practice Hub]. As the National Autistic Society Guide on Interoception and Wellbeing notes, a significant percentage of autistic adults experience atypical interoceptive awareness, making it difficult to process internal signals before they reach a crisis threshold [NAS Professional Practice Hub]. In our previous discussions, many of you shared familiar patterns, noting how chronic masking and intense situational stress manifest as deep, persistent shoulder and neck tension or gastric issue etc. We carry the weight of neurotypical performance parameters directly in our bodies as well as our minds.
For a long time, my own interoceptive tracking was a source of confusion. I was experiencing volatile physical symptoms: a sharp, restrictive "catch" of pain beneath my right floating ribs that radiated into my shoulder blade, accompanied by heavy executive paralysis. Falling into a classic trap of hindsight, I tried to analyze these signals as completely isolated issues. I explained the physical pain as a simple localized muscle strain, and the cognitive flatline as a personal failure to cope with intense, ongoing situational trauma and institutional duress.
However, when I stopped viewing these signals as chaotic failures of my body and started looking at them through an analytical, autistic lens, a classical mirror clicked into place: the myth of Prometheus.
In the ancient text, Prometheus is chained to a rock of unyielding situational duress, where an eagle arrives to systematically consume his liver every single day, only for it to regenerate in the quiet stasis of the night, setting the stage for the cycle of retribution to begin anew the moment he wakes.
By utilizing my interoception not just to feel the pain, but to map its precise temporal and mechanical patterns, I realized my body was living out that exact diurnal Promethean loop. I began tracking the data my body was sending me with precision:
  • The Night Stasis: I noticed that during the night, as my body remained immobile in a fasting state, internal physiological stress built up, causing my rib muscles to tighten into a hyper-tonic, protective shell.
  • The Morning Retribution: I registered that the exact moment of waking—when the autonomic nervous system releases a natural surge of hormones to jumpstart morning activity—the internal tension peaked. My descending diaphragm physically compressed the underlying tissues, triggering a sudden, stabbing muscular guarding response under my ribs. The morning waking was when the physical debt of my background environmental trauma was being collected.
  • The Dynamic Shift: My interoception showed me that this wasn't a static, structural break. The pain fluctuated. Movement, warmth, and conscious somatic down-regulation could cause the guarding to temporarily ease into a "valley" of relief. Yet, a sudden mechanical jar (like a vertical heel strike during gait), a deep breath, or a fresh spike in background situational stress instantly re-facilitates the loop, causing a sharp return of the protective guarding.
I had spent years believing my body was simply "breaking" under chronic stress. However, by leaning into my autistic capacity for pattern recognition and decoding these precise interoceptive signals, I refused to let the symptoms be dismissed as purely psychological. This internal data gave me the specific clues needed to confidently request targeted blood panels from my medical team. By advocating for myself based on the physical data my body was sending me, I was able to secure the right testing—specifically an antibody check—to formally identify the root cause as Hashimoto's thyroiditis.  (and yes it could be gallstones - I await the scan - but what caused that...)
The puzzle solved itself. I realized my system was operating within a predictable, unified physiological feedback loop where chronic external trauma was unmasking an underlying, active autoimmune vulnerability.
Decoding this internal data has been the ultimate act of reclaiming my context. It proved to me that the physical "catch" under my ribs and the executive flatline were not personal failures, unmanageable psychological deficits, or hypochondria; they were the literal, biological wear-and-tear of forcing an autistic nervous system to perform under prolonged trauma. As documented in the National Autistic Society Guide to Autistic Fatigue and Burnout, deep exhaustion from sustained cognitive and environmental overload frequently manifests as acute physical pain and systemic loss of function [NAS Guide to Autistic Fatigue].
When we open our past experiences for examination, active hope becomes the fuel that lets us rebuild. By learning to accurately decode our interoceptive signals rather than tuning them out or misinterpreting them as isolated failures, we can give ourselves a single, neutral explanation that replaces a dozen painful self-blames. We stop trying to fight individual physical symptoms and instead start altering our environment to protect our biological baseline.
Building on the shoulder and neck tension patterns or gastric issues etc. that I have previously read others discussing, I would love to open this up to see what we have found within our own bodies and how we have gone about accommodating it:
  • Where does your body typically hold or map stress (e.g., neck, jaw, shoulders, how you breath or how your guts work), and when does that tension predictably peak or quiet down?
  • How did you move past viewing that physical sensation as an isolated issue, and realise it was an active somatic mirror of masking or autistic burnout?
  • What environmental adjustments, pacing strategies, or communication modifications have you found helpful to naturally lower your baseline stress and accommodate your body's energy levels?
(Note for transparency/moderators: The thoughts and metaphors here are entirely my own lived experience, but I used an AI tool to help me clean up the structure and typos before posting.)

  • in reply to TheCatWoman

    Thanks   hehe - there's a 14 page document sitting on my other computer screen titled "

    " The Late-Diagnosed Reclamation Toolkit

    A Somatic, Structural, and Molecular Safety Manual for Autistic Burnout  " 

    (hmmm... that could be a little more catchy and accessible maybe!)

    I'll run thro' were to put it and how to make it safely accessible and if it's OK with you keep you in the loop about where it's at.

    I won't let the fire burn out :-)

  • in reply to Phased

    I get you're to knackered to do anything much with it now, but....

    Will it just sink to the abyss of dead posts? 

    How will others access it from the abyss?

    You have my permission to reuse anythng I've written on this thread and the other related ones.

    I don't know how one would go about getting it off NAS or even keeping it accessible within NAS?

  • in reply to TheCatWoman
    Hi @TheCatWoman
    Thank you so much for saying that. Your comment means an immense amount to me, and it hits on the exact reason I felt compelled to map these thoughts out loud in the first place.
    I am deeply concerned about how easily community wisdom, real-world workarounds, and peer-tested survival data disappear into the fragmented, ephemeral scroll of the internet. When our official support structures are broken, archiving these blueprints becomes a vital act of mutual preservation. By linking our somatic maps, legal levers, and molecular insights together, we are actively weaving a protective text that stops us from falling through the cracks.
    I would absolutely love to find a way to compile, edit, and structure these threads into a coherent, permanent resource—perhaps as an open-access digital toolkit or a structured guide for late-diagnosed adults trying to navigate systemic burnout safely.
    Of course, to do that properly and respectfully, I would need to work strictly within the NAS community guidelines regarding data privacy. I legally own my own original posts, but the rules are very clear about protecting everyone's anonymity and consent. If I ever do formalise this into a permanent resource, it would mean publishing only my own framework prose and safely summarising the brilliant general themes and ethical questions raised by the community, rather than directly exporting anyone's usernames or specific text.
    But even before a formal archive happens, there is a quiet comfort in knowing that for now, many other people have already read what we’ve shared here. When future members search the NAS forum for relevant tags, these threads and the deep connections we have worked on together will surface precisely when someone needs them most. The stone thrown into the pond has many ripples, and this collective space is already carrying that weight outward.
    Right now, with my executive processing flatlined and my system in active autoimmune recovery, I don't have the baseline energy to build a separate platform or pitch an external publication anyway. But I am keeping personal backups of my own original logs safely saved on my computer. For now, using this forum as our raw repository is a beautiful start. Once my engine has had a chance to cool down and heal, structuring this into a formal, permanent archive is a project I would be honoured to take on.
    Thank you for seeing the value in this space, and for helping me build it.
    Best wishes,
    Phased
    (Note: I am sharing these scientific reflections and systemic insights purely to map out my own personal health journey, somatic tracking, and peer workarounds. They are shared for community support and mutual preservation, and are not intended as personal medical or legal advice.)

  • Have you thought about publishing all this somewhere? between two or three related threads we've covered  a lot of ground and I think its worth saving and not being allowed to disapear into a hole in the internet.

  • in reply to Phased

    Wow! Thanks, Phased - that's fascinating. 

  • in reply to Alexa

    Hi @Alexa - i just posted this in an answer to another thread and it made me think of your post - best wishes Phased:    

    I wanted to share a quick "Layperson’s Guide" to a fascinating piece of science that I mentioned in my other replies. It helps explain the physical side of what many of us experience.
    Scientists use the term called the "Neuro-Cutaneous-Immune Axis." It sounds like heavy medical jargon, but it actually breaks down into a really simple concept. It just describes the three-way, non-stop conversation between our brain/nervous system (Neuro), our skin (Cutaneous), and our body’s defense system (Immune).
    In many autistic profiles, the literature suggests this conversation is turned up to a much higher volume. Here is the basic breakdown of how researchers explain it:
    • Brain and Skin are Siblings: When an embryo is growing in the womb, the exact same initial layer of cells splits to create only two things: the entire nervous system and the skin. Because they share the exact same origin story, it makes sense why a uniquely sensitive autistic nervous system so often goes hand-in-hand with uniquely sensitive skin.
    • The Stress-Skin Connection: Our skin is packed with tiny immune cells that sit right next to our nerve endings. When we experience sensory overload or navigating a world not built for us, the nervous system sends signals down those pathways. In response, the skin can rapidly react with localized inflammation. This is why many of us notice sudden itching, flushing, hives, or psoriasis flares during stressful times.
    • The Shared Inflammatory Highway: Clinical research shows that our immune systems often have their defensive dials set to "hyper-alert." The exact same internal chemical pathway that can lead the immune system to target the thyroid (like in Hashimoto's) is often the very same pathway that tells skin cells to multiply too fast. It's essentially one single highway of inflammation expressing itself in different areas of the body.
    For me, learning about this was incredibly validating. If you’ve ever felt like your physical body is reacting in tandem with your mental exhaustion or autistic burnout, there is a massive framework of science showing that you aren't imagining it. Our brains, our immune systems, and our skin are operating as a single, deeply connected circuit.
    (Note: To remain fully transparent under forum guidelines, I used an AI assistant to help me translate these complex clinical concepts into everyday language. This is shared strictly for educational and community discussion purposes and is not intended as medical advice.)
  • in reply to TheCatWoman

    haha - I grew some "ring of fire" chillis this year - I know what you mean.

  • in reply to Phased

    Time to put the loo roll in the freezer!

  • in reply to TheCatWoman

    hehe - good idea with the chilli - long may your fire burn  !

  • in reply to Phased

    What, my soggy and overgrown garden? Lol, I've had two days of running about, including having to get up at the crack of sparrow fart yesterday, (6:20). I'm not recovered yet, but I will feed my inner fire with some chiili from the freezer for dinner.

  • in reply to TheCatWoman
    Hehe, fair point! The digital "fire" definitely takes some getting used to. I will keep doing the heavy lifting with the text prep and keeping the archive shelves organised here for us both. Go enjoy the garden and take care of your own baseline today.
    Best wishes,
    Phased
  • in reply to Phased

    You can do it, as I still can't C&P.

  • in reply to TheCatWoman
    Hi @TheCatWoman
    Thank you for sharing that context. Knowing that your perspective was forged at Greenham Common and through organizing the Reclaim the Night marches explains so much about the clarity and power of your writing. That history of radical collective activism provides a profound framework for discussion, and you are entirely right that historically, it took pure, unadulterated rage to shock an unyielding architecture into confronting its own injustice.
    I set up another thread today where this sort of thing might find its place even better, and I am chuffed to see you have joined the conversation in there too (focusing on socio-politics rather than burnout and reading one's body). I would say here though that I think there is a necessary, modern balance we have to find between that external socio-political fire and our internal somatic survival. While collective rage can be a powerful tool for historical progress, the "powers that be" have grown wise to direct action over the decades, often adapting their bureaucracies to insulate themselves from it.
    From a physical and mental health perspective, I am personally very cautious of getting too close to that heat without protection. I have found personally that when my autistic nervous system is already structurally bankrupt from chronic burnout and high allostatic load, running on pure rage can act like throwing fuel onto an internal fire—it risks causing profound physical and mental exhaustion to our own baselines. I see our two perspectives as a necessary continuum. The collective rage of movements like Greenham Common is vital for challenging the macro-system from the outside, but individual, bottom-up boundary setting—using tools like Taiji or treating legal frameworks as a concrete shield—is how we protect the camp from the inside. We need the fire and smoke visible at the edge of the camp to keep the wolves back, but we also have to contain the flame so it warms our baseline rather than consuming us from the inside out.
    Thanks for bringing your history of collective resistance together, and maybe you could take what you've shared over to the other post, or I can do so perhaps—with your permission. Then we could keep this thread for practical tools for somatic containment. Hehe, it seems I have absorbed a little of the Librarian from spending time in libraries! I hope that protecting our health, mind, and soul is a valid form of resistance in itself.
    Best wishes,
    Phased
  • in reply to Phased

    The biggest act of unmasking, not just of autism, but of injustice in general is rage, pure unadulterated rage. The absolute refusal to be put iin a box and accept staying there because of this lable. I learnt this in the Womens Movement, at Greenham Common, at all the Reclaim the Night marches I helped organise and went on.  

    The questions we asked and made people confront, why should women stay indoors and be to afraid to go about our lawful business because of men who think they have the right to take what belongs to us? Our bodies, our minds and those who were supporting them by telling us the same old script, stay quiet, be invisable, be afraid, we said NO, why should we stay at home and live in fear when we're the vitcims of crime, shouldn't men be told to stay at home and not go out unaccompanied by a woman unless you get picked up as a rapist, afterall you're asking for it being out on your own at night, going about your lawful business.

     We're still fighting that battle, but we got heard, we did change the system, it dosen't work as well as it should, the old narratives of victim blaming are still there, but they're no longer the norm and get called out, and can lose you your job and other things you hold dear.

  • in reply to TheCatWoman
    Hi @TheCatWoman
    Your analysis of how the word "disability" is weaponized to strip away autonomy—demanding that we sit quietly and follow a script of saintly gratitude—is a profound critique. It highlights how the system loves to offer superficial, patronizing templates like a handful of "spoons" instead of treating us as resourceful, equal human beings with common sense.
    Your dismantling of the word "dysregulating" cuts straight to the core of institutional gaslighting. You are entirely right; when a neurotypical person faces a chaotic, high-pressure morning, their frustration is validated as a normal human reaction to stress. But when an autistic adult expresses the exact same right and reasonable rage, the system immediately pathologises it as a clinical malfunction that needs to be isolated, quieted, or heavily medicated. The jargon is used to protect their comfort and control, forcing us to appear numb and compliant so they don't have to face the validity of our anger.
    I think that refusing to swallow that script is an essential piece of the puzzle. It makes me think that as well as being canaries in the coal mine, we are also the "fly in the ointment" for society. A fly spoils the illusion of a perfect, smooth product; by refusing to normalise their exhausting environments or play along with their sham service scripts, our biology and our boundaries actively disrupt their comforting illusions. Our rage isn't a mechanical breakdown or an old boiler malfunctioning; it is a logical, healthy response to an unyielding environment that refuses to consult us.
    I think that when the official services turn out to be structurally useless, reclaiming our right to have real, messy, and protective human emotions is the ultimate act of radical unmasking. Your historical nod to Barcelona is a beautiful reminder that our desire for authentic, self-managed order isn't chaotic—it is a threat to their rigid control. Thank you for adding this fierce, necessary map to the library.
    Best wishes,
    Phased
  • in reply to Phased

    I've been down as disabled for years, because of my structural problem, quite literally, my back is really bad.

    When people here the word disability, they instantly think "pity", either that you want it, or thats what they'll give you and they do this by talking over the top of you, it dosen't give one more power it often removes it and then some. As a disabled person, I'm to sit quietly and wait with saintly patience, whilst others run round like headless chickens making descisions for me, over the top of me and never consulting me. I'm not allowed to say no, to say whats proposed isn't suitable or right, its like having the same old argument again, the one that goes something like 'we know you're vegetarian, but it's only chicken', and onto 'how am I suposed to help you when you won't take medicines', I ask them when was the last time they dug up a chicken and ate it, when did they last pick a fish from a tree, I didn't say I wouldnt take medicine, I said I'm not taking that one I'm allergic too. This make me a bad disabled person, one who's breaking the script that says YOU MUST BE GRATEFUL.

    It's either all that or I get told I'm to resourseful, that I could teach them things, they can't so anything for me, because I've already used my common sense and what I read years ago in a womens magazine.

    Then I get offered a set of spoons and asked how many spoons of energy do certain tasks use up, the answer is invariably not as many as having to restrain myself from beating you to death you patronising bovine!

    So I get mad, I get accused of being mad and that makes me madder. The final insult is being told I'm dysregulating and I need to clam down and I should go and sit somewhere quiet. I should never mutter to myself that I'm older than you, don't you dare speak to me like I'm a naughty child! Dysregulating, am I an old boiler in need of repair, or better yet, medicate her heavily! 

    What dysregulating really means is that others dont' want us to show an emotion, their regulation is being stiffled, the jargon shapes the thoughts and the meanings. We should always be on an even keel, so when you have a bad start to the day, child can't find PE kit, child finds PE kit and everythings dirty because they shoved in a cupboard and forgot about it, the laces in the other ones shoe is broken, so you have to find a new one and thread it, only now you have to do the other one too as child is kicking off about unmatched laces. It dosen't matter that its the first day of your period and you feel as though you've been kicked in the belly and have blood all over your sheets and have to wash everything. The first coffee has barely hit the sides and breakfast is finishing off the odd spoon of cereal and half a piece of toast., You get out of the door and every traffic light is aginst you, you finally get to work and someone says you look harrased, so you tell them the list of disasters that have befallen you and they say, poor you, shall I get you a coffee? They never say, get thee to a cupboard and sit in silence because you're disregulating, that only happens if your autistic, because normal life with its frustrations dosn't happen to you, you're feelings aren't real you've got this thing, this problem that we call autism, it makes you emotional and its always unreasonable. NT's need us to have all our feelings numbed, to behave numb and dumb and accepting, oh yes above all accepting, other wise us autistics might realise they're actually terrified of us. We might realise that our rage is right and reasonable, they might lose control and the whole world will be unregulated, chaotic and anarchic. 

    They always forget that the only time public transport ran on time was when Anarchists were in control of Barcelona during the civil war!

  • in reply to Alexa
    Hi Alexa,
    The distinction you make between lowercase 'd' deaf as a medical model and capital 'D' Deaf as a political identity is a very clear parallel. The history of trying to force people into a "normal" mold under a medical lens is a pattern we see everywhere.
    I think that for me, the word "disability" isn't a grand political banner; it is just a clunky administrative lever. The paradox is that I have to use a medicalised label just to legally demand that a rigid environment bend its architecture enough for me to survive it. Whether the world's hostility toward our baseline is passive underfunding or an active pushback in public discourse, the practical result on my body is exactly the same: it drives up my allostatic load.
    While I appreciate the validity of that wider socio-political landscape, I think that while I am burnt out and unwell, I don’t have the energy to engage in the "Life of Brian" style of debating endless semantics in the amphitheater. I see accepting one's disability, and through this identifying oneself to social services, the medical system, or any bureaucratic and social organization, as simply one of the practical tools for handling burnout. Because my original post here was intentionally focused on mapping our physical health, interoception, and somatic baselines, I think these vital structural and political points you've raised actually deserve their own dedicated room. I propose a launch of a separate thread on the board specifically for swapping notes on how we navigate that wider socio-political landscape, so we can explore those models fully.
    I think that swapping these notes on what works—like your Brandt-Daroff sequence, TheCatWoman's practical insistence on appropriate seating and mattresses, or my Taiji forms—is the only real toolkit we have right now on this thread. It keeps us focused on the immediate task of getting back on our feet, and there is real hope in identifying that shared thread together. Thank you for this ongoing conversation and I look forward to continuing the political side of the discussion on the new thread.
    Best wishes,
    Phased
  • in reply to Phased
    Phased said:
    The Structural Benefits: It forces a broken system to stop treating your needs as an optional request and start treating them as a legal obligation. It frames your struggle under the Social Model—proving you aren't failing, but are a person navigating an unyielding environment.

    Food for thought. I'd argue that it's a medical model rather than a social one, in the same way as deafness (small 'd') is framed as a medical model. Deaf (capital D in BSL = deaf activism) politics prefers a social model to the extent that Deaf activists fought cochlear implants (= the medical model) on the grounds they destroyed the deaf community by trying to make everyone 'normal'. That followed a history of forcing deaf children into boarding schools that forbade them to use sign language. I'd posit that the only difference between the political identities of the Deaf community and autistics is a history of shared community created as the unintended consequence of that repressive regime.

    I would also argue the envionment of the recent past is passively hostile through lack of funding, ignorance and disinterest; whereas the recent discourse on reshaping the paradigm of autism shows signs of becoming actively hostile.

  • in reply to TheCatWoman
    Hi @TheCatWoman
    Your description of the "magic word" gatekeeping and the siloed, disconnected services is a brutal, accurate mapping of institutional trauma. It is exhausting to deal with a broken system that expects an autistic individual in the thick of a crisis to decode a barcode just to return a piece of hospital equipment.
    The "Enid Blyton" family assumption you highlighted is a massive, systemic failure in how public services are designed. They operate on a default, romanticized model of an immediate, local support network that simply does not exist for many of us. Assuming that everyone has an emotionally and physically available family network ignores the reality of small, isolated, or aging families where you are the single point of failure—the only driver, the only cook, the only coordinator. Having a small family isn't a failure, but treating it like a personal oversight or a reason to judge is incredibly damaging.
    I think that your anger at these sham services is entirely valid. The hamster wheel of being bounced between disconnected silos doesn't just drain your time; it causes acute physical and mental pain by re-running those old scripts of not being "good enough." I think that the "magic word" you are being nudged toward is "disability." It is the legal and administrative key that theoretically unlocks structural protections, but it doesn't come without a heavy cost. For me, it means exploring and identifying in the unmasked me exactly how disabled and unwell I am, and choosing to respond to that in as effective a way as possible.
    Here's the pro's and cons of the magic word "disability" as I see and currently am beginning to experience them.
    • The Structural Benefits: It forces a broken system to stop treating your needs as an optional request and start treating them as a legal obligation. It frames your struggle under the Social Model—proving you aren't failing, but are a person navigating an unyielding environment.
    • The Internal Costs: It requires an immense amount of emotional grief. Admitting how unwell an unmasked system actually is means facing the literal, material damage that years of chronic masking may have done to the body, mind and possibly even the soul.
    I think that part of what I hope this thread will do is open up a space where we can see what other people do in this exact situation to resolve the burn. When the official support systems are structurally bankrupt, I am personally choosing to stop asking permission to exist—and instead using the term "disability" as a shield to protect what remains of the biological baseline—I see it as a necessary act of radical unmasking. You are managing an immensely harrowing situational reality for your friend while holding a fragile family baseline together entirely on your own; that takes an immense amount of endurance, and you shouldn't have to fight a broken bureaucracy on top of it.
    Best wishes,
    Phased

  • in reply to Phased

    I don't think it helps that servicees are so patchy and incoherent, GP's seem to have been made into prescription dispensers and gatekeepers to other services. When I told my GP of my struggles over my friends problems, he had no idea of where to send me for help that he couldn't medicate away. I want to send back the equiment the hospital services sent me, only I don't know how, there's a QR code and a barcode but no phone number, for all I know the codes could be manufacturers codes. The GP's surgery dont' know either, it seems nobody knows.

    TO MANY PEOPLE KNOW NOTHING

    There seems to be to little responsibilty taken by everyone, they all operate in thier own little silo's and don;t talk to each other.

    WHATS THE MAGIC WORD?

     It feels like theres a magic word that will unlock services, when I go to autism services or rather service as theres only one in the whole of N. Wales and they ask what I'd like them to do for me, I ask what they offer and they can't or won't tell me, do they know what they offer? I feel as though I'm being nudged towards a certain word or phrase that will magically unlock everything and a whole new world will appear.

    HAPPY FAMILIES

    Everybody has a family that is close emotionally and physically, supportive and willing and able to drop everything at a moments notice to do things for you. Or thats the assumption, why are they so surprised that many of us don't, that I can be the only driver in my family, that if something happens to me, the whole thing stops. We found that out when I had covid, everything was on hold until I was well enough to drive again and go out. There is no one who can walk the dog, there's no one else to cook, my mum does a lot of the cleaning, but everything else is me. The wider family is in Manchester and have lives and jobs of thier own. My family is also very small. This isn't a failing, its just how it is. But not if you listen to the people who are supposed to be there to help and support you, it seems more like they're there to judge your family or lack of it.

    These things are structural and cause pain both physically and mentally, they help rerun old scripts about not being good enough, they cause stress with thier Enid Blyton ideas of what families are. Most of the time they hinder not help, why do they think they exist? What are they for if not to help? Instead they leave you run around like a hamster in a wheel until you die from exhaustion and thats not because you've been under immense strain and pressure, it's because you're not good enough.

    WELL GO AND EFF OFF, YOU'RE STRUCTURALLY USELESS AND A WASTE OF PUBLIC MONEY WITH YOUR SHAM SERVICES.