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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
    Hi @TheCatWoman
    I am not offended at all; these are exactly the right questions to ask. Untangling the line between situational stress and autistic burnout is a vital part of decoding our context.
    From what I understand of current research, there is a distinct mechanical difference between the two states. Situational stress happens when life throws an intense, high-stakes crisis at you—like sorting through a friend’s life for a care home. It is emotionally harrowing for any human being, regardless of neurotype. Autistic burnout, however, is a systemic, whole-body collapse driven by allostatic load—the literal biological wear-and-tear of chronic masking, constant sensory filtering, and executive overload over years [NAS Guide to Autistic Fatigue]. When burnout hits, your neurological software essentially goes offline, leading to a profound loss of basic functional skills and physical pain that doesn't disappear just because a single stressful event ends.
    I think that you are entirely right about us being the canaries in the coal mine. We aren't more fragile than neurotypical people; rather, because our nervous systems cannot automatically screen out the sensory noise, the toxic ultra-processed environments, and the unyielding demands of modern life, we register the damage first. When you are forced to handle a deeply harrowing situational crisis while your underlying autistic baseline is already running on empty from a lifetime of masking, the two forces compound each other.
    I think that the core hope of this thread is to validate the identification of these physical aspects of burnout, and how we find ways to incorporate that insight into resolving the burn. I have hoped before that when I resolve Phoenix-like from the fire that'll be it—however, the message of the Phoenix is that it is reborn many times from the pain. I think that since I've experienced the flames before, they're not so frightening or distressing for me now. I am confident, having been through it before, that I'll be out of the ashes soon enough to do what the Phoenix is meant for.
    I think that in a crisis, neurology shouldn't matter—everyone deserves systemic, practical support when life gets harrowing. But under our current social architecture, being autistic means you are often forced to manage that heavy situational trauma with a nervous system that is already structurally bankrupt from trying to "fit." Realising this isn't a personal failure of resilience, but the logical consequence of an overwhelming load, is a necessary step in protecting whatever baseline energy you have left.
    Best wishes,
    Phased
  • in reply to TheCatWoman

    Phased, I'm going to ask questions of your questions about burnout, so please don't be offended.

    Are autistic people more likely to burn out than NT's?

    Or do we have burn out and they have stress?

    Is there a difference between being burnt out and too stressed to cope with life properly?

    If there is a difference what is it?

    Are we, autistics the canaries in the coal mine? Are we signalling to a world that dosen't want to listen that the way we live isnt' right, normal or natural. We shouldn't have to fight through the courts for the right to turn off our work phones outside of work, it's different if you're an emergency worker who's on call, but not a normal office worker. We shouldn't be eating all the ultra processed crap we do, because we've been sold the lie of convienience, its litterally killing us, clogging up our digestive systems, our arteries and the gods alone know what else. 

    Convienience and time saving are mostly lies too. Convienient for whom, the over worked person who's to rushed and not allowed to turn off, or the multinational companies making this crap? These things save time for what? Watching telly, or endless scrolling. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to go back to doing the families washing by hand in the kitchen sink, and I like a kettle that boils fast. We're told another lie, that its ever faster growth and convienient time saving, or going back to the before the industrial revolution. I hardly think that saying yes to washing machines and no to UPF's is going to see 98% shovelling horse manure for a living.

    I've been hovering on the edge of burn out, overwhelm whatever you want to cause it due to a friends ill health and increasing dementia. I'm left picking up the pieces of a life unrecognised, sorting it out into piles of what he will need in whatever care home he ends up in, what can be sold, what can be kept and what can be thrown away.

    It's been really harrowing, so am I feeling overwhelmed because of the situation, am I burnt out because I'm autistic? Where does difference lie?

    Should there be a difference, sometimes sh1t happens and we need help and support, our neurology isn't important, or shouldn't be. 

  • in reply to TheCatWoman

    Hi @TheCatwoman

    Your mapping of how physical misfits—furniture that doesn’t support us, clothes that don't fit—become internalised as personal inadequacy is a precise description of how the neurotypical world operates. The sequence you outlined, moving from "Why don't I fit?" to "Who decided I don't fit?" is the exact threshold of reclaiming your context.

    Your point about the immense pressure, especially on women, to shrink themselves or look perfect to earn the right to "fit" highlights how masking is a relentless trap. Trying to meet those unachievable external parameters only drains the internal flame, leaving us feeling like imposters while still facing hostility from an environment not built for our biology. Choosing to stop asking permission to exist, and instead embracing the "weirdness" that liberates you, is the practical reality of radical unmasking.

    Your transition from trying to perform to simply protecting your space is where the shift happens. Turning away from the social demands to find nourishment in the trees, the land, and your own solitary interests is how you stop the unyielding architecture of society from dictating your worth. I think that we are somewhat defined in our being by what we do, though once one is a human being, one is also a human doing. I think that when our actions flow naturally as a self-expression of a protected baseline, doing simply enhances and anchors our being rather than exhausting it.

    It makes complete sense that the physical pain remains—the bubble-wrap feeling under your feet and the necessity of the osteopath are the real, material toll of a lifetime of holding that tension. But by externalising the negative messages, you have cleared the deck to let your body heal on its own terms.

    Thank you for adding this profound map to the thread.

    Best wishes,

    Phased

  • in reply to Alexa
    Hi  
    The consultant suggesting squash or badminton for a labyrinth issue is a striking example of the gap in standard clinical understanding. Your experience with group Tai Chi classes makes complete sense too; the pressure to process external verbal and visual instructions in real time completely overrides the internal, slow-paced somatic calibration that the forms are actually meant to provide.
    Your "magpie" metaphor is a precise description of how we are forced to navigate this landscape. Collecting shiny fragments of coping mechanisms from scattered sources is a direct consequence of a world that leaves us to fire-fight our own burnout. A systematic, organized kit designed by neurodivergent health specialists would change the entire paradigm from individual survival to collective infrastructure.
    The truth is that the fundamental research and systemic frameworks are actually already present among pioneering neurodivergent clinicians. The bottleneck is no longer a lack of science, but a profound failure of public access; the data remains locked away from front-line medical teams, forcing us into the position of translating clinical concepts into our personal realities. Until that structural gateway opens, treating our home environments as isolated testing grounds is how we build our own custom kits. For me, stripping away the social demands of a classroom and applying the old training maxim of "watch one, do one, teach one" to the forms of Taiji and Qigong was the only way to make the movement accessible. By watching the form without pressure and studying the underlying structural principles behind them rather than just memorising external choreography, I could treat the movements as a functional internal blueprint. This let me refactor my internal proprioception and balance, and effectively "teaching" my own nervous system the routine from the bottom up rather than the top down, I could find my baseline without triggering processing overload. Swapping these notes on what works is how we assemble the library manually, piece by piece.
    I think that choosing the red pill to accurately decode the raw, difficult data our bodies send us is exhausting, but paradoxically it is the only way to genuinely protect our baseline. I hope that I am proved to be right. Thank you for this conversation; it has been a privilege to map these paths out with you.
    Best wishes,
    Phased
  • in reply to Phased

    It was whilst looking for a sofa that really made me realise how little things "fit", so many we saw were more like shelves and one could just about perch on them.

    I looked at some rise and recline chairs but they were far to small, apparently only short people are old and want to use them, or so I was told.

    Most mattresses cannot be tried out instore, if you have a store to go to, and have to be bought online so you hope for the best.

    Clothes likewise nothing seems to fit properly.

    Not fitting in the world is a physical as well as mental thing and they go together, you get uncomfortable and start to ache or get pins and needles, so you move, get momentary relief before you realise you just ache and have pins and needles in a different place. Then you get grumpy, grumpiness makes the pain worse because you're clenched from physical and emotional pain.

    WHY DON'T I FIT IN THE WORLD

    This gets internalised, and the world is full of negative messages about size and shape, I've listened to countless women talking about how little space they take up in the world, the self denial of food, resourses, physical and mental well being, because everything is done for another, usually children.

    People, especially women and girls, but an increasing number of boys and men, feel inadaquate in women that they take up to much space and with men that they don't take up enough, both torture their bodies and minds trying to reach an unachievable goal of looking perfect. 

    IF I LOOK PERFECT THE WORLD WILL FIT ME

    Only it dosen't and you feel fake an imposter pretending to be one of the beautiful, successful people, you crumble inside the flame of your being deminshes, crushed by the need to be perfect, accepted, only what you get is hostility. Far from bringing success, it brings anger and resentment from others, you get sneared at by shop assistants, 'we don't do that size in that length, only short people are allowed to be that size'. 'Women with feet as big as yours never want an open shoe', the subtext being you have feet like a troll so go away and stop cluttering up our shop and the "beautiful" people that come here. Then you start to realise, you will never be one of the beautiful people, you will never be good enough.

    I think this is the point when you realise its peak pain, and you either die or you start asking questions.

    WHO DECIDED I DON'T FIT? 

    A very good question, who does decided this, the media, they report on it, show existing and developing trends and help move it along and widen the audience. Manufacturers who make this stuff that dosen't fit us, well if we keep buying it they'll keep making it. "Society" whatever that is and which section of it, I mean who decided that in order to be eco and sustainable I have to be below a certain height and size, so we come back to how space we're allowed to take up in the world.

    The world has decided that people only want certain types of food, foods that I often can't eat. I have to choose between digestive pain that can last for days, or missing out on social events which brings the pain of loneliness and missing out, watching from the outside whilst other have fun. I'm an only child, I'm good at watching others and doing things by myself. I'm an autistic only child I excell in watching others doing things that I can't, don't want to do, can't understand.

    I DON'T FIT AND I'M CONFUSED

    So I think s0d the lot of you, I'll do my autisitc only child things, I'll watch you, so as I know when its safe and mostly stay out of your way. I'm good at entertaining myself, so I do the things I enjoy that you don't understand and don't want to do because you're afraid of being seen as weird. 

    I EMBRACE BEING WEIRD AND AM LIBERATED BY IT

    I'm frequently still confused, but now I feel I'm asking the right questions and have stopped asking if it's alright with others if I exist in the way that I do. It is alright, its more than alright, why should I care if they don't laugh at the things I find funny, why should I care if they dont' share my intellectual  ideas, my spirituality, oddly enough most of them want to share my food!

    So I exist in a space where I've cleared the decks of so much that brings me pain, asking the right questions has externalised the negative messages so long internalised. I still hurt, I still get out of bed and it sounds like I'm stepping onto bubble wrap, I still need to make an appointment for the osteopath. I still don't feel a sense of belonging anywhere or really with anyone, except the land that I've loved all my life, they trees I could see from my childhood bedroom window, the places that make my soul feel young, that nourish me, there have been people too, others who've walked beside me for a while, who I've learned from. 

    I AM A HUMAN BEING NOT A HUMAN DOING

  • in reply to Phased
    Phased said:
    Cawthorne-Cooksey works like Ariadne’s Thread; it is a systematic, step-by-step recalibration where the brain software traces alternative visual and proprioceptive pathways to solve the balance puzzle. Conversely, Brandt-Daroff functions more like a brute-force heuristic;

    Interesting comparison. I might try to Cawthorn-Cooksey to see if it's more effective the next time I experience dizziness. Rather amusing, the consultant for my diagnosis recommended playing squash or badminton.

    I never tried Qigong, although I did learn Tai Chi for a while until I had to give up because my brain failed to process the instructions quickly enough during classes to keep up.


    Phased said:
    It seems whether we are navigating a spatial labyrinth or the social architectures of the neurotypical world, we are constantly oscillating between exhaustive backtracking, algorithmic refactoring, and survival heuristics to get back on our feet after the maze knocks us down.

    It's a fascinating idea to explore. Wouldn't it be lovely if we had an orgainsed kit of such survival techniques akin to my hospital physio exploration of which Brandt-Daroff exercises work for any given individual. It seems to me that's it's largely left to autistic people to build our own kit like a magpie collecting shiny things. organisations such as the NAS can point to some options, but it's a fragment torn from a potential library. That would be an area of research better donw systemically by neurodivergent health specialists rather than the fire-fighting due to lack of resources or, worse, moral panic at understanding to number of autistic people in the population and attempts to redefine autism. But that seems a hopeless dream in a world of, as you called it, brute-force heuristics.

    Until then, I agree - it's down to us to swap notes and decide between blue pills and red pills.

  • in reply to Alexa
    Thinking further on your note about Ariadne's Thread being a formal logic method for puzzle-solving, it makes me think about how it directly contrasts with heuristics. In logic, Ariadne’s Thread is exhaustive, systematic backtracking—unwinding your steps through every turn until you find the exact point of error. A heuristic is just a practical rule-of-thumb shortcut to find an immediate, functional answer.
    That distinction maps perfectly onto the vestibular routines we talked about. Cawthorne-Cooksey works like Ariadne’s Thread; it is a systematic, step-by-step recalibration where the brain software traces alternative visual and proprioceptive pathways to solve the balance puzzle. Conversely, Brandt-Daroff functions more like a brute-force heuristic; it doesn't map a precise path, but relies on habituation—running a repetitive loop to flood the system until the brain builds a shorthand filter to ignore the error.
    I suppose we could look at a routine like the Epley maneuver—which rotates the head through precise geometric angles to physically steer loose ear crystals out of the canals using gravity—as a form of physical code refactoring. In logic and computing, refactoring is rewriting the internal structure of code to make it efficient and stable without changing its external behavior. Practicing the forms of Taiji and Qigong does this exact same structural refactoring for the body; it takes chaotic, trauma-guarded movement and methodically cleans up the internal neuro-mechanical pathways to optimize our biological baseline and learning the best way to get back up again after a "knockdown" is essnetial I think as one cannot avoid it happening.
    It seems whether we are navigating a spatial labyrinth or the social architectures of the neurotypical world, we are constantly oscillating between exhaustive backtracking, algorithmic refactoring, and survival heuristics to get back on our feet after the maze knocks us down.
    There is real hope in this kind of mapping. By using these frameworks to consciously name and decode our experiences, we stop being passive captives of the maze. Every time we swap these notes, we are actively identifying our shared thread, making it easier for ourselves and others to safely navigate our way back home to our own baseline.
    Best wishes,
    Phased

  • in reply to Alexa
    Hi  
    Thank you for that correction—both on the thread color and the exercises. You are right about Mary Renault; I've not read them myself but a quick bit of research on my part helps me understand that her retellings color much of how we picture those Cretan adventures. I also appreciate you pointing out Ariadne's Thread as a formal logic method for puzzle-solving. It fits well with how we map our way through these systemic loops.
    Your clarification on the Brandt-Daroff routine is noted, especially given your 40-year tracking of what works for your system. Looking into how clinical practice handles the "labyrinth," there is a clear mechanical distinction between the two routines that mirrors our discussion about environments:
    • Brandt-Daroff functions as a mechanical clearance. It was designed to shift loose crystal debris out of the ear canals, resetting the physical landscape.
    • Cawthorne-Cooksey acts more like a neurological software update. It forces the brain to find alternative visual and body signals to compensate for a compromised nerve.
    Because general hospital printouts often bundle these together under a general heading, it makes sense why a specialised diagnostic physician was needed to isolate the exact movements your system required to find its baseline.
    For me, learning how to track these internal signals and external anchors came from practicing the "forms" of various martial arts, Taiji and Qigong mostly these days for me. The rigid geometry of a form provides a deliberate template to manage proprioception, balance, and visual/auditory field awareness when our internal sensors are chaotic.  This tracking serves as a direct correlate to the vestibulo-ocular reflex (VOR); you are physically fixing your gaze on a single structural target to stabilize your entire field of vision while your head moves. This connects to your note on Mary Renault's "red thread" and my wife’s fine art dissertation (I've just asked my wife and it's possible that Mary Renault's books ring a bell with her - I've promised her i'll find a copy :-) ) which explored classical theories that the thread was a metaphor for cyclical, bodily biology. Using Ariadne's thread as a logical "backtracking" method to solve a maze applies well here. It is how we use physical data to trace our steps backwards through a meltdown, finding the precise points where the neurotypical world overloaded our systems.
    I resonate with your extension of the metaphor, especially viewing the Minotaur not just as the general threat of burnout, but as the beast that has to be killed to save the lives of those fed to it. The labyrinth is this unyielding NT world, and the monster inside it consumes us systematically. Whether it's a customised exercise sequence, a sensory haven, or choosing to answer the door in a house kaftan, finding those practical, external anchors is how we keep from being swallowed by the maze while we find ways to dismantle the threat. I am holding onto that image of the sensory thread rescuing sanity; it serves as a straightforward justification for radical unmasking - meaning completely stopping the exhausting, automatic effort to act neurotypical, choosing instead to prioritise the biological baseline over social expectations.
    Best wishes,
    Phased
  • in reply to Phased
    Phased said:
    I've personal experience of Cawthorne-Cooksey exercises, which I think that you may be referring to.

    Labyrinthitis uses Brandt-Daroff, of which there are about 30, although only about 6 are normally pictured in online print-outs. I was assessed 40 years ago at the only hospital in the UK dealing with Labyrinthitis at that time for what worked then. I paid for a diagnostic physician to reassess the exercises I needed in 2015.

    Phased said:
    a sensory haven reminds me of finding Ariadne’s golden thread

    Is my memory at fault? I had thought it was a red thread. Oh, upon checking Theoi, I suspect I took red from Mary Renault's book about Theseus' Kretan adventures. By the way, do you know that Ariadne's Thread is a method of puzzle-solving in logic?

    I like the idea of the sensory thread rescuing one's sanity (= Theseus, though I'm not sure he's the best representative of that quality!) from one's potential melt-downs/burn outs (= the Minotaur). In such a metaphor, the labyrinth could = this NT world. I'm tempted to link the double empathy problem with Theseus abandoning Ariadne on Naxos, but that's probably pushing things too far. Stuck out tongue closed eyes

  • in reply to Phased

    PS I hope that one day I'll open my door to the unexpected doorbell rings in my kimono!

  • in reply to Alexa
    Hi  
    Thank you for sharing this. It is helpful for me to see how your body shifted its stress mapping over time, from nocturnal scratching to labyrinthitis. The feedback loop you described—waking up to deal with the physical effects of nighttime stress—mirrors the daily debt I’ve been trying to decode in my own experience.
    Picking up on the conversation you and I shared previously about Greek myths, your labyrinthitis makes me think of that of Theseus in the labyrinth. When my own internal balance and spatial awareness fail completely, it feels like being trapped in that maze. I've personal experience of Cawthorne-Cooksey exercises, which I think that you may be referring to.
    For me, this maze is also a compelling metaphor for navigating the double empathy problem. It highlights how communication breaks down not from a lack of empathy, but because we are trying to cross paths while operating inside completely different structural layouts. Your shift to physical exercises, digital communication, and a sensory haven reminds me of finding Ariadne’s golden thread—using external, practical tools to anchor oneself and navigate when both internal signals and external social architectures are compromised.
    For me, letting go of expectations around daily dress codes or choosing web forms over phone calls are necessary ways to lower background situational stress. Using your post-diagnosis lens to replace historical guilt and shame with a neutral understanding of autistic behavior has been a catalyst for my own tracking, and it helps me see how unmasking actively supports my baseline now.
    Best wishes,
    Phased

  • My body expressed stress until my 30s as scratching at night, which caused extra stress when I woke and realised I had to deal with the effects of that. Labyrinthitis took over from there, which responded to the usual medication until my very last job, when the pills stopped working and I had to rely on long-established physical exercises in an attempt (not always successful) to control it. Wrapping myself in my special interest helped for a couple of decades before I retired.

    Unfortunately, retirement coincided with a major burn out as the result of chronic and acute stress factors. Cannabis helped me through the worst and has been replaced by living alone, setting up my home as a sensory haven and minimising the need to make phone calls by utilising web contact forms and email as much as possible. I have largely stopped bothering if I respond to an expected ring of my doorbell in my house kaftan rather than proper clothes. Smile

    Also, since diagnosis, I am learning to identify patterns of social behaviour that induced guilt/shame as autistic and using my understanding to inform others of the reason for the behaviour. Unmasking relieves the guilt/shame.  

  • in reply to TheCatWoman
    Hi  
    Thank you for sharing this. Please don't apologise; this is exactly the kind of response I was looking for. Hearing how "one-size-fits-no-one" seating forces your joints to overcompensate is a very clear example of how external environments mess with our bodies.
    It makes complete sense how that physical strain connects down to your knees and ankles, just as teeth-grinding shows the mechanical toll of constant pain. Your frustration with medical professionals who assume a lack of basic self-care is a very common, exhausting experience when dealing with complex, chronic issues in my experience too.
    While the Prometheus metaphor I used captures the cyclical, repetitive nature of the daily burnout loop, your Phoenix metaphor represents the baseline defiance needed to keep going after that environmental wear-and-tear.
    Getting a sofa, mattress, and pillows that actually fit your body are practical, necessary adjustments to protect your baseline and exactly what I did this morning for mine while I waited for my rib pain to settle enough to get on with my day. Thank you for sharing your perspective and for focusing on that underlying persistence; it is exactly the kind of shared experience that helps people rebuild their context.
    Best wishes,
    Phased
  • in reply to Jamesmac
    Hi  ,
    Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts! I think there might be a slight misinterpretation here—by "night stasis," I didn't mean sleep paralysis (which is the temporary, limp immobilization where the brain wakes up before the body's REM sleep switch turns off).
    Instead, I was referring to the normal physical immobility of regular sleep, where internal physiological stress and muscle tension quietly build up overnight.
    The morning transition I described is heavily driven by the Cortisol Awakening Response (CAR). This is a natural, sharp spike in hormones that our autonomic nervous system releases right as we wake up to jumpstart the day. For an autistic nervous system navigating chronic trauma, the exact moment of waking is also when the mind instantly kicks into gear, immediately going over ongoing situational stresses.
    For me, that sudden surge of hormonal activity and cognitive load slams directly into already hyper-tight tissues, triggering an immediate physical guarding response and sharp pain under my ribs. The post I've made is inviting others to explore where their own bodies map stress, how they realized it was an active somatic mirror of autistic burnout, and what environmental adjustments help them accommodate it.
    Best Wishes

  • "Night Stasis"? I think that's just sleep paralysis, tbh. It's a surprisingly common occurrence   

  • I guess I was lucky as this sort of thing was part of my counselling training, we had to learn about ourselves before we could look at a clients body posture and ways of holding themselves to learn about where they held pain. I tend to clench my buttocks when uncomfortable which is often, I find a lot of seating uncomfortable and I fidget and wriggle, much to the annoyance of some. This often ends up in my knees and ankles that have been used to prop myself up on unsuitable seating where I can't let my weight sit where it should, often because of generic one size fits no one seats. They are usually to short in the seat and not enough leg room in general so I have my knees jammed up against the seat in front, lumber support is in the wrong place and pushes me out of shape, so I sit bolt upright, unable to use my core properly as I'm so bent out of shape.

    Having fibromyalgia as well as athritis I'm usually in pain and tired anyway. This makes me irritable and suffer fools even less gladly that usual, I get really annoyed when people assume I'm stupid and have been unable to do the most basic self care things and then get cross when told that I have tried the things they've suggested to no avail, this is especially bad with medical professionals.

    I grit my teeth again pain too, now they're totally knacked and I need thousands of pounds to either replace them with implants or have dentures, luckily I can make lots of good soups and am happy to eat foods that don't require much chewing.

    Despite all the pain and discomfort I live with daily, I'm to thrawn to give in, I just keep going until I fall over, which I do quite often, I'm so glad I insisted on a sofa of the right size and shape for me and managed to find a mattress thats comfy and the right pillows, pillows are really important. 

    I do fall, trip and stumble, I get things wrong, and I end up thinking a lot about the things I've done "wrong", but I've learnt to let go, for the most part. There have been many people over the years who have tried to put me down and keep me down, but they can't I'm a pheonix, just when they think I'm down and out I rise again more magnificent than ever.

    ' I'm a fire starter', not an arsonist, but someone who helps others become pheonix's too, I want us all to be pheonix's, to rememeber evenwhen we feel at our lowest, most hurt and broken, especially then, that theres a spark that will turn to a flame and we will rise and be glorious.

    Sorry that probsbly wasn't the answer you wanted.