Published on 12, July, 2020
I feel exhausted after work. OK, many people, ND and NT do. It often feels like autistic exhaustion and I can't do anything else that day and sometimes not the next either (I work two days a week). But over the last few months (I'm not sure when exactly), "exhausted" has become light-headed, dizzy, faint and generally unwell, although articulating more precise symptoms than "unwell" is hard. Sometimes it persists into the next day.
Has anyone else experienced autistic exhaustion like this?
Unfortunately, there are a lot of other potential suspects to eliminate:
- dehydration (but it doesn't always go after drinking).
- low blood sugar (but it doesn't always go after eating).
- low blood pressure (I do have low blood pressure, but this doesn't seem like a normal 'standing up too fast' headrush and lasts a long time).
- medication side-effects (entirely possible, but I haven't changed meds for a while, so it seems strange that it would just start).
- sleep issues (I'm being investigated for a sleep disorder, so it could be tiredness related to that, although sometimes it persists after sleeping).
Thanks for helping!
Luftmentsch said:light-headed, dizzy, faint and generally unwell
That sounds like the list of symptoms I took to my dr and got a diagnosis of stress. I had thought it was a physical illness. Took time off my PhD, went on a useless course on dealing with stress, took more time off my PhD, got counselling but as it was on the NHS not for long enough (plus my Mum got cancer so we ended up talking more about that and never got close to sorting my problem), eventually gave up my PhD. Sound like autistic burnout? That was a decade before I had any inkling I might be autistic. I do wonder if having known might have meant I didn't have to give that up, or better still not having reached that point.
I do have very poor energy levels. I have a physical disability (arthritis) since about age 20 for which the main symptom has always been exhaustion, such that as my kind doesn't show up in a blood test they thought it was post-viral fatigue or ME for a year. At the point I got the burnout mentioned above I was sad that my energy levels were only about half that of a normal person. Now I think back longingly of having as much as 50% energy! Now it is more like 10%.
I'm sorry to hear about your poor energy levels and also your stress/burnout experience. It sounds somewhat similar to my experience doing my BA and then my MA, both of which were interrupted by severe depression, which in retrospect was probably burnout-related. My energy levels have never fully recovered from that either, but things seem to have got worse recently and I can't work out if that's because of worse autistic exhaustion, life stresses or something else.