Autistic burnout: prevention and coping

[Music] hello and welcome to a friday night live stream with yo sandy sam before we get started let's just do a regular test can you all hear me let's just check that my mic is working um so please just indicate in the comments or in the the call to the live chat the live chat that you're all in um that i that you can hear me i can't hear you of course uh which is what i was gonna say um so welcome um oh my gosh there's so many people already uh all the comments coming flooding in i will try to keep up um i'm gonna have this is gonna be like a more chill vibe i think because firstly i've not had a great week week and secondly like sometimes i feel like i just i try to over entertain over entertain and i think that gives me kind of anxiety you know i mean it's yeah it's pretty difficult being live on the internet but so i'm just gonna try and like have a nice chat take things slowly it's not gonna be like super must be on the game all the time i'm gonna have a look at some of the messages and try and interact a little bit more and just chill i hope that's all right with everybody um some people say chill is nice actually hold on um where is everybody from today we have got i'm just gonna read out some places uh somebody's first time on my live hello and now you're in immortalized in the live now um we've got somebody from pennsylvania um hello um we have got somebody from oregon hello we've got someone from denmark this is fun this is way more fun than like concentrating on anything uh that we got some from ireland and scotland oh sorry i'm doing this way too fast this is me getting carried away now i promised i'd be chill so hello basic bath from scotland we have got somebody from portugal um just waiting for me to click on somebody with an inappropriate thumbnail right and i have to awkwardly uh remove it um we've got someone from prague from belgium from liverpool san antonio texas scotland an australian in norway um so we are global today and that's really nice to see um and of course we've got representation from brazil my wonderful assistant and moderator tonight um so don't be naughty in the chat people um so today uh wow god i've just seen this 190 people watching that's really cool um the quote that uh i found i don't i don't know where i found this quote um i probably just typed in quotes into the internet which is how i do most of my research the flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long and i thought that was particularly relevant tonight i was actually planning to have like candles and stuff behind me as a sort of visual metaphor for burnout but then i thought that maybe that's overkill and like i don't need to joke about everything i amuse myself um so today's today's topic is almost as cheery as my recent video on trauma so um i've lightened the mood i did have herbal tea i'm now drinking water um i think that drinking wine sets would set the wrong tone although i do have herbal wine which is interesting it's called blood wine i don't know if it's a dutch thing or not but anyway not drinking that tonight drinking water um and i've also noticed that my jumper unintentionally matched the thumbnail that i put on several weeks ago so that's kind of cool and serendipitous and all of that kind of stuff so um before i get started i just want to shout out to all my members who are here and the new ones who just signed up that i am uh trying to keep track of when this uh uh chat keeps going down because it's going pretty quickly um so um what was i even saying this is the problem i still i'm still having brain problems um which we'll talk about later maybe concentration problems running a live chat is um is actually quite difficult because you have to concentrate on what you're saying you have to make sure that all the tech is set up correctly i do have some notes um i have the live chat and i also have the discord in the background as well so it's really a concentration issue but yes give me patience um right blood wine blood wine is klingon oh it's called blue divine which i don't know whether that's just a dutch thing or if that's an english translation or the person who did something to do with klingon uh was dutch perhaps um anyway let's get on to the topic tonight you didn't come here to hear me waffle or did you um i'm really hyping myself up now this is terrible okay so let's talk about autistic burnout because we're several minutes in already um so this is something that i think um probably the majority of autistic people experience at some point and i feel like it's so common it's like a cool component of being autistic so what actually is it um you may have had a burnout before but what is autistic burnout and this is basically a prolonged period of intense physical mental and emotional exhaustion exhaustion that's hard way to say ranging from lasting like a couple of weeks to a month um or it can even last for years or decades i don't want to i don't want to depress anyone because a lot of people here they're looking for hope and i don't want to be like it will last for decades it can last for decades but i'll get to the reasons why it might do you know in a bit um the fact that you're here means that you probably will find strategies to to cope with it so so that's a good thing um so this period of exhaustion is sometimes accompanied by a lot of skills for example children autistic children might appear to regress although i don't like that term because it implies that development is linear it implies this kind of linear progression and then you go backwards so like a previously speaking child might stop communicating in the kind of socially demanded way like speech or something but loss of skills can also apply to adults and you wouldn't say that an adult has regressed because they're demonstrably an adult um and for adults this can be to an extent where you might appear to function less well i'm going to stay away from functioning labels because i think this is relevant to functioning labels because the main issue i have with functioning labels is that i think that autistic people function differently throughout different periods of their life and we'll come back to that with the sort of the peeps and the troughs of autistic burnout and periods of depression and stuff like that but functioning labels you know there are some periods in my life where i've functioned very well and some periods of my life where i have not and so that's why you can't just say this person is high functioning or low functioning because it varies and it's sort of like the the tides if you will um so along with possible loss of skills um during an autistic burnout you might find that you are increasingly sensitive to stimuli that didn't bother you beforehand so you might be very intolerant to noise um light well any sensory stimuli really um you just find that things like that bother you more than they did and you can't cope with it and um i would say that my experience has mostly it's mostly sound that that overwhelms me um but we'll get onto that later um there are also quite a few cognitive changes that may happen during a period of autistic burnout for example speech might become harder and i don't know how many of you will have seen one of the first videos that i did on my channel it was called something like things i struggle with as an autistic person like my autistic struggles something like this i think it was the second video that's public on this channel um now you're wondering what's private aren't you um so uh if you look at that video you will notice that i am struggling to form sentences uh because that video was not scripted i'd done bullet points that was before i realized if i'm gonna do youtube i'm gonna have to script it otherwise people aren't gonna sit there and watch me going um anyway so that period of my time i had just come out of basically a burnout period and that was brought on by sleep deprivation a really bad period a poor period of sleep from my son um and i just completely lost the ability to form sentences and that's something that has happened as a result of becoming a mother as well which um we'll talk about motherhood and burn out autistic burnout also a little bit later i wrote notes for this live and normally i write notes it's like one or two pages sometimes three and um i have seven pages of notes so we're either gonna be here a while or i'm gonna have to do more videos on this topic and i think i will do more videos because i started writing and i was like this is the core of the autistic struggle of the autistic experience this is very very important so fear not especially if you missed this or you know i have to run out suddenly halfway through we will we will come back to this topic um so in addition to speech becoming more difficult you know just not feeling like you can word you know you can't think of the right word you can't form sentences you're kind of stuck um other cognitive skills might be effective affected such as decision making executive functioning that's another big one with me memory issues even um you might find your mood changes and you might find that if you are an autistic who did a lot of masking you previously seemed normal to the outside world not autistic you might start displaying more obviously autistic traits and people might go you know like are you faking being autistic because you didn't used to do that but you might just start displaying it because you're not masking as much so as you can imagine it's a very big deal for us and um the problem is it's pretty much unheard of outside of these comforting online circles and even autistic people don't know that much about it so there is very little research there is barely any research done into autistic burnout specifically there is very little written to help us guide us out of burnout because everything that refers to burnout without specifically being autistic burnout is um talking about a neurotypical version which i will also come to later so i've just been reading on uh my notes so i've not been paying attention to the chat let's have a look and see um what people have been saying so let me have a look because i'm like i'm blathering on and then all of a sudden i'm like oh yeah people are chatting and they might want me to talk to them um so autumn says here autistic burnout is how i discovered i was autistic it was a true eye-opener and that for me is extremely true as well because when i had that light bulb moment i was like four months postpartum and all throughout pregnancy i'd basically been an autistic burnout and kind of like continuing after having a child because it's exhausting so that was how i realized that i was autistic because it exacerbated my autistic traits that had always been there but it was like i couldn't ignore them anymore um let's have a look and see what there are a lot of people who are writing who are in the middle of a major burnout and i hope that things are okay i also want to remind you that this year is unusually stressful for various reasons so um you know it's you're not alone it's something that's happening to a lot of us and i've been kind of like on and off the brink of burnout the only reason i haven't burnt out is just sheer force of will and like realizing realizing that i'm a burning out and taking steps to avoid it and that is something that i will also come to you later i'm like later later later um but you know we've got we've got some pages of notes to get through um so um corvin i i don't know if that's how you pronounce your name says i literally had to stop working move home and just self-care and rest social assistance helped and this is um this is a very good point uh that i will also make about myself avoiding burnout is that the netherlands has a very good support system for autistic adults i have had an autistic coach for um a year and a half now something like that and i also have had psychological support which is specifically for autistic people post burnout and um i also have a little bit of municipality support in in household areas so i get a lot of support compared to some countries and that is definitely something that has made a big impact on my ability to cope um so let me have a look and see um somebody sent me a super sticker but i can't see what it is because i'm in my streaming soft software so i'm really sad um well i'm sure it's a cute sticker thank you anna um right now i'm completely losing track on this see isn't it much better when i have a guest and we can just talk and i'm not like no i said i'd be chill right um so gary says i use cbt to help with my asperger's but cbt is not a cure for autism like masking isn't um so after using all this coping techniques to get tired and burnt out new typicals just naturally think neurotypicals and yeah this is this is the thing that i mentioned in my trauma video i think that cbt um is not designed with autistic people in mind uh it can work for autistic people it can also not work very well um so when we're thinking about burnout and strategies for that it's not as simple as i just take some time off work and rest um and that's kind of why i ended up with so many pages of notes um mandy lorde says i find it much more difficult to recover from burnout as a mother and i think that that is very true i keep on vaguely hinting at motherhood promise i'll get to it but motherhood is non-stop and so the thing about well motherhood or parenthood is that you never you can never catch up to yourself kind of like you can never get that break because as soon as you have you have two hours and you feel relaxed and maybe the child comes back into your house you're like um so you just never get the opportunity to have that time that you need to rest in that space and peace and quiet so i'll talk about that a little bit later um but i think that autistic burnout and motherhood autistic motherhood kind of go together um a lot of the time right um okay so um i've read some comments so let's talk about how it's diff different to regular burnout because um it is becoming a term that more and more people recognize you know especially in the netherlands where it i think it's i don't know it's a recognized psychological disorder but it's a it's a thing that your doctor can sign you off for work you know you can be signed off with burnout and a lot of people i know actually have um and i used to i used to take the piss out of it i thought oh burn out that's like because they can't handle work or whatever like they don't know what it's like to i don't know work hard i i don't know i used to think it was like this funny thing and it's it's obviously not like obviously i've matured how about though um but regular burnout when it's spoken about just burnout is specifically a workplace or work related phenomena and that's not to say that it's not a problem that can also have severe repercussions if it's not managed but autistic burnout is not always based around workplace stress and it's more like life stress and the difference is that it also takes less stuff or different stuff to get there so it's something that neurotypical people would not consider that would be cause for burning out can be a trigger or a contributing factor to burn out for an autistic person um so neurotypicals don't experience this outside the workplace because if they do it's called something else i imagine um except i can imagine neurotypicals who are in um like a carers role so either they're a parent caring for um maybe a disabled child uh so they might be working non-stop i think that might be a situation where a neurotypical person might experience burnout but essentially they are still working um so now of course autistic people can get regular work burnout like everyone but we can also burn out for a variety of additional reasons and this might be including um masking or camouflaging sorry i can't for some reason i lost the ability to talk sketching my face i'm like i need to do this first and then i can talk um masking or camouflaging is extremely energy intensive and i think the energy required to do it is part of the reason why it can be a contributing factor to burnout because it just takes so much out of us you know um over stimulation or unsuitable sensory environments and this would be like in a workplace school or home setting and i would say like bullying but maybe even low-level bullying so like unsatisfactory social relationships being around people you don't like even um and obviously all of these things kind of like it's not one thing but they all add up and especially if you don't know you're autistic they can build up over a lifetime and that's that's where it ends up in the situation where you've been masking you might be very successful actually at your life and you've been masking and nobody would even suspect you're autistic but you have been autistic all this time and then you hit i don't know 40 50 60 and you burn out and um and i think it's those situations where you end up in a in a very low prolonged state of autistic burnout um but you know it's any point in life where the un where the ongoing environment is chronically hostile to the autistic person and so for me how i understand it or how i would like to explain it um and please don't think that i am like the ultimate authority on this as i said there isn't that much research and um it's it's obviously going to be different for different people so i'm drawing on the research that i have done and my own experiences talking to other people's experiences um but the the way i see it is that autistic burner burnout is the result of things that are specifically stressful to autistic people that present as chronic stress to the body mind um or you know chronic emotional stress often combined with things that might also be considered stressful to non-autistic people um so things that you know what are regular people find stressful um changing jobs losing your jobs divorce moving house um you know breakups um having a child like all of these things are stressful events and um i can't remember what it's called but you can search there is a kind of ranking of the most stressful life events so you can have a look and you know he tick if you score over a certain amount in the last year it's like yes you're very stressed and so all of these things obviously happen to autistic people as well um and i and i think they probably are important in in regards to the burnout things because you know everyday life comes with stress but the thing that makes the autistic burnout more difficult to get out of is that the stress might be not be recognized or the cause of the stress might not be recognized by the people around them so for example over stimulation chronic over stimulation um you know i i know someone who has moved house and lives in an apartment building um where you know the noise it's not necessarily loud in terms of decibels but it's kind of irritating noise and this kind of like constant um agitating noise and your typical person might say well what's the big deal you know just ignore it kind of thing but an autistic person obviously can't and um and that has really severe repercussions for for their life and so that's that's kind of the difference and i hope that i hope that i'm explaining this right um send me some send me some signs that um that that you're all getting this um because um oh like the chat's just going on i can't even i can't even with the chat you guys are great um so if you want to know what a burnout looks or feels like um you probably will start to recognize a lot of similarities with what we think of as depression because a burnout from an autistic burnout from the outside and also from the inside can look a lot like depression uh you might be exhausted you know i've already mentioned the exhaustion uh you might find that you are having more frequent meltdowns or shutdowns um irritability or loss of connection from others including safe people um and irritability i can't say that irritability that's definitely something that is part of my burnout and that was something that over the summer when i took i took a break of making videos on youtube at least um because i found myself getting irritable at things that were not intrinsically annoying um you know so for me obviously i'm in a kind of a i guess unique situation for an autistic person you know there's not that many autistic people that are like have a big social media following like no actually they probably are autistic people with social media followings but like specifically about autism as well makes it more stressful because i obviously get a lot of messages and i found myself getting really annoyed by the nice messages that people would send me and you know somebody would send me a nice message like i love your videos and i'd be like oh god why do they want me to talk to them you know and i would get really um super irritated um sorry one sec i'm getting distracted by notifications now um that was an important one maybe um i would get really super irritated uh have i lost sound or something have i lost sound i'm just checking i hope not um i'm like getting a lot of frantic calls now oh somebody can hear me okay everyone can hear the sound so okay all right i'm just kidding never mind don't worry oh sorry i'm so confused now um right that like that totally freaked me out because uh the moderator of this chat called me on discord and i like just basically freaked out um and it was because i'd not seen a super chat but hold on let me go um i'm gonna read this one out because uh i'm gonna read this one out so the super chat said that i missed and i'm really sorry um i don't think autistic burnout is avoidable in a world designed for neurotypical um in a world designed for neurotypicals also thank you so much for all you do so thank you so much to ms tree uh i'm really sorry that i missed your super chat it's not um it's not appearing on my um on my thing so do you know what this is the whole distraction thing like i see something and then all of a sudden i'm panicking um okay so um let's have a look so yeah i was talking about the irritability and how people would send me nice messages look i'm doing that again i was like a little bit irritated that somebody sent me a nice message on the super chat like i this is something that it's taken me months to kind of like come down from not even being fully burned out just being almost burnt out um packaban says don't be distracted you can choose to stay focused thank you i probably have adhd on medicated but thank you i will choose to stay focused right now um oh hello um right so the irritability kind of goes hand in hand with anxiety and anxiety is kind of one thing but also this feeling of constantly being on edge and along with anxiety irritability and being on edge of course comes sleep problems and once you have sleep problems that exacerbates the whole thing doesn't it because once you're not sleeping you're not resting and especially if you're not you're sleeping but you're not sleeping well and that's not really something that you can control is the quality of your sleep um so all of these things you know it it can be very hard to differentiate from depression um obviously a good professional will be able to help with this somebody who obviously knows about autistic burnout because if they don't know what autistic burnout is they're not going to know whether you're depressed or whether you're burnt out and i think you need to know before well before you start medicating potentially because you know if you're not depressed then well what is the purpose of taking the medication well i don't know let's not talk about medication right now um but the difference between regular burnout and i'll call it neurotypical depression the the depression as described in psychological literature is that depression typically develops in all parts of your life um sorry the difference between regular burnout as a neurotypical burnout and near typical depression is that depression is like all all encompassing all parts of your life you know you wake up you think what is the point kind of thing um and the burnout is specific to one area but of course they can occur together and one usually predicts the other so if you've been depressed before in life you are more likely to burn out and this is for neurotypical people um but there are not there's not a lot of information or research out there about autistic burnout and autistic depression probably because a lot of what we see as autism symptoms are the result of burnout or depression in us or the result of autistic people under stress um so let me just reiterate that point that a lot of what we think is how autistic people are we're actually seeing an autistic stress response um and i'm trying to think of an example i didn't write one down in my notes and i can't think of one on the fly so that's not very helpful is it um so we don't anywhere have a really clear picture or good idea of what a mentally healthy autistic person looks like we don't know that we don't know that from research um i think the autistic people i know are just desperately trying to avoid burnout all the time so it's it seems like you never meet an autistic person who's like i'm thriving and i'm living my best life and you know all of that it seems like there's always struggle and i feel like i've been recommended a lot of um youtube videos right now about people moving to cabins in remote areas of sweden i don't know why i guess youtube has got me like in a niche or something um and i feel like i feel sometimes like my best chance of happiness and avoiding burnout is to live a very isolated existence in nature with people that i um i i like um so um sorry i'm gonna say anna please stop messaging me it's really distracting um let's go to uh back to the chat um the moderator said that whoever sent the superchat thought that she offended me and absolutely did not offend me i just i can't see some of the super chats on my streaming thing and i'm really really sorry please yes i just wanted to clarify that um now i'm like i'm sorry i've been offending people i'm really sorry um thank you so much mel for your for your generous super chat that's really kind of you and thank you to ms tree as well um i'm sorry do you know what i was mostly annoyed by the fact that i was getting um notifications from somebody that i it like puts me in a bad frame of mind and this is actually i'm wondering whether i'm like mildly on the verge of burnout again so this is a very um this is a very um do you know what i really i really can't i can choose to focus but that does not mean that it will happen i promise you so um i'm trying to find this oh okay so miss tree i just wanted to clarify this because i was not talking about you when i said getting a nice comment annoyed me i promise you i was not talking about you i was talking about in july when um when i was like verging on burnout people would send me messages and i would just be really super annoyed about it and that was my one of my signs that i was beginning to burn out i was not see i'm autistic and i have a habit of putting my foot in my mouth by saying things in that don't communicate what i mean very well so um but i really i really appreciate you talking okay well this is super awkward isn't it i just want you guys to know that i'm just as awkward as you would expect in real life um right james says we can all relate sam yes thank you thank you i'm so glad you all relate to my super super awkward oh goodness um rob what rob wants me to compose myself do you know what it's been it's just been a really difficult week i'll talk about my week actually so i have um a condition called pmdd which is pre-menstrual dysphoric disorder um i will be working on a video about this actually but essentially it's like supercharged pms um and it is it is more commonly diagnosed in autistic people uh so yeah uh basically it means that for i would say one week out of the month but actually more than that because the hormonal changes kind of add up um like i just have horrible symptoms and mostly psychological symptoms um i don't know how to take this comment off now it seems like it's kind of awkward good let's put a heart on then people want me to take a break i'm taking a break i'm telling you about pmdd and um so basically uh for me it involves one day of like wishing i was completely obliterated from this earth and that's not the same as it's not exactly suicidal thoughts but it's just like i wish myself out of existence and that's one day and now that i know what that is and i know that it's one day when that day comes around i just kind of ignore it i'm like fine wish yourself out of existence see if i care kind of thing you know this internal internal dialogue but basically this week i don't know why this month has been particularly bad but um uh it just it's just been very bad from a hormonal perspective and um like i've just been trying to get off my phone get off instagram and stuff um things have been difficult with my child he's been stressed as well he's been like having these meltdowns and stuff so you know i don't i think i may be sort of like heading towards burnout if i don't take the steps but at the moment i'm just trying to take the steps and like waiting for the hormones to to settle down um so let's um i don't know what you mean anna by inviting you to help with the chat because oh i think hold on let me just copy it i don't know if this will even work let's see yeah i said that this was going to be chill and now i'm getting already like uh tense and stuff so um let me go back to my notes and stuff because a lot of you are asking stuff that i actually have plenty of notes written down about so we've talked um we've talked about my theory that we don't really know what mentally healthy autistic people look like if you look at the hashtag autistic joy online um that is a really nice one to to follow especially on instagram maybe on take talk i'm not on tick tock but um autistic joy is is really nice um just it's like a bunch of autistics happy stimming and flapping and you know doing nice autistic things but maybe that's a start maybe that should be like a campaign or something to try and um [Music] try and uh encourage people to share their happiness their you know their their good lives their part their good parts of their lives um so let me just i've got another quote for you but i don't have a nice little intro for this one um so i just wanted to say it is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society and that is a quote by a man called jiddu krishnamurti um who was in um i think he's i think he's dead yeah he died um quite a while ago but um so no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society and that is a very important point relating to autistic people even though it's not about them but i'm just making up for my own you know philosophy here because i feel like autistic people might just be the canaries in the coal mine as it were um and i think that quite often we can be the first indicators that something isn't right in the environment so for example we would be very sensitive to harsh sensory stuff that when they start getting worse so when there's a lot of fluorescent lights or a lot of sound neurotypical people would then start also getting sick from sick as in you know getting burnt out getting weary and exhausted from but because we're so much more sensitive it's like we're the first to notice that um so i've got these notes that are very mysterious to me right now about autism and depression not autism and depression um autistic burnout versus depression in autistic people and you know i'm not even really sure about that um i i've had periods of what i considered depression in my life and i have also um have had periods that i really now consider to be autistic burnout so for example when i first went self-employed in 2012 i went self-employed and i was just really eager to prove myself immediately and um i went self-employed for a variety of reasons related to probably burning out at work ironically um and then i decided that i was going to self-publish a book and it was september and i was like well i like christmas recipes so i'm gonna self-publish a christmas book okay and so some of you who have any idea about publishing are probably like sam honey please but i did you know i stopped work in august and then i pretty much started on the book at the first of september and then i had the book published i think i got the copies in november late november so i wrote i developed the recipes i tested the recipes i wrote the book i edited the book i published the book in the space of about two months and then um of course i'd spent no time marketing it didn't know how to market and barely sold any copies um and then spent like five months burnt out basically and i just it obviously i had no idea how to pace myself and that's kind of like a very extreme example but that was a very clear i built up with all this activity and then i'd burnt out so comparing that to other periods of my life where i'd been depressed there were different reasons and i think it's the reasons and the things that lead up to it that is how you determine the difference between burnout and depression autistic burnout and depression every time i'm gonna have to say autistic finance so i don't accidentally refer to neurotypical burnout um so somebody said what's the book called it's offline now it is offline because i had i had a bit of a freak out actually because somebody ordered it like and i hadn't noticed because i'd missed the email because i'm not checking the email account and like oh basically please don't do not do not remind me i shouldn't i shouldn't have mentioned it um so but talking more about like this idea of depression depression is kind of when for me when like gloom sets in it's it's about feeling just like there's no hope this hopelessness and i think that for me i only really want to talk about my own experiences because i don't want to generalize on this point but for me autistic burnout is more like exhaustion and not being able to keep up with anything not being able to think properly not being able to talk properly maybe like today um accidentally offending people i well i do that anyway but um and and these kind of things whereas depression is like i don't want to get out of my bed because what's the point um and like you lose intrinsic well you lose motivation in both for me i would say i'll lose more motivation and just like any value and joy and and finding goodness in in life um so i hope that that is uh a kind of like useful clarity but bear in mind this isn't like this isn't me saying this is how it is and this is what depression is like and this is what autistic burnout is like because i feel like it's different for everyone i mean the autistic spectrum is so broad anyway um and you know we just we need to do more research and not just research because it's going to take probably years for the research to catch up with this but you know we need to give a framework for people to talk about this we need to find a way for people to share their experiences i mean like everybody is welcome to start a youtube channel of course and like a lot of people have have been a lot of youtube channels and i think that is really helpful because it lets people um it lets people express different sides of autism and the autistic experience that aren't just me telling people about that so i think i don't know i don't really know what the solution is to it other than we need to do more research and we need to talk about it more i think we just we need to talk about it more because it seems like everyone i every autistic person i know is kind of like teetering on the edge of burnout and is having to really practice self-care on a very conscious level um very self-aware very conscious level to avoid creeping into it so um let me but i you know i i i don't know how much of a difference there really is between depression in an autistic person and burnout in an autistic person because it might be a part of the same thing it might be a part of just like an autistic life malaise or something like you know we don't know i mean we don't really know how to treat depression and neurotypical people either we you know people people use antidepressants and they work for some people and they don't work for other people and people do therapy and that works for some people and doesn't work for other people but you know other areas of science have come so far and psychology is still so behind in terms of like if psychology really worked consistently because it was based on science then we should have a cure for mental problems mental disorders but i think it doesn't take into account the fact that being depressed is not a mental disorder in itself being depressed is often a consequence of the environment and that's whether you're neurotypical or you're an autistic person um but understanding that you are autistic and i think that a lot of undiagnosed autistic people go through a series of mental health crises throughout their lives and then maybe eventually gets to a burnout point which is when they eventually get their diagnosis excuse me um but i feel like understanding and really believing that you are autistic and this is a thing this is not something that you made up in your head really coming to coming to terms with that is crucial to heal and to healing your burnout and to preventing future burnouts and if you don't believe me talk to talk to the people in chat talk to autistic people about their experiences and validate yourself through this realization and this can be hard if you are not able to access the diagnosis but you you can validate yourself without without a diagnosis i'm giving you permission to right now you know use do whatever you need to do to validate yourself um because feeling truly like you belong and feeling like yes i am autistic um that is something that that's the key to to going forward and and making changes and avoiding future burnouts um so i've been talking an awful lot now i'm gonna have some water um i mean i also think that when you get to that point of i've got my diagnosis you know things are going to turn around it's not just immediate it's a very long process of reflection it's a very exhausting process that could even contribute to burnout ironically enough like the process of realizing who you are is it's very emotionally draining emotionally intense so you know it's how long has it been since my diagnosis january 2019 so you know coming up to two years and i still have not processed everything um because i have three decades to unpack and and i think time is oh time is a healer there's a song in that isn't that i'm like where have i heard that before it's a song um mira send me a super chat thank you so much uh i've known depression and recently learned about bernard burnout and in my perspective they are related but very different experience and i think that's that's that's kind of what uh what i was saying with my experience they yeah they're related but very different experience that's a very good way of of putting it thank you mira um let me just see i can somebody asks me do you watch school of life channel i love alan de bottom to learn about psychology trauma depression um i used to actually i think i even went to an event at the school of life in london uh many many years ago like 10 years ago um i don't like their youtube channel because some of the stuff that they it's it's very patronizing and it's very like it's very exclusionary of anything but like i would say probably like the white male cis middle class viewpoint that i can't remember why i just remember that i saw a video and i was like this is not right and it and something annoyed me does anyone else ever get that feeling where you have bad associations with the whole thing because you know that something annoyed you but you can't actually remember what it is about the thing anyway um i don't uh is it alan de botton that runs the channel i'm not sure i can't remember i can't remember much these days i'm trying i'm trying to focus [Music] um i don't know how to take this the problem is i put one of these comments up on the bottom and then uh the chat goes on and then i need to actually press the comment again to get rid of it and i can't hide it so then i have to scroll up the chat to find it again um so let's see somebody says i feel that way about school of life youtube also okay that's good that's good that it's not um it's not just me that thinks that somebody said condescending i can't remember i can't remember where the um where the comment went but yeah it just it comes across a little bit like preachy sort of like how you know traditional western philosophy comes across as a little bit preachy inaccessible it's like doesn't really feel very true to me um so i don't know what this is in response response to but i appreciate the um the cheering on thank you um somebody says in the uk they do a police card in south yorkshire that tells them i'm autistic and how to deal with me when i'm overwhelmed i find it validating and that i can portray the real me it's scary yeah we have a card in the netherlands as well which is called the ortipas aotipas actually i don't know how to pronounce it but it's it's a literal card i am a card carrying autistic person i don't know why that makes me laugh so much um and it it's designed to show the police or i don't know prefer professionals maybe healthcare professionals who might come into contact with you and help them explain explain how to how you might react and how you might want to be treated uh for example don't touch me kind of thing um and i think they're relatively useless useful useless useful i meant i do think they're useful um as long as they are obviously trained in what to do when somebody hands you this card so definitely look them up to see if they are in your area um [Music] let me go to right so my notes my notes i've come to the tips section this isn't going to be um this isn't going to be a buzzfeed style 11 handy tips to help you recover now i'm afraid um all of the thoughts that i had i had a lot of thoughts oh you could do this and this and this i and to be honest it's per it's probably more apt for a course because even talking for probably like even two hours on here i don't think it's gonna be two hours tonight but you know talking on a live like this it just it's not enough to explain it's not enough to just say well do this and this and this and you'll be recovered from burnout because burnout is insidious and um it it builds up over a long time and it takes a while to to go away um you know uh i think this was something that they said about um eating disorders as well like anorexia however long it took to develop the disorder is how long it's going to take you to recover um so obviously if you've if you've had this problem for five years it'll take you another five years to recover and i don't know how much that is i don't know how whether that's the same for autistic burnout it sounds it sounds very um you know even and equal it sounds pleasingly pleasingly coherent but that doesn't necessarily make it true and i think you can do quite a few things not just to get out of burnout in the first place but to decrease the likelihood of developing it unfortunately none of these things are easy or necessarily simple but i think that the first thing that you need to do is to recognize patterns in your life and um you need to understand that it's a slow process and it's it's not like take a bath and rest and we'll see you at work on monday you know it's just not like that so um i like this kind of like intensive self introspection kind of stuff but recognizing patterns um could involve a therapist it doesn't necessarily need to could involve journaling or writing in a notebook which you probably should actually i think that would be a helpful thing especially if you haven't really journaled before because it will help you remember stuff it doesn't have to be a notebook it can be online or something uh well online you know private but um and this is something that you could use when you start to realize or recognize or remember things and if you are in a state of burnout uh it can be difficult to get clarity because you will have brain fog and brain fog is something that i frequently get in burnout and during depression and it's like you can't think your mind is trying to it's like you're in a swimming pool full of pudding and you're trying to swim that's how it feels in my mind and that's also goes hand in hand with executive functioning um issues so when when i get one of these feelings the brain fog the executive function goes as well um but you can also but if you feel this way about your life right now you can try and look back at look back in the past when you'd had periods of depression before maybe you've called them periods of depression because you didn't know about autistic burnout um the patterns might look something like peaks and troughs you know you might think okay what are the what are the times in my life when things were going really well and i was very energized all things were just going okay and what are the times in my life when i had really dark periods you know as it were um and you know you can then start to see patterns from that and the patterns might involve you recognizing hey during the summer i'm very energetic and during the winter i tend to have like significant periods of depression this is probably linked to seasonal affective disorder that's kind of like just a very basic example of a pattern another pattern might be like every time you had a really big or abrupt change you went into a period of depression or burnout so for example like leaving school or starting university or leaving university or um you know moving in with someone or breaking up with someone like all these big life changes that really disrupt the rhythm of your regular day-to-day life um so those are like the big picture pattern things you can you can look about look back at your life and think about what were the things that what were the times that didn't go well what the times that did go well and try to just work out try not to think why did that happen i don't know why that happened but try to think okay what was happening at that time you know not just what was a trigger but what was happening in the months before that time you know what was building up to it um and i think that can be a really useful self-discovery kind of thing um if you can look at your life on a day-to-day basis there are also patterns in your day-to-day life so for example if you work in i don't know if you work in a busy environment and you have to go take breaks throughout the day um you know when i was at school actually i just remembered this when i was writing the notes um i remembered like uh i used to ask her to the toilet in the middle of a class and just sit in the toilet for a bit take a break um so what other stimuli throughout the day that make you duck out you know is it like you've been in the cafeteria and it's a lot of noise try and and notice those daily patterns as well um you know is it social overwhelm or is it simulation like lights or noise um so um how do i put this one if there's a super chat but i can't put it on okay oh here we go um so just had a super chat from zalcian um social life seems to burn me out very quickly but i also need to see my loved ones and keep my social skills practiced how do you maintain normal so sociality and keep burnout in check um that's a very good question and that word normal is also extremely loaded um so if social stuff burns you out you can't maintain normal sociality i mean you need you need to see your loved ones and and that's a given but you might need to see them in a different way that um you know that is on your terms and not on their terms you might need to see them in a different environment um you also say keep your social skills practiced uh i think that can be a contributing factor you know this idea that you need to practice your social skills we've all been kind of shut in our houses for a while now and um clearly my tact has like my ability to be tactful has plummeted um so there is something to be said for social skills but i also think you can't practice anything when you're burning out and i think that managing burnout has to be has to be the priority um i think i missed a super chat somewhere i'm really sorry let me just have a look this one can stay on the screen now i'll have to look in my um carter did i miss another one i'm i don't know why these are not appearing for me i don't know why i'm really sorry um so i'm just gonna this one is from minnow coleman thank you mino um and you say i'm burnt out i'm 31 but i feel like i'm regressing emotionally and with executive function losing my short-term memory um being undiagnosed not knowing personally uh three months ago do people ever not recover and stay regressed um this is a very loaded question because i feel like you know saying like you're in burnt burnout and you've just had your diagnosis that's a really um that's a really difficult time in your life um and not just it's difficult to deal with both of those things at the same time i was lucky that i wasn't actually burnt out by the time i was diagnosed so dealing with both at the same time i think you just have to understand the enormity of what's just happened or what is happening um but i think that that that question you know you say um do people ever not recover and stay regressed i i think that you absolutely can recover i i don't think that there's any like biological or scientific reason why you couldn't recover if you make the right adjustments but the key is to knowing what those adjustments are um so i hope that wasn't that was okay um yeah i can't oh no i see it now but i can't add it to the chat i don't know this whole streaming thing is being really funky today and it's stressing me out so i'm really sorry um for the super chat people but i really appreciate your um your chats um i wish i could just see i can click it right here and i can see it but you can't sorry guys um right so yeah i would just say minnow don't lose uh don't lose hope because like you are what did you say three months being undiagnosed and not knowing personally three months ago so i don't know whether that means that you are diagnosed but like give yourself time to process you know it might take a few months but it is not like you're not a lost cause or anything like that and i totally understand this feeling of regressing emotionally like i become a lot more childlike when i'm under stress um so just please take care of yourself as well and i hope that some of the tips i can give you will uh will be a little bit more helpful um oh you've got another comment saying brain fog is the worst yes i it is the worst i don't know why i can put that one on but not the other one i'm really sorry um i've just seen another one saying she doesn't have a duck dutch accent because she isn't dutch that is correct i'm not dutch but my english accent has changed since living in the netherlands it's become more of a um european english which is mixed european english is i'm not going to get into this now but this is like european english has got a lot of americanisms um in terms of vocabulary so there are now things that i forget what is the correct way of saying it like i remember i was having this big thing where i couldn't remember what the word for stroller is in english like in british english and stroller and i just i don't know what we'd call it like a push chair or buggy but i ended up just calling it a stroller because that just seemed the best word so yeah european when your native language changes to a slightly different native language that's a bit weird there's many things that are weird about living in a foreign country um right let me go back to um sorry the thing is i'm reading off my notes which is why i'm like missing comments and stuff like that so i'm really glad that i have my uh moderator to uh she keeps she's messaging me she's like there's a super chat pay attention to it attention a isn't that fun um so i was talking about the daily the daily stuff analyzing your life as a whole analyzing periods of your life where peaks and troughs as it were and then talking about um daily daily patterns so for example i had this thought like okay i'm sure there are people out there who are still who are smokers or you maybe maybe you think um and if you are what are the triggers that make you step out for a cigarette what makes you kind of like i need to get out of here kind of thing and if you make a note of that it's not just helpful in like addiction kind of stuff maybe maybe it's an autistic stressor that's that's doing that you know maybe it's too much sound maybe it's just after a meeting where you've had to mask a lot and be very social so what is it that might be helpful i'm not saying anyone should start smoking to find out what makes them smoke but i'm saying that if you are that could be a good way of noticing what happens right before another daily pattern another daily pattern that you could examine that i think is very common for people who mask very heavily is that you kind of make it through the day and then by the end of it you are just collapsed so you come in the door you've been either a day at school or you know a day at work and you come in the door and you just collapse and you can't do anything you can't be bothered to make dinner you can't do any anything like that or you get just very emotional and very kind of um aggressive and irritable with with your family members or the people you live with um and uh and so that's another pattern as well because that is more indicative that there is something in your life that is sort of chronically stressing you out and that is something that you may want to look at with regards to some of the changes that you might make um so you know what you're analyzing your daily your daily things what are the triggers that are like what are the things that are triggering you on a daily basis what are the things that have happened just before bad periods in your life um are you masking way more than you'd like to admit um and is that wearing you down quite frankly um maybe you are unable to set boundaries and say no to people i'm very bad at setting boundaries um i recently turned off my dms on instagram because that was like a boundary i wanted to set and immediately felt incredibly guilty because people would write me in the comments being like you turn up your messages yeah i know i know i had to um so um and that all makes it see that's already like i'm i get slightly not aggressive i get slightly agitated by people saying that because i set down a boundary and now i'm feeling like feeling worried about it feeling tense about it and so autistic people typically are not great at setting boundaries um and maybe we also tend to be people pleasers and the people-pleasing aspect is really something that can lead to burnout um examining your examining your patterns as well not just the patterns in your life or the patterns in the day-to-day but examining your patterns you know if somebody comes to you being like oh i just need a favor are you going to say yes to them because you just want to be a nice person because fine it's fine on that one-off but it's first of all is that person asking you lots of favors but are you just generally over extending yourself um you know and and so these are the patterns that that you can um that you can start to build up an idea of what's going on in in your life um hello and welcome to the wind chime system my newest member and you get a fancy green name now that's exciting isn't it um a few of you are asking about the discord that is available to my green members well they're all green members but you know the the yo sandians so if you click the join button you can you can have a look at that it's a really um it's a growing community now actually i think we've got about 100 people almost in it um so that might be a nice thing for some of you to join so thank you to the wind chime wind wind chime system i really struggle with all these um all these different names sometimes ah right um so i was talking about um patterns pattern recognition we are stereotypically good at pattern recognition i think i'm pretty good at pattern recognition actually maybe that's why i've been good at analyzing my life i don't know whether some people might find it might find it difficult um but those are some possible patterns that you might identify in your life as reasons that when not addressed will build up to autistic burnout so things that happen in your life that maybe you don't have control over that's one thing all big changes that you kind of do have control over like starting university might be a big change you've you decided to do that you have control over it but you don't necessarily you didn't necessarily realize what it would entail so it's a big stressor that when combined with all the day-to-day stuff might result in burnout might result in you having to you know quit halfway through or something like that so the analyzing patterns part i think is probably the most important because otherwise you'll just be kind of like repeating you're repeating yourself over and over again and you won't get anywhere um we've got another new member hello honeyfungus90 became a youtube member hello and welcome um for the new members if you once you've joined the yosambians um you scroll down on the community tab you can find the link to the discord um i will post another one at the top because obviously as i've been posting stuff it goes down so um yes yes now rob says often less said the better and i hope that i hope that's not referring to me i don't think it is um but uh i also kind of had to talk because it's just me today it's just me it's it's actually now that i've had a few lives where there's been other people there my gosh it's so much easier having those because it's like you're just having a conversation you happen to be filmed whereas now it's like really these ones by myself are really intense actually um and as you can tell the focus is really difficult um so so once you analyze the patterns you have to look at what you can change and the thing is that these might not be comfortable and they might not be easy changes for you or for the people around you you might also say things like if if if somebody were to say well this is going really wrong in my life and this is causing me loads of stress and i'd say well okay change it i mean i wouldn't i wouldn't be that flippant with with you dear viewers would i though probably but i wouldn't mean it um but you might say like oh well i can't possibly change that and i guess the unpalatable truth is that you might have to if you want to avoid burnout and you might have to take a look at things in your life that you see as very fixed and permanent and actually realize that everything has the potential for change um and so part of this obviously we're resistant to change aren't we but part of you kind of i guess developing a burnout recovery kit it's like a first aid kit but it goes on forever um it's a form of radical self-care and when i say radical self-care um you know like i don't mean like self-care like taking bubble baths although i really find i had an amazing bath this morning but radical means like this isn't something that's going to be easy this is going to involve change it's going to involve things that might be difficult that's what i mean by radical self-care but what that means together is that everything you do has to be directed at healing yourself and that and every everything that you have to do has to be with that in mind um you know you need to be thinking what are the things that you need on a daily basis that you aren't getting what do you need because what you need is often not what you think it is and you know maybe you need two hours of silence in the morning okay if you have a child that might not be practical and actually i promise i'd talk about motherhood so maybe now is a good time to um to do that um people are asking how to become a member um there should be a join button next to the subscribe button that hopefully is already pressed if you're not already subscribed then please subscribe because i've just realized i've got 368 people watching this is like maybe not my best live i'm afraid some of my lives vary in terms of uh how my brain and my talking seems to function um somebody's talking about wrong cannabis information and i have missed that chat so i'm not sure um not sure about what's going on with with that but obviously like medical advice try and and seek medical advice with professionals hopefully professionals who know what they're doing um everyone's saying oh my gosh you found the join buttons great guys new members yay oh i can do one at a time holiday welcome and um poyo poyo i hope i said that right welcome to the club and oh there's another one agnes hello welcome i'll sort you out on the discord later by the way um person says gn who is a shark just wanted to say hi and thank you for the energy you put in your videos thank you it's completely unintentional i said at the beginning this was going to be a really chill video oh dear yeah all the best intentions eh um so um this is a complete uh this is complete a side thought i actually read a study uh the other day that said that adhd symptoms are linked to fluctuations in female hormones which is yet another tick mark for me suspecting adhd and myself because they the symptoms like about a week ago i had such severe symptoms that i was just sitting on the sofa and i was like my brain was just whirring inside me and i had to turn my phone off i had to turn everything off and just be in silence because my brain was just going going going going and so that makes a lot of sense um which would also oh my gosh new members right who was the last new member i welcomed um welcome to the canadian rockies all of you hopefully um welcome canadian rockies um i have i have been in you before that sounds wrong i have been in you before i went to um i went to lake louise once and it was absolutely beautiful and i would love to go back to canada i love canada um i don't know what that means but i feel like it's a private joke that i should get so i'm putting a private joke members only joke members club very very exclusive um welcome to another member a rash of oh our fazer day arrest off as a day i think that's as close as i'm gonna get please correct me if i'm wrong about that it must absolutely crack you guys up to hear me attempt to pronounce international names on a regular basis leonardo says i like this live because it's you alone it's a bit overwhelming the chat and the guests that's a lot going on that's true yeah you have to pay attention to two people and the chat so um i should pull some members onto the feed i had thoughts about doing that this time katie and um i just didn't like i i didn't get around to it yes um as discussed uh anna has said to me privately i'm allowing you to self-diagnosis adhd and i still feel i feel very mixed about that because i am i'm a complete proponent i'm saying like yes of course self-diagnosis is valid for everyone except me um i couldn't possibly do that that would be awful i'd be i i don't know i don't know i've just i've i've gotta work through some stuff of my own essentially i'm 90 there about the adhd um but i'm already at the stage where i'm trying to not necessarily heal it as in it'll go away but manage it better but i'm going to talk about that in a future video have i talked about um meltdown mandy says i have adhd too my brain doesn't stop it's either go gogo or brain fog city yeah the only times i've had very calm brain has been like after holidays after lots and lots of rest um after lots of detachment from social media um or after um [Music] or after psilocybin actually psilocybin helps um a lot micro dosing but that's also for another video i might do a members video on that now you can tell that i am starting to talk really quickly which means that i probably need a break grey bow says yay i've caught you live heart emojis thank you um cool i would love to see canada someday like the improved version of america i don't know who that's offensive to or whether that's offensive that made me laugh actually um cool right oh my gosh right okay there is just like so much going on yes new member right i can see the new man welcome karina her in camp alvarenga this is like i feel like this is now testing my ability to be multilingual i think that sounds brazilian i'm gonna i'm gonna guess brazilian karina here in camp alvarenga actually no i think that is brazilians so i'm just uh i'm just being silly now oh my gosh so many new members brandon moles welcome um gary says do you prefer dragon or robots i don't know whether that's directed at me um i prefer dragons i like how to train your dragon that was a a good film but i did not like the spin-off shows although the sequel was okay um right oh no that's not another chance i found a chat that was uh i found a chat that was uh helpful and now i've can you shortly give a few reasons to why you suspect have adhd um i think what i'll do rather than talking about that now is i'm gonna make a video coming up at some point where i do the adhd test um like i did the autism test and just see see what i get um i've talked i've have talked to professionals so i don't have an official diagnosis but i've spoken to enough professionals who've been like yeah it kind of sounds like it um essentially my type of adhd is not a physical hyperactive one it's it's i don't know whether it's inattentive exactly i think it's probably more of a combo but i will talk about that later and i also want to talk about the combination of having both autism and adhd because i think that is something that's also not really commonly discussed and it's very common so um basically the answer to that was later um was there oh another member right now this is rack 1280 became a youtube member um right i'm gonna go back to my notes because i i'm just looking at the time we've been on this for quite a while what is everybody doing are you like making dinner and watching this i don't know what what people do when um what people do when they watch lives now somebody says somebody said something about medication and somebody lfo says you need a formal diagnosis to obtain medication now the reason that i am not pursuing an adhd diagnosis actively is because in the netherlands you do not need a formal diagnosis necessarily it might be you might be able to get medicated with adhd meds with autism with autism with an autism diagnosis and for autistic symptoms traits or whatever so that is the reason why i haven't pursued if i was in another country i might but i also haven't decided whether i want to take meds or not yet so this is going to be a this is going to be a process in the next few months so i'm hoping there'll be a couple of videos on that um adhd is not being able to choose where your attention goes yeah exactly like when a notification pops down there and i'm like oh my gosh what's happening and then my brain is hyperactive so i'm like is my sound off and nobody tells me my sound is on like what happened in the first part of this life i've calmed down a little bit from that i think i've calmed down um there is so much um right okay so i was i was actually on tips i feel like i haven't really got much to the tips but so many of i don't want to say like top tips for avoiding burnout because it's going to be personal it's going to be related to what is your actual situation because burnout you know an autistic mother is not going to be the same as burnout from somebody who works in a cafe and has to deal with like people and the public all the time it's just it's going to be completely different from person to person so the analysis side of things is actually more helpful than any quick and easy tips um i can give you um and the things that you need on a daily basis if you are if you know what they are that you need that you're not getting um your recovery should be targeting those you should be targeting not just your body not just physical exhaustion but mental emotional exhaustion because all of these are affected by autistic burnout it's not just have a few days of good sleep and then you'll be unburnt out that is not how it works it's more like uh that scene on the lion king you know when the fire's been raging on pride rock and the everything is charred and the rains come and it grows everything goes green again it's more like that um yeah it's it's it's not like flicker switch and everything's great so i just wanted to reiterate that it is a process but it's a it's a healing process um and you should be listening also to what you need and you might need to listen to a voice that has been pushed way down inside you no not what other people say you need or what you think you should need um and so as i mentioned i've been kind of teetering on the on the verge of burnout probably most of this year without actually going into a full burnout and there are a few things that i'm doing now these are tips that they might not be relevant for you but these are what i'm doing for me that can give you kind of an idea of like what you can do to build this this burnout burnout recovery kit we'll call it um so focusing on the mind obviously as a thinking i have adhd person i'm sure there's a fancy name for that you know suspected adhd adhdr my mind is kind of a chaotic place and um and the thing that for me exacerbates that is social media and that is ironic because i don't know whether youtube really counts as social media i don't see it as social media but on all the other platforms i just it's like everybody's voices get into my head and they they stay there and they start taking up space and so i don't know if you're familiar with this idea of like monkey monkey chatter you know the chattering monkeys in your head for me if i'm on social media personally that that's what happens i start but it's not my monkeys it's someone else's monkeys um so i've been taking a lot of breaks that maybe are not that noticeable because i do try and schedule things but i know that i need to manage this because i've been this isn't just about like oh i've got to upload stuff because you know it's not work if you're scrolling through your phone like i don't i don't care who says that there's any justification that's not work is it so if i'm avoiding social media i need to upload it and i need to reply to things and then i need to switch off um but unfortunately my brain doesn't really work that way so i've been working on ways to manage to manage this um sorry that was a very abrupt ending you can see you can see once you see the adhd in me you'll notice and now i'm gonna get self-conscious about that so um actually one of the first videos on this channel um i think maybe the third video that i did on this channel is um about me trying to cut back on social media and i've been trying to do this my whole life well since social media became a thing because it just sucks you in again it's designed to do that and so that's something that is one of my things right especially now because we're all well we're all stuck i'm stuck at home um and you know the tendency is to try and socialize through social media and doesn't work for me so that's kind of like i realized that i recognized that and now i have to deal with it it's the dealing with it that's not not so fun um so on the subject of mind um my brain also needs a lot of stimulation and when i am in a healthy place generally i read books for stimulation but i can't read books when i'm in burnout because i can't read so i end up reading articles for stimulation because it's still input going in kind of thing but the way that you reread articles because i don't have like magazines and newspapers and stuff uh reading online they've done studies that show that people read in a different way they scan rather than read so they don't absorb information you're just scanning for like ooh nugget of information nugget of information but you're not actually reading so when it comes to picking up a book you know it's like you read the same paragraph over and over and you're like i can't read this book so you close it um and that's one of the signs for me is when i can't read anymore that's how i know that i'm close to burnout because i just i can't concentrate you know on reading it um might also be a sign of of adhd that you know like a hormonal thing as well so that's kind of like for me the mind stuff and um as i said you know you need to focus on the mind the body and and the emotions and in terms of body i think that especially as we are i don't want to say different we are sensitive in different ways we are hypersensitive or hyposensitive i veer on the hypersensitive side um but i think we've all been in situations in life where we kind of learnt to ignore our bodies needs because it's not socially acceptable to react in that way or to feel pain from that stimuli or something um and so for me the sensory actually since during this year since lockdown the sensory stuff has become easier for me um because i'm not going out into crowded places as much there are no crowded places well actually there are in the netherlands but that's why the numbers are rising in the netherlands um so you know i'm i'm not going out i'm not doing the normal things so my sensory environment is now my home and i can control that with the glaring exception of my son i can't control my son um and nor should i actually and so that is something that um i need to manage i need to manage a way that um i don't get overwhelmed by the noise of a three-year-old having fun or being upset or something like that because if i get triggered with you know if i get triggered by the noise i react in a way that is not how i would want to react and it's not how i would decide to parent but it is a completely instinctive reaction um and so you know that's just one example of needing to manage your sensory triggers so i've been wearing a lot of headphones but i find that also makes me feel like i'm switching off and sometimes well kids are very sensitive they realize when you're trying to shut them out even if it's just shutting out the noise and so i think for my son he's i think he's actually been a little bit upset that i've been wearing those and you know you can wear earplugs but they still know that you can't really hear them or you don't want to hear them um and so it is very difficult to manage your sensory needs as a parent especially as a parent to small children and i think that is part of the reason why you know so many autistic parents go into burnout because there is just no getting away with it getting away from it and there's no getting away with it either um i do i'm sorry i'm do you know what i do this exact same thing when i'm filming my videos i stop talking and then i go um and then i take a breath and this is something i only notice when i'm editing them but then i realize it sounds it sounds really weird when i'm just talking by myself and then i just go um and stop it's because i run out of the thing and then i'm like oh i need a i need a breath now i promise this would be chill and i feel like i've let you guys down i'm sorry but i've let myself down more [Music] um we're talking about the body and what you can do for your body um exercise is a good one and and i think finding an exercise that works for you is the most important because i have tried so much throughout my life i used to be a gymnast because hypermobility you know um and now i've started doing um weekly pilates reformer classes the ones with the exciting uh bdsm kind of machinery um and you know i've been doing like i think i've done six weeks or so and already the difference in my body and my levels of pain my joints and stuff like that has been incredible so uh i can really recommend that and it's also completely socially distant so it's perfect um yeah and i think for hyper mobile people that one works but just it feels really good to exercise in a really calm environment that doesn't involve actually getting with a lot of loud music because most exercise classes have loud music to motivate you which is kind of the opposite um but you know coming into autumn winter you know people say well go for walks but if you are very sensitive to the cold or the rain like maybe you don't want to go for walks in the winter so it's just about finding something for your body that fits in um and that's one part exercise is one part it's not the whole part of caring for your body obviously caring for your body involves eating right and sleeping right um two things which which can be very difficult to do if you're not feeling yourself if you are burnt out um and and that's just something that you need to try and like deal with more in on an individual basis you know like i've been talking now for an hour and a half which is like bless you all for staying with me so long um but uh you know i could do a whole video on how to eat right when you're in burnout how to organize your food plan your shopping plan your meals it's a lot it's a lot of requires a lot of executive functioning skills that you might not have at that point um but of eating right helps you feel better it might be something you have to prioritize you might have to think of different ways of doing things so um you breaking things down into just incredibly small steps so instead of saying i'm gonna meal plan for a month and batch cook everything which just sounds like a superwoman achievement you might say i'm gonna go and find one recipe online that i want to try or i want to batch cook and i'm gonna print it out and that is gonna be my thing break it down into really small achievable steps and you sit there and you like yeah i printed this recipe out this is awesome because then you have the recipe you can take the next step which is looking in your cupboard and seeing do i have all these ingredients you know um so it's like breaking each thing down because i really believe especially for autistic people eating right and sleeping right are so important to get right but i cannot i don't think i've got time to go into that now to be honest um the sleeping has been an issue for me throughout my life but especially since pregnancy and and having a child because my son went through this phase where he would wake up three times in the night sometimes screaming you know i think it was nightmares around 18 months something like that and um and that primed my body to be anxious around the time he would wake up first which was like 10 30. so i would be getting to bed 9 30 10 trying to get an earlyish night and i would start feeling anxious anxious because i was already sensing and so it's very easy for my sleep to get disturbed um but you know like i'm going to talk about baths and self-care now like buds epsom salt baths oh my god i had one this morning and it was fantastic it was really it was the like infused with lavender it was just absolutely lush and i just like i can't believe it's taken me almost 35 years to discover epsom salt baths but like it left my skin feeling amazingly soft i just i'm gonna rave about them probably at every chance i can get um and i always joke about like self-care is more than baths but actually sometimes self-care is baths um yeah so oh gosh my throat is said this is a sign that um i feel like i've almost been talking too long but so i'm gonna just start moving along the notes a little bit um [Music] so emotions we've talked about mind and body things to focus on emotions um i'm someone who struggles to understand my own emotions and uh i did a video on alexithymia ages ago now which might be of interest which is kind of like the inability to always name your emotions not really know what you're feeling and actually i feel like i have improved that in the year or so since i made that video and and i do think that it's impossible to to make progress to improve your ability to recognize emotions but it takes work much like all of this takes work unfortunately um and you know the the trauma video that i did a couple of weeks ago kind of released something in me um that wasn't exactly like releasing the trauma but released like the memory of the trauma and and just made me very aware of like my emotional reactions to things since that video actually i've just been i feel like i've been reacting more emotionally to things and um you know i'm also well also i'm autistic i consider myself an hsp which is a highly sensitive person which might may or may not be the same thing as an autistic person uh i consider myself an empath in the way that you know like i'm more betazoid than most people but like i'm deeply sensitive to other people's emotions and vibes and stuff like that and my reality now is that i'm getting comments and i'm getting chats from people who are all carrying pain around and i have to recognize the emotional toll that takes on me obviously it has emotional tolls on everyone else they're the ones with the actual pain but i have to recognize that i'm the sort of person that absorbs it all and so that's part of like the setting boundaries thing um working out how to deal with that knowing yourself is the key knowing that you are like this knowing that you need to set boundaries and take steps to to adjust your reaction or shield yourself essentially from from other people's emotions or other people's vibes um so the last thing i want to talk about is uh the environment i've put the environment slash other people um other people of course being notoriously difficult to change however much we might try um your environment might be a bit easier to change than than other people um so probably most of us are in atypical environments right now and that might actually be a good opportunity to see what's changed in your life since 2020 we went into lockdown some people had just have it everybody's changed something in some way about their life and maybe your reaction to that you can see well actually i'm feeling better now because i'm not at my i'm not in my office every day you know like i can control this environment that's great and so you can really identify it is the office environment that is causing the burnout whether that is maybe the commute which was a big thing for me when i was commuting into london you know i was like commuting two hours a day and that was really horrible for me i hated that um no it wasn't two hours a day no it was less than that but um it was still pretty awful water the the waterloo and city line was like yeah rush hour no um that's that's a very niche only people who've ridden the stuff on the waterline city will know what i'm talking about um but you know maybe you're doing worse during the pandemic because you're still working you're still having to work in the same workplace but you've got way more stress you're having to wear a mask all day and deal with entitled idiots i mean the entitled idiots might be the same but you know you might have extra stresses in that place of work and you can identify those it's like okay the mask is a sensory thing and i'm having to wear that all day that's a lot that's not really how we're meant to be that's difficult um so at the end of the day i would say that recovering from and preventing burnout is about analyzing analyzing yourself finding the patterns in your life and realizing what what you need to do but also realizing that you are the only one who can make the changes because other people are not going to change your life for you to make it easier they might help you if you say that but you have to tell them what you need and to tell them what you need you have to know what you need um and so i've put here in bold actually you are the captain of your vessel and ultimately the one in charge of its course which sounded very good when i wrote it but sounds quite weird to say out loud um so this is getting to be quite a long live um let me just check that i missed missed anything more in the chat um maybe voldemort says whenever i'm in london for work i walk everywhere including from whitehall to kings cross just to avoid you i think my colleagues think i'm mental yes i mean if i was if i was like ludicrously rich i would probably just take taxis everywhere but then you end up stuck in traffic so um walking in london i actually when i lived there i really i really liked walking around london um apart from the noise i think vagabond really wants me to chill because um he or she they say i'm the chill captain of my chill vessel this is me on a chill day actually no it's not i'm i'm i'm medium levels worked up today i would say um so i'm going to answer some questions some of these are pre pre-recorded not exactly but um pre pre-vetted let's say um one person has asked is it possible to be in burnout for years without actually crashing completely for context i describe myself as having been in survival mode since my first child was born eight years ago and i wonder if this has burnt out any other comments from a parenting perspective so i did promise i'd get to parenting and this is kind of like why i was leaving it for this question um i totally relate to that feeling of being in survival mode um and i don't know whether it's um a question of like i don't know why this term i keep on thinking of like high functioning burnout is high functioning burnout like is that going to be offensive to anyone i don't know is high functioning burnout offensive let me know in the chat right now um high functioning burnout that sounds weird but you i guess what i mean is that you are burnt out but you still live your life because when you have a child um you sort of have to if you're autistic why are you a parent in the first place that's kind of an that's kind of an insulting question i would say um but like you can't you have to step up when you're a parent and um the problem is that some people if you can't step up when you're burning out that means that other people will have to get involved whether that is the other parent whether that is your family members um whether that is perhaps even social services um and uh i think most people would probably realize that it's better not to get into that situation so if you just keep pushing and pushing and pushing you can avoid that just about but it comes at the expense of yourself um and so i would say that it is possible to be in burnout without and still be functioning in everyday life and um let's see what i wrote because i did actually write out some some notes because oh yeah because actually as i mentioned earlier in this in this chat i think that um sorry i'm you can tell i'm starting to get a little bit tired now because it's almost my bedtime you guys know i get to sleep at 10 o'clock um you know going through a burnout was part of the reason why i realized that i was autistic in the first place was because it exacerbated the autistic traits and and all of that kind of stuff um and the problem is that when you are kind of burning out while autistic and apparent um and you express your difficulties people say helpful things like well that's just life that's just parenting if you can't handle this you shouldn't be a parent which is i think is what somebody in the comments just said you had to put other people first as a parent and it's like well first of all i didn't know i was autistic when i got pregnant thanks um but this is all just shaming like this is shaming an autistic person for struggling with something that's difficult we're not meant to be parents in isolation in isolated nuclear families we're meant to be in communities we're meant to live among people who will help like this idea if we should all just be shut in our rooms and you can be parenting right now and if you can't handle that then you just a failure that's just how do we think that that is how parenting should be of course it should be a community thing and i think that is part of the reason why not just autistic parents are burning out especially at the moment where there is just so much parenting to be done um i mean yeah and the problem is that all of these things are not helpful all of these comments that people say well if you can't handle this just you know it all boils down to somebody saying well just suck it up buttercup kind of thing and it's like that's what we're doing that's what we're doing and that's how you end up in burnout and so like this approach is not helpful it's not helping anyone um oh my voice is breaking now i would just like to point out that autistic people can make wonderful parents and they often raise children who can empathize and accept people with their difficulties so um there we go somebody said thank you for shaming the shame a good boundary sam and do you know what i feel really anxious about the fact that i did that because i feel like what if they went didn't mean that or whatever but you know what like this whole idea of like why if you struggle so much why why do you want to be a parent like or if someone said to me like oh well if you're struggling so much with one child why would you want to have another it's like maybe you want another child maybe you want a child to have a sibling kind of thing like first of all it's nobody's business is it um but the world is not set up to be kind to autistic people and autistic parents certainly don't figure into that so um this this culture of i should just suck it up is dangerous because for me i end up thinking i should just do that and that is when i stop taking care of myself um and whether that is literally like not showering or whatever because i feel like i don't have time even though i do have time i just need to make the time or something like you know i've been spending so much energy my son went through a growth spurt over summer which is you know to be expected from a three-year-old um and i spend so much energy making sure that he's got all the right amounts of clothes and he's got winter boots well actually i haven't bought those yet but like he's got the wellies and he's got the waterproof trousers and he's got everything and then i went out today and i'm like i don't even have a raincoat that's water properly waterproof like it's too short it's leaking like i am not taking care of myself and i realized that today and i went out i went i got home and i'm like i am buying a raincoat and i'm taking care of myself and um it sounds silly but i forget to do things like that so i get annoyed and the thing is is having a good raincoat will make me a better parent because when it's raining outside which it does in the netherlands if you don't know it's an extremely wet country um which makes it all the more ridiculous that i don't have a raincoat um just so you know like when it's raining outside and my son goes i want to go out the front i'll be like no you know and it just sets this awful tone but me taking care of myself buying myself a raincoat that by the way kind of looks like a cool witch raincoat because it's long and awesome and i'll probably share a picture of it on instagram um but you know like buying something for myself like that makes me a better parent because it means that i'll go out with my son instead of just being like no let's just stay in and do something inside i will be like no i can go out because i won't get wet and cold and miserable so there you go um this is a very important point please remember that no one is perfect no one the perfect parent does not exist you can only try your best um yeah so yeah i totally agree um this person says i relate i don't have waterproof shoes i hike for exercise yes and you get wet photo but i know because i'm the same i like i suffer and i just don't think hey i could just i can just treat myself it's not even treating it's just taking care of yourself having waterproof stuff is taking care of yourself okay um here we go stephanie bethany says life is hard yet we keep living we are disabled yet we do our best to live our lives deciding that something being difficult more so for us than others means we shouldn't do it it's a bit silly yeah i mean like working doing youtube stuff like that's hard it's probably harder for me to stay organized than for other people um i think there was another question about like uh how do you do youtube stuff and avoid burnout that i just missed um and it's like should i not be on youtube because it's like super stressful to keep everything organized and keep up with all the work like no because it's worth doing and it's like should i not be a parent because i get burnt out like no because i love my son and it's it's totally worth doing it's just really really difficult for now um so yeah this mentality that like you have to be perfect or you can't be a parent it's like okay no no no um [Music] liz says having waterproof stuff has taken care of yourself it is if you live in the netherlands it is um all right let me just see how far i've got my notes do you know what i've got to page six no seven of my it's now eight pages of notes um let me just see about some questions i feel like a lot of the questions that i got on instagram i've kind of answered them within the context of this even though i haven't asked it directly and and saying uh somebody asked what's the difference between physical tiredness and autistic burnout and can they overlap and i would say that physical tiredness is is solved by resting and sleeping you know like take a week off work and go on holiday like have a rest and physical tiredness as long as they're not underlying medical condition physical tiredness will heal whereas with autistic burnout i feel like you can sleep and sleep and sleep and you just never seem to feel rested you never seem to feel better so that's kind of like the difference for that um a lot of people asked how to read the warning signs and i think that i think that that just goes back into the whole system of analyzing you know i think it's unrealistic to expect that you're suddenly going to just be able to see oh what's this warning sign like you have to listen to yourself you have to self-reflect everybody's warning signs are going to be different for me it's that i'm irritable um i get irritated by things that are not irritating as discussed earlier um can't sleep can't concentrate brain fog executive functioning all that kind of stuff all of that stuff was happening to me in july and that was why i decided to take six weeks or so off making you know regular youtube videos and that really helped for a bit i did other things um as well i i did a little bit of micro dosing uh psilocybin as i mentioned in another video i can't remember which one um but i didn't do it i didn't like commit to it so that might be something that i'll revisit in the future um i did yeah i did a lot of spending time outdoors we went on a little mini vacation within the netherlands you know um and so like that was me realizing that hey if i don't stop now i'm going to get burnt out and i'm just going to say i don't want to do youtube and i want to carry on doing youtube i like doing youtube even when it's stressful sometimes um but you know it's just like it's just i don't want to say trial and error because it's not trial and error it's it's it's understanding your patterns and you have to you have to do a lot of deep diving like so there's no easy way to say well this is a trigger that's a trigger you have to just analyze the heck out of your life i guess what i do is i also talk and forget to breathe and now i'm like oh well i'm out of breath that's a symptom of corona isn't it i'm not going to start sorry start with the bad jokes about coronavirus um there were a couple of comments about special interests causing burnout and i do think that that is a possibility especially when you get really hyper focused on something new and you're like i want to do this forever i want to do only this and that is also a recipe for burnout because especially if maybe your special interest is also like a work interest um it's very easy to overdo it and i think that you need to balance special interests with like life and care stuff as well i hope that makes sense i now run out of water i've been talking to too much too fast too much too fast um so let's let's really try i'm i feel like um i've missed some um chats the person that i kind of sassed and i was a bit like that's an offensive comment i don't think that this person meant to be offensive but i'm like i'm lost on the chat so i'm really sorry i have been offending everybody inadvertently and everyone has been offending me but i think that is also i feel like we're all a little bit of burnout right now um 2020 wise you know it's been six months or so since the pandemic kind of started and we went to lockdown and it's really hard to keep your head in a in a good space when that happens and i think we all just need to appreciate that we're all on edge you know it's not nothing is going to get better sooner like we're just we're going now into autumn winter it's it's all going we need to focus so much on this self-care stuff which is why i think this is so important and i hope that i'm not um i hope that i'm not being too i don't know i feel like sometimes i'm very paranoid about offending people because i have offended people in the past completely unknowingly and that's been kind of traumatic especially when it's been friends that i've definitely not meant to so it's a little bit of a sensitive spot so i i apologize to anyone that i've hurt who's he feels hard done by um somebody somebody says i'm part of the skinner's waterproof brigade waterproof separated yo rain is cold and it's like yeah it's waterproof but you still have to feel the wet that's the thing isn't it um somebody asked do you have a medical background your channel seems to indicate you might i have a psychology degree so i do have a background in psychology and i have done i have a master's degree in sociology and anthropology um of specializing in religion so that doesn't make me qualified to practice psychology but it does make me qualified to speculate wildly about psychology on the internet but i don't feel i feel like i put a lot of disclaimers in my videos for this exact reason so i don't want to mislead anyone that that think i just have like i like researching stuff you know and so i just have the sort of brain that i like finding out things about it and categorizing interests it's almost like i might be a bit autistic let's see what other what other comments we have gary says if a genie asks you three wishes would one of those wishes be can i have a day off being autistic um if i got three wishes no uh i wouldn't ask to be not autistic i would ask to have like i would have i would go for a day off not being anxious the the the anxiety is the um the anxiety is the thing that i find really hard especially at the moment i'm very anxious at the moment um i feel like i've got some kind of like sticker or something but um it's not coming up i got a something or other from miro well thank you very much mirror but i can't i can't see it on my um on my screen some technical issues do i normally get technical issues i feel like i deal with it a lot but it's just very it's a lot to run everything even when you have like a a stream software thing that i do um road i have been chatting for almost two hours and you know what that means right that means it is um [Music] bedtime and i promised you at the beginning that this was going to be like super chill i had my herbal tea and i feeling really chill and now i'm like so i don't know what it is about lives that get me very energetic i guess i like that it's a lot of people talking at once um okay so oh back to that person the parenting with autism question the person's poster began with sharing trauma related to her parent leaving due to that autism so i'm really sorry i did not mean to be like that's so offensive i do not take offense like i understand context is everything i just saw the comment i was like that's a bit you know rubbed me up the wrong way so i'm i apologize for that i'm always willing to apologize if i make mistakes guys you know me um it's just you would not believe how much how energy intensive it is to do these things so um a huge thank you and welcome to all my new members i hope some of you are still listening and thank you to my old members as well um you guys are cool too i guess um and um thank you for everybody who's been participating in the chat i mean we are still over 300 i think this might be one of the biggest live streams i've ever done and i'm in some ways i'm a bit like was it the best though probably not but you know this is this is just real life this is this is unscripted for the most part i've got my notes but like formulating sentences as discussed female hormones affect adhd symptoms um they affect neurotransmitters and i really notice during like certain times of cycles i just feel very much more adhd than other times of the month so um it's something that i have been thinking about a lot because it is starting to affect me more um and this is even with treatment for pmdd so it's just things have been a little bit i don't want to say things have been hard because things have been alright it's just things have been a little bit heavy you know but it's it's heavy for everyone so that's why i'm trying to do these deep topics because the trauma video was really well received by you guys and so many people saying like i'm so glad you did this topic it's so important nobody did it like and i felt really good i was really um anna helped me do the research for that one and she did an amazing job and then i put it all together and like wrote the script and stuff and it's like i'm really proud of how that came out and i want to do some more of these deep dive videos that take a little bit more research a little bit more time to put together um but it's also like i have to balance that out because so that's why i followed up with a love on the spectrum one because it's like okay we need a little bit of light-hearted stuff um because i can't just do like fully researched intellectual videos every week like i do not have the capacity for that mental physical or emotional and that trauma video i was surprised i was it brought up a lot within me just writing about it from a very academic perspective so um somebody said it's really heavy but um and i don't know what that means but i feel like if i wanna if i was gonna write a comment i would want it put up like this um somebody says oh where did it go i just clicked on it and it disappeared um somebody says i've been looking forward to the stream but who forgot would you restart no you can watch the replay um this person says flower i guess it is you look really young for a mom thank you i'm 21. i'm kidding i'm not 21. i just want to say that because it gets funnier the older i get i'm gonna be 35 in november yeah so that's a big birthday that nobody but me cares about isn't it um that's the birthday where they start calling you geriatric if you get pregnant at that age a geriatric pregnancy um let's see what uh this person says how do you track your mood mood mute what am i even saying mood and attention directing abilities to figure out whether and how hormones affect them well i mean i've started by a lot of tracking of hormones and stuff tracking your cycles and then just noticing symptoms and then basically like last weekend i sat down on the sofa and my brain was like as well as all my pms pmdd symptoms so i was like well this is pretty pretty obvious correlation there you know um have a good night and get some rest yeah i probably won't i get pretty wired after these lives um and uh usually takes me about an hour to an hour and a half to actually wind down enough to get to sleep but i do have some secret medicinal teas um i'm not that's not even a euphemism for cannabis i'm actually talking about valerian root i took it last night and it knocked me out so um that's not something you should mix with other medications because apparently has a similar effect to benzos but um it's something that i've been kind of like just trying out because i thought well you know i'm not on any other medication so it's as good as good a time as any to try something like that um before i go into to thinking about the adhd meds which i still don't know i haven't made up my mind if i want to try them yet um so who's somebody says that things have been stodgy that's how i feel about the world it's pretty stodgy at the moment i'm avoiding news as much as possible just avoiding social media you know oh jenny thank you i thank you for the super sticker i can't see the actual sticker on my thing but um i really appreciate that thank you so much um janey bug that's a really cute name i don't know if it's a real name see now i'm like did i offend you is that a cute name i don't know is that your real name i think it's cute it's a cute real name if it's real and it's a cute nickname if it's not um you can tell me oh hold on i'm getting sent the super the super stickers that okay so the super sticker that jamie just sent me is so cute says you're amazing and thank you so much um she just sent me the screenshot of it so thank you thank you for that that's really cool um right um somebody said valerian hypes me up i was like no it knocked me out completely last night i took it for the first time um i had a cup of it at about 7 30 after i put my son to bed and then i wasn't really keeping track of time i was like oh man i'm so tired it's been such a good night i'm i'm gonna go to bed and i got myself ready climbed into bed and looked at the clock it was 8 30 and my eyes like my pupils were dilated i'm like wow this stuff's good actually and i slept pretty well so um that's not a medical recommendation that's just telling you what happened telling you what happened to me which is oh the story of my life in this channel i guess isn't it um victoria vague says i wonder if that's your real name uh currently being assessed for adhd at the moment definitely more adhd around my period yeah i think it's a thing i would i read a study it wasn't just an article it's an actual science study that showed that so um oh gosh there's even more chats more chats more chats um read the subtle art of not giving an f by mark manson i have actually read that and maybe i should reread it because i do have it i think so it is very good and highly recommended to anyone if you just want to like not care about other people and things i can also recommend um i'm reading some letters from letters from a stoic by seneca at the moment and the stoic philosophy has also been very helpful for like helping me gain perspective on my life and stuff so i like that kind of stuff somebody on one of the chats before also mentioned taoism and like the taoist philosophy and stuff like that so that's something else that i would like to look into when i can read again which i'm starting to get to the point where i can now read books which is fantastic because i have many many books i need to read i had to well i'm not quit my book club but i just stopped going because i was like i don't want to admit it but i like i can't read books especially not fiction non-fiction you can skim a bit more you can't skim fiction oh right what do you do to calm down before sleep after alive i typically go down have some tea i'll probably have my special valerian drug tea um it's legal don't worry um for me watching something helps like watching friends yeah i can watch friends that'll be a good idea actually um somebody says be careful with psychosis and adhd meds it can be a nightmare yeah i mean the adhd meds things the whole thing there are side effects because they're all stimulants and uh people say it changed my life but they also have symptoms and stuff like that so you know it's like okay uh maybe i need to manage other aspects maybe i can manage other aspects before i go down the medication route so i don't know but adhd meds are like you know that's that's a decision i haven't made um somebody says lightbulb moment i'm so much more sensitive to light and sounds before my periods we're talking about periods i'm going to have a whole video on periods so i bet um the people who don't have periods are like oh great they're not going to watch that one um somebody says i listen to the stoics too audiobooks on youtube that's a great idea for when you can't read audio books and stoics i bet um right so i am gonna probably have some tea i'm gonna say goodnight to all you beautiful people and apologize profusely for the people that i offended because i got worked up and couldn't concentrate and i got stressed and then i reacted and got agitated and if that isn't like all adhd in a nutshell like the lack of what's it called inhibition and stuff like that i i don't know um and then offending people obviously that's that's the autism i just can't help offending people even when i'm not trying um but i appreciate your patience and your kind words telling me i did see some nice ones saying like you're doing great sam thanks so thank you um wow thank you for all the super chats and all the members and um i look forward to chatting to you more on discord i've been a little bit quiet on discord for the reasons that i mentioned pretty much throughout this video but i'm gonna try and be on it um a little bit this weekend because it's quite nice to do some to do some games like the the jackpots games they were fun let's do them again um so everybody enjoy your day your your night it is it's now it's pitch black and it looks like a bit of a i think it's a waxing gibbous moon now it's definitely over the halfway point anyway um i can see the moon directly from my window that was nice like i thought that would be kind of cool and i looked out and there it was um so sleep well everybody or enjoy the rest of your day and um i'll see you at probably at the end of october for another live if you have any suggestions for lives please just comment on instagram or something or on the youtube community tab i usually try and like ask people what do you want what do you want oh i'm gonna breathe drink some water and um catch you all later bye guys bye

Channel: Yo Samdy Sam

Views: 70,059

Keywords: autistic burnout, adult autism, autistic spectrum, actually autistic, autism burnout, autism burnout symptoms, coping with autism burnout, autism regression, autistic regression, how to avoid autism burnout, autistic burnout vs depression

Id: AviIoJap0F0

Length: 127min 48sec (7668 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 25 2020