Autistic Burnout

burnout is a state of physical and mental exhaustion burnout can happen to anyone but it's more likely to happen if you're autistic because of the challenges we face navigating a world that wasn't designed for us for autistic people burnout can as well as causing exhaustion lead to a loss of skills for example an autistic person who could previously talk might lose the ability to speak or somebody who is able to work completely independently might find that they can no longer do so i asked the members of my youtube club the purple people whether they had experienced autistic burnout and how it felt for them cat said i believe that i'm in burnout or on the edge of it i'm having lots of meltdowns it feels like every minor challenge is a huge setback and my capacity to cope with even the smallest of challenges crashes i experience brain fog which really impacts my concentration things like spatial awareness and my sensory issues take a hit too so i find myself walking into things a lot miro told me my chronic burnout started at university my social anxiety skyrocketed my masking started to wear heavily on me prolonged burnout from stress and anxieties caused me to develop chronic depression even when i didn't feel depressed i was unable to enjoy things which otherwise brought me pleasure beth told me when i got burned out i just slept i couldn't eat or motivate myself to do anything but not like depression it just felt exhausting makka pakka shared that when i get burnout i just go to bed and sleep for ages and hug my dog until i feel better and have energy to do things again when i look at my own life i feel like i've experienced burnout particularly in the last 10 years as life has got more complex with being a parent having a job navigating more difficult social situations i also think that being neurodivergent as well as physically disabled leads to me experiencing burnout more easily i noticed during lockdown that i had a period where i just felt really flat and i couldn't motivate myself to do anything which is not like me because i'm normally quite an energetic optimistic enthusiastic person i wasn't used to feeling so negative i realized that i've been living an unsustainable life trying to do it all and then just living with the consequences and whilst i understand that i'm someone that needs more rest less social encounters and a reduced workload it was really hard for me to actually implement that lifestyle additionally the effort of masking my autism or trying to fit in was definitely contributing to my burnout it takes a huge amount of effort to ignore your natural instincts of how to behave and instead try to modify your behavior and your reactions to be more in line with what you observe as being socially acceptable sensory issues are also a factor since i was unaware of my autism for such a huge chunk of my life i was dealing with those sensory issues without being aware of them or having any strategies for coping with them even when i got my diagnosis and learnt about my sensory issues it took me some time to connect the sensory issue with the consequence so i wouldn't necessarily realize that the meltdown was the result of being in a really busy noisy bright room or that i felt really anxious because my jumper was really itchy this crazy year with its frequent lockdowns side note if you're watching this and the pandemic is over hurrah so this crazy year has given me the time and the space to experience the benefits of a reduced pace of life but if anything i was feeling even more tired and i think that's because having given my body and my brain a chance to rest it was able to acknowledge its level of exhaustion because up until then i had been running on adrenaline for me entering a state of adrenaline is very bad and what i mean by this is when you ignore your tiredness signals and you push on through regardless this would lead to adrenaline surges giving me spikes of energy and an extremely wired feeling a little bit like drinking way too much caffeine then when i stopped pushing through my brain and my body crashed hard i would experience surges of adrenaline panic attacks anxiety nausea brain fog headaches so i'd go to bed get up and start the whole cycle again i was using this adrenaline state to cope with many aspects of my physical disability and my neurodiversity for many many years which essentially led to a severe burnout which i'm still working to recover from i couldn't find any official studies or information about autistic burnout because this is an area that's really being led by the autistic advocacy community and autistic people themselves speaking about their experiences of burnout so i found it very difficult to find information on how to prevent and recover from burnout so i headed to twitter to crowdsource some information and this is the advice that i was given bluebird louise advised everything we see hear taste carry wear do etc contributes to the mental load if you know you have to add something extra you need to take something away to increase your capacity sarah douglas added work out what you can do in a sustainable way and if you're in recovery from burnout halve this to get a baseline to work from this is something that i can definitely attest to i have a real tendency to just add extra stuff to my schedule without considering the impact that that's going to have on my capacity for the day moving forward i think it's a really great idea to work out your daily capacity limits you could do this by using energy accounting which i've talked about in a previous video and i'll leave a link in the description box for you to check that out and then you should aim not to let daily tasks and appointments go above that capacity level if you're in burnout that daily capacity level needs to allow time for extra rest and recovery s puzzling offered this suggestion use your strategies even when you feel okay i think this is great advice it's really easy to forget to implement your usual strategies like sensory diets and energy accounting when you're feeling okay when you're not experiencing any negative symptoms it's easy to just keep plowing on through using strategies in an ongoing way is a much healthier habit rather than plowing on through and then experiencing a crash flippy grows said mindfulness meditation to recenter your parasympathetic nervous system exercise is supposed to help too having spent some time doing mindfulness meditation i would definitely agree that it helped to keep me calm and regulated but i confess i found it hard to implement it as part of my daily routine partly because i find it really boring so instead i try to do some of my activities mindfully like i'll do my yoga or my daily dog walk entirely focused on the moment that i'm in and this feels like a good compromise danielle rose told me i started staying up to watch my favorite two movies over and over again while knitting the alone time was imperative i think this is great advice doing things that we're really familiar with like watching the same tv shows or movies or doing activities that we know inside out take a lot less energy and effort than new things and can be really calming and comforting finally several people reminded me to learn to be comfortable saying no and this is definitely something i've been working on because i used to be really bad at not just people pleasing and agreeing to everything but i'm proud to say i have gotten a lot better at this recently and it really does help when you carefully consider whether you have capacity to invest energy into something before you agree to do it then that means that you are investing your time and your energy and the things that are important to you and that's a really good thing it's okay to be in charge of your own agenda and how you spend your limited energy especially if it means avoiding burnout i think that many autistic people particularly those of us diagnosed later in life find it really difficult to structure our lives in a way that suits us whilst living in a world that wasn't designed for us it can be hard to figure out what we need or whether we're headed towards burnout sometimes it can even be hard to recognize that we are in burnout so i hope that this video has been useful in identifying what burnout is and giving you some pointers on how to avoid it if you did find the video useful please click the like button and if you'd like to see more videos like this please also consider subscribing to my channel finally if you are a regular viewer and you're able you can support this channel financially by joining my youtube club the purple people as a thank you for that support i offer a number of perks including an exclusive video every month a private discord server and the chance to contribute to videos in future like this one thank you for watching goodbye

Channel: Purple Ella

Views: 16,678

Rating: 4.9751358 out of 5

Keywords: autistic burnout, burnout, autistic exhaustion, autistic adult, autistic spectrum, neurodivergent

Id: fUSUGHWcKt4

Length: 8min 36sec (516 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 15 2021