So I have noticed an interesting autistic trait that maybe you can relate to. I resonate really strongly with it myself, but it's a bit hard to explain and I think it needs a name. So maybe you can help me out. It has something to do with rest and burnout and analysis paralysis and monotasking, focus, attention to detail, perfectionism, that kind of thing. But it's hard to explain and it doesn't as yet have a single name. So maybe you can help me out and we can find one. Hi everyone, Paul Micallef here from Autism From The Inside. I make weekly videos sharing the human side of autism. So make sure you hit subscribe to get the latest content. So I'm not sure how this video is gonna go. Hopefully it makes sense. It is an idea, a work in progress, a concept that I think once we get it sorted will be really, really helpful to a lot of people. I know I have personally tried to explain a lot of these traits individually to people and they kind of make a little bit of sense one-on-one, but they really start to have a very, very big impact when they are considered all together and how that affects a person's life. So the working title I've got for this phenomenon is Responsibility Hypervigilance. So that doesn't quite roll off the tongue as well as I would like. I really think we can do better than that. It has something to do with responsibility in terms of when I am in charge of something, when there's something important that I need to do. And it has something to do with hypervigilance and attention to detail and looking for problems that aren't there, or rather looking for opportunities to improve a situation potentially, or looking for potential threats that might need handling in advance, or even just trying to remember, have I forgotten anything? Is there any tiny little detail that has been left undone? So that's kind of where I'm going with the responsibility hypervigilance, because I am looking very, very carefully to try and see what I am not yet seeing in terms of my own responsibility and what I can do to improve a situation. And I feel like this is just my natural way of approaching the world a lot of the time. It's not anxiety. It's not like I'm anxious about things and I'm hypervigilant in that way. It's not even stressful. It's just that I'm constantly paying attention to my environment and looking for things that could use some extra attention. So while this disposition in and of itself is not anxiety or stress or depression or anything like that, what it leads to very often is exhaustion and burnout and an inability to rest and an inability to be productive and get stuff done, which then leads to stress, anxiety, depression, burnout, those types of things. Or at least it can lead to that in many situations. So let's get a little bit more specific. What am I trying to describe with this term of responsibility hypervigilance? So what it looks like is I'm actively looking, is there anything that needs my attention or is everything okay? And even when everything is okay, I'm still scanning the environment again, just to make sure, just to have another look, is there anything I missed? So what that looks like when I'm doing a task is, am I done? Is it really done? Is there anything I've missed or is there anything else I could potentially do? And what that means is when I'm trying to complete a task, when I'm trying to put a task down and transition away from that task to something else, it makes it challenging to transition away because I'm checking and double checking, have I said everything that I need to in this email? Are there any spelling mistakes in this email? Could I improve the way that I am phrasing this paragraph or this sentence? Is it clear? Can I make it more clear? And of course the answer usually is, well, yes, if you wanted to spend another hour writing this five minute email, you might be able to do a better job if you spend more time on it. However, in most situations, it's not necessarily going to be better to spend more time on something. So what I should do instead is sometimes just accept this is done. I don't need to make it better. It's good enough. That is a really powerful phrase for me recently. Good enough. It's definitely not perfect. I definitely could make it better, but it's good enough. Nothing's gonna fall over if I send this text message with a typo in it. So part of this phenomenon is, is there anything else I need to do? Have I forgotten anything? And part of it is trying to keep track of my future commitments and future responsibilities. So if I have to leave the house in 15 minutes, for example, and I am actually completely ready, well, what do I do in that 15 minutes? I can't start a new task because what if I get engrossed in that? And then what if I forget about time? And then what if I forget about this upcoming responsibility that I need to make sure I keep track of time and leave the house at the right time? So this leads to a great difficulty in turning off between tasks. So I've actually successfully overcome the first barrier. I've finished what I'm doing. I know there's nothing else I need to do for that one task, but then I can't start anything else because it might distract me or let me forget about a future responsibility that I have to attend to. So the fact that holding future commitments and future responsibilities in my brain does not allow me to relax properly in the moment means that the only way I can turn off completely and actually rest at all is if I've completely finished my to-do list. And I know there's absolutely nothing that needs my immediate attention for a significant amount of time. That's why I stopped checking my email on a Friday and I don't check them again until Tuesday. Because if I was aware of an unanswered email that needed my attention, even if I knew it could wait until Monday or Tuesday, it would still be in the back of my mind that, oh, I can't forget this email because I have to respond to it in four days time. And then this distraction of future responsibilities can also make it more difficult to be productive in the moment. Let's say, for example, I have a relatively short to-do list. I have all day to complete three very important tasks. Well, the logical thing to do would be to just pick one of them because they all need to be done. So just pick one of them, start on that one, finish that one, and so you can then move on to the other ones. But unfortunately, because I am aware that the others are also important, it means when I'm trying to focus on task number one, task number two and three keep knocking on my door saying, hey, we're important too. And if I haven't adequately taken precautions to protect myself from that and deliberately decide in advance that I'm doing task one exclusively and block out that time and commit to myself and like promise these other tasks that yes, I will get to you. Yes, you are important. Don't worry, everything's fine. Then those future tasks can actually make it almost impossible to do the one thing that I'm supposed to be doing right now. And then what if my to-do list actually has more on it than I could possibly get done in one day and I know some of them have to get leftover for tomorrow. Well, then I have to decide at some point that rest is the new current priority. So how can I decide? I know these are important tasks that I have to do and I can't forget about because if I let them go then the whole thing's gonna fall down and know that forgetting about it in the moment and allowing me to rest is actually the most important priority for me. So this responsibility hypervigilance of not wanting to drop any of the balls that I have in the air kind of creates this paralyzed state where I'm not really resting, but I'm also not working and I'm just staring at my to-do list knowing that they're all really important but not actually actioning any of them or resting. So I'm doing nothing, wasting time, getting more and more stressed because I am wasting time and none of this is getting me any closer to either finishing things on my list or actually taking a break. So what are some practical everyday examples of this? It could be reading every single word of an instruction set to put an IKEA table together or reading and rereading an email over and over again instead of just hitting send or I'm trying to hang a picture frame. How long do I decide exactly where it fits on the wall compared to just doing it and moving on to the next thing? If I need to buy something and I'm researching this new product, how long do I look for different brands and different options and understand all the information before I actually make a decision and actually do the thing? The other day I was hosting a social event at my house and I couldn't really relax properly because even though I'd done everything, there was no more than sort of five to 10 minutes between when I had to do the next thing. Like, oh, so we're all sitting down eating, that's fine, but then I need to do the next thing and then the next thing and then the next thing. And so because I couldn't forget about it completely, I had a responsibility coming up in the near future that was already on my radar. It made it incredibly hard to just relax and be in the moment because my brain was too scared about forgetting an important thing. So, so far I've been talking about all the challenging aspects of this phenomenon that I'm looking for a better name than Responsibility Heart of Vigilance for. However, in lots and lots and lots of situations, it's actually really advantageous. My natural disposition to do a job very thoroughly and make sure that I remember and complete all of my responsibilities means that I can be very thorough. Sometimes it means I'm extremely productive because I always go above and beyond in any task. Whenever I do apply myself to a task, the quality is extremely high because I have gone above and beyond in so many different ways. Especially when I'm doing something that I'm naturally good at, spending that extra time means that when I'm done, it's literally like the best of the best of the best because no one else has the skill and has devoted so much time to this one thing. However, if I am attempting a task for which I am not naturally gifted, it is equally possible to spend an equally ridiculously long amount of time for fairly mediocre results. Think about an extremely talented artist spending, I don't know, six months nonstop, day and night, focusing on this masterpiece of a painting. Whereas if I did that, I could spend as much time as I wanted and the result would still not be all that great. So are you getting a bit of a sense of what I'm trying to describe here, like the full picture of what all of these things come together to look like? So before I jump into sharing some of the real life consequences, I'm really curious to hear your opinion if this resonates for you and if you can think of a better name than I've already come up with. Okay, so what does this actually mean for my life? I've talked a lot of abstract concepts so far, hopefully you've got a bit of a sense of what I'm talking about. However, what it looks like day to day is it's really hard to transition from one task to another task. The positive version of that is once I focus on doing one thing, I can really get absorbed in that one thing and keep doing it, keep improving it, go above and beyond in whatever the task is to end up with a really quality result. And the trick with that is finding something that I'm actually good at that is worth spending so much time so that in the end it's worth the massive investment of time and energy. The opposite of that is it's really easy for me to get distracted and feel scattered in everyday life. It's hard to multitask. If I'm trying to do too many things at once, I can't adequately focus on any one of them. So what I have to do instead is deliberately block out space and time and mental bandwidth to deliberately focus on one thing at a time. A really good example of this is my one-on-one life coaching. When I'm with one client for one session, during that session, the allocated time, there is absolutely nothing else outside of that in my everyday life or anything like that that needs attention during that session, which means my brain can safely leave all of that at the door and just focus on the one person in front of me. So that's where ironically, it's actually a lot easier for me to work with people than it is to work by myself sometimes. Because if I'm by myself, I need to decide if I'm done on one thing and decide that I'm transitioning to the next thing and then decide that that is the thing that I'm gonna be focusing on for the next little bit. And all of those decisions create a lot of extra executive function load. Similarly, sometimes the decision and the executive function that it requires for me to block out time to rest is almost more than the actual rest gets back in the first place. So that's one of the reasons. And again, I don't know if you can resonate with this, but one of the reasons why it can be so challenging to avoid burnout. And this kind of predisposition, I've always had it. I've always had this way of looking at the world where I am looking for opportunities. I'm looking for continual improvement. I'm looking for, is there anything that we're missing here? So sometimes questionnaires ask what kind of role you find yourself in, in teams, for example. Are you a leader? Are you a follower? I'm sure there are lots of other ways to be participating in a team. Anyway, my answer is always something like, I'm the one who looks at how the whole group is working. And I find if there is anything that we're missing, any gaps that we're not currently doing, and then I will either go and do it myself or bring it to the attention of the group so that I'm keeping the whole group on track. And that's always been my role. And that's a really, really valuable role. I'm like the lookout in the crow's nest of a ship, making sure we don't hit any rocks. And I'm aware a lot of the time from the outside, this looks like perfectionism, but the more I look into it, it's actually quite different from how a lot of people describe perfectionism. So Brené Brown, for example, talks about perfectionism a lot. And the way she talks about it is that perfectionism is the desire to do a perfect job so that I am not criticized, right? If I do a perfect job, then there will be no way for anyone to criticize me. And I'm kind of avoiding shame and blame and things like that. Whereas my version of that is I am always trying to make sure that I'm okay. And my brain doesn't feel safe to stop looking because I might miss something. And maybe that's just an inherent mistrust in my own brain. Maybe it's actually quite accurate. And if I didn't constantly check, maybe I would forget things all the time. But either way, what it looks like, probably the most easily observable external feature is that I put a lot of effort, a lot of time and energy into everything in life. I once expressed, or for lack of a better word, at how a friend of mine could just do so many things in a day, like look after the kids and then do some housework. And then it just seemed like there was always more to do. And I'm like, wow, there's no way that I could keep going for that long and have that amount of energy. And their response was, yeah, but when you burn, you burn very, very brightly. So I think that's one way to think of it. I don't seem to have a medium setting. When I focus on something, I put everything into that one thing, which can be fantastic and is also not really appropriate for a lot of things in life. Some things really should just be maintenance tasks that you get done with a minimal energy. You say, good enough. Okay, sure, mom, I'll come over for lunch on Sunday, right? Like that does not require a lot of brain power. Whereas if I'm constantly looking and reviewing and have I said exactly the right thing, is there anything I've missed? Do I need to add anything else to this text message that can drain a lot of extra energy, leaving me feeling burnt out and unable to rest? So responsibility, hypervigilance, can we find a better name than that? I'm really curious to hear if what I've shared kind of resonates with you and you can see it in your own life. I'm especially looking forward to hearing all of your suggestions of what we can call it, because I kind of feel like once it has a name, then it becomes a lot easier to talk about and a lot easier to share the experience and help people understand our own experience as well. So I better leave it there for today, but thanks for watching. Please leave a comment and I will speak to you next week. Bye.
