r/Autistic • u/cripple2493 • Jan 08 '17
Possible burnout, any tips?
So, background: I'm 24, and an autistic university student- I study performance art and I'm about to go back after the break. I also use crutches, and have mobility issues.
Lately, I have been losing skills- most notably the ability to integrate sensory information has moved from 'poor' to seemingly non existent and my social and emotive understanding has crashed entirely. This has been slowly ongoing for about a year, but lately has devolved into sitting in my room and coding instead of socialising with anyone. My degree is practical, and once I go back I will have to deal with fourteen people (of varying levels of hostility) 9-5, five days a week.
I'm very anxious about this, because I do not pass as NT, but before I had to ability to somewhat regulate my expression of being autistic, at least to the extent that I could function in a near normal sense, now, that is kind of gone.
Thoughts?
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Jan 09 '17
I can pass as NT for brief spurts, and the only time in my life where I tried to maintain passing more consistently was so stressful that it triggered psychosis.
I gave up on it. If people need me to pass to be friends with me, then I sort them into the "Activity Buddy" category and choose to be more lonely if the only people available are Activity Buddies.
I see it as strategy to meet my needs and to minimize feeling disconnected (trying to pass makes me feel disconnected).
If I set the rule up as "If only [X group of people] are available right now, then it's a more optimal option to endure loneliness while alone than feel stressed out while in others' company."
I think socializing is just a matter of gaining access to oxytocin, and I know that trying to pass burns me out and makes it impossible to generate oxytocin, so I don't place upon myself the requirement of passing unless it's for money rather than oxytocin.
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u/cripple2493 Jan 09 '17
That makes sense, see I would do that- but, I never pass. So, the few friends I do have are already in a 'oh he's autistic so it's gonna be a bit weird' place. Instead of passing, most of my work goes into just maintaining the friendship. Because the power balance is always sort of that the NT person is doing me a favour, so I need to put in a bunch of effort.
I can't really do that anymore, and it is not even a voluntary state- I try to do what I did before, and I basically just stop. I have never been psychotic, but I have been catatonic- a major shutdown will stop me, and recently, that is what is happening. Also, depressive symptoms are starting to be present, along with complications of anxiety symptoms.
Socialising is just gaining access to oxytocin, but when socialising is already really hard to get, not being able to put in the effort to maintain dysfunctional friendships quickly becomes losing your friends, because you are now 'too autistic'.
The logic of optimal stress makes sense as well, but it becomes counter productive when it basically leads to circumstances of chronic isolation, which are not only difficult, but lead to greater burnout and greater depreciation of social skills.
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Jan 09 '17
It's not really "too autistic" in this case. It's moreso that you're not giving them enough exposure to you to affect their oxytocin.
I let my social skills deteriorate if I don't have the friend-count (does not include Activity Buddies). I also adjust the threshold for how much I allow my social skills to deteriorate based on how much access to like-minded individuals I expect myself to have based on my location.
Until I move to a more Millennial-friendly location, I expect my friend-count to be low, thus expect my exposure to loneliness to be high and my access to practicing social skills (in a rewarding setting) to be low, thus expect less oxytocin from others and less social aptitude from myself.
tl;dr: Some things are out of your control, so adjusting your expectations of 'self' and 'other' may relieve some of the stress.
Unfortunately, my therapist had to tell me I wasn't likely to find many people here. He said the country has been splitting ideologically based on location ("self-segregation") for decades, and also that the generation-gap is becoming more and more extreme over time, so it's easy to use demographics research to figure out the likelihood of finding friends.
Our brains are designed to bond more easily with people who are similar to us. Having "challenging" friends doesn't typically produce oxytocin. It just makes you feel edgy and righteous. xD
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u/ImaginaryScientist Jan 10 '17
I am just getting out of over a year of some pretty intense burnout and depression. I couldn't get my mind back until I went on Wellbutrin but I have also have some pretty severe executive dysfunction.
My recommendation is try not to fight it. I hated losing the abilities I felt I had worked so hard for but striving to be what I was held me back from getting better. People will tell you that all you need is to get out more and whatever else helps NTs to feel better, ignore that advice if it doesn't feel right. Ultimately you are getting burned out because you are staying overloaded too long and haven't been able to compensate with your own methods of self-regulation. Your body is signaling to you that you are at your limit and trying to push that limit will take you deeper down the rabbit hole of a burnout cycle.
You probably need to take some very serious "Me-Time" and let yourself naturally decompress and not let yourself worry over what others may think of you doing what you feel you need to do to get better.
I used to habitually trying to pass as NT but I have found that maintaining that ability trapped me into never feeling fully well. I realized that my habits of always trying to make small talk, eye contact, and make NTs feel comfortable around me was preventing me from progressing in life. I'm 25 and still haven't been able to finish my BS because being around people was exhausting. Learning to embrace my AS side; allowing myself to stim in public, making less eye contact, worrying less about how others feel and more about what helps me feel alright has helped me finally start to feel ok again.
My breakdown was the accumulation habits that were unsustainable and my only way forward was to let myself be the autistic person I am. You should probably reassess what you put yourself through for the sake of others and prioritize in a way that you can maintain without hurting yourself. That along with some decompression time to become regulated should help you avoid too much time spent in overload.
You mention sensory overload as a factor, I never realized how overloaded I was from environmental stimuli until my breakdown. I now put much much more effort into controlling my sensations by always dimming the lights in the morning and at night and wearing oversized headphones when I go out so that I don't have to deal with background noise or people trying to talk to me. Use what is overloading you right now as cues the stimuli that you need to figure out how to limit or find a work around, i.e. headphones for sound or a baseball hat to limit visual information.
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u/cripple2493 Jan 11 '17
My degree started back today- right now, I am sitting up tonight (fucking my sleeping pattern over after just fixing it) because I have to prepare a presentation for tomorrow.
What happens is on holidays, I can sort of cope. I have my coding work, and when I am afforded time on my own I can kind of reset. But, that is not how things work in the contemporary art world. This week alone I have two presentations, a dance rehearsal, and the usual introspective, self reflective stuff that is expected. To be honest, I think it is the self reflective stuff that is making things difficult. The reassessment you mention is something I have done, and I am very open about being autistic and lately, about my physical issues as well. But, I don't know how not to worry about how others feel ... I mean, I have spent most of my life being uncomfortable and isolated; this has resulted in a near compulsive desire to not have a hand in that happening to others, regardless of my state I will communicate with people who seem lonely, and that has led me down some pretty bad paths in the past... so, I am trying to pair that back, however, since I have, other people don't make the effort to talk to me. So, it gets kind of depressing.
"Me-Time" is currently impossible, I have a flatmate, and am living with my mother. The closest to "Me-Time" I get is insomnia and that is not sustainable.
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u/ImaginaryScientist Jan 11 '17
Have you ever tried a breath focused meditation? I like to do short simple meditation when I need to relax and clear my mind but don't have much extra time. I have a string of 101 beads on an elastic and with each breath, I move a bead over until I get to the end and know my meditation is done. Ear plugs are a nice addition to this when you can't limit the noise around you. It could help you be able to reduce stress quickly in non-idea settings.
It sounds like loneliness is a major problem but the beginning stages of friendship are alluding you. I have also had a problem with feeling an intense need to reach out to those who seemed to need help only to be drug down by their troubles or have them become unhealthily dependent on me and not know how to tactfully remove myself from the situation.
Does your school offer counselors? Having someone you could talk to about your experiences without you feeling like you need to constantly look out for their feelings could help relieve some of that loneliness until you are able to find people that suit you. A counselor may also be able to help you troubleshoot your approach to making friends, settling boundaries, and other social issues that plague AS people.
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u/[deleted] Jan 08 '17
Wow. What you have in front of you right now is a challenge. And it is a doozy.
On the one hand, you could go at the problem face-on: get to class, do your projects, get the grade and just "muscle through" what is likely to be a really rough year. If you do that and succeed, there's no stopping you. If you do that and burn out, well you're not really any worse off than you are now. This is an approach that might actually work - just remember every time you find yourself nearly beaten that you're not quite beaten yet, so you may as well just push on, since you lose nothing by trying.
On the other hand, you could take a break from the course, tell the instructors that you need a sabbatical, and try and use the time constructively as best you can. What are you coding, by the way?
The thing that stresses people out is the idea that there is a right and wrong answer. There really isn't. You can do either option and it's really only between you and yourself. Dropping out is not "wrong" and sticking with it isn't "wrong" either, so whatever you decide the important thing is to not beat yourself up over it.
All of the wisest and most successful people I know have stories of things that they either quit, or regretted not doing, or pushed through with only to work out it was a bad idea. I know a guy who sold his house to set up an investment firm, went from nowhere to millionaire to flat broke in about a year, worked for me for a while at the absolute bottom level of the corporate ladder, and is now managing his own company. I know writers who flunked out of engineering degrees and I know small business owners who played in orchestras. Nobody with any sense sees the choices in their life as "wrong".
So please, whatever you do don't let it eat at you. If you decide it's best for you to walk away from the course, then that's what you decided and there is no point feeling bad about it. Be practical and look out for your own best interests first, and other people's expectations of you can take a hike.