On Autistic Burnout
(Originally written as a Twitter thread; read it here)
I think I’m in the early stages of another autistic burnout. I don’t like this possibility one bit, but I’m tired, I’m irritable, I’m less verbal, meltdowns are easier to trigger, I stim in ways that hurt. The world hurts in a way it only hurt the last time I burned out. It’s hurting my relationships, making it harder for me to get any work done, making it harder to enjoy anything. “Sounds like depression to me!” Maybe, but I’ve had both and they feel distinct to me. And this isn’t a normal depressive episode.
In depressive episodes, I’ve dropped the ball, sure. But it looked like failing classes, going on medical leave without filing the right paperwork, schlepping myself to and from work without doing anything meaningful. There was follow through but no passion. Here, there’s no follow through. I have enough energy to feel tense, but even the thought of classwork or video games or relationships with people or anything makes me scared and angry and sad and tired all at once. That’s what burnout feels like to me.
Right now, I want to cut myself off from everything and just hide in a dark room and scream for hours on end, which (at least for me) is distinctly a burnout feeling. And it fucking sucks. I feel like I should be apologizing to friends, family, professors, loved ones of all stripes because whatever you’re asking me to do? I just cannot fucking do right now and trying just makes me pissed off and scared and embarrassed.
I guess the difference is that when I’m in a depressive episode I just feel empty, but when I’m in burnout, the world hurts. And right now it hurts a lot.
(is this related to [gestures vaguely at the world]? Yeah, sure, of course. But just because that’s the cause doesn’t mean I’m not experiencing burnout. The general state of the world + the inherent unfriendliness of the world towards autistics -> burnout.)
Another sign of burnout for me: I want to wear the same outfit, eat the same food, do the exact same things every day. I’m retreating hard into routine as a way to cope with the world feeling like too much. Not necessarily bad on its own but with everything else — burnout. I’m also sleeping more (with the help of weed and/or ZZZquil). You’d think this is a good thing, because normally I struggle with sleep, but this means I’m so overwhelmed that I’m trying to just sleep my way out of it, which just makes me feel hopeless.
Basically, for the next god knows however long, my threshold for meltdown is going to be really low (as in, in the past few weeks I’ve melted down almost every day), and once my ability to sustain that runs out, I will be radio silent for some other period of time. I’d have lots of ideas for how to support someone in meltdown in a normal world, but for the most part they involve showing up in person to make sure I eat, bathe, get fresh air, etc., but I don’t know how anything is gonna look this time so. Fuck. Wish me luck?
