before we start, yes I changed the font. I know some people notice this stuff, especially autistic people, and I just want to acknowledge I changed it.
I did this because I was reading back through some of my old posts and noticed they were a lot harder to read than I remember them being because the font was very thin and simple dark grey against white. This is a bigger, bolder font and should hopefully be clearer and easier to read.
Now, onto today's topic: burnout.
Everyone's experienced burnout at some point. You overwork yourself for too long and suddenly you feel exhausted and unable to do any more. You lose your motivation to work and just need to stop.
What some of you WON'T have experienced, is AUTISTIC burnout. Some Autistic people experience burnout at a level drastically higher and drastically worse than that which others do.
We can burn out much easier, and we burn out much harder.
For me, to get over burnout, I tend to need to shut myself off for a day. Often sitting in a dark room with as little sound as possible for that entire day, spending most of the day asleep.
Personally, I have been suffering from a very extended burnout over the last year, drastically worsened by my depression.
So, why do Autistic people burn out easier?
As our society stands, Autistic people are expected to behave "normally" (read: like the neurotypicals) - because of this, we have to spend extra energy focusing on pretending to be neurotypical (see: masking)
This leads to us expending our batteries faster and reaching a state of burnout faster.
The problem, however, comes with the burnout itself. After reaching this state, we tend to crash and burn HARD.
Things that can happen to a burned out autistic person are:
- depleted social battery (lack of energy for socialising, lack of patience for other people, perceived lack of empathy or emotional attachment/response - often even more so than usual, etc.)
- higher sensory sensitivity. Some more annoying traits such as the oversensitivity, especially to lights and sounds, can be turned up to extreme levels to a point that it can literally hurt to open your eyes. This is why I tend to lock myself in a silent, dark room whenever I burn out.
- and drastically more. These are just my personal experiences, and others can burn out extremely differently, more or less aggressively, but still the most common factor is that autistic burnout is drastically worse and more common than regular burnout.
This is a very simple explanation of Autistic burnout, and one I can very much relate to currently being in the middle of my A-level examinations (highest mandatory level of education in the UK)
Future posts will probably be back to the normal, larger length, but I must confess I'm currently going through the exact same thing I've just described to you all. My exams are burning me out extremely hard right now and it makes it really hard to focus on anything, or, in this case, write anything.
That's it for this month. Happy pride month, have a good month and all that jazz, I'll see you all in July.
- Josh