Burnout

Burnout has been the bane of my existence for a long time.

It’s common for undiagnosed/late diagnosed autistic adults, when pushing through life by masking, with no help or resources or even a breadcrumb of a benny-of-the-doubt* (not even once lol) to eventually experience a life-changing burnout.

*benefit of the doubt

This happened for me right out of college and it lasted about a decade. The worst of it lasted about 7 years.

While I didn’t love the forced socialization, the sensory overload, or the limitations on the amount of days you could miss of school, I did enjoy learning. I loved the rigidity of paying attention, studying, getting a good grade. I’m a sucker for any task with a proven formula. A + B = C. I can thrive at anything with clear directions. After years of stressing (to the point of panic attacks) due to outside pressure of the expectation of perfection and the inner knowing that an education was the only way I was getting out of my family’s cycle of generational trauma, and succeeding at great personal cost, when I finally graduated college, something snapped.

I’d had small glimpses of burnout before—running myself ragged with clubs and activities and multiple different friend groups that I split my time between (Libra 💅), going even when I didn’t want to or really felt like I shouldn’t (or couldn’t), forcing it until eventually my body would give up. Literally. I would always get sick and not be able to get out of bed for days.

I was lost. The nebulousness of life and it’s rules and how to function in a work space and budgeting and going to the doctor and feeding myself and cohabitating with a partner and gender roles and all of it was too much for me. I crumbled under the pressure.

I went nonverbal for weeks. I was so depressed that I could barely function. I slept 10 to 14 hours a day. I was so anxious that leaving the house for a walk around the block would cause a panic attack. Everything was uncomfortable. I lost all my friends, I stopped singing. My intrusive and passively suicidal thoughts started to be a lot less passive. I was drowning.

I would be out of work for months at a time, pissing off everyone around me. Because I was so broke I was often unable to be generous, I wasn’t able to reciprocate financially in any of my relationships. This only added to the stress. The big question of “why is life so much harder for me than it is for everyone else?!” plagued me.

I’m only just now seeing the other side of that big, life-changing burnout, and it actually taught me a lot.

I learned, just like with keeping a tidy home or taking care of your health, a little bit of daily self-care does a lot to prevent disaster. I learned how to check in with myself, ask myself how I’m feeling, assess how much physical pain I was in, how much energy I had, and how to set expectations that were reasonable given that information. I learned to flow with my energy. I learned how to rest. I started to see that the more grace I gave myself when I needed to do nothing, the faster I would recover. I learned that no one is really capable of doing it all, all the time. I learned to protect my peace. A stressful home or social life is a killer for me. Stress causes these full-body flare ups of pain that prevent me from sleeping and put me in a shitty fucking mood. Which makes me more stressed. Which makes the pain worse.

I learned to unpack any notions of success or expectations of productivity that came from capitalist programming. I let go of my American Dreams. I let go of comparison, which helped me release competition, because I realized everyone is working with entirely different resources, and that has more to do with who “makes it” than talent or HaRd WoRk or any mythological moralistic bullshit rhetoric like that.

I have learned to navigate burnout with grace. I have learned to prioritize self-compassion and self-care above all else. That’s not to say I don’t care about other things, I don’t work on other things, that I’m incapable of building community or making art, being a good partner, or am an inherently selfish human being; it just means that I keep my cup full. In fact, the more full I am, the better the quality of love I am able to give.

We put so much value in self-sacrifice. I reject that. If everyone took care of themselves first, we would have a lot less dysfunction in the world. Everyone would have better boundaries, that’s for sure.

Burnout is a bummer but there is a lesson to be learned during the winters of your life. Nothing blooms forever, but it will always bloom again. Rest without guilt or abusive self talk, or thinking about all the things you should be doing. If you need to phone it in at work because you’re exhausted (or better yet, call tf out!) take care of YOU. Over-giving is a thankless job, anyway. In fact, the venn-diagram of people who would enjoy your self-sacrifice and people who will ALWAYS take more is a circle. Let it go.

Make yourself a priority. In the inherently exploitative program of the white supremacist capitalist cishetero patriarchy, rest is revolutionary.

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