Burnout

About a week ago I started feeling kind of numb, like the amplitude on my feelings and responses to life was being flattened. I chalked it up to getting through a few months of emotional ups and downs (mostly ups to be fair, but it was still a rollercoaster) and decided to listen to my body and take more time to rest between work and the social obligations I had already planned. I was adamant that it didn’t feel bad to be numb, it just felt quiet and maybe a little disorienting (since I’m used to feeling things so strongly).

Unfortunately, in the next few days I experienced a few hard things one right after another. A project I had been devoting a lot of time and energy on at work had to be redone from scratch (with other projects needing to take a backseat), and I had a very uncomfortable interaction with someone I’m very close to. The shock of those important things going awry knocked me off my axis so much that I spent most of last week nonverbal, crying quietly throughout the day then collapsing on the couch to watch movies or TV shows until bedtime every evening. I barely had the strength to feed or bathe myself, and even with spending time with loved ones and friends over the weekend I haven’t recuperated much since then.

I’ve been on a years-long research journey trying to figure out if I’m autistic or not.  I’ve had friends on the spectrum (whether they had been diagnosed professionally or not) my whole life, and while I found it easy to get along with them most of the time (we had a lot in common!) I still felt like I was more neurotypical than they were.  I could ask other people about their interests and look like I was interested much more plausibly, I understood tact and how to soften my words to keep other people from getting offended.  But the older I got and the more I learned about autism, the more I started to see some of those traits in myself.

There are still some things that don’t completely resonate with me though.  I don’t have a totally inflexible sense of right and wrong, I can tell white lies if I need to or I feel like it’s what needs to be done to get through an interaction.  I don’t have “safe” foods that I always eat without fail (though I have foods I prefer over others) and I don’t have insurmountable sensory issues when it comes to food.  The more I think about it, I have gentler presentations of a lot of symptoms.  I’ve been discounting them for years because they weren’t totally debilitating.

Well, things are debilitating now.  I can’t put my feelings into words, so I can’t ask for help.  I get overwhelmed at work, but I don’t have the support or security to tell them how much I’m struggling.  I’m afraid they’re going to accuse me of lying about my capabilities to get this job, when I feel like the conditions of my job have changed so much that it’s destroyed my previous ability to pivot and solve problems. 

I’m worried that I’ll never get back to my old processing capacity ever again, that my brain, body, and soul are just damaged beyond repair.  Like if an athlete goes too hard too fast, ruins their muscles and joints, and is unable to do basic living because they didn’t take care of their body.  I tried to take care of my mind, but I’ve also been told from a young age that I can just do more than most people so the standards for me are different.  I didn’t practice rest or relaxation after a certain age, and I certainly didn’t do the work to figure out what my neurodivergent brain needs to rest and recuperate.

Ultimately, I feel like I don’t have time to rest.  I have work to do, I have bills to pay, and I have people to take care of (emotionally, not always physically).  I’m so worried that if I fall apart, the people who are around me will get resentful of having to take care of me (because I did a bad job) and they’ll leave me, and then I’ll really be in trouble.