How My Autistic Burnout Hurt My Relationships
by: mike morse, 01/20/2022
Since the world started changing in March 2020, I have been able to learn a lot about myself, including that I’m autistic. This realization wasn’t a sudden one; in fact, it took until over a year into the pandemic for me to fully come to terms with being autistic (self-diagnosed). About a year earlier, in April 2019, I had begun to suspect I was ADHD. Although I was unsuccessful in receiving an official diagnosis through psychological testing, I was confident, as was my therapist at the time, that my self-diagnosis was correct. By April 2021, my attentional difficulties still prevailed, but I was more concerned with the social problems I was having. Verbally communicating was seeming to become more difficult by the day, and I began to realize the extent to which I had relied on mirroring other people throughout my life. This has always helped me as a way to navigate and understand social settings. In fact, the distress I felt regarding my loss of social abilities quickly led me to struggle with my emotional regulation, I became even more non-verbal, and felt as though I had nothing left in me to give to anyone, even myself. I saw the following graphic floating around Twitter for a while, and it actually became the tipping point for my self-diagnosis:
I related to every symptom on the chart; activities that used to bring me joy and excitement, like gardening or spending time with my partner, began feeling like a chore, and my depression worsened. I’ve struggled with depression on and off throughout my life, but this felt different- this despair I was experiencing overtook my whole life, and I was anxious that my heightened fear of socializing was going to affect me permanently.
Before seeing this graphic, I had never seriously considered myself autistic. My neurodivergence, I was convinced, was limited to my mood dysfunction and my hyperactivity; I even knew many autistic people, but my own internalized ableism kept me from allowing myself to consider this label. But the more I read about autistic burnout, the more I realized that this was happening to me. Every day I woke up feeling like I was out of energy, no matter how much rest or sleep I thought I was getting. My memory was rapidly regressing, and I found that I wasn’t able to communicate anything about my overwhelmed feelings at all. Every day began feeling either overwhelming or underwhelming to me- I either couldn’t function because there was too much going on, or I was so understimulated that I couldn’t find the energy to start. I found myself having more meltdowns and shutdowns (which are different from each other) than ever before, both trademarks of autistic emotional dysregulation, and no one around me, myself included, was able to understand the cause. Upon some reflection, I realized I had hit a similar point of autistic burnout when I was younger, around the time I was 14 or 15. No one around me had recognized it at the time- the pressures of fitting in with my peers overwhelmed me to an extreme that was simplified to adolescent insecurities; however, looking back now I realize the distress caused during that period was much more than that. I had been constantly comparing myself to my friends and classmates, seeing the ease with which they seemed to be able to connect with each other and navigate life; I had always felt like there was this invisible wall separating me from the rest of the world. Coming to terms with this self-diagnosis was helpful for me to make sense of my past and current life events, which released some of the existential pain I had been holding, but this insight alone was not enough to heal the burnout. In fact, having this realization initially further exacerbated my burnout because I began to fear that it would never end.
“It is particularly common for neurodiverse people to experience burnout following an intense period of activity and social performance”.
I had extreme difficulty adjusting to my role change from being a student for 17 years to facing the undefined nature of the rest of my life. Without realizing it, I had been continuously keeping up with my allistic (non-autistic) peers by masking, or forcing my behaviors to be acceptable in a neurotypical society. My whole life I had been building up this persona for myself to navigate the world, but it was entirely based upon school. I graduated college three months before the first round of pandemic lockdowns, and suddenly the social structure I had become so accustomed to was completely ripped out from under me. I went from essentially having to keep myself alert and stimulated due to being constantly surrounded by people for 12 hours a day, to having a ridiculous amount of unstructured alone time. I had previously never considered myself to be someone who ever needed that much alone time- as long as I had a few hours to myself a week that was enough to recharge. However, I never considered that this was just due to the fact I had gotten so deep into my masking that I didn’t even know how to be when I was by myself. I started finding my social anxiety continually increased; just one month into isolation and I already dreaded having to return to any type of social normalcy. Going to the store and interacting with strangers caused this new level of fear that I had never previously experienced, and I began to even avoid maintaining relationships with my friends and family who I was not able to see regularly. Most of my other social skills were falling apart as well- I struggled holding eye contact and had very little control over my tone of voice when I was able to speak. As I became increasingly non-verbal (I regularly found myself sitting in silence around others due to overthinking and anxiety about my words), I feared that I would never be able to connect with people the way I had in the past. This avoidance, however, caused me so much distress and guilt that has still not gone away, as I have not yet been able to fully rebuild these social skills.
In fact, the worst part about my autistic burnout is how much it pulled me away from my relationships. During the peak of my recent burnout, I had become so self-absorbed with my own anxieties and shame that I had next to no mental energy to put back into any of my relationships. My emotions had become distant; I hadn’t been able to feel love or passion like I used to. The autistic stereotype of an emotionless person with a flat affect who can’t connect with others never fit for me- if anything I’ve always been overly emotional, especially with regards to interpersonal emotions. I’ve always been the type to read people fairly easily and fit my behavior accordingly, but my burnout was leading me to become almost emotionally averse. I started off just struggling to identify my own emotions, but this grew to a point where I was feeling so emotionally numb that I thought I had lost my ability to feel anything. I’ve been depressed before, hitting a point of existential numbness where you can’t connect with anything in the world around you, but this was different. In those depressive states, I am usually too far gone to care about my lack of emotionality; however, the emotional disconnect resulting from my burnout caused so much distress for me, specifically regarding how little I felt like I was able to connect with my partners anymore.
I have always loved love. I like seeing love, I adore feeling love, and I’ve always felt as though I had enough love to give to keep the world going around. One morning, I woke up next to both my partners and felt nothing. This had nothing to do with them; it was like my heart had forgotten how to feel anything. That morning was when I knew something was seriously wrong. I spent a couple days in my mind reminding myself of all the reasons I love my partners, trying to respark something inside me, but it seemed like nothing was working. I did eventually feel something: fear. I was so scared that I wouldn’t be able to find these feelings inside me again, that I was permanently numb to my emotions and just overall socially inept. I was terrified that I was going to be a burden on those who loved me because I was so unable to just exist like I used to. This fear eventually became so overwhelming and paralyzing that I had convinced myself that I had completely lost my prior self; I would never talk or feel like I used to. I was convinced that my partners would not be able to love the person I had become, at least not long term, since I couldn’t even get myself to fully be present.
Retrospectively, it’s hard for me to say for sure when something began shifting back. My existential anxieties seemed to slowly become easier to manage, and I began to notice that situations that would send an immediate feeling of dread or fear through me became easier to handle. For example, the idea of leaving to go to the store alone felt exciting to me for the first time in months. Little by little, I started to feel slightly more in control of myself again; I regained the ability to predict things before they happened (previously I had been in such a state of constant anxiety that I was literally unable to think of anything outside the present moment), and I noticed I started feeling certain emotions again (excitement, contentedness). Life began to feel more manageable again; although I wished the process could happen faster, I was confident that a shift was starting. I began to feel as though I could show up again for my partners more than I had been able to for months- I was more present in conversations, and I even finally started to recognize feelings inside me again- I wasn’t quite so numb anymore.
By the time I had realized how bad my burnout had become, I was already at a point of drowning. Recovering from a bout of autistic burnout mostly just takes time: space from the triggers of the burnout, time to invest in special interests/hobbies that excite you, and sleep/overall rest for yourself. After recognizing my burnout as just that, I was finally able to give myself a little time, space, and gentleness to allow for some healing. I had been so angry with myself for not being the person I wanted to be that I had not been able to compassionately look at myself to see what my needs really were. As time passed, days became less overwhelming, and I began to feel present and grounded again for the majority of most days. Consequently, I could show up more for my partners, and I could feel the love in my heart begin to expand again. My burnout was such an isolating experience, but it brought me to a very important level of self awareness- I needed to be reminded of my limits. My healing process is still an on-going one; I have become slightly more verbal again, which for myself is important because of the types of relationships I prioritize, however I still haven’t found myself able to completely reengage socially with the confidence I desire.
No two autistic people have the same experiences, and every autistic person’s burnout looks different. My burnout afforded me the ability to really look at my life through a new lens to understand myself, but also drew a really big gap between me and the people I love. Luckily, I have been able to slowly begin to recover from my burnout, but this privilege is not afforded to everyone. Not everyone will have the same recovery goals either; for example, I wanted to rebuild my neurotypical verbal communication skills, such as being able to speak, match tone, and hold eye contact, but this would not be a goal for all autistic people. Having the ability to allow yourself to slow down or stop in our society is impossible for most autistic people, especially those with multiple marginalized identities. We are forced to constantly keep up with a pace of life that is not meant to support most neurodivergent people’s needs, and sufficient rest is almost always at the bottom of the priority list, especially in the fight for survival under capitalism.
My burnout began for a variety of reasons- social environment changes, physical/hormonal changes (I had begun hormone therapy during this time), and also likely the general life changes I was experiencing (changing jobs and moving). I had spent probably five or six months in my burnout state before I had any insight as to what was happening to me. Before finding the vocabulary for my autistic burnout, I was stuck in this state of feeling like something was wrong with me that I just could not figure out or resolve, and I was even afraid that I would never be the person I used to be. Since discovering and recovering from my burnout, I have come to realize that I do not have to be the same person I used to be, in terms of my social abilities or even my personality; the personal knowledge of being autistic is enough for me to give myself the kindness and self-forgiveness to just exist as I am. I once again have found the energy to put into my relationships again, and both my partners have even said they see the difference in me; they have even described me as ‘glowing’ now, which I see as my own acceptance and joy in understanding myself and my limits and abilities.
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