Reading My Way Through Autistic Burnout
Early in the process of being diagnosed with autism, I learned about autistic burnout. I first came across it on the Autistic Women and Nonbinary Network website. Seeing the list of symptoms of burnout laid out so clearly in a graphic made me realize that there were several times in my life when I suffered from burnout beginning when I was only 12 years old.
I spent large chunks of my teens and 20s in a constant state of overwhelm. I was living in New York, a city that was always too loud, too fast, and too crowded for my sensitive nervous system. I remember living in my first apartment in New York City at 20 years old. Working two jobs to make ends meet and coming home to hide in my bedroom and cry. I couldn’t figure out what was causing me to feel such deep exhaustion and despair. Because I was also really excited, to be on my own, making art, living in a city I had long dreamed of, and living with two friends from college. But some days, I would come home and the minute I closed my bedroom door I would collapse in on myself and feel this crushing sense of exhaustion. I would cry quietly alone in my room. I didn’t want anyone to hear me. How could I explain this behavior? It made no sense and it seemed to consume me with an intensity that made me want to escape my own body. I had this overwhelming urge to bang my head against the mirror closet door in my room. I remember rocking back and forth as I stared out myself in that mirror. The rocking was the only thing that would soothe me.
What is Autistic Burnout?
According to researcher Dr. Dora Raymaker, it is a “state of physical and mental fatigue, heightened stress, and diminished capacity to manage life skills, sensory input, and/or social interactions, which comes from years of being severally overtaxed by the strain of trying to live up to demands that are out of sync with our needs.”
Prior to diagnosis, I would have short periods of time when I simply couldn’t function. I would have to quit my job or take days off. I would lie and say that I had a family emergency. My mother was chronically ill so it was plausible that I was taking care of her. I hid the fact that I was burnt out from everyone around me because I could not understand what was happening to me or what was causing it. I felt ashamed. I thought I was lazy and depressed and just needed to push harder but pushing harder only made me more burnt out.
There was one constant during those prolonged periods of burnout for me: books. I would lay in my bed and escape into a story for hours. Reading continues to be one of the ways I cope with burnout even now. The difference is, that I understand what’s happening to me. I also know that engaging in special interests is one way to recover from burnout. Without realizing it, all those years I struggled without understanding my neurobiology I was doing what I needed to do to recover.
I still have periods of burnout. Usually when I find myself in environments where I need to mask or where I have to neglect my own needs in order to work. I recently came off a week-long work trip that took 10 days to recover from. I spent most of that time laying under a weighted blanket devouring a series of romance novels. Sometimes I read for 10-12 hours a day. This is how I take care of myself. How I recover.
Research has hypothesized that the reason autistic hyper-focus on special interests is because of a dopamine deficiency. Dopamine is the neurotransmitter responsible for motivation, attention, focus, and interest. We focus on our special interest to access the dopamine we so desperately lack. It’s kind of amazing to think that our brains have found a way to get us what we need to function. It totally makes sense then that focusing on my special interest is how I recover from burnout and get the dopamine engines up and running again.
Unfortunately, not everyone has the space and time to write a blog about their favorite romance novels or read all day as they recover from days spent in the neurotypical world. Yet every autistic should be able to spend time doing what they love no matter how unique their interest may be. Because it’s a critical part of how we recover from burnout.
