Acting more autistic

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I can still read books since my own burnout, but I don't read nearly as much as I used to (then I was always reading something, now I only occasionally read, and sometimes leave a book unfinished for ages before going back to it).

I also seem to have more executive function difficulties.



This has been worrying me because for the past two months now I've been repeatedly piling shutdown on top of shutdown. And the kinds of shutdowns I've had have started to vary (or I'm better at realizing I'm having them). I don't think I'm getting enough recovery time between them.

The trouble for me is by the time I finish page "n" I can't remember page "n-1." And running my eyes over the words but having no reaction to them. Luckily, most things on the internet are short enough that that's not a problem.



That also seems a common thread re: the burnout thing.





A lot of people do seem to recover from their burnouts, given time and being able to lessen their stress load. In a better world stress would be seen as dangerous as... well, something pretty dangerous (high cholesterol? riding a motorcycle without a helmet?), and more so for conditions that may predispose one for high stress. In a way I feel lucky that my physical health went south, since it was easier to prove that than to prove to skeptics that I was experiencing more stress than they thought.

In my case, I think it might be a matter of having traded certain skills for others. I'm a lot more functional in the world than before I was 19, but my cognitive abilities were a lot better before then. I've wondered if I "cut loose full-autistic style" or something if I'd get the cognitive skills back. (I'm not likely to find out, though.)

{edited to add one last paragraph, and fix a quote tag}

Last edited by Apple_in_my_Eye on 24 Jan 2011, 3:25 am, edited 3 times in total.

Ah yeah, the reward for 'success' through tremendous (and possibly destructive) amounts of effort is being expected to do it all the time. Reminds me of all the comments from autistics over the years about feeling like their life is a tilting house of cards that is always on the verge of falling to pieces.

Due to a dizzyiness thing and some other reasons I've been using a cane, lately. The funny thing is I think it's acting as a "prop," in that if I do something odd looking, rather than "hey, that guy's a wierdo," it's more like (I think) "oh, the poor crippled man is having a hard time -- don't anyone stare." It's odd how people's perceptions work.


Ugh, yeah. I've found that keeping the verbal part of my brain spooled up for ambush-conversations like that to be really draining. Hope there's a way to explain to them what's going on at some point.

This has happened to me a few times.

I recently took an executive function and verbal memory quiz (I got the links from here) both were low but the verbal memory was astoundingly surprisingly low.



I am not surprised.



Yeah, I read a paper about a girl who went through a lot of shutdowns and had burnout-like symptoms that faded when the cause of the shutdowns was removed.

I am in the process of applying for SSI and I am concerned about proving my impairment. Hopefully my work and college history (as well as K-12 history) will make it pretty apparent that there is definite impairment here.



I've stopped trying to not look autistic, which has had some results. I'm not sure how extreme they are (I wrote about some earlier in the thread), but my anxiety has gone way down and I've had more success being able to adjust my routine to at least be somewhat better for me.

But my shutdowns continue, except without the anxiety attached. Now it's just overstimulation, and I seem to have lower tolerance before the next one, and I've had some other odd effects.

I'm not sure about my cognitive skills. A friend of mine who says she could tell that I had a rapid decline around the time I had those burnouts said she's working out what she's observed, but she first said that a month ago and I'm still waiting.

I'm not sure what to do about now, I don't really have many options to get away from the noise.



I almost feel melodramatic saying I'm not able to talk.

Anyway, I've tried to explain shutdowns at all, but that got me nowhere. Either I am being incredibly obtuse or they are. I'm not sure which.

Regarding the cane -- the weirdest thing to me is how wheelchairs altered my appearance to people. Without a chair they think and sometimes outright say "autistic" or "ret*d" (whether I'm stimming or not -- the perception has as much to do with lack of expected movements as with unexpected ones). In a chair, they put everything down to being a gimp. They see the exact same things, but they respond so differently. Even the transition from manual to powerchair made a difference. 

I'm sorry but exercise is important. It's good for your heart. For me it's good for my ADHD, it gets me thinking and motivated.
I do it to stay fit not lose weight. The Ritalin made sure I was as skinny as possible. With a mass of weight loss and a rapid heartbeat came hypoglycemic type of symptoms which I still have.
It's important to exercise. This is coming from someone who begins to seize after one hour, stim uncontrollably and begin to conduct the music I'm listening to because I can clearly hear every note and separate them. Not to mention all the weird thoughts I get.

That said, my functioning has been pretty good lately. The only issues I've been having have to to with ADHD.

I don't think they were saying that exercise wasn't important. Just that the way it's treated in modern-day America is like you're a horrible person if you don't exercise, and there's all kinds of pressure that wouldn't be there if it was as simple as "this is good for you". And yes, much of that pressure does have to do with hatred of fat people. That's why fat people are told more often than thin people that they haven't exercised enough, even though weight (as you know) isn't a measure of whether you've exercised, or whether you're fit. (If it were, then you as a thin person wouldn't need to exercise. But that's exactly a phrase that is repeated all the time -- "he doesn't need to exercise", where the unstated part of the sentence is "...because he's already thin". I heard it over and over about my brother because he has an extremely high metabolism.

That makes sense. And I can relate to that. I find the way I stim has changed over the years, depending on the demands of the situation and what is considered acceptable, and also because I learn new strategies and experiment and discover some things work better than others.

Yeah. I mean, why do you think I'm so upset? If learning to hate it and feel ashamed whenever you try to exercise could be sufficiently remedied by not doing it, that wouldn't be such a bad thing. But instead you get caught between trashing your health and feeling like crap.

Maybe I exaggerated, though. I have known people who enjoy it. I'm not totally sure HOW, but then again, most of them are really fit, and I'd wager a guess that that's at least partly the cause rather than entirely the result. (After all, then it's just boring. It's not humiliating or exhausting.)

Anyway, anbuend, that's quite interesting. How do perceptions differ when you use a powerchair vs. a manual wheelchair?

I'm feeling and acting like my sweet self again. I was having a really rough time of it going into the weekend, last week.

Judging from reactions I've had from trying to explain even physical health stuff to people, I'd guess the latter. People's eyes seem to glaze over pretty fast if they can't immediately relate. I try to reduce things to common terms like, "I get tired from standing too long." The trouble is (of course) it's a lot harder to do that with "speech is draining/stressful/difficult."

I like exercise and moving around, and even chores because it is all repetitive and I love motion and I can do a lot of it without much conscious thinking so I can think about the things I like.

Yes, and doubly so because my ability to speak is variable. Sometimes I can't really talk at all, or maybe say one or two words, and sometimes I can talk as much as I want, so I have trouble explaining that sometimes I am not able to do everything I can do most of the time.

Like one person got mad at me because a couple times he's knocked on my door while I've been shut down and I didn't reply. I said I was taking a nap but he acted like it was a personal slight. WTH?

Oh: Looks like a two day break from the constant noise. Hopefully this will be recovery time from the overstimulation and shutdowns. I don't know if it'll be long enough, but it's a good start.

Me too. I save my exercise days for those days when I just need to move around. I know when it is because I'm restless and can't focus on anything. It feels good to move around. After I'm done the focus is back and I can get on with what I was trying to focus on before.
It's like I'm a wind up toy and winding me up is the exercise part and the winding down part is the motivation. My brain can only focus if I'm active and eating.

I do think I am much more symptom prone when I am stressed out. I am nothing but autism, unable to do anything that looks normal. I almost have to check every part of myself to make sure I don't walk out of the house without some major fashion issue or my pockets filled with tools that will rip holes in my car seats. I won't tie my shoes, won't eat all day, won't answer the phone and walk around a bag of ticks and twitches. I don't think anyone that has ever been around me understood it or accepted it, at least not at first, that it was just me in my 'less functioning' state.

It takes a huge amount of energy to live and work in the NT world, which is not much different than my nuclear 'family' world. My family members are all high achievers with big responsible lives and then there is me. Don't get discouraged, regroup and relax, try to find what helps to get it all calmed back down.

Thanks, alone. I really appreciate that.