regression of skills?

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Has anyone here experienced regression, as in "autistic burnout"?

I have noticed that I cannot keep a conversation going at all anymore. Whilst I have never been the greatest or most confident of communicators in the world, I used to practice tongue-twisters daily because I hated mumbling and wanted to speak more eloquently.

Now I am mono-syllabic, and find I am extremely tired by mid-afternoon. But the tiredness could in part be attributed to my medication, which is known to cause sleepiness.

I believe I used to remedy autistic "burnout" symptoms by eating copious amounts of junk food. Ironically, I am even more miserable on a reasonably healthy diet. I can't help feeling my body needs to be overloaded with carbs to just make it through each day.

I experienced something that could fall into the burnout category. During that time I realised that many aspects of my life were dependent on personal qualities that were actually nurtured skills and not innate abilities. Due to health reasons I couldn't practice these skills, they disappeared and I had to rebuild them, on the plus side, this gave me the opportunity to prioritise sustainable skills that would help me to be healthy.

It's difficult for me to answer as I don't know if I have ASD.

I have had multiple nervous breakdowns in my life which could be autistic burnout ( or not ) but I have definitely regressed after each breakdown and it's taken longer each time to recover , it's taken nearly 2 years to recover from my last breakdown and I'm still not there.

For me it could be a case of not having ASD and only having minor autistic traits but my breakdowns amplify them and give me other autistic traits that I've never noticed before ( although I have only really learned what is an autism trait since joining here ).

I'm wondering if I'm in one right now. I wonder how long it will last. Seems like I can't do anything I used to do.

Yes. I recognize at least two periods in my life that I suffered from autistic regression.

The first started at university, lasted until I finally had a 6 month break from all but the most basic responsibilities after graduation, and involved loss of my coping skills.

The second started 2 years later right before I was fired, has lasted almost 10 years now, and involved loss in everything, including:

• ability to tolerate sensory overload,
• executive functioning skills,
• ability to tolerate mental overload,
• self-care skills,
• ability to speak,
• social skills,
• ability to tolerate social/emotional overload.

To add to my frustration, Social Security does not recognize autistic burnout, so they do not believe I could possibly be having this much difficulty now after being able to accomplish everything I have before.

_________________
31st of July, 2013
Diagnosed: Autism Spectrum Disorder, Auditory-Verbal Processing Speed Disorder, and Visual-Motor Processing Speed Disorder.

Weak Emerging Social Communicator (The Social Thinking-­Social Communication Profile by Michelle Garcia Winner, Pamela Crooke and Stephanie Madrigal)

"I am silently correcting your grammar."

With socializing I feel like a 50,000 piece jigsaw puzzle. I'm hoping by the end of this year I can be like one of those 4 piece puzzles made for toddlers. In some ways I feel like I am talking Chinese, and I don't even know Chinese.

Yes. Hugely.
It was a few years ago. I was at university, living on campus, pouring absolutely everything I had into a degree. It was competitively sought, had a lengthy qualification process to even get selected, was very high stress, high workload, with an incredible dropout rate. I held up ok though with the sort of singlemindedness an autistic is capable of, and got out into the job - only to find it disappointed me completely. Everything fell apart from there. I had been proverbially running on fumes, pushing myself to the limit to make it to probation, and I found it had all been for nothing. The time, the stress, the student loans, moving inland, all the work, all the buildup that what you were doing was worthwhile, that it made a difference and was important work - and it was nothing.
I had some kind of breakdown - they tell me it was an autistic regression type scenario. I didn't speak for over a year, and did absolutely nothing but bury myself in my special interest. As in I literally did nothing else. I slept and I pursued my interest. Didn't see anyone, go anywhere (except to get supplies for my interest) and had to be cared for by relatives because I was incapable of doing anything else.
Everything changed from that. And it's changed forever I think, as some things that were getting better until that point (like speaking) have remained difficult.

I've recently created a hypothesis for this. We spend our life building a processing structure to interact with the world and the society we're brought up in. The best allegory I've come up with is a hydroelectric damn. Meltdowns are when too much water flows through too fast to be processed properly. Shutdowns, the machine stops trying to process anything at all. Burnout is when the whole structure gets hit so hard that parts break. So as a result it has to be rebuilt, which of course takes time and space and a solid foundation to build on. It's not a matter of just starting back up the system.

Burnout is what led me here in the first place. I moved in 2015 to France to study Breton. I always wondered just what my limits where, and I've found them. Language is one of my interests, it has been since I was a child. Last fall I spent about a month in my flat, afraid of my books because none of it seemed to make any sense. I'm still working on trying to enjoy it again.

I've never been diagnosed but I find it harder to socialize as I get older. People have more expectations of me now than when I was younger. It seems that people take social miscues more personal as you get older. They think I'm being an as*hole when really there are other reasons why I may not hang out with them or speak with them at a party.

Don't have a diagnosis, like a couple of other posters, but a combination of rough life experiences have caused the following:

1) Muted affect is much worse. I really have trouble coming up with facial expressions in a lot of situations. This is my biggest handicap.
2) I am much more easily disoriented than before.
3) I have a harder time learning and remembering new things.
4) Executive functioning is worse.
5) Misophonia is worse.
6) Echolalia got worse.
7) I've lost a lot of joy in life. I am actively working on finding something new to enjoy.

Amity made a point that resonated with me.

"During that time I realised that many aspects of my life were dependent on personal qualities that were actually nurtured skills and not innate abilities."

As I get older and more versed in this disorder I'm recognizing situations where I brought intense focus to something that I wasn't suited to be an expert in. In the short term I was able to pass myself off as being knowledgeable but any real expert would have seen through me. Fortunately(?) in office life it's extremely uncommon for anyone to be called out on their credentials directly so I was always able to muddle through.

Lately I've been focusing on the things that generate mental energy and trying to integrate them into my life. I work in a field that has aspects that can hold my interest (IT - systems and routing are always interesting) and I as long as I remember to spend time explaining what it is that I'm working at to my co-workers and managers they seem to tolerate me.

tl;dr - If I spend too much time focusing on things that I'm not suited to I get burned out. If I persist it leads to major issues.

I tried a lot harder to fit in when I was younger, especially in my 20s. Now, I just can't be bothered with all that.

Yes I did. I was doing things just because I was supposed to do them, there was little feeling or passion.