Tiredness

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I'm an adult female who has autism and anxiety (social and generalised). I'm not sure if this problem is caused by my autism or something else so I wanted to ask if anyone has had any similar experiences and if they know what caused it.

I can only do an activity for so long before I become tired. This activity could be anything (washing up, scanning documents onto my laptop, playing sudoku etc) and the same thing happens every time.

I'm not stressed during these activities (to my knowledge), no one else is around, I'm not feeling socially anxious or overwhelmed, I'm not experiencing any sensory overloads.

Some activities are more challenging than others but the tiredness comes regardless of how easy or difficult I find them.

When I feel tired, I stop the activity. If I continue, I feel worse and become irritated or upset.

However, if I change activities, my energy levels reset and my tiredness goes. This doesn't happen all the time, sometimes I'm so tired I can't do anything but cry, but it can happen. Sometimes I just feel less tired.

I can't tell you when it started or if it's been like that my entire life. I do know it's been this way my entire adult life so far. It took me a while to adjust to my autism diagnosis and the way I was (I also had other mental health problems at the time) and now that things are more settled and I understand myself better, I'm asking questions about the things I find debilitating.

I appreciate any insight you have to offer.

Do you mean tired, like you need to sleep? Or tired of the activity?

Unless I'm hyperfocused I generally get bored with things after a while, which I attribute to ADHD. I get tired of what I'm doing and I want to do something else, but I don't need to rest, I just need to change what I'm doing.

Welcome to Wrong Planet.

I would see a doctor to rule out anything physical.

Anxiety is tiring.

Sometimes we have been doing things for so long we do not realize it stresses us out.

It may not have anything to do with the activities themselves but constantly pretending to be not autistic(masking/pretending to be normal) that exhausts us.

Spoon Theory and Autism

Some consider the neurological variant called Aspergers a condition of a more complex, faster, or more sensitive neurology. Often this manifests as an ability to marshal internal resources to focus intensely. However, the processing involved to consciously manage many processes can be taxing. I found I could attend a party if I came 15 minutes early and helped set up. I could visit with some for about half an hour and then had to go home.

A clue is that you don't remember if this was a problem before or not.

It may be that you had a very structured childhood and early adulthood.
Your day was filled with different activities and you never had the opportunity to do something for hours.

I know that when I first started working it was hard to put in a full day of work.

You may just try extending times doing stuff. Maybe for an 90 minutes instead of an hour, and see if you can't adapt over a few weeks. Then maybe two hours.

Sort of like learning to run a marathon. I knew a very old lady who did that. At first she had difficulty making it to the end of the street! But she stuck with it!

I find myself dealing with a lot of tiredness. Add insomnia to that and it doesn't make for a pretty picture.