Aspergers and Burnout

Post Reply New Topic

Hi all, I've done lots of research on "burnout" and it doesn't seem to be mentioned in any "official" literature. I've spent my life running away from jobs, being judged as a skiver and suffering horrible self-doubts and bouts of depression because I get into phases where everything is too much effort, I feel headachey and aggressive and I just cannot face going to work. I've been told all my life that I am lazy, I "don't want to work" and that I am suffering from depression/dysthymia, when it turns out that all along I have this disability and should have been working part-time with disability benefits.

I cannot overstate how furious, neglected and even lonely this makes me feel - to know that I've been right all my life, I was burned out because that's how I was made, that I am not designed to be shackled to a desk, that everyone who made me believe I'm a failure was in fact failing me and turning me into a loser. Now I'm 34 and having to rebuild a life that was broken because of other people's opinions.

Has anyone else suffered from burnout, and are there any good online resources about coping with it?

Hi

In my case when they shackled me to a desk, then I was more like bored out than burned out. I think that it is a combination wtih Asperger in the beginnings.

I am thinking about self employment increasing in order to make my own hours and be bothered by other's opinions so much.

I feel the same way in a sense, I was told I was worthless and a failure even though I had been trying hard to get by from in my own point of view, I also found out that this was the completely wrong approach and I should have never listened to those people. I haven't found away around burning out but I find trying to build myself up to a place of productivity while allowing myself more breaks seems to make a difference, I also had to learn to stop being unnecessarily critical of myself which is easier said then done.

Hi everyone. Thanks for your replies. As Wreck1 says, there is definitely an element of boredom in our burnout, at least sometimes. Maybe it's because we don't think like the neurotypical world and we don't understand why people just make themselves miserable and wallow in stressful jobs. In a sense, I definitely think we are aliens. If it wasn't for the negative traits of aspergers, I might even think we see the world in a better way than other people.

At the same point right now in my life. I took a second job in the mornings because my favorite job only gave me 7 hours per week; the second job added 20 hrs, so I am up to 27. But the morning job is administrative, and requires answering phones and listening all morning to printers and faxes and copiers and staring at a computer screen creating spreadsheets full of data I don't understand--mostly because the data is about social events and constituency, and I don't really understand why anyone really cares about the information they want in the spreadsheets. So even though I get off from work at 1:30 in the afternoon, I am burned out from trying so hard to deal with things other people in my office don't even think about--too burned out to pursue my own interests, like writing or natural history research, which means that I really get depressed, because all the things which give me confidence or happiness are being neglected.

No one seems to understand how I could possibly be burned out after five hours of work in the morning (incidentally, the morning job also resulted in giving up my routine morning walk, which helped me to start the day with a positive perspective). They don't see why I can't take an hour to relax after work and then have energy for doing the other things I want to do; and even though the job only lasts through the end of the summer, it often feels interminable, and I feel some days like I can't bear going to work at all.

However, if I am doing something related to my particular interest and it is a solitary pursuit, I could do it endlessly--fifteen hours or more a day--and not feel "burned out" at all. This is where the "bored out" becomes apparent: boredom and frustration are the two biggest triggers for my becoming burned out at work. The boredom results from not being interested in the work itself; the frustration is what I feel when I try unsuccessfully to deal with social or environmental situations which are "no big deal" to anyone else.

My idea of a burnout is when you finally can't pretend to be normal anymore. I hit this state around 19 and from there I just stopped trying. I stopped trying with my family, my friends, and at the workplace, and oddly enough the results have been pretty good. I get along better with my family then usual, and work is a lot less draining. I lost a friend or two, which was fine with me, and the ones that I am close to only got closer. I let my quirks show. I let myself babble about whatever obsession I'm obsessing over. If I don't feel like talking I just don't. I don't force myself to participate in small talk if I am not in the mood (which is 90% of the time.) To put it simply I just let myself be myself and shockingly enough, the results have been good. My stress level has gone down dramatically, and I find it easier to keep my bipolar moods in check.

I have experience burnout. I experienced burnout in traditional sense, burnout as in compassion fatigue. I could not take it. I could not be subjected to one more horror story, another person who we could not help. I couldn't stand having my heart broken one more time. I left my previous job as a case manager for a court-run drug and alcohol treatment program. That job almost killed me. I wasn't diagnosed as having Asperger's back when I took the job, but I knew I was different and already considered myself an aspie. Now that I have been officially diagnosed. I am never taking another job like that again. It takes too much effort to interact with people the way that you are supposed to interact with people when you are in a therapeutic relationship. I signed up for voc. rehab. to see if they can help me find a different career. I am not taking another mental health job. How am I supposed to help people when I'm not fully functioning due to a mental disorder?

I like working...I just don't always like working with people.

Usually because their social expectations of me are too high. I'd like to quietly get on with my job please, not make endless chatter around the water cooler about subjects that don't fascinate me.

I have been dealing with this burnout since before I was even diagnosed. And it has been getting worse since I turned 40.
I think a combination, or maybe a train wreck of factors contribute to the problem. For one, in my youth the frequent periods of intense hyperfocus running me down, the brain uses a lot of energy. Another factor my poor diet, I'm addicted to fast & easy. I'm not getting the proper nutrition to physically recharge myself. Something else that has not helped was my periods of heavy pot smoking. I'd be sober for a year or so, then stoned for a solid 3-6 months at a time.

I also think that being hypersensitive, as our bodies age and wear down, not taking care of them starts to hurt. I have always been aware of almost every little process in my body. And an unhealthy 43 year old body is not a comfortable thing to live in, even for NT's, but it's unbearable for those on the spectrum.

Since 2001, I have worked 5 months in 2005, 3 months in 2011, and 7 months in 2013.
The job in 2005 was temporary, not through an agency, direct with the place I worked, things ended fine there.
But the job in 2011, was full time at a 7-11, that was a living hell. dealing with the general public, excess stimuli. One day came and I just didn't show up for work.
Then this last job in 2013 was also became very unpleasant. It was a factory production job, the same thing every day, day in day out, that bored the daylights out of me. Then on top of that, social integration was not working out so well. Over the period of working there, relations with a direct side by side co-worker we're getting worse and worse, coupled with a deceptive and manipulative manager, I eventually just walked out mid-day. I had had it. The place had sucked the will to live out of me, I was having thoughts of suicide on a regular basis. I had no energy left for anything outside of work. And as someone else said, the weekends we're not enough to recharge me, even a weeks vacation wasn't enough.

Now, my mom is helping me get the resources to apply for disability. She found me a case worker to help with the application process.

Fortunately I have a very understanding family. My dad, (parents are divorced) has been supporting me financially for all these years, but he's getting older and will retire soon. I need to find some way to keep going financially. I really hope the disability works out. I REALLY do not want to return to the blue collar, wage slave world. I really fear that I would commit suicide if I had to live out the rest of my life working in some factory. Life felt so futile at my previous job.

On top of all that there is the guilt and shame imposed by society. So many cultures around the world have the hard working, "nose to the grindstone", philosophy. All these messages coming in that one is worthless if they are not 110% devoted to their job. This traditional idea that if you don't take any job that comes your way that you are lazy and a parasite on society. many of the more conservative old farts out there don't even accept disability as a valid thing, they consider it a cop out. "I worked 60 hours a week every day of my life since I was 12, and when I lost a job, I was out there the same day, pounding the pavement looking for another." they would say.

The resulting depression from that garbage rattling away in my head all the time as beaten the remaining precious drops of energy and motivation out of me.

Burned out? yeah, that's me.

I experience two different things, each of which are commonly referred to as "burnout":

1. Job-specific Burnout - This happens when I am working a job that I should not because it requires too much in the way of skills that my Asperger's limits.

2. Life-cycle Burnout - This happens to me as I age into elderhood and my overall physical and mental abilities decline, making my Asperger's symptoms more pronounced and more difficult to cope with.

Regarding #1, Job-specific Burnout, during most of my working life I was fortunate to maneuver into jobs that matched my interest and abilities. Helpful resources for this were career guides like "What Color is Your Parachute", and those specific to my Myers-Briggs type.

burnout? more like flame-out. i held over 24 jobs in 15 years and that was just the history i put together for my disability application. i hit 45, and everything hit me at once; the sense of overwhelming failure, as well as a general existential crisis about my life choices and where i was heading in my old age (misery). it was another two years before i was able to qualify for disability, during which i fortunately received some unemployment and some support from my now ex-husband. it's always been difficult to summon the energy to deal with a full-time day at work and then come home and do common household tasks, but it was becoming literally impossible. i became resigned to working part-time with no benefits, but it became clear i couldn't even manage that much. of course at none of this time was i aware i had asperger's. it was pretty clear (doctor's agreed) i had fibromyalgia and some other physical issues that were impairing my energy levels. i did everything i could think of to maximize my nutrition, take supplements. it became harder and harder to exercise. my husband couldn't understand that when i worked out it would take me days to recover, not hours. i tried to keep physically busy around the house. there were days i felt fine, and days i felt bone-weary for no explicable reason. i took a job walking dogs, which was great for a while, but eventually things fell apart with the woman who ran the business. i did a lot of mental health work, which personally i found very rewarding, but i could not manage the office dynamics. and yes compassion fatigue is a real thing and it also led to me leaving the field. it's funny because i was talking to an angry psychologist last week about his divorce, he had just sold his practice, and he suddenly looked at me with this big smile and said, "you are really easy to talk to!" like he couldn't believe it. of course i didn't mention i'd been a professional counselor. it's a point of embarassment to me now. my own therapist identified part of the problem as PTSD, where the people i work with become my family members and authority figures represent my parents and i have flashbacks and panic attacks and can't use good judgement or communicate adequately. but i was never officially diagnosed asperger's because i'm female and my symptoms look different, because i never saw a specialist in AS, because years of group therapy gave me skills to compensate for many of my social deficits - not enough, and it was and is exhausting to use them, but enough to cover up a lot of what this neurotype has done to me personally and professionally.

after i got disability i just disappeared for a couple of years. then i tried a couple of jobs and just immediately failed. i'm 48 now and have no idea where to go or what to do. having become recently homeless complicates matters. being stuck in small bergs where there are no professionals, and until recently without transportation, has made it worse. now i have a car, but no money for gas to leave until the 18th. i'm hanging on, i have a place to go now, i'm hoping to find some services and help in the city where i go, but it's tough to keep going. recent events have left me feeling less human and less capable of human connection than ever. i know i'm depressed, and i know my perspective is skewed. i know a lot of my own stupid impulsive decisions have led me to this pass. i know my life is not over. i work hard to act on what i know, not what i feel. WP has been a gift. if i can just get to a physical location where - i don't know - i can get some support - moral, emotional, psychological, physical - i know my life *could* turn around. it's happened before. i know now that my whole life i've picked work based on what aptitude scores told me, based on what people told me, based on what was available, based on my gender, based on certain basic skills (word processing, for instance) and abilities that are marketable, but put me in exactly the wrong environments. i don't even know if there is a right environment for someone who can only work as inconsistently as i can.

and no, this has nothing to do with my parent's expectations of me as a child with asperger's , since there was no such diagnosis when i was growing up. if anything, i was punished for being aspie - punished severely, and by everyone.

i wish i'd known. i might still be struggling mid-life, but i doubt i'd be in the shape i'm in now if i'd known how to care for myself from the beginning.

Autistic Burnout was one of my favorite topics in the past few months, largely because I had to experience it myself.

I've been working in a steady job (or so I thought) ever since I discovered I have some kind of mental disorder myself. But, time had to come when I lost it, and immersed myself in the ever swirling world of middle-age (autistic) burnout. Two jobs have passed within one year, and I'm at the beginning of the third. I have some serious hopes now that I can go with this one well for this time.

During the one year I mentioned above I had had several bouts of depression and/or feeling worthless, cheated, and altogether treated badly. Anxiety was my constant companion.

At a point I realized I had to completely rearrange what I think of myself, the future, and the surrounding world, including the people around me. Marc Segar says that you have to find a middle ground between being too aggressive and too shy, becoming assertive eventually. The interesting point: How? I started out following Karla Fisher's (kfisherx) concept of Autistic Burnout, reading threads on WP, and then going along the book of Susan Cain: Quiet, its subtitle saying 'The Power Of Introverts In A World That Can't Stop Talking'. I even spoke about this very topic on an Asperger's Workshop at an autism conference.

Although Susan Cain in the Quiet book focuses on introverted people and how they differ from the extroverted ideal in an extroverted world, many of her findings and advices would be just the answers for questions raised here and elsewhere in the HFA or AS worlds.

My current understanding of how to cope with autistic burnout is this, in a nutshell:

- Release guilt and stress. If a situation is unbearable, step out of it. Don't blame yourself for the pile of ever continuing past failures and mistakes.
- Find your autistic self. It took me two and a half years literally to begin to understand what others mean by it. You have to think of autism as a part of you, that by no means determines you. It only affects you in some ways that are common with a group of other people. In my model, you, the real person (skin, bone, flesh, brain), your imagined self (how you see yourself in your mind), and a third companion, your autism stand in a triangular shape, autism being below the other two. The idea is that the latter is only affects how you think about yourself, not determines it. All three entities affect each other in everyday context, through interactions, learning, reading, meditating, etc. You simply don't have to think of autism as an important self-feature, better put it aside for a while, and think of how life would be better shaped for you.
- Never stop learning. Learning everything you'd like to, you have to, you've dreamed about, your duty fulfilling your profession's needs, and so on. Use your natural curiosity and perseverance.
- Cultivate connecting with people who can and are willing to help you. Be firm at standing up for your interests, don't let others to belittle you in any ways. Take responsibility for your actions, don't let others to make decisions instead of you (again: stand up, speak up).
- Find your core project(s). Getting in touch with your inner desires needs some work to do, finding your aims in your life isn't always as easy as one might think. For some their core project may be art, for others it may be family or helping people. Even work is an option, with the right choice. What you wanted to be or to do as a child? To what things and activities do you gravitate to? What would you like to do if you had a billion dollars? Or if you'd be the only person on an uninhabited island? What do you envy? Why? These questions may be impolite, but being aware of your desires requires an open mind.

All this may sound a little bit short, perhaps condescending, but I only wanted to provide some ideas, the fact is that everyone has to take their quest individually, using the techniques that suite them the best. Some may find relief in somewhat obscure disciplines like homeopathy or kinesiology, the idea is, whatever is your choice, have faith - in yourself.

Thank you btbnnyr and Opi! You are welcome. I wanted to write about at least one more idea (I'm not sure what was the other one), it's about dealing with emotions (yes, the good ol' meltdowns, shutdowns, feeling down, etc.).

I went through my one and a half year old mmpi2 test results one more time, this time paying more attention to analyzing it in detail. I've come to realize that one thing that holds me back (and perhaps thousands of others having similar minds to me) may be the difficulty of dealing with disproportionate and often repercussive emotions, meaning ever returning feelings that have no real reasons to be there. They have to be trimmed or suppressed altogether, being utterly damaging. Personally I call it 'fighting my own demons'. I do it day after day, sometimes realizing that the feelings I had to suppress were supporting false beliefs like 'never ever hurt someone's feeling, no matter what' or 'you have to be patient when other's don't treat you the way you deserve'.

The truth is (with enough scientific support) that most of our actions are not the result of our conscious thought processes but rather routed in our emotions or subconscious. Meaning, if we could find a way to better understand our emotions and a means to have effective control over them, we could make better decisions along the way.