Your Career after Autism Burnout

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QUESTIONS FOR ALL OF YOU
For those who have had a burnout and then gone back to work:
1. Did you go back into the same field?
2. If you selected a new field, what field did you choose?

I've bounced around a lot. Went back to school, got my degree, worked in IT, Emergency Services, Tech Support, Administrative stuff, etc. It's possible to recover from Autistic Burnout, but things haven't been the same for me.

I had 3 burnouts over 12 years while working as a science teacher. Eventually retrained as a gardener and now work training adults with learning disabilities in gardening. Definitely an improvement and hoping they'll be no more burn outs.

I'm a geotechnical engineer.
Had a few post-burnout changes of direction:

30's burnout:
tried full-time motherhood (didn't get on with it at all)
tried temping as a teacher of English as a foreign language (me trying to control a classroom of kids, ha ha)

40's burnout:
wrote sci fi novels (now that was fun, I could have continued that, except... no income)
self-employed engineer (nope, couldn't market myself)

Came back to work as a geotech and happy with it, am now in a very AS-friendly job

I'm an engineering graduate student. Had to drop a semester due to a nervous breakdown, that I now know was at least partially due to autism.

Have gone back to the same program, but having great difficulty being as functional as I was before.

I have done a crash and burn with every job I have ever held over the past 45 years. I now just sit here in my room all day, since the night tremors and panic attacks have started giving me fits again. When I tell most people about what I suffer, I get either trite platitudes or vicious contempt. Say something to a medical professional, I get comtempt or antipsychotics shoved down my throat. With the exception of the clergy, NO ONE REALLY GIVES A DAMN ABOUT MY ISSUES, which is why I no longer say anything.

I hear you. I have been drugged with antidepressants and dumped as a loony. I may still have been there if it wasn't for my "superpower" of analytical thinking and that one psychatrist who did listen.

I'm not really after burnout, I'm still in burnout. I can't work right now but I hope there will be something of value I will be able to do later. I'm not sure if I can carry on with my science career though. But maybe me and science are just to live in this kind of an in-and-out relationship?

Same as Meistersinger and Mags , I don't think my current burnout has finished yet but it's definitely improved but I'm not there yet. What will I choose for my next job ?

This topic fills me with sadness. I have given up multi-year commitments and opportunities because I could not handle the stress and still perform. I'm not prepared to talk about this further though. Ultimately I ended up doing office work at a low wage, and being able to maintain even that employment was a challenge. I have to admit that I've failed at everything big I've ever done.

I had a psychotic breakdown that lasted 7 years. Changed countries twice and got a degree anyway. Still in the same field. I was lucky to find an employer who had patience with my bad days because he wasn't expecting much anyway and my pay was very low. Been working my way up since then. There are still days I sleep in my chair because I'm so tired of trying to measure up to my coworkers. Luckily they're getting fewer. Following my doctor's ordination to a T, never complaining openly about my situation to anyone in the office, and spending most of the weekends sleeping has helped. I'm on my way.

I can relate to that.

Every time I've had a fantastic job and think to myself I'm gonna be sorted at last , burnout rears it's ugly head and sets me back to a toddler like status and I have to relearn everything again After every subsequent burnout it has taken longer to find my equilibrium. I cannot do what ordinary people do and it's taken decades of pain and suffering to realise FML

Has anyone looked into a company like this was requires you to be autistic to be hired?

https://abcnews.go.com/WN/software-comp ... d=10260617

There was another one I had looked into before that was basically a clearinghouse for companies with specific jobs they wanted an autistic person to do. Stuff like review data sets for inconsistencies. It was a work-from-home thing, wish I could remember the name. Anyway, didn't do it because it was too much while staying home with my kid.

Anyway, wondering if anyone has done anything like this, and how a "pro-autism" workplace affects burnout.

I had a burnout which partly caused me to leave my 2nd job. The burnout was caused by stress of management at my specific place of employment. If my department wouldn't have been majorly shorthanded & we wouldn't of been getting pulled off to do things that were outside of our department, I wouldn'f of quit. My 3rd job was in a similar filed but I have physical & other mental disabilities besides Aspergers that really limit me with employment & I didn't feel I could do much else. I wasn't at my 3rd job long but I didn't mind it cuz management was a lot more lax with me. I knew what i was supposed to do & did it when I felt like it needed doing & when I had a chance instead of being pulled off while I'm in the middle of something else & then chewed out about why the task I was originally doing wasn't getting done.

My "field" is almost too broad to escape. I just take on more or less ambitious projects, mostly depending on who I can work with.

Thank you to all that responded. Many of your stories resonate with my own experiences.

I have voluntarily been out of work for 6 months now. Since I quit, going back to work in any capacity seems like an impossibility. My anxiety is much worse than it has been. I thought that my lack of motivation was caused by pot abuse, but I have quit pot for several weeks and have realized that pot was covering up many of my autistic behaviors, and may have actually helped me to push through the work day for the past several years. Now I know that my lack of motivation to work is not because of the pot, but because of autistic burnout, autistic regression, extreme panic, or whatever term people use to describe this "I've had enough" state that some of us get. I've been an engineer most of my adult life so changing careers to something else seems difficult. I am considering going on disability for a while (if I qualify) until I can get a better handle on my emotions. I'm actually OK with my autistic qualities being more present in my life. I just wish I had a diagnosis before the age of 47 so that I could learn to deal with life a little more easily.

Best of luck to all of you. This seems to be discussed very little in professional autism treatment circles. I have learned more about autistic burnout from user groups and blogs that any professional I have met, or book I have read.

Just recently failed my 3rd career. Unfortunately, even if I did burn out, I don't have any time to recover. My Crohn's forces me to need money in order to pay for my five-figure medicines that insurance companies pay for, so insurance is essential for me to survive. I'm not sure what I can do at this point, though I have until the middle of August to find out.