Autistic Burnout -The Silent Killer - Recognizing, Preventing, and Recovering from Burnout

As a child (in middle school), I was denied the right to rest when I was so physically exhausted and burned out it made me sick.

I’m creating a new community outside of social media on Substack (where I can have more control over my space), and I hope you’ll join me as a free member (but I also have paid subscriptions if you want access to bonus content)

My Substack community members are helping shape the community's content by requesting different topics they want to learn about.

This week one of my readers has asked me to share advice on recognizing, preventing, and recovering from Burnout (a topic close to home for me).

Thank you so much for this perfect topic request.

Autistic Burnout, unfortunately, is a topic that I'm intimately familiar with. It's a topic I've spoken about often due to my own experience of repeatedly Autistic Burnout since childhood, and the most recent Autistic Burnout in a workplace, which led to my late Autistic discovery at the age of 29.

The first Burnout I remember experiencing came in elementary school, where exhaustion, lack of empathy from those around me, and overexposure to my sensory triggers (without protection or rest breaks) eventually gave way to sickness - my stomach and head twisted in knots of pain (headaches) and disorientation.

As this sickness would come and go through the years, doctors never seemed to have an answer to the cause of my pain and distress. 

My school demanded that I attend, and I must have a doctor's note explaining why I missed class. However, exams and tests found nothing "physically" wrong with me, so it was assumed (by one of my doctors and the school nurse) that I was "getting sick" to avoid school. 

The prescription for "school avoidance" was more school - to send me to school so my aversion wouldn't be "nurtured." 

Imagine if the prescription for workplace burnout was "more work"? 

Attendance is essential to schools because when students miss class, the state doesn't pay the school for educating them. Empty chairs mean lost revenue. 

My guardians were told (since I had no fever and wasn't contagious) I had to attend school, and keeping me home would result in truancy charges against them (since I was still too young to charge).

Schools and doctors hold a lot of power over parents (especially if the parents don't have the resources to fight back when schools and doctors team up) to enforce abusive policies that violate the rights of children in their care. 

As a child (in middle school), I was denied the right to rest when I was so physically exhausted and burned out it made me sick.

The things that broke me weren't the things that drained others, so people were always confused when I would fall apart in environments they found invigorating.

The school demanded medical information about me, then used that information to force me to go to school when I was too sick to learn. They had me throwing up at my desk in a trash can in front of my peers because I "wasn't contagious." 

How is that in my best interests as a child? 

Was it a punishment, behavioral conditioning for my "school aversion," making an example out of me, or just a misunderstanding? - regardless of why the impact and trauma of being denied rest and dignity are still with me today. 

It was in my diagnostic report. I don't know my own limits, and I don't know when to stop and rest- but then again, growing up, I wasn't allowed to stop (even when I begged to because I was in excruciating pain and agony). I always had to find some way to keep pushing. The option to "tap out" was never given.

From a young age, I was trained not to listen to my body, to ignore its signals. 

Because asking for help failed, I stopped asking for help.

When I complained the lights in the classroom were "hurting me," I was gaslit and told to "suck it up" because "Nobody else" had "a problem with them." - it taught me to push through my pain and keep it to myself. 

"No, you can't go to the bathroom. You're out of passes for the six weeks!" - just as I was learning to sense when I needed to go, when advocating for that need became a punishable offense, training me to ignore that feeling. 

"It doesn't matter if you are sick. You are out of sick days for the semester!" - taught me that I wasn't worthy of rest. I would go to school sick (and eventually go to work sick) because I learned being sick didn't entitle me to rest. 

Not only did I feel as if being sick wasn't an "excuse" for me to rest, but I also grew into an adult who felt guilty for relaxing and "not being productive" all the time (which is an unfair and unrealistic goal).