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Autistic burnout? Try driving a train
To recover from this pain is going to take something very immersive indeed.
I recently posted about being diagnosed as autistic, and about autistic burnout. The latter was a stream of consciousness which reflected on just how exhausting and utterly disabling it sometimes is to be autistic.
One enormous achievement at work later, and I have reached that undesirable milestone of burnout. Several 60–70 hour weeks of taking on too much responsibility, having to engage large groups of stakeholders and put on the “inspiring leader” mask have done for me. Without bragging, I am happy that I have some great leadership skills, but I do have to face the consequences when I stop work and take the mask off.
Weeks of more intensive masking and general effort have depleted my energy resources and I now find myself struggling to stay in the game at all, needing more breaks and desperately wanting my next week of leave (which is depressingly two months away!) to come round.
Being in burnout but not having leave to take gives me only limited options. I could take sickness absence, but my natural inclination is to leave that as a last resort. Alternatively, I just have to find ways to manage the burnout.
This post is all about three weird and obscure, but effective ways I have been keeping sane…
