Two fully-disconnected weeks off from work have given me a clarity of mind I haven't had in a long time.
I thought I had mostly tackled my burnout over the winter, but the clarity I have now tells me that I was still burned out.
How do I know?
I feel like I have skills now that I haven't had in a long time. Cognitive and information processing skills. I feel like my brain can process things more clearly than before my time off.
I never really understood what it meant when people say that burnout causes loss of skills, but it totally makes sense now.
That clarity has also helped me see some of my challenges at work in a new light. In particular, managing people as an Autistic person.
Several people outside of my department have complained about a member of my team. They, and I, have had conversations with this person about that feedback. I've personally seen improvement and I'm not unhappy with their work. But I'm still getting complaints about them.
This is incredibly challenging for me. Am I misreading the social situation? Am I being taken advantage of? Do others see something I don't? Am I giving this person the benefit of the doubt far beyond what's reasonable? Are my expectations of others too low?
I don't know the answers to these questions, but they're definitely something I need to work on.
@dave@actuallyautistic I can relate: I also find it challenging to handle the conflicts of others people, especially when suspecting a power play, in which case new “problems” will arise but the real motivation for the conflict stays hidden from me. I can also relate to the positive effect of taking a step back from daily life 🙂
I have to admit: I was worried about my trip to Italy. My wife was as well.
It's the first time we've travelled away from home in years - since before COVID - and also the first time since I discovered that I'm Autistic.
I was worried about what unmasking has done to my ability to cope with change, disruption to routine and the chaos and unpredictability of travel.
I used everything that I've learned about being Autistic in the last 10 months, and I actually overestimated how stressful and taxing it would be. By doing so, I planned for a lot of downtime. Taking time off work - and not trying to balance work with travel - has also helped tremendously. It has let me focus on travel and rest.
My wife has a chronic illness, which means she needs just as much - if not more - downtime than I do, which helps avoid conflict between our energy levels and motivation. The pace of our travels seems to work well for both of us.
We planned for two full days in Venice. We spent all day yesterday walking and exploring, and today we're mostly staying in our hotel and recharging. We've both become better tuned to our needs, and we both need this downtime before we move on to the last leg of our trip in Rome.
I do expect this coming week to be a bit more challenging, as I'm returning to work while we're still in Italy. But the last couple of weeks has given me more confidence in my ability to recognize, plan and advocate for my needs, and I'm confident that will carry over into this week as well.
@Susan60@ScriptFanix@dave@actuallyautistic I think the underground shopping worked really well. Much like busy streets, but no traffic or sky. The roof wasn’t as high as typical shopping centres, and no atriums allowing sound to echo from floor to floor.
Found one shop inside a big shopping centre that was very loud music, hawkers shouting over speakers, extremely bright lights and the busiest signs everywhere. Guarantee no autistic works there. Diagnosed or not. Just walking past was intense.
It amazes me that anyone could think that assaulting your senses so much would make a good business model. 🤷♂️
@kliplet@ScriptFanix@dave@actuallyautistic
I get that some people need that level of input. ADHD types. Our nearest big shopping centre (the largest in the southern hemisphere) has soaring ceilings & lots of natural light now, which I find much easier to tolerate, but the ostentatious consumerism is depressing. The top floor is brand label shops, the types where beautifully dressed customers line up to enter when the centre is busy. Sickens me.
Here's another example of masking sensory preferences because they're considered "childish":
One of my comfort foods is PB or Nutella sandwiches. While in Italy, I found a loaf of sliced white bread that has no crust, and I was shocked at the difference in my experience between this and normal bread with crust. It's so much more enjoyable and less stressful to eat a sandwich without crust.
It made me recall, as a kid, forcing myself to eat the crust because I would be mocked and shamed for cutting it off.
Even now, writing this, I feel a little self conscious. Like someone is going to say, c'mon, is the crust really so bad? How can eating crust possibly be stressful? You're being a wimp/making a big deal out of nothing.
In reality, it's a small thing. Yes, I can force myself to eat it. I've been doing that for 30 years. But all of those little small instances of masking add up.
Now that I'm thinking about it, I actually have a very specific way of eating a sandwich to minimize the discomfort of eating the crust.
Well... lesson learned here: find bread without crust back home, or don't feel shamed for cutting off the crust.
This project is actually a byproduct of another big thing I'm working on.
Currently, I use YNAB for budgeting, but I've been putting sustained effort into getting my data out of the cloud and self-hosting everything.
I started researching options for budgeting software, and I really couldn't find anything I liked or that felt like it had enough features.
I decided, then, to just whip up something in Excel... which led me to the discovery of Office.js and the ability to build Add-ins for Excel using web tech.
Thus, vue-excel was born.
I may eventually release my budgeting tool for Excel, when it's feeling a little more mature and stable. Stay tuned... ❤️
"Self-diagnosis is a valid form of identification and is often the only accessible diagnostic avenue for many marginalized people."
Wow, I really didn't expect to see this acknowledged in this magazine.
I feel like the word "treatment" was used on the cover intentionally to give the magazine broader appeal. The fact that the first handful of articles discuss neurodiversity and neurodivergence as a natural form of human diversity is incredibly satisfying and gives me hope. It's like this magazine was designed to educate people who don't know anything about neurodivergence.
Holy shit, it's already been four weeks that I've been hyperfixating?
What the actual hell?! When did it become March?
At least I'm managing it this time around. At first, I felt hopeless. I felt like hyperfixation might not be manageable, Like it's an uncontrollable feature (or bug?) of my brain that I have no say in. That's an incredibly frustrating feeling.
But, it seems like I've found some tools that are working to some degree. Tools that are helping me find balance, manage my energy, and avoid burning myself out on my fixation.
Maybe there's hope that it's manageable and sustainable, if not completely controllable. That I can feel healthy and balanced while achieving deep and prolonged focus. I used to think those concepts were mutually exclusive.
What do the terms "hyperfixation" and "hyperfocus" mean to you?
I've seen these terms used interchangeably. I'm writing a blog post about hyperfixation coping strategies, and I want to make sure I'm clear on how I'm using these terms.
I really like the way you distinguish between the two as a matter of intensity and choice. In particular, that hyperfocus is a choice, and hyperfixation is not.
Then you throw in Autistic inertia - which I find is more intense when I'm hyperfixating - and it's a struggle all around.
That being said, I have felt in the past that hyperfocusing on a project every day for weeks, and dropping "lower priority" things, was a choice... and in retrospect, I'm not sure it was. I suspect that it was actually hyperfixation making a project seem so exciting and fun, that even self care became lower priority. And I ultimately suffer for it.
There's a lot I don't love about being Autistic... but one thing I DO love is how systematic and logical my brain is. I can often successfully troubleshoot systems I have no experience with, because my brain just gets systems.
In our RV, our bed is on a slide-out. That means that it extends and retracts: it's retracted while driving, and extends about 18 inches from the wall of the RV when we're parked.
On our way to LV, the bed slide broke. It would extend, but only one side would retract. I found a hacky workaround that let us get it retracted so we could finish our trip.
I did some diagnosis once we got to LV in November and I was fairly certain the problem was the electronic controller that controls the motors, not the motors or the wiring. Lo and behold... yesterday I finally replaced the controller, and that fixed it.
The burnout experience, before I knew I was Autistic and expected myself to be able to function like a neurotypical:
Why the hell am I so tired all the time?!
I get 8 solid hours of sleep!
Maybe I'm eating too much sugar.
Maybe I'm not eating enough.
Maybe I'm eating too many processed foods.
Maybe I'm not eating enough protein.
Maybe I'm not drinking enough water.
Maybe I'm not getting enough physical activity.
Maybe I'm drinking too much caffeine.
Maybe I've got mono.
Maybe my body is fighting off a mild infection.
Thoughts that literally never crossed my mind:
Maybe I've had too many demands on my time and energy.
Maybe my senses have been overloaded.
Maybe I'm not giving my brain enough rest (which is different than sleep)
Maybe I need to do LESS.
Maybe I need a lot more alone time.
It's so hard to understand why we feel a certain way when we're trying to understand ourselves as a "normal" person.
Got another chore completed that I had been putting off for months.
These chores weren't particularly complicated. In fact they're kinda "easy" - the trouble was that they required multiple easy steps, and some level of executive function to think ahead about where to start and in what order to complete things.
This chore was "simply" gluing the molding on some of the doors in the RV, because they had come loose.
But that involved setting up a workbench, getting my tools out, finding the glue, removing the doors, taking them outside to a work area, gluing them, clamping them and/or putting weights on top of them, etc
Burnout is not laziness. It's not even really a lack of motivation, though that's the word I've been erroneously using to describe it.
It's a disability. It's the complete lack of ability, in my brain, not just to plan and consider all of these steps, but even to make the decision to get started.
"Just do it" my ass. I CAN just do it - when I'm not in burnout and taking care of myself.
@dave@actuallyautistic "Burnout is not laziness" - I wish people would listen instead of taking the easy way out and hating people for the sake of hating people
Finally checked off a maintenance chore I've been putting off for months because I didn't have the spoons.
I feel really good lately. Motivated. Enjoying things. I'm also trying to be very mindful of how I'm feeling, so I don't wind up burning myself out again. I'm trying to find a sustainable balance.
Part of me is hopeful and even confident that this is my new baseline, and a sustainable balance is possible.
Part of me is absolutely terrified this is just the same cycle and in a month or two, I'm going to be completely exhausted and have zero energy to do anything.
I was talking with a client today about "hardwiring in" the noticing and celebration of small things.
They've decided when they "stick" a thing that they are trying to do, they'll stop, really feel the achievement, and then walk away from trying for a bit.
I'm still learning how to find that little spot of good even when other things seem overwhelming.
An interesting observation of myself: when I'm deep in burnout, I have very little interest in new and unfamiliar things. In fact, I feel strong resistance to it.
New kinds of music, new movies, new TV shows, going to new places, etc.
I've learned that in burnout, I crave the familiar and comfortable, and I need to follow those cravings to help me recover. Familiar foods, routines, TV shows, movies, music.
But as I recover, as I start feeling better, as my HRV rises... not only do I become more willing and interested about new experiences, but I feel less interested in the familiar.
This has manifested specifically this morning by me exploring new music and artists. Something I rarely do, because I so deeply crave and need my familiar, comfortable music.