Crrrrrashing Into Burnout

I have some more #resistance-style posts in the queue, even mostly written, but I hit the wall on how far anger could get me and I've been sleeping… a lot, and haven't had much energy to do much. Things fall down. My plants were due to be watered like… a week and a half ago?

So I wanted to take a few minutes and quickly address the topic of burnout, and particularly neurodivergent burnout, which is a little different from the neurotypical variety and requires different treatment.

In both kinds of burnout, you feel tired, but not sleepy. You actually lose your sense of empathy.  Everything is too much. You lose control of your emotional regulation.

Neurotypical burnout is often best addressed by providing a sense of agency or meaning to the life role that is doing the burning out, or better yet, an actual break from having to do that specific thing. There's a lot of advice out there for neurotypical burnout so I'll leave you to search that for your own self. (Sorry not sorry!)

Neurodivergent burnout is a little more pernicious; it's caused by your nervous system being pushed beyond its limits too far and for too long. it causes cognitive problems that can be mild (saying the wrong words, forgetting numbers or directions or conversations, turning the wrong way) or severe (going straight up nonverbal.) It creates an exhaustion that can leave you sleeping for twelve, fifteen, eighteen hours a day. It causes almost a cousin of anhedonia: you would maybe like to watch a TV show or make some art or go hang out with a friend, but you somehow can't make yourself actually do it. That can look a lot like lying around doomscrolling! It can look a lot like depression! But it is not actually depression.

I've had conversations with autism specialists about this and the treatment is in two parts: remove expectations, and give yourself joy and mastery.

Removing expectations is a lot easier said than done because we all live in an elaborate palace of shoulds: you should volunteer, you should cook a healthy dinner, you should listen to that voice mail, you should send out holiday cards, you should hit the gym…

If you're in neurodivergent burnout, forget about anything that is a "should" that doesn't actually carry an immediate and very serious consequence. It's important to still pay your bills, feed your pets and children and yourself, go to work if you can’t swing some time off. But in burnout, pare away all of the extra stuff. ALL of it. Skip out from your book club or writing group for a while. Forget about dusting or making your bed, even forget about brushing your teeth; if it feels like too much, it’s too much. And forgive yourself for it. You're not well. You can get back to all of the extras when you're better, when you’re no longer in pure survival mode.

Notice how this is the direct opposite of what you'd be doing if this were depression. With depression, if you can force yourself through the wall and exercise, clean your living space, take a shower, spend time with loved ones, then generally you begin to feel somewhat better! (…Though results can and do vary profoundly.) In neurodivergent burnout, trying to keep doing the things is just going to make you feel worse for a longer span of time.

So what do you do in the meanwhile? Feed yourself a steady diet of things that make you feel joyful — maybe that's looking at baby animals, or listening to your favorite band. Maybe it's reading your favorite book. Maybe it's trying a bunch of new-to-you foods, or spending a few hours in the bath or wrapped in a fuzzy blanket. You might have to think a while to hit on the right things, because sometimes our leisure activities are also things we feel like we should do, not what we want to do. Be honest with yourself: don't watch documentaries if you really want cartoons, and vice versa.

And find the things that provide you a feeling of mastery. That can mean activities that make you feel like you're learning or successfully progressing at something, or it might be doing something well that you're already good at. It might be a hobby like cooking or baking, or maybe learning a new language. It might be crossword puzzles. Video games can be really, really great for this; it’s exactly what they’re designed to do.

For some of us, especially in creative fields (ahem), the activities that provide a feeling of mastery can look like working at your job or your side hustle. If that's true for you, and you can do that work without creating a burden of expectation for yourself, then have at it. Be honest with yourself here, too, and if you can afford to back off a little, you should probably do so. Your mental and emotional health are more valuable to you than your career momentum.

This treatment plan will look and feel an awful lot like being lazy. Get that voice out of your head. It's not being lazy; you are resting. More specifically, you are resetting your nervous system. It is vital to your health.

When you're ready to step back toward ordinary life, you'll begin to feel a kind of restlessness. You may even start doing things without planning to or meaning to — that rare overabundance of executive function. You'll know it when you get there, and it an amazing feeling: like coming back to life after being asleep for a long time. Like becoming yourself again. And we’ll all still be right here waiting for you.