| > She’s working essentially three jobs and is extremely tired - is that really autistic burnout, or just regular exhaustion? > At what point are we going to say that expecting people to do so much is not realistic The problem from my standpoint is that some autistic people just want to do so much, they have a variety of very intense interests that simply override basic things like personal health, and there is no conscious awareness of those things, that requires someone outside the loop to intervene I was trapped in the exact same situation for years, being an autistic and constantly hyperfocusing on what made me happy, during all that time the most I cared about was my own hobbies and nearly everything I thought about somehow led back to a new idea I could apply to one of them, the whole time anything about sleep exhaustion or eating properly was just not in my headspace. It was like I was blind to those things And the hardest thing? We are led to believe that some things in life are "one's calling", that they fulfill us or make us the happiest, etc. I got into the state of believing that for my hobbies to the point that they overtook me. With my kind of focus there's no such thing as guard rails, Ill look up after "two hours of work" and it will actually be 4:00AM and I wouldn't have even realized it Its really the definition of "too much of a good thing", it got to the point where I was asking my parents or my therapists to help keep me accountable by gently reminding me to go to bed at a certain time, but all they offered me was the equivalent of "well you're a grown adult so you're going to have to learn to deal with basic life needs by yourself, good luck." It was no less than two minutes of their time a day yet it was seen as so trivial that those people believed I had no choice but to understand what I could not understand if left to my own devices That is the kind of thing that is misunderstood about autistic people I think, others underestimate the support that they will need to function at the same level as normal people, but when offered the idea of keeping them accountable they overestimate the supposed burden it places on them, when its really not that much in my eyes |
I'll be sure to bring it up with the missus tonight. Thanks for the perspective.