The phrase "burnt out former gifted kid" has always given me the ick, but there are unique challenges/issues/traumas related to that experience that tend to come up in #autistic discussions and I've never encountered a good description.
Proposal for a slightly less icky alternative:
✨ burnt out former high achiever ✨
There was a time, many years ago, when I intended to go to law school after graduating college. But I suffered #burnout and never followed through. I had already taken the LSAT and been accepted.
I've only just self-DX as autistic. I've been thinking about all the ways that affected my life. I think I am beginning to understand a lot of things that never made sense.
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My new "try to at least stop the descent into increasingly worse burnout" plan is to increase my protein intake.
My theory is that protein is used to make important brain chemicals, so maybe if I increase the available raw materials to make said brain chemicals, I will have more brain chemicals and that might make me less brain urgh.
I can barely drag myself out of bed most days now and there is literally nothing else I can do.
Autistic burnout recovery is not a linear process. It's an ever-changing, morphing, iterative process, that when graphed looks like a big messy plate of spaghetti.
It describes it as:
“Autistic burnout is a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic life stress and a mismatch of expectations and abilities without adequate supports. It is characterized by pervasive, long-term (typically 3+ months) exhaustion, loss of function, and reduced tolerance to stimulus.” ~Raymaker et al, 2020
Typically the Autistic person in question will still have multiple demands in their life that require cognitive resources, despite having little to no resources left to give. Life goes on, as they say.
Trying to figure out how to pivot and make a career change, even with all the logical advice I've been given, is only reminding me how burnt out and risk adverse I am.
I just can't bring myself to start over again, especially with the amount of financial anxiety I have.
Because all I've learned leads to "You have to start over" and I'm too scared to change.