A conversation with myself
When I was in the heart of recovery from my last burnout, I had quit my job and was living in a van and had basically no responsibilities besides taking care of myself on a daily basis, living with my own thoughts, and finding new, legal places to park for a few days at a time.
And yet, even that sometimes felt like too much to deal with.
Sometimes I would get fed up with doing nothing and try some small project and be really productive for a short time, but it would completely wear me out and I would crash for days or weeks, and often my sensory issues would intensify or my frustration would flare up at everything around me.
It felt like I was going backwards, and I was scared that I would never be able to do anything ever again.
My mind would have this conversation with itself:
“Well, shit, you can’t even do that small project. Look what it’s done to you. You’re pathetic.”
“I know, I need to rest. I need to get better.”
“You can’t rest forever. You need to do things. You need to bring in some money.”
“How am I supposed to do that? I’m not ready for that.”
“You need to get serious about starting to work again.”
“No, I don’t. It’s OK. I can relax. This is what I’m supposed to be doing right now. Resting. Recuperating.”
“It’s taking too long. You don’t have time for this. Get your butt out of bed and start doing something.”
This is an entirely predictable experience. And it will get better.
“But I don’t know where to go from here. What else can I do?”
And then I would panic and end up on my phone or reading a book or staring out the window for hours.
What I know now, having gone through this more times than I care to admit, and having watched more than a hundred other people going through this, is that this is completely normal. This is an expected speed bump in the road of burnout recovery.
This is an entirely predictable experience. And it will get better.
What’s happening?
This is what happens in the early stages of burnout recovery, where things are starting to look better.
Things are moving in an upward trajectory, but it’s still slow, and it’s gradual. And you don’t have a lot of energy to give. But you’re starting to get interested in things again, you’re starting to even get antsy occasionally, and think, “Oh, I could do more stuff.”
And what happens—and this is the predictable part—is that your old programming kicks in and it goes from “I can do this tiny unimportant thing for fun,” to “I need to do it right and make all the things work, and if I’m going to do that, I might as well do this other thing.” And it snowballs into this gigantic thing, and of course that’s overwhelming because you’re not yet out of burnout enough to be able to deal with all of that.
So your self-protective mechanism kicks in and is like, “No, no, no, we’re gonna remind you that you’re not there yet. So we’re going to intensify the symptoms of burnout to remind you to not do all of that.”
If I can anthropomorphize burnout for a moment, it is trying to keep you from going back into situations that didn’t work for you.
But your internalized messages from productivity culture is frustrated at that.
And we just want to be well, we want to be able to do things, and of course there’s an element of general frustration there.
But it does NOT mean that you’re not making progress.
It does NOT mean that this will never work.
It does NOT mean that you’re never going to be able to handle things.
It’s so easy to think, “Oh, look, I tried to do something and I couldn’t do it, so I’m never gonna be able to do anything again.” That’s a very common thought. But it’s not true.
Things will get better
You will be able to do things again.
When you’re doing all of the things that you need to get out of burnout, you will absolutely be able to do things again.
It might take longer than you would like. But you can’t go from this early stage of recovery to later stages of recovery, where you can take on bigger projects all at once.
Personally, it took me three years of not working, and just resting, and working through my old shit, and healing old wounds, and dealing with my thoughts, and taking on tiny projects, before I was ready to start some bigger projects and start working consistently again (and even that was very part time for a while).
You can’t go from this early stage of recovery to later stages of recovery, where you can take on bigger projects all at once.
It will take a different length of time for everyone, but however long it is for you, it will probably be longer than you want it to be.
And all the while I had to actively resist those productivity messages that kept nagging me.
Messages like, “what am I doing with my life?” and “I’m wasting my time” and “I should be doing more than this” and all that kind of crap.
I had to actively resist the impulse to do more than I could at any given time in my burnout recovery. Even as my capacity to do things increased, I had to actively resist the impulse to do even more than I could.
But it will get better.
Part of why it took me so long, I’m now convinced, is because I had no clue what I was doing. I was experimenting and figuring things out as I went.
And that’s why I’m so motivated to systematize what does work consistently for us Autistics who have been raised in productivity culture and have been hurt by toxic systems.
And that is exactly what I will be teaching in my recovery course.
It’s the system I’ve developed over the last four years of working with other Autistics on their recovery, that consistently shows results.
It won’t be fast, but consistent progress is a whole lot faster than floundering.
And having someone to normalize the process, and share the tips and tricks, and to allay the fears, is incredibly valuable. It’s exactly what I wish that I had had back then.
Intrigued? If this might be what you’ve been looking for, you’re welcome to learn more here, or, if you’re ready to join us, sign up here.
If you have individual questions, feel free to send me an email.
