Disclaimer: The following piece is a reflection on my progress through what I have determined to be neurodivergent burnout. Though I hold a high degree of certainty about who I am and it is helpful in my pursuit of a balanced life, I am not a mental health professional and none of this is meant to be interpreted as anything other than my understanding of my own experiences. As a result of living with an uncommon brain and nervous system, I have lived my whole life never really feeling comfortable or even realizing that comfort was something that was achievable for me. Since I started to learn more about my neurotype specifically, for the first time in my life I have hope that I will be able to live the life I have always dreamed of. My purpose is to process this unfolding out in the open, in the hopes I will find the truest expression of myself, and hopefully also to connect with others who relate to my experiences and passions. Nonetheless I hope you enjoy.
I have some stuff I’d like to get off my chest. Up until now in my life I’ve been cycling in and out of neurodivergent burnout. I want to make it clear that I do not intend to make this a blog about burnout, but inevitably some of my posts will be about burnout and burnout recovery, because it has played such a significant role in my life, especially in my adult life. It’s affected my sleep, my mood, my ability to work, my confidence, and countless other aspects of my existence in the world.
It’s a very significant part of my history, and now as I am coming to understand my burnout more in depth every day, I am doing a better job of overcoming it and learning how to live a life which promotes my mental and physical energy, which does not continually drain me. It’s been difficult, especially since my symptoms from the outside tend to resemble other psychological maladies like depression and anxiety. The problem is, the types of therapeutic suggestions used to help with those seemingly common issues often do nothing at all for me, or they make my situation worse. This happens because these issues stem from a deeper place, a difference in my neurology.
Basically when I take in information from the world in the form of sensory stimuli from the tactile/audio/visual/olfactory/gustative aspects of my current environment, my brain takes in a lot more of those signals from the world than the average neurotypical person, and so at a certain point I hit a threshold where I either I need a change of environment or my body “goes numb”. While everyone certainly has their own limits in this area, my limits tends to be a lot lower than most people. If I am not careful about managing highly stimulating sensory activity, which starts with learning what triggers me specifically (it’s different for everyone). Soon I will be bumping into walls or dislocating my shoulder (both of which have been known to happen). Though it seems to the outside world like my brain is still working, because my mind is kind of still working, my brain and mind are taking time apart until I regain space in my working memory in order to operate like a person again.
I need to talk about this stuff in the open because I’m tired of holding it in. I’m working on seeking a formal diagnosis, but it’s taking longer than I can stand and so my only option is to help myself through this cycle of burnout recovery by reading books, watching videos, reading articles and the like. And journaling, there has been a lot of journaling during the past few years, but especially this year. A month ago or so I calculated I had written over 300,000 words during the previous 365 days. I’ve been doing the work, but I’ve had no one to talk to this about until I started seeing a psychotherapist about this. Therapy is awesome when you find the right therapist! So are weighted blankets.
Since I’m often an overwhelmed person, I seem like a shy person, and I’ve always been labeled as shy although I wouldn’t consider myself that way. As my burnout stints have become worse over the years, I’ve also lost a lot of my old social habits. It’s sad, because I actually really want to keep up a lot of those old friendships from my past, but often times I just don’t have the bandwidth to keep up with even my own family sometimes (I’m sorry, family and friends 🫶).
Thankfully, I am feeling that I’m going to be getting better at actually keeping up with the people in my life, as I recover from burnout and learn to live life in this new way of living that I’ve been discovering.
I have a tendency toward focus. I operate best when I can ignore the whole world, except for one activity, which envelops me. When I was younger I could get wrapped up in a book while my family had to make several attempts to get my attention. This absorbed focus stopped happening as frequently as I grew older, though I always had a hard time knowing why. I could still get wrapped up in a subject, but I was becoming more susceptible to distraction. That’s the world, right? Distraction everywhere. For me though, at a certain point even a subtle sound could become the catalyst for mental drift. A distant voice, the buzz of a lightbulb. Don’t even get me started on the wrong kind of lights, or high noon with nothing around but asphalt and almost white buildings. Who doesn’t love a little lunchtime dissociation?
It turns out that hyperfocus I had when I was younger? It’s called monotropism1. And when it stopped working? Executive dysfunction. Now that I’m learning about these conditions and how they manifest in me, I’m getting better at managing them through gradual shifts in my lifestyle and routine. Simple changes, like wearing headphones and exercising during pomodoro2 breaks. Eating regularly and drinking enough water, which is difficult when one continually forgets to do those things, is also very important as well as it turns out. Ridiculous, right?
The fun side of monotropism is that I get to have all of these fun hobbies, like logo / type design, digital illustration and coding. This website is one of the results of my hyperfocus sessions.
For now, I am doing my best to get over my hangups, psychologically, neurologically, intellectually, cosmologically… I am sifting through the puzzle pieces of my existence and I am laying them out for whoever wants to take a look at the results.
Yeah.
Thanks for reading. 💚
Footnotes
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I used the timer before but these days I kind of automatically take 3-5 movement/hydration breaks every 25 minutes to 1 hour. Game changer for a person who tends to lose track of time like I do. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique ↩