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community weblog
Melting Spoons and Autistic Burnout
"If you saw someone going through Autistic Burnout would you be able to recognise it? Would you even know what it means? Would you know what it meant for yourself if you are an Autistic person? The sad truth is that so many Autistic people, children and adults, go through this with zero comprehension of what is happening to them and with zero support from their friends and families." From Ryan Boren and Stimpunks.org: Autistic Burnout: The Cost of Masking and Passing.
"Burnout, long-term shutdown, or whatever you want to call it, happens generally when you have been doing much more than you should be doing. Most people have a level to which they are capable of functioning without burnout, a level to which they are capable of functioning for emergency purposes only, and a level to which they simply cannot function. In autistic people in current societies, that first level is much narrower. Simply functioning at a minimally acceptable level to non-autistic people or for survival, can push us into the zone that in a non-autistic person would be reserved for emergencies. Prolonged functioning in emergency mode can result in loss of skills and burnout."
A long, link-filled reflection. Like long enough to require a table of contents. (I believe that Ryan Boren is the original author.)
posted by MonkeyToes on Dec 05, 2025 at 12:41 PM
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Thank you for this, I am experiencing it myself and have been looking for resources.
posted by Jon_Evil at 1:08 PM
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I just got out of my first therapy session in a few years and this is exactly how the therapist explained my current situation to me. Very interesting to see this posted here. This wasn't something on my radar.
posted by robotmachine at 1:16 PM
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'The Battery's Dead': Burnout Looks Different in Autistic Adults
Autistic Burnout: How It Differs from Depression and Work-Related Stress
Autistic Burnout Is More Than Burnout
A Conceptual Analysis of Autistic Masking: Understanding the Narrative of Stigma and the Illusion of Choice (previously)
posted by Phssthpok at 1:33 PM
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This piece is packed with frameworks and links and information. I hope readers find it helpful. Be gentle with yourselves as you make your way through it.
posted by MonkeyToes at 1:33 PM
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Are these articles all about recognizing and acknowledging the existence of autistic burnout, or are there resources/strategies?
This isn't me refusing to simply RTFA, it's me in the middle of an autistic burnout cycle being careful about where I expend my limited energies. I read a bunch of very nice "It's real"/"It's tough"/"Other go through this too" stuff here but I'm really more at the "Now what do I do?" stage and by the second or third set of song lyrics or poems or whatever, I was disconnected. Are the resources all at the Stimpunks thing linked to at the end?
posted by DirtyOldTown at 2:21 PM
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I need a study or something that will convince a skeptical professional that this phenomenon exists, that it leads to real difficulties in functioning, that extended stress prevents it resolving, that communication tasks and executive functioning -- like showing up at the dentist -- can be absolutely destroyed by this. I need to convince people akin to Mrs. Katchatourian, the [composite] 1960's high-school English teacher who rolls her eyes and shakes her head and tells Jimmy that she doesn't care about his so-called "dyslexia", he's obviously just not putting in the work.
posted by amtho at 2:31 PM
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This is absolutely my life right now. A highlighted section early on in the first link:
"Common life strategy for autistic people: achieve/overachieve until burning out and maybe the overachievement will result in enough social and economic capital to see you through the burnout. High cost, high failure rate, inaccessible to many."
Yyyyyep. This isn't even my first burnout. There have been a couple. However, this time, I held my shit together for over eleven years, in a very well paid industry. But the whole time, I knew that I needed to be socking it away because I always knew I wasn't going to make it all the way through to retirement in one stretch.
I wound up leaving my job due to burnout in mid-September. I probably should have done it back in January or so, to be honest. I almost did, but circumstances wound up with me continuing to tread water and burn out until a particular episode flipped the switch for me. I bowed out and decided to take at least until January on recovery. Chill out, self-care, get stuff done.
I am recovering! But the recovery is slow. I am still not ready to get out there and interview yet. Starting to make some preparations in that direction though. Redid my resume this week, and doing early talks with some recruiters. I know I'm still very employable, if I can get my mind right again.
posted by notoriety public at 2:32 PM
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Basically, a bunch of first-person accounts are great for helping people feel less alone -- but won't necessarily convince Mrs. K, or her bosses, or anyone else, that the people affected shouldn't just "try harder" or "improve their time management".
Ans this is extremely important in, for example, getting accommodations in court cases or for employment.
posted by amtho at 2:36 PM
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DirtyOldTown: "Are the resources all at the Stimpunks thing linked to at the end?"
Yes, the article itself doesn't talk about strategies/resources much. It's possible some of the videos, which I didn't watch, may touch on this. But none of them are framed that way.
Here is what StimPunks has for resources.
Here is a briefer resource that summarizes some techniques, plus links to other resources.
posted by brook horse at 4:14 PM
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I in no way mean to minimize the struggles of those with autism, nor am I suggesting I, a healthy, neurotypical individual have it as bad as one with autism or other mental health issues... but it blows my mind that anyone doesn't experience this condition to some degree.
posted by AlbertCalavicci at 4:29 PM
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I am sure that you didn't mean that comment the way it read, AlbertCalavicci. The degree, duration, intensity, quality, and consequences of this type of burnout for people with autism are the point.
posted by MonkeyToes at 5:03 PM
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but it blows my mind that anyone doesn't experience this condition to some degree
Autistic burnout involves loss of developmentally normal skills, including speech and motor skills. Neurotypical individuals experience a reduction in capacity, but not a regression in developmental skills. A neurotypical person may not have the energy, motivation, or time to cook dinner when burned out, while an individual experiencing autistic burnout may lose the ability to cook dinner even with energy, motivation, and time, because of how burnout impacts their core developmental abilities. A neurotypical person generally will not experience this unless they sustain a traumatic brain injury or other neurologically atypical experiences.
posted by brook horse at 5:24 PM
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brook horse said it, but it bears repeating. Something I have been wanting to do, during my recovery, is work on my hobby project. It's something I genuinely want to do! It's going to be an incredible, impressive thing once it gets going, as well as serve as useful training for FPGA programming, which is something I'd like to maybe get into professionally.
It's been almost three months, and I've hardly done anything on it. On really good days, I can get my brain together enough to focus on it. And there's been a couple days like that. But what I was hoping for was to be able to dive into it almost immediately, and get a lot done with this time. That's not how it worked out.
This is part of why I don't really feel ready to even start looking for a job again. The level of focus I need for the hobby project is the level of focus I need for the kind of work I do. If I can't summon it when my distractions are minimal, for something I deeply want to work on for its own sake? How the fuck am I going to do it as a regular job?
In a way, it feels very whiney to say this. "Boo hoo, you're not a hotshot engineering superstar anymore, go cry some more." But it was something I used to be able to do, and do well. It hurts to lose something like that.
I don't think I've entirely lost it. Something I've said about depression is that it holds up a mirror to the world, and in a mirror, you see everything backwards. But that mirror image is just a reflection's thickness away from the real world of life and hope. When you're on the wrong side of the glass, it seems impossibly far away. It's not. I've been on the wrong side before, and I'm on the wrong side now. But I know I've performed the translation before, to make it through the looking glass. I can do it again, if I can get my mind right.
posted by notoriety public at 5:41 PM
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I experienced what I would now frame as burnout once or twice in the first few decades of life. Battery drained. Cut back, recharge, refocus, get back to it. Dec 2019 I had my first encounter with Autistic Burnout (significant caps) and immediately described it as battery broken. 6 years later I can still barely hold a charge.
I'll be gladly exploring these resources after I've conquered this other task which will take me 20 actual no-learning-curve minutes but the deadline is today and it is SO HARD.
posted by droomoord at 6:35 PM
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I was really really competent in the before times. That's the big rub. I don't understand this me, and I'm not really interested to, and I especially don't have the energy to learn things I don't value, but I think that's probably an important paradox here.
posted by droomoord at 6:43 PM
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God damn it, droomord. I hear you. I hope you can find your way back.
posted by notoriety public at 6:48 PM
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Autistic burnout is also specific to the concept of masking, which is a word I dislike for its misleading implications. For me, masking is not hiding how I truly feel by acting in socially appropriate ways, which everyone does. Masking is:
When I was ten years old I studied how-to-draw-expressions books and drew them over and over and over and over until I, piece by piece, learned how to move my eyes, my nose, my mouth to look happy; and
I learned young that saying nothing at all was worse than any answer I could give, so I trained myself to say "yes" or "no" before I understood what I was being asked; and
It is not possible for me to move my hands or body in complex ways while also inflecting my voice out of its natural flat monotone, so I immediately drop everything I am doing when anyone tries to talk to me because the sound of my natural voice saying "give me a minute, please" makes people flinch as if being hit; and
I was in college when I learned that I was terrible at making eye contact, because simply holding someone's gaze the entire conversation is not "good eye contact" and is interpreted just as judgmentally as never looking at someone, so I learned to count carefully to 5 seconds and look away, count to 3 and look back, and if this made me dizzy or unable to hear what the person says so be it; and
When I came home from my graduate school classes after holding my body and face and voice to neurotypical standards, every second of the day, constantly checking that I didn't slip and become the kind of person that my sister in law--who I had known for a decade and thought was safe to unmask around--found "intimidating," "scary," and "selfish," I would pace around my house for two straight hours before I could relax; and
Decades on from the child who practiced drawing faces to learn how to look happy, I am having to follow the same process to learn how to look sad, because I have never practiced this and I have been told by everyone I have ever met that it is impossible to know that I am upset before I burst into tears; and
Wait. Let's hold that one up and study it a little closer. (The act of staring at a small detail of an object, such as the spinning wheels on a toy truck, is called "peering," and will be scored against you on the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule 2nd Edition).
A memory: I look you in the face and tell you that I am experiencing severe chronic pain today. Because I have trained myself to speak, as a parrot does, I say this in the exact tone you would expect from, "I saw a lovely cardinal in the garden today." You briefly express sympathy and then walk away.
Later, I walk into a meeting with an obvious limp. You look puzzled, but your concern disappears when I sound like my articulate, friendly, sweet self. Halfway through the meeting, I remember to mask in the other direction. I pull my face into a frown, furrow my brow. Remember to wince when I feel the pain of my hip subluxing. Lower my voice, and refrain from jumping in to help solve problems or offer kind words of encouragement.
Afterward you pull me aside and ask me what's wrong. I tell you, making sure to keep up the performance, that my joints are flaring up and I am in a lot of pain. You express shock and dismay, and tell me that I need to tell you when I am in that much pain so that you can help me. I tell you that I did. You don't understand, because your memory encoded more about my tone than about the content of my words.
We talk more deeply, then, about masking. I have always been open about being autistic with you, and you have special training in working with autistic individuals. We talk about the fact that I told you multiple times that I was struggling with being bullied by my coworkers, and yet when I finally broke down sobbing it seemed to come out of nowhere because I always talked about what they did to me with a calm, quiet exactness.
I believe this is not a reflection of your cluelessness or lack of empathy: neurotypicals have come to you with similar problems, and you have responded to them with kindness and care. You have cried with concern for them, trembled with anger, taken all the steps you could to protect them. It is not that you don't care. It is almost never that the neurotypicals I express my pain to don't care.
But they can't read me. It doesn't matter if it's work, school, friendships, family. I do not act the way neurotypicals expect someone in distress to act. I do not, naturally, act the way neurotypicals expect someone happy to act, but I pony-tricked myself into the shape of that girl a long time ago. Went a bit sideways when I became a boy, still a bit of a work in progress there, but the imitation is passable. I still have to girl-shape to look overjoyed, which is its own kind of pain, and I don't do it much for that reason.
So, to recap: when you (the neurotypical you, use as the royal we for an autistic reader) face conflicting social information, your brain favors tone and expression over the actual content of my speech. This does not happen when I interact with other autistic people, because as a general rule we believe people mean what they say. With prompting, we can think otherwise, but by default our attention is to your words and not your tone.
I mask to be more understood, not less. This is the difference between masking and what neurotypicals do when they hide their negative opinions from their boss or family members or whoever else they fear social repercussion from if they express the truth. I am not hiding from you. I am trying to help you see me in a way you can understand. Sometimes, this does mean hiding my autistic traits, but rarely is it because I do not want you to know that I am autistic. It is because my autistic traits hurt your feelings, and I care very much about how you feel.
And it is not so easy as just saying, "I am autistic, and when I do not react for 30-60 seconds after you address me, it is not because I am ignoring you or don't want to speak to you, but merely that I think entirely in pictures and am attempting to accurately translate into English, which may as well be my second language." Nor can I say, "I always mean what I say, and if my words sound flat and uncaring this has nothing to do with what I feel or how much I care, simply that I cannot both inflect and take this object from you without dropping it at the same time." Your heart doesn't believe that, not unless you've known me deeply enough that you can second-guess your own brain's evolutionary attention to certain social signals.
It is very hard work, running a body this way. It is only automatic in that I am trained to run a series of programs given the right input, but regardless of practice it never takes less of my brain to move and sound like a human being. This is at the core of autistic burnout. It is the end result of constant hypervigilance, which of course neurotypicals can experience as well. But it is not usual for them to experience this particular kind of hypervigilance, about these things, in this way.
I unmask a lot more than I used to. But most people still only get degrees of me. I am ashamed of nothing that I am. And I know that it isn't your fault that you can't see me, standing right in front of you. So I do this dance over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. I like it if you do a dance for me back, such as simply telling me with your words what you want me to know, or organizing your desk while we talk so that I'm not expected to look you in the face, or any of the other little things that people who care about me have learned help us interface. I have more people like that in my life than I used to, and I like the little dances we trade back and forth. It was exhausting and miserable to be the only one dancing, never a break to catch my breath.
And scene.
You may have noticed I had quite a different tone there than I did in many of my Metafilter comments, and that's one aspect of masking! I'm not going to say that my natural state is a waifish Victorian poet writing missives from his bed at the seaside, but it certainly expresses my actual thoughts (which, remember, come in pictures, thus translating better to something with a bit more visual and metaphor than casual conversation) better than my default Metafilter voice does.
But you're not going to hear me talk like that most of the time, because that tends to form a kind of psychological distance between me and the reader that exacerbates the whole "I can't read your emotions" thing. Like, sometimes people get it because I can write and speak in ways that are very moving, but it's in the way of theater, where there's a gap between the stage and the audience. That's different from what I need to get someone to interpersonally understand me, as an actual human being. You may at times hear me speak Academia, which is closer to my natural mode of speaking, but when I do that I don't care if the person I'm talking to sees me as a person at all.
But if I want to be a person who is understood on a human level, you'll usually see a different tone and cadence. It isn't necessarily less me, when I write like this. It's just me tilted in a way that your average person can more easily grasp. This is similarly what happens with my speech and expressions. Because it's even more true in real life that even very precise and complete language will not be understood by most people if it isn't accompanied by the appropriate voice and expression cues. So I take on the tone and cadence that is expected, knowing that my natural modes of expression will lead to my words being totally misunderstood. And yeah, I do slip a lot back and forth--maintaining human being brook horse is hard.
posted by brook horse at 8:12 PM
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(Not directed at anyone in this thread. I promise. Mom, on the other hand....)
"i tHinK ErYBoDY is A LiTtle AutIstiKs" says the person with a home and a career and more than two friends and a family and hasn't had to fight their body to eat because everything seems terrible and the single solitary item I want is unavailable and then they settle for 7 stale crackers, 28 peanuts found in the back of the pantry, and yet again cheese. Cheese is always safe.
And I say to them......... no you fucking aren't. You just have poor work life balance and don't understand what it's like to be a shattered attempt at a human being. Why yes, my collegiate vocabulary and vast knowledge does indeed hide the fact that I can't easily do basic things. No, it usually seems like I don't need any help because nobody allistic understands a fraction of the problem. Not that help really exists much.
Eh. Whatever. We survived, or not.
posted by Previous username Jacen at 8:18 PM
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Brook horse: thank you. That was really enlightening.
posted by emjaybee at 9:16 PM
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Honestly, this sounds a bit like depression as seen through the lens of an autistic individual. And the boom and bust cycle sounds a lot like my bipolar father. but I'm really too exhausted to scroll through dozens of testimonials and sidebars in order to check if my assessment is correct.
posted by pwnguin at 9:29 PM
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Depression may be one of the symptoms of Autistic Burnout but, in my experience, the least. I have lost capacity, not interest, not at all. I so look forward to a !practical! fascination with the biological processes through which Hashimoto's and POTS have (causally?) followed the onset of this Burnout of mine. I nod off if I try to hold too much in my consideration at once, let alone organize it. The smallest sudden challenge steals my words away. Mania for me looks like reading brook horse's entire fantastic comment in one go. Depression would cost too much.
Recent theories that mitochondrial allostatic load is one appropriate pathophysiological frame for Autistic Burnout are really interesting to me but journals are not presently parseable. I think mitochondrial dysfunction is one of the genetic factors for Bipolar, too, but I am only familiar enough with that to know it's not the same choreography as a whole.
(Please consider choosing your words mindfully when musing glibly about the endocrine and nervous systems of persons present. You may not be aware, there is a bit of a problem with high-masking Autistic persons being misdiagnosed and pharmaceutically treated with mood stabilizers and antipsychotics, which is a bad scene when inappropriate. My family's own experience is a tiny anecdote in a sea of them.)
posted by droomoord at 2:36 AM
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Ah, I'd wanted to share this paper. A molecular framework for autistic experiences: Mitochondrial allostatic load as a mediator between autism and psychopathology
posted by droomoord at 2:52 AM
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MonkeyToes, I respect every person's explanation of the difficulties of their own life, regardless of circumstance. I leave it to others to comment on how much easier one may have it than another.
posted by AlbertCalavicci at 4:19 AM
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Before I really had any idea I was autistic, I posted an AskMe once about a hard time I was having that I now recognize as autistic burnout.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:14 AM
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[Hey, just a friendly reminder that linked article and people in this this thread are taking the time to explain what autistic burnout feels like. So please be mindful of trying to explain or define this as something else and just listen to what people who experience this are saying.
No comments have been removed. ]
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:36 AM
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This looks great, but quite an overwhelming amount of information too.
For a shorter but still helpful and practical resource: Autism and ADHD Burnout Recovery: How to Recognize It and What Helps
On a rapid skim of the OP article I didn't see any mention of the impact of menopause and peri menopause, which is one of the big factors in autistic burnout for many autistic people who have to deal with the hormonal fluctuations that exacerbate many of our struggles. It's the reason many AFAB autistic people only realise they are autistic in their 40s and 50s.
posted by Zumbador at 8:44 AM
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Brook horse: Thank you for the energy it took to tell us. Thank you for being clear and candid. Thank you for being here.
posted by MonkeyToes at 11:56 AM
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I was hospitalized several times for depression in my teenage years. Looking back on it through the lens of this conversation, I am starting to realize it probably was already austistic burnout just as much as depression.
posted by notoriety public at 1:50 PM
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brook horse, thank you for that extraordinary comment.
I would like to do a dance for you back (although, this comment is indeed me telling you with my words what I want you to know, but - I imagine that's more often a problem in in-person interactions, and I'm wondering what I could do that would make all-text interactions easier, so perhaps I'll go see if I can go find some info on that) -
I hope I can learn to tilt in a way that makes things easier for YOU, and for anyone else I may interact with who could benefit from fewer assumptions on my part and more genuine understanding.
I know, in the very smallest way, what it's like when the world isn't set up with me in mind; I'm pretty short, and things are often out of reach or out of sight or hard to use because they're designed for more average-sized people.
I am sorry that so much of the world assumes you will be different than you are, and requires you to expend SO MUCH EFFORT to be seen and heard. I hope we can all move all of society toward being aware of our assumptions and our failures to understand, and make the world more able to see you as you are, welcome you as you are, make sure you get everything you need, as you are.
posted by kristi at 5:45 PM
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So, to recap: when you (the neurotypical you, use as the royal we for an autistic reader) face conflicting social information, your brain favors tone and expression over the actual content of my speech. This does not happen when I interact with other autistic people, because as a general rule we believe people mean what they say. With prompting, we can think otherwise, but by default our attention is to your words and not your tone.
with one caveat: if we've been conditioned and trained to be on constant lookout for certain tones, because those tones signal potential threat, you can absolutely erase that default and key in hypervigilance related to tone. ask how I know.
I am really fucking tired of how small my world has gotten over the past five years. I was crawling out of burnout when last year's election happened, and it knocked me off my trajectory, but I am crawling back again now, goddammit.
Better depression meds have absolutely been key for me. So has a lot of rest and as much time away from performing as I can swing. I think it is possible to build some capacity back up if you find and respect your limits, carefully.
posted by sciatrix at 11:33 AM
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I was really really competent in the before times.
I don't know how many times I've said this. When I was 33 I went through some "more than stressful" events that almost broke me, and resulted in a voluntary inpatient stay, during which they erroneously diagnosed me with "paranoia and delusions" and took me off the ADHD meds I was on for 15 years with no issues, because "it must be them".
8 years later and I'm still trying to get back to work, finish school, etc. I did spend 3 months doing a 50+page DARPA proposal, but that's the most I've done in all that time. Every time I start getting ahead, something happens and I break down again. It's awful. I'm focusing on my mental health #1, but a lot of people say they want that and then when it means working part time or doing things for me instead of them, they suddenly don't want it anymore, lol.
I've never formally been diagnosed, but I have been diagnosed informally by doctors twice (no testing) and I test very highly on self-tests.
posted by nTeleKy at 12:03 PM
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Spoiler alert: this ends well.
I'm now in my seventh decade as an autistic person. I am the type of autistic who could never truly dive deep on ANYTHING: relationships, career, hobbies, you name it. As a result, I never married, never raised children, and there's really no one left alive who would care all that much if I suddenly ceased to walk the planet.
I did OK in a tech career for years, just OK. Never got very good at anything, although I flailed at music and photography for quite a while. Tried antidepressant meds (for decades), tried different religions and belief systems (except for one, but I'll get to that, God willing). I spent most of my forties and fifties either at work, engaged fruitlessly in some hobby, sitting in 12 step meetings, or watching Turner Classic Movies, M&M pound bag close by. Sound like I was slowly sinking? I was. My whole life was one long slow autistic burnout, punctuated by crises.
I was first DXed in 2019 after a tech colleague suggested I do so. I'd long suspected I was ADHD or "Aspie" (we don't use that label anymore for many reasons). It was good to learn about how autism affects women and girls, and I found the theory of monotropism (autistic inertia) especially helpful. After a few suicidal years on my sectional, Turner Classic Movies was no longer quelling the pain. So, shortly after my DX, I quit the last tech job and left the US, lock stock and barrel, to travel South America. I wound up in Spain with a residency in 2022.
People like me don't wind up in good places, for the most part. The actuaries take bets on us, I think. Well, they would have lost big with me. I was called to Islam shortly after my arrival in Spain. And everything, slowly but surely, started to change for the better.
I still have no close friends or family. But it matters less than it ever has. I live on the Atlantic coast in Morocco now, and my days are full of worship of my God and lots of interesting reading. I do have some Muslim friends, one of who is an autistic woman like me, and I enjoy their companionship. But mostly I'm in solitude. I go for walks on the beautiful beach here, I pay very little rent, I hear the Muslim call to prayer five times a day, I pet the many street cats and occasionally share some mackerel with them. I live quite simply, and in some ways it's like the life of a medieval anchoress. Nothing could suit me better. All that chasing after relationships, "meaningful" careers and hobbies, empty religions and philosophies... it was all a combination of chasing my whims and masking (in the case of education, religion, and career) just to reassure myself that I wouldn't wind up on the street. I would have wound up in a (somewhat) early grave had I kept going with the life I was living.
I write this at the risk of sounding like I'm doing a "sell job." In the Qur'an, Allah says that He calls whom He wants to this religion, so I couldn't do a "sell job" if I tried. So I write this for the autistic person who might be like me but can't believe they could ever find a place in the total worldview that is Islam. Or they might be afraid to explore because they don't know any Muslims and it seems like such a radical change. It is indeed a radical change if you become a Muslim, but it has been 100 percent worth it for me.
posted by rabia.elizabeth at 5:52 AM
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It's not what you say, it's how you say it!
I have been told this more times than I could ever recall, and I can assure you, I'm not trying to say it in a way that makes it confusing. AI has actually helped me quite a bit. I can put something in and say I'm trying to communicate with my mom, send the results to her (I tell her it's AI) and she will usually instantly realize what it is I've been trying to explain to her for years.
For me, this is one of the most exhausting parts, that I try so hard to express myself in a way that will be understood and I fail very often. People will sometimes get upset or offended and seem to be incredulous that I'm not trying to upset or offend them, merely communicate, often be helpful. It's almost like trying to communicate in a foreign language, but with the difference being they think they understand what I mean, but often don't. Frustration city.
posted by nTeleKy at 10:27 AM
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This might be another instance of someone going "Oh.... Oops, that's me." What the fuck I do about it, I don't know.
posted by hoyland at 8:01 AM
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Well, after realising that I'm autistic about 3 years ago, I've just come back home from an appointment this afternoon to hear a clinician confirm my self-diagnosis after having completed a series of interviews to determine autism, masking autistic traits, social anxiety and ADHD.
So I'm now both self and officially diagnosed.
My advice for anyone starting this journey is that knowing you are autistic is far more important than an official diagnosis. But if you are lucky enough to find (like I did) autistic specialists (as in, the specialist is autistic), then it can help to clarify all kinds of things like, what flavour of autistic person are you?
Finding autistic online spaces (I mean, Metafilter has a way higher than average neurodivergent membership) is very helpful too. Very likely you will discover that your family and friends are neurodivergent too, as we tend to attract one another.
I put together a page of resources for adult autistic people that I found helpful
posted by Zumbador at 8:55 AM
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Thank you, Zumbador! And I'm glad that you got confirmation of what you knew.
posted by MonkeyToes at 10:09 AM
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