Lesson's learned with resistance and difficulty...
Why is burnout an ongoing challenge for neurokin?
Dear neurokin,
Flipping a phrase I often hear in yoga; lessons learned with ease and grace, this week I have finally realised that I have pushed myself into the early stages of burnout over this summer.
I have fought and resisted the recognition of this. Why?
That’s what we’ll be exploring in this article:
Why is burnout an ongoing challenge for neurokin?
What prevents us from recognising that we are heading towards damaging our own health?
Here I go again, down this road…
Between June to September my immune system has been taking a battering. I’ve had this cold/flu virus that has been boomeranging back to me, three or is it four? times over this period.
Did I practise what I preach and use my own tools to protect and replenish my energy?
Hell no!
It took me to read an excellent article by Hormone’s on the Blink about the five stages of burnout to realise that I’m not firmly in its grip, but I have entered the frazzled building of Burnout.
I can relate to all of the words
use to describe phase 1:What led me here?
I’ve been constantly pushing myself out of my comfort zone since Easter.
launching Belong…we are neurokin - a new arena, that I love… and also I wonder, am I doing it right?!
Experimenting in the open with new ways to develop resources to help you: neurodivergent women in your growth
The cumulative effect of constantly doing this, without giving myself a chance to catch my breath has caught up with me.
In July, two weeks apart, I organised and hosted two big (for me) events. Gathering’s of people who don’t know each other…. Yes, an autists nightmare scenario!!
a party to celebrate a new decade; 50
a Book launch, where I chose to be interviewed and read from my newly published book - in front of a room of people!! (I am actually laughing as I type this….WTF was I thinking?!) I find spoken word the most draining form of communication with one or two people let alone 30 to 40 people!
That was not enough stress, so I thought it would be a good idea to distract myself from the nerves I would be feeling about speaking to a group of people about some deeply personal things. So, on the day of the book launch I co-led a training session about Neurodivergence and Innovation in the workplace to a brand new client group (it was a really good session, but, again, what was I thinking?!)
Our family are living with the constant uncertainty of not knowing when/if my husband will get a phone call about a life saving transplant he has been waiting four years for. He received his 4th call about a potential transplant in the first week of August. Unfortunately it wasn’t a viable transplant. The highs and lows of hope and sadness weigh heavy on us. And take up much energy from depleted reserves.
I tried to please everyone with fun activities and travel over the summer that I was not well enough to do on my own. I did it anyway.
Self Sabotage
We all have positive and negative aspects in our minds, depending on which is the dominant aspect, it will take charge of our decisions and actions.
When we’re in resonance and positive aspects are driving us we can feel in flow and sure of what we’re doing.
When we’re in dissonance and the negative aspects are leading the way it feels less natural and can come from a place of self sabotage or from our shadow side.
In my work as a Coach I help my clients to identify what is getting in their way of pursuing their dreams and ambitions.
One of the ways I do this is in helping them to identify and characterise their saboteurs and to understand their underlying emotions and stories.
Let me introduce you to one of my pesky and damaging saboteurs - My Hyper Achiever :
Along, with my People Pleaser saboteur Lily, who is of course “Happy to Help!” Charlie the Hyper Achiever self sabotages to drive me relentlessly in pursuit of achievement and firmly towards burnout.
Of course, now I understand I’m autistic I recognise that my self sabotage is tangled up with anxiety responses along with compensating for and masking my neurodivergent difficulties:
People Pleasing is a ‘Fawn’ anxiety response
Achievement is a compensation for masking neurodivergence
compensation - hiding, obscuring, blending in
camouflaging - ways to maintain appearance of independence and success
I dedicate a whole chapter to helping you to understand your masking in This is Who I Am… The Autistic Woman’s Creative Guide to Belonging
Masking keeps us safe in many situations where we don’t feel safe and it can be harmful for us.
It takes up a LOT of energy and can impact our mental health in our loss of sense of self and energy depletion.
The Cost
The cost of driving myself so hard to achieve so much in a small space of time is:
I start doubting myself
I ignore my intuition. A few times I have thought ‘this doesn’t feel right’ . I ignored the wisdom of my intuition and ploughed on regardless
The worse I feel the more I avoid taking care of myself, in replenishing or protecting my energy.
I’m scared to ask for help - because even though I know this to be a lie - I think it will be an admission of weakness or failure. Those, my friend, are old stories that creep up on me when I’m at my lowest ebb.
I really wanted to say, ‘hello, dear neurokin reader; this substack is all new to me and I recognise I need a break, I need to pause for a month’.
I was fearful of doing that at these early stages in you getting to know the benefits of Belong…we are neurokin
The biggest cost of all this is that I get myself to a point where I simply want to throw in the towel and run away…. “Hello, anxiety response ‘flight’ welcome to this burnout party!”
I hate that I can’t do ALL of the things!
I want approval and acceptance…. oh shit! The old internal ableism is here again.
I'm struggling to embrace that I need to make adaptions and alterations to care for my neurodivergent struggles and needs.
This is the hardest of the lessons I’ve fought this summer, the irony of having just published a book about a guide to autistic acceptance; I am struggling with acceptance that I’m Autistic …. again!
A message of compassion
Wow! that’s a hard realisation. I’m four years on from my autistic discovery and it still bites me on the bum!
Of course it does.
I lived for 45 years not knowing a vital piece of information about why some of life can be so challenging, why some things take up a lot of energy and what I need to do to take care of myself.
Life takes more energy when you’re neurodivergent
Midlife
hormone depletion and imbalance
Generation X/Early Millennial’s - many of us are only just discovering or have unacknowledged neurodivergence
What can help?
The start point is always noticing and then acknowledging where you are; with compassion for yourself.
I fully recognise that I need to build in some habits that will constantly help me to be realistic about my energy levels and ensuring that I replenish what I give.
During the term times I find it easier to regulate these habits.
I normally spend time every Monday looking at the week ahead and considering:
How activites will effect my energy
What will take energy?
What will give energy?
What can I do to restore and replenish my energy
Who can give me help?
I’m wondering if I can find some neurokin who will buddy up so we can help each other to get realistic about how much energy we have to push to achieve
And - to be straight talking and ask each other:
“Is this being driven from a need to achieve and please others?”
“Is anxiety in the driving seat here?”
As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic.
Does any of this resonate with you? What has been helpful for you to navigate this? What’s been helpful for you in this article?
Want to explore this topic further for yourself? For paid subscribers: here is are some guided Coaching questions for you to do just that
I’m attempting to come out the other side of a burnout and although intellectually I know what I need to do (rest, align expectations to capacity, activate self compassion…) I struggle to override 50+ years of patterns and not helpful strategies. It is so easy to revert to pre-discovery ways of acting that never served us particularly well. I struggle with the reality that my capacity seems to have diminished and my autistic traits increased since menopause - I’m pissed off! Thanks for creating this place for sharing and learning and building self acceptance - it’s really helping me get understand and manage myself better.
I can relate to this so much Andrea, your insight is spot on as always. You've been powering through with little regard to your own needs, but it's time to slow down and be gentle with yourself. I struggle with the internal ableism too, it feels like default thinking due to a lifetime of trying to be enough.