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And people are like 'Oh you know everyone doesn't feel like studing or something. You just have to push through". But like truly all I wanna do with my whole heart is to study. But my body says no and what else I can do?

Not to mention that for me the burnout always comes very unexpectedly, and I always don't recognise it at first till it's too late. And even then I dismiss it because after all 'nothing ha happend' and my symptoms doesn't seems as serve as for the others.

And I feel so mad at myself because all I can do entire day is to lay in bed, do some low stimulation activities and in like best case go for a walk. And that's still seems like a lot for somone who is unwell. So I just must be lazy isn't it?

While I'm crying and trying my best just to be able to do my bare minimum every day. And yet I feel like I'm just useless. Like I don't have a job, all I really have to do is to study and keep the house in good condition. And I struggle to maintain even so little like that.

It might be a combination of several different burnouts including work burnout

That the burnout can cause one to be an asshole to some people and hurt them, which is very unfortunate and can be unavoidable

That it can cause physical symptoms too, such as flu like symptoms when working in an office that somehow disappear almost instantly after you get home

The guilt, the guilt is the worst, about not being able to perform well at work, putting more workload on your co-workers, having to say no to some types of hangouts

I don't have external meltdowns.

I could. I don't let it happen.

I keep my rage on the inside and stay pretty quiet about it. It's just as strong as theirs [physically shaking nose bleed from high blood pressure kind of bad], but like as a kid I saw how terrifying it was to be around [dad breaking dishes, mom putting our lawn chairs into walls] and I just internalized that I wasn't going to wear that anger on the outside.

So my mother genuinely cannot tell if I am just being quiet or if I am silently hearing the dial-up noises of pure rage. This has lead her to both making strong and confident statements like "You are a pacifist who would never hurt a fly U.U" but also acting like I am secretly dangerous maybe... It's because she has never seen me snap.

She knows what her temper is like [throwing chairs through walls], she knows what my father's temper is like [pick up child and toss out door], and she can tell I am being tested, but she doesn't know what happens when I snap or where that breaking point is.

Her -perhaps unhinged- solution to this, my whole life, has been to do things that should obviously enrage me or shut me down completely, like ignoring important boundaries, repeatedly, punishing me for expressing emotions or needs at all, etc... And then to constantly ask me if I am angry with her when I get too quiet [right after near directly telling me to shut up].

It has occurred to me now, they have never once seen me lose my temper, so they literally just can't tell if I am angry at them. My sister is easy, my mother fights and screams with my sister constantly, my mother understands this. My mother doesn't have any grasp of feelings or boundaries that are not screamed at her [apparently, and I fear my sister is the same way]. Her and my sister are close despite constant fucking fighting because they understand each other.

They are trying to get me to engage the same way and it is not working. I realize now that this has been hard for them.

I was so successfully taught to suppress my emotions, by being punished for any outburst, that rage quiet looks the same as any other kind of quiet from the outside. To them anyway.

I did tell her. For the record. I used my words. I did tell her very calmly that my response to rage, in order to avoid doing the things that terrified me as a child, was to simply leave [the autistic urge to GTFO]. When a situation or person causes too much of the dial-up rage noise, I simply extract myself from that situation, up to and including never speaking to a person again. I explained this calmly. I explained it calmly 100 times and I explained that I explain myself calmly as my rage response 1-5 [also pretty much every other negative emotion tbh], and I told her that what came next was me simply opting out and fucking off. I told her this. I couldn't understand why she never took me seriously, or why she never fucking understood.

I couldn't understand what made her like this.

But it's the same problem I have with everyone else multiplied by a factor of 10.

If I am explaining myself calmly, they can't understand that it's actually serious or that I am actually upset. ESPECIALLY because they read me as "female" and women "aren't that rational" so if I am not screaming and crying about something, which I never do, people assume I can't be upset and it isn't serious.

And then after having my boundaries ignored too many times despite having calmly explained how and why it's a problem [shaking inside or not]... I leave. I leave and everyone gets upset like this is unexpected behaviour, even though I told them 50 times that is how I would respond if they kept doing *the thing.*

And for neurotypical people especially, they are expecting there to be a disconnect between what someone says they need or feel and what their actually boundaries and feelings are, and they expect the latter to be demonstrated with emotions. Telling them bluntly you do not function that way somehow never helps?

My mother isn't just looking for normal yelling or a few tears to know I am serious, whether or not I do those either [I don't], she's looking for an explosion to know there's a problem at all.

Fucked if I know how she proceeds through life this way in general or if this is just her expectation of her own kids???

And I couldn't get why my mother couldn't read my emotions and didn't seem to think I have any. It's because she's testing for the rage limit to see where my 'actual' limit is instead of taking my word for it. Never the fuck mind that she could simply *not* test at my boundaries instead of letting me have them. Separate issue.

I couldn't figure out what made her *like this*

She's expecting me to throw a giant meltdown violent tantrum at people when I have 'actually' had enough. Maybe she got away with those being like 5'4" in another time, but I am the size of the average man, I do not get to have giant screaming rages, whether or not people perceive me consciously as a woman, and least of all because a lot of people -at least unconsciously- read me as 'masculine' or at least always "the guy" of the situation compared to all other women and some men [bigger stronger and more rational, more able to just absorb the damage and let it go so the less rational screaming/crying one doesn't have to be dealt with]. Even if it was in me to be willing to terrify people [usually never], there are such limited instances where it wouldn't just blow back on me. Potentially very dangerously.

I am going to be the quiet calm one. You are going to have to let me use my words, bitch.

So she kept ignoring my boundaries until I had to cut her out of my life, and she probably doesn't understand and probably thinks it feels sudden -after 36 long years of bullshit- abrupt and unfair.

But I told her hundreds of times.

Anyway, I've been struggling, and i had this conversation with my girlfriend. I've blanked out our usernames, the longer blue one is me and the shorter redish pink one is her.

(ID in ALT and under the cut).

I really struggle to see just how much work I put in daily just to live. Because it's always been that way. I genuinely cannot even begin to image a life where someone doesn't function this way.

I made a diagram a while ago to help a little. I think i will go back to it. Map it out again, remind myself that it is tiring living this way. That this is part of my disability. That it isn't normal.

“Having All of Your Internal Resources Exhausted Beyond Measure and Being Left with No Clean-Up Crew”: Defining Autistic Burnout

Although autistic adults often discuss experiencing 'autistic burnout,' and attribute serious negative outcomes to it, the concept is almost completely absent from the academic and clinical literature. Lay summary Why was this study done? Autistic burnout is talked about a lot by autistic people but has not been formally addressed by researchers. It is an important issue for the autistic community because it is described as leading to distress; loss of work, school, health, and quality of life; and even suicidal behavior.

This is one of those "WE ALL KNEW THAT" studies, where they have to study and write about Things We Already Know in order to make them part of the Official Body of Knowledge out there, and maybe even get useful research done on them.

I went digging on Google Scholar because I want to be able to send my smol child's summer day camp director something that actually explains why he's only shown up two days in the past two weeks.

I would kind of rather have something in the form of a cute handout, but I didn't think of that before I hit Google Scholar. (Also, the first thing I found in a regular Google search was kind of basic and kind of confusing; it seemed to be referring to shutdown, but was calling it burnout.)

What were the results of the study? The primary characteristics of autistic burnout were chronic exhaustion, loss of skills, and reduced tolerance to stimulus. Participants described burnout as happening because of life stressors that added to the cumulative load they experienced, and barriers to support that created an inability to obtain relief from the load. These pressures caused expectations to outweigh abilities resulting in autistic burnout. From this we created a definition:

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.

Participants described negative impacts on their lives, including health, capacity for independent living, and quality of life, including suicidal behavior. They also discussed a lack of empathy from neurotypical people. People had ideas for recovering from autistic burnout, including acceptance and social support, time off/reduced expectations, and doing things in an autistic way/unmasking.

Oh, wow, this is a good burn:

...mental health treatment/therapy as a means of remediating burnout came up, but in the context of a missing resource, a negative experience, or unrelated to burnout (e.g., for treating a co-occurring mental health condition).

Leaving Elementary School was the start of the problem, because it was the first real sign of me aging. Being Bullied in Grade 4 messed me up too, actually. So I don't think I'm actually capable of creating a coherent timeline here. But grade 8 seems like the best beginning for this timeline. In grade 8, I would've been approaching 15. 15 wasn't far from 18, and so age and time finally began to feel like a real threat. That combined with the stress of transitioning from Elementary School to High School really messed me up. But I know that I'd recovered and become more mentally prepared by (at least) November of 2019.

Switching classes and semesters messed with me again, but I was still able to find my footing to some extent. I was able to do that, and that was pretty good. But just as I was beginning to find my footing, COVID hit. And just like that, the rug was right pulled out from under me. That really did mess me up, and I hated it when it originally happened. It caused some meltdowns, I think. But after I had time to find my footing with the online learning, I began to adjust to that just like I did to everything else.

Online learning meant I couldn't read like I did back in Grades 1 to 9, but it wasn't all bad. I did really like being at home, so that's something. Doing Phys Ed online was actually fun, because it felt much more like something I could handle at my own speed. It became a nice little routine for me. But things rapidly began going downhill for me in the middle of 2021 or so. My mom's health began getting worse, then she died in 2022. All the while, I was dealing with the knowledge that High School was almost over, that I had to return to In-Person learning, and that I was growing older faster and faster. It all felt like a lot, and yet I was somehow still able to handle it.

It didn't hurt that I'd been taking online social skills classes since the summer after my mom died. I really bonded with the teachers for that program, although I didn't really make it happen as much with the other students all the time. I think it still gave me a bit of a softer edge than I'd had all during Grades 4 to 9. I'd been bitter during that time due to the omnipresent trauma of being bullied. But being online for years and away from school helped to reboot my temperament, I think. I still had some bitterness to me, to an extent where I truly did despise some kids. But there were some other kids I didn't mind and felt some amount of respect for, and that was very good progress for me. I still barely talked to anyone, but I still talked more than I did in grade 9. So again, progress was being made.

Adjusting to In-Person learning did give me a lot of stress and meltdowns, but nothing compares to the weight I felt once I realized I had to leave High School forever. Once I'd adjusted to In-Person High School and I'd become fond of it and fond of reading there and learning there and being there, things began to go downhill for me again. Because then the knowledge that I'd have to leave High School sooner than later began to weigh heavy on my head and on my heart, and that was truly an unbearable stressor. It was truly something else in terms of being uncomfortable to deal with. And it's also something that would eventually lead me to regression and even deeper stress.

Now I'm in College, and I really do feel like I'm regressing a little bit. I don't feel as social in College as I did in those last few years of High School. Maybe that's just me being paranoid again, but it feels true. And on top of all that, I've also been dealing with stomach pains since June of 2025. I've had really bad Congestion for years, and it only feels like it's been intensifying since December of 2025. I've had a lot of problems, and I suppose we could argue things are finally coming to a head.

Maybe a description like burnout and me finally running into a wall is a bit melodramatic. I can see that. But it also just seems like the right way to describe everything for me. I'm 20 going on 21, and that's completely devastating to me. I'm dealing with a whole bunch of transitions in life (needing new glasses, needing my wisdom teeth out, transitioning to college and/or to a life without high school, losing my family doctor, etc). I'm dealing with a lot of stuff, and it really throws me off. So yeah, you could argue things are just finally boiling over or something. It sounds melodramatic, but it may still be perfectly true for me.

you have to be kinder to people who are slow processors.

you have to be kinder to people who don't understand your jokes.

you have to be kinder to people who forget important dates.

you have to be kinder to people with cognitive decline.

you have to be kinder to people who were always this way, too.