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Identifying & Preventing Autistic Burnout
1k Plays1 year ago
What are the RED FLAGS of Autistic Burnout? What are some Autistic Burnout symptoms and signs? How can you better manage your energy and regulation to avoid Autistic Burnout in the future?
Vera is the Founder of @HappyAutisticLady with her sister Ivi, which is a business offering resources, stickers, art, and speaking about Autism and Neurodiversity. Residing in the UK and the Czech Republic, Vera works with the Ambitious About Autism youth network and within Civil Services, where she looks at governmental papers, and trains Mental Health workers to understand Autism alongside the MIND charity.
My Links - https://linktr.ee/thomashenleyUK // Vera’s Insta - https://instagram.com/happyautisticlady?igshid=MmJiY2I4NDBkZg==
Dbud Noise Cancelling Adjustable Ear Buds (20% Off with code: THOUGHTYAUTI) - https://dbud.io/thoughtyautipodcast
They start off by talking about the concept of accent switching or mirroring in social interactions, as well as sleep chronotypes and hustle culture, before chatting about the difficulties of managing a wide variety of business roles and introducing the topic… Autistic Burnout!
Vera goes through 6 main causes of burnout: Tiredness, Fairness, Control, Insufficient Reward, Lack Of Community, and Values. Thomas highlights some modern-day difficulties like atomisation, Vera mentions how lack of fairness is a difficulty for Autistic people in a neurotypical world.
Diving deeper into the specifics of Autistic burnout, how burnout impacts Autistic people differently, and the unique causes of Autistic burnout. In a larger conversation about Autistic masking, they highlight how masking can impact short-term energy/stress as well as long-term mental health. Sensory difficulties are a big issue for Autistic people in the workplace and out in the world due to our lack of habituation to sensory stimuli; Thomas highlights the importance of environmental adjustments and sensory supports in reducing overall stress.
Thomas adds that concepts like interoception and issues with sleep can also impact Autistic burnout; many individuals don't fulfill their hydration and food intake needs which are important to overall functioning and well-being, but struggling to wake/sleep due to melatonin differences can also impact energy levels and stress long term. It can be easy to think of psychology as a separate thing from our biology, but the brain is an organ, and exposure to cortisol and adrenaline has some real bodily effects. Cortisol impacts autistic people more strongly and takes longer to die down, and in our modern day, this can lead to chronic stress and impaired cognitive function.
Looking into Vera and Thomas' experiences with burnout, they talk about the concept of Spoon Theory and the importance of distinguishing capability from capacity... Vera uses the cupcake analogy to explain this.
Thomas and Vera list some common RED FLAGS for incoming Autistic burnout, some unhelpful coping strategies, and mentalities th
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Transcript
Introduction and Sponsor
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Exploring Autistic Burnout
00:00:45
Speaker
Good day and welcome back to the 4TOD podcast with your host, as always, Mr. Thomas Hedonley. How are you guys doing today? The hustle and bustle of life, things are getting very overwhelming for me at the moment, and it's very apt for the conversation that we're going to be having today because we are talking about autistic burnout, how to avoid it, how to spot it. Some of the more personal experiences that myself and my guests will have
00:01:15
Speaker
to give a bit of background, a bit more of a personal angle to the experience so that hopefully you'll be able to relate to it in some ways and implement some of the things that we have in our own lives for your own benefit. So, I think it's a good idea to first introduce my guest, Vera. How are you doing today? I'm very well, Thomas. Thank you for having me.
00:01:38
Speaker
Well, I know that from having our chats before, you said that you've listened to the podcast a fair bit. What has been your favourite episode so far? Well, some of the ones about self-advocacy really spoke to me and definitely inspired a lot of my own attitude to how I do things. I'm very keen on those.
00:02:05
Speaker
I was also mentioned to you some of the recent ones about adapting your environment to your sensory needs. And that's something that I'm very interested in and something that I'm doing currently in my own house.
00:02:18
Speaker
I remember the self advocacy one because it was I think the one with autistic column and they're really interesting because they think they do the kind of in the world of like law and things like that. So they have to be like really overly specific with that language. So like when they moved to social media and started off with like Twitter and buddying up an Instagram page.
00:02:43
Speaker
A lot of that transferred into how they did their posts and did their tweets and things like that. I can really see that because it's very comprehensive, anything that I've seen from them on Instagram. So, might be good to learn a bit more about
Vera's Advocacy and Diagnosis Journey
00:03:03
Speaker
you. Would you like to tell us a little bit about what you do in terms of your work as the happy autistic lady? Love that name.
00:03:12
Speaker
Thank you. Absolutely. I'm Vera. I started my Happy Autistic Lady illustrations on Instagram shortly after I was diagnosed autistic a few years ago, I think three or four now.
00:03:27
Speaker
So not too recent, not too far away. I just wanted to connect with other people in the actually autistic community and to really learn to embrace my neurodivergence. It was something that I had not encountered autism before. I'm from the Czech Republic. We don't have any of that. I mean, we obviously very much do. It's just not spoken about. And I really wanted to come to it with a positive attitude, hence the happy autistic lady.
00:03:54
Speaker
What whereabouts is the Czech Republic? I have heard about it mostly through like I remember there was these activities that we did around like the World Cup where like all the students in the class had to like pick a team and stuff like that and Czech Republic was part of that and I was like oh that sounds like a cool one I'll go for that one. It's a fantastic country it's
00:04:18
Speaker
underneath Germany and Poland and we speak Czech. We've got about 10 million people and I was born here in the UK but I've lived my life half and half which explains my name. I've got a Czech name but then my accent is quite English.
00:04:33
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. And is that, is that more or less that kind of, cause I know that for a lot of English kids, English autistic kids, when they grow up, they listen to a lot of like American based shows and so they start picking up on like the accents and stuff. Is that something that you experienced with? Definitely. My accent goes all over the place and it depends on who I'm working with. Yeah.
00:05:00
Speaker
Yeah, I actually it's a it's a kind of a weird thing because like it's not something that I do consciously. It's very much like my my like behavior and speaking style seems to very much match the person that I'm talking to. It's very strange sometimes.
00:05:21
Speaker
But what about, um, cause you said that you, you, you were diagnosed like three or four years ago. What was, um, kind of the, like the situation around that? Like, what, why did you go for it? Yeah, I was diagnosed at university because of mental health. And I realized that there was something more there. It wasn't just depression and it was actually because of autistic burnout and
00:05:49
Speaker
One of the things that I was exploring at university and through my Happy Autistic Lady illustrations was how do I deal with my own energy? How do I stop overexerting myself? And how can I work with my own needs, with my sensory needs, with my energy needs, my social needs, everything so that I can work with myself, not against myself. And that's where Happy Autistic Lady came in because I wanted to really embrace being myself
00:06:17
Speaker
and being happy in this neurotypical world. So since starting those illustrations, I've actively pursued autism advocacy with lots of different organizations, including on the UK charity Empress About Autism, they've got the Youth Council. Yes, I remember you saying. So I'll mention one or two of their resources. And then currently, I work for the UK Civil Service in Environmental IT. And I do a few hours every week with our
00:06:46
Speaker
autism and ADHD network. But I still mainly do just happy autistic lady with myself and my sister. We just have a great time. We do lots of illustrations online, but we also do empowering neuropositive stationery and stickers. We've got a great community there.
00:07:09
Speaker
So what is it like? Because for me, it's very much been the case that I'm very good at sort of independent work, like things that I can get on by myself being creative and, you know.
00:07:26
Speaker
organizing things for myself. But one area that I really struggle with is stuff around organization and comms. That's something that I just never have been able to get around. So I know that you were mentioning something about like the autism ADHD network. Do you have a lot of oversight of like tying things together? I actually am the comms and engagement lead. And through my work on comms and engagement there, I moved into my current role
00:07:56
Speaker
doing comms and engagement for this big environmental IT programme, which is really funny because a few years ago, if you told me I was semi-extroverted and dealing with communication and getting your message across, I would have been absolutely shocked. I was mostly non-verbal, had massive stutters and speech impediments and didn't like talking to people very much. But the journey through that was because I've learned how to do
00:08:24
Speaker
Communication, I've learned how to look at things from other people's perspective and really consider audience timings, planning. I've almost overcompensated to the point that it's now natural to me and I've got so many different spreadsheet formats, list formats. It's very helpful.
00:08:44
Speaker
But with Happy Autistic Lady having my sister on board has really made things easier in that we share the load of comms and it's just nice to talk to other people about things that are interesting and not have the burden of responsibility. That's probably what drives me most is in working with other people is that if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go with other people. Yeah. Yeah.
00:09:13
Speaker
That's really interesting. I mean, it would be really cool to know about like the work that you've done with Ambitious About Autism because I have had some comms with them. I think I've worked with them a couple of times. Why is it that you gravitate towards that organisation sort of, as opposed to other ones? I actually found them through their
00:09:40
Speaker
employability programs for young autistic people. They were doing a civil service internship. And this was at a point where I had just been diagnosed. I didn't know any autistic people. I mean, it turns out I did retrospectively. They just didn't know. Yeah. And I was being quite loud about it, loud and proud. And it just took a few months for people to come out the woodworks, if you'll excuse me.
00:10:07
Speaker
And I applied for this internship, I got it, but then Covid happened so it couldn't go ahead. If one door closes, another one opens. I was able to join the youth network and we do every Tuesday and Thursday. We do really awesome peer support sessions where we just do art or listen to our favourite comedy videos and just have a great time. And together we learn about each other, share our special interests.
00:10:36
Speaker
And with the youth council, we're able to focus a little bit more on policy, contributing to various government papers, looking at resources, one of which I'll mention later, it's the Know
Resources and Support for Autism
00:10:46
Speaker
Your Normal resource. And during COVID, we actually did a big series about autistic people's mental health for mental health. We've got a video series, we're going to be doing a new one soon.
00:10:59
Speaker
This was during lockdown, we did a series with mind where we had a few thousand mental health professionals come and learn about autism and our experiences in the mental health industry, basically any autism through our own words and how they can adapt their practices to our needs.
00:11:23
Speaker
Yeah I think that sounds a lot really interesting and great and it sounds like you're you know both having sort of an impact and a voice out in the autistic community but also going and doing some like more direct work for improving things for autistic people which I think is very under underrated at the moment because
00:11:48
Speaker
You know, you mentioned about mental health services. I've hardly ever found any positive.
00:11:54
Speaker
experiences of autistic people with mental health and getting support for it and sort of recovering from things. So it's definitely an area that I think needs a lot of work. Absolutely. And it was really powerful to come together and discuss that and sort of validate each other's experiences, but equally share with the professionals our positive experiences. Yeah. Positive stories of when
00:12:23
Speaker
somebody had stepped up and taken time to understand our sensory needs. Or when they've sort of had a thought of, hey, maybe this cognitive behavioral therapy isn't working for you, for obvious reasons, your pain is completely, you can't rationalize pain. So let's try something else. And putting all of that together into this amazing resource funded by Mind as well, which was really lovely. That's really cool. It's awesome.
00:12:53
Speaker
I suppose in a similar vein to mental health, you know, today we are talking about autistic burnout.
Understanding Autistic Burnout Causes
00:13:01
Speaker
And I think it's something that I think most lay people, most neurotypicals will know about in terms of just general burnout at work and with life, you know, those kind of
00:13:13
Speaker
social experiences, those life situations, to do with finances and the workplace, it seems to be that a lot of people experience that sort of burnout experience.
00:13:26
Speaker
for autistic people, it's obviously going to look a lot different. There's gonna be some things that perhaps are a little bit different for us in terms of the way that it happens and how we cope with it. So I think it would be good to start off with, you know, what is an autistic burnout and what can it look like in daily life? Sure. I'll explain maybe what burnout is and then how personally I would,
00:13:55
Speaker
That sounds good. The autistic side of things. Burnout is subtle. It's long-term and it's really, really debilitating. It is class as a psychological condition. And generally it's people feel exhausted. They feel cynical and really ineffective. Like any kind of, any amount of energy that you put into something, it's just not having the same results as it usually would. Yeah.
00:14:26
Speaker
There's one book which I have found enormously helpful and I'll just reference it briefly. It's the book called How to Calm Your Mind by Chris Bailey. I picked it up once by complete chance and it was super, super helpful. So I'm mentioning that now because in it, the author mentions the six triggers of burnout. So there's six of them. It's workload. If you've got too much work to do, you're going to struggle.
00:14:55
Speaker
a lack of control about that workload, but also maybe not just what the contents of the work is, but when you can do it. If you're working shifts, for example, and you're a morning person, but your shifts have been assigned to you into the evening, that's going to be a source of tension. The opposite in my case. Are you an evening person? I have a solid night out. There's just no getting away from it. I've been through stints of going like,
00:15:26
Speaker
long times with waking up in the morning, but it just never works for me. Do you know it's genetic? Yeah, like the chronotypes and stuff. Yes. So your chronotype preference is genetic. And this just comes to my message of work with yourself, not against yourself. There's so much messaging out there for, oh, be a morning person. Four steps to become a morning person, wake up at five and go to the gym. No.
00:15:54
Speaker
Plus, it always just blows my mind, that kind of thing, because it's not like getting up any earlier is going to give you more time in the day. No. Because if you're an evening person, you know, that person who might be, well, I feel so great about getting up and getting a workout in at the start of the day, like yourself, maybe. I'm holding my hands up now. I am a morning person. My body wakes me up at six. I can't do anything about it.
00:16:23
Speaker
But imagine me. Let's switch. Yeah. Imagine it turned around where somebody was telling me, oh, Vera, this is what you need to be an evening person. Have you tried waking up in the night clubs? No, no, no. You've been a bartender. Oh my God. Yes. It's interesting. I think that dynamic though, because I think at the moment there's so much of that like work culture whereby
00:16:52
Speaker
you know, people are like glorifying these perfect schedules and like working loads. And one of the aspects is always about getting up in the morning and doing that kind of thing. And I just think because, you know, as I said, there's not, there's the exact same amount of time that you would get if you woke up later and went to sleep later. Like, why can't you be the person who goes to sleep later and goes to the gym?
00:17:17
Speaker
you know just in the afternoon or something like it it doesn't make sense to me it feels uh feels very strange sometimes watching stuff like that that ties into another one of the six triggers so it's the workload lack of control another one is fairness if you're constantly being assaulted by a barrage of unfairness especially as autistic people we're very we're very aware
00:17:44
Speaker
of things being maybe not the way they should be, or somebody saying one thing and doing another. So that unfairness can have a big, big impact. Yeah. The other ones are insufficient reward. So if you're not being paid adequately, but socially as well, if your team aren't acknowledging the work you do,
00:18:08
Speaker
You are going to struggle. You might not have a team, so you are a freelancer mainly, right? So socially, you want to be able to see that kind of reward. Yeah, it sounds like a lot of these points that you're bringing up are pretty much core to being a content creator.
00:18:29
Speaker
Every little reward, you know, you've got to work a lot. You don't see much success in the short term and it's a very long process. Seeing those outcomes is a big part of the insufficient reward. It's definitely something that I feel I've recently changed jobs and I'm really, really enjoying my new job. You don't see the work that you're doing immediately and that's absolutely normal. It's just part of life.
00:18:55
Speaker
So I need to do other things where I can see my rewards, my outcomes basically instantaneously, whether that's making an illustration or doing a bit of gardening. Yeah. I'd say for me, that's probably going to the gym and getting all pumped up with blood from workouts. That's my instantaneous reward of the day. Yeah. Do you measure how you're improving? Do you race against yourself?
00:19:26
Speaker
Oh, I, I, I don't like, um, I know there's some people who go and like, like measure themselves and do like body fat tests and stuff like that. But, um, I think for me, it's mostly just, you know, if I can add like one more repetition of a movement every, every week that I go, I'm like, cool. Um, sometimes works, but then like, if I drop by one or it's the same, I'll be like, Oh my God, everything life is, is so hard on me. And it has such a massive impact on my day.
00:19:56
Speaker
Yeah, how we measure that success is something that I would definitely like to talk about towards the end. It's difficult, isn't it? Yeah. What's the last thing? The last things are lack of community, which we've sort of touched upon already, and our values. Big thing. Yeah. Big thing at the moment. But the atomization of people, you know, everyone
00:20:21
Speaker
community groups sort of in your physical area are very, very much dwindling, especially for like the younger generation. I think that's a big contributor. You say a lot online of a lot of people
00:20:38
Speaker
being very sort of insular and what I suppose fairly like myself except that I do go out to the gym so it's I get a little bit of exposure to the outside world but I do hear a lot from people that like agoraphobia and not being able to go outside is quite a big issue especially for a lot of autistic people
00:20:58
Speaker
And for us autistic people, we are extra prone to burnout because it affects not just our energy and the traits that I mentioned earlier, the sort of feeling exhausted and cynical and everything being just so much harder than it usually is, but it also affects our ability to communicate completely can going nonverbal. And it just makes it hard to take care of our basic needs. I think two things that.
00:21:28
Speaker
contribute to us being very, very prone to that burnout is masking and sensory issues. Yeah, totally. I'm not sure if I should define masking. I don't know how familiar with people are with it as a term. Yeah.
00:21:45
Speaker
That's the thing. It's not a very defined term, is it? I mean, you could say that it's hiding your autistic traits or social camouflaging. The specifics of it tend to vary very greatly from person to person.
00:22:02
Speaker
Hmm. Definitely. I find in myself that it can either be conscious or subconscious. I often find myself thinking, even though I'm very open about being autistic, I will sometimes think, okay, these are new people. Let's not flap our hands. Yes.
00:22:19
Speaker
But then a few minutes later, I can feel the pressure in my chest start to build when the lights are too bright and I can feel my head getting foggy. And at that point, I generally slap myself over the head with a newspaper. I'd be like, Vera, just chill. It's fine. You can move your hands about to stop this feeling of pain from the lights. Just be open about being autistic. It's fine. Nobody's going to care at all. And generally they never do.
00:22:49
Speaker
But masking can also be not just subconscious, but also conscious, not just masking can be not just conscious, but also very subconscious. Where if you spent your entire life trying to fit in and appear normal and copying people's behaviors, then it's going to take a lot of effort. And all masking just takes so much energy.
00:23:16
Speaker
Yeah, I talked to the creator, Paul McAllough from Autism from the Inside, when we're talking about sort of the differences between the ways that the autistic people sort of go about things like socializing and small things. And I really empathize with it a lot because when I was younger, I
00:23:43
Speaker
I used to be extremely confused about how neurotypicals would just kind of go about and do things without contemplating and thinking over and having a reason to do it.
00:23:55
Speaker
And it makes makes sense because we do have two modes of being one is that kind of unconscious like going with your guts kind of emotionally based decisions and behaviors. And then you also have the the more higher cognitive aspects of
00:24:15
Speaker
analyzing and like you know something something that's really sort of key to be being a human and a lot of autistic people we don't use that sort of lower emotional brain to do things and so we end up expending a lot of energy for things that other people might not expend hardly anything like good example is
00:24:39
Speaker
Now you've decided to go out for a run today and you're going to start running every day for a week. Let's say, um, that's going to be much harder than, than, you know, if you've been running for a year and it's just part of your routine, it's like.
00:24:54
Speaker
you don't have to think about it so much and you don't have to prepare yourself so much because it's like a set habit, a set routine that you have to just go out and do. And I feel like that transfers a lot into social situations as well. Like if you're thinking about social situations and masking to such a large extent, it's obviously gonna cause you to be a lot more taxed and tie in the aspects of having like a lower social battery.
00:25:23
Speaker
It just sets you up for getting completely overwhelmed by very short situations. Do you do social scripts? I don't because my working memory in social situations is not very good. That's interesting because recently, as my working memory has been improving with time,
00:25:51
Speaker
I'm not depressed anymore. Doesn't wonder that helps. I've been using it more because, but, but in a sort of, it, they helped me make fewer decisions in life in my daily social communication at work. I've got these little note pads on my screen, different colors for different topics. And they're just filled with blank sentences to fill in.
00:26:20
Speaker
So some sentences like, thank you for reaching out. I currently cannot do this because blah, blah, blah. And then there's like a pick list for me. It just helps automate all of that. And I feel like they're social scripts, but they just help reduce the amount of energy I've got. I can definitely see myself using that kind of thing, like, especially through like emails and social media. It's like, I've only just realized that you can have
00:26:46
Speaker
um, saved replies on Instagram. Yes. Or you can just, you can just send like a reply that you've, it'll pick up if someone's asking you a similar question to what the other person asked and you can save that. And then the next time that question like that comes out, you can just click the button. I haven't started using it yet, but I'm excited to building it up a little bit more. All this automation makes so much sense, right? But then if a neurotypical person comes along and sees all my notes,
00:27:13
Speaker
I think you're like a psychopath also. They just think, hey, how do you manage to use all this? Isn't that a lot more effort? But for me, it's actually less effort to have that all prepared. What you were talking about there, the fancy biological word for that is habituation. That's the word from animal behavior science, ethology, that describes how animals, we're animals as well, get used to stimulating their surroundings.
00:27:42
Speaker
So every time a plane goes by, generally animals will look up and see what the plane is, see what the noise is, where the noise is coming from. And eventually they'll just learn to tune it out. Whereas us autistic people, we don't have that habituation effects. We don't know how to do that. We will always be looking at what the sound is. My fridge, my mortal enemy in the room behind me, I can always hear it. It's unplugged today. Good.
00:28:10
Speaker
I'll put it back on later when I'm upstairs, but we just don't have that habituation, which brings me nicely onto sensory issues. The other thing which I feel called this autistic burnout, because we don't have that habituation, we can't ignore sensory issues. If you're forcing yourself to withstand painful environments, purely because you think everyone else can do this, then that's going to have a massive negative effect.
00:28:38
Speaker
schools, workplaces, just going on public transport, all of that is really, really odd. And I think there's something that I was talking to Natasha from I want to tell you books. She does like neurodivergent. Neurodivergent affirming parenting. And we were talking about how weird it is that
00:29:06
Speaker
teachers and parents think that it's a bad thing to offer autistic children sensory supports because they have to expose them to it.
00:29:16
Speaker
You know, they're not going to have that in the real life. You know, they're not going to be able to use the headphones and the shades and things like that. And I'm like, really? Because I use them all the time. Like, it doesn't impact my day from using those sensory supports. I was very worried about starting to wear noise counsellors and someone else is in public because for some reason, and I've had it my whole life, I attract the odd people.
Sensory and Lifestyle Factors in Burnout
00:29:43
Speaker
public transport. I generally go out and sit and do some drawings of some interesting landscapes or any interesting buildings and people come up and chat to me. I don't know why, it's just my vibe. And I was kind of worried that I'd lose that because it's a really wonderful way to bring a little bit of joy into my world and meet people who I never would usually. So I was concerned about it but actually nobody cares.
00:30:10
Speaker
especially those people who come up just for a chat while still drawing, they don't mind you wearing sunglasses and noise cancers at all. And at work, nobody notices in the workplace, you've got the Equality Act, you're allowed to wear whatever you need to help. And so it's just, that's just odd to me, especially because it is backed by scientific evidence, habituation. We literally cannot learn to deal with the stimuli. Yeah.
00:30:39
Speaker
It is insane. I think when I very much am very much happy with the noise cancelling aspect of things. I think the only reason why I don't wear shades is because I don't know. I feel like
00:30:56
Speaker
I feel like people can very easily paint a picture of me if I'm, you know, I'm a tall man and I have a beard at that point and I'm wearing sunglasses. It's kind of like a bit of a stereotype for like, there's, there's like alpha male, red pill people. And that's, that's, I just can't get around it. Cause you know, if,
00:31:18
Speaker
Yeah. I'm always like self-conscious about, about wearing them. Especially because you're autistic and then if they make that assumption and you start having a shutdown and a meltdown or start losing your ability to communicate or you need help from them, it's an invisible disability. You might need that extra support in a public area and they've got a bit of prejudice against you that would go against you. And so I completely understand why you made that choice.
00:31:47
Speaker
That's exactly why. It's kind of among the large list of positive things. It is definitely a negative to me going to the gym so often as well, because it's almost like people are less likely to think that I'm capable of struggling and having negative experiences. Whether it's men or women, it just tends to be the case that
00:32:17
Speaker
You know, if I, if I dress my, my, my very coffee as my very coffee self and now I look like I go to the gym, it's, it's like, I come up and say that I'm struggling. It's almost like people just kind of double take and they don't really don't really go into like caring mode. It doesn't happen a lot, but when it does, it's, it's, it's a bit hard. Hmm. I completely, I feel that.
00:32:45
Speaker
Well, I think there's perhaps another aspect to autistic burnout that I wanted to touch on, and I can't remember it right at this moment, because it's gone, as it does. I think another aspect of autistic burnout that might be quite important, I think,
00:33:08
Speaker
is stuff around sleep as well because reading some of the research behind the circadian rhythms and melatonin and stuff, it does seem that
00:33:23
Speaker
you know, from statistics and from talking to people that a lot of autistic people struggle with the sleeping aspect of things, struggling to get off to sleep, not having very high quality sleep, not being able to wake up as easily and sort of get straight into life. And I know that sometimes if that happens and you kind of
00:33:48
Speaker
have a plan for the day and you kind of wake up late it's it's kind of like you're always running behind and you're kind of stressed out and then it gets to the evening and you've got stuff from the previous day that you need to do the next day um i know that's something that can be quite a vicious cycle and i think as well you know a large part of us um
00:34:11
Speaker
performing well being being well is aspects to do with diet and hydration which is something that again i feel like a lot of autistic people struggle with keeping on top due to things like interoception like it's it's such a massive massive part of
00:34:31
Speaker
like eat your blood sugar levels and how that impacts your wellbeing. I think it's quite a big contributor to that. If you're very stressed and you're very hyper focused throughout the day, you might forget to drink as much water as you should do. That can impact your sort of mental wellbeing. Same with food. I think it's...
00:34:55
Speaker
I suppose these are more indirect additive things to the experience. I found it really helpful with anything to do with stuff to do with your mood and stuff to do with your productivity and overall well-being.
00:35:19
Speaker
Understanding things from a neurochemical or hormonal sort of set point is really important. I did a podcast, not a podcast, I did a post about trigger stacking in dogs and how that, I feel like it can help explain a lot of the experiences that autistic people have when we have meltdowns and shutdowns and things like that.
00:35:47
Speaker
It's kind of going off the principle that it's the same in humans. Cortisol is released when you experience a stressor. But the Cortisol, it doesn't just rise up and then die down really quickly. I think the half-life of it is like...
00:36:06
Speaker
And now we're two hours, something like that. So it sticks around for quite a while after the events. And so if you go through your day and you sort of, as you said, constantly bombarded by sensory, social things, things of that nature, that cortisol builds up. And then you get to a point where something very little happens, like you can't find your keys to your house. And it's just buried down at the bottom of your bag. And so you chuck the bag to the side and you get overwhelmed.
00:36:35
Speaker
you have a difficult time with that. Whereas usually you would just be like, okay, my bag, my keys are going to be in there somewhere. I'm going to check that. Um, so I think that that really, um, has helped me to be more aware of sort of the, the small daily things that, that would cause me stress and how, how that would impact whether I need to relax or wherever I can work and search in sort of the evening.
00:37:03
Speaker
It's very interesting that you've mentioned cortisol there. And previously, a few sentences ago, you mentioned how difficult it is to get going in the morning. So exactly as you were saying that cortisol for us is spiked by when we've experienced something stressful.
00:37:28
Speaker
And like we were discussing before with the habituation, we struggle with not becoming calm with, we just can't ignore these constant stresses. Whereas neurotypicals can, the fridge, they just tune it out, a calendar change. They've had it a thousand times before. For us, it's still a stressful thing every single time. And so our cortisol would be spiked every single time. And stronger than most as well. And then if you combine those factors together,
00:37:59
Speaker
you've got a situation where a person has very high cortisol all the time, and it is going to cause, in fact, what we're talking about today, burnout. It's mentioned in the book that I recommend. It's the How to Calm Your Mind. If you enjoy the chemical and science understanding of things, it's not neurodivergent specific, but it's still a really well-written science book. There he talks about how burnout
00:38:28
Speaker
is you losing the ability to create the stress hormone just because you've had it so high the whole time. You get like, what's the opposite of ever sensitized? Desensitized, like you just. Desensitized. You just don't respond to it as much anymore. And in the mornings, cortisol and adrenaline and all of these stress hormones is what gets you up and out of
Stress and Burnout Experiences
00:38:51
Speaker
bed. And if we're just not responding to them anymore, you're going to physically struggle getting out of your bed. So it's,
00:38:58
Speaker
literally, chemically, not your fault. Yeah, I think that there is a tendency. I think that's in a lot of people to separate out psychology from physical things. Like I think people forget sometimes that your brain is an actual organ. It does. It is impacted physically by things.
00:39:22
Speaker
you know i feel trying to know a lot of the ways that i feel like i've been able to understand my mental health conditions and things like burnout a lot more is by actually looking at you know what are the physical things that are happening at the moment because it kind of keeps you a bit more grounded you can be like hmm cortisol is very high got a little bit of adrenaline coming through because there's a deadline coming
00:39:48
Speaker
right how do I deal with this rather than you know sort of staying very in the moment and obsessed and like hurrying and and like playing into the adrenaline in the cortisol and it's just not very very good um i think it's it kind of goes back to the reason why we have these systems because
00:40:09
Speaker
is originally used, as you said, for wake sleep, sometimes a bit to do with appetite, sometimes to do with avoiding dangerous things and having the energy to do things. But our modern day, although our stresses are a lot less sort of life threatening, they're still important to us and they happen chronically over a long period of time. It's not like,
00:40:40
Speaker
going about your day chilling and then the line pops up and you have to run away from it it's oh there's this deadline and there's that thing and then i've got this thing that i have to reorganize for that thing and there's there's these things and there's some papers that have come through and i need to read those letters and then oh my god this the fridge is broken it's making a horrible buzzing noise there's so many things that we should do that we could do that we might do and
00:41:10
Speaker
That choice, isn't it? What is it, that choice? Paralysis. Choice paralysis, yeah. And there's so many of these things that we should be doing, that either we think that ourselves or we have been told that this is important to somebody else. Expectations. Expectations are very high. And I don't know if it's just me and my black and white thinking, but I am very, very hard on myself for those reasons. Because if somebody's told me this is important to them,
00:41:40
Speaker
Can I help? I put myself into it a hundred percent, even if I don't necessarily have the energy. And that's not because I don't recognize it. I don't have the energy. I know I'm tired, but I'm really... Sorry. He just runs halfway down the stairs and stares at me.
00:42:06
Speaker
Cortisol's going. Adrenaline spike. There you go. Nice. Thing is, dog then just goes back upstairs to sleep, whereas I just... Yeah. That's my cardio.
00:42:20
Speaker
I don't even know what I was talking about anyway. Well, I realised that we talked a lot about burnout and things like that for a long time. So it might possibly be good to... I don't know, would you be able to go through sort of your own experience with burnout and
00:42:45
Speaker
I guess looking back in hindsight, sort of listing off some kind of red flags for what happened for you when you were approaching a burnout. Sure. I knew that autistic burnout was applicable to me the first thing when I finally managed to sit down and research autism.
00:43:09
Speaker
I did not know how to take breaks. I always overexcited myself and said yes to everything and really rarely had any kind of recharge time. At school I was in quite a stressful environment and there was so much work to do. I was there for many, many hours a day.
00:43:28
Speaker
and I was ill all the time. I was ill maybe for two weeks, then I'd be back in school for three weeks, then I'd be ill for two weeks. This was diagnosed as psychosomatic and it was really, but it was to the point where they thought I had tuberculosis because I had such bad illness, but it was always psychosomatic but never investigated further. Then going into uni, sorry.
00:43:54
Speaker
So it tends to be something that a lot of women get labeled with, um, like things like BPD and borderline. And it's like all these, all these other things, everything, but autism and is the psychosomatic component. It's literally just like you think something and therefore you feel it and it happens. It's, um, it's very funny to me retrospectively.
00:44:22
Speaker
because you can either laugh or you can cry. Might as well laugh, right? Then going into uni, I struggled massively with my mental health and was only able to work for about three and a half hours per day tops. The only thing that really helped was being outside. So I did a lot of volunteering and through that I met some awesome people and started to learn how to talk about mental health through them. And I'm so grateful.
00:44:51
Speaker
for all the vocabulary they introduced me to. Once I recognized what chronic burnout was, it was one of the main reasons I pursued getting my diagnosis because I just wanted a reason for why my brain and body felt so disconnected. The brain and body, it's all connected, it's all one thing, it's not separate. And so I figured there must be some sort of reason behind this and I wanted to figure out why my energy levels were so spiky. Why when I was interested in something
00:45:21
Speaker
It was amazing. I felt like I could live and breathe and eat just that thing I was interested in. Well, I missed a robot just like type of coding for hours and hours and making my gardening plans. Yes. Thinking about advocacy, just making spreadsheets, just having a great time. But, um, yeah, so it all made sense after that. And I've really been working on understanding my needs, my capability and capacity.
00:45:47
Speaker
Capability and capacity, they're two different words. Capability is, oh, do you know how to bake a cupcake? And capacity is how big is your oven? So those are really important distinctions because I was capable of doing all the work that I wanted to do, but I did not have capacity. And so understanding that distinction was really, really important for me and ultimately enabled me to join in the workplace.
00:46:16
Speaker
I'm able to work full time, which is a massive privilege and something that gives me so much joy, but I'm still sort of, I've still been teetering on the edge of that burnout and it's something that I want to put a stop to. I've generally just confused being driven with overworking and that's a strong, strong note overworking. There's such a societal trend towards that at the moment though. It's like, it's almost like it's glorified, like, um,
00:46:47
Speaker
And I think it's really important, you know, when you were talking about like capacity, you know, you could probably stuff a lot of cookie dough was, I don't know, what would you say? Muffin, muffin dough. Yeah, cupcake, cupcake dough into the oven and just absolutely ram it full and come out with this, this huge
00:47:09
Speaker
Minecraft-esque blob of cupcake. But that doesn't mean that it's a good cupcake. No. And you can't eat that much cupcake. For all the love in the world, I love cupcakes. There's not that many that I want to eat. After a while, they're all going to start tasting bland. Can you see where I'm going with this metaphor? The lack of joy from overworking creators is palpable.
00:47:34
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. It's, I definitely agree that there is a societal trend toward this and I completely blindly accepted it. Despite the fact that in my current workplace, I've got awesome workplace adjustments. I've got a really supportive and calm working environment, but I was always chasing the dopamine. I always wanted to do a bit, a bit more here, a bit more there, whatever made me feel helpful or whatever I felt was valuable.
00:48:04
Speaker
But if you combine that with all the external stuff that happens outside of work, recently for me, it's been pretty for long. The last year has been difficult. Yeah. Yeah. It's weird, isn't it? Like in the mornings when you're getting ready for like a work day, it's like for some reason, like you see perhaps your battery, I don't know, 90% because you had a bad night's sleep or something. And so you're like, oh, cool. I've got 90% of energy to use.
00:48:35
Speaker
you use that entire amount of energy for your working day. And you're like, oh, I'm on 5%, you know, I've got to get home. And then something happens. And then you forget that you've got a social event. And then it's like, you don't have the energy to do that kind of stuff. And you have to spend more energy for like reorganizing things. And so it's kind of like you just run your battery, battery through without giving you any like wiggle room.
00:49:03
Speaker
And that battery, if you've got that 5%, I was neglecting to realize that I still need some battery to recover. I still need battery to clean up my house. I need to make myself dinner. Even something like going for a walk is going to take some of that battery and I need that. And so I came to this, this breakthrough, which was very helpful in the
00:49:29
Speaker
words of Taylor Swift. Hi, it's me. I'm the problem. It's me because I recognize that I am making those choices of running my battery dry and struggling to recognize when I need to rest. I was overdoing activities like the rest. I go into the forest. I'd be there for half an hour and feel amazing.
00:49:50
Speaker
So I continued walking for another hour and a half until it was dark. And then I realized I'm in the middle of a forest with my dog. I don't have dinner waiting for me at home. And I also don't have any groceries. So obviously that's going to be a problem. And that's
Managing and Recovering from Burnout
00:50:10
Speaker
where I needed to genuinely reevaluate my relationship to my energy and my capability and capacity.
00:50:20
Speaker
A up, just popping on to say thank you for listening to this podcast thus far. If you could do me a real solid, please make sure to rate the podcast if you're in a podcasting streaming service and do all that like, subscribe, comment stuff on YouTube. Damn, even send a heart in the comments if you don't feel like typing.
00:50:40
Speaker
Make sure to check out my link tree, which is always down below in the description or head over to my Instagram page at Thomas Henley UK for daily blogs, podcast updates and weekly lives. This podcast is sponsored by my favorite noise canceling noise reducing earbuds that you can adjust the volume on. Really, really great thing. They're called D buds and you can find the affiliate link down in the description of this podcast for a 15 percent off discount.
00:51:09
Speaker
anyway i hope you enjoy the rest of the podcast that's all from me i think there was something that you were saying about um you know your school time sort of having three weeks of doing loads and then having two weeks where you're sick i think that's that's been
00:51:27
Speaker
It was really interesting because the previous podcast, it's not come out yet because I've been burnt out and so behind on things. Yeah, ironic for the topic of the podcast. I'm not totally on top of it yet, but I'm trying. But we were talking about how very much my experience of life is like a roller coaster.
00:51:53
Speaker
I have like peaks which are like really great and I'm doing so much and then I have absolute just tail off drops where I just, you know, I can't function and I need supports and things like that. And I think that's a really good analogy for like what happens when you just lean into that whole burnout thing. You just get so overexcited with the amount of energy that you've got.
00:52:21
Speaker
and just burn through it all and then not give yourself enough and things start to fall apart and then you have a burnout. I love the analogy of a roller coaster because that is so true to my own experience.
00:52:36
Speaker
And I'm, I'm just sick of it. I don't want to be going up and down anymore. I'm just tired. I'm so tired. And I know that I need to be here for a long time and a good time. And that's part of my recovery journey has been slowing down, even though I really don't want to, because I love, I love all the things that I do necessary. And my goal for 2023 has been to have a boring year.
00:53:06
Speaker
because I just need to slow down and figure things out. And I've been setting myself up for success and learning what all my different red flags are for approaching that burnout. And it's been incredibly invaluable. And what would those sort of red flags be for you?
00:53:24
Speaker
It's difficult because Alexithymia, I'm not sure how to pronounce it. My favourite topic. Everyone knows it. I mention it every episode that I can. You need to get yourself a bingo card for listeners. Yeah, yeah. I put like a little counter in there. How many times has Thomas mentioned Alexithymia?
00:53:45
Speaker
Alexithymia, there you go. So, Alexithymia, with my difficulty in identifying and describing my feelings, I've got a little emotions wheel on my phone. It's helpful, but it's not going to do the trick right. So I've had to adapt everything to fit that. And so I have
00:54:06
Speaker
red flags for burnout, which are my social behaviour, my energy. And those are much easier to recognise than feelings. You get feedback, don't you? Exactly. So the small behaviour changes include things like not singing, eating less,
00:54:30
Speaker
neglecting chores because they just don't seem worth it. Or a big one for me are ticks. They're very hard to ignore. My neck just goes back, you know? I get little ones. It's mostly from like the sides. Sometimes I get them with my arms, but I hardly have any when I'm not anxious, but
00:54:58
Speaker
If I start getting anxious, then I get little ones. Um, if I have like a meltdown or something, they get like really intense. Yes. Same for me. And I used to really struggle with ticks. I used to also have a speech impediment. I absolutely hated it, but I've grown to love them because they're there to help me. They're there to protect me. They're there. They're literally my body telling me babes, slow down foods. We're stimulated. So, you know, we, we work together. Yeah.
00:55:26
Speaker
Socially, I really become obsessed with any errors I might have made. I reread emails and messages a lot anyway. I've been trying to get a handle on them, but it can escalate to like rereading an email to a colleague 30 times. I withdraw and isolate myself. I lose my words.
00:55:50
Speaker
And interestingly, this is something that a friend of mine mentioned that she experiences. And I definitely do the same. I help people more when I'm going into that crisis mode of, okay, there's a lot of problems going on here. I start helping others rather than stopping and helping myself first, which is interesting. So you're like switching your focus onto someone else. Cause that's like,
00:56:18
Speaker
You know what, I relate to that. The worse that I'm doing, the more likely I am to offer up my energy and my time for people who are struggling too. I don't know if that's just, I think that might be just at the empathy aspect of it, because you feel it a lot more because it's something that you're
00:56:42
Speaker
you're experiencing not perhaps for the same reason or at the same level but you are experiencing something similar so you're like oh man I really feel this and you just want to take care of people make sure they're all right maybe I don't know why it is but it's definitely a thing and it's odd especially because I know that the general feelings that accompany my
00:57:07
Speaker
the road to burnout for me are forgetting what makes me happy and feeling meaningless, or just being overwhelmed more easily and getting more meltdowns. And I know that if I ignore all the behaviors that I mentioned earlier, and these general feelings, it can all escalate into physical illness, I will once again get that psychosomatic illness of the weird cough.
00:57:31
Speaker
that comes from nowhere that I mentioned that I had a lot as a child, but I get cold sores on my lips and on my fingers sometimes as well, which is generally just being more passive. Sounds of low immune system, because it does anxiety and cortisol and things like that, they do affect your body in a lot of different ways.
00:57:53
Speaker
Definitely. And so these are, those are my red flags. I have a list and I'm trying to keep it fairly updated. And then whenever a few of those flags are raised at the same time, that's when I know, okay, it's time to, to go and do something about this and have a little meeting with myself and figure out where do we go from here? It's really helpful because it's a good quantifier of, okay, don't worry about it. Don't worry.
00:58:16
Speaker
if you're going into burnout until you've reached this point. I'd like to mention a resource which is super helpful before you go out and make a list of burnout indicators. It's called Know Your Normal. It's a resource we made with ambitious about autism. You can find it on their website. And it's a great way for you to figure out what your baseline is of when do I usually go to bed? How many hours do I sleep? Who are the people I hang out with? What are my favorite interests?
00:58:46
Speaker
favorite foods. Everything that's your normal life, it's a very accessible resource and really fun to fill in because that way you've then got a resource that you can utilize your natural strength and pattern recognition and figure out when you've deviated from your normal and spot when things are going wrong so much easier.
00:59:09
Speaker
I think a good red flag for me in terms of burnout is a lot to do with transition times. For a lot of autistic people it can take us a bit longer to switch. It's been a bit...
00:59:25
Speaker
It's a bit funny, like, talking to some parents about it, because it's like they feel like it's something that would only be an issue when you're going in to do something that you don't want to do. Like these transition times, like it's, for example, it's not necessarily I need a long transition time to go from rest to work. It's the opposite way as well. It's like it takes me a while to get out of work mode and get into rest mode.
00:59:56
Speaker
but in terms of burnout, for me it's the case that i'll have periods of time where i just completely ignore all transition times throughout the day so i just won't give myself any rest or breathing time in between things, it could be like
01:00:15
Speaker
as little as going down and getting a glass of water. That tends to become a lot harder for me to do, to break things up in that way and not just jump from task to task. It happens when I'm approaching a burnout.
01:00:34
Speaker
And then I also have the opposite side where my transition times sometimes just take forever for ages. You know, I finish the day at work and I really want to go to the gym. But some reason I've been sat on my bed for two hours. Just, you know, I want to move. I just can't. I'm just kind of.
01:00:52
Speaker
locked into the environment that I'm in. I'm not able to transition both from rest to work, but also from work to rest to sleep. So all of those things, it kind of compiling over each other. And because I'm setting myself such a high workload,
01:01:17
Speaker
during that time, because I'm approaching a burnout, I get behind on stuff, and then it kind of builds up and the transition times get longer and longer. And then, you know, I just find myself unable to cope with things. And I also give myself more to do when I feel like I'm approaching that burnout. I don't think it's because I want to feel busy and distract myself. I genuinely just think it's because in that moment where you feel like you're drowning,
01:01:46
Speaker
all the small issues feel insurmountable. And so everything has this sense of urgency because everything is equally bad. Everything is equally hard. Everything is equally terrifying. And that's because it's all 100% awful. Yeah. Just reaching the top of your limits. Whereas usually you'd have not, when you're not drowning, you'd have much calmer
01:02:13
Speaker
processing, you'd have all the executive function skills that you need, and you'd be able to assess, okay, this task is low prioritization. This task has high priority, but I'm going to find it difficult. So I'm going to ask a friend for help. This task is important for my wellbeing. So I'm going to do it now. That sort of thing. But because we're drowning, you're just clutching at all the straws trying to do everything at once. And clearly that's going to
01:02:42
Speaker
make things worse, which is interesting. The same friend who mentioned the cupcake. I'm going to start that sentence again. A friend of mine pointed out that when she's going into burnout, she also feels the same way around everything being really urgent and trying to do all the things. And it's sort of because she finds it easier to just get into the burnout and recover from that rather than stop.
01:03:13
Speaker
And that surprised me because, well, we've not really talked about it before. I think this whole burnout, it's, it's a massive mental health topic, but still not really talked about. And so especially if we don't have those mechanisms for de-escalation that have, we don't have that empathy for ourselves and we don't stop and just reduce pressure on ourselves, then
01:03:41
Speaker
going to be really tempting to just push yourself into burnout because then you're physically incapable of doing more and so it feels like less effort to recover when actually what we need to do when we're feeling that we're drowning we just need to take a deep breath hold it and float up to the surface and pause but same like a drowning person they're going to be thrashing their arms around when actually what they need to do is just put their arms underwater and just
01:04:08
Speaker
breathe, but that takes practice and is terrifying because it doesn't feel like it's the right thing to do. I think that that's really important that you mentioned that because the mechanism behind cortisol and adrenaline is that it's used to give you energy and to drive you forward to problem solve and to get out of a stressful situation.
01:04:33
Speaker
And as I said, it might be good in a very simple situation where your life's in danger. Sounds a bit weird me saying that. But chronically, in such a complex world that we live in, it doesn't do us any favors because it does kind of feel like I really empathize with what you were saying about your friend because it's the same for me. It's like once that adrenaline course is all built up,
01:05:01
Speaker
around something like perhaps you're trying to edit something and you finished it and you've got a deadline in a bit but the program isn't working and so you start opening up loads of different other programs to try and figure out why the program's not working and you restart it and so you halt the program being able to to work and you just keep restarting it and you keep trying to do stuff but really what you need to do is probably just leave it for a bit and come back later
01:05:31
Speaker
even though you want to do it. But I think very much when you're in the midst of that, those cortisol and adrenaline spikes, everything in your mind and your body is telling you to work on it and to try and get it sorted so that you can relax when, as you said, sometimes it's a lot of the time when you're in those situations, it's good to step back because although it gives you more energy and it makes you more focused,
01:05:58
Speaker
It also impacts your cognitive function. Your ability to think clearly and think over stuff slowly and problem solve like is needed for those complex tasks. Yeah. Stepping back, taking a breath can feel really illogical. So there's no shame in it whatsoever that people continue doing it and there's no shame in burnout full stop really.
01:06:28
Speaker
It takes me about an hour, two hours, sometimes, like stepping back from something. That first hour is always the hardest because I feel like everything could be solved by me completing this task. Brute force. Brute forcing it. Yes, it feels great. Exhausting. Yeah. And not always the best option. No idea.
01:06:55
Speaker
So I guess we've talked about sort of your and mine personal experience with autistic burnout and some of like the red flags and what the difference is between like normal burnout and autistic burnout, normal burnout. So yeah, neurotypical burnout.
01:07:15
Speaker
So I guess, you know, a question on a lot of people's minds is, you know, how do you know if it is burnout or something else? Because a lot of the symptoms and feelings and level of functioning that you have during a burnout might be quite similar to things like depression. With all the things that we've talked about,
01:07:39
Speaker
and all the feelings, it's always going to vary for everyone, right? People are unique and every neurodivergent person is different. That means that we do have similar shared experience. And so if any of these symptoms sort of speak to you, and as autistic people, we do tend to research autism quite a lot. So I'm imagining this is one in many of the resources that people are visiting if they're interested in the topic.
01:08:08
Speaker
As to your question about the difference between depression and anxiety, it doesn't necessarily have to be one, just because they go hand in hand. Yes. What does make burnout different is looking at those causes of the energy, looking at the different parts of your life. And depression might be a part of that, unless it's long-term clinical depression. But they are very, very similar.
01:08:38
Speaker
And anxiety, at least for me, is just a normal part of everyday life. And it definitely contributes to those causes of burnout massively. It's such a drain on my energy every day. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's another thing that we perhaps miss down when we're talking about the contributors to burnout, because mental health is very, very common, isn't it, for autistic people, especially those anxiety-related things.
01:09:09
Speaker
I think for me, the important distinguishing factor is that it's situational when it's burnout. There's different causes of being depressed. As you were saying, there's the psychological angle of things. There's things to do with your neurochemicals. There's sometimes existential philosophical reasons for becoming depressed.
01:09:38
Speaker
And then there's also these situational aspects, which I think a lot of people who say that they've been depressed before have experienced some stuff related to work, stuff related to life, things breaking down, causing you to jump into a period of time where you're depressed. Now, for someone like me, perhaps,
01:09:59
Speaker
is a lot more psychological and neurochemical. I was diagnosed with clinical depression. It's something I've lived with for 13 years. It's not something that's brought on specifically by my circumstances, although
01:10:16
Speaker
It can contribute sometimes to burnout, sort of in the long run and might sort of tolerance for things. So I definitely say the situational aspect is important to know, like looking back on the time before you've gotten to depression or a burnout, has there actually been like a cascading building up effect of anxiety or poor mental health over a long period of time?
01:10:45
Speaker
Absolutely and because I didn't have a mechanism to release all of that energy or find ways to stop myself getting into the burnout then it was always getting worse.
01:10:59
Speaker
I suppose as well, you know, there's that whole thing about depression, you have that catastrophizing, learned, what's it called, learned helplessness with depression. You know, if you're feeling very much that you can't control this, and you just seem to be going down and down it, you know, obviously leads to a lot of feelings of learned helplessness, which kind of lends to that experience of depression. Either either way, with, with all of this,
01:11:29
Speaker
it's important not to make any assumptions about what it may or may not be and not to panic because either if it's through my own choices of I have chosen to overwork because I wanted to, I have chosen to not to overdo my rest or I have chosen whatever, if it's my choices or if it's external factors, there's so many things going on in our lives that we just can't control and a lot of them aren't really awful
01:11:58
Speaker
so if it's that or if it's genuinely genetic like it is in so many people with all three of those a portioning blame to it isn't going to help yeah and so much like we were talking about earlier about taking the time to step away and breathe for a second you've got to do that again you just take a minute to stop and think of all the things on your mind which are making you overwhelmed
01:12:27
Speaker
just looking at all the things that are going on, whether that's any task or responsibilities, but also your environment. Because if you're in an environment that is not conducive to you being autistic, where you're being shamed for any of your traits, you're being forced to mask a lot more, the sensory elements of it are difficult, then that is all going to make you feel awful. It's important just to stop and assess your situation.
01:12:57
Speaker
And it doesn't matter if it's because of autistic burnout, if it doesn't matter if it's because of depression, or it's still going to help. Stopping, you won't make a mistake by stopping. Yeah.
01:13:10
Speaker
I think that that's really important. And although it can be useful to kind of go through and look at some like resources and stuff, it could just be as simple as getting your notes page out and thinking about all the things that you're worried about and things that you have responsibilities for and just kind of seeing it like laid out. Just thinking, is this something that I would give to someone I love to do? Something that would be conducive to them having a good time? Absolutely.
01:13:38
Speaker
I make a list of stresses and everything, absolutely everything from the clothes that I'm wearing currently, one of my socks is a bit funky. Oh boy. Got the seams too. Yeah. Too much of an inseam. I took my, we had a break earlier so I took them off and everything's fine now.
01:14:00
Speaker
But but anything from socks to big picture, thinking about work, uncertainty can be a big deal for us. So writing all of that out. That's recommended in the how to calm your mind book. And then the author was saying that about two thirds of these are generally external. Yes. However, for me, I found that overwhelmingly, all of my stresses were internal. They were caused generally by
01:14:28
Speaker
me putting a lot of pressure on myself, me not scheduling in breaks, my own high values and the way that I expect myself to behave. I wouldn't expect other people to behave in the same way of not making mistakes. You literally can't not make mistakes. So all of that. It was a real eye opener, really, about the way how I treat myself. And like you said, I wouldn't really give that list to do to another person.
01:14:59
Speaker
Yeah. Even if you thought they were incredibly competent, it's, you know, there's a lot of stuff to deal with. Um, I guess one of, one of the good things to perhaps go into is like, what about that? Like the preventative strategies, whether you are.
01:15:16
Speaker
you know, why building up to a burnout sounds like it's an accomplishment. Whether you're building yourself up to a burnout, or you are actually within a burnout, what kind of sort of strategies or thinking or like lenses do or framing tools do you use to help yourself in those situations? Yeah.
01:15:44
Speaker
I look at that list of stresses that I've got and think about ways in which I can produce them. Every little helps. And the more you can reduce it now, the less severe the burnout is going to be. I found it really easy, especially at the start of my journey in terms of treating myself like I was physically ill. If I had the cold, I would not be forcing myself to sit at a computer for eight hours a day. Yeah.
01:16:11
Speaker
I might need to take some sick days. I know that being outside helps for me. Excusing myself from social occasions is a big one. Just because I think I should, doesn't matter at all. I need to recover. I wouldn't go there if I had a cold, would I? And declining unimportant meetings. These are all sort of small quick wins, which will all depend on your situation and what is on your stress list.
01:16:35
Speaker
But there's an analogy that I use that's really helpful in terms of thinking about the big picture and just taking a step back. It's the three legged stool. It's basically the way that you can imagine your life as a stool. So it's the little chair with three legs and everybody's going to have different legs and they might change throughout your life but they generally tend to stay quite stable. For me, one of mine is
01:17:05
Speaker
nature. Another one is art. That's where I do all my happy autistic lady illustrations. And then finally the last one is friends and family. If you've got a store with three legs and one of them breaks or is a bit wobbly, you can still continue sitting on the store, but it's going to be difficult. It's going to be a real workout for your abs.
01:17:34
Speaker
And you won't be able to stabilize yourself on a, exactly. You'll figure doing like wall sets and stuff like you had in PE. The burn, you'll feel the burn. Your body will start shaking. It's not going to be great. If your stool suddenly has two legs that are broken, you're going to fall off three. You're completely on the ground shattered. Thinking about what your legs are can be a little bit daunting.
01:18:02
Speaker
But it is imperative for me for understanding why I'm feeling wobbly. In the past, my legs were, one of them was education. So it was my school staff. One of them was sport. I did a lot of Frisbee and then one of them was sort of nature, all my advocacy work, all my nature work, all my autism, everything. And you'll notice part of those wasn't a friend and family's leg. They were integrated into all three of those legs.
01:18:29
Speaker
which meant that I was only ever spending time with my friends and family if we were working together on one of those things. That was made overworking so much easier. It also meant that when I had an injury in Frisbee, I suddenly lost almost all of my social life and made me feel really, really awful. Or if my
01:18:54
Speaker
Education wasn't going really well. We had some cell biology modules, which I absolutely hated. Oh, microbes. No, thank you. So that then made my entire... That's what I did my degree in. Oh, really? Yeah. How? My condolences and admiration at the same time? Immunology, parasitology. Wow. To be honest, it was very to do with human cells. So it's more about the interaction of the human cells with the microbes.
01:19:24
Speaker
Interesting. Well, I'm an ecology girl, and I like to think about the big things. But part of that is I did loads of climate change modules, and I was doing a lot of climate change advocacy. And so that's all a bit much. And I continued doing it because I was very passionate about it. And that's where all my friends are. So I didn't feel like I had a choice, even though I really did. So thinking about how I needed to rearrange my store really, really helps it. I've got friends and family separate. And we still do things separate to the other two lengths.
01:19:54
Speaker
So, there you go. Trying to think about what my legs would be. I think that there's always been through my life, kinda...
01:20:04
Speaker
I guess, yeah, probably about three different pillars of things that I do. I think, you know, one of them is definitely YouTube. Just watching YouTube videos or playing a mobile game or something. One of them tends to be work related, like, um,
01:20:26
Speaker
I don't know, my online stuff, my my part time job, things like that. They tend to be another pillar. And then the last pillar is like some kind of sport or exercise like yourself. I guess, you know, it I definitely I do need to figure out more ways of enjoying life. I think it's just. It's one of the things it's kind of
01:20:57
Speaker
You know, I was saying too earlier about like, you know, quite often, well, not quite often, but for myself, a big part of my depression diagnosis is that I'm very apathetic. I don't know if that's the right word for it, but I don't really experience emotions as easily. Like, anyways, just thinking about the Alexithymia, you know, obviously that's a big impact, but
01:21:23
Speaker
Also like SSRIs and medications I'm on, you know, the SSRIs, they don't just boost your mood all around, they just flatten you out. And so it's very hard for me to notice and value a lot of things that aren't related to productivity. Yes. It's definitely something that I need to work on a lot more, but I know the reason for why I'm doing that.
01:21:53
Speaker
That's the way we're raised to be, right? It's the system that makes us that way. And we'll get onto how I've changed my success evaluation in a little bit, I'm sure. But it's just easier. It's just easier to think about how much you've achieved rather than quality. So it's difficult. But from my own experience of what you were saying with the legs, it sounds like you've got quite a lot of different components within each of the legs.
01:22:23
Speaker
I did that as well for many, many years. And I just thought, oh, I can just grow more legs. I can do four or five different types of things. When in reality, I need to task which between each of those, right? If I want to do five things, it means I've got to divide my time up between five things, which means I need to switch between tasks multiple times. Get those transitions. And those transitions aren't easy for me. They take a lot of experience each of them. So just practically speaking,
01:22:52
Speaker
I'm a big fan of maths. You can't math out the fact that you're doing a lot more transitions. That's just not going to add up, isn't it? Um, and so yeah, having a think about where, where the community lies and where you're getting the most value from. And yeah, so if we've done stop, we thought about why the next bit really is accepting that I have, I struggle with transitions. I accept that I am neurologically sensitive.
01:23:22
Speaker
And I accept that I have a lot of differences to the way it should be. And I'm quite happy that way. I don't want to be neurotypical. I'm very happy the way I am. Obviously there's drawbacks, but it's
01:23:42
Speaker
Instead, I'd much rather go down the route of accepting where I'm at, working with myself, not exempt myself, and just taking a moment to say well done me for recognising that I'm struggling. Because even that recognition... I think that's a big thing for a lot of autistic people, those neurotypical expectations that we have about
01:24:05
Speaker
where you should be in a certain number of years and what age you're supposed to do what. And it could be as simple as something like having a car and using a car. That's such a big thing for a lot of people.
01:24:25
Speaker
you should be independent, you should be able to go places your own and stuff around food perhaps, instead of buying individual ingredients for food, sometimes you don't always have the energy to do that. Little things that make
01:24:44
Speaker
you individual and different and have different needs from other people but recognizing that stuff and also contrasting it with your skills and the positive things that come from you having a different brain. Yeah, addressing that internalised ableism is a lifelong journey and I accept that and where I'm at now is that I'm trying to take my own struggle seriously
01:25:11
Speaker
and accepting my needs and behaviors as an autistic person. It's been really validating to prepare for this podcast and talk to my friends about burnout because it's not something that's talked about very much. Turns out two of the five or six people that I talk to are currently in burnout. And we were just talking about all the different ways in which their experience is similar to mine. And it's been so validating to hear that I'm not alone.
01:25:38
Speaker
That's really what happy autistic lady is about and what I set out to do that you're not alone. There's a whole wide world of autistic people out there and we all can learn from each other and find out ways to recover from each other as well. It's been lovely to do that.
01:25:57
Speaker
I think, I suppose, just going off when we were talking about some of the differences between burnout and autistic burnout at the start of the podcast, we were talking about the sensory aspects in particular. I don't think a lot of people, especially if they've just recently been diagnosed,
01:26:19
Speaker
um or people who have their own sort of internalized ableism or or stigmas or stereotypes around um various things like there's this you can get so much relief and so much um you know it's not necessarily a real big thing it could be
01:26:38
Speaker
as simple as getting some earbuds or getting some noise cancelling or listening to more music or wearing shades, adjusting your environment so that you've got nice orange coloured lights instead of white lights.
01:26:56
Speaker
There's so many little things that you can kind of do, especially like within your own living space that really help. And also when you're out and about, like, do you really need to, if you find jeans extremely difficult to wear, do you really need to wear jeans a lot? No. Unless she going out on a night out and some clubs won't let you in because she don't have jeans on.
01:27:19
Speaker
I can't go to clubs. I've given up on them. I'm more of a crochet lady myself. Yeah, no, absolutely. Reducing sensory stimuli is a big part of my recovery plan. I just need to give myself the space to be without any of those sensory issues or masking. So all the things that you mentioned there, wearing the comfort clothes, but also things like eating safe foods. Hmm.
01:27:45
Speaker
I've got a list because during but now I will forget what food I've liked. I like is on the inside of my fridge because the outside has my illustration. So the inside, like it's frozen. You just, you just, every time I open the fridge, there's a list of the food that I can always eat. And it's always in my pantry because otherwise I will forget. Yeah. So that, that kind of consistency with,
01:28:12
Speaker
foods that aren't too overwhelming. I think that's important. Mine at the moment tend to be like these protein pudding yogurts and protein pancakes that are just store bought. You just microwave and very nice.
01:28:30
Speaker
little things like that you know because I think that I do have a tendency to gravitate towards the sugary things and sometimes if I'm not feeling able to prepare myself food um or I don't have anything to prepare sometimes just having a real big stock of these foods that I know that I can eat and they're not too bad for me. I have a big proponent of smash in said mashed potato
01:28:55
Speaker
Some people, it's a Marmite situation, some people hate it, some people love it, but it's always there for me, you know? So yeah, anything just to reduce the sensory stimuli, I know that I probably won't be able to deal with crunchiness, so smoosh it is. No, that's not the word. Mash, mash it is. Mash, yeah. Smoosh. I think that there's a lot of other things that you can think of that
01:29:22
Speaker
I think because it's a very individual thing, it can be hard for some people who are just getting into it. And it's really, you know, I have a podcast, which is a bit far back where I talked to, I want to tell you books, Natasha, about sort of sensory environments and sensory supports. And within that we were
01:29:45
Speaker
We give a lot of lists of different things that you can try. And there's also a part of that kind of sensory sphere, there is the stimming, you know, because for a lot of us, we get stimming kind of lent out of us, just free life and the experiences that we have, or perhaps from parenting or teachers. And so finding stims that are really good for you.
01:30:10
Speaker
that help you regulate a lot. It can be really good and it doesn't necessarily have to be those kind of stereotypical stims. For me, the biggest stim that I do is go to the gym because it's vestibular, it's proprioceptive. I get to listen to music, so it's auditory as well.
01:30:31
Speaker
And it's also part of my routine and it makes me feel good after and helps me sleep and stuff. So, you know, I would classify that as a stim. There can be lots of things like that. It's also something that brings you joy. And so as part of recovery, it's really important to think about what gives you joy and where are you getting relaxation? And is it really relaxation? Or is it just something that other people find relaxing?
01:30:59
Speaker
I'm taking a bath. It's weird. It's also sense like things like loads of people enjoy running. I can't get into it because for me, it's so overwhelming. I can run on in the gym on a treadmill, but if I'm running outside, even though I love being outside, I just get so much information. It really ties me up. Totally. So you have to really find time for that recharge.
01:31:28
Speaker
and find those days of making things easier and meaningful for you. I think that's definitely just going to be a lifelong journey, especially as my needs evolve, as I try new things, as my special interests change. It's a joy, a fleeting thing. A good way to think about the joy is making a happy list. Something that my sister taught me and I really recommend is making
01:31:58
Speaker
a page of all the recovery activities that you can do, all the happy things that you have in your life, divided up by energy. And I've got that right next to my bed so that if I'm in bed and I'm doing scrolling Instagram because that's the only thing that I've got energy for, and we all know how addictive Instagram reels are, then I can just look up and I can see the three categories of energy for happy times.
01:32:25
Speaker
That's a good idea. It's definitely something that I'm going to think about implementing.
Practical Tools for Burnout Management
01:32:31
Speaker
I think that's really interesting that you talked about sort of divvying up energy because there's quite a common analogy theory people have and stuff around like spoons. It's not something that I've really used a lot myself. I think it's more just that I kind of
01:32:55
Speaker
Over time I've kind of intuitively understood how much energy I have to spend in the day so I have a bit more awareness around it so I've never really used it myself but I know that it's helpful for some people.
01:33:09
Speaker
I use spoon theory a lot. I learned about it through its Wikipedia page, surprisingly. It's got a great Wikipedia page. Thank you to everyone. It's basically exactly like your battery, your percentages that we were talking about earlier. And it's just thinking about, oh, how much energy will it cost me to do a certain task? So you would think, oh, this is going to cost me 5% of my battery.
01:33:32
Speaker
is going to cost me two spoons. It's equivalent. Rather than just thinking about time and how much time you've got to fit things in. Yeah. And I feel like maybe your battery and energy works a bit better because you can understand that, oh, today my phone is draining very quickly. Yes. I think as well, I mean, I definitely
01:33:57
Speaker
I don't know. I think I implement a lot of things while I'm doing things that require energy that help me mitigate it. Like I'll have some sensory lights on my desks, and now and again, I'll just kind of play with them. And I've got music that I listen to that calms me down. I've got this really tough chewing gum that I can use if I need some oral motor stimulation.
01:34:27
Speaker
And if I'm a bit bored, I can kind of look out the window and just see what's happening outside. So I suppose at the same time as giving rest, which is something that I need to work on, I think you can also do a lot to reduce the impacts of things that don't need to be an issue.
01:34:49
Speaker
Like if you're in the workplace in an open plan office, you know, it's not just the fact that you've got to spend spoons on doing the piece of work, but it's also the sensory, the unpredictable social environment and meetings and, you know, things that are not necessarily part of the plan, but just are there. Yeah. So one bullet point.
01:35:14
Speaker
that definitely falls under the recovery is reducing commitments. And it can be at all for saying no to meetings if you've not ever put yourself first. Yeah. Believe me, I've been there. But reducing commitments is essential so that you can then avoid those spikes in energy use, especially if they're unexpected. I've sat down with quite a few of my friends over the years so that we can actually make a spreadsheet to decide how to reduce commitments.
01:35:43
Speaker
because we all love doing things, don't we? We're just very passionate about so many things and it's just amazing to do stuff. And it hurts to say no and step back. So we always just sat down and made a list of all the things that they do and then a column to rank them about how important they are to us.
01:36:09
Speaker
And they can be imported to different ways. They can be an important part of your social life. They can be financially important. For example, going to work is important financially for me, but it's also important socially for me. And I do feel like I'm contributing. So that's where I'm really, really privileged to be able to do that. So it would be very high up my keep list, obviously. Whereas other things like going to my neighborhood litter pick cleanup day.
01:36:39
Speaker
is going to be nice to see people but I don't know a lot of them, I don't know what the weather's going to be like, I don't know what the route is, there's a lot of uncertainty and so that would be very likely to be removed from my to-do list and just saying no. I found it really hard to learn to say no so I literally have a list of ways in which to say no.
01:37:05
Speaker
It's indirect message of indirect methods of saying no to things. I try and be, I try and be fairly clear just because I want other people to do the same to me because I don't pick up social cues at all. And so it's generally around the sort of format of thank you for thinking of me. I am currently unable to do this another day or generally, no, thank you. Not today.
01:37:35
Speaker
I like that. I'm definitely with you with the directness.
01:37:47
Speaker
I kind of, I stopped doing it because I got really obsessed with neurotypicals for a lot, but it's part of the reason why I started to learn more about autism because I was just so fascinated with people. And so I started to learn about it and then I was kind of like trying to be kind of
01:38:08
Speaker
like translating and trying to fit into other people's way of communicating and being. And I have done that in some cases with people. I think there's, you know, as I'm sort of getting older, I'm kind of trying as much as I can to shift the communication style towards something that I agree with more, which is that kind of directness and, you know,
01:38:38
Speaker
just highlighting to people that it doesn't mean that I'm, you know, I'm literally just saying the same thing just straight to the point rather than going about it all weird and fluffing it up. Yeah. And that's the same with a lot of other areas of my life. It's
01:38:56
Speaker
I feel more confident in advocating for how I like to have relationships and communicating things. There's some places where I compromise, but I think in general, it's sometimes good to stick to what feels good. Especially if you're burnt out, you don't really have a choice. You do have a choice to continue
01:39:21
Speaker
it, but it's much easier to be authentic to yourself and ask people to meet you there. Obviously it's difficult when it doesn't go the way you were expecting. So if you ask for help and then it doesn't, doesn't go the way you would have liked, but it's quite rare that that happened. And also we just have to learn to ask for help. It's something that I was focusing on for the last two or three years where
01:39:52
Speaker
A, I struggled to identify that I needed help, but then B, asking for help was really hard. And it's imperative to recovery because it's not my fault that I got into the situation that I'm in. Life was just too overwhelming. And it's not a, it's not a, nothing about me. It's just the way life is. I mean, in a rough time. It's not a personality trait. No. It's not that you just aren't capable of dealing with life. It's just, you need to shift it towards a way that's more
01:40:21
Speaker
conducive to you having a good life. And so being with people in that recovery phase can really help without masking in a non-transactional way with no expectations. That's all that's needed. And asking for help is important because that's what friends are for, right? I help so many people but really, really struggle to reach out. So I've got
01:40:43
Speaker
a few ways in which I have learned to do that. One of them is something that a study mentor at uni taught me, is do delegate dump or delay for every task. You can either do the task, but I'm burnt out, I can't do anything. You can delegate it, so you can ask somebody else to do it for you, or if it's something like cooking, you can delegate that to a professional. Or instead of chopping the onion, you can buy pre-chopped frozen onion.
01:41:14
Speaker
Don't do it. Or delay it until if it's actually important and doesn't need to be done, it can be delayed. So those four things were my initial step into asking for help, delegation, thinking about tasks that I can be happy with. Thinking less, it's less like internal, like emotionally internal. It's like, I need help. It's like, no, I'm just delegating a task.
01:41:35
Speaker
it's efficient, it's business life, I can do this. And that's a really important distinction between the types of help is emotional and practical. So asking for emotional help is really difficult and you should really only be doing it with people you genuinely trust, but the practical help can
01:41:56
Speaker
can be a massive burden off your shoulders as well. Things like if you're stressed about a presentation doing, practical responses will be things like making a script, rehearsing your slides, or somebody researching for you. That sort of thing. Yeah. Recently I had an experience where I asked a really good friend for emotional support because I'd been helping them with emotional support for a few months.
01:42:24
Speaker
and it went wrong and it ended up making me feel worse and it revealed to me how one-sided that relationship was which obviously hurt so badly but surprisingly this has persuaded me to reach out for help more often and earlier on in those friendships because so it sounds odd but it's a good way for me to determine how much I should trust others it's boundaries isn't it as well like
01:42:54
Speaker
you know, having boundaries about how much energy, emotional energy you spend on someone is equally important. And I think as well, I've been in situations like that as well. I think some people just kind of get used to you giving them everything and then when you stop doing that, like, oh, hey, what did I do? What was wrong with me? Like, why are you not helping me? Why are you asking me for help? Like, it doesn't make sense to them to kind of,
01:43:23
Speaker
forget that you're human sometimes and that you also have difficulties, especially if you're supporting them. That's why professional help is really helpful. But unfortunately, that's just not available to everybody. Although if you have any sort of opportunity to get regular interactions with a professional and it really helps understand yourself better
01:43:53
Speaker
and pick everything going on in your head. You can be a lot more selfish as well and feel okay about it. Yes. Like in terms of what you're talking, who you're talking about and you know, what's, what's bothering you is the topic of the conversation kind of thing.
01:44:10
Speaker
Because there's so much going on in our lives, right? And for me, it's all these small things in learning how to treat myself as an autistic person, learning how to work with myself rather than against myself in daily, everyday life, but then also dealing with big picture things. I've moved country in the last year, I've changed job, I entered into the workforce, and
01:44:37
Speaker
than dealing with saying no to all the other stuff I was doing previously. It's just a lot to process. Plus, you've got all the external factors that inevitably everybody is going to have to deal with in their life, either that's family or friends or something unexpected. Like a few years ago, there was a global pandemic, you know, that was quite a lot to handle. So there's
01:45:02
Speaker
It's good to get a professional's help to unpick with everything and learn those healthy coping mechanisms because you can't magic the map out of the air. And so it's an integral part of setting yourself up for success.
Redefining Success and Fulfillment
01:45:13
Speaker
So for success, for me, it's sustainability.
01:45:18
Speaker
I want to recognize who I am and what my needs are without any attitude towards that, with joy and kindness. And I want to accept who I am and I want to build a life for myself and be able to deal with all the crappy things that happen every day. So a big part of that was thinking about how I measure success. I used to do it quantitatively because that's easier, right? How many hours have I studied? How many lines of code did I write? How many books did I read?
01:45:47
Speaker
only website visits and social media followers. There's so many ways of measuring it quantitatively and it makes it really easy but more is not sustainable. It's also comparative as well as it's dependent on other people which we know as we were talking about expectations it's not doesn't work like that in reality.
01:46:10
Speaker
No. So the alternative to that is quality and thinking about the quality of things you're doing. Connection is a really big one for me. I think about enough and balance. So for my three-legged stool in my friends and family, I try and schedule in time to connect with people. Sure. With nature, I try and think about
01:46:38
Speaker
What's a small thing I can do that will immediately I will be able to see an effect of that on one other person that can mean going into the forest with someone just for a little bit coming back. It can mean just tidying up the art in the local park or whatever and in with my art.
01:46:56
Speaker
there's no such thing as enough or quality. It's just doing it, just being purely is enough. And so countering in time for all of these things and thinking about quality rather than quantity is such a big shift and I'm still in the middle of all that. So it's something that I'm learning to do and thinking about what I care about and just in a way being strict with myself. Refocusing. Yeah, being strict with myself and stopping when I feel like I need to.
01:47:28
Speaker
Brilliant. Awesome. Well, we've been talking for a while. I think it might be good to kind of wrap things up. It's been really lovely to talk to you, Vera. I'm just wondering, did I tell you about the song of the day aspect of things or something that I glossed song of the day? What's that?
01:47:49
Speaker
um usually i ask my guests which i haven't been doing i usually ask my guests to um think of a song which um means something to you or something related to the podcast or i've got one okay wait i need to find what it's called though okay it's called Vienna Vienna uh and it's it's literally about slow down you're doing fine
01:48:20
Speaker
Billy Joel yes cool nice awesome well that song Vienna from Billy Joel will be down in the playlist song of the day playlist that you can always find right at the bottom of the description
01:48:38
Speaker
I think what I want to do as well as that is, you know, I know that you do a lot of online related things.
Closing Remarks and Engagement
01:48:47
Speaker
So if my listeners can listen to this and they want to check out more of your stuff, where would be the best place to go to? We are on Instagram, Happy Autistic Lady. But we've also got a website where we've got a few free resources, including talking about burnout. And so please do follow us on Instagram. It's
01:49:09
Speaker
great to have people join the community. And it's just a nice way for documenting everything I've learned since starting Happy Autistic Lady and sharing ideas and ways of being. Awesome, brilliant. And if you have enjoyed this podcast thus far, please make sure to give it a rate if you are on any of the kind of podcast streaming services, Apple Podcasts, Google, Spotify, whatever.
01:49:37
Speaker
Really, it really does help. And also give it a like if you're ever on YouTube, consider subscribing for weekly podcast episodes all about autism and neurodiversity. And if you want to get in touch with me, you can always find my links down in the description. You can find my email on there. It's like a little icon at the top.
01:50:01
Speaker
Um, and if you want to check out my website, see all the stuff that I offer, check out the consultancy and coaching, that kind of thing. And that is also in the link tree down below under all my links. Um, and yeah, lastly, social media at Thomas and the UK. Come follow me on Instagram. See what I'm up to on the daily check out the daily blogs that I do over on Instagram. And, um, yeah.
01:50:27
Speaker
I guess one of the last things I want to ask is, have you enjoyed your 4T experience there? I really have. Thank you so much for inviting me. It's been a really good prompt for me to think about all of the work I've done on this topic in the last many, many years and how that's all developed and how much it developed with my understanding of the fact that I am autistic.
01:50:53
Speaker
It's also given me a great opportunity to reach out to friends and talk about it more. And if that's taught me anything, you're not alone. Brilliant. Well, I hope you have enjoyed this episode too. Thank you very much to Vera and hope you all have a good day. I'll see you in another episode next week on the 40 Auti podcast. See you later guys. Dance time.