Recovering from autistic burn out
The 4 of swords medicine in part 3 of my series on autistic burn out:: ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON AUGUST 25th 2024
Dear soft heart,
In the last installment of my series on autistic burn out, I started to explore the supportive elements that help us either stay out, or get out of autistic burn out inspired by the work of Dr. Dora Raymaker who teaches us what causes autistic burn out. You can get all of that here if you haven’t yet read it.
As a reminder, the supportive elements are as follows:
· Sensory friendly living
· Stability and consistency
· Low stress
· Support
· Unmasking
· Compatible environments
· Demands matching the capacity available
· Stimming without punishment or shame
I mentioned I would be going over what helped me get out of the previous two autistic burn outs I lived in my life so far. The first one being the longest - from 2007 to 2013 - and my second one that lasted around a year, in 2017. I am sharing this information and this education in this series to create a resource for us if ever we are ever in the situation I have been in, either now or in the future.
It’s super helpful to orient to the fact that our brains, nervous systems and bodies in general are not random, that this is happening because of multiple factors, and there are also ways out of autistic burn out if we are patient with ourselves and can slowly add supportive elements into our world.
Let’s get into it… Thanks for being here.
Burn out 1
My first burn out that lasted 7 years was during my parent’s divorce which was filled with intense stress, often traumatic for me, and lots of changes for many years in an ongoing way. During this time I was attending schooling systems which had too many demands and incompatible environments for my autistic nervous system without any proper support. It was arguably the most socially stressful times in one’s life (teenage hood and young adulthood), I was also very sick during this time which contributed to intense stress and prolonged sensory overload, etc. I masked and repressed my stims every single day, and took a lot of Ativan in order to help me do so.
I got out of this burn out largely by…
Introducing compatible environments and therefore reducing stress: Working from home and setting my own schedule. I started my consulting services with intuitive work and life coaching in 2014. Tarot and oracle were some of my first special interest and continue to be one throughout my life, so to work in my special interest field and be recognized and valued for my talent was a dream.
Unmasking and letting go of peer pressures and designing a life that worked for me instead. I didn’t know about the name for what I was doing yet in terms of career and work and education – I now know of course that it’s called unmasking – and at the beginning for me, it was all an intuitive process. It worked.
Practicing sensory friendly living: I eliminated a lot of sensory overload by designing home spaces that work for me, and because I could be financially independent then due to being successfully self-employed, I could have boundaries on my body, my space, etc. I was able to live more so in line with my needs and preferences for my neurotype. This helped me.
I stayed out of acute burn out for approx. 3 years after that. Not without challenges related to autism, but out of acute burn out for sure, which was very welcomed. I had just spent 7 whole years in it. I felt so… healed. It was night and day. I wanted to help others do this too, and I was inspired to tell everyone about designing a life that works for you and the benefits of this, instead of trying to fit into something you can’t fit into. A lot of my early work is heavily influenced by my experience of healing from this burn out.
Burn out 2
My second burn out happened ironically because of trying to reduce stigma about mental health issues and recovery in my community. When I ran the movement that was Anxiety Free Community, the demands were intense – they were for a neurotypical and I was not able to keep up, which was unfortunate and it broke my heart that it seemed to change the systems you must first be able to keep up with them to be heard, which I was not able to. At least not sustainably or without autistic accommodations. Due to me not being able to keep up and due to lack of funding, AFC ended by the end of 2016. Then my burn out really solidified not long after throughout 2017 when I went through Ativan withdrawal. At the same time, there were huge changes and griefs like the loss of my dog, and during this time I was the breadwinner in our family (mine and my ex’s), so overall I found myself with a systemic lack of support, and lots of demands on me to have to keep performing which meant masking, even though I didn’t feel well at all.
I got out of burn out this time around by:
Receiving professional support. This was the time in my life where I stopped trying to do it all myself. Getting a very vigorous team of professional support was my first priority. I got myself a robust team of helpers - a therapist, a coach, some body work practitioners and healers - this is when I started acupuncture for example. It was a game changer for this burn out and I think what helped me leave it fairly quickly was to keep being supported on every level through processing life as an autistic person with a heavy trauma history. And I started having household help too, like a cleaning service, and as I got out of burn out, I got a lot of my food catered on the days I worked until I had the energy to cook for myself again. Of course to receive this support, I also had to work quite a bit, but for a long time, like many years, this worked out for me. I could give well without burning out because I had been supported enough.
Receiving personal support. To get out of this burn out, I was equally lucky to have a lot of friend support. Friendships felt abundant and also I lived in the same places as my friends did, so no one was trying to manage long-distance friendships yet or pandemic induced separation, etc. I had friends who helped me, cooked with me, cooked for me, who exercised with me by walking at the lake or going to stretch at yoga, who looked out for me emotionally and we had a lot of quality time back then. We played games, watched movies, grocery shopped together, got together for special occasions in candlelight, and there were so many hugs. It was wonderful.
Relieving some demands and removing stress therefore not having to mask as much anymore. My partner at the time and I made different choices to relieve me from being the breadwinner, and I didn’t have the schedule of running AFC anymore. And so I fined tuned my remaining work schedule to make sure I had a lot of down time for nature and special interests by myself between commitments and demands. Ample time alone in meditation or study was good for me to replenish.
It was the healing of this burn out that inspired me in the years that followed to seriously address my workaholism which I was doing in order to keep myself safe sure, but also, it was wearing on my autistic brain and body to follow a neurotypical business pace like I was in the first several years of my business. I eventually learnt to be able to leave the office behind, trusting it would be there when I came back, and this led to wonderful things like better executive function (I actually cleaned my kitchen without it being very hard) I went swimming often, and I started my own gardens for the first time since I was a kid (I’m a huge garden girl).
After this relatively short burn out in 2017 that I was able to remedy quite fast, I was entirely burn out free for 4 years from 2018 to 2021. I had some really good years during this time. I travelled lots. I slept better overall. I did all sorts of amazing and fun things – like writing my memoir, creating and running group coaching programs, being involved in entrepreneurship circles, going to retreats, hosting retreats for my 1:1 clients, having amazing day long adventures with friends, pursuing my talents or interests outside of work like cooking, doing exercise freely without any fatigue and not repressing stims, coming out as queer.
Between my second burn and my third burn out, I cooked every single day these wonderful elaborate food things. This is homemade mango salsa, that I would currently give anything to dip a nacho chip into. The salad beside it I grew myself. I also grew tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, so many herbs, flowers, potatoes, etc.
On a hike near the Pacific Ocean
Of course life still happened, and this time wasn’t entirely stressor or change free (I mean of course, there was literally the beginning of a pandemic during this time), but I successfully stayed out of autistic burn out throughout it. I’ve noted in this series that this is because the overall load of contributing factors that cause autistic burn out matter in terms of the likelihood of falling into burn out, as do current resources to combat the potential burn out. I had a lot of resources that continued to help me during these 4 years of time and I had less contributing factors. The stability of that kept me afloat. Also, when the contributing factors were present, their duration was not super significant because I could pivot, or I was able to break between them in a way that worked for me and my particular sensory profile.
So when I started feeling significantly off in 2022 once again, and some really big contributing factors were introduced, some I could control, others I could not, it felt like a really big fall from a high place as I began to be affected and did not have enough resource to meet the stress. Which leads us to…
Burn out 3
I haven’t completely left my 3rd and most brutal burn out yet and it’s been almost a year of pretty significant symptoms that forced me to stop life as I knew it previously last fall (in 2023). Rather inconveniently, this burn out itself created more burn out because it led to several sudden and stressful changes in daily life. It also created major sensory overload with chronic illnesses flaring out of control due to not living in window of tolerance much. And additionally a very severe injury caused by proprioception issues originally from burn out that has been very demanding to heal. So all contributing factors of autistic burn out within their own right, caused initially by autistic burn out. What a nightmare.
I have been in what I call the 4 of swords medicine.
The 4 of swords from the traditional rider waite tarot deck
The 4 of swords talks to us about retreat. It is a card that says we must recover from something and take the time in order to do it. The character in the image is laying down on a sort of bed and there are 3 swords hovering above him, but they are not piercing him - to me, this always indicates that the pain has already occurred, and is not happening right now, but that the pain is still influencing us and has taken a toll on us. Like in the 8 of swords, where the swords aren’t piercing, but they have enclosed the character, meaning a trauma of some sort happened. And although it’s over now, it is still influencing thoughts, emotions, coping mechanisms, and even behaviours.
It’s this hovering, lingering, and haunting pain that we see is affecting the person in the 4 of swords. Pain from the past that hasn’t been easy, pain so bad actually, that it has led to a need for deep rest to restore oneself. This isn’t pain we can just quickly let go of because it has affected us so deeply. It requires… a recovery.
There is also an additional sword, the 4th sword, underneath the bed the character lays on. I see this as the person’s sword, that they have laid to rest as well. They currently cannot be involved in their own fighting, or even in their own engagements. They are too tired. This is exactly what autistic burn out feels like and translates to.
They rest with their hands together upright, one could interpret this as a meditation. Notice that in a meditation, there is no outward goal, only an internal one; the goal perhaps being to restore peace and balance within oneself.
I love the 4 of swords for this. There is something spiritual about this lack of movement forward outward when the inner world is getting a huge makeover. That is symbolized by the fact that the character in the card seems to rest in a church like building - we notice the stained glass window. As if signalling a safe haven that says this recovery isn’t pointless, it will be fruitful and it is protected.
The need for recovery allows a realignment. And this is what I feel autistic burn out is creating in my life. First it initiated a fall (physically, emotionally, cognitively, socially, and quite literally down the stairs) from a pace that was not my own, an impossibility to move forward as things once were and then an opportunity for readjustment, for greater alignment.
Please note I am not suggesting I haven’t fought this, and gone through many ego deaths in this process. Giving up the neurotypical pace everywhere in my life for me was something I did not want to do, but it was also the thing I craved the most. I didn’t want to do it because it felt like utter failure to not be able to keep up as though I am not disabled and of course, because I wanted to belong and be safe in both very practical and also emotional ways in this scary capitalistic individualistic world. But I also craved it so deeply because the only way to truly belong is to be yourself.
Unmasking to the degree my health in this burn out has begged me to continues to be uncomfortable and I haven’t been able to do it all once - only in chunks when I gathered a bit more energy.
Yet, it’s saving my life. It’s giving me parts of myself back that I haven’t had since childhood. While I first saw it as the thing that stole my entire life away from me (skill regression will make you feel that way - understandably so), there are glimmers now that show me that actually, this autistic burn out is giving me back myself.
What I need to do is simple and equally infuriating and can go against my conditioning which can make it feel so terrifying. And it’s this: I need to follow its medicine and see what it needs next. It being the autistic burn out. For the 4 of swords reminds of this, the burn out is not my enemy, it is actually the answer.
This week, in my last essay in this series on autistic burn out, part 4, I’ll write to you about what I am focusing on to heal this autistic burn out that has included a lot of skill regression. Until then,
Emily Beatrix