my expirience with: Autistic Burnout

no intro im just gonna get into it!!

originally i was going to try to create an intro, but i sort of just want to get into this head on lol. im currently whatching video called "struggling with autistic burnout" by 'Im Autistic, Now What?' on YT, which gave me the idea to talk about my own expiriences with burn out. maybe someone will see this and feel some validation, and maybe i can give some advice on how treverse somthing like this :33

so, for a lot of my life ive had pressures in certin areas. i was diognosed with ADHD at about 6 or 7, so the pressure of school was there automatically for me. it felt like my prents were very scared the id fall through the cracks. i was origionally put into a school for 6 months to be "treated" i guess, because meds werent working for me, and my momther said that when i did take them i was having heart problems. anyway i guess the school worked because i started going to "regular" school again and everything was...fine :,>> obviously not but whatever. point is, school pressures have always been there. i was almost held back in the 4th grade actually, because we had moved and i was falling behind :PP later in my elementary school years (for the most part) was when i had picked up a few masking traits. during those times id start to be called weird for alot of different things like my interests, how i walked, some of my manurisms etc. so, ive been masking and have had pressures like these for a long time now

middle school came and the pressure doubled really. now i had to worry about things like making friends, so i picked up more masking traits and had made up these social rules for myself that i followed to a T. school was also becoming a bit harder and things like grades were becoming a bigger worry for me, but i was somehow able to "handle it" (i wasnt, there just wasnt much i could do with the environment i was in). then high school came and punched the shit out of me. i transitioned into highschool during 2020, so my first semester was all remote. of course, i was home all day so i did a lot of lounging around. even though this year was dfficult for me achademically, in terms of everything else it was pretty nice. i obviously didnt have to mask as much (even though i definantly msked around my mom as well, it wasnt as difficult as it was around others). 

freshmen year was fine, it was the end of my sophomore where i think my burnout really started. that second semester was horrible really. i had just come back to in-person learning the year before, and i thought id do better in school, but i was doing much worse. my parents werent really helping me either. i alredy had a difficult time asking for help in school, so when my mom would do somthing like look at a B i had in a difficult class and tell me "youre gonna get that up, right?" it really made me feel like i had absolutely no one to rely on for these things and just increased that stress and pressure for me. not only that, but my masking had almost "reverted" somehow, and was increasingly harder for me to do. things sensorywise were also getting bad. things were getting to me so much eaier that they were able to before. 

que the seccond semester of my 10th grade year and all of this was happening x10. i felt like a shell of myself, espesially as summer break was getting closer. i would have shutdowns in class, to the point where i wouldnt listen to the techer whenever she said i had to pick up my head because the lights were so unbelivably bright that i couldnt even pretend to handle them. during this time i was also reciving major hostility from my mom for the way i dressed. the way she treted me was rediculous but thats for a later blog i suppose!! i was masking all. the. time. around my mom, at school, around friends. and summer wasnt any better at all.

i thought that because it was summer, and school was totally the only draining thing in my life that it would get better, but it got absolutely worse. i believe at this time fashion became a special interest for me, so the way my mom really tried to push it away from me and treat me as "other" was terribly draining. i wont get into too much of it here but i had pretty much expressed how i was feeling to my mom about our relatioship at that time. so, she got worse, i was msking more than ever which was becoming increasingly harder. i was so drained at the time. i didnt find my interests fun anymore and wanted to talk to someone about it without teling my mom somehow. i told my mom i thought i might be depressed and autistic which just turned into an hour long gaslighting session. it was bad. i just want to clarify by the way, at this point i was in burnt out for about a year. 

it continued into my junior year, and even though i was able to accomidate for myself more and prevent things like shutdowns or meltdowns in that aspect, i was still around my mom, and i never actually got any motivtion for school back. it was the first time ever that id had such low F's. and my mom found out and moved me to live with my dad. it was alot, that week was alot, and it didnt help. obviously. that year was pretty hard as well. i felt like i was just constantly scraping to get to the top, and i ended up failing a class. i think somehow though, i was also able to recover. i wasnt around my mom, i was with my dad (who may or may not also be autistic but hey what do i know). generally the environment was alot better for me. i could dress how i wanted, and i didnt have to mask around my dad as much because alot of the time he was the same as me in those aspects. 

im in my senior year now and ive finally been able to bounce back a little bit. i can do work relatively on time, and my passion for art has been reignited. the biggest stresser in my life is overseas, so things are much better. im mostly just focusing on graduating and getting out of this state :333 i know this post was all over the place, it was written over about 3 days (and i probably wont keep it up but i dont think anyones even going to see it so its doesnt matter). i dont hve too many tips for how to get through this, but i will say that if you are going through burnout, its ok. obviously its not "ok"ok, but i men that its ok to get tired nd burnt out to want to take the steps you need to in order to recover. weather that be by trying to mask less or just talking about your expirience, its ok and healthy. 

ok im done now. ill probably redo this in the future this was such a last minute idea for me. i want to talk about more things relting to autism and gender and my expirienes and all that jazz but i need some time to actually get my words together lolz :333