10 ms·

‘The Battery’s Dead’: Burnout Looks Different in Autistic Adults

73 points by eklitzke 4y ago

mmarq 4y ago
https://archive.ph/pEz2h https://archive.ph/pEz2h
- ogn3rd 4y ago
  thank you!
jzemeocala 4y ago
https://archive.ph/pEz2h https://archive.ph/pEz2h
itronitron 4y ago
I remember a time when autistic meant that a person was unable to interact with others outside of a tightly controlled and consistent environment. Now autistic is being used to label people that just need to 'veg out' at the end of the day.
- cultofmetatron 4y ago
  no kidding... I'm starting to wonder if I'm autistic after reading that
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- sublinear 4y ago
  > Burnout can erode independence. So can self diagnosis and over diagnosis.
  - silverwasthere 4y ago
    Healthy autistic coping strategies are not going to hurt anyone. Take what you can use and leave the rest.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- gizmo686 4y ago
  That time was pre-2013. In 2013, a new revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders l, DSM-5, was released. This revision greatly expanded the scope of the 'autism' diagnosis (and eliminated the aspergers one). The theory is that it is all the same underlying thing, just with different severity and presentation.
  - gowld 4y ago
    > The theory is that it is all the same underlying thing, No, there is no underlying thing in the DSM-classification. There are the "same" symptoms. The most obvious evidence for this is that "pervasive developmental disorder-not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS)" and "childhood disintegrative disorder" both merged into "autism". Autism now means "anything with this symptom basket that is not covered by s more specific diagnosis". > with different severity and presentation. This part is true.
    - fsociety 4y ago
      Yes, there are theories that these things are all fundamentally monotropism. Then the criticism of the DSM is that it takes monotropic minds in the worst (read negative) environments, and buckets those into disorders like autism and ADHD. DSM classification is not fact, it is a diagnostic tool to assist with treatment. The theory of monotropism is an interesting area of research which potentially explains the underlying mechanism.
- armchairhacker 4y ago
  Autism is an extremely broad classification: honestly, probably too broad. Two people can be diagnosed with "autism" from wildly different symptoms. There are autistic people who present completely normal and those that can't speak and have extreme obsessions or extreme reactions to stimuli others would consider mild. Although it is still real. The people who present completely normal are still autistic, because behind the scenes they have some unusual way of thinking or strong obsession or strong reaction to the mild stimuli, they just don't show it.
  - 0xffff2 4y ago
    >Autism is an extremely broad classification: honestly, probably too broad Hard agree with this. As someone who was diagnosed with Asperger's back when that was still a thing, it was a lot easier for me to say "I have mild Asperger's" on the rare occasion that I felt a need to explain than it is to quantify where I am on the huge swath of area now occupied by the term "autistic".
    - PuppyTailWags 4y ago
      Inquiry: why did autism broaden to include aspergers in the first place? Why did the field deliberately make the move to broaden as oppose to narrow a diagnostic criteria? Not asking just you but anyone fairly educated on the subject. [Caveat: I'm super uninterested in hearing about big pharma conspiracies or whatever, please don't send me this.]
      - mwigdahl 4y ago
        Because there were (and are) a lot of disability accommodations available for people diagnosed with autism. Expanding the definitions made those accommodations and resources available to more people, and fit easily into the trend of medicalizing life (in particular, school performance). Win-win! Well, except for the severely disabled who can't advocate for themselves because they can't speak or communicate online, and now find themselves crowded out for the very benefits that were created to support them in the first place. But they're not the ones that vote or sound off on social media, so they're easier to ignore.
- moffkalast 4y ago
  People these days are like "if you can't concentrate for 30 hours straight you totally have ADHD".
  - BizarreByte 4y ago
    Too bad the demand is that people do that very thing. It’s no surprise adderall is abused as work stress and requirements increase for many.
  - dekhn 4y ago
    why I don't get is that I can't concentrate on any one thing for more than about 30 seconds but I've been working towards long-game goals for decades.
- rocqua 4y ago
  The scope of the labelhas definitely expanded. But the article here isn't saying that 'people who need to veg out have autistic burnout'. Instead its saying 'people who were already labeled autistic seem to respond in this peculiar cluster of begaviors when stressed in burn-out like ways'. If the article is correct, and the behaviors are quite unique to people labeled autistic, it actually supports autism as a diagnosis rather than just a label. Labels with predictive power regarding psychological behavior have some semblance of a diagnosis.
- genderwhy 4y ago
  Science has improved, yes. We've discovered there are many people who are able to produce a set of coping strategies that effectively mask their autism. This is what science does -- we continuously challenge what we know and change our definitions when we learn. The people who are experiencing diagnosis with autism and ADHD today will seem totally different than the diagnoses 50 years from now. You cannot hold on to one, old definition for something like autism (or any other non-neurotypical behavior) and expect it to remain the definition, unchanging.
  - gowld 4y ago
    > You cannot hold on to one, old definition for something [...] and expect it to remain the definition, unchanging. If I'm autistic I absolutely will.
    - silverwasthere 4y ago
      Then you'll just have to include a date of diagnosis and we'll all be good. No worries. We still support you. (This is not meant with sarcasm, only a slight nod at programming language version numbers)
    - genderwhy 4y ago
      I assume this is a joke about autistic folks disliking change?
  - faeriechangling 4y ago
    If somebody has coping strategies that effectively mask their autism (in the early childhood/developmental stage specifically), they DO NOT HAVE autism, because autism is defined by others perceptions of you particularly as a child. You're going to have to change how autism is diagnosed if you don't want this to be true, which would be a great idea, the DSM approach to diagnosis is fundamentally flawed. How SPECIFICALLY are these additional people getting diagnosed? Is there special training diagnosticians get to unveil the secret masked signs of autism? What are these scientific advances I've heard vaguely cited for the rise in autism diagnosis over the years? Why is it even possible for a diagnostic criteria that hasn't changed to result in dramatically different diagnostic rates over time, doesn't that prove the diagnostic process is fundamentally unreliable and thus fundamentally scientifically invalid? The fundamental cause of the rise of Autism is that both schools and parents both financially benefit from a child being labelled as "Autistic" and because the diagnostic criteria is so vague to begin with you can interpret it as it suits you. The driver isn't "science", there aren't scientists and doctors marching into schools outraged at improper diagnostic practices and making changes happen. It's driven by parents and schools looking for money, money is the dynamo driving this, autistics are rainmakers. Then schools will often restrict some of their resources to those with special needs or whatever, which only drives up the need for other parents to play the same game. I've seen how the sausage is made too, with parents and teachers and doctors outright committing fraud to ensure a child looked appropriately disabled on paper, downplaying their ability as much as possible, which further jades me regarding how "scientific" this all is. I've also seen no analysis on if this practice actually helps kids, which you really think there should be because all these kids we labelled as disordered all reported being suicidal later in life.
- bitwize 4y ago
  That time was probably before Lorna Wing's groundbreaking research on Asperger's syndrome was widely known. Before then, yes, autism was only recognized when it was severe. Those who had better coping abilities just got wedgies and swirlies at school. It's kind of like infection with a coronavirus: could be a mild cold, could be long COVID, depending on the type of coronavirus and the susceptibility of the patient. The spectrum for autism is similarly wide.
  - faeriechangling 4y ago
    >Before then, yes, autism was only recognized when it was severe. Those who had better coping abilities just got wedgies and swirlies at school. It just resulted in the teachers calling them disordered and sending extra staff to smother and socially stunt the students they deemed to have Aspergers, and then stopping this before puberty occurred, resulting in even more wedgies and swirlies. However, we started calling these students disordered, and let everybody know certain students who got bullied weren't victims of school neglect or other students or cultural norms, but of their disordered brains. So woke! We live in such enlightened times.
- dekhn 4y ago
  I like to put it as: to my parents generation (baby boomers), the definition of autism is Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man and anybody who doesn't act exactly like that "doesn't have autism". I see many traits in me that are consistent with various forms of autism but I've always struggled to express them to others in a way that doesn't cause them to say "well can't you just not do that then?".
- 71a54xd 4y ago
  With age, I've figured out I'm just flat out bad at socializing. Unless I'm around people I know, I basically act weird and socializing only goes well with a very narrow group of people. While I was living in New York I just kind of had to accept this and eventually left because I started to hate socializing. I'm now realizing this could've been a mistake, but it also might just be a crisis of realizing autism has basically nixed my ability to live a life that I enjoy.
  - cwsx 4y ago
    Not sure if this relates to you, but I was recently diagnosed with ADHD (30~ y/o). My whole 20's I had trouble socialising outside of small groups of people I already knew, and wondered if it was autism related (my grandfather is undiagnosed but our family strongly suspects he's autistic). What changed everything for me, was finding the right stimulant medication. Turns out it wasn't the socialising, it was the big groups. I can't understand what people are saying, get distracted by background noises, lose my train of thought and then get anxious about how I'm acting (and how the person I'm talking to thinks of it). With medication it's just... normal. I still lose my train of thought or get distracted by background noises, but I'm able to return to the conversation much easier. More importantly, I'm not getting anxious in social environments anymore. Even the understanding that its ADHD related has helped my mental health a lot. I understand this doesn't quite relate to autism, but if you aren't diagnosed and only suspect it, I'd recommend investigating ADHD (as well as AUT+ADHD, which is its own thing entirely).
    - 71a54xd 4y ago
      Thanks, I also had a "late" diagnosis at 22. I've been on generic adderall for a while but I'm curious if you adjusted dosage or the kind of stimulant? I can assert as well that my social / auditory circuits work about 3x as well while I'm on stimulants (even a very small does of 5mg). Fortunately, I haven't had any dependency issues either. For me, my social problems are usually just not caring enough about being interesting to the other person or misreading facial expressions and thinking they're annoyed I'm talking to them.
anonreeeeplor 4y ago
I am pretty autistic in nature and I get super burned out. I have so many interests and I pursue them all simultaneously and I work seven days a week. My tendency is to push myself far beyond my limits. When I get exhausted I start blowing up and yelling at people.
- canthaveitall 4y ago
  [dead]
- pengaru 4y ago
  > When I get exhausted I start blowing up and yelling at people. Do you consume caffeine?
  - manimino 4y ago
    This is the right question to ask. Caffeine causes mood swings, anxiety, and poor sleep. After over a decade of regular caffeine use, I stopped it entirely last year. The benefits were tremendous. The "decaf" subreddit is full of people with similar experiences.
- rocqua 4y ago
  How come you push beyond your limits? Do you notice and do it anyway, or does it go unnoticed? Would you like to stop going past your limits?
silverwasthere 4y ago
Stuff like this makes me feel less guilty about the work all week sleep all weekend cycle I've been on all winter.
richardjam73 4y ago
I now wonder if I have had this but never knew because I didn't know I was Autistic. I had a job and was given a different position but I just stopped working after a while and was fired. Everything I tried to do afterwards just felt like a struggle. I had assumed it was all just anxiety and depression but no treatment seemed to work. Ten years later I get prescribed Ketamine for depression and things start to change. After reading some articles that talked about myths around autism I realised that I had been dismissing it as a possibility. Now that I have started talking about it with family, psychologist and psychiatrist it all starts to make sense.
- _k7dr 4y ago
  Describes me too, I am a diagnosed Autistic. It was a reasonable amount of corporate work combined with way too many intense interests. I wanted to pursue them all alone despite having the work shared by community members being typical (OSS) Its like the feeling of wanting to embrace burnout just because the things you pursue are that fulfilling and make you that much happier, and that was despite me knowing I would not find happiness as a corpo and deliberately working less hours whenever I could. Now there is a constant film of tiredness, I sleep 10 hours a day and wake up exhausted, for a while I was worried I was doing permanent damage to my brain with how terrible my short-term memory was. At least its reassuring the condition has a name, I always assumed autistic burnout was just the same as regular burnout, well I stand corrected. I also tried ketamine but didn't react well to it so the doc didn't let me sign up for more sessions.
  - Felger 4y ago
    Can relate to that, I wondered a sec if I didn't write that comment myself. Didn't go the medication route, however. I slept for 8h30/9h per night. A better routine (earlier wake up time, 8 hours of sleep max, some intense physical exercice - weight lifting in my case) put me back on track after about 7/8 months. But I tend to go back to my bad habits by taking too much workload on my sole shoulders...
  - paulmd 4y ago
    consider getting tested for sleep apnea too. If you already are, make sure your masks are sealing properly etc. I had huge problems with chronic fatigue before I got treated and it helped for a bit and then I realized I didn't have the mask tight enough (trying not to damage the seals) and tightening them down helped again. I used to be in that "I need 10-12 hours a night" camp and now I am pretty OK on 8-9. I dream every night now, I obviously wasn't hitting REM sleep before. The other thing is exercise does help regulate it as well. Even if I am otherwise active, I need to do some cardio at least a couple times a week, just cleaning the house or working outside doesn't do it. Again perhaps something related to heavy breathing and lung capacity. When I am not doing as well I find myself having to take a nap in the afternoon etc and while I don't mind that as a thing, it is a sign or even a contributing factor to an overall pattern of fatigue.
silveroriole 4y ago
She’s working essentially three jobs and is extremely tired - is that really autistic burnout, or just regular exhaustion? I saw someone on TikTok who got diagnosed with ADHD because they felt unable to go to school, work a job, go to the gym, see friends, and still do necessary life stuff like cooking etc without running out of energy. At what point are we going to say that expecting people to do so much is not realistic and that it’s unethical to diagnose people with disorders just because they can’t keep up with the work of three people?
- westmeal 4y ago
  Probably as soon as diagnoses aren't used as an excuse to plop patients on the pharmaceutical pill parade.
- awesomeMilou 4y ago
  It's going to only get worse. There is no indication that employers or states are ready to deal with the boomer retirement wave that is about to begin. In my home country Germany, this development has been forecast since the early 2000's [0]. And the reaction of previous governments has so far been similar to how climate change is dealt with. In Germany, leading politicians are currently debating on forcing young adults to work in elderly healthcare after finishing school, to at least deal with the most obvious signs of a declining workforce in the healthcare sector. [1] Employers are trying to turn towards cheap migrant labor due to shrinking applicant pools from inside the country. We too have the infamous "Fachkräftemangel" (skilled labor shortage) which is just a hoax - obviously employers are looking for skilled labor, that is also cheap. Eventually, you get anxiety and burnout, because there is this sense of ever lasting competition. When in reality, there will be less and less, because boomers will eventually die. [0] https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/anfang-vom-ende-der-unvermeidbare-kollaps-des-rentensystems-a-221456.html https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/anfang-vom-ende-d... [1] https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/olaf-scholz-aeussert-sich-skeptisch-zu-sozialem-pflichtjahr-a-65b8f99e-1e4c-42ef-86cc-bba70a228ef5 https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/olaf-scholz-aeuss...
  - telotortium 4y ago
giantg2 4y ago
"found that 72 percent of autistic adults scored highly for suicide risk, compared to 33 percent of the general population." Wow these seem like high numbers for both groups.
- faeriechangling 4y ago
  If 33% of the general population scores highly for suicide risk, there is a curious lack of suicide. I'm pretty sure whoever evaluated that risk was simply incompetent.
  - eurasiantiger 4y ago
    Is there though? I was under the impression many suicides look like car accidents or overdoses.
faeriechangling 4y ago
I've been hearing about "Autistic burnout" for years and I still have yet to see a single reason how it doesn't have 100% overlap with the concept of "burnout". In fact NYT gets all their recommendations from a book on burnout, which just goes to show you how autistic burnout and burnout are the same thing, they have 100% overlap, there isn't a difference, I have never heard a person talk about "autistic burnout" and didn't suggest we react to it in a way that was in any way different from regular burnout. I also have a huge caution of making autism look like it has a lot of unique and special mental phenomena going on, literally anything that can cause autistic like symptoms can result in an autism diagnosis because it's a heterogenous diagnosis defined by others perception of you. There is if anything an especially diverse amount of reasons why autistic people would feel "burnt out" relative to most people. The person in the article is working multiple jobs and when she breaks down her conclusion is she's a victim of her mental disorder. No that's stupid. What she experienced is simply what happens when you work multiple jobs, your body tries to protect itself from the damage by making you stop. There is nothing wrong or aberrant going on, what's wrong is peoples desire to live lifestyles that only hurt them and their self-perception that they're mentally disordered if they can't force themselves to do them.
- Doxin 4y ago
  One of the main symptoms of autism is not being in tune with your own body. In most cases this expresses as it being hard to intuit your own emotions, but it's also definitely experienced in things such as not knowing when you're tired, or too hot, or too cold. Yes working three jobs leads to being overworked. It only turns into burnout if you keep going regardless. Autism can definitely be a cause here.
AussieWog93 4y ago
Dead set, to any other Spergs out there struggling with sleep, get yourself some sublingual melatonin. Absolutely life changing stuff, and a month's supply is under $20. Just keep in mind it's a circadian rhythm stabiliser, and not a sedative. Take it at the same time every day, even if you're not going to bed (but are around home; never take it while out of home), and keep the dosage lower than you'd think.
71a54xd 4y ago
I'm somewhere on the autism scale, I've had multiple vague diagnoses but only one in particular from a neuropsych who attributed my specific form of ADHD (auditory) as likely caused by autism. For me, rounding out the end of my 20's it feels like my energy / motivation is reaching an era of "wondering if I should press the gas as I'm careening towards a yellow light on the highway going about 78mph in a 60mph zone". In the past, I've had trouble really laying out complex tasks in a way I can get them done, and encountered crippling procrastination and blocks to just starting things. Stimulants have helped but only marginally, it's quickly becoming kind of a existential crisis as friends have accomplished more than me and I largely attribute my lack of success to a lack of focus and well... just being unable to get that much done in any given day. Comparing to friends in my group who think I'm smart is the most painful. I definitely make below average as a dev in the US, and for two years of a roaring economy I did okay but feel like I've largely been passed by my friends / colleagues who can actually force themselves to try. I'm starting to worry that as time goes on, I'm actually moving down the class ladder and it's starting to really scare me. Curious if anyone else has dealt with this? Preferably in a way that isn't just "accepting you don't know how to improve"?
__derek__ 4y ago
Leaving aside the impossibility of comparing one person's burnout to another's ("autistic people [...] experience it on a whole different level"), the second paragraph also works for depression: > While most people undergo periods of burnout — physical, cognitive and emotional depletion caused by intense, prolonged stress — [depressed] people, at some point in their lives, experience it on a whole different level. [Depressive] traits can amplify the conditions that lead to burnout, and burnout can cause these traits to worsen. They may become unable to speak or care for themselves, and struggle with short-term memory. This harms their ability to perform well at jobs, in school or at home.
- puffoflogic 4y ago
  > Leaving aside the impossibility of comparing one person's burnout to another's Imagine using this to dismiss the lived experience of, say, a PoC, and not getting instantly banned. But say it about autistic people and you will be lauded. This is the world we live in.
  - __derek__ 4y ago
    I don't see what's objectionable about that aside. The article's premise implies that "neurotypicals" cannot understand "autistic burnout" but the reverse is also necessarily true. This makes it impossible to compare the severity of each. I believe that the same is true for those with depression and those without, hence the meat of my comment.
moremetadata 4y ago
Is this title by the NYTimes a stealth dig at autistic people with their use of the wording The Battery's Dead, implying that autistic people are robots or machines of sort? In other respects, this title is the result of liars and cheats who following the doctrine "bullshit baffles brains". A perfectly legal way to abuse people which happens to make money.
- h0p3 4y ago
  Are you an autistic person?
TheDesolate0 4y ago
[dead]
octoluke 4y ago
33% of normal adults score highly for suicide risk?
rolenthedeep 4y ago
I'm autistic, and I recently had a bout with burnout, really the first since I realized that I am autistic. This time, it was three weeks of struggling before I realized I was burnt out, and after some minor adjustment I got through it just fine. The trick is knowing that you're burnt out. One of the big features of autism is being unaware of or unable to interpret your own internal state. That makes it way, way too easy to slide all the way down the slippery slope of burnout until you're in such a bad place mentally and physically that there's no longer a way out. In previous jobs, this turned into a deep seething resentment for my workplace and either quitting or getting fired spectacularly. Last time it happened to me I ended up lashing out at everyone and everything around me. I lost my job, my friends, my boyfriend, and my house. I had to start a new life in a different city. Being autistic and being unaware that you're autistic is actual hell. You know you're different, but you don't know why or how. You don't know that you have different needs from your peers, so you try to get by with what everyone else is doing, and it usually doesn't work. Endless frustration and self-doubt. You just can't do what everyone else seems to be able to do easily, it's like taking a test on a subject you've never heard of and everyone but you is given a textbook to work from. One of the hardest and most important things is to be aware of yourself and your mind. It does things on its own and you're along for the ride most of the time, but you can steer it if you know how. Problem is you don't know how, and you don't know that you even can.

73 points by eklitzke 4y ago

mmarq 4y ago

https://archive.ph/pEz2h https://archive.ph/pEz2h

ogn3rd 4y ago
thank you!

jzemeocala 4y ago

https://archive.ph/pEz2h https://archive.ph/pEz2h

itronitron 4y ago

I remember a time when autistic meant that a person was unable to interact with others outside of a tightly controlled and consistent environment. Now autistic is being used to label people that just need to 'veg out' at the end of the day.

cultofmetatron 4y ago
no kidding... I'm starting to wonder if I'm autistic after reading that
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
sublinear 4y ago
> Burnout can erode independence. So can self diagnosis and over diagnosis.
- silverwasthere 4y ago
  Healthy autistic coping strategies are not going to hurt anyone. Take what you can use and leave the rest.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
gizmo686 4y ago
That time was pre-2013. In 2013, a new revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders l, DSM-5, was released. This revision greatly expanded the scope of the 'autism' diagnosis (and eliminated the aspergers one). The theory is that it is all the same underlying thing, just with different severity and presentation.
- gowld 4y ago
  > The theory is that it is all the same underlying thing, No, there is no underlying thing in the DSM-classification. There are the "same" symptoms. The most obvious evidence for this is that "pervasive developmental disorder-not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS)" and "childhood disintegrative disorder" both merged into "autism". Autism now means "anything with this symptom basket that is not covered by s more specific diagnosis". > with different severity and presentation. This part is true.
  - fsociety 4y ago
    Yes, there are theories that these things are all fundamentally monotropism. Then the criticism of the DSM is that it takes monotropic minds in the worst (read negative) environments, and buckets those into disorders like autism and ADHD. DSM classification is not fact, it is a diagnostic tool to assist with treatment. The theory of monotropism is an interesting area of research which potentially explains the underlying mechanism.
armchairhacker 4y ago
Autism is an extremely broad classification: honestly, probably too broad. Two people can be diagnosed with "autism" from wildly different symptoms. There are autistic people who present completely normal and those that can't speak and have extreme obsessions or extreme reactions to stimuli others would consider mild. Although it is still real. The people who present completely normal are still autistic, because behind the scenes they have some unusual way of thinking or strong obsession or strong reaction to the mild stimuli, they just don't show it.
- 0xffff2 4y ago
  >Autism is an extremely broad classification: honestly, probably too broad Hard agree with this. As someone who was diagnosed with Asperger's back when that was still a thing, it was a lot easier for me to say "I have mild Asperger's" on the rare occasion that I felt a need to explain than it is to quantify where I am on the huge swath of area now occupied by the term "autistic".
  - PuppyTailWags 4y ago
    Inquiry: why did autism broaden to include aspergers in the first place? Why did the field deliberately make the move to broaden as oppose to narrow a diagnostic criteria? Not asking just you but anyone fairly educated on the subject. [Caveat: I'm super uninterested in hearing about big pharma conspiracies or whatever, please don't send me this.]
    - mwigdahl 4y ago
      Because there were (and are) a lot of disability accommodations available for people diagnosed with autism. Expanding the definitions made those accommodations and resources available to more people, and fit easily into the trend of medicalizing life (in particular, school performance). Win-win! Well, except for the severely disabled who can't advocate for themselves because they can't speak or communicate online, and now find themselves crowded out for the very benefits that were created to support them in the first place. But they're not the ones that vote or sound off on social media, so they're easier to ignore.
moffkalast 4y ago
People these days are like "if you can't concentrate for 30 hours straight you totally have ADHD".
- BizarreByte 4y ago
  Too bad the demand is that people do that very thing. It’s no surprise adderall is abused as work stress and requirements increase for many.
- dekhn 4y ago
  why I don't get is that I can't concentrate on any one thing for more than about 30 seconds but I've been working towards long-game goals for decades.
rocqua 4y ago
The scope of the labelhas definitely expanded. But the article here isn't saying that 'people who need to veg out have autistic burnout'. Instead its saying 'people who were already labeled autistic seem to respond in this peculiar cluster of begaviors when stressed in burn-out like ways'. If the article is correct, and the behaviors are quite unique to people labeled autistic, it actually supports autism as a diagnosis rather than just a label. Labels with predictive power regarding psychological behavior have some semblance of a diagnosis.
genderwhy 4y ago
Science has improved, yes. We've discovered there are many people who are able to produce a set of coping strategies that effectively mask their autism. This is what science does -- we continuously challenge what we know and change our definitions when we learn. The people who are experiencing diagnosis with autism and ADHD today will seem totally different than the diagnoses 50 years from now. You cannot hold on to one, old definition for something like autism (or any other non-neurotypical behavior) and expect it to remain the definition, unchanging.
- gowld 4y ago
  > You cannot hold on to one, old definition for something [...] and expect it to remain the definition, unchanging. If I'm autistic I absolutely will.
  - silverwasthere 4y ago
    Then you'll just have to include a date of diagnosis and we'll all be good. No worries. We still support you. (This is not meant with sarcasm, only a slight nod at programming language version numbers)
  - genderwhy 4y ago
    I assume this is a joke about autistic folks disliking change?
- faeriechangling 4y ago
  If somebody has coping strategies that effectively mask their autism (in the early childhood/developmental stage specifically), they DO NOT HAVE autism, because autism is defined by others perceptions of you particularly as a child. You're going to have to change how autism is diagnosed if you don't want this to be true, which would be a great idea, the DSM approach to diagnosis is fundamentally flawed. How SPECIFICALLY are these additional people getting diagnosed? Is there special training diagnosticians get to unveil the secret masked signs of autism? What are these scientific advances I've heard vaguely cited for the rise in autism diagnosis over the years? Why is it even possible for a diagnostic criteria that hasn't changed to result in dramatically different diagnostic rates over time, doesn't that prove the diagnostic process is fundamentally unreliable and thus fundamentally scientifically invalid? The fundamental cause of the rise of Autism is that both schools and parents both financially benefit from a child being labelled as "Autistic" and because the diagnostic criteria is so vague to begin with you can interpret it as it suits you. The driver isn't "science", there aren't scientists and doctors marching into schools outraged at improper diagnostic practices and making changes happen. It's driven by parents and schools looking for money, money is the dynamo driving this, autistics are rainmakers. Then schools will often restrict some of their resources to those with special needs or whatever, which only drives up the need for other parents to play the same game. I've seen how the sausage is made too, with parents and teachers and doctors outright committing fraud to ensure a child looked appropriately disabled on paper, downplaying their ability as much as possible, which further jades me regarding how "scientific" this all is. I've also seen no analysis on if this practice actually helps kids, which you really think there should be because all these kids we labelled as disordered all reported being suicidal later in life.
bitwize 4y ago
That time was probably before Lorna Wing's groundbreaking research on Asperger's syndrome was widely known. Before then, yes, autism was only recognized when it was severe. Those who had better coping abilities just got wedgies and swirlies at school. It's kind of like infection with a coronavirus: could be a mild cold, could be long COVID, depending on the type of coronavirus and the susceptibility of the patient. The spectrum for autism is similarly wide.
- faeriechangling 4y ago
  >Before then, yes, autism was only recognized when it was severe. Those who had better coping abilities just got wedgies and swirlies at school. It just resulted in the teachers calling them disordered and sending extra staff to smother and socially stunt the students they deemed to have Aspergers, and then stopping this before puberty occurred, resulting in even more wedgies and swirlies. However, we started calling these students disordered, and let everybody know certain students who got bullied weren't victims of school neglect or other students or cultural norms, but of their disordered brains. So woke! We live in such enlightened times.
dekhn 4y ago
I like to put it as: to my parents generation (baby boomers), the definition of autism is Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man and anybody who doesn't act exactly like that "doesn't have autism". I see many traits in me that are consistent with various forms of autism but I've always struggled to express them to others in a way that doesn't cause them to say "well can't you just not do that then?".
71a54xd 4y ago
With age, I've figured out I'm just flat out bad at socializing. Unless I'm around people I know, I basically act weird and socializing only goes well with a very narrow group of people. While I was living in New York I just kind of had to accept this and eventually left because I started to hate socializing. I'm now realizing this could've been a mistake, but it also might just be a crisis of realizing autism has basically nixed my ability to live a life that I enjoy.
- cwsx 4y ago
  Not sure if this relates to you, but I was recently diagnosed with ADHD (30~ y/o). My whole 20's I had trouble socialising outside of small groups of people I already knew, and wondered if it was autism related (my grandfather is undiagnosed but our family strongly suspects he's autistic). What changed everything for me, was finding the right stimulant medication. Turns out it wasn't the socialising, it was the big groups. I can't understand what people are saying, get distracted by background noises, lose my train of thought and then get anxious about how I'm acting (and how the person I'm talking to thinks of it). With medication it's just... normal. I still lose my train of thought or get distracted by background noises, but I'm able to return to the conversation much easier. More importantly, I'm not getting anxious in social environments anymore. Even the understanding that its ADHD related has helped my mental health a lot. I understand this doesn't quite relate to autism, but if you aren't diagnosed and only suspect it, I'd recommend investigating ADHD (as well as AUT+ADHD, which is its own thing entirely).
  - 71a54xd 4y ago
    Thanks, I also had a "late" diagnosis at 22. I've been on generic adderall for a while but I'm curious if you adjusted dosage or the kind of stimulant? I can assert as well that my social / auditory circuits work about 3x as well while I'm on stimulants (even a very small does of 5mg). Fortunately, I haven't had any dependency issues either. For me, my social problems are usually just not caring enough about being interesting to the other person or misreading facial expressions and thinking they're annoyed I'm talking to them.

anonreeeeplor 4y ago

I am pretty autistic in nature and I get super burned out. I have so many interests and I pursue them all simultaneously and I work seven days a week. My tendency is to push myself far beyond my limits. When I get exhausted I start blowing up and yelling at people.

canthaveitall 4y ago
[dead]
pengaru 4y ago
> When I get exhausted I start blowing up and yelling at people. Do you consume caffeine?
- manimino 4y ago
  This is the right question to ask. Caffeine causes mood swings, anxiety, and poor sleep. After over a decade of regular caffeine use, I stopped it entirely last year. The benefits were tremendous. The "decaf" subreddit is full of people with similar experiences.
rocqua 4y ago
How come you push beyond your limits? Do you notice and do it anyway, or does it go unnoticed? Would you like to stop going past your limits?

silverwasthere 4y ago

Stuff like this makes me feel less guilty about the work all week sleep all weekend cycle I've been on all winter.

richardjam73 4y ago

I now wonder if I have had this but never knew because I didn't know I was Autistic. I had a job and was given a different position but I just stopped working after a while and was fired. Everything I tried to do afterwards just felt like a struggle. I had assumed it was all just anxiety and depression but no treatment seemed to work. Ten years later I get prescribed Ketamine for depression and things start to change. After reading some articles that talked about myths around autism I realised that I had been dismissing it as a possibility. Now that I have started talking about it with family, psychologist and psychiatrist it all starts to make sense.

_k7dr 4y ago
Describes me too, I am a diagnosed Autistic. It was a reasonable amount of corporate work combined with way too many intense interests. I wanted to pursue them all alone despite having the work shared by community members being typical (OSS) Its like the feeling of wanting to embrace burnout just because the things you pursue are that fulfilling and make you that much happier, and that was despite me knowing I would not find happiness as a corpo and deliberately working less hours whenever I could. Now there is a constant film of tiredness, I sleep 10 hours a day and wake up exhausted, for a while I was worried I was doing permanent damage to my brain with how terrible my short-term memory was. At least its reassuring the condition has a name, I always assumed autistic burnout was just the same as regular burnout, well I stand corrected. I also tried ketamine but didn't react well to it so the doc didn't let me sign up for more sessions.
- Felger 4y ago
  Can relate to that, I wondered a sec if I didn't write that comment myself. Didn't go the medication route, however. I slept for 8h30/9h per night. A better routine (earlier wake up time, 8 hours of sleep max, some intense physical exercice - weight lifting in my case) put me back on track after about 7/8 months. But I tend to go back to my bad habits by taking too much workload on my sole shoulders...
- paulmd 4y ago
  consider getting tested for sleep apnea too. If you already are, make sure your masks are sealing properly etc. I had huge problems with chronic fatigue before I got treated and it helped for a bit and then I realized I didn't have the mask tight enough (trying not to damage the seals) and tightening them down helped again. I used to be in that "I need 10-12 hours a night" camp and now I am pretty OK on 8-9. I dream every night now, I obviously wasn't hitting REM sleep before. The other thing is exercise does help regulate it as well. Even if I am otherwise active, I need to do some cardio at least a couple times a week, just cleaning the house or working outside doesn't do it. Again perhaps something related to heavy breathing and lung capacity. When I am not doing as well I find myself having to take a nap in the afternoon etc and while I don't mind that as a thing, it is a sign or even a contributing factor to an overall pattern of fatigue.

silveroriole 4y ago

She’s working essentially three jobs and is extremely tired - is that really autistic burnout, or just regular exhaustion? I saw someone on TikTok who got diagnosed with ADHD because they felt unable to go to school, work a job, go to the gym, see friends, and still do necessary life stuff like cooking etc without running out of energy. At what point are we going to say that expecting people to do so much is not realistic and that it’s unethical to diagnose people with disorders just because they can’t keep up with the work of three people?

westmeal 4y ago
Probably as soon as diagnoses aren't used as an excuse to plop patients on the pharmaceutical pill parade.
awesomeMilou 4y ago
It's going to only get worse. There is no indication that employers or states are ready to deal with the boomer retirement wave that is about to begin. In my home country Germany, this development has been forecast since the early 2000's [0]. And the reaction of previous governments has so far been similar to how climate change is dealt with. In Germany, leading politicians are currently debating on forcing young adults to work in elderly healthcare after finishing school, to at least deal with the most obvious signs of a declining workforce in the healthcare sector. [1] Employers are trying to turn towards cheap migrant labor due to shrinking applicant pools from inside the country. We too have the infamous "Fachkräftemangel" (skilled labor shortage) which is just a hoax - obviously employers are looking for skilled labor, that is also cheap. Eventually, you get anxiety and burnout, because there is this sense of ever lasting competition. When in reality, there will be less and less, because boomers will eventually die. [0] https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/anfang-vom-ende-der-unvermeidbare-kollaps-des-rentensystems-a-221456.html https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/anfang-vom-ende-d... [1] https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/olaf-scholz-aeussert-sich-skeptisch-zu-sozialem-pflichtjahr-a-65b8f99e-1e4c-42ef-86cc-bba70a228ef5 https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/olaf-scholz-aeuss...
- telotortium 4y ago

giantg2 4y ago

"found that 72 percent of autistic adults scored highly for suicide risk, compared to 33 percent of the general population." Wow these seem like high numbers for both groups.

faeriechangling 4y ago
If 33% of the general population scores highly for suicide risk, there is a curious lack of suicide. I'm pretty sure whoever evaluated that risk was simply incompetent.
- eurasiantiger 4y ago
  Is there though? I was under the impression many suicides look like car accidents or overdoses.

faeriechangling 4y ago

I've been hearing about "Autistic burnout" for years and I still have yet to see a single reason how it doesn't have 100% overlap with the concept of "burnout". In fact NYT gets all their recommendations from a book on burnout, which just goes to show you how autistic burnout and burnout are the same thing, they have 100% overlap, there isn't a difference, I have never heard a person talk about "autistic burnout" and didn't suggest we react to it in a way that was in any way different from regular burnout. I also have a huge caution of making autism look like it has a lot of unique and special mental phenomena going on, literally anything that can cause autistic like symptoms can result in an autism diagnosis because it's a heterogenous diagnosis defined by others perception of you. There is if anything an especially diverse amount of reasons why autistic people would feel "burnt out" relative to most people. The person in the article is working multiple jobs and when she breaks down her conclusion is she's a victim of her mental disorder. No that's stupid. What she experienced is simply what happens when you work multiple jobs, your body tries to protect itself from the damage by making you stop. There is nothing wrong or aberrant going on, what's wrong is peoples desire to live lifestyles that only hurt them and their self-perception that they're mentally disordered if they can't force themselves to do them.

Doxin 4y ago
One of the main symptoms of autism is not being in tune with your own body. In most cases this expresses as it being hard to intuit your own emotions, but it's also definitely experienced in things such as not knowing when you're tired, or too hot, or too cold. Yes working three jobs leads to being overworked. It only turns into burnout if you keep going regardless. Autism can definitely be a cause here.

AussieWog93 4y ago

Dead set, to any other Spergs out there struggling with sleep, get yourself some sublingual melatonin. Absolutely life changing stuff, and a month's supply is under $20. Just keep in mind it's a circadian rhythm stabiliser, and not a sedative. Take it at the same time every day, even if you're not going to bed (but are around home; never take it while out of home), and keep the dosage lower than you'd think.

71a54xd 4y ago

I'm somewhere on the autism scale, I've had multiple vague diagnoses but only one in particular from a neuropsych who attributed my specific form of ADHD (auditory) as likely caused by autism. For me, rounding out the end of my 20's it feels like my energy / motivation is reaching an era of "wondering if I should press the gas as I'm careening towards a yellow light on the highway going about 78mph in a 60mph zone". In the past, I've had trouble really laying out complex tasks in a way I can get them done, and encountered crippling procrastination and blocks to just starting things. Stimulants have helped but only marginally, it's quickly becoming kind of a existential crisis as friends have accomplished more than me and I largely attribute my lack of success to a lack of focus and well... just being unable to get that much done in any given day. Comparing to friends in my group who think I'm smart is the most painful. I definitely make below average as a dev in the US, and for two years of a roaring economy I did okay but feel like I've largely been passed by my friends / colleagues who can actually force themselves to try. I'm starting to worry that as time goes on, I'm actually moving down the class ladder and it's starting to really scare me. Curious if anyone else has dealt with this? Preferably in a way that isn't just "accepting you don't know how to improve"?

__derek__ 4y ago

Leaving aside the impossibility of comparing one person's burnout to another's ("autistic people [...] experience it on a whole different level"), the second paragraph also works for depression: > While most people undergo periods of burnout — physical, cognitive and emotional depletion caused by intense, prolonged stress — [depressed] people, at some point in their lives, experience it on a whole different level. [Depressive] traits can amplify the conditions that lead to burnout, and burnout can cause these traits to worsen. They may become unable to speak or care for themselves, and struggle with short-term memory. This harms their ability to perform well at jobs, in school or at home.

puffoflogic 4y ago
> Leaving aside the impossibility of comparing one person's burnout to another's Imagine using this to dismiss the lived experience of, say, a PoC, and not getting instantly banned. But say it about autistic people and you will be lauded. This is the world we live in.
- __derek__ 4y ago
  I don't see what's objectionable about that aside. The article's premise implies that "neurotypicals" cannot understand "autistic burnout" but the reverse is also necessarily true. This makes it impossible to compare the severity of each. I believe that the same is true for those with depression and those without, hence the meat of my comment.

moremetadata 4y ago

Is this title by the NYTimes a stealth dig at autistic people with their use of the wording The Battery's Dead, implying that autistic people are robots or machines of sort? In other respects, this title is the result of liars and cheats who following the doctrine "bullshit baffles brains". A perfectly legal way to abuse people which happens to make money.

h0p3 4y ago
Are you an autistic person?

TheDesolate0 4y ago

[dead]

octoluke 4y ago

33% of normal adults score highly for suicide risk?

rolenthedeep 4y ago

I'm autistic, and I recently had a bout with burnout, really the first since I realized that I am autistic. This time, it was three weeks of struggling before I realized I was burnt out, and after some minor adjustment I got through it just fine. The trick is knowing that you're burnt out. One of the big features of autism is being unaware of or unable to interpret your own internal state. That makes it way, way too easy to slide all the way down the slippery slope of burnout until you're in such a bad place mentally and physically that there's no longer a way out. In previous jobs, this turned into a deep seething resentment for my workplace and either quitting or getting fired spectacularly. Last time it happened to me I ended up lashing out at everyone and everything around me. I lost my job, my friends, my boyfriend, and my house. I had to start a new life in a different city. Being autistic and being unaware that you're autistic is actual hell. You know you're different, but you don't know why or how. You don't know that you have different needs from your peers, so you try to get by with what everyone else is doing, and it usually doesn't work. Endless frustration and self-doubt. You just can't do what everyone else seems to be able to do easily, it's like taking a test on a subject you've never heard of and everyone but you is given a textbook to work from. One of the hardest and most important things is to be aware of yourself and your mind. It does things on its own and you're along for the ride most of the time, but you can steer it if you know how. Problem is you don't know how, and you don't know that you even can.