This year things have happened at work which has led to the Ultimate Autistic burnout. An autistic Burnout like this takes months to recover from. But I will get there however, it is leading to us revaluating how best to get over it.
This week Duncan and I are both off. We were meant to be doing the West highland way, unfortunately, my health won’t allow it.
We have postponed that for another year hoping Emily will be up to doing it with us and that my health wont get worse and now I know why I have been getting more ill I stand a chance to heal.
What is an Autistic Burnout?
It is hard to explain but it has been for me this time a complete mental breakdown which has gone on to have physical complications.
- Increased Brain Fog
- Increase of Sensory Processing sensitivities
- Exhaustion/fatigue
- Increased Panic attacks
- Memory blocks
- increased Stimming
- Increased Tourette’s outbursts
- Executive Dysfunction
- Decreased Mental abilities (inability to think straight)
- Confusion/forgetfulness
- Increased OCD intrusive thoughts
- overthinking
- physical co ordination issues
- Concentration loss
- increased Impulsiveness
The list probably goes on the breakdown of my ASD breakdowns the way all my conditions interact. This left me once again with a head of 3 fighting conditions battling each other rather than working together as I have learned to work them.
The biggest long term issue was because all of this has hit, all energy I had in a week is going into my work days. These are becoming harder and my Physical pain is increasing. Somedays I couldn’t actually get out of the car unaided by the end of the day.
Added later: It is now November (7 months later) I had to give up work in August. The mental breakdown lead to some serious longer term complications. I became iron and Vitamin B12 deficient Anaemic, I also suffered a massive drop in Vitamin D which caused extreme problems with my joints causing pain and loss of movement. This in turn has lead to the need to rely on a stick outside the house.
I am hoping this will sort itself out again and I can at least learn to keep active but I am still under investigation. Therefore we don’t have any answers as to what is causing the pain and loss of strength even now months down the line. Shortly after this post was typed I came completely out of the Autistic Burnout side. While some symptoms remain I had by writing this post overcome the Executive Dysfunction enough to
Home ed life while fighting an Autistic Burnout?
This looked very different to our normal Home ed life but as a family we are working through it. The Girl’s English and Maths were completely handed over to their tutor. I would get so confused while trying to help them I wasn’t helping. Home work help was a family effort with help coming from their Dad, Sister Emilia, Grandad, Nanna or Granny instead of me.
I’m sticking with small projects based on what I know well, we looked into smaller projects some only lasting a day as the interest took her. I had Emily work with me on my Autistic regulation process. which actually worked out incredibly well for her as she had never learned how to self regulate in the first place. We worked through our mental health together.
We are working on the following to work towards a more active life in the outside world again:
- Social Energy Build up
- Social Energy regulation
- Making and Maintaining a routine again
- Learned about making and maintaining healthy boundaries
- Worked on Emily’s safety when out and about. (hide and come seek game)
Getting back to the Grindstone
This week we are working in the garden. We are finishing the back garden path and hopefully planning the front and digging out the grass from the new front borders we failed to complete last year.
Emily is helping and learning about Gardening and garden maintenance. she has enjoyed helping to lay the paving stones.
EWO Visit
We were delighted to see our EWO (educational Welfare officer) this week to for our review. Our EWO has been doing our reviews from the start and has watched all three grow up. It was the first review where we didn’t have loads of photos and outings to talk about which for us is really strange. So instead we talked about how I organise Emily’s education and what work she is up to.
To be honest, it was an eye-opener on how Emily’s Home ed journey differs from Thomas and Jessica’s. Their home ed was more interactive learning than Emily’s. They had structured mornings followed by afternoons of activities and adventures. Emily’s is more of a mixed bag of structured work at home, structured activities and projects.
Getting Back to normal
It may not be easy but we are getting there. It may take us a lot longer than we planned to complete our Garden work but ill health won’t stop it getting completed one way or other! You can follow our progress on the garden via our social media accounts Facebook and Instagram.
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