- Hi, everyone, welcome back to Aspergers From The Inside,
you're here with Paul.
Today's topic is, is it even possible
to avoid autistic burnout?
Or is it just an inevitable part of our lives
that we just have to learn to deal with
and to plan to be burnt out every once in a while?
So I guess, firstly, have a think about
what do you think of when you think of the term burnout?
What does it actually mean for you?
Because in getting a practical answer to this question,
it helps to know what we're actually talking about.
What does burnout actually mean, actually look like for you?
So for me, for example,
there's a couple of different types,
there's kind of the the smaller type
where I just get exhausted really quickly
and it feels like I get to the end of my energy
and my executive function falls off the cliff
and that's the end of that,
no more doing anything for the day.
So that's like a mini-burnout
where I've burnt out for a short period
but with a little bit of rest,
maybe a day, maybe a weekend or something,
I'd be back on track.
Another type of burnout is a little bit more long-term,
it's the type of burnout
where you've been working really hard for a long time.
At the moment, for example,
Melbourne has been in level four lockdown for a long time,
it feels like forever, all right?
So that's really tough.
I've been working really hard
to put this autism summit together,
that starts this Monday, right?
Autism Explained Online Summit.
That's been a huge amount of work
and it's been something that's been constant
for weeks and weeks, building up, building up to right now.
So, I can feel that coming on
so that when I take a break, I'm tired when I take a break
and I feel like I'm at the end of my energy
and then I take a break for a day,
a night, an hour, a weekend,
and then when I go back to work, I'm already tired,
first thing, Monday morning,
already feeling like it's Friday afternoon.
So that is a pretty clear sign
that my body needs a significantly longer break
to adequately recharge
and just taking a day or an afternoon or a weekend
is not gonna cut it.
So, last weekend I attempted to avoid burning out, right?
I can't afford to burn out,
the summit, I've been working so hard on this
for such a long time,
the summit is coming up, I need to be there,
need to be on the ball while it's actually going on.
So how do I avoid getting burnt out?
Something that I tried
was I tried taking four days in a row completely off,
no work, no phone, no internet, no screen time,
absolutely none of any of those distracting tiring things,
from Wednesday afternoon to Monday morning.
So, that was a huge thing to do,
at least it felt like at the time
and then when I got to Monday morning,
I thought this actually is only just,
it helped significantly but it's not quite enough,
I'm gonna need at some point,
to take a significantly longer period of time off
to allow my brain to recharge.
What I find is that part of the intense focus
and the mono-tasking and the lacking
to focus and do one thing at a time,
it means that my brain takes a while
to shift from one gear to the next gear,
which means that taking two days off over the weekend
is not enough, because it probably takes two days
to get into a relaxing mode
and then it's Monday morning again.
So that's why I personally need
a significantly longer period of time
so that I can work really hard,
stop, spend a day or two changing gears,
'cause it takes that long,
and then spend a couple of days at least, if not more,
if not more like a week or more than a week,
to try to recharge properly
and give my body the rest that it needs
that it's been asking for,
that it's been threatening to burnout over,
because it's been building up
and building up over such a long time.
So, I believe that it's possible to avoid major burnout
if we listen to our bodies
and if we take that rest in advance
before it gets to that critical, critical stage.
There's a saying that I like
that, "If you don't put a rest day in your diary in advance,
"then your body is gonna choose one anyway."
So either you choose one voluntarily
or your body's just gonna choose one
when it decides that enough is enough
and I'm not gonna endure this punishment anymore,
I'm going to shut down and force you to rest.
I did a video on this a little while back,
sometimes for me getting sick
is a way of my body forcing myself to rest.
So, that's talking about this big burnout
which can look like needing to take weeks, months off
because we've just shut down.
It can almost, in extreme cases,
it can look almost like a complete mental breakdown
kind of situation where suddenly
just things aren't working anymore
and we just don't have the capacity
and it's not getting better in a short period of time.
It takes a long time to recover,
as I said, potentially weeks or months or more.
So that said, is it possible to avoid
the kind of shorter burnout
that I was talking about earlier,
where at the end of the day
or at the end of the week or at the end of the month even,
I feel like I've hit the end
of my executive functioning abilities,
used up all the energy and that's it, candle exhausted.
In that sense, I'm not sure the answer is yes.
I actually think that for myself at least
and again, tell me if this is relevant for you,
if it makes sense for you as well,
I work in intense bursts of energy and productivity
and like I said with the with the gear switching,
I'm on, I'm burning a huge amount of energy
for a relatively short time, getting a huge amount done
and then at the end of that,
I'm essentially burnt out by any definition,
no energy left, no mental resources left,
no choice but to stop and do almost nothing
and recharge for a significant period of time.
Obviously with these shorter timeframe burnouts,
that significant period of time
might be the rest of the day or the rest of the weekend,
rather than the weeks and months that I was talking about.
So in a sense, that's not so much a problem,
it's not so much, "I'm burning out
"and I need to try and avoid burning out,"
it's, "This is my working style, this is my living style,
"I work intensely and then I have a intense break,"
otherwise known as burnout
and that is like being a sprinter
rather than a marathon runner or something.
It's not so much burning out,
it's spending all of your energy very quickly
and I consider that a skill
and that I am able to put all of the energy
that I would normally take in a week
and spend it in a day (chuckles)
with varying results depending on how well I spent it.
Anyway, so, they are some of my thoughts
on what can we do to try and avoid burnout.
Actually, sorry, one more thought
on how we can try and avoid burnout.
I find that a really useful category of a way of thinking,
is when I'm tryna recharge,
does an activity give me energy or does it take energy away?
That might sound overly simplistic
but hear me out why it's actually important,
what I found is that a lot of the activities
that I would be drawn to doing when I'm really tired,
they might take my mind off the stress
and my mind off the work
and I can zone out and de-stress and things like that,
but it actually doesn't give me more energy,
I'll give you some examples.
So things like watching TV,
for me, I would sit there and I would look at a screen
and I would zone out and follow the story
and then at the end, I wouldn't have more energy,
I'd actually have less energy.
Another good example is I used to like
to do crosswords and puzzles and things on my phone
and I found that it was fun to zone out
and do these little puzzles on my phone
but at the end I would be exhausted
and I wouldn't think,
"Oh, that was refreshing, back into it,"
I would think, "Oh, that's exhausting,
"maybe I'll have a power nap."
So on the other side, there are some things
that actively give me a significant amount of energy,
either short-term or long-term.
So, short-term, how to get energy back?
Power nap, I love power naps.
More long-term, things like exercise and going for a walk
and things like having interesting, intellectual,
engaging, stimulating conversations with people
or the kind of social interactions
that simultaneously take my mind
off a stress of work, for example,
and still allow me to sit around and relax
and be awake and actually recharge.
So by thinking about those things in different categories,
I found that personally really helpful
because there were a lot of activities
that I would do when tired
that actually don't give me more energy,
they just take even more energy away from me.
So, I might leave it there,
I'll be interested to hear your opinion
on if you think it's possible to avoid burnout.
What does burnout even look like for you?
So leave them in the comments if you're able to,
that would be really good
and also make sure you check out
this Autism Explained Online Summit, starting on Monday.
There are five days of 20 plus international autism experts
with 75% actually on the spectrum.
So, quick plug for that,
that is the reason that I took four days off.
Did I even say that?
I've done this video a couple of times already.
Gonna stop there, thanks, bye.