• Do you have difficulty identifying burnout?
  • Do you have difficulty identifying when you’ve recovered?
  • How do you decide when to go back to work?

Sorry, no answers here. I was asking you…

I’m off sick from work, because I’m burnt out, and because I know what can often occur when I am burnt out (losing temper, upsetting people, getting really frustrated with people and it getting perceived as aggression).

I didn’t feel burnt out, but evidence was mounting and I had a hunch that I might be. And then I reacted kind of badly to something, and I knew “hey, I’m burnt out!”. The first two days off sick involved lots of sleeping, and not being able to begin menial tasks at home.

I started to feel a lot better yesterday - I say “feel”, but I don’t really feel it; my physical being does something or does not do something, and then I observe that it has or has not done something. I was back to doing things like housework and hobbies, and could hold a conversation with my mum on the phone without being to braindead to talk. I must be feeling better…

I started work this morning (from home today, just by luck of the schedule), and a few hours in it was clear to me that I shouldn’t be back yet. On reflection, it probably hasn’t really been enough time to recover, but:

  1. I experience guilt that I’m just bunking off work because I don’t feel like it today while I’m off
  2. Each day I’m off, I’m going to have to catch up on that work, which might be stressful, so I begin to get stressed that I might get stressed in the future
  3. I don’t feel much in myself, it all just feels very much the same - burnt out and normal. Introspection isn’t something I do well and I need to see the effects of what’s happening inside me to know what’s happening inside me.

I’m hoping others can share thoughts and experiences that might help me. Also, it’s just nice to dump my thoughts at times like this and see that I’m not on my own in some of my experiences.

Oh, and finally: a positive I have taken away from the experience is that I seem to be getting better at preempting my burnouts, as I had the hunch it was coming before it came.

  • MelodiousFunk@slrpnk.net
    12·
    3 days ago

    Up front, my experience probably isn’t going to be much help, aside from validating your experience. I’m up shit’s creek and have been for quite some time. To hit your numbered list first:

    1. Yes. So much this. A lot of it likely comes from childhood, where unless I was puking I was “faking it” because I had earned the “lazy” label thanks to early academic aptitude and subsequent failure to complete assignments (undiagnosed AuDHD). “I’m not dying, I should be okay. Instead I’m sitting here doing nothing.”
    2. Unless you’re running the business this should never be a thing… but as we all know this is all too common in an office setting. The longer you’re out, the more backed up you get, to the point where even planned vacations are stressful because in the back of your mind you can see the accumulating workload. It’s by design and it makes me want to flip tables.
    3. I’m only recently getting a good read on my past and present experiences with autistic burnout (which is absolutely its own thing but thanks to the lack of interest in studying adults the only language we have is “it’s like burnout, but turned up to 11”). It first hit (as an adult, anyway… childhood still needs to be unpacked) a mere year into my professional career, trying to navigate a high level of technical challenge (since I was green) and a high level of social challenge (field service work in and around a dense urban area). The most recent was the culmination of 11 years of hard work being rewarded with more work and more responsibility, and getting hung out to dry when it overwhelmed me. Probably the last 4-5 years of that was me “pushing through” burnout, because I simply had no other frame of reference and bills needed to get paid (this is “real life,” I don’t have the energy to look for something else, bad economic time to be the low man on the totem pole, better the devil you know, etc.). It got bad. I left two and a half years ago when they tightened the screws enough that I could no longer pretend. I had like 6-8 months of expenses saved, my spouse had steady work, and the plan was to take time to recharge and worry about the gap in the resume later. The recharge never happened, thanks in no small part to life continuing to pile on. The only upshot to this is that I’m finally getting some real therapy, after years of off and on bad experiences with prior attempts.

    To kind of sort of answer your questions:

    • Do you have difficulty identifying burnout?

    Yes. And so do employers. Individual managers may care on a professional level, maybe even on a personal level. But the business itself is incapable of caring. A burned out employee will simply be replaced once they no longer produce. The added nuance that autistic burnout brings to the table is a “you problem.” Yes, I am bitter.

    • Do you have difficulty identifying when you’ve recovered?
    • How do you decide when to go back to work?

    I realize this kind of response is unhelpful, but that’s where I’m at right now. I’m trying to unpack things through therapy, but life doesn’t get put on hold just because I can’t handle it. And being in the US isn’t helping, what with all the make believe rugged individualism and the gubmint doing a slash and burn on social services. I feel like I’m on a trajectory to starve in the streets as opposed to recovery. I am still trying in spite of it. I’m exhausted though.

    I wish I had better answers for you.