 the 40 or T podcast. And for us autistic people, we are extra prone to burnout, because it affects not just our energy and the traits that I mentioned earlier, the sort of feeling exhausted and cynical and everything being just so much harder than it usually is. But it also affects our ability to communicate completely can going non verbal. And it just makes it hard to take care of our basic needs. I think two things that contribute to us being very, very prone to that burnout is masking and sensory issues. Yeah, totally. I'm not sure if I should define masking. I don't know if it's how familiar with people are with it as a term. Yeah, that's the thing is is that's it's not a very defined term is it? I mean, you could say that it's hiding your autistic traits or social camouflaging. The specifics of it tend to vary very greatly from person to person. Definitely. I find in myself that it can either be conscious or subconscious. I often find myself thinking even though I'm very open about being autistic, I will sometimes think, okay, these are new people. Let's not flap our hands. Yes. But then a few minutes later, I can feel the pressure in my chest start to build when the lights are too bright and I can feel my head getting foggy. And at that point, I generally slap myself over the head with a newspaper. Just chill, it's fine. You can move your hands about to stop the stop this feeling of pain from the lights just be open about being autistic. It's fine. Nobody, nobody is going to care at all. And generally they never do. But masking can also be not just subconscious, but also conscious, not just masking can be not just conscious, but also very subconscious, where if you spent your entire life trying to fit in and appear normal and copying people's behaviors, then it's going to take a lot of effort. And all masking just takes so much energy. Yeah. I talked to the creator Paul Michele from autism from the inside when we're talking about sort of the differences between the ways that the autistic people sort of go about things like socializing and small things. And I really empathize with it a lot because when I was younger, I used to be extremely confused about how neurotypicals would just kind of go about and do things without like contemplating and thinking over and having a reason to do it. And it makes makes sense because we do have two modes of being one is that kind of unconscious like going with your gut kind of emotionally based decisions and behaviors. And then you also have the the more higher cognitive aspects of analyzing and like, you know, something something that's really sort of key to be being a human. And a lot of autistic people, we don't use that sort of lower emotional brain to do things. And so we end up expending a lot of energy for things that other people might not spend hardly anything. Like good example is, you know, you decided to go out for a run today and you're going to start running every day for a week. Let's say that's going to be much harder than then, you know, if you've been running for a year and it's just part of your routine, it's like you don't have to think about it so much and you don't have to prepare yourself so much because it's like a set habit, a set routine that you have to just go out and do. And I feel that that transfers a lot into social situations as well. Like if you're thinking about social situations and masking to such a large extent, it's obviously going to cause you to be a lot more taxed and tie in the aspects of having like a lower social battery. It just sets you up for getting completely overwhelmed by very short situations. Do you do social scripts? I don't because my waking memory in social situations is not very good. No, that's interesting because recently as my working memory has been improving with time, I'm not depressed anymore. It doesn't wonders for you. That helps. I've been using it more because but in a sort of, they help me make fewer decisions in life in my daily social communication. At work, I've got these little notepads on my screen, different colors for different topics and they just filled with blank sentences to fill in. So some sentences like, thank you for reaching out. I currently cannot do this because blah blah and then there's like a pick list for me. It just helps automate all of that. And I feel like they're social scripts but they just help reduce the amount of energy I've got. I can definitely see myself using that kind of thing, especially through emails and social media. I've only just realized that you can have saved replies on Instagram. You can just send a reply that it'll pick up if someone's asking you a similar question to what the other person asked and you can save that and then the next time that question like that comes up, you can just click the button. I haven't started using it yet but I'm excited to building it up a little bit more. All this automation makes so much sense, right? But then if a neurotypical person comes along and sees all my notes, they're just, why is it like a psychopath also? They just think, hey, how do you manage to use all this? Isn't that a lot more effort? But for me, it's actually less effort to have that all prepared. What you were talking about there, the fancy biological word for that is habituation. That's the word from animal behavior science, ethology, that describes how animals, we're animals as well, get used to stimuli in their surroundings. So every time a plane goes by, generally animals will look up and see what the plane is, see what the noise is, where the noise is coming from and eventually they'll just learn to tune it out. Whereas us autistic people, we don't have that habituation effect. We don't know how to do that. We will always be looking at what the sound is, my fridge, my mortal enemy in the room behind me. I can always hear it. It's unplugged today. I'll put it back on later when I'm upstairs but we just don't have that habituation. Which brings me nicely onto sensory issues. The other thing which I feel cause is autistic burnout because we don't have that habituation, we can't ignore sensory issues. If you're forcing yourself to withstand painful environments purely because you think everyone else can do this, then that's going to have a massive negative effect. Schools, workplaces, just going on public transport, all of that is really, really hard. And I think there's something that I was talking to Natasha from I want to tell you books. She does neurodivergent affirming parenting. We were talking about how weird it is that teachers and parents think that it's a bad thing to offer autistic children sensory supports because they have to expose them to it. They're not going to have that in the real life. They're not going to be able to use the headphones and the shades and things like that. And I'm like, really? Because I use them all the time. It doesn't impact my day from using those sensory supports. No. I was very worried about starting to wear noise counsellors and some others in public because for some reason, and I've had it for my whole life, I attract the odd people on public transport. I generally go out and sit and do some drawings of some interesting landscapes or any interesting buildings and people come up and chat to me. I don't know why, it's just my vibe. And I was kind of worried that I'd lose that because it's a really wonderful way to bring a little bit of joy into my world and meet people who I'd never wear to usually. So I was concerned about it, but actually nobody cares. Especially those people who come up just for a chat whilst you're drawing. They don't mind you wearing sunglasses and noise counsellors at all. And at work nobody notices. In the workplace, you've got the equality act you're allowed to wear whatever you need to help. And so it's just, that's just odd to me, especially because it is backed by scientific evidence, habituation. We literally cannot learn to deal with the stimuli. Yeah. Hey, YouTube. Hope you have enjoyed this podcast clip so far. If you want to check out the full episode, you can find it here on my YouTube channel under the podcast section. Or you can go to Spotify, Apple, Google to check it out on different podcasting streaming services. If you have enjoyed this video this far, please make sure to like, perhaps drop me a subscribe if you want to see some more content from me, and drop a comment down below, even if it's something simple like an emoji or a heart. It really does help satisfy those big YouTube algorithm gods in the sky. Anyway, I'll let you get back to it. It is insane. I think I'm very much happy with the noise-canceling aspect of things. I think the only reason why I don't wear shades is because, I don't know, I feel like people can very easily paint a picture of me if I'm, you know, I'm a tall man and I have a beard at that point and I'm wearing sunglasses. It's kind of like a bit of a stereotype for like, there's alpha male, red pill people. I just can't get around it because, you know, I'm always self-conscious about wearing them. Especially because you're autistic and then if they make that assumption and you start having a shutdown and a meltdown, or start losing your ability to communicate or you need help from them because it's an invisible disability, you might need that extra support in a public area and they've got a bit of prejudice against you that would go against you. And so I completely understand why you made that choice. That's exactly why. It's kind of one of the, you know, among the large list of positive things. You know, it is definitely a negative to me going to the gym so often as well because it's almost like people are less likely to think that I'm capable of struggling and having negative experiences. Whether it's men or women, it just tends to be the case that, you know, if I dress my very goffy as my very goffy self and, you know, I look like I go to the gym, it's like I come up and say that I'm struggling. It's almost like people just kind of double take and they don't really go into like caring mode. It doesn't happen a lot but when it does, it's a bit hard. I feel that. Well, I think there's, you know, perhaps another aspect to autistic burnout that I wanted to touch on and I can't remember it right at this moment because it's gone as it does. I think another aspect of autistic burnout that might be quite important, I think, is stuff around sleep as well because, you know, reading some of like the research behind like, I think the circadian rhythms and like melatonin and stuff, it does seem that, you know, from statistics and from talking to people that a lot of autistic people struggle with their sleeping aspect of things. Struggling to get off to sleep, not having very high quality sleep, not being able to wake up as easily and sort of get straight into life. And I know that sometimes if that happens and you kind of, you have a plan for the day and you kind of wake up late, it's kind of like you're always running behind and you kind of stressed out and then it gets to the evening and you've got stuff from the previous day that you need to do the next day. I know that's something that can be quite a vicious cycle. And I think as well, you know, a large part of us performing well, being well, is aspects to do with diet and hydration, which is something that, again, I feel like a lot of autistic people struggle with keeping on top due to things like inter-reception. Like, it's such a massive, massive part of like your blood sugar levels and how that impacts your well-being. I think it's quite a big contributor to that. You know, if you're very stressed and you're very hyper-focused throughout the day, you might forget to drink as much water as you should do. That can impact your sort of mental well-being. Same with food. I think it's, I suppose these are more kind of indirect sort of additive things to the experience. I found it really, I found it was really helpful with anything to do with stuff to do with your mood and stuff to do with your like productivity and overall well-being. Understanding things from like a neurochemical or hormonal sort of set point is really important. I did a podcast, not a podcast, I did a post about trigger stacking in dogs and how that, I feel like it can help explain a lot of the experiences that autistic people have when we have meltdowns and shutdowns and things like that. It's kind of going off the principle that it's the same in humans. Cortisol is released when you experience like a stressor. But the cortisol, it doesn't just like rise up and then die down really quickly. It can, I think the half-life of it is like, an hour, two hours, something like that. So it sticks around for quite a while after the events. And so if you go through your day and you sort of, as you said, constantly bombarded by sensory social things, things of that nature, that cortisol builds up and then you get to a point where something very little happens, like you cut fine keys to your house and it's just very down at the bottom of your bag. And so you chuck the bag to the side and you get overwhelmed and you have a difficult time with that. Whereas usually you would just be like, okay, my bags, my keys are going to be in there somewhere. I'm going to check that. And so I think that that really has helped me to be more aware of sort of the small daily things that would cause me stress and how that would impact whether I need to relax or whether I can work and search in sort of the evening. It's very interesting that you've mentioned cortisol there. And previously, a few sentences ago, you mentioned how difficult it is to get going in the morning. So exactly as you were saying, exactly as you were saying that cortisol for us is spiked by when we've experienced something stressful. And like we were discussing before with the habituation, we struggle with not becoming calm with we just can't ignore these constant stresses, whereas neurotypicals can the fridge, they just tune it out, a calendar change. They've had it a thousand times before. For us, it's still a stressful thing every single time. And so our cortisol will be spiked every single time. And stronger than most as well. And then if you combine those factors together, you are, you've got a situation where a person has very high cortisol all the time. And it is going to cause exactly what we're talking about today, burnout. It's mentioned in the book that I recommended, how to calm your mind. If you enjoy the chemical and science understanding of things, it's not neurodivergent specific, but it's still a really well written science book. There he talks about how burnout is you losing the ability to create the stress hormone just because you've had it so high the whole time. You get like, what's the opposite of ever sensitized? Desensitized. You just don't respond to it as much anymore. And in the mornings, cortisol and adrenaline and all of these stress hormones is what gets you up and out of bed. And if we're just not responding to them anymore, you're going to physically struggle getting out of your edge. So it's literally chemically not your fault. Yeah, I think that there is a tendency, I think that I've seen a lot of people to separate out psychology from physical things. Like, I think people forget sometimes that your brain is an actual organ that it does, it is impacted physically by things. You know, I feel trying to, you know, a lot of the ways that I feel like I've been able to understand my mental health conditions and things like burnout a lot more is by actually looking at, you know, what are the physical things that are happening at the moment? Because it kind of keeps you a bit more grounded, you can be like, hmm, cortisol is very high. Got a little bit of adrenaline coming through because there's a deadline coming. Right. How do I deal with this rather than, you know, sort of staying very in the moment and obsessed and like, hurrying and like playing into the adrenaline and the cortisol and it's just not very, very good. I think it kind of goes back to the reason why we have these systems because it's originally used, as you said, for wake sleep, sometimes a bit to do with appetite, sometimes to do with avoiding dangerous things and having like the energy to do things. But our modern day, although our stresses are a lot less sort of life threatening, they're still important to us and they happen chronically like over a long period of time. It's not like you're going about your day chilling and then the line pops up and you have to run away from it. It's, oh, there's this deadline and there's that thing and then I've got this thing that I have to reorganize for that thing and there's these things and there's some papers that have come through and they need to read those letters and then, oh my god, the fridge is broken. It's making a horrible buzzing noise. There's so many things that we should do that we could do that we might do and that choice, isn't it? What is it that choice? Paralysis. Choice process, yeah. And there's so many of these things that we should be doing that either we think that ourselves or we have been told that this is important to somebody else. Expectations. Expectations are very high and I don't know if it's just me and my black and white thinking but I am very, very hard to myself for those reasons because if somebody's told me this is important to them, can I help? I put myself into it 100% even if I don't necessarily have the energy and that's not because I don't recognize I don't have the energy. I know I'm tired but I'm really, the dog's barking. Obviously, yes somebody closed the car door. He just runs halfway down the stairs and stares at me. Quarters all is going. Adrenaline spike. There you go, nice. The thing is dog then just goes back upstairs to sleep whereas I just, yeah, that's my car, do you? I don't even know what I'm talking about anyway.