 The Thoughty Autie podcast. Looking back in hindsight, sort of listing off some kind of red flags for what happened for you when you're approaching a burnout. Sure. I knew that autistic burnout was applicable to me. The first thing when I finally managed to sit down and research autism. I did not know how to take breaks. I always over-exaggerated myself and said yes to everything and really rarely had any kind of recharge time. At school I was in quite a stressful environment and there was so much work to do. I was there for many, many hours a day. And I was ill all the time. I was ill maybe for two weeks, then I'd be back in school for three weeks. I'd be ill for two weeks. This was diagnosed as psychosomatic and it was really... But it was to the point where they thought I had tuberculosis because I had such bad illness. But it was always psychosomatic but never investigated further. Then going into uni, sorry. So it tends to be something that a lot of women get labeled with things like BPD and borderline. All these other things, everything but autism. And the psychosomatic component is literally just like you think something and therefore you feel it and it happens. It's very funny to me retrospectively because you can either laugh or you can cry. Might as well laugh, right? Then going into uni, I struggled massively with my mental health and was only able to work for about three and a half hours per day tops. The only thing that really helped was being outside. So I did a lot of volunteering and through that I met some awesome people and started to learn how to talk about mental health through them. And I was so grateful for all the vocabulary they introduced me to. Once I recognized what chronic burnout was, it was one of the main reasons I pursued getting my diagnosis because I just wanted a reason for why my brain and body felt so disconnected. The brain and body, it's all connected. It's all one thing. It's not separate. And so I figured there must be some sort of reason behind this and I wanted to figure out why my energy levels were so spiky. Why when I was interested in something and it was amazing. I felt like I could live and breathe and eat just that thing I was interested in. Well, I missed a robot to say type of coding for hours and hours. Making my gardening plans. Yes. I mean, you're thinking about advocacy. Just making spreadsheets, just having a great time. But yeah, so it all made sense after that. And I've really been working on understanding my needs, my capability and capacity. Capability and capacity, the two different words. Capability is, oh, do you know how to bake a cupcake? And capacity is how big is your oven? Yeah. So those are really important distinctions because I was capable of doing all the work that I wanted to do, but I did not have capacity. And so understanding that distinction was really, really important for me and ultimately enabled me to join in the workplace. I'm able to work full time, which is a massive privilege and something that gives me so much joy. But I've still been teaching on the edge of that burnout and it's something that I want to put a stop to. I've generally just confused being driven with overworking. And that's a strong, strong note. There's such a societal trend towards that at the moment though. It's almost like it's glorified. And I think it's really important when you were talking about capacity. You could probably stuff a lot of cookie dough or, I don't know, what would you say? Muffin dough. Yeah, cupcake dough into the oven and just absolutely ram it full and come out with this huge Minecraft-esque blob of cupcake. But that doesn't mean that it's a good cupcake. No. And you can't eat that much cupcake for all the love in the world. I love cupcakes. There's not that many that I want to eat after a while. They're all going to start tasting bland. Can you see where I'm going with this metaphor? The lack of joy from overworking creates is palpable. Yeah, I don't know. I definitely agree that there is a societal trend toward this and I completely blindly accepted it. Despite the fact that in my current workplace, I've got awesome workplace adjustments. I've got a really supportive and calm working environment. But I was always chasing the dopamine. I always wanted to do a bit more here, a bit more there, whatever made me feel helpful or whatever I felt was valuable. But if you combine that with all the external stuff that happens outside of work, recently for me it's been pretty prolonged. The last year has been difficult. Yeah. It's weird, isn't it? In the mornings when you're getting ready for a work day, for some reason, you see perhaps your battery, I don't know, 90% because you had a bad night's sleep or something. And so you're like, oh, cool, I've got 90% of energy to use. You use that entire amount of energy for your working day and you're like, oh, I'm on 5%. I've got to get home and something happens. And then you forget that you've got a social event and then it's like, you don't have the energy to do that kind of stuff and you have to expend more energy for reorganizing things. So it's kind of like you just run your battery through without giving you any wiggle room. It really, really does help me with the algorithm. All of my links to my socials like my daily Instagram blog posts are down in the description. But other than that, I hope you enjoy the rest of this clip. And that battery, if you've got that 5%, I was neglecting to realize that I still need some battery to recover. I still need battery to clean up my house. I need to make myself dinner. Even something like going for a walk is going to take some of that battery and I need that. And so I came to this breakthrough, which was very helpful in the words of Taylor Swift. Hi, it's me, I'm the problem. It's me because I recognize that I am making those choices of running my battery dry and struggling to recognize when I need to rest. I was overdoing activities like the rest. I go into the forest, I'd be there for half an hour and feel amazing. So I continued walking for another hour and a half until it was dark. And then I realized I'm in the middle of a forest with my dog. I don't have a flashlight. I don't have dinner waiting for me at home. Trying to min max resting. Yeah. And I also don't have any groceries. So obviously that's going to be a problem. And that's where I needed to genuinely reevaluate my relationship to my energy and my capability and capacity properly. Hey, just popping on to say thank you for listening to this podcast thus far. If you could do me a real solid, please make sure to rate the podcast if you're in a podcasting streaming service. And do all that like, subscribe, comment stuff on YouTube. Damn, even send a heart in the comments if you don't feel like typing. Make sure to check out my link tree, which is always down below in the description. Or head over to my Instagram page at Thomas Henley UK for daily blogs, podcast updates and weekly lives. This podcast is sponsored by my favorite noise canceling, noise reducing earbuds that you can adjust the volume on. Really, really great thing. They're called debuts and you can find the affiliate link down in the description of this podcast for a 15% off discount. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the rest of the podcast. That's all from me. I think there was something that you were saying about, you know, your school time, sort of having three weeks of doing loads and then having two weeks where you're sick. I think that's that's been. It was really interesting because the previous podcast, it's not come out yet because I've been burnt out and so behind on things. Yeah, ironic for the topic of the podcast. I'm not totally on top of it yet, but I'm trying. But we were talking about how very much my experience of life is like a roller coaster. I have like peaks which are like really great and I'm doing so much and then I have absolute just tail off drops where I just, you know, I can't function and I need supports and things like that. And I think that's a really good analogy for. Like, what happens when you just lean into that whole burnout thing? You just get so over excited with the amount of energy that you've got and just burn for it all and then not give yourself enough and things start to fall apart and then you have a burnout. I love the analogy of a roller coaster because that is so true to my own experience. And I'm just sick of it. I don't want to be going up and down anymore. I'm just tired. I'm so tired and I know that I need to be here for a long time and a good time. And that's part of my recovery journey has been slowing down even though I really don't want to because I love I love all those things that I do. It's necessary and my goal for 2023 has been to have a boring year. Because I just I just need to slow down and figure things out. And I've been setting myself up for success and learning what all my different red flags are for approaching, approaching that burnout. And it's been incredibly invaluable.