Discovering How My Brain Works So I Can Get Some Rest

I’ve suffered from burnout for years, to the point where I once crashed into a tractor-trailer because my mind had become too frazzled to notice it. But to find out how to treat my burnout and get some much needed rest there’s one thing I need to do first: Get tested for autism.

I have tried—oh, how I’ve tried—to get the rest I’ve needed for years. But even after taking a vacation, I still felt exhausted. Even when I tried to lighten my workload, I was as rundown as before. And I think that’s because the cause of my burnout wasn’t completely what I thought it was.

In August 2016 I quit a stressful job to begin a master’s degree in library science. I already had years of experience working in libraries and a great love of books, so it seemed like a good move for me. However, I also have social anxiety. It’s more than just anxiety, though—I don’t know how socializing is supposed to be done properly. Working in libraries, while it seems like the ideal place for anyone who prefers books to people, actually involves a lot of social interaction. Working the circulation or reference desk means talking with everyone and anyone who comes up to you. I’d worked those kinds of jobs before and didn’t like them, that was why I had quit working in libraries at one point. Now I was returning with a plan—I wanted to become a library cataloger, one of the few library jobs that doesn’t require working a customer service desk. But I needed a degree to get that kind of a job.

So I put my plan in motion, enrolling in grad school. I still needed to earn money, though, so I got a part-time job with a public library, but it had a long commute and didn’t pay as much as I had hoped. The job plus the commute plus graduate school—and minus a lot of money—turned out to be a heavier load than I had expected. But I figured I could power through.

Then my sister’s autoimmune disorder started to flare up. Autoimmune disorders have a tendency of causing other disorders to crop up too, so many people have multiple comorbidities in addition to their so-called main disease. My sister has a whole slew of comorbidities, both physical and mental. She’d been suffering from them for years, but suddenly they were all flaring up at the same time. By January 2017, she couldn’t work anymore and was on FMLA leave. She and I lived together (and still do), so I tried to help her out as best as I could—some of her ailments cause mobility issues, making certain tasks very difficult for her to do on her own—but with her out of commission, I was also now solely responsible for all household chores.

Then my father got sick. It wasn’t a chronic illness that flared up for him, though. His back started hurting, really badly, and we didn’t know why. After test after test, doctor after doctor, and about three months of waiting, we finally got the answer—he had multiple myeloma. It was attacking his bones, leaving fractures and holes everywhere. He was in terrible pain.

My sister ran out of FMLA leave in the beginning of April, around the same time my father began cancer treatment. She wasn’t ready to go back to work, so she had to quit. She and I were struggling to make ends meet, her without a job and me only working part-time and trying to pay for grad school. My father had offered to help back when my sister’s illness was flaring up and his back pain was just a twinge that he thought might go away.

Then my father died.

The grief compounded with everything else, making the stress I was feeling even worse, but I had to push it all aside to find a job to support myself and my sister. She would eventually begin the process of getting on disability, but it would take two years before she began receiving payments. My mom helped us a lot, but she didn’t work full time either and was struggling without our father to support her. I started applying to full-time jobs at my library, and I finally snagged one, but it had an even longer commute than my part-time one. I was on the road for four hours a day. And I was still working on my graduate degree.

Grieving, helping my now-disabled sister, shouldering all the household chores, going to grad school, working full time, and commuting twenty hours a week. This is what I thought broke me. I sped up my plan and finished grad school early, but even without having classes, it was too much. I found my dream job as a library cataloger much closer to where I lived, changing my daily commute from four hours to fifteen minutes. Still didn’t help. I tried to rest when I could, take days off when I had enough leave available, but I was too far gone. I was exhausted, I could barely get out of bed in the mornings. Talking wore me out, thinking made my brain whir like an overheated computer. I was thinking about quitting this job—a job I had spent years training for—because I just couldn’t take even the most basic of tasks anymore. My brain was fried, my body weighted down like I was wearing a lead suit.

When the COVID-19 lockdown happened, I was actually relieved.

I worked from home at first, but only for a few hours a day because there wasn’t much I could do from home in my job. I slept in, I took more breaks. There were some days where there was no work for me to do, so I did nothing. Nothing. It was beautiful. The whole world was on fire around me, but I was getting the rest I had so desperately needed for so long.

It was when my sister and I started up regular video chats with family and friends that I began noticing something was off.

Simply talking to people—people I know and love—felt like a chore. After virtual meetups, I felt that same exhaustion I had felt before, my burnout flaring back up like my sister’s illness. Why would chatting with friends make me feel this way?

For years I had suspected that my social ineptness was something more than just anxiety. I had read books about women with autism and saw myself reflected there. The concept of masking, of putting on a new persona to make it through social interactions, had especially resonated with me. It sounded like what I did every time I interacted with someone, from friends to family to customers at the library. But masking is exhausting, especially the longer you do it. When I stumbled across an article about autistic burnout and how it is much worse than neurotypical burnout because even the stress of basic social interactions add to it, I realized that could be what I was feeling.

But in order to get help for autistic burnout, to finally get the proper care and rest I need to heal after all these years, I have to first get diagnosed as autistic.

As luck would have it, I found an organization that offered to connect people with doctors trained to diagnose autism, even in adults and women, who are more difficult to diagnose. They had a long waitlist, but after signing up months ago, I just had my first appointment this week. This year I’ll finally discover if what I’ve long suspected is true. And once I know, I can finally get access to resources to help me with my specialized needs.

It's been a long road to get here. What I’ve been through would have exhausted anyone, but I know that I had been feeling the beginnings of burnout long before then. Every day I’d put on my mask in customer service—a forced smile, helping a customer find something, going to meetings with my supervisor—had put a strain on my mental health that I didn’t notice at the time. It was like a beaver nibbling through the leg of a table. The table still stands until that last bite through causes it to come crashing down. But if you start putting weight on that table, it’ll fall down faster. And someone had put a whole Thanksgiving dinner on top of mine.

But I’m on the right path this year. My New Year’s resolution is to discover how my own mind works so that I can understand it and its needs better. Whether I’m autistic as I suspect I am, or if it’s something else, I intend to find the treatment my mental health has been denied for so long. This year, I vow to take the time I need to finally heal.