The video for this podcast is available on YouTube.

Autistic people, particularly autistic females, are prone to autistic burnout. One large reason for this is because it takes us a lot more energy to process one day than it does for a Neurotypical person. This is particularly true when it involves social interactions. In my life I’ve had to learn how to have very strong boundaries in order to  avoid burnout, boundaries that are rarely respected in our culture. 

What I’ve noticed is it takes a lot for me to be balanced. But I need balance in order to have any quality of life. I’ve had to learn the hard way after four years of recovering from autistic burnout (among other health conditions) exactly what I need to be healthy, and I’ve figured out that I do this by building upon foundations.

My first foundation is health. The very base of this is proper sleep every night. On top of this I  build meditation, daily stretching, exercise and cooking my own food. Now when this is in balance then I can build upon it. I can add in work for example. This doesn’t have to mean a job. It can mean house work, garden work, running errands, things like that. And when this is in balance and flow I can add in something else, such as a creative project like this podcast. When this layer is in balance I can open up the space to hold appointments and social interactions. When all these layers are built upon the other, there is a flow that is happening in my life and I call this the autistic flow.

This is why it can be so hard to make plans with me or any autistic person. It’s because I don’t know how I’m going to feel on Saturday. I don’t know if my life is going to be in flow and I’m going to be in a place where I have the capacity to take that on. For some reason social interactions tend to take up more ‘spoons’ or energy than other activities. Similarly, this is also why it sometimes takes me five weeks before I can have that 15 minute appointment phone that I really need to have I just don’t have the capacity to add it in. However, if I am force into a social interaction or appointment when I am not in a place where I am ready to open myself up to it, usually through obligation or guilt, this will throw my entire life out of balance and I will have to start from square one. It will take me weeks to rebuild and my mental health suffers as much as my physical health.

But for years I was stuck in place where I was constantly having my foundations knocked down every time I tried to get back up on my feet. I’ve learnt that I need to be able to work on my own hours from home, as being expected to be somewhere at a certain time (usually in the morning when I have insomnia), fucks me up. When I’m in flow I can get my hours in a little bit over here and a little bit over there, which I wonder if it is related to my ADD. If I continue to build my foundations and if nothing pulls me out of my flow then he capacity for what I can take on increases and I become extremely productive. I just don’t work in these 9-5 rigid blocks the rest of the system operates in.

However, unfortunately because of the rest of the world does not respect this. Setting boundaries with these things is really hard in our culture because our world doesn’t value things like rest and self autonomy. It is only the last few years that I have actually set up really strong boundaries. My friends have had to learn that me not wanting to catch up with them doesn’t mean I actually don’t like them. Prioritising the flow has caused me to lose out on jobs and other exiting opportunities. But this flow has to be my priority, and my health and happiness have improved dramatically since.

It took me a long time to figure out the autistic flow. Our world offers little guidance and little space for us autisms, which is why I am putting out what I have learnt. I would love to hear if other people are the same or have developed this theory even further. I actually consider the way my mind works an extreme advantage that I wouldn’t change for the world, it just always comes back to that quote, “If you judge a fish’s intelligence by it’s ability to climb a tree, it will spend it’s entire life believing it is stupid.”

Let’s stop trying to climb trees and instead get back to swimming with autistic flow.