Planting a Neurodivergent Mind in Neurotypical Soil. – I Wasn’t Lazy. I Was Autistic and Burnt Out. What My Autism Diagnosis Taught Me About Rest.

We reside in a world that encourages self-neglect, where rest is viewed as a reward that one must strive to earn.

In this culture, the relentless pursuit of productivity is often celebrated, while the importance of slowing down and practicing self-care is frequently overlooked (or outright disregarded). This ‘hustle and bustle‘ lifestyle is designed to extract every bit of energy from an individual, often with severe consequences for our mental and physical health.

We recharge our devices (our phones, tablets, and laptops) but too frequently treat ourselves with less kindness than we extend to our non-living electronic devices.

It is impossible to ‘pour from an empty cup,’ but our society seems to have forgotten (or been discouraged from learning) this lesson.

Neurodivergent People, in particular, too often bear the brunt of these demanding systems (that haven’t been designed without our needs taken into consideration).

We are the canaries in the coal mines, shining light on a system that harms all of us (because while these exploitative systems are bad for all creatures, they are especially hard on those of us with neurological and brain-based differences or other disabilities).

Our exploitive system is less harsh on those whose bodies and minds are closer to neuro-normative (or Neuro-Average people, I sometimes say), because it is designed in a way as to support (and not trigger) those with the ‘average mind‘.

If you are close enough to average, many of your needs will be taken into consideration. Still, for the rest of us (whose needs are ignored), time in the world can be draining (like the health bar of a video game character as they run through a world full of toxic gas, slowly draining the life out of them).

We are starting at a disadvantage (not because we are faulty, but because our world is), like plants planted in soil with the wrong pH level, lacking proper nutrients.

Too many of us are barely clinging to life, surviving, not thriving, so we need more rest (to help us survive this toxic system), but when we dare stop or slow down, the people around us always seem to push, demanding more of us.

Many of us are already giving our best, working harder than the people around us, but phrases like “You’re not applying yourself,” “If you just tried a little harder,” “Nobody else is struggling with this,” or “I expected more from you,” come at us like daggers, embedding within us messaging that our bests are not good enough (and by extension neither are we).

Burnout is what led me to being diagnosed as Autistic a few months shy of my 30th birthday.

For most of my life, before learning the truth about my brain, I had been stuck in an endless cycle of burnouts (starting in elementary school), due to our system’s unrealistic expectations for minds like mine.

When I was young, these burnouts, had they (or I) been correctly identified, would likely have been called “regressions“ (because they caused me to regress and lose skills I’d once attained). In adulthood, when I burned out, the results were much the same.

My most recent burnout (the one that led me to finally being diagnosed Autistic after 29 years of not knowing the truth about my own mind) took years (and re-designing my entire life) to climb out of.

It took me learning about myself, my brain, and my needs, as well as how I (and my needs) differ from those around me, to break the vicious cycle I was in.

I also had to learn boundaries and how to stand up for myself (and my needs), something that had been systematically discouraged throughout my life (thanks to expectations being placed upon me that I keep up with the people around me, whose minds and needs were very different from my own).

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