wild_solovei

For two years now I've lived on a pension for the unemployed because of a fatigue I can't quite explain. It's been gradually worse since my Master's degree (about 7 years ago), and it's come to the point where I've become unable to continue working and/or studying. I usually sleep 10 hours a night but feel too tired to do much in a day, my brain has become foggy and my memory gets worse and worse (I forget words all the time, and I can't hold a thought for long). I do a little bit of sleep apnea but not enough for it to explain this, and my sleep is of a lesser quality for reasons I'm not sure of. My psychiatrist thinks it's depression and anxiety, but the thing is, I don't feel depressed. I have. Last year, notably, and in some other periods (Covid, of course, and for a year when I was away in another country, with a 2 hours bus ride between Uni and home that killed my social life), but now that I've taken up writing again, and found some sense to my life, I do not feel depressed anymore.

I was about to try some CBT for anxiety and sleep when I stumbled back on my notes about Autism.

Actually, it was a need for organising my computer that made me rediscover those notes, as I decided I would gather every .txt file on my laptop in a unique Scrivener file. But because I can't organise things without being extremely thorough I started reading the notes again and decided that if I wanted my notes to be organised I needed to keep learning about the subject. I had started writing those because I was diagnosed with ADHD, and was wondering about what Autism was exactly, and whether it fit me.

So I've been reading several books on Autism and AuDHD, taking even more notes, watching videos. And at some point, I can't remember where, I stumbled upon the idea that autistic burnout could look exactly like the kind of fatigue I had. Brain fog, memory issues, bad quality sleep... I hadn't considered burnout yet because I'm not the kind of person to push myself to exhaustion in my studies or work. Before becoming unemployed I gave about 4 2-hours literature lessons a week to highschoolers, and studied Medicinal Herbs for one weekend a month. This didn't exactly look like the type of schedules that would push people into burnout.

But reading about autism made me realise how closely I related to some things, even some unexpected ones. It made me reconsider my daily needs, too.

So I've decided to try treating my fatigue as if it was autistic burnout. I thought at least I might learn a few things about myself in the process.

For now, I'm focusing on 4 things :

• Organisation
• Hypersensitivity
• Stimming
• Special Interests

I've noticed I am barely able to function in a messy environment. Because everywhere I look there is an action to take and a decision to make, I tend to bury my head in the metaphorical sand that are a TV Show or my Tumblr dash.

I'm a pretty messy person and tend to be very annoyed when people remind me to clean things, and for so long I just thought it was my way of being, that I didn't need things to be clean and organised, that I liked that chaotic freedom. But I've realised that what I dislike is not order, but being told by others what order should look like for me. Being told what my priorities should be. I've also realised I need to adapt to my ADHD and chronic fatigue, instead of pushing myself to be someone else all the time, and feeling guilty when I fail.

A mundane example : unless I'm with someone who I can have a good conversation with, I need to watch something when I eat ; it's compulsive, because it feels like a moment when I can finally relax and focus on a good, comfort show. But oftentimes, that will kick-start a whole TV watching session, as I get rapidly and deeply invested in the things I watch. Which means that I won't do the dishes during the evening, not wanting to interrupt my session, and usually going to bed as soon as I'm too tired to watch more episodes. Sometimes of course I'll do other things in the evening, but to me it's still a time for relaxation, literature and fandom fun. I just... need it to be that way. And because I struggle with cooking, when I gather the strength to do it I will often brush off doing the dishes, which can create a pretty vicious cycle. More dishes means more stress about cooking, which means that I'll only gather the strength to cook when I'm thinking I don't have to do the dishes now. Nowadays I've taken the habit to do the dishes while my food cooks, which saves me from the feeling of losing my time that most chores give me. If I simply start by putting the dry plates and stuff back in the cupboards, I'll often have put myself in enough motion to do the dishes as well.

Gods, that's a lot of words just for dishes... What I mean to show through this example is that yes, there will always be some dishes in my sink, and other people might judge me for that, but it is the simple consequence of a lot of needs and hidden struggles. And if what's in my sink doesn't become Mountain Doom all the time, it's a win.

✦

I've designed a lot of things in my tiny 17 meters squared appartment to make organisation easier on a daily basis.

I've always had a hard time motivating myself with cleaning stuff up regularly, doing small things like putting old toilet rolls in the bin, or putting away the dishes after eating, or closing my wardrobe's door after using it... Realising I was ADHD and needed to find easier ways to clean and organise made me look for a better room design : having a basket under my coffee table where I can just throw every cable, Switch or tech stuff I'm not using right now ; dedicating a space on my shelf for the extra pillows I use only half the time and tended to throw on the floor when I didn't ; dedicating space for unfinished sewing projects instead of staring at them on my table, feeling guilt at every glance.

All these helped with doing the things. But not with motivation. What helped with that was understanding I needed an organised environment in order to de-stress, and this understanding came with the knowledge I gathered about autism. Now when I see something I should clean I don't only think "Well, do I have enough energy to do it now ?", I also remind myself that cleaning it will give me more energy, because I won't spend time stressing about it. So far it's been working really well !

This month I'm focusing on organising my environment, to the details. Darning my socks and mending my clothes, sorting out my herbs, finishing painting the bathroom, organising my books and putting them straight, copying all my files from OneDrive to Scrivener because I cannot with the cloud anymore, sorting out my music files and my pictures... Lots and lots to do. (3 500 pictures of Supernatural that need to be named, checked for better quality and sorted into smaller folders... At least I'm rediscovering the cringe but fun 2010s Tumblr posts I used to download from Facebook pages). But little by little, I'm getting able to look at some parts of my physical and virtual environments and not feel stressed out ; able to not think "Oh, yes, I have to do this" every time my eyes land on something (which is, well... often, as you can imagine).

I do not know if I am autistic, but I know that acting as if I was is making me feel better in several aspects of my life. I'll talk about these other aspects in future posts !