I was diagnosed at a young age and this isn’t new, but I have become more and more frustrated with it: getting to do something often happens slow. In the gym my exercises are often interrupted by many minutes of getting stuck in my head, being distracted.
People talk about how it’s okay to take breaks but I sometimes lose HOURS at home because I just don’t do anything and it isn’t resting either because my head keeps churning without a goal. I call it a limbo between activity and resting. Sometimes my phone or another means of distraction is to blame, but other times it’s just anxiety to do something because “is this the best use of my time?” (in general I often have time anxiety)
It drives me crazy because I will have a plan of things to do that’s totally reasonable and achievable, but then I only achieve a small part of it because I keep wasting so much time, I then procrastinate on the rest. This mainly affects activities/plans I’ve set myself, those set by others let me just obey and not have to overthink as much.
Does anyone else relate and can they share means of dealing with it?
There could be different causes for this and I wouldn’t rule anything in (or out) without knowing more about your situation.
Has this been a persistent thing throughout your life or does it only happen at certain times/during particular activities/in certain periods of your life?
If you have external expectations like at work or school, do you find yourself struggling with the same problem or do you find that you get the expected tasks done or transition from one class to the next without significant procrastination?
Do you find that if there is a ton of urgency to get things done that you suddenly find yourself motivated (e.g. needing to get ready to go out or to have a guest over and only in the last 15 minutes do you feel like you’re capable of motivating yourself?)
Do you find yourself hesitating, almost like you’re buffering or lagging, when it comes to very clear transitions between spaces (e.g. walking through a doorway, opening the front door to leave the house) or into the next activity (e.g. freezing before you turn the shower on or before you actually step into the running shower)?
How is your current ability to engage in activities that you find rewarding, e.g. hobbies/special interests/gaming etc.?
Do you find yourself feeling exhausted before you have even started your day?
How do you go with well-established routines, e.g. a morning routine when you get up and have breakfast and put some clothes on etc.?
It has been especially persistent since secondary school, when I could no longer ace every test without effort and homework loads increased dramatically.
With stuff like school assignments, it’s almost certainly pathological demand avoidance (PDA) being at play, sometimes not even deadlines are enough and I turn in things late. BeamBrain brought it up but I knew of the concept beforehand. It however affects me most of the time, when I have to decide for myself on what to do.
I indeed have trouble with delaying things to the last moment. It sucks: I’m either too passive and not doing anything or rushing and wearing myself out.
Yes, yes, yes. Lots of buffering/lagging, also while I am doing something.
I actually don’t get around to them often, aside from working out. When I am doing them, what often happens is that I am neglecting schoolwork, it piles up over 2-3 weeks and I then collapse in on myself. Instead i instinctively watch the one Discord server I’m in or play around on Google Maps, it’s like stimming behaviour.
I hate how I will feel determined to do things when I go to bed and then have trouble getting up the morning after, regardless of how much I’ve slept. One thing I’ve noticed is how I often become tired when I get home from school, when I didn’t feel the need for rest earlier. Part of me suspects that I simply am not eating enough for all the walking to/from school and working out that I do.
The order of things is very consistent, but when these things happen is not.
I also want to add that I often feel like I’m running on auto-pilot and that the sluggishness can be overcome with bursts of confidence and determination, but those happen irregularly. I also have a tendency for perfectionism.
This is interesting but inconclusive by itself.
There’s potentially a few different factors at play here. One is that overachievers very often hit the wall where their natural aptitude is eclipsed by academic demands later in their educational career and they haven’t built up the study habits necessary to get them through the next phase of education so they tend to go from aceing everything to dragging themselves through on a C average or just dropping out entirely.
Another factor is that as you progress through school it becomes less structured and more self-directed and open ended which can be extremely difficult and stressful for autistic people.
Last of all, as you progress through your academic career, the demands on you increase in other aspects of your life - you take on more responsibilities, relationships get more complex, you will take on employment etc. and this can mean that the monotropic autistic brain just feels like it’s perpetually overextended which can lead to a decline in performance and academic outcomes.
There’s a whole lot to unpack with PDA and my own hot take on it but in short I think that PDA is too loosely defined and, ironically, it has a tendency to pathologise things like burnout so I’d approach this label with caution and healthy skepticism. Not saying that it doesn’t exist or that it’s “wrong”, just that it can fit a lot of different experiences and it’s important to be judicious with how we use the label.
What I’m getting at here, in a metaphorical sense at least, speaking as a person who has been diagnosed with chronic fatigue who is on the path to getting POTS diagnosed is that we need to approach a diagnostic label very cautiously because if it’s inappropriately applied it can serve to obscure the nature of what you’re dealing with, which is counterproductive.
So this definitely points in the direction of either burnout or undiagnosed ADHD. Or, worse yet, both.
This one is super interesting. If you literally feel like there’s some sort of physiological or psychological “block” that makes you sort of freeze up or buffer, particularly with transitioning between doing things and especially between physical “boundaries” like crossing through doorways then this is a really big indicator of catatonia, which is very common in autism and it’s astoundingly lacking in research and general awareness, even within psychiatry itself.
This sounds a lot like burnout.
I’d be looking at interception here and I’d try some behavioural interventions like having some snack food like trail mix on hand at school constantly while making a habit out of eating a little bit throughout the day or scheduling in mandatory eating breaks in whatever way structures it well for you - it might mean setting a specific alarm on your phone with a label promoting you to eat or it might mean blocking out eating times in a digital calendar or it might mean literally scheduling in what you’re going to eat and when for your daily agenda - find something that “fits” how your brain works and run with it.
I’d also consider scheduling in downtime and alone time to decompress throughout the day. Like library time or spending break time away from others by the pond on campus or putting on your noise cancelling headphones and listening to calming or soothing-stim music. That sort of thing.
Lastly it’s worth examining your “sensory diet”.
I’ve written comments about this elsewhere and I’ll link to a good comment here in the edit once I post this one and dredge up the right one I’ve made prior (I’m currently on a mobile device so it’s not conducive to this stuff.)Edit: Okay I found what I’m looking for here in this comment but at the risk of seeming self-congratulatory, I found a couple of other good ones that are also worth reading here (it’s specific to misophonia but the advice can generally be applied to sensory processing more broadly), and one here (skip to where I start with “that’s a big question” and I start discussing habit stacking/habit advice for neurotypical people vs neurodivergent people, although the rest of the comment may have stuff that is tangentially of interest to what I’ve mentioned here in this comment).
This too points towards burnout but it could also fit within ADHD struggled with task initiation and within catatonia so it’s inconclusive.
Sounds very much like burnout or ADHD. Hard to tell.
Just fyi this is not intended to be diagnostic of ADHD, not that I’m qualified to diagnose anything anyway, but there’s enough in what you’ve said that would make me want to look at whether undiagnosed ADHD is at play here and to go through an actual diagnostic process to either rule it in or to rule it out.
Oh yeah, and there’s a big discussion about whether autistic burnout is in any way different from a form of autistic catatonia (or if parts of autistic burnout actually overlap with autistic catatonia). There’s an entire effortpost which is calling my name on this topic.
Oh boy, that’s a lot to read… I will just type out whatever comes to mind.
So, first off: what is “autistic catatonia”? I have never heard of this or even just “plain catatonia”.
That’s basically where I’m already at regarding possible ADHD. I started the process at looking at counsel or whatever means of support available, so I want to get into that too. If only the municipality will get back to me…
I must say that I took your examples of crossing physical boundaries metaphorically: making that first step towards doing something is often scary to me, because it means I’ve committed to it and have to walk the path with uncertainty. I don’t experience it in the literal sense, except when it’s tied to such a moment, like leaving bed.
Other people here suggested timers and such. My mind worries that I’ll eventually start ignoring them anyway, but I should at least have tried it.
As for my “sensory diet”, I argue I have not enough stimulation, leading me to get lost in my own head in search of something to do.
Lastly, I want to say that I’ve grown up to be scared of negative reactions / criticism, in particular from my mom: she has quite unfiltered reactions and when I complain successfully places the blame on me. I think her + my autistic perfectionism has contributed the most to a fear of trying or not doing things perfectly.
I’m gonna try and return to this comment but in the meantime I just wanted to reply with a couple of quick thoughts:
If that description of literally feeling a sort of block doesn’t fit then that makes catatonia less likely. It doesn’t rule it out entirely but it isn’t a flashing neon sign screaming out “catatonia” either.
Have you come across the concept of maladaptive daydreaming before? I wonder how closely this might fit your experience, or maybe part of it? Just mentioning this because I know it’s gonna a slip my mind if I don’t ask now.
What if the answers are yes to these?
It depends because there are a few either-or questions and I’d need a bit more of a thorough description of what these questions prompt in you and your experience of it all but basically I’m assessing whether it’s burnout, undiagnosed/unmedicated ADHD (it occurs at a rate of about 40% of autistic people), executive dysfunction, problems to do with task breakdowns and establishing routines as well as the autistic need for certainty and predictability, and autistic catatonia.
I can confidently say it’s not burnout, at least. I have indeed considered if I might also have ADHD, but I haven’t looked into that yet. But what is “autistic catatonia”?
There’s no way I know of to word this in a way that doesn’t sound like I’m being arrogant and debatebroing you into some trap but I’m too autistic to know how to avoid coming off that way so I’m going to rely on your autistic traits to interpret this exactly as it’s worded without reading into the (unintentional) implications but:
Can you tell me why that is?
I’d definitely put this high on the list of things worth looking into because it might explain a lot.
I wrote this post about my own internal experience of auDHD because the combination can feel and look qualitatively different to either autism or ADHD independently and there’s very little discussion about what it’s like with the two conditions when they co-occur. Note that this is absolutely not diagnostic in any way so even if that post resonates with you, don’t assume that it’s definitely the same as what’s going on for you but instead use it as a guidepost that either points you towards auDHD or, conversely, points you away from it.
This demands its own post tbh and I’m about to be preoccupied with other demands on me so I’m not going to be able to do it justice but autistic catatonia looks like burnout, shutdowns, and an entire breakdown or collapse of functioning (depending on the severity and nature of the catatonic episode) which is precipitated by being overwhelmed, including on the level of your nervous system or on a sensory level, but it can look very similar to treatment resistant depression or executive dysfunction or chronic fatigue and other similar conditions.
I’ll try to get myself to sit down and bash out an effortpost on autistic catatonia in tjr coming days (also note here that I have huge amounts of sympathy for your situation since it parallels what I’m struggling with lol).
I’ll be honest, I’m not sure it isn’t myself. My reasoning was that I can function normally most of the time and that the “buffering” isn’t that severe.
Your description of catatonia sounds familiar, I’ve definitely experienced it a few times, usually lasting a day or two. I had a severe case almost two years ago halfway in my first year at university: I couldn’t push myself to do things for school anymore and felt doomed to be incapable to manage adult life.