#41 - MEW THEORY: The Autistic Flow

Autistic burnout is something many of us experience, but after years of trial and error, I’ve discovered a system that works for me: autistic flow. This episode breaks down how I manage my energy, build strong foundations, and maintain balance in a world that doesn’t always respect our needs.

🔗 Related Links: The full blog post with resources, references, and transcript can be found on my website.

👽 If you want to support the show, consider subscribing or buying me a coffee: Ko-fi.

🪐 Plz subscribe if you CBF because the children need me x

Transcript

0:09

So autistic people, particularly autistic females, are prone to something called 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 to be balanced in order to have any quality of life. But 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. I figured out that the way that I do this is by building upon foundations. So my first foundation is health. This is the very base of it. And the base of this is proper sleep every night. Once I'm on top of this, I build in meditation. Daily stretching, exercise and cooking my own food. Now, when this is in balance, I can build upon it. I can add in work, for example, and this doesn't have to mean a job. It can mean housework, garden work, running errands, things like that. And when this is in balance and in flow, I can add in something else, such as a creative project like this podcast. When this layer is in balance, I can then open up the space to hold appointments and social interactions. When all these layers are built upon each 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 just 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 if I'm going to have the capacity to take that on. For some reason, social interactions tend to take up more spoons or energy than any other activity. Similarly, this is also why it sometimes takes me five weeks before I can have that 15 minute phone call appointment that I really need to have. It's because I just don't have the capacity to add it in. However, if I'm forced into a social interaction or appointment when I'm not in a place where I feel ready to open myself up to it, which is usually through obligation or guilt, This will throw my entire life out of balance. It will send me all the way back to square one and I'll have to rebuild from there. It can take me weeks to rebuild and my mental health suffers just as much as my physical health. For years I was stuck in a place where I was constantly having my foundations knocked down every time I tried to get back up on my feet. I've learnt the hard way that I need to have really strong boundaries. I've learnt that I need to be able to work my own hours and from home, as being expected to be somewhere at a certain time, usually in the morning when I have insomnia, really fucks me up. When I'm in flow, I can get in my own hours a little bit over here and a little bit over there, which I wonder if that's related to my ADD. If I continue to build my foundations and if nothing pulls me out of flow, then the capacity for what I can take on increases and I actually can become extremely productive. I just don't work these rigid nine to five blocks that the rest of the system operates in. However, unfortunately, the rest of the world does not respect this. Setting boundaries with these things is really hard in our culture because our world does not value things like rest and self autonomy. It is only in the last few years that I've actually set up really strong boundaries and my friends have had to learn that me not wanting to catch up with them doesn't mean that I don't like them and prioritizing the flow has caused me to lose out on jobs and other exciting opportunities. But the truth is that I don't really have a choice. Um, this flow has become my priority and my health and happiness have improved dramatically since I have implemented it.. It took me a long time to figure out the autistic flow. Our world offers little guidance to autistic people, which is why I'm putting this information out there that I've learned myself. I would love to hear if other people are the same, or if anyone has developed this theory even further. Likewise, if you're a neurotypical person, or someone who's not autistic or neurodivergent, Please stop putting your expectations on us to be quote unquote normal. Even though we might present well and look normal, we're not. What's going on behind the scenes is this flow's been destroyed every time you set your expectations onto us. But that's okay, you don't know, which is why I'm raising awareness. I actually consider the way that my mind works an extreme advantage that I wouldn't change for anything. It just always comes back to that quote. If you judge a fish's intelligence by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its entire life believing it is stupid. Let's stop trying to climb the tree and instead get back to swimming with autistic flow.