LATE DIAGNOSIS SERIES: Autistic/ADHD Burnout - Why Everything Feels Impossible Now

Today I trace the real arc of neurodivergent burnout after late ADHD or autism diagnosis and why understanding yourself doesn’t refill the tank overnight. I share raw stories, practical accommodations, and a path to recover with boundaries, rest, and self-trust.

• late diagnosis and the burnout crash
• why masking drains energy and identity
• how diagnosis is a starting point, not a cure
• real-world accommodations for home and work
• boundaries that protect capacity and time
• rest as a non-negotiable nervous system need

**ABOUT ME**

I’m Autumn Moran - Licensed Professional Counselor, yoga instructor, life coach, and a neurodivergent, trauma-experienced woman who helps other neurodivergent, trauma-experienced women heal.

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** PREVIOUS EPISODES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE**

Setting Boundaries Episode: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2467345/episodes/17182211-why-it-s-so-hard-to-set-boundaries-and-how-to-start-anyway

Setting Boundaries with Family Episode: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2467345/episodes/18195112-when-your-family-doesn-t-understand-setting-boundaries-around-holidays-special-events-and-expectations-and-traditions

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Transcript

Welcome & Building Community

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Howdy howdy, welcome to the Awaken Heart, a podcast for healing women, a place where your voice matters, your body is sacred, and your journey home to yourself is honored no matter how winding the road. I'm Audin Moran, licensed professional counselor, yoga instructor, life coach, and a neurodivergent trauma-experienced woman who helps other neurodivergent trauma experience women heal. The goal of this podcast is super simple. So women like myself and my clients don't feel alone, don't feel hopeless or helpless. And ultimately, I want to create community because healing together is more powerful than healing alone. It's not a gimmicky community. It is a space where you can honestly not feel alone. So with that in mind, I have a goal, I have a dream, I have a certainty that I'm gonna start group therapy programs. I have four categories. I want to start with somatic healing groups. So this is where we get out of our heads and into our bodies. We'll work with nervous system regulation, movement, and embodied healing practices to help you finally feel safe in your own skin. I have a trauma recovery group. This is for women healing from complex trauma, childhood wounds, or relational trauma. And then if you have specific sexual trauma, I want to host and have a sexual trauma healing group for survivals, survivors of sexual trauma who are ready to reclaim your body, your sexuality, and your sense of safety, safety. It will be deep sacred work done in a community. And then last but not least, the late diagnosis support group for women diagnosed with ADHD or autism in adulthood. We'll process the grief, navigate the identity shift, and figure out how to accommodate yourselves together. So we'll dive more into what I'm covering now. And when I say community or group, there will be five, five people in each group, five women in each group. So it's not going to be a big, overwhelming group. It will be small and intimate and safe. If you prefer to work solo, fill out a consultation form in the link tree for a 15-minute chat. If you're interested in these groups, please also hit the link tree in the show notes and sign up for the group therapy wait list. My vision is to start this spring summer. This is when I feel is the new year. This is the new year when things come alive, awake. And we meet once a week for 60 to 90 minutes with five people max per group. So join the wait list now. I I'm so excited. But whether you work with me one-on-one, you join a group, or you just listen to this podcast, I want you to know that you're not alone. We're building something here, a community of women who get it, who've been through it, and who are healing together. New episodes drop every Wednesday, so be sure to subscribe, hit the thumbs up, like button, whatever it is, so that you never miss one. And I'd kindly ask you that if today's episode resonates with you, I'd be so ever grateful if you'd share it with someone who needs to hear it, or leave me a hard emoji, or click the thumbs up if you're on YouTube. This helps other women find the space and know we are not alone in our healing. I am counterculture. I am doing this by word of mouth, by just people finding me through searches. I am not in the content creating game to make social media stuff. So I'm not on the socials. Harm me, hurt me, I'm not quite sure, but it's where I'm at right now. It's my accommodation. I need to give my all to this podcast to share what I want to share. So if you can help me by spreading the word so I can grow, so we can grow, so we can heal together, please share it, like it, talk about it. All right, that's the commercials. That's all I want. I'll have a little commercial break at the end as well, but that's all there is. So let's get into it. This is our fourth episode of the late diagnosis series, and today is all about burnout. Specifically, why so many late diagnosed people are completely burned out when they get diagnosed, and why getting diagnosed doesn't immediately fix it. It can, in fact, make it worse at first. So, like you probably got diagnosed because you hit a wall, because you were so burned out you couldn't keep going, because the coping strategies that got you through your 20s and 30s finally stopped. They finally stopped working. And maybe you found out in therapy, maybe you did it alongside your kids, maybe in a friend group, someone else, and you're like, I'm just like that person. Oh my god. But it so you get a diagnosis, right? Or you self-diagnose. I'm not saying you have to have a diagnosis, you know yourself better than anyone else. You can take a number of quizzes. A good website is Autism Speaks. I think that's what it's called. It's super cute, it's bubbly. I think the colors are like very blue and purpley, but you can take autism quiz, you can take sensory quizzes, ADHD quizzes. Like it's a really good resource and it's a good company. It's it's a really good website. So if you want to self-diagnose, please do. If you're curious, if you want to, if someone around you is curious, send them that way. All right. So you get this, you get self-diagnosed, and you think, great, now I understand what's wrong. Now I can fix it. Now everything will get better. But what happens, it doesn't right away. It just doesn't. Sometimes it seems to get worse before it gets better. Because now you're realizing, wait a minute, I've been running on empty for decades. I've been overworked, undervalued, trying to fit into a box I was never meant to fit in. I've been unaccommodated my entire life. I've been masking so hard that maybe I don't even know who I am anymore. And that realization, poof, that can fucking be exhausting. And I'm speaking from experience. I was already burned out when I got diagnosed because, like, up into my 30s, everything came easy to me. I could fly through school, I didn't have to study, I could get any job I wanted, I could excel at any job. This is not me floating my boat. This was just like I could make things work, I could make things happen. Like I was a hard worker. And then I was burnt out in my 30s when like there was too many things that I couldn't control, too many things I couldn't perfect. So I got diagnosed. I was completely depleted and understanding why didn't magically give me my energy back. I still had work of recovery, I still had to learn how to accommodate myself. I had to even learn what the fuck that word meant. I still had to unlearn decades of rules that were never meant for me. So today we're talking about neurodivergent burnout after late diagnosis. And a thought just came to my mind: you're like, wait, you're a therapist, you don't know this. Yes and no. I get it, I know it, but before I was in private practice, I was in nonprofit and state-funded hospitals. And in that world, to keep and get funding, there were only a select few of diagnoses that people generally quote unquote had in order to be able to help them or give them services. So it and in grad school, they just don't have an ADHD neurodivergent course. Like the educational system is just now catching up. The medical system is just now catching up to realize that our brains, especially neurodivergents, aren't fully developed until like 30, 31. So like I was ignorant until I wasn't. And then as soon as I found out that this was something bigger than I didn't know, I went all in. And I've learned and I've trained and I've educated and I constantly read. So it's like, yes, I was a therapist, but never in a neurodivergent setting or able to use that knowledge or terminology in the places that I was employed. Oh, fuck the system. Small, small existential crisis there, but I'm gonna digress and come back, right? So I had to learn how to accommodate. I had to learn how to just undo decades of rules that were never meant for me. So that's what I'm talking about today. Like that, what burnout actually is, why it happens, why unmasking can make it worse initially. Like unmasking, I think I said masking, but unmasking can be tough at first. The trap of thinking you should be better now. And most importantly, after all the hard, heavy stuff we're gonna talk about of the realities of your experience. I'm of course gonna give you some goodies, and that is how to actually recover. Not the Instagram wellness version, the real raw version. Okay? All right, let's jump into it. Let's start by defining this clearly because a neurodivergent burnout is different from regular stress or tiredness. Neurodivergent burnout is complete depletion from years of being unaccommodated. You've been living in a world designed for neurotypical brains. Every single day you've had to force focus when your ADHD brain couldn't, suppress your autistic responses, push through sensory overwhelm, hello, lighting, work clothes, work noises, pretend to understand social rules you didn't understand. You've had to work three times as hard to achieve the same results. And you master authentic self to be acceptable, to survive. For years, decades, without accommodations, without understanding why it was so hard. And that's not sustainable. And eventually what happens? You burn out. The accumulation of being unseen, unheard, not considered. It's not just the practical overwhelm, it's the emotional toll of never being seen for who you are, always being told you're too much or not enough, being criticized for things you can't control, being expected to just try harder when you're already fucking running a marathon every day. And it's the emotional toll of being neglected by caregivers who didn't understand what you needed. Decades of that wears you down until there's nothing left. When coping strategies stop working. Isolated to avoid overwhelming social situations. Maybe use substances to manage. Hello, wine. Hello, drinks in the afternoon. Hello, a shit ton of weed at night. Whatever your pill is, whatever it is. Sometimes that's a coping skill. It is a coping skill, it's just a poor coping skill. Maybe you push through on sheer willpower alone. But eventually those strategies fail. Your body says no more and you crash. So what does neurodivergent burnout feel like? It feels like not being able to do basic things you used to be able to do. Maybe it's everything is harder than it should be. You're exhausted even after taking days off of work. You can't mask anymore. You don't have the energy to pretend that you give a shit about things that don't really matter. Sensory sensitivity is worse. Executive function is worse. Organizing, planning, ability to focus and pay attention, having difficulty managing and controlling your emotions and reactions. Your social tolerance may be worse. Maybe you are just dysregulated, always feeling like you need to be doing something. Like rest is not rest. If you're resting, but your mind's saying, I gotta do this, this, this, this, you should be doing this, this. It's just not rest. You're just beating yourself up, you're bullying yourself. Like you have someone there screaming at you while you're trying to rest. How rude. You feel like you're falling apart, maybe. And maybe you can't remember the last time you felt okay. It's not I'm tired. It's uh I have nothing left feeling. And regular burnout is like you work too hard, then you re rest and recover, and then you get back on it and you can rest and recover, and it's okay. You recover during the rest. But neurodivergent burnout, you've been running on fumes for decades while your brain and nervous system have been chronically overwhelmed. Rest helps, but it's not enough. You need fundamental changes in how you live. So let's shift to talk about why burnout and late diagnosis go together so often. Most people don't seek assessment when things are going well. They seek assessments when they can't cope anymore, when the strategies, strategies that got them through stop working. When they're so burned out they can't keep pretending. And the answer was you're neurodivergent. You've been trying to function as a neurotypical and it's been burning you out for years. From childhood to now, you've had no accommodations at school, work, home, no understanding from family, no support for your actual needs. You've been masking constantly. Masking takes enormous energy, suppressing your authentic responses, monitoring yourself constantly, performing normal, that's a full-time job on top of your actual life. And you've been doing it for years, my dears, without realizing how much energy it was costing you. Until you have no energy left. And then you wish you had it back, even that little bit, right? Maybe you've been working to compensate because you struggled more than your peers. You worked harder to keep up, you stayed late, you worked weekends, you pushed through exhaustion. You never rested because rest meant falling behind. You've been running at 150% for decades to achieve what others achieve at 70%, and now you're empty. And I'm not knocking you because I even though you've been doing this for decades, you've been shitting gold. Like the circles you run around people, the holes you dig yourself in to do, perform, fabulous work. But it's not sustainable, and that's not what life is about. You're fabulous going at 100%, 70%, 50%. You don't have to be a million percent every single day, all day to everyone. Maybe you've been trying to fit in a box you were never meant to fit in. I mean, this was my experience. I was overworked, undervalued at work, trying to fit into a box I was never meant to fit in. And I kept trying to make myself fit. I kept thinking if I just try harder, if I just do better, if I show up differently, if I have a better attitude, if I just fix myself, if I just do more, then I'll fit in. I'll fit. It'll all work. I won't get burnt out. I won't have to quit. I won't have to take time off. I won't have to miss days. But I was never meant to fit in that box. The box was the problem, and trying to force myself into it burned me out. And many people get diagnosed during or after a crisis. A breakdown, losing a job, a relationship ending, a mental health crisis, complete physical, emotional collapse. Sis, I'll be real with you here. I was a breakdown, hating my job, wanting my relationship to end in a mental health crisis, really physically and emotionally exhausted. I hit all the markers at once. It was a super shitstorm. And I called for help and I said I need help. And I started to get medicated and I started to get help. And then the more I educated myself, I told my therapist, no, it's my psychiatrist. I was like, I'd like for you to assess me for ADHD because I think I have ADHD. And then as the years went on, it was obvious there was autism in there. She didn't have to tell me. We didn't have to talk about it. It was obvious. So, you know, get help first. Get a professional that is neurodivergent affirming, that is there to help you stabilize, that is there to help you see what being neurodivergent is all about and what accommodations are. If you're not working with me, work with someone else. It is helpful, it is needed, it is necessary. I mean, you've got it's all you. Whether you're seeing a therapist or not, you've got work to do. You've got some educating to do, you've got a lot of self-care and healing to do. Why not have a professional make it a little easier? Maybe be your guide so you're not just swimming in all this self-care and healing. All right. But diagnosis doesn't immediately fix burnout. It did not immediately fix it. I had a lot to undo. I had a lot to unravel. Knowing you have ADHD doesn't magically give you executive function back. Knowing you're autistic doesn't mat magically make sensory overload stop. Knowing you've been unaccommodated doesn't undo decades of depletion. Diagnosis is the starting point, not the finish line. You still have to do the work of recovery. You have to rest a lot. A lot. I'm banging my hand on the table, stomping my feet on the ground, waving bright pink flags in your face as neon as it gets. Rest a lot. You have to unlearn decades of harmful patterns. You have to learn what accommodations you actually need. You have to set boundaries you've never set before. You have to stop masking, which is terrifying. What if they find out who I am? What if no one likes me? Oh my God. And you have to rebuild your life around your actual needs. That takes time, months, years, not days. And you might not have access to support immediately. Even with a diagnosis, medication might not work or might take time to find the right one. Accommodations at work might be denied or hard to get. Your family may not believe you or support. Support you. Listen to the previous episode about telling your family, episode three in the late diagnosis series. I will put it in the show notes if I have room. Last week I had a hard time making room. Maybe the therapy wait lists are long, or the prices, or the insurance getting it put through and approved, and all that jazz. And you might not be able to afford the support depending on your insurance, your copay, your deductible, and if they really value mental health. So you're diagnosed but still struggling, and that is so freaking frustrating. When things immediately don't get better, you feel disappointed. You feel hopeless, more exhausted, and angry. Diagnosis is not a cure, it's information. It's the beginning of understanding yourself and learning how to work with your brain instead of against it. Recovery takes real time, not Instagram recovery time, real slow, messy, two steps forward, one step back kind of deal, kind of time. And that's okay. You're not failing. You're healing. It's gonna look messy when you when you think about healing. I want you to think about one of those drawings where it's all ziggy zag all over the place, loop-de-loop, intercepting and back and forth, all that. That's that's healing. So next up on the knowledge drop of burnout information, unmasking and how it may get worse before it gets better. Masking is burning you out. You can't recover while you're still masking. You have to stop performing this normal and start being yourself. This step is an absolute must. You must do this. But unmasking is exhausting too because you're doing something terrifying. It feels like safety to mask, like survival to mask. And now you have to stop doing the thing that's kept you safe, even if it's also killing you. That's scary. Fear is exhausting. But I want to tell you something about fear. F-E-A-R. False evidence appearing real. Sis, don't let that fear stop you. That is false evidence appearing real. You push through that fear, you do the dang thing, you treat yourself like you deserve it. And when you do it, you show your nervous system that hey, the world doesn't end. I can do these things, I can ask for these things. I survived a hard thing, even if it was hard to do it. I digress. Unmasking is exhausting because you're constantly fighting old programming. Every time you want to mask, you have to consciously choose not to. Every time someone expects you to be normal, be the same old you, say yes and serve, you have to resist. Every time you feel the urge to people please or suppress your needs, you have to override it. That takes a lot of energy. Unmasking it is exhausting because you've experienced more sensory emotional overwhelm. When you're not masking, you're not suppressing your sensory responses, so you feel overwhelmed more intensely. You're not regulating your emotions for others, so you feel your emotions more fully. You're not performing calm, so you experience your actual state. That's more intense. And guess what? That intensity can be exhausting. What about people pushing back? When you stop masking, people notice you're you're different. They might criticize, question, or pressure you to go back to normal. You might lose relationships because of them wanting you to go back into your little box. And you might face discrimination. Dealing with pushback, especially people that are close to you, that have been in your lives for eons, takes energy, mental, physical, and emotional energy. And maybe you don't know who you are yet, because when you stop being the mask version, you have to figure out who you actually are, and that's confusing. Identity work is exhausting. But the paradox, you can't recover while masking. But unmasking initially makes you more tired. So recovery looks like getting worse before you get better, being more exhausted, more overwhelmed, more dysregulated for a while because you're finally letting yourself feel what you've been suppressing. So what helps? Unmask gradually in safe spaces first. Give yourself permission to be quote unquote worse for a while. Don't unmask everywhere all at once. Find people who accept the unmasked you. Therapy, coaching support while you unmask is very helpful. And no, this is temporary because once you unmask sis, oh party all the time, party all the time. It gets easier, freer, better, so much more sassier. I just where you're headed, where you're going, it's good shit. All right. Next topic, just not really flowing into the next topics today. Just look it up in notes. Let's move into talking about what keeps burnout going, even after you know you're neurodivergent. You're still not accommodating yourself. You need to figure out what you actually need. Ask for accommodations, which is hard. Implement them yourself, which takes energy, and fight for them when people say no. Many people get diagnosed and still don't accommodate themselves because they don't know what accommodations they need. Maybe you don't even know what the word means. I'll tell you some accommodations instead of waiting to the end. So, like accommodations for me. I put all incandescent light bulbs in my house. There are no LED. The only LED I have right now is a little bit of Christmas lights that we put up. And then I found the incandescent, and the rest is incandescent. So I don't plug those in all the time, but I don't use LED lights. You'll never catch me using the long tube lights, fluorescent lights. I like it quiet in my house. It stays fairly quiet in my house. Sometimes that's hard because my youngest is he likes his sensory noise. Today I was showering and could hear the bass over my speaker in the shower. Love him. So I accommodate in different ways. I my comfortable clothes. I'm not gonna wear anything that's tight. I'm not gonna wear anything that's restricting or that makes me feel like I'm in a suit. You won't catch me in high heels. It's all gonna be comfortable shoes, it's all gonna be relaxed. Bright lights. If I go to the grocery store and I feel a little sensitive, or if I just feel like it's gonna be busy, I have earbuds in and I just listen to something soothing or I listen to something poppy and I go on and dance and have a good time, like no one else is there. So things like that. Those are accommodations. Maybe you feel guilty for asking for accommodations. Maybe you think you should be able to function like everyone else. That's ingrained ableism. Stop that shit. Maybe you can't afford accommodations. Understandable. Maybe workplace family won't provide them. So you stay unaccommodated, you stay burned out. Maybe you still follow rules that weren't meant for you. Even after diagnosis, you're still operating by boomer rules. Work hard, never rest, earn your worth. Neurotypical rules, just focus, just remember, just be social. American culture rules: productivity equals value, rest equals laziness. Rules for women. Be pretty, be successful, be everything to everyone but yourself. These rules don't work for neurodivergent brains, but you learn them young, and unlearning them takes conscious effort. And maybe you're still pushing through instead of resting. You are burned out. You need rest, real rest, extended rest. I wish I had a song to sing for you about rest right now. But you keep pushing through because you can't afford to rest. Bills and responsibilities, I get it. You feel guilty resting. Hey, we can work through that. You're afraid if you stop, you'll never start again. Eh, maybe for a while, but that's okay. And you think rest is lazy. Get that boomer voice, get that elder voice out of your head, get the American culture voice out of your head. So you never actually recover. This keeps you from recovering. You need to rest. I have a client I am so proud of. She is now having like staying in my pajamas day once a week.

SPEAKER_01 29:37

It is a huge, it was a huge goal.

Patterns That Keep Burnout Alive

SPEAKER_00 29:39

And I'm so proud. I'm so proud of the growth and her ability to learn how to rest and not feel pressured to perform in her own house that she pays for with her own money. So heal, rest. And maybe you're still people pleasing and overextending. Maybe you say yes when you mean no, doing more than you have capacity for, putting others' needs before your own, and of course, not setting boundaries. I have some episodes on boundary setting. I will try to remember to put those in the show notes as well. Because these patterns are wired deep. Diagnosis doesn't automatically give you permission to set boundaries. You have to learn that. You have to learn how to set boundaries and what it's gonna be like when you do set boundaries. Because it's not like, hey, I set a boundary and everybody just goes along. Most of the time, people push back, people don't understand, people are like, no, go back to the old you. Listen to the episodes, it's worth it. Maybe you're still striving for perfection. You know you're neurodivergent, but you still think you should be able to do everything perfectly. Good enough isn't enough. You have to prove you're not lazy. Mistakes mean you're failing. Perfectionism keeps you burned out because you never let yourself do good enough. You always demand more from yourself than you have to give. Mistakes happen. So you can learn and grow and be a wise woman. If you don't have mistakes, you do not learn. I was reading a yoga book and they talk about with fire comes smoke. So the fire is like the action, the fire is what you're doing and helping. But the thing that someone may say something bad about is there's smoke. Like no matter what you do, someone or something may be wrong or have something to say. Do it anyway, because with action, there's always gonna be the smoke. And it's okay. The smoke's okay, it's not that bad.

SPEAKER_01 31:52

I think I grasp it. I don't know. Let me get back to the notes.

SPEAKER_00 31:58

Maybe you're still environments that burn you out. Maybe the job doesn't accommodate you. Maybe the relationship doesn't support you. Maybe the living situation overwhelms you. Maybe you still are in systems that require you to function like you're neurotypical. Maybe you have to perform for mom or dad or family. If your environment hasn't changed, you're still being burned out by it. Okay, happy times. Let's talk about what actually helps you recover from neurodivergent burnout. Not the Instagram's versions, the Reels versions. First, understand please that recovery takes time. Not weeks, not months, years maybe. You did not burn out overnight. You burned out over decades. Recovery is slow and steady, or you can blow your life up all at once and rebuild. But either way, healing happens over time. Be patient with yourself. You're undoing decades of damage. All right, non-negotiables. You cannot recover without accommodations. Period. Period. So your environmental accommodations, like I said earlier, lighting, no LED lights. Use old school incandescent bulbs, soft, warm lighting, dimmer switches, natural light when possible. I love to turn off all my lights in my house and just open my blinds and let the light in. Even on a cloudy day, I prefer the natural light over any lights. Noise canceling headphones or loop earplugs, white noise machines, and quiet spaces. My closet is my quiet space. If I have to come somewhere where I don't want anyone to bother me, I don't want to hear anything going on, I come and sit in my closet. Make a fun space in there. I have put a table in here, I have books in here, I have a good little palette.

SPEAKER_01 33:58

I made me a little cubby.

Real-World Accommodations That Help

Boundaries, Rest, And Monotasking

Letting Go Of Perfectionism

SPEAKER_00 34:03

White noise machines help, and the loop earplugs and noise canceling headphones help too. And what about temperature? Control your environment temperature. We often have temperature regulation issues as neurodivergence. So keep a small heater around, keep a fan around. If you're combating with if you're cohabitating and you can't just keep adjusting the temperature just to accommodate you, keep your accessories around to help. Get warm pants, get thick socks, wool socks. I picked up a pair of wool socks on vacation once. It was alpaca. I think it was alpaca socks. I don't know. There's an alpaca on it, and they're super cute. I don't know what they are, but I wore them in the the freeze we had, the quote unquote freeze. I'm in Corpus Christi, by the way, Texas. So, like when the rest of the world is freezing, we're having cold weather. But I wore those outside and I did not get cold once in my feet. So wool socks are where it's at. Clothing, comfortable clothes only. I mean this: no tags, no tight waistbands, no uncomfortable fabrics. And if we're talking loving ourselves and being healthy, 100% cotton, 80 to 100% cotton. Look at your label sis. Most of the time, we're buying plastic. And I'm talking about high-end expensive brands. You still have to look at the tags. If it's not 100% cotton, don't waste your money. 80 to 100%. Sometimes they get a little bit of plastic in there, but like baby steps. But I'm encouraging you for the sake of your comfort and for the sake of your livelihood, stop wearing plastic. If it's not cotton, what are we doing? I have mixed emotions about bamboo. I encourage you to read on it because of the process. It's not as wholesome as it is touted to be, so that's why I go with cotton. Linen's just an uncomfortable fabric for me, but linen is also a good fabric. Dress for sensory comfort, not appearance. And your workspace, organized or chaotic, whatever works for your brain, visual schedules, minimize distractions or strategic distractions. Time accommodations, extra time for task, please make breaks between activities, please make transition times between events, no back-to-back commitments, buffer time in your schedule as much as you can. Social accommodations, permission to leave social events early, advanced notice for plans, written communication when overwhelmed, time alone to recharge, no pressure to attend everything, work accommodations, flexible schedule, remote work if possible, quiet workspace, clear written instructions, permission to use headphones, and regular breaks. Think Pomodoro technique. Look it up, 20 minutes of work, five-minute break, repeat that three times, then you take a real break. Do that as much as you can based on how much autonomy you have at work. You can prevent future burnout by accommodating the shit out of yourself. Not being afraid to ask for what you need. And also, non-negotiables, boundaries, boundaries with yourself. Say no when you want to say no. Don't overextend yourself. Stop people pleasing, simple, not easy. I get it. Protect your energy like it's precious because it is. And stop saying yes to prove you're capable. Other people will survive. If it's not your children, other people will survive. If you're not their caregiver, other people will survive. Boundaries with others, I can't take on any more right now. I need advanced notice for plans. I need time alone to recharge. I can't handle that today. No is a complete sentence. Real rest, not productive rest. This is hard for neurodivergent people because rest feels like a failure, but rest is a non-negotiable. Not just sleeping, though sleep is important. It means doing nothing, lying down with no agenda, staring at the ceiling, not being productive, not self-improving, not optimizing your time. Rest rules. Rest doesn't have to be earned, never. Rest isn't lazy. Rest needs to be planned. Just like you plan your fun times, you need to make sure you have rest time. Rest is productive. It is how you recover. You can rest even if you didn't do enough today. Rest is a biological need, not a reward. I want you to slow down and monotask. Stop trying to do everything at once. Stop rushing. Studies show that multitasking is worse than monotasking. You get more done focusing on one thing at a time. If you want to be efficient, be efficient. Let go of the old rules. Let go of the boomer rules, the neurotypical rules, the American culture rules, and the rules for women. Instead, I want you to embrace that your brain works differently and that's okay. That rest is necessary, not optional. Good enough is good enough. You don't have to be everything to everyone, and your worth isn't your productivity. Perfectionism keeps you burned out because nothing is ever done, never enough, always needs to be better. Good enough is enough. Truly, the dishes don't need to be perfect. The emails don't have to be perfect. Your work doesn't have to be perfect. Done is better than perfect. I want you to kick ass, but also self-care. You can still work hard, you can still be ambitious, you can still achieve things, but not at the expense of yourself, not by burning out, not by sacrificing your well-being. Kick ass and rest, achieve and set boundaries, work and accommodate yourself. Both. Self-care isn't bubble baths. Though, although those are nice, self-care is saying no. Resting when you're tired, eating foods that work for your body, moving in ways that feel good, taking your meds, going to therapy, and protecting your peace. Self-love is accepting that you're neurodivergent and not trying to fix it. It's being kind to yourself when you struggle. It's recognizing your needs are valid. And it's forgiving yourself for past failures that were actually just being unaccommodated. And believe that you deserve accommodations. You're gonna have to do some inner child healing. The one who was burned out for decades without help, the one who was told to try harder, the whole one who wasn't accommodated. And reparenting means giving yourself what you needed as a child, telling yourself it's not your fault, allowing yourself to struggle without shame, protecting yourself from overwhelm, believing you're worthy of help. Healing from years of being I'm accommodated, this is grief work, this is processing, this is therapy work. You can't skip this. It's part of the recovery. A support group is nice because you can't heal this alone. Community is medicine, other non-negotiables to consider medication for ADHD, routine but flexible, movement, nature, therapy, reducing responsibilities, financial support if possible. Can you work less? Can someone help financially while you recover? FMLA, short-term disability, you've got high anxiety. Take some FMLA if you can afford it, because I think it's like 75% of your income, depending on where you are. In Texas, that's what it is. But you can get help. You can talk to EHR about this. You would just have to have a provider or a doctor sign off on it. And you can get like up to three months off. So once you've started recovering, how do you prevent burnout again? You need to accommodate the shit out of yourself. You need to not be afraid to ask for what you need. You need to notice early warning signs. Are you more irritable than usual? Struggling with basic tasks, sensory sensitivity increasing, social tolerance decreasing, sleep disrupted, physical symptoms. When you notice these, stop, rest, accommodate before you crash. You've got to have regular rest, not just crisis rest, rest days, not just weekend, actual days of rest, downtime between commitments, time alone, low demand days. You got to have boundaries. Keep your boundaries even when you're feeling better. Don't go back to overextending just because you have the energy again. Keep these boundary walls up. And keep accommodations even when functioning is better. Because you're functioning well because of the accommodations. Keep them. Ask yourself regularly: how's my energy level? Do I need more rest? Do I need to adjust anything? So that's neurodivergent burnout. After late diagnosis, why you're burned out when you get diagnosed? Why it doesn't immediately fix it. Recovery is slow. It's frustrating. It requires changes that feel impossible. It means letting go of rules you've lived by your whole life. It means accommodating yourself even when you feel guilty. It means resting even when you feel like you're failing. But on the other side, you get to live as yourself. You get to have energy. You get to stop pushing through and start actually living. You've spent decades burned out, trying to fix it, fit it in a box that you were never meant to fit in. You don't have to keep that. You don't have to keep doing that. I want you to accommodate yourself. You deserve to recover. And you will get there slowly, one accommodation at a time, one boundary at a time, one rest period at a time. I'd love to hear from you. Got a question? Message me. Want to help more women hear this episode and support me by helping grow my podcast? Please comment, thumbs up, like it, leave a review, leave a heart emoji, your favorite heart emoji. This helps me show up in searches, I think. And of course I want to grow, but I'm not. I don't know where I'm going with this. Just I want to help more women. This is my goal. This is my life purpose. And I just want to share my knowledge and share what little bit of healing I can outside of a therapeutic setting. So want to work with me? I'm building that wait list for the spring-summer group therapy programs for women who are ready to heal. We've got somatic healing, trauma recovery, sexual trauma healing, and late diagnosis support group. So if you're interested in joining a group, join the wait list on my link tree. If you want to work with me individually, individual therapy in Texas only, I do trauma informed therapy for neurodivergent women, trauma survivors, and late diagnosed women navigating their healing journey. I do DBT, CPT, and IFS, dialectical behavior therapy, cognitive processing therapy, and IFS, family systems, internal family systems. I swear I'm professional. And if you want a life coaching available anywhere, I add on to your therapy with somatic coaching, and then I have unhealing journey coaching if you're late diagnosed and just want to work with unmasking, stopping the people pleasing, and creating boundaries. We can work together. If that sounds interesting to you, hit the 15-minute consultation button on the link tree and connect with me. If you just want to listen to some good music, I've got playlists on Apple Music and Spotify called Divine Woman Playlist. It is all the healing songs I have found and continue to find that are just uplifting, empowering, and have good messaging. Subscribe to the podcast if you'd like. If you want to join the Awaken Heart Pod Club, you get two bonus episodes monthly, early access to offerings and future content. You can find the link there at the Buy Me a Coffee link. In the next episode, we're talking about accommodations at work and at home, the specific, practical things you can ask for and implement. Until next time, rest, please. Just rest. And I want you to know that you are never too much, you're never too late, and you don't have to figure it out all alone. I am right here with you every freaking Wednesday. May you be happy and free. May our healing ripple outward to bless the world with happiness and freedom. Take the gentlest care of your awakened heart, and I'll see you next week.