NOTE
This article contains discussions of depression, S thoughts, and past mental-health struggles, as well as personal experiences with autism and burnout. It is not intended as medical advice. Some sections may be emotionally difficult to read, so please take care of yourself and skip them if necessary.
I’m not a psychiatrist or psychologist, so I could be wrong about some of the things I describe. This article is a mixture of information I’ve learned about autism and my own personal experiences and interpretations. I’ll try to provide sources for factual claims, but some parts are simply my personal experience and shouldn’t be treated as medical advice or as a description of autism that applies to everyone.
“Why do you need a label? Because there is comfort in knowing you are a normal zebra, not a strange horse. You can’t find community with other zebras if you don’t know where you belong. It is impossible for a zebra to be happy or healthy spending its life feeling like a failed horse.” Unknown Author.
Hello there!
Who is this article for? I don’t know. Probably for myself, just some kind of venting. I doubt anyone I know will ever find it. Either they don’t care, or they won’t stumble across it on Google. But if they did happen to find it… “Hello from the other side, I guess”, lol. I think I would share a link on my social networks, but those are practically empty anyway. If you somehow managed to end up here, brace yourself and good luck reading my hour-long brain dump. Or just skip everything and jump straight to the burnout section.
What autism actually is
Let’s take a look at Wikipedia and World Health Organization:
Autism, also known as autism spectrum disorder (ASD), is a condition characterized by impairment in social communication and interaction, as well as a need or strong preference for predictability and routine, sensory processing differences, focused interests, or repetitive behaviors. Features of autism are present from early childhood and the condition typically persists throughout life. Autism is classified as a neurodevelopmental disorder, and a diagnosis requires professional assessment that these characteristics cause significant challenges in daily life beyond what is expected given a person’s age and social environment. Because autism is a spectrum disorder, presentations vary and support needs range from minimal assistance to full-time, 24-hour care.
This is a useful general description. Autism is a neurodevelopmental condition associated with differences in how the brain develops and processes information. These differences begin early in development, and they can affect how a person experiences and interprets the world. Common features include differences in social communication and interaction, a preference for predictability and routine, differences in sensory processing, focused or highly specialized interests, and repetitive movements or behaviors. We will discuss some of them later in this article.
Throughout this article, I’ll simply use autism to refer to the condition. Its current diagnostic name is Autism Spectrum Disorder. The word spectrum is particularly important: autism does not look the same in every person, and autistic people can have very different combinations and degrees of characteristics and support needs.
The current concept of autism as a spectrum developed through changes in diagnostic classification. In the DSM-4, which was used before 2013, several related diagnoses were listed separately. These included Classic Autism, Asperger syndrome, and Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS). The 2013 publication of the DSM-5 consolidated these diagnoses under a single diagnosis: Autism Spectrum Disorder. The change was intended in part to provide a more consistent and comprehensive way of describing autism, rather than treating closely related presentations as entirely separate disorders. The World Health Organization later adopted a similar spectrum-based approach in ICD-11.
This also explains why terms such as Asperger syndrome and PDD-NOS are still encountered, particularly in older medical records and literature, even though they are no longer separate diagnoses in the current DSM-5 and ICD-11 classification systems. Terms such as High-Functioning Autism have also been used informally, but they do not represent a separate official diagnosis.
The spectrum does not mean that autism can be represented by a single line ranging from “mild” to “severe”. Autism involves multiple characteristics that can vary independently. For example, someone may have substantial sensory sensitivities but relatively few difficulties with spoken language, while another person may have significant communication difficulties but comparatively little sensory sensitivity.
A simple way to visualize the spectrum is as a circle divided into different sections, with each section representing a particular autistic trait. The position or size of each section can represent how strongly that trait affects a person. For example, one person’s circle might show strong sensory differences but relatively mild communication difficulties, while another person’s circle might look completely different. The result is a unique profile for each person, reflecting the combination and severity of their autistic traits.
Traits
In this section, I’m going to explain common autistic traits and provide examples from my own life. Obviously, I won’t include every single trait or example; instead, I’ll try to focus on the most important ones. My explanations and interpretations may be incorrect. They simply reflect how I currently understand and experience these traits.
Social Struggles
For me, the biggest problem in autism is social struggles.
For most of my life, I knew that something was wrong with the way I interacted with other people, but I couldn’t explain what it was. Unfortunately, I didn’t look for answers. I thought I was shy, introverted, weird, or simply bad at communicating. The strange thing is that I don’t actually dislike people or social interaction. I can enjoy being around other people, talking about things I’m interested in, or simply being part of a group. The problem is that I don’t naturally understand many of the rules that seem obvious to everyone else. Or I’m so anxious that I can’t communicate properly at all.
A normal conversation contains much more information than just the words being spoken. You need to understand the tone of voice, facial expressions, body language, the situation, what the other person probably means, what they expect you to say, and whether something is supposed to be taken literally or not. You also need to replicate all these features in order to appear “normal”. For many people, much of this information seems to be processed with relatively little conscious effort. For me, it often requires a lot of effort. Because of masking (which I’ll discuss in the next sections), I can look “normal”, but sometimes the mask breaks, and I behave weird.
Some autistic people may have difficulty recognizing implicit context, indirect requests, sarcasm, hints, or meanings that depend heavily on tone and shared assumptions. They may interpret language closer to its literal or explicitly stated meaning. The best example here, and one that always makes me cringe, is a request to go out. Once, I was talking to a girl on the phone, and she asked me to go out. But in my native language, you could interpret her words in two different ways. The first, implied meaning is that she was asking me on a date. The second, literal meaning is that she wanted to go for a walk ALONE. And my autistic brain understood the phrase in the literal sense. So, it was the perfect conversation killer because it immediately triggered anxiety and a desperate search for a new topic to talk about. I’m glad she understood that I either didn’t get what she meant or was too shy to ask, and that she eventually asked me directly. I’m also extremely glad that it happened. Even though we couldn’t build a relationship, it ended up looking more like a situationship. It was the best attempt I’ve ever made, and at least it led to some results.
Same with jokes. In some situations, I interpreted normal sentences as jokes. But even worse, sometimes I made inappropriate jokes that caused a cringe situation or even got me called a “pervert”. I wasn’t capable of “reading the room” and didn’t understand that a joke might be okay around boys or close friends, but it could be a bad idea to say it directly to a girl’s face when you barely know her.
Another topic is eye contact. It is always considered a “distinctive feature” of autism. Some autistic people fail to do it properly. Autistic people may have atypical eye-contact patterns, including reduced eye contact, avoiding it because it is uncomfortable, looking excessively, or consciously forcing it. For “normal” people, there is a perfect amount of time to look at someone in a particular situation. A little bit less, and you are lying, trying to avoid the conversation, or something else. A little bit more, and you are a creep. I’m not 100% sure whether I try to avoid eye contact. It would be nice to get someone’s opinion. But I can definitely confirm that sometimes I stare at someone with a strange look.
The same thing happened with facial expressions and emotions. I didn’t always know how to read other people’s emotions or what expression I was supposed to have in a particular situation. One example is from my childhood, when I was five or six years old and playing with friends. An old man had died, and his body was being carried out of a nearby house in a coffin. I knew it was a sad moment, but for some reason, I was smiling. I only realized it when someone asked me why I was doing that. Another example happened at work. Once, I said something about the weather, like how I had dressed inappropriately for it. But I said it with so much excitement, as if it were the best day of my life. I only understood later that day, when I was analyzing my interactions and noticed that someone had reacted strangely to my statement. But in the moment, it seemed completely normal to me.
Sometimes I was misunderstood because of these mistakes in expressions and emotions. Around 2011, I started changing everything around me to English, my YouTube subscriptions, movies, shows, and books, to learn the language better. As practice, I decided to read the original Harry Potter books in English. Later, I mentioned to some girls in the group that I was reading the books in English. They reacted really strangely, as if I were bragging about it, but it was just a dry statement, a way to share information and keep the conversation going.
We slowly came up to the topic of social rules. Unfortunately, it is not a book that you can read to understand how to behave in each and every situation. Rather, it is something built into “normal” brains that autistic people lack. I’ve partially described it in the example with inappropriate jokes, but here I just want to pay attention to conversations. Sometimes, because I misunderstand these rules, I can come across as rude. At school, we were required to undergo a medical examination during which the doctors would draw our blood for testing. One of my classmates almost fainted. Later, we started talking about it, and for some reason, I asked a question about his fainting. I wasn’t trying to be rude, nor was I trying to humiliate him with something like, “Haha, you’re so bad, you almost fainted”. I was genuinely curious about why it happened, what he felt, and things like that. But everyone in the group interpreted my question as an attempt to humiliate him and became angry with me.
My voice was another thing I didn’t understand. I’ve been told that I sometimes speak in a monotone or that I sound “boring”, whatever it means. I don’t necessarily feel emotionless when this happens. The emotion is there. It just doesn’t always come through in my voice in the way other people expect.
I think a related problem is how much I analyze my own behavior after social interactions. If something feels even slightly strange, I can replay the entire conversation in my head, trying to figure out what I did wrong. What did I say? How did I say it? What was the other person actually trying to communicate? What did their reaction mean? Was my facial expression strange? Did I sound rude, bored, too excited, or something else? Sometimes I can find an explanation, but sometimes I just end up with more questions.
This also explains why I remember some completely ordinary conversations for years. They weren’t necessarily important, but something about them felt ambiguous, and my brain never found a satisfactory explanation (until the diagnosis). I can still remember a particular sentence, the other person’s reaction, and several possible interpretations of what happened. Sometimes I eventually understand it years later. Sometimes I still have no idea.
The funny part is that I can be very good at analyzing other things. Give me a technical problem, and I can spend hours breaking it down, or immediately spot patterns and find the underlying cause. Social interactions are much harder because there is no specification, no compiler error, and usually no objectively correct answer. I’m trying to reverse-engineer a system whose rules I don’t fully understand, using incomplete information and feedback that may itself be ambiguous.
This constant self-analysis is probably another reason social interaction became so exhausting. I wasn’t just having a conversation. At least sometimes, I was simultaneously having the conversation, monitoring myself, trying to understand the other person, checking whether my behavior was appropriate, and storing the interaction for later analysis. That’s a lot of things to process at the same time.
Well, I think the last important thing I need to mention in this section is social anxiety. Here is a short description from Wikipedia.
Social anxiety is an anxiety disorder characterized by high levels of anxiety and self-consciousness in social situations, resulting in significant distress and an impaired ability to function in daily life.
I was always anxious about social interactions, especially if it wasn’t a knowledge-based conversation. It was hard to find friends; usually, they found me. It was extremely hard to speak with girls, especially those I liked. It was hard because I tried to maintain a mask (see the Masking section), read emotions, show emotions, and think about the topic at the same time. Usually, it resulted in a miserable failure. And over time, each failure contributed to a buildup of social anxiety. I feel like in my childhood, I was just shy, while in adulthood, I became extremely anxious about any kind of interaction because of my fear of failure. It wasn’t always the case, though. Some interactions were okay-ish.
Also, I don’t know why, but sometimes I wasn’t anxious at all. At university, I was assigned to a “special” group in PE class because of potential heart problems. One of the exercises was to walk around instead of running. One day, a girl asked me a question, and it started a whole conversation that lasted almost the entire class. I didn’t feel anxious at all. I don’t remember being weird or anything. I’d say it was a pretty decent interaction. But here’s the thing: I only realized this when I went to the next class. I don’t know why this interaction didn’t trigger anxiety. Probably because I just wasn’t into her, so I didn’t feel any pressure.
And back to conversations and topics themselves. Throughout my life, I’ve been told multiple times that there’s nothing to talk to me about. For instance, years after I graduated from school, we had a “reunion” party with old classmates. One of them asked me to talk about something, some story or news, because we hadn’t seen each other in years. But I couldn’t produce anything at all.
It doesn’t mean I didn’t have topics to discuss or had no interests. It means I just don’t know how to express myself or keep a conversation going. Even when I’m genuinely interested in a topic and know a lot about it, whether it’s games, TV shows, anime, or something else. I can still struggle to actually talk about it with another person.
The same thing happens in everyday situations. Someone might try to talk to me at a meeting, a delivery person might make a small comment and try to start a conversation, or someone might message me online and try to chat with me. In all of these situations, I often don’t know how to respond beyond a few words. It’s not that I don’t want to talk or have nothing to say. I just have trouble figuring out what to say, how to continue the conversation, or how to turn my thoughts into something I can actually communicate. This has happened many times throughout my life.
I think it is partially related to my social anxiety. I tried to start a conversation about my interests multiple times when I was a kid, but it always resulted in zero interest from the other side or even worse reactions, making me feel like some kind of weirdo. So later in my life, probably because of masking, I learned to be a “silent, shy” guy who can barely maintain a conversation at best.
Now, at 32 years old, after 10-12 years of burnout and shutdown. I can’t interact at all. Any interaction triggers anxiety, sometimes a pretty big one. This summer, I participated in some protests. I wanted to ask a question of one of the members of the protest. I think I tried to build up the courage to ask a question for 5 or 10 minutes. Or another situation: I usually plan everything. But when I needed to buy some paracetamol, I didn’t do it. What could go wrong, right? Yeah, paracetamol is sold in different dosages. I wasn’t prepared for this question, even though I knew the right answer. It triggered anxiety and a pretty weird reaction and conversation at a drugstore. My brain just froze and refused to process any information. And it’s not the first time that has happened. It genuinely looks like I’ve “lost” that skill, or whatever was present before.
Looking back, this is one of the biggest reasons the autism explanation makes so much sense to me. “I’m introverted” explained why I might want some time alone. “I’m socially anxious” explained why some interactions made me nervous. “I’m weird” explained nothing. Autism connected these things into a much bigger picture. I don’t think autism explains every awkward interaction I’ve ever had. Some things are probably just personality, lack of experience, or ordinary human mistakes. But it explains why social interaction has consistently required so much conscious effort from me.
Stimming
Stimming, or self-stimulatory behavior, is repetitive movements or actions that a person may use to regulate their sensory or emotional state, or to feel enjoyment.
The stimming was always present in my life. I just didn’t know what it was. As a kid, I had relatively long and a little bit curly hair. So, I played a lot with my hair, wrapping my curls around my finger. Then other kids asked me why I was doing it. I felt like it was something inappropriate and stopped. Also, I picked and bit my nails.
In school, I started to rock back and forth on my chair, fidget and crack my fingers, or just do simple small swinging of my body back and forth.
But the biggest and best stimming was pacing. Around ages 8-12, I developed a new way of stimming when I was alone. I would pace around the room and talk to myself. I didn’t have an “imaginary” friend. I clearly understood that I was talking to myself. It was more like thinking out loud, or some kind of version of inner monologue. I knew it was not “normal”, but it helped me process things a lot.
Special Interests
Special interests are topics or activities that an autistic person may be deeply interested in and focused on. They might look like hobbies, but usually they are more intense. They can provide enjoyment, comfort, and motivation. Not every autistic person has obvious special interests, and the interests themselves can vary widely.
So, every autistic person can have a special interest, and it can be anything. There is some kind of “local” meme in the autistic community about special interests and trains. The stereotype is that autistic people are unusually interested in trains. Some autistic people do indeed develop very deep interests in trains, for example, knowing train models, routes, schedules, or technical details extremely well. But it doesn’t mean every autistic person is interested in trains.
Initially, I struggled to identify my “special” interest. On my assessment, I suggested that it could be programming, computers, or anything technology-related, but I felt like an impostor. It sounded strange. Yes, programming provided me enjoyment and comfort, even when I did it for myself. I hadn’t tried to create a huge project or earn money from it. I just solved problems because I liked doing so, even though the problems were already solved.
Later, I think I found a better explanation for my “special” interest. It is not just software engineering and IT but rather anything related to doing it yourself, learning new skills, and applying them in practice. As a kid, I really liked to play with construction sets. Initially, it was an old Soviet-style construction set with metal parts. Later, it was LEGO. As a kid, I disassembled a lot of stuff, trying to understand how it worked and imagining I’d build something out of it. Of course, I wasn’t able to do anything and, in fact, just broke a lot of stuff and was scolded a lot for it. As a teen, I got interested in computers and programming. So, later I went to college and university for software engineering. I worked for several years in this field. As an adult, I got interested in cooking, and currently it is my only interest.
Fun fact: Before I decided to go to college to study software engineering, my mom casually suggested that I pursue something related to cooking. I don’t think choosing software engineering was a mistake. Yes, I struggled with burnout, social communication, and my overall quirkiness. If I had known that I was autistic, I might have been able to manage those things better. But I still don’t think cooking would have been the right choice, even though, right now, I get a lot of fun and peace from it.
Monotropism
Monotropism is a theory used to explain differences in how attention is distributed and focused in autistic people. The idea is that autistic people tend to have a stronger tendency for attention to concentrate on a smaller number of interests at a time, rather than being spread broadly across many things. They could become deeply absorbed in a new hobby, have issues with switching from or stopping the current activity, or have difficulties processing multiple sources of information. But it is also worth mentioning that monotropism doesn’t mean a person is incapable of switching to other things, can’t complete required tasks, or fails deadlines.
There is even a theory that tries to explain everything in autism through monotropism; see the video. For example, social struggles are explained in the way that our brain is focused on the conversation (content, words), and it doesn’t have the capacity to read emotions, express appropriate emotions, understand the context or implied meanings, etc. Quite an interesting video; I suggest watching it. You can also find other videos about autism on that channel.
But personally, I treat it as a way our brain manages attention. Because I can clearly see when it happens in me. When I find something interesting, for example, a new movie, TV show, anime, book, etc., I shift my entire attention to it and try to spend as much time as possible with it. Sometimes I even go to sleep several hours later, just because I was so interested in it.
Masking
Masking in autism is when an autistic person consciously or unconsciously hides, suppresses, or changes their natural behaviors in order to appear “normal” and meet social expectations. They might force themselves to make eye contact even when it’s uncomfortable, hide their stimming, pretend to understand social situations when they’re actually confused, and more.
Also, we need to acknowledge that masking doesn’t happen for no reason. It’s not because a person is trying to deceive someone or because they don’t have an opinion. Rather, it can be a reaction to signals received from others. When a person tries to behave as they really want to, but is treated as a weirdo, they may start to hide those traits. This is especially true when the person doesn’t know they are autistic or what autism is.
The important part here is that masking is not perfect. Some people can do it better than others, while some struggle more with it. But everyone makes mistakes here and there. Usually, the person understands that they’ve made a mistake, even if they don’t realize it immediately. These failures and the mismatch between their natural behavior and the behavior they feel compelled to perform can contribute to burnout, which we will discuss in the next section.
Throughout my life, I’ve been told multiple times that I don’t have opinions of my own or that I copy other people’s behavior. Especially, it was easy to see when my masking failed. When it came to knowledge-based topics, I had strong opinions and would easily express my thoughts and preferences. But when it came to social topics, where there was no correct answer and I didn’t know the general opinion, I would become extremely anxious and might answer randomly or fail to answer at all.
So, I’ve spent my entire life trying to play the “role” of a “normal” human being, hiding and suppressing the “real” me.
Burnout, Meltdown and Shutdown
This is the second most important autistic trait, at least for me. The fucking trio.
Burnout is a state of exhaustion and reduced functioning, usually occurring after prolonged stress, masking, sensory or social demands, or trying to cope beyond one’s capacity. It can cause extreme physical or mental exhaustion; difficulty speaking, thinking, planning, or carrying out everyday tasks; losing skills that are normally manageable; an increased need for loneliness and predictable routines; and feeling emotionally flat, irritable, anxious, or overwhelmed. Burnout can last for days, weeks, or sometimes much longer. Burnout as experienced by autistic people: A systematic review
A meltdown occurs when an individual’s nervous system becomes overwhelmed, causing a temporary loss of control over emotions or behavior. Unlike tantrums, meltdowns are uncontrollable reactions to intense sensory, emotional, social, or cognitive overload. They might involve crying, shouting, screaming, or becoming extremely distressed. Sometimes, a person may cover their ears or otherwise try to escape stimulation, say things they do not mean, or have difficulty communicating. The person’s ability to regulate themselves and process information is temporarily overwhelmed. Trying to reason, argue, punish, or demand explanations in the middle of a meltdown is usually ineffective.
A shutdown is more of an inward response to overwhelm. Instead of expressing the overload outwardly, the person may become extremely quiet or disconnected. They may stop talking or have difficulty speaking, have trouble making decisions or processing what others say, need to be alone, and have very little capacity for interaction. A person experiencing a shutdown is not necessarily ignoring everyone around them or refusing to cooperate. They may genuinely be unable to communicate or respond normally at that moment.
I think I’ve experienced burnout several times throughout my life. There was a repeating pattern: I would participate a lot in social interactions, my mental state would deteriorate, I would do something stupid, isolate myself, recover, and repeat the cycle. But here, I want to describe the biggest and most important one.
After I graduated from college, I decided to move to another city to continue my studies at university. I moved into a dorm with my “friends”. But here’s the thing: because we were from the same city, joined the same faculty, and lived in the same room, we did everything together. We went to university together. We were in classes together. We went back to the dorm together. We prepared and ate food together. We spent our free time together. Initially, everything was fine.
I was feeling okay-ish and behaving more or less normally for the first four months. Yeah, I felt tired, but I thought it was related to my poor sleep schedule. I’ve always had problems with sleeping. I couldn’t just put my head on the pillow and turn off my brain. Usually, it took me 30-60 minutes to fall asleep. Also, it was pretty easy to wake me up. Because of this, I was usually one of the last people to fall asleep, but I still had to wake up at the same time as everyone else. Sometimes, I could sleep for only 4-5 hours a day.
A lot of influencers describe burnout in terms of social batteries - a common metaphor. Our brain has a certain mental capacity for socializing and functioning properly. When these “batteries” are drained, the brain goes into a burnout state, and we need to “recharge” them.
After four months, my “batteries” were drained to zero, and it was only a matter of time before my meltdown happened. It was late December. We had finished the semester and were preparing to go back home (to our hometown). We didn’t want to buy or prepare anything complicated, so we decided to get some cheap instant noodles. We boiled the water, and I poured it into the cups. But for some unknown reason, I decided to put a lot of water into my “friend’s” cup. Instead of putting in a normal amount, I filled it almost to the edge. Maybe my brain thought it would be funny. I can’t explain it. I made a mistake. I could have admitted it, and everything would have been fine. But no, my brain wasn’t capable of normal reasoning anymore and just went into meltdown. I became really angry and aggressive. There was a lot of arguing and shouting. I tried to defend my point, even though the “rational” part of my brain knew I was wrong. Later, one guy asked, “Why did you do that?” and I answered, “I don’t know”. Not because I didn’t want to talk about it, but because I genuinely didn’t know why, and it scared me. The same thing happened later on the train. I just said “fuck you” to someone for no reason when he greeted me.
There was an idea to meet with our old college teachers. We had a group chat on a social network where we usually discussed things like that. But I completely ignored it. Later, I came up with an excuse that I hadn’t seen the messages and notifications. Everyone knew I was lying and just “accepted” it. That’s when the shutdown and executive dysfunction started. It was extremely hard to force myself to do anything unless it was really necessary or part of a predictable routine.
I started to isolate myself. I skipped the meetup with my old teachers. Later, I refused to go to classes and decided to walk alone through the dark evening city (We were studying from the middle of the day until the evening during the second semester of university). It was so good. I wonder why the fuck I didn’t do it on a regular basis. It probably would have helped with my burnout. I did something similar when I was at school, but I guess I just forgot about it. Later, I went to the movie theater alone to watch Star Wars: Episode VII. The funny part is that I bought a ticket for myself without even thinking about asking anyone else whether they wanted to go. I only realized it when they asked me whether I wanted to go. The idea of going together hadn’t even crossed my mind.
Executive dysfunction is a term used to describe difficulties with the mental skills that help you plan, organize, start tasks, switch between activities, manage time, control impulses, and hold information in mind. It doesn’t mean that someone lacks intelligence or motivation. Instead, it’s like the brain’s “management system” has trouble coordinating tasks. From the outside, executive dysfunction can look like simple laziness or indifference, but in reality, it’s very different. A lazy person is genuinely choosing not to do something, even though they understand the consequences. A person experiencing executive dysfunction, however, may genuinely want to do something but find that their brain is unable to initiate the action.
Next in our plan, while we were home, was to go to a party with some old classmates. Initially, I refused to go there as well. Somehow, I was able to force myself to go, which I later really regretted. It was fun while you were drunk, but afterwards, it threw you into a depression. One guy even said something like, “See, it was fun and you didn’t want to go”, to which I answered, “It was a huge mistake”. I couldn’t explain why, but somehow, subconsciously, I understood that I can’t function normally and that my brain is screaming, “I need a break”. But, well, as you probably already get or will understand later, I ignored a lot of things.
From this moment on, I was kinda fucked. After a week or so, we returned to our dorm and university routine. So, I went back to the environment that had caused my burnout while I was still in a burnout/shutdown state. Each day, my mental state deteriorated, masking started to become less effective, I started to behave really strangely, and my executive dysfunction continued to grow. I was capable of maintaining a daily routine: classes, doing something to pass the time, repeat. To pass the time, I played a lot of online games, not because I really wanted to. But rather as a coping mechanism. I could just distract myself from reality and relax my brain a little bit. Usually, I can’t play a single game for more than several months. Like in school, I was the guy who couldn’t stick to a single game and play it with “friends”. I was the one who constantly jumped between different games. I’d get bored, and because of monotropism, when I found something new, I switched to it. But not this time.
But here, I was stuck in a loop, living in a comatose state: classes, home, something to pass the time, and repeat. Later, when I found a job, the routine changed from classes to work. It wasn’t a life, just an existence.
I was living in that state for 1.5 years (so, in total, it was 2 years in dorms). Two years of constant burnout, poor mental health, overall tiredness, and enormous executive dysfunction. Later, I moved to a rented apartment, and it helped a little bit, but not that much. Yes, instead of coping through online games, I started doing things I was actually interested in. It wasn’t much, but still: pet projects, movies, shows, anime, single-player games, etc. But unfortunately, my routine didn’t change. It was still pretty much the same loop. I still couldn’t do the things I was required to do, and because of this, I was dropped from university. My brain just refused to do anything related to it. I couldn’t even force myself to brush my teeth. My brain was like, “Is it critical for survival? No? Then fuck it.” It required a lot of mental effort just to do it every day.
I lived in this state for several years. I switched from one job to another. Each time, I worked for less and less time at each place. I felt exhausted by it, so I decided to take a break and stopped looking for a new job. It was a sort of sabbatical that lasted a year and a half. Yes, it helped me return to an okay-ish state. At least I could force myself to do basic things, like fix my teeth and get a haircut, and my overall mood was much better. I’m not sure whether my burnout ended or if it was just a minor improvement; personally, I think it was the latter. I found a new job, but after only one year, I felt tired and even bored. After another year of working, I returned to where I started, completely burned out, and left the place.
I think I was in burnout for more than 10 years. Yes, it wasn’t always at its peak; it had its ups and downs. Some periods were extremely bad, some somewhat better, and some almost close to normal after a break. I use the term “burnout” here because it is the term that best fits my experience. I can’t know retrospectively how much of those years was autistic burnout, depression, anxiety, sleep problems, or some combination of them.
Now, I’ve been unemployed for almost two years. I truly believe I “healed” from burnout only after taking such a huge break and realizing that I’m autistic.
Routines and Predictability
In autism, routines and predictability are often ways of creating a sense of safety, control, and understanding in a world that can otherwise feel overwhelming or unpredictable.
A routine is doing things in a familiar, expected way or order. For example, getting dressed, eating breakfast, and leaving for school in the same order each morning and becoming upset when a familiar routine suddenly changes. Routines can reduce the mental effort involved in figuring out “What happens next?”.
Predictability means knowing what is going to happen and what is expected. For example, knowing the schedule ahead of time; having clear, specific instructions; knowing who will be there and what will happen. Unexpected changes, such as a cancelled activity, a different route to school, or a substitute teacher, can sometimes cause significant distress.
The best example of this behavior from my life happened when a friend invited me to his birthday party. He lived in the countryside, so I needed to figure out a route and travel for a little while. Everything was fine, I had an exact plan for where I needed to go and how to get there. But then, suddenly, the plan changed. I don’t remember exactly what changed, but I clearly remember how I felt about it. I went into panic mode, and instead of updating my plan, I tried to find a good excuse to skip the party altogether. Thankfully, I somehow forced myself to go, and everything went smoothly. Later, I analyzed the situation and felt so stupid.
Sensory Sensitivity, Cognitive Overload
Sensory sensitivity means that the brain may process information from the senses (sound, touch, light, smell, taste, etc.) differently or more intensely than other people do. For an autistic person, noise may genuinely feel painful or extremely intense. Sensory sensitivity is common in autism, but autistic people can have very different sensory profiles.
Cognitive overload happens when your brain is receiving or processing more information, demands, or decisions than it can comfortably handle at that moment. For example, a person may be in a noisy classroom where several people are talking, the lights are bright, and they have to understand instructions, answer questions, and switch between tasks. Even if each thing is manageable on its own, the combination can exceed their processing capacity.
I thought I didn’t have any sensory sensitivity or anything like that before my diagnosis and for a couple of days afterward. I wasn’t able to find any examples of it. I had no reaction to light, sound, or touch, nothing. The only thing I could recall was a random strange feeling in my toes. It could appear out of nowhere and disappear in the same way. It was easy to muffle the feeling by touching something with my toes or covering them with a blanket.
Later, I found some examples of auditory processing differences. It isn’t as severe for me as it is for some other people. I participated in some protests where the crowd was shouting different chants. But because the crowd was pretty huge, different parts of the crowd would shout out of sync. For example, the front would start a chant a little earlier than the back. My brain would pick up both versions, and I couldn’t concentrate on a single one, even when I was close to a specific group and the out-of-sync groups were barely audible. I couldn’t shout along either. I would always get confused.
Here is an example of a difference in visual processing. Usually, I pay attention to everything in my field of view, especially if something is moving. It draws my attention for a short period of time, and then I return to the main object in my view. I need significant mental effort to stay still and focus on a single place. It is also connected to my preference for predictability. I look around a lot, whether I’m in class or on the street. This way, I pay attention to everything around me to feel “safer” or something.
The cognitive overload was easier to spot. Somewhere around the time of my diagnosis, I started playing a new video game: DOOM - The Dark Ages. It has a section where you need to fly a dragon and follow a flying enemy. One day, I opened a Twitch stream in the background, started the game, and concentrated on gameplay. I had to pay attention to a voice from the stream, the sounds from the game, and the visuals from the game, tracking the enemy, while also making decisions and controlling the dragon. All this information was too much for my brain. I instantly felt tired. I had a strange feeling in my brain, almost like it hurt, although the brain itself doesn’t have pain receptors. It’s hard to explain the feeling. After 10-15 seconds, I just dropped the controller, stood up from the computer, and rested for the next several minutes. While I was standing, I felt a strange “phantom” pain in my fingers and toes, even though I hadn’t done anything to them.
My path to diagnosis
Well, “path” is probably not the best word here because it felt more like a “revelation”. One day, I had a huge depression. For the first time in my life, it affected my sleep. I have sleep problems even in a “normal” mood: hard to fall asleep and easy to wake up. But then I was able to sleep 3-4 hours per day at best. Sometimes I didn’t sleep at all. The funny note: this depression was triggered by my brain gaslighting itself. I was really confused about which memories were real and which weren’t. I thought I was going insane.
Then suddenly, it just clicked. I started to ask the direct question: “Am I autistic?”. And later, I started to google a lot about autism, watch videos, and ask clarification questions to LLMs (and no, I didn’t diagnose myself with ASD via an LLM, it just a helping tool). I completed all screening tests, and all of them screamed that there was a high chance of autism and advised me to visit a doctor. And in about 2 weeks of research, I was 100% sure I have autism. Yes, I know it is self-diagnosis but the screening tests gave me enough reason to seek a professional assessment.
The diagnosis process is not perfect even in developed Western countries. I’ve read a lot of cases where a doctor dismissed autism for some stupid reason, like you can maintain eye contact or something. But because I’m in Ukraine, I didn’t feel I even wanted to try the official (government clinic) way to diagnose autism. And to be honest, I didn’t care about the official part of it. I don’t need a piece of paper that says you are autistic. I just wanted a professional to confirm that I have autism.
I scheduled an appointment for 24.07.2026, and after two more weeks of waiting, I received my confirmation. So, I was diagnosed as autistic when I was 32 years old.
I think this sudden realisation of being autistic wasn’t random. I think it was related to my burnout. After 10 years of burnout, I slowly started to return to a normal state and life, and started to care about myself (how I feel, how I look, what I want, etc.). It really felt like I just skipped 10+ years of my life.
Wasted chances to understand autism
I had two chances in my life to understand that I’m autistic, and of course I ignored them.
The first one was somewhere in December 2013 (I was 19 years old, almost 20). I was in my last year of college. After classes, we were walking home with a classmate. She offered to walk her home, and we ended up walking home together several times. At some point, we started to discuss our childhood, and she said she started to speak earlier than other kids. Initially, parents and doctors thought she could be autistic (I’m not sure that she is truly autistic or not). But an important part here is that I understood autism differently (I thought of autism as some combination of classic autism plus Down syndrome). I thought I misunderstood something, because she definitely didn’t look autistic, according to my understanding. So I asked a casual question: “What is autism?” I don’t know whether it was my autism or she was truly mad at me, but she looked really angry. And instead of explaining what autism is, she suggested I read about it myself later. Which I definitely didn’t do. Probably because my brain was occupied with completely different thoughts. I just realized that I might have misinterpreted the emotion. It was a long time ago, but maybe she wasn’t angry - just confused. Like she spotted some autistic traits in me and thought, I know what autism is. But then why did she refuse to explain what autism was herself? I don’t know. Maybe I’m just imagining things, but the more I think about it, the more it seems true. Anyway, if that’s what happened, then it makes the situation a lot funnier.
The second one. Roughly 2.5 years later (at 22 years old). After a birthday party at the dorms, a classmate of mine, someone we weren’t really close to and hadn’t talked to at all, randomly asked me a question: “Are you autistic?” or something similar. Because I was drunk, and because of my autism, I misinterpreted his question. I thought he was joking or even trying to insult me (as in, “Are you stupid or something?”). This happened right after a huge burnout (see previous sections), so my overall mental state probably contributed to my indifference and my lack of understanding toward myself. However, the important part here is that I completely missed my second opportunity.
Would it change anything? Maybe an earlier diagnosis would have changed my life. Maybe it wouldn’t have. I’ll never know. At least, it would have been better than getting the diagnosis at 32. I could still have tried to do something about it. I feel like the second opportunity was also kind of late, because I was already burned out and had given up on my life. The only way I could have read about autism or gone to a doctor was if someone had forced me to do it. I wasn’t in a state where I could do it myself. I simply didn’t care. And even if I had, there was still executive dysfunction in place.
The first one was a good chance, as I had roughly 6 to 8 months to understand the “new” me and adapt to it. I could go to therapy, unmask, deal with social anxiety and burnout, and, if needed, change my plans entirely. It didn’t mean I would be successful, but at least I could try.
Yeah, I don’t blame anyone here. I had a lot of changes to understand autism. I described two major opportunities. But there were smaller ones. Even earlier, for example, once in 2011-2012, at the party, we discussed personality traits. In particular, someone suggested I’m an introvert. While I kind of agreed, I admitted that there is a small difference between the definition of introversion and myself. Usually, introverts can socialize normally, but may find a lot of social interactions tiring and prefer quieter settings or time alone afterward. While I can’t socialize normally (social rules, cues, context, etc), but want to and don’t mind being in the group. By itself, it is not proof that I’m autistic, but I could dig deeper and find why I felt this way.
But the perfect one never existed. I’m pretty sure I was a “strange” kid, unfortunately I don’t have a lot of memories of my childhood. So, I can’t definitely confirm it or find good examples. There were some signs, but they weren’t enough to confirm it. Primarily because I was too young to remember it, but also because I didn’t recognize it as strange behavior. I didn’t know any better at that point. I can find a lot of examples from my teenage and adult years, mainly because I recognized them as strange or because someone pointed them out to me. My parent had a chance to see my quirkiness and sent me to a doctor when I was a kid or a teen, instead of just ignoring it. So, I could understand myself and deal with it in yearly stages of my life.
Taking into account their “best upbringing practices” by beating the shit out of me every time I did something wrong. You don’t need to be the smartest person in the world to understand what corporal punishment would do. Let’s do a small research: World Health Organization, American Academy of Pediatrics, and others. They claim it can result in fear and stress, as well as emotional and mental-health difficulties: research links it with anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, emotional instability, and other struggles. It also causes damage to the parent-child relationship, leaving the child less trusting, more secretive, or emotionally distant from the parent. Even ignoring my autism, it is not a surprise why I isolated myself from my family, never asked for help, or explained my struggles.
One additional note here is that I could have inherited autism from one of my parents. I don’t have proof, but knowing what autism is, I could spot a lot of strange behavior in one of them. But, to be honest, at this point I don’t care. I’ve cut all ties with my family. Whether it’s true or not, I’m fucked anyway.
I hate missed opportunities; I’d rather fail than do nothing. But here’s the thing: because of my fucked up brain, sometimes I can’t do anything even when I want to. For some reason, I’m happy to research and solve any other problem except my own.
Why didn’t I look for answers or help?
Well, I don’t know.
I’ve already mentioned several reasons, like I didn’t know what autism actually looked like and my conception of autism was extremely stereotyped. But I think there was more to it than that.
First, I interpreted most of my difficulties as personality flaws. I was introverted, shy, socially anxious, bad at communication, weird, or simply bad at dealing with people. Those explanations weren’t completely wrong, but they were incomplete. I never asked why all of these things seemed to happen together.
Second, I didn’t know what I was looking for. I knew that something was different about me, but I didn’t have a framework that connected my social difficulties, masking, anxiety, need for predictability, and other strange behaviors. They were just separate problems.
And finally, I had “learned” to treat those problems as personal failures. I also grew up in an environment where asking for help wasn’t something I felt comfortable doing. So I “learned” to hide problems instead of explaining them. If something was wrong with me, my instinct wasn’t “I should tell someone and ask for help”. It was “I need to deal with it myself and make sure nobody notices”. That probably made everything worse. I didn’t just fail to recognize that I might be autistic; I also learned not to look to other people for explanations or support in the first place.
And then there was executive dysfunction, especially during burnout. Even if I had realized that something was seriously wrong, knowing that I should look for help didn’t necessarily mean I could make myself do it. So, I don’t think I simply chose to ignore the problem. I didn’t recognize the problem as something that could have an explanation.
What the diagnosis changed and what it didn’t
Hobbies
The diagnosis changed all my hobbies. I suddenly lost interest in everything I used to do before. No games, no shows, no movies, no anime. Even programming and pet projects, which are a big part of my special interests. Yes, I replaced programming with cooking, and I’m extremely happy with it. But everything else is gone, and no, it is not depression. It’s more like I feel that my life has already passed, and I don’t care about anything anymore.
Special note about books. Throughout my life, I haven’t read a lot of them. A small part of my reading came from the school curriculum, and another small part was because I wanted to. Yeah, I’ve read a lot of technical books related to software engineering. But later in life, I slowly started reading more and more of the usual literature. During the first six months of 2026, I completed about 40 books. And it is the only thing that has remained the same after my diagnosis. There is a small problem with reading, though. For some reason, sometimes I have a slight feeling similar to cognitive overload while reading. I don’t know why. It is definitely not related to the quality of the book or my interest in it. Well, even in that state, I was able to read in small sessions, like 10-15 minutes of reading, then a short break, and repeat. I think books have become my escape (or coping mechanism) from reality.
Off-topic: I started reading books by buying digital versions through Amazon Kindle. I liked their app, the syncing features, and it was just convenient. But when the war started, these fucks banned my account because it was registered in a “sanctioned” territory, even though I hadn’t been living there for years. Just a ban, without warning, and only 30 or 60 days to restore the account; otherwise, they will delete it completely. Thankfully, I was able to restore my account with all my content, and from that point on, I started to think more carefully about what and where I buy. Later, I kind of started to support the “if buying isn’t owning, then pirating isn’t stealing” idea. But the biggest problem here was Goodreads. I used my Amazon account to register on Goodreads to track what I’d read and what I wanted to read. But guess what? After my Amazon account was banned and restored, Goodreads just deleted my account, and even their support said they couldn’t restore it. It’s all gone, along with my reading history and ratings. So, I repeat it again: fuck Amazon.
Jobs
I finally understood why I can’t hold a job for more than 1-2 years. Initially, I thought it was just tiredness or boredom from doing the same thing for multiple years. But this idea felt strange. Software engineering is part of my special interest; I really like it, and, on the contrary, I should get a lot of joy from it. And only now do I get it. It was probably autistic burnout speaking. Especially with my first two jobs, because I was still at university and was already in a huge burnout anyway.
Later, I took a break for a year and a half. I was able to recover a little bit, enough to start a new job, but probably not enough to get out of burnout. And again, I started to feel “strange” roughly after one year there. It was also during COVID, so everyone was working remotely. You didn’t need to go to the office or mask as much to look normal. I don’t think I had a lot of calls that could trigger burnout from social interactions. It looked really strange. Even though I kind of liked this job, this time I was able to hold it for another 8-10 months before leaving. I felt so exhausted. I couldn’t work normally anymore.
So, yeah, after the diagnosis, I understood that I can’t currently sustain software engineering in the way I was doing it. And unlike burnout from social interaction, which I think I know how to manage. I can reduce the amount of social contact and control how much time I spend with other people. I can also stop masking if the environment allows it. I could walk alone around the city; for some reason, it really helps me. But I don’t know what to do to manage my work. I can’t just work for a month and then take a break for a week because I need to manage my mental state and prevent burnout. I don’t know how to manage this kind of burnout. And I don’t want to go back to burnout. Hell, no. Fuck it. I’d rather be unemployed.
The last thing I was truly interested in and lived for was gone.
The harsh reality
For the first time after realising that I’m autistic, I felt like it helped me explain my entire life and understand myself. I finally recovered from burnout and was feeling okay. But as I got closer to my diagnosis and shortly after it, I realised that there is no “cure” for autism. And all 32 years of my life suddenly felt like just a preview of the years to come.
As I mentioned before, if I’d found out earlier, I could have tried to manage it. I’d try to unmask, to explain to everyone what, why, and how. I’d definitely disclose that I’m autistic. I wouldn’t try to show it off to everyone at the first opportunity, but I also wouldn’t try to hide it. I’ve tried to live my entire life as “normal”, and it doesn’t work.
After my burnout, I kind of gave up on my life. I had poor mental health. I didn’t understand what was going on. And most importantly, I didn’t want to find out why, or maybe I couldn’t make myself find an answer because of executive dysfunction. I had fallen into a “comfortable”, predictable, controllable routine and wasn’t able to escape it.
I had S thoughts for the first time when I was 15-ish, I think, maybe earlier, and they returned each time I had depression. But I never actually harmed myself. I wasn’t interested in wrist cutting because I knew it had an extremely low chance of success and was usually interpreted as a cry for help rather than an actual attempt. Well, maybe I should have tried it and received the help earlier, lol. Other options that I knew weren’t so reliable. But most importantly, the “rational” part of my brain knew that it was not a solution. So, I just ignored it and waited for the depression to pass.
The same happened after burnout (about 12 years ago). I hadn’t tried to kill myself, but I had such thoughts. However, I finally admitted I’m strange. I can’t find friends, I can’t keep them, I behave strangely, I’m broken. After that, it was clear what would happen. I knew that I would be alone and only work would keep me alive. And when I’m done with it for whatever reason, nothing would be left. I kind of hoped that at this point, even the “rational” part of my brain would say something: Well, we are fucked, S is the only way.
I was almost right with this prediction. The only difference is that I finally understood why the fuck it was so hard to live. The “rational” and “emotional” parts had swapped. Now, emotionally, I want to try to live as an autistic person, but the “rational” part agreed there is no other way. No friends, and I probably never had any, well, except maybe in kindergarten. No family, and I never had one. No relationships. No job. No future. I finally accepted it. It’s a strange kind of peace. At least I’ll live in a “normal” state for the last few months. No burnout, and doing whatever I want.
In the end, we can split my life into three parts, ten years each. The first one is childhood. It doesn’t really matter because no one cared that I was strange. I was just a little boy who would eventually grow up and become “normal”. The second one is my teenage years. Here, I subconsciously knew I was strange, but I constantly tried to fight myself, to look “normal” and hide my real thoughts and feelings. An impossible task. The last one is ten years of burnout. I just skipped those years. I didn’t exist during that time, just a shell stuck in a loop. A total waste.
Fun fact: In school, one of my “friends” said I wouldn’t live past 30-ish. I thought it was a strange thought, but he wouldn’t explain why. Probably, he knew about my “strangeness” and social struggles. For some reason, though, he never told me.
Another fun fact: When I was in burnout and a low mental state (felt like shit and behaved like an asshole) that I didn’t want anything, at the peak of my executive dysfunction, one “friend” asked me about my future plans or something similar. I answered that I didn’t care, that right now I had a job, and that when I got bored, I would commit S. I received the best response ever: “Good luck”. LOL. Good fucking luck.
The puzzle
I had a lot of strange pieces.
I didn’t understand why social interactions were so difficult for me - I thought I was just shy. I didn’t understand why I would copy other people’s behavior or consciously analyze how I was supposed to act. I liked pacing around the room and talking to myself. I knew it wasn’t “normal”, but I didn’t connect it to any disorder. I didn’t understand why I could become completely absorbed in a new interest. I didn’t understand why unexpected changes could throw me into a panic. I didn’t understand why I could function normally for some time and then suddenly completely fall apart.
I was introverted. I was socially anxious. I was bad at communication. I was exhausted. I was just overthinking things. I was weird. Some of these explanations were probably partially true. But they didn’t explain the whole picture. And that’s what the diagnosis changed. Of course, this metaphor has its limits. Autism doesn’t explain every decision I’ve made or every bad thing that happened to me. Some pieces probably belong to completely different puzzles.
Finally, after 32 years, this puzzle is solved. I’m autistic.
The end
Any regrets? I don’t think so. I’m not even mad that I’m autistic. I’ve kind of accepted that I ruined my life, and I’m completely fine with it. The only thing I really wanted to do was finish Classroom of the Elite - the light novel series. I really liked it and wanted to see the ending. But according to the current release schedule, I’d have to wait another 3-4 years. Yeah, I’m not going to do that. As for the other books, I’ve either already finished them or intentionally never started them because I know I won’t be able to finish them.
When I was reading about autism, I came across a brilliant statement:
The world is built by neurotypicals for neurotypicals.
And it was used in the positive sense. So, as a neurodivergent person, you need to find other neurodivergents and build the world around your personal preferences/needs and be happy, not try to conform to the “general” norm.
But I’m going to use it in a different sense.
The world is built by neurotypicals for neurotypicals
It is too late to try to find a place for me in it.
I’m broken. I was living in a hell created by my own mind, and I realized it too late.
“I’m tired, Boss” The Green Mile.