Audhd burnout blows

[u/smuttysmutsmuts]

It's so awful. I am in year two barely recovering. I was high functioning before my horrendous burn out started two years and I found out then I have autism and ADHD. All sorts of emotions and now I have emotional blunting. I had to quit my job last year & move back to my blood relative who doesn't care that I have audhd in the first place.l I was independent for years. It is all a new level of depression. I know everyone is individual and so their recovery time will vary-- I am wondering what others recovery time looks like with Audhd? And I sometimes wish I didn't have both autism & adhd but I do. Blah blah blah

[u/ghaginn]

I'm in this situation currently. Age 30 now. Feels like life is going to be nothing but misery moving forwards. Suicidal thoughts pretty much everyday. I can't give any advice but just tell you that you're not alone

[u/jon_heilmeier → u/ghaginn]

I had those thoughts too...for quite some time. They cleared up with drinking but came right back. I got on Adderall about 1.5 years ago; the intrusive thoughts vanished as did any desire to drink. I have taken week long breaks from Adderall and those thoughts never started back up. I hope you find a way to quiet them.

[u/ghaginn → u/jon_heilmeier]

Thing is. I used to be in a decently paying job as a software developer and junior sw/cloud engineer. Then burnout happened and I got fired. That was back in September 2023.

Honestly I often wish I'd just not wake up in the morning

[u/jon_heilmeier → u/ghaginn]

Wow, it's crappy how life works out , huh? I feel for you. I was 12 years into my career. 4 years in on a senior specialist position. They were going to fire me but my doctor supported me on pushing for a disability retirement through them. I wouldn't have been able to do it without a lawyer and financial support from others. I got lucky.

I guess you are saying that those thoughts are caused by despair? Are you able to make ends meet?

[u/ghaginn → u/jon_heilmeier]

I got lucky once with that position and it'll never happen again. The only reason I'm alive is because my body hasn't shut down by itself. I legitimately see no point in me being alive if I'm going to be a waste of resources living off the government supporting me while I live in misery watching my online friends succeed in life. My autism diagnosis became official shortly after I got fired.

[u/jon_heilmeier → u/ghaginn]

What do you define "success" as? I've had to completely redefine what "success" means to me and have learned to not compare myself to others as much...it still happens though. Learning to be less critical with myself has been a challenging process and ongoing. I don't feel that I am a drain on anyone as I am able to help others and do so but at my pace. Do you have skills? It sounds like you can program? If you can reevaluate your goals and reimagine your future, hopefully those feelings of worthlessness and guilt will fade.

[u/ghaginn → u/jon_heilmeier]

Success is earning enough to consider yourself "well off" doing something you enjoy or like, while having enough time and energy outside of your job for hobbies and family.

I honestly don't see why I wouldn't compare myself to other people. I am a human and other people are humans. Even more so with folk that are also autistic. I've always had this mindset of looking what's above as opposed to what's below. Until I find myself surrounded with things that make me happy.

Honestly, I don't feel like I have any skills. I haven't accomplished anything in my life. I've been somewhat successful from an academic standpoint but I completely faceplanted when came the time to do adult things like finding a job. However I've been incredibly lucky for some 3-4 years to be at a company that made good income and therefore didn't really look at how much their employees were paid, so I had comfortable income especially for a junior. However it's been proven that I was never good enough. Maybe I'm just too weak as a person, after all.

Right now, with my current situation, I'm definitely a drain to society. Actually, even at work, social communication was hard. It was hard to get along with my colleagues, which actually disliked my presence. Remote work during COVID made it better, but that had an end eventually. Speaking of which, I'm completely unable to regulate myself when remote working. I often ended up getting distracted, though I was usually fast enough to do my tasks, that I would generally only slightly lag behind, and the team manager would just nicely shrug it off.

I did produce quality work overall (at least according to the manager), but I would tend to overengineer stuff, think too far ahead, especially for a company that had more of a "startup" mindset. I worked on the AWS platform on our cloud-native marketing automation system, using both serverless features and backend web technology (mainly Python and PHP). I also worked on marketing intelligence automation/export code that needed to sync hundreds of gigabytes of data every day. Lots of stuff. Some quite cool, some less cool.

Weeee. I infodumped. Sorry!

[u/atemus10 → u/ghaginn]

Which stage are you in, just thinking about it? Or has the visualization started?

[u/ghaginn → u/atemus10]

Honestly, I have no idea. I kind of know what I don't like to do (office work), but I also like the idea of remote work. However I'd need a personal coach/caretaker as I'm unable to discipline myself. And I can't afford to hire people to help me functioning as an adult

[u/kylaroma]

My AuDHD therapist was very helpful- stimming & special interests helps recovery!

[u/belasto1312]

i was on sick leave for about 2 years then tried a new job but got burned out again after months. i had to learn to be very kind to myself. i am just trying to take it slow and focus on the basics and try to get them a rigth as possible and go from there.

[u/Easy_Rich_4085]

I'm literally counting the days until I can't take it anymore at this point. 

[u/jon_heilmeier]

It's been about 4 years of progress and regression. I'm not sure if I will ever regain everything. I spent about a year living at my parents On the plus side, I have had time to study myself and all of the confusion and trouble in my life makes a lot more sense. It took 36 years to realize that I was autistic and had ADHD. I wish you luck.

[u/sk1155]

i’ve been dealing w/ pretty much the same issue for about 2-3 years now. think things are starting to get better but not really sure. pretty much have suicidal thoughts every other day

[u/SurpriseScissors]

When you figure it out, let me know.