As a therapist, what is more concerning to me than burnout itself is that it has been normalized. Along with realizing that a lot of the people I talk with think that burnout is “normal,” neurodivergent clients experience burnout at a more intense and frequent rate than others. My 20-something neurodivergent friend recently told me that he expects burnout in life. While burnout does not have to be a normal part of life, after researching statistics of burnout in the neurodivergent population I have a better understanding of why he expects burnout is going to happen at some point.
NAMI is the national alliance on mental illness. They are the nation’s largest grass roots mental health organization. Taylor Bennet from NAMI wrote an article about how to support and listen and potentially help a friend who expresses feelings of wanting to die. Suicide is heavy. It is not easy to think about and it is not easy to talk about, especially with those you care about. The most important thing to remember is to talk about it. Don’t avoid it, don’t graze over it, don’t try to talk about something else. Listen. Confronting those thoughts out loud with someone who cares for them impacts someone’s ability to get the help they need before reaching a crisis.
If “burnout” was not something you heard about prior to the pandemic, 2020 sealed the deal in ensuring we all knew what burnout looked and felt like. I can still remember images of nurses and doctors with deep indents on their faces from wearing masks for endless hours while trying to save those battling COVID. I also specifically remember a picture of a mom crouching in her kitchen with her head in her hands. The caption noted that she had not bathed or changed clothes in a few days because she was trying to care for all of the “littles” (babies and toddlers) in her home without adequate support during the pandemic.
Let's take a look at the internal monologue, also known as your inner voice, internal dialogue or the voice inside your head. This is when you hear yourself talking in your head without actually speaking or forming sounds. A little bit like carrying on a conversation with yourself. Hearing or so in your own head is a completely natural phenomenon. Some experience this more than others, and some people have no internal monologue at all.
Last month we began exploring the treatment modality of Internal Family Systems (IFS). As stated last month, IFS is an approach to therapy that aims to help the individual become aware of their inner voices to begin the path to healing and wholeness. IFS recognizes that each person has a true Self, but that the parts within a person’s psyche or emotions are often in conflict with each other and this in turn suppresses the person’s real, whole Self from ruling and reigning in peace.
Attention deficit disorder and autism co-occur at high rates. They are both forms of innate neurodivergence. This means that they are genetic and can be present in childhood. They are similar. The overlap between them is poorly understood since the diagnosis manual we use as clinicians was released in 2013 when a clinician could not diagnose both ADHD and autism.
