Chapter 19-- Burnout and Masking.

I'm Penelope. I discovered that I was on the spectrum about four years ago. I got so good at a job that required masking that I nearly had a burnout, a breakdown, and a health crisis from it all. Before then, my first husband and I had an at-home business for 10 years where we supported computer and video interfaces.

In hindsight, I was unaware that I had lucked into a job that not only dovetailed with my talents, it also insulated me from a lot of the social interaction that would otherwise have been required. In a job like that you're mostly left alone, which I did not realize was suited to what I did best.

When my husband died, my stepchildren were grown, and I basically had to start over. I did not explore other careers because they all seemed to want at least 60 hours a week, and graduate school was going to be a never-ending series of stresses on some level. Even though I had no idea I was on the spectrum at the time, I knew I couldn't manage the workload of an advanced degree.

My attempt to get out of computers and into some other job derailed. And before I knew it, my part-time job during college turned into my full-time job, coding HTML for web pages. The job was in tourism. And they needed someone to be multifunctional, which I was able to do. I eventually got out of coding because people no longer needed coding as much as they needed social interfacing.

For 16 years, I was highly social, doing extra work on committees, and meeting and guiding people. At one point, I could talk to 300 strangers a day. Although ultimately, it wasn't good for me, I had no idea I was pulling on my reserve tanks to the extent that I was until an incompetent doctor threw me into surgical menopause.

I went online and researched his suggested course of treatment for what my problem was, and I nixed it. Thank goodness I did, or things would have been worse. As it was, I got thrown off a cliff into menopause. The lack of estrogen gives you the memory of a goldfish. I was struggling like mad. I was overstressed and had to treat myself because they gave me artificial hormones. Anyway, that's a whole other rabbit hole.

Path to a diagnosis-- the way I got diagnosed was through a person I know who is a special ed teacher. They said that the way I explained something reminded them of the way they explain things to their kids on the spectrum. I thought that was a little interesting and it stuck with me.

Later, I ran across a book called The Journal of Best Practices. In it, a man with young children and a happy marriage was trying to figure out why his responses to things were different from most others. His wife, who is a psychologist, figured out he was on the spectrum. So this book was all about him adjusting to the ways he could be a good parent, which were not the ways he was taught and not the ways anybody would tell him. He had to come up with different ways to do things on his own.

What struck me was there were two pages in the book about his getting dressed for the morning routine, and I noticed that it was exactly parallel to mine. I can see and feel a nasty underwear itch from across the room. My nickname as a child was the princess and the pea. I cannot deal with itchy or constricting clothes. That was another stress that came with working IT jobs in New York City.

From talking to the special education teacher to reading this book, it all shook down to the point where my natural curiosity took over. I took an online test that was female-oriented. I scored 98.7, or something like that. So at that point, it became a matter of getting an official diagnosis, although it was hard for me to get one because I was too good at masking.

If you jump to the present day, in a couple of years I'll be eligible for early retirement. And with everything going on in the world, it is unfortunately the worst time in history to be involved in the tourism industry. That aside, I do have a self-published book that I wrote about cats, so I'm going to try to piggyback off that for a little bit. My life has had its combination of lucky and unlucky. But at least for me, the unlucky parts have led me down a path of self-knowledge about my own situation and existence.

Advice for others-- I would advise young people to consider the culture they both live and work in. I grew up in two different highly repressive conservative cultures where being an intelligent woman was awful. Right from the get-go, I was supposed to be someone I wasn't.

Additionally, if you get into a corporate culture where you are expected to be Mr. Personality, that can put a tremendous strain on you. You could also be like me where you're good at it. But at the same time, it's a double-edged sword because it's also going to suck the life out of you.

One of the good things if you know you're on the spectrum is that you know when you're masking. Or at least, you may have an educated guess as to whether you are or not. By not being diagnosed or knowing that I was on the spectrum, I was digging my own grave with my ability to fake it and not even realizing that it was something I was doing.

Even now, learning how to unmask is still a work in progress. It wasn't until I was furloughed from my job that I realized just how much effort it takes every day. I know that we are in a gig economy. But if possible, think carefully about taking a retail job or a server job, or really anything that requires a lot of contact with the public if you know that that is something that's going to wear you out.

Introverts tend to have their life force sucked out of them by social contact. Whereas, extroverts kind of gain energy. They are like energy vampires. We're not. We're energy victims in a way. At least, that has been the case for me.

So be mindful of the work culture you're getting into or are already working in. It's important to ask yourself whether or not your current position is sucking substantially more out of you in resources than it is giving it back. The game of surfaces and pretend seems to be kryptonite for those of us on the spectrum.

On a similar note, another thing that really killed me was all of the open plan office spaces and their innate tremendous amount of noise. When everyone is shouting into their phone around you, it's almost like Dante was on the spectrum and rose up from hell with an office theme.

I suppose that is a type of situation where being in a department like IT did have an advantage. I was able to be up front with my boss about moving out of the public-facing things and moved to the back where I ideally would be able to be left alone to do my work, at least at certain jobs.

One of the things I did in my personal life when those open floor spaces really got to me is that my second husband and I expanded our living space at home so there was more area to decompress and space to focus on recharging time. It resulted in increased rent, but it was absolutely worth it. I needed to have that alone time where I could recharge in solitude. I had to have it, and it had to be alone for it to be effective.

I've talked to a lot of other autistic people online, and a lack of having that space just wears away at them. So I think it's a pretty common thing with us.

My experience is that you won't be able to make your own way in the world unless you get your environment arranged in a way that will support you, not undercut you. The Americans with Disabilities Act can be incredibly helpful. However, it is also somewhat up to your employer as to how they will accommodate you.

Now, in the brave new world that may come about because of the pandemic, working at home is hopefully going to be easier. At the same time, I would suggest that everyone figure out their own boundaries very carefully.

Lastly, I would tell parents to have a little more trust in their children. Look at how many traditional jobs have vanished. The kids growing up today have a greater understanding of the culture of today than the older generation does.

Look at something like YouTube. Not everyone is going to have a successful career through something like that. But there are also tens of thousands of others who are able to make money that way.

Everybody wants to put a button on something and then close the drawer. There you are, son, be a CPA. There you are, daughter, be a secretary. My mother tried to make me learn shorthand. Nobody needed it two years later. They all had already gone to typing on keyboards.

It's more likely than not that your child knows more about the current job market than you as a parent do. It has changed radically, and it's not at all like what it used to be. So whatever your child wants to do, they might as well do. Because, otherwise, you're adding a whole other layer of burden on what will already be a tough, traditional role. Let them go nontraditional if they want to. At least, that's what I say.