Lately, I have been sporadic about taking care of myself and not accepting or recognizing my needs more frequently. Doing so in the past few days has had me care for myself more often than normal while understanding autistic burnout and not getting angry at myself whenever time passes, and I do not want to care for myself.

For the majority of the past two and a half months, I have been on track with following through with what has been needed for my mental health care. There are times, however, when I haven’t been spot on with doing what is needed because I have been reluctant to recognize the fact that I cannot do what is expected of the neurotypical world and it can have bitter taste within me.

One of the hugest barriers coincides with the need to understand the need to sleep and have proper time management skills. I often see this as a way of me not being able to do the things that I need to do. If I indeed to take the time and rest up, then I get frustrated for taking the time to care me and when I do wake up, I am frustrated when the time passes because it was used for the purpose of recharging and sleep.

As I had said from research in my last blog post, 40% of the autistic population struggles with good sleep. For as much as I have been unwilling to admit it, this has been an issue since the onset of my autism diagnosis nearly 25 years ago. It has been something that I have been unwilling to accept. It was the reason that I was given one medicine. It has been the one medicine over the past five years or so that has been a struggle because I relate it so much to its need to sleep. It does help with traits of my bipolar and being autistic so I can function better in society and can-do things that are needed in life.

Yet, I have had this deeply enmeshed reluctance to it because it “puts” me to sleep. The fact is that the world is so overwhelming and without medicine, I am constantly manic without the need to admit it. Also, it creates a deeper inability to focus on the work that I must focus on to be able to survive and puts me in survival mode.

However, I do not realize that life in general is very overstimulating and overwhelming and while the medicine in general helps me a great deal, it is not a cure all and there are times when I do need to recharge in a cocoon of safety and take time for me to be able to do things later. Again, the cycle of shame for having to do this repeatedly plays within my headspace and has become angry for not doing what is necessary for me to function and instead sees it as a way of wasting my time and not doing things that I find interesting or productive.

It is how my brain is thought to think about things that I must do and not allow myself to see that some things are just too much sometimes and its OK to do what is necessary to take care of me, whatever that may be. It doesn’t have to matter to others, it is something that is quite necessary in my life and as such having things that are necessary in a neuro-affirmative household should be more important than what time is wasted or what others may think.

Is not all about keeping totally engaged even if it helps, sometimes too much is just too much, and it will cause autistic burnout. I had to be willing to accept the fact that adequate sleep and rest is necessary, and medication is a tool that needs to be greatly adhered to function in a society that is not made for me. That also means taking care of myself and using the necessary coping skills to get through the challenges that need to be conquered in the day.

So going forward, it is going to take perseverance and understanding that it is important to care for myself in whatever necessary ways that may be whether that be medication, sleep, or coping skills. What works for me may not work for someone else, but it is my life. In my own way, in my own time, that is how I am going to live life going forward.