The Neurodivergent Burnout Series Continues

Announcing the next session, opening mentoring space, and releasing the transcript of the lost second session.

In this update, I will announce the latest installment of the Neurodivergent Burnout Webinar Series, provide a link to the previous session on Teaching with Executive Dysfunction, and provide the lost transcript for the second session, which was never recorded. In the middle of this transcript, I will announce a new mentoring initiative.

Next Session

On Tuesday, December 5th, 2023 at 11am EST, I will run a special session of the Neurodivergent Burnout Series on Writing with Executive Dysfunction. In this session, we will write a writing guide live as an example of a neurodivergent-friendly writing process. Visit this form to register.

Previous Session

The prior session on Teaching with Executive Dysfunction is available on YouTube. Of particular note in this session is the segment beginning just before the 42 minute mark, where I discuss with a participant about how to “climb out” from under the avalanche that comes from burnout.

When you're feeling completely buried, it can be good to get yourself in front of a whiteboard, or a wall for Post-it notes, or like whatever. Just start writing down everything that you have going on, everything that you feel crushed by, and start breaking them down. Not because you're breaking them down into chunks that are possible for you to tackle, that's not what you're doing yet. You're just trying to figure out… what you're buried under. Once you know most of what's on top of you, you can still move something and get a cave in. That's still going to happen. But once you get a sense of what's on top top of you, you can start moving stuff around. It can help you see the immovable deadlines and the flowable ones, right? You can start making plans. Even if it’s to move one pebble a day. You can get there.

The Lost Session

The second session of the Hacking Executive Function Webinar was not recorded. I did manage to save a transcript. This session involved some very vulnerable Q&A, so in many ways, I am grateful to only have a text record of the event. Below is an abridged version of the Q&A portion, as the introduction is largely the same as the existing recordings.

RUA: We're always taught that we have to find a way to overcome these things and be independent, and actually I think we're more powerful as great, big clusters of neurodivergent burnouts — but with our powers combined we make almost a fully functional adult!

So that's what we want to talk about today.

I'll start with GUEST 1.

Recursive Dysfunction

GUEST 1: Thanks so much. Immediately, some really interesting thoughts… the thing I wanted to ask… timing a lot of strategies into like, separate projects that become targets and focuses for executive dysfunction… yeah this sort of thing where my productivity strategies turn into the site of like, either distraction or failure to implement them into any of the of the actual practical task I need to do. Instead of a thing mediating my executive function, being a parallel problem within it.

RUA: Yeah, absolutely. This is great. So, this problem of like, “okay, I'm trying to make myself a task management protocol so that I don't have problems with task management” — but then it becomes this structure that you have to maintain, and it doesn't work anymore. This is a common problem. And it's like, kind of inherent, especially in the tools that say they are going to fix it. The task management apps, right? They take a lot of investment and time to actually get set up and that can be really overwhelming in and of itself. My only advice and solution on this is — you don't have to use one thing or the same thing every time forever, and then if you mess it up, it's ruined.

I use many things at the same time and I just use whichever one is making sense to my brain at the time.

I use TickTick right now. It’s working really well for me because I can just write, “send email to Sherri today” and it just goes right in. Okay? But I also use Trello sometimes. I even had a board at one point called executive function. It worked for like two weeks and now it doesn't. That’s okay. My qualifying exam for my PhD was done in here. And I have every paper that I had to read with notes on it and divided them into sections and those sections became the sections of the paper that I had to write for it. And like, this is how I managed my life for a semester.

And now it still lives here because sometimes I want to go back and check something, but that's it. I don't write papers this way anymore because I don't need to. But like when I do, I can do this thing. I have a bullet journal. I use it sometimes. I used it a lot in classes, I don't really use it anymore. I don't really have rules. I just decided I was going to stop looking at Pinterest and just make my own way. Pick it back up. It was November and now it's February and we're just going to go with it. I had to stop being mad at myself for having empty pages, time gaps, or having pages that looked different.

And that's really my only advice there is to be more chaotic with your organization system. Embrace the chaos goblin mode. Instead of trying to construct the perfect system, just start making microsystems that you work with and discard and pick back up. I don't know if that's helpful. I know sometimes people think “No! I need the one, true system.”

I don't think that's going to happen, honey.

[LAUGHING]

GUEST 2: Having weird flash backs because Trello was used at my last workspace and was actually my problem with task management. It definitely can have its uses but I definitely want to echo GUEST 1 — it feels like it creates more work for me half the time. I was very curious about the Venn diagram that you shared earlier. Especially around the social areas. One of the things that I was wondering if you have thoughts on is like borrowing each other's executive function things like that.

Accountability, you know. Buddies body doubling… I feel like a lot of times this is something that's even been an issue with my partner. It ends up kind of crossing boundaries of labor distribution. Oh well then, she's just — she's just doing all of the, like, you know, management load of the labor a lot of the times because I'm not able to keep track. So, I'm curious, how do we do that responsibly, rather than just having everyone else track everything for me?

RUA: There's a few things to that. And so, one is like, yeah, accomplishing the boundaries and knowing that the person that you're with is going to tell you when it's too much for them and that they need to step back. It's not necessarily your fault if they give more of themselves than they want to. They did that. They should not do that.

But also, I hear this a lot, and I think sometimes people still want all relationships to be evenly reciprocal. And it's like, that's just not going to work. There's no score card. You can't keep score in a relationship, it's not good for anybody. And so as long as everybody feels fulfilled and happy and not exploited, then it's fine. If somebody is feeling exploited then that's a conversation that needs to be had. But actually, if you just think that you're exploiting people, that's internalized shame and it's not helping. Right?

If the person that's helping you out is like, “I actually love forms!” … Which, I have met a few of these people and no, they are not normal…

[LAUGHING]

and you know, that's fine. Right?

GUEST 2: Yeah, to that point I had a relationship with a coworker, a working relationship, that worked along those lines that was able to — part of it was, I recognized what they were doing. They appreciated having their work seen as important valuable work at the organization. Just recognizing them and valuing them verbally and stuff, I found was helpful in that regard. But then this is another thing I've had in working relationships where, it's expected that you have to be able to fit into this certain kind of shape of independence. And to ask for a coworker to cooperate with you was seen as just inappropriate, or not allowable, and that became a problem in that workplace. So, I don't know if that extends upon that.

RUA: Yeah the model in workplaces do not suit this idea of like, assemblage person, people who work together to form one whole person. That's not allowed right? There's a process for getting a screen reader versus there's a lot of resistance to getting an assistant who will read for you.

Right? And that's because the technology makes it seem like you're doing it all by yourself, you become independent.

I do a lot of these accommodations that require this sort of different relation with other people. And it absolutely works best informally. So like, just trying to find the people that will do that authentic relationship with you, and not try to make it some HR thing, because they don't care about you. That’s the way to do it.

There's a lot of forms involved in my job, and the first time I have to fill out a new one, I ask the nice admin lady to sit with me.

[LAUGHING] um. And she does and then I feel better, and I can do it next time. It's just not “official” — we don't talk about it.

[LAUGHING] you know? That's how it has to be sometimes. But it is really frustrating when you can't find that support. And you try to reach out to like the official channels, but they're just not set up to recognize people like that.

When procrastination works (out), but it’s awful.

GUEST 3: Hi. So I guess my question is really around breaking cycles that actually work, but it's not healthy. So, I have this problem where — it's a life long issue — I can't get anything done until the very, very last minute and then suddenly, I guess there's the dopamine rush, and I can get it done. And it is very frustrating because I mean like [LAUGHING] I was a little late getting on today because I'm still planning my class that I'm teaching this afternoon. Yeah so, every time my syllabi are up like the day that classes start.

And it's just — even though I know I'll get it done, I pull all-nighters, which get definitely much harder in middle age than it was in high school or college even in my 30s.

But yeah, it's just this like, every time I plan to do it differently. And it's like, I can't make myself. It's very, very frustrating. I will say I'm going to do it different this time. And it's the same thing every time. And then I'm kicking myself because I'm like I was going to do it differently this time and then it's the same pattern over and over. But because I get it done, I don't know.

It's like, it's been — it's just been a very, very frustrating cycle being able to get out of this inertia and then actually being able to have the focus to get through something before it's eminently due.

RUA: Yeah. So, this is a common experience. There's probably a bunch of messages in the chat that say like “mood, lol” or something.

And this is — I've done this. And I still do this. There are papers that I have written like five hours before the deadline. Because I kept… I kept… I was like, “I know exactly what I'm going to write and I'm going to write it. But not today, I'll do it tomorrow. Tomorrow, tomorrow.”

But the strategies that I have seen work are like, creating a new sense of urgency around the task by chunking. If you break it down and you're like — okay, I need to have this part done by this day. And obviously the fake deadlines don't always work because you know that they are fake, right? And that's true and real.

I think that sometimes the fake deadlines start to work if you can just manage to do a few of them. You get a new kind of dopamine hit from that. I did a thing. Gold star for me. But it doesn't always work. And so, I do it a lot and it works a lot more for me now than it used to. But sometimes I'm still writing papers like the day that they are due. When this happens to me, I think it’s because I’m struggling more than I think I am. Or I haven’t really supported myself as much as I need. When this happens, I’m really avoiding the strategies I know will help, because something else is bothering me and I’m self-sabotaging.

Another thing that can help is the body doubling thing. If you know you have a syllabus to write, if you can find a friend and find an hour where you could do a Zoom date syllabus writing time together, you might actually get some of it done before that last minute. If you're doing it with a friend, it becomes locked in time in a way that your own deadline doesn’t achieve.

But the primary thing is, if there's something that you're doing at the last minute, pulling an all-nighter, it's a much bigger multi-part task than you've put it down as. One chunk. If you break it down into tiny chunks it's more likely that you can do parts of it along the way instead of all at the same night. But it's hard because sometimes you feel like, how do I untangle this chunk puzzle? How do you make it into something where you're like, I can do this one and then this one? It's not easy.

There's not a final answer. But the important thing is, when you try something like fake deadline and is it doesn't work out, that you don't feel bad about yourself for it. It's not healthy to do these binges, but it's not healthy because society doesn't want you to be able to sleep the next day, all day. Right? It would be fine if we could just be allowed to be stochastic workers. And so, when you try this — the different strategies, and they're not working like that — if you can allow yourself to be okay with that, and not mad at yourselves, sometimes that's enough. I don't know.

But like again, this isn't — we're not going to cure anybody of the brain problem.

The Power of Friendship

[LAUGHING] GUEST 4, I see your physical hand.

GUEST 4: Yeah. Question — for me I guess I had a question, comment, whatever thing. I like I often find oh here's this tool— someone else said it, too. Here's this tool. You will set up a system, set up a journal. Do a bullet journal, whatever. Some kind of organizational tool. Well, who's going to do that for me?

[LAUGHING] like that's what it feels like a lot of times. I can't do the thing, all I know how to do is the panicked survival mode. I've never known how to do otherwise. And that's taken me pretty far, but now coming into the tail end of my whole PhD… has been just working on all these projects that I get pulled into and I get focused on and I forget about the old thing, and I'm sitting here trying to put together a Dissertation. So I have a pile of work, they are good, but none of them are deep enough. So yeah, I don't know if that’s the question or if this is venting.

RUA: Yeah so, I have a few things. First of all, what you might want to do is reach out to some other neurodivergent academics that maybe are in a similar field, because they might be able to help you see what the connections are. We're super great at hyperconnectivity. There's probably actually a common thread there. That's something that some friends might be able to help you piece together.

Then, okay, if I'm in chaos mode all the time, the planner's not going to work for me. But post-it notes might. Scrap paper might. If I’m a goblin, maybe what I need is some trash. Sometimes just the act of getting the thoughts out of your head, and onto the wall, can get you started. This also looks chaotic but it's actually the externalization that matters. So, the journal itself is not the thing. It's — I take the thoughts out of my brain and make them lines on scrap paper. That might help sometimes. And then it's okay if it still looks like chaos. It’s step 1.

But I do want to ask, what is your PhD field? What are you in?

GUEST 4: The department I'm in is called computational media, and my specific focus is human-robot interaction research. So, I do a lot of, essentially, social science experiments.

RUA: Okay, I would love to chat with you about how to craft a narrative that makes your work seem deliberate and more cohesive.

GUEST 4: Sure I'd love that.

Interlude

Did you know that I offer free mentoring sessions to neurodivergent academic burnouts? My focus is on Technology, Disability, and Politics, but my definitions for those things are very expansive. Check it out.

Conflicting Access Needs

RUA: Here's a question from somebody who's in a classroom with other people who are doing the hyperactive tabbing, and the other pereon’s screen flashing is distracting for you, what do you do?

That's a real one. And you know, sometimes you can't just get up and move to a place where you can't see that anymore. That's true.

Sometimes, you can actually put your bag on the desk or something. Something that would obscure it. That's kind of the only solution is somehow find a way to not see it anymore. I don't know if that helps. A lot of like, “this might help” is like, that's not always possible. Yeah. [SARDONIC] It's almost like society is disabling.

[LAUGHING]

Burnout and the Bifurcation of Fate

[READING] The being burnt out and wanting to finish but not wanting to do the thing…

I mean, that's … burnout. So burnout issues are often slightly different from executive function issues, because you can’t usually solve them by productivity hacking. The problem is, you need to rest. And again that's not always possible, like society doesn't want you to rest. Right? But if you feel — if you're in a position where you can't do your dissertation writing, it's 'cause like you're not in love with it anymore, and we're really bad at doing stuff we don't love. That we're not in love with. So, you need help to find another way to get in love with it.

Sometimes the answer is to take a break.

The person has typed here, “it feels like I should just give up.”

[SILENCE]

Sometimes giving up doesn't have to be forever, either. Like, I don't — so like, I actually can see the face of the person who wrote this, and they're having a hard time right now. And I wish that I could hug them.

But like, sometimes you do need a break. And like it's not — it's not a failure to take a minute like that. And then again, sometimes we're literally dependent on the shitty PhD stipend for life, and you feel like you can't quit, and that's real. And I don't know how to solve that one.

Sometimes I wish it was a little bit easier to be a hobo.

[LAUGHING] but I think maybe sometimes — sometimes what you need in burnout is community. And I don't know what your situation is. But maybe some of us can be there for you, and figure this out. But you can't make yourself write when you're not in love.

GUEST 2: I was actually going to make sure the person's question was asked earlier, because I was in the same boat. And so a lot of what you shared already kind of hit on it. One of the things I wanted to maybe focus in on around, is that I've considered just dropping my PhD topic. It has gotten to be that point where I just can't engage with it a lot of times, or read on it, or anything.

And possibly switching towards dissertation by publication. Because my university does allow that.

But it would also be like another year, it’s a lot of work, and as you said there's also the material limits of things.

But yeah like with the burnout side of it… I guess part of what I'm — I'm wondering, how do you recognize when there's a need to just walk away? Or like the cost benefit analysis of engaging in a new topic or dissertation versus not, or leaving and coming back several years later, after four, five years of work. I don't know how to make that decision. Or if I'm working in a work setting where I’m researching and collaborating with people… There's these situations where I'm not able to move something forward.

When I do set that aside, and move to something else when they are needing me to work on it? So like just kind of… any idea on when to kind of cut and run?

[LAUGHING].

RUA: No, because I didn't cut and run. And so I don't have the experience, right, to advise on that. I just need to be honest about that. But also, I went to grad school 10 years later than most people.

But I do know there are times in my life where I've taken breaks from stuff and thought that I was walking away forever.

And that's kind of the thing, when we make decisions sometimes we think that it decides fate, as if it bifurcates the line, and it will never converge again. That’s not necessarily true.

But you have to make decisions for yourselves now, like “I don't know what to do but I know next semester I need to not be here.”

And then you decide what's next. And then what? And then what? Sometimes the real problem is that you have a shitty adviser. And what the fuck are you going to do with that? Right? Sometimes you have a shitty adviser who's abusing you and you can't get out. That was not my situation. Yet, despite the fact that I didn't have a shitty adviser, I needed to have a second, secret adviser. Sometimes you need to have somebody who's really doing that support for you when the person who's doing it on paper is not doing what you need.

And that's another one of those things, you can't always find a person. It's a privilege to find that person. Sometimes that person is not in the in the same institution as you. But when you are experiencing the kind of disaffection with your PhD that I'm hearing from some of you, that's — that's a failure of advising. And you deserve better than that. And I know a lot of people who are excruciatingly brilliant who did not make it out of grad school with the letters, right? But this isn't the only way to be a source of cultural production. Fuck the letters.

Which is easy for me to say because I got them. But like, they are not worth your life. And you can — all of this work that we do as academics — anybody can do it. We're not special. You don't actually need the letters to do the things. Okay? So if the letters are killing you, don't let them kill you, because I would like to actually have access to you as a person and your cultural production more than I want you to have letters at the end of your name. Right?

[LAUGHING].

(DIS)Emotional Walls

I wanted to mark out this from GUEST: about sort of constructing their own metacognition out of this identification with cybernetic systems as a way of understanding metacognition implicitly: the superstructure versus the substructure. And this person says, “Maybe that's dissociative.”

I actually think we get told dissociation is bad and maladaptive, but I think it might actually be fine. I don't know, I haven't been in my body ever. And I used to be worried about it. And once I used to do like — want to unlive. I don't want to do that anymore, but I'm still not in my body. So I think they are not actually related. I think it's okay sometimes, if it isn’t bothering you. “I've decided I'm a robot and it's working for me.” That's fine.

There's a whole chapter in Bettelheim about a mechanical boy. And it has all of this description about how pathological this boy was. This boy actually grew up and was released from the state hospital, and like got married and had kids and a job. And like, it's fine. You can beep, boop. It's fine. Okay?

[LAUGHING] yeah, there's a hand from a GUEST.

GUEST 5: Hello, sorry, I asked a question in the chat before, just to quickly paraphrase it: There's like a YouTuber on line that kind of breaks down the ADHD executive function problems into two parts — like the mechanical inability to start and do tasks, and also like the whole emotional avoidance wall that comes from fear of failing. And I recently started meds for my ADHD and it's made the physical doing of the stuff easier but the walls haven't gone away. I'm just curious if you have come across or used strategies of having to deal with the emotional aspects of executive function, because that's my problem.

RUA: Yeah, definitely. There's the task initiation. Hard. How do thing? How get off couch?

And there's the “I don't want to fill out the form because it's really complicated because I always do it wrong and then somebody's mad. And I have to fix it and they wouldn't explain how to fix it and it's a form and it's wrong every time.” Like that.

And some of dealing with it is the abolition of shame. And some of it is getting support from others. And some of it is to just be radically okay with being a fuck-up. So like, I'm like, you know what? This form might be wrong and they'll tell me and we'll fight about it. It's not my problem right now, because I finished it and I sent it. It's not my problem until it comes back.

The IRB hates me because I have to argue with them about how disabled people are people, and then because I have to fill out a form, they tell me I didn't do it right and I'm like, okay tell me what you meant. I stop trying to get it right the first time and just let them walk me through what they really want from me.

Avoidance is hard. I can say the solution is to just don't give a fuck anymore but — It takes a minute to get there.

That's when body doubling is really helpful. Really just “hold my hand and do this Thing” is an okay thing to ask for.

Because yeah, the walls aren't going to go away with meds. Those are self-love walls. Sometimes we need friends to hold our hands while we do the thing that we hate. I don't know if that was helpful.

GUEST 5: It is. Thank you.

RUA: Um. So we have some stuff in here about spoons versus forks. There's also tendril theory … there's matchstick, which is my favorite. But that one's for chronic pain. Although I think it works really well for emotional overwhelm and meltdown, too.

A question about explaining it to normies… that’s hard. So there's a few things here. First, I'm fairly convinced there's no such thing as a neurotypical person — just people who benefit from the idea of a norm, and people who do not. I don’t mean that everyone is neurodivergent, not everyone experiences their difference as disabling. I just mean that the “typical” is not real, and no one meets it. So, for example, we have people that are very clearly autistic and diagnosed formally that still operate in service of normativity and do lots of harm.

So, your identity, as neurodivergent or not, doesn't actually decide whether or not you're supporting the bell curve or dismantling it. Right? And so what I mean by that is, sometimes it's not worth trying to explain it to the normies or to the people who are upholding normative power — I can't explain it to somebody who's committed to neurobigotry. I can't explain it to somebody who's committed to like, the ideal of the individual capitalist innovator.

What I do sometimes, though, is I find that being vague or indirect, which I know is very difficult, can be a useful strategy. When they wouldn't respect, “Hey, I need this in writing because I'm autistic and I don't know what you're saying.” Instead I say, “I have a cognitive condition and I'm not able to process the words that you're saying and I need it in writing.”

When you make accommodation vaguely neurological and not specifically the condition that everybody thinks is like, fake — then they’re all like “oh, no. The brain. That's so scary. Like. Ugh.”

And they may defer to it, because “neurological condition” is scarier to them. And they are more willing to roll over for it rather just saying “oh you're ADHD shut the fuck up. You're being lazy.”

It’s not a lie. They just don't need to know which alphabet soup you are. Just be like, “my brain hurts.”

[LAUGHING] I don't know if that was helpful.

Adulting

There was an anonymous question submitted in the form. And I want to get to it because they submitted it a long time ago and it would be really rude to not talk about it.

So, getting things done at work… Struggling to keep up with adulting tasks… personal life, cleaning, tidying, getting enough sleep. And then you know the whole like, you're supposed to have hobbies. And you know, what's leisure?

First of all, the reason that you struggle in your home life is you're using all your spoons, so to speak, on work. And sometimes you have to, because it's like “if I don't do this I don't get the paycheck and I die.”

[LAUGHING] like hmm, how do you solve the problem when the problem is actually not your problem, it's capitalism's problem?

The Black Girl Lost Keys blog has a really cool video about cooking that I really appreciate, and I think she also has stuff about cleaning. I really would defer to her materials, because they've been really cool. And just really nice to look at.

And then the other thing is… your house doesn't have to look like other people's houses. And like, 95 percent of the people's houses that you see on TikTok are fake. And also a million dollars. They're paying somebody to clean their house. So like, it's okay if you never put your laundry away. Mine is currently in a chair and sometimes I fold it and put it away, and I do like it better when it's like that. But sometimes I don't get it done. The clothes on the floor are still clean. And the floor that they are on is clean because it's covered in clothes and you can't step on it. Problem solved.

[LAUGHING]

Dishes are really hard because it's like, no you have to clean those or you die. But if it's really bad, it's okay to buy paper plates. You know? Maybe you don't want to do that forever. Some people do. But there's no moral value to, “I don't have plates because I can't clean them. I have paper plates.” It's okay to use paper plates. Okay? Yeah.

Not cleaning is like… not cleaning is not — it doesn't make you bad. Unsanitary things can make you sick, and you might need help with some of that but — you're not like, gross or bad.

Okay, good. All done.

[LAUGHING] and then you know, I'm extremely online. I'm FractalEcho on Twitter and Twitter alternatives. I'm echolaiachamber on Instagram, and I am on Facebook even though it's a terrible place, and my nonFOIA, encrypted email address is this one: fractalalia@proton.me.

And yeah. I love you. Stay alive. Bye.