hey guys let's talk about how we can manage chronic burnouts and reoccurring meltdowns and if you find videos like this helpful please give it a like and subscribe to my channel stay tuned for future videos educating you on autism and bringing more awareness to what autism is and what it can look like so i already have a few series on this channel that i'm always adding to and i thought that it's about time where i started a new series on this channel where i give tips and tricks for autistic individuals out there and let me
explain to you guys why i want to do this and why i think is so important so for those of you who don't know really quick i started my own business where i do one-on-one coaching with individuals to bring more balance into their lives and something that i find very very important for me is to begin to work with autistic adults in specific as i begin to grow this channel and make more content specific to autism awareness and the reason why i find this so important and such a deep sense of soul calling to this
is because there are really not enough resources for autistic adults out there to get the help that we need in order to learn more about our autism and to integrate our autism into our lives in a way that feels good to us i feel like a lot of the help accessible to us and sometimes it's not even accessible but the only help that we really have out there are professionals who work with kids in school settings and a lot of the times the help that is accessible to us isn't really autism informed in the ways
that we would hope for it to be you know i of course i'm like grossly simplifying it but a lot of the times the help that is accessible to us is essentially just trying to teach us how to not be autistic or how to be more holistic and it's not really teaching us about autism in a way that makes us understand it and embrace it and learn how to integrate it better into our lives and how we can integrate ourselves into society better as an autistic individual because of that i find doing work like this
so important and at least having resources made available to those out there who are seeking help and who are autistic if you're watching and you can't really afford to do one-on-one sessions with me or one-on-one coaching with me subscribing to my channel helps me out so much with continuing to make content like this so that people out there who really could use the advice i have to give can access videos like this or episodes like this be able to learn about their autism for free and to be able to integrate some of the tips i
have into their lives on their own either way wherever you're at it just helps me out a lot for those to like my videos share it subscribe so that i can make a living on my end and continue to create content like this to the best of my ability and if you stay tuned i hopefully in the near future will have a membership available to those out there who just want to pay like a few bucks a month for extra content extra worksheets that i'm going to make accessible for autistic individuals all of that good
stuff so with that being said let's get into the chunk of this video i just want to quickly talk about mental health and autism really quick because it's all related right i find that a lot of autistic adults who were diagnosed later in life or even if they were diagnosed when they were younger we struggle a lot with chronic burnouts and reoccurring meltdowns and a big reason why i think this begins to happen into adulthood and begins to happen at a higher rate is because the way we approach mental health the well-being of a person
in autism is not necessarily in alignment with what works best for us i feel like a typical approach to mental health and mental well-being and i'm not saying everyone is like this but i'm just saying generally right generally speaking the way we like to approach it and the way we are used to seeing it being approached is you go to therapy right you talk about it you work through those thoughts you go through those mental patterns you process your emotions so it's mental first emotions second and the last thing you really target is once you've
integrated your thoughts your emotions maybe you could then begin to do things in your life to bring those thoughts and emotions into action and that is kind of like how we approach mental health and trying to bring balance into our lives right and that works for a lot of people out there i'm sure that works for autistic individuals out there to an extent but the thing is is that we as autistic individuals process differently we develop differently we experience life and the world differently than holistic people our sensory experience is so different and therefore it
really does make sense that the way we would approach bringing balance into our lives and mental health is going to be a little bit different and that difference will probably benefit us more than it might for an holistic person you know not saying that the advice i'm gonna give is only for autistic individuals it's just i curated it with autistic individuals in mind and curated it with myself in mind as an autistic woman so here is the trick listen carefully you guys especially if you are the person who has autism when it comes to approaching
mental health it's not done in the ways we're used to seeing what works for us is having to flip the order in which we target different aspects of our lives so what is the most important thing to us and something that we should target first out of anything else is our physical well-being so we have to really take ourselves from up here where we're experiencing all this burnout all of these meltdowns and instead of trying to target like what are things you want to work on like you know making more friends getting a better job
getting more sleep before you do any of that you have to bring yourself from up here back down to square one and begin to pinpoint what are those physical discomforts in your life that is just whittling away at your sensory experience day after day after day for years on end pinpoint what those triggers are pinpoint what helps you pinpoint what accommodations you need and begin to lay out a new foundation to build off of and once that new foundation is built and you have built a life for yourself where you are physically comfortable you are
doing well you're not overstimulated on a daily basis you know every now and then it's okay because we can't control everything but you have what you need the knowledge and the accommodations whatever you need to integrate into your life you have what you need to maintain an overall physical well-being enough so that you can emotionally regulate better naturally let alone when you put that actual effort into it and you could mentally work through critical thinking a lot smoother as well that whole process is just smoother once your body is functioning in the ways that it
needs to because it feels safe and because it is nourished so let me explain why our physical well-being is so important so our physical well-being is so important because when human beings are experiencing high levels of stress and anxiety our body gets thrown out of whack our intestines are not working the way it needs to we're experiencing inflammation inside our digestion is not working as well that's why a lot of people who struggle with anxiety aka a lot of autistic and neurodivergent individuals struggle with chronic ibs and gastrointestinal issues we struggle with constipation diarrhea feeling
nauseous vertigo like there's so many things we struggle with in our gut because we're constantly experiencing such high levels of stress and what stress also does to you is it really triggers your fight or flight instincts and it makes your breath a lot more shallow you're literally not getting enough oxygen to your body that is needed to function on a healthy level you're not getting enough oxygen to your brain for it to critically think and function on a healthy level as well and so when you're stressed essentially your capabilities to critically think kind of goes
out the window your capabilities to emotionally regulate goes out the window as well this is why it's so important for autistic individuals to prioritize our physical well-being now the reason why it's also super important is because the amount of stress we experience is going to be higher than an holistic person basically because the way we process and experience the world that we're in in this day and age at least and in the past is a very traumatic and stressful experience because our world is not really built for us it's not even built to really accommodate
us if anything the world is built on like a complete opposite sense of how we naturally like to function and process and so when you're living your whole life trying to be something that is not natural to you you're gonna feel very very stressed and you're gonna carry that trauma of all these stressful situations in your body year after year day in and day out and that really affects a person as a whole like a lot of the times autistic individuals i meet their baseline is experiencing such high levels of stress all the time that
they don't even really know what it feels like to relax anymore they lose touch with the concept of not being stressed because it's so normal to them and it's their reality so a lot of the times when you meet an autistic person and you talk to them they seem fine on the outside they seem calm they seem stoic but if you were to like hook them up to machines and you know calculate the numbers of their heart rate their blood pressure all that stuff you will see that it just doesn't match up and i'm speaking
from my own experience as well and a lot of my clients struggle with the same thing but when we go to the doctors and we have a lot of these chronic health issues like migraines and tension and gastrointestinal issues and also you know our blood pressure is just always super over the roof a lot of the times doctors are completely baffled because they're like oh this isn't normal there must be something wrong with you let's run a bunch of tests and have you pay hundreds of dollars to figure out what that is and a lot
of the times you know especially for me when i got those tests back you know i've gotten my brain scanned i've done so many blood tests as well they all came back clear and so all of these medical professionals are just so baffled but what it really is it's so simple you guys it's literally just being chronically stressed on a day-to-day level for all my life is the source to all of my medical issues is the source to a lot of my mental and emotional issues as well because i wasn't regulating my body and my
body wasn't getting nourished in the ways that it needed so i couldn't function in a way that could support myself a lot of the times when i see autistic clients who are coming to me for help they have a good idea of the things that they want to bring more balance to and to improve on the things that they struggle with and it's always very specific things in their lives like i feel lonely i feel like i don't have anyone to connect with i don't like my job i just feel a deep sense of like
discomfort and depression and anxiety these are the things i want to work on and they believe in their minds that we have to target those things first and improve on it but what it really comes down to is the reason why it's so hard to begin to tackle these things is because your baseline is struggling and has been struggling for years now and if we do not target that baseline and begin to bring balance into that foundation there is no way in hell we can begin to balance out everything else that you want to balance
out and so what are ways that we can physically bring more balance to ourselves and our lives it's all about sensory experiences the first thing is is to reflect on yourself observe yourself and keep track of one what are things in your day-to-day life that you find yourself absolutely trying to avoid what are those things and keep track of why you find yourself trying to avoid it because a lot of the times the reason why you avoid a certain person a certain experience and a certain task is because the sensory experience of that thing is
extremely stressful for you the second thing is to figure out therefore what are the accommodations you want to begin to integrate into your life so once you have a good idea of things that really make you uncomfortable and bothers you you can begin to figure out okay what are ways i can make those tasks or seeing certain people a more comfortable experience for yourself so one is avoid two is accommodations and the third one is what can you do to recover so this one is important because a lot of the times we cannot have full
control over our lives and our environment there's a lot of things we can have control over which is good because i'm sure we all love to hear that but for those times where we are not in control which is inevitable what are the things that you need to have in place in order to recover from it there should be a certain routine that you have in place that you know will work for you and can be used at your disposal in those moments where you are having a meltdown having a burnout and you just need
to go into recovery mode when it comes to recovery practices something that you could keep in mind is what are sensory stims that energizes you so there's different stims for different reasons and this is the importance of learning what your stems are as an autistic person and how they meet your needs there are certain stims that will energize you there are certain stims that will calm you and regulate you and there's certain stims that will over stimulate you and cause you to feel distressed it's important to begin to really get to know yourself and begin
to build that road map of what are sensory stims that actually energizes yourself and what does that mean that means it's engaging one or more of your senses in a way that gives you energy fulfills you and you feel like after you're done you have more energy to do other things in your life rather than the opposite where you're tired and drained and you need to go rest another thing that you should begin to think about is sensory deprivation sensory deprivation a lot of the times is what is needed in your recovery phase to bring
you back to a baseline because you experience such a heightened spike of stress levels right more than usual and so it's really important in following up a meltdown or burnout to have sensory deprivation practices in place sensory deprivation practices is kind of the opposite of energizing stims it's kind of like taking away so that you have a moment to just like quiet everything down and just like breathe lowering your heart rate and calming yourself down so what this can look like is being able to lay down or getting into certain bodily positions that could encourage
your body to regulate itself a lot better when i'm in sensory deprivation mode depending on what my needs are sometimes what this could mean is i go into my room i lay on my bed i turn off all the lights i close my eyes i put in my headphones and i listen to white noise i am not doing anything but just hearing that white noise and breathing those two things super simple and i do that for however long i need sometimes all i need is 10 minutes sometimes i need a few hours i don't do
anything other than that i don't talk i don't listen to music podcasts i basically don't want my brain to be processing anything i just want my brain to turn off at that point and those are kind of like following a meltdown it's like a more severe recovery mode but a sensory deprivation practice that i have put in my life on a day-to-day level just to maintain my overall well-being and so that i could try to avoid meltdowns as much as possible is just a very simple practice first thing when i wake up in the morning
and that is to get outside go on to my yoga mat lay down breathe close my eyes and just like feel my body feel my breath listen to the white noise sometimes i could just listen to the birds in the morning as well feel the air on my skin especially in the mornings a lot of the times it's cooler air so it feels really good and i'll just lay there and breathe and i'll feel into my body and where i'm experiencing a lot of tension because a lot of the times with autism and anyone with
high stress and high anxiety we carry that tension in our bodies so i'll feel into tense parts of my body so for me it would be my upper back my hips and my jaw i will find myself into certain positions where i could begin to stretch those parts of my body out in a very gentle way i have certain positions that i will go into that helps bring a deep sense of comfort it will help me just like calm down a good way to visualize this is you know if you can picture a mother comforting
her child those very gentle physical touch and affirmations that really regulates a child who is in distress you want to basically be doing that to yourself so there's certain positions that i feel very comforted by and i'm basically doing it to myself so that i could help regulate myself as if i am the child that needs to be regulated and so a lot of these positions that i find myself in is bringing my thighs to my chest and keeping myself low on the ground and kind of like huddled in so that it could like make
me feel a lot more safe more regulated and breathe it's so amazing for me to begin my mornings like this because it just helps bring my baseline down more and my heart rate isn't going to be as high as it usually is and i could be a little bit more calm a lot of the times my heart rate will go up throughout the day because there's things that are unpredictable and will stress me out and make me anxious but all i really need to do is at least get my baseline down in the morning and
if it spikes back up throughout the day i have to remove myself bring it back down and then get back into the day and that is a really good way for me to regulate my baseline and make sure it is where it needs to be and of course for the people who are watching this and are going to try to implement this into your routine adjust it to what your needs are so if there's something i do that feels good but you think that it could use adjustments to fit you better by all means make
those adjustments feel into it as much as possible and eventually get to a point where you have that specific practice or that specific habit in place that you know works for you and you could rely on knowing what we can rely on to make ourselves feel better and to help regulate ourselves brings not just like that physical comfort but it brings a deep sense of mental comfort as well to know that no matter what goes on you have these practices in place to ground yourself and to make yourself feel safe and comfortable again and you
don't have to feel that intense sense of stress that once you lose it it's like the world is ending right which kind of goes into the concept of like meltdowns i feel like if you were to just follow those advices i give you your meltdowns is naturally going to be managed a lot better but going more specifically into how to manage your meltdowns i think again applying that structure that i first listed off avoid accommodate recover you apply that to meltdowns as well that should be applied to your overall well-being but that should also be
applied to meltdowns in specific and you should find a specific practice that is for meltdowns and is for your overall well-being and so when it comes to meltdowns you pinpoint what are things that makes you have meltdowns so that you could try to avoid those specific triggers as much as possible what are things that you can't necessarily avoid and so in those moments what are the accommodations you could ensure to integrate in that moment to make it less intense and what are the things that you could do to recover from a meltdown when it's ultimately
happening because a lot of the times we can't control our meltdowns and we shouldn't expect ourselves to not have meltdowns either we shouldn't feel ashamed of it but also we should figure out a way to try to manage it there's an in-between there that we could really target my number one trigger for meltdowns is social situations that are really overwhelming is impossible to interpret and there's like a progression of escalation of someone's mood so what that means is if i'm interacting with one or more people where they are doing something that is not aligning with
what i'm interpreting and they're constantly like contradicting what i'm observing in them so if they come across as really angry and frustrated i could say like are you okay like what can we do in this moment to like get you to calm down and they're like i'm not mad that is a really classic example of something that could really quickly get me into a meltdown stage because if i am already escalating emotionally with someone but trying to ground myself as much as possible and help that person and they're just not letting me help them and
they're denying that there's even help that needs to come in it puts me in a very intense place where i just don't know where to go from there and i begin to shut down don't know what to do i don't know what to say i don't know how to move forward that's when i start to experience a meltdown coming on because i've just completely lost so that is like my number one meltdown trigger another meltdown trigger is just like a bunch of small things stacked up on each other a change in plans someone being late
someone not meeting an expectation that i had of them that was like established if all of these things happen on top of each other all at once that's a really quick recipe for a meltdown as well and usually my meltdowns kind of look like a panic attack i look like i'm in extreme distress i'm sobbing i don't know what to do i can't talk i become non-verbal i can't really formulate my thoughts i am just in extreme emotional distress and i can't do anything but to just cry usually when i'm in a meltdown the people
around me become very concerned because a lot of the times allistic people when they're seeing someone crying or seeing someone in distress their way of targeting it is to ask you all these questions are you okay why are you crying what can i do you know there's all of these like questions being asked and words for you to process also they're asking you to process your own thoughts and emotions which is impossible during a meltdown that can really push you even deeper into a meltdown so it was really helpful for me to realize that during
a meltdown i become non-verbal so that i could at least verbalize that to someone i could say hey i'm experiencing a meltdown right now i'm in a lot of stress i can't talk just give me a second leave me alone or if you trust the other person you could ask for them to just be quiet and like rub your back and like do a simple physical sense of comfort to give you the time that you need to just like let the wave pass and ride it out and so like that would be an example of
an accommodation that you have in place in those moments to just help you through the wave of that meltdown this is kind of like where the recovery practice comes in place usually the recovery that i have in place for meltdowns is as i stated earlier in this video and that's the sensory deprivation aspect of different types of routines that helps regulate your body again all right you guys so that brings us to the end of this video i hope today's video was helpful to you and i hope that this helps bring more clarity into your
experiences as an autistic person or if you're an holistic person watching this because you know someone autistic i hope this enlightened you a little bit more i am planning on making worksheets that goes through things like this like figuring out what are your sensory needs what are your energizing sensory stims what is sensory deprivations that helps you what are certain sensory maintenances that you can instill in your life you know i will in the near future make worksheets like this available for you guys i will put them up on my etsy shop or when i
make memberships available to you guys on my youtube channel you could pay a certain amount a month for extra videos and also i will probably put those worksheets that i make available for members as well but either way subscribe to my channel and stay up to date with the new things i'm going to be able to provide for you guys and of course if you need a little bit more help more one-on-one interaction by all means contact me set up a consultation and we could go over whether or not working one-on-one with me is something
that would benefit you but other than that thank you guys for watching this far on my video and i will see you guys on next week's video bye guys so you
