“I need adjustments, but I don’t want to out myself as autistic.”   For years, I white-knuckled through office life—blaming myself when fluorescent lights left me nauseous, when open-plan seating made focus impossible, when I needed five business days to recover from a single meeting.   Then I learned: You don’t need an autism diagnosis to get […]

“I spent my whole life thinking I was just bad at being human.” Sound familiar? If you’re a late-diagnosed ADHDer, Autistic, or otherwise neurodivergent adult, you’ve probably had this soul-crushing realization: You’ve been running on fumes for decades. And then—crash. The burnout hits harder. The meltdowns feel more violent. The exhaustion isn’t just a bad

“I wasn’t lazy. I wasn’t failing. My brain was screaming for a break I didn’t know how to take.”   If you’ve ever felt like your body and mind suddenly stopped working—despite pushing through for months (or years)—you might be experiencing autistic burnout.   Unlike everyday exhaustion, autistic burnout isn’t fixed by a weekend of sleep. It’s

“I don’t know who I would’ve been if I’d known sooner.” When I got my autism diagnosis at 36, I expected relief. Instead, I found myself sobbing in the parking lot, grieving a life I never got to live.   The gifted kid who dropped out of high school because no one knew about sensory overload.