Part of me hates limits.
Part of me loves limits.
Sudden surprising limits irritate my sense of agency and ego strength. What, I have to rest? I’m not in control of this? This interrupts my plans.
Chosen boundaries that honor new parts of story can feel like relief and freedom. What, I get to rest? I get to let go? This is how I love me.
I’m navigating a season of burnout.
New boundaries are the only way forward. I used to do it this way. Now, I choose to do it this other way. It always makes sense in theory. But living it out is hard.
The boundary brings relief. But it also messes with my sense of identity. It’s inviting me to wrestle with the stories I’ve clung to about who I am and what I’m capable of. Because I am not capable of many of those things right now. And that feels deeply uncomfortable. It’s bringing me face to face with how I worship competency. It’s like a weird codependency with my sense of skill. I’m only okay if I’m okay.
To tell myself the truth about what I can and can’t do is one thing. To tell people around me is harder.
My experience is most people don’t actually care. Everyone has their own things going on and we’re all trying to survive right now. But the old expectations I have for myself are noisy inside my head. Really? You’ve done that for years. Of course you can still do it. You’re just being lazy. You’re failing.
My inner bully is quite mean sometimes. Even when she’s looking directly at evidence that says no I actually cannot do those things anymore. The more I unmask as an autistic human, those things I did on the surface while unconsciously suppressing sensory challenges, emotional dysregulation, and challenging social navigation have become near impossible.
I hate this.
The ways of belonging that I used to co-create for others now feel out of reach. Like I’m slowly sinking in quicksand and I can’t grasp anyone’s hands. Yet, my masked skills are still fairly strong so it looks like I’m doing mostly fine.
I used to be so afraid of burnout but not quite sure why. Now that I understand what I was outrunning as a highly masked autistic, it makes perfect sense. My entire world was built around pretending to appear neurotypical. If anyone figured out I couldn’t keep up or fit in, then that meant some kind of death.
Now?
Burnout is my body very awkwardly asking for me to pay attention to something that’s unsustainable.
But to even get to that message, I must wrestle with how uncomfortable it is to not feel competent. If I can’t tolerate that reality that I’ll miss the deeper invitations of burnout.
Burnout is not an invitation to push harder.
One of burnout’s antidotes is gentleness. And that is a tricky thing in our culture. Our systems are not set up with this quality in mind. It’s not often affirmed or valued in the spaces we move in. Practicing softness or gentleness with one’s self is not a common way of being.
We’re invited to show up and hold it all loosely. Letting life enter when it needs to enter and dissolve like sand when it needs to fall out of our fingers. To make peace with the coming and going. It’s a thing that many grounded and wise people among us often share. But wow, is it challenging.
I’ve experienced seasons like this before. I’m grateful to know it will pass. But only with deep love, care, gentleness, truth-telling, release, and self-trust. It requires me to lean on others who have capacity in the areas I don’t. It will invite tough decisions about how I arrange my life and the work I’m here to share.
Here’s to slowly (and sometimes violently) learning our limits. Honoring them. Lamenting them. Finding freedom in them. Receiving them as messenger and gift.
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The Thread is a weekly-ish newsletter where we untangle the stories that make us who we are so we can show up to our lives with spacious presence, brave honesty, radical love & wild curiosity.
Take good care. You are worth it..❤️
Thankyou very much Jenny...For your honesty and thoughtful explanation. Being in that process of recognising some unsustainable places... I too am finding that gentleness and the reassurance of safety and value are helping...Take Gentle Care of you and those you love ...so obvious in your communications for us : )