Books and tools that helped me through autistic burnout: Because therapy wasn’t for me
Originally published on Medium
Most of my professional help as a late-diagnosed autistic and ADHD woman came from books. I love learning from books. I can focus on the book’s message, stop reading whenever I’m inspired to think or write or act, and even quit the book if I don’t want to finish.
I wanted professional help like therapy or coaching to work for me. But it wasn’t right for me. I did one intro therapy session once. And, after getting diagnosed, I tried a coaching session for autistic/ADHD adults. The therapist and coach were nice people.
The problem? I couldn’t turn off my social mask setting. I kept trying to match the person’s energy and anticipate the best way to answer questions. I couldn’t let myself be me. The social aspect was too distracting for me to let them help. I didn’t want to force it, so I didn’t schedule more sessions.
Thankfully, I still had books.
These are the books that helped me go from “What’s wrong with me?” to “Am I burned out?” to “Ohh! I’m autistic!” to my current “Okay, I understand I’m autistic. What now?” phase.
Oh, and this list is not all in chronological order. My memory isn’t that good. I also linked to the book or tool on Amazon (except for two), so I’ll earn a small commission when you click those links.
Permission to Feel by Mark Brackett
This book taught me that emotions are important. And explained their importance in a way that made sense to me.
And I realized I had no emotional intelligence. Yes, I could write you a scene about a character experiencing complex emotions. But identify those emotions in myself? Not really.
I didn’t like that. So I used the book’s emotion grid (link to image of grid) to practice identifying emotions. It was SO HARD. At first, I identified if I was feeling red, blue, green, or yellow. Then I used the grid to name that emotion.
Emotion Magnets and Mood Tracker
The emotion grid was great but I wanted a more tangible way to practice. So I bought these emotion magnets (not an Amazon link). I put the magnets on the refrigerator for easy access. I liked to figure out my emotions in the morning or after being around a lot of people.
I worked backwards and used the “I want to feel…” prompt to see how I wanted to feel. And then that clarified how I was actually feeling — the opposite. And sometimes, I carried the magnets in a tin in my purse to practice on-the-go.
Like I said, emotions are hard. I needed a lot of practice.
So I did more.
I really really wanted to understand emotions so I bought a Mood Tracker planner to track emotions. The patterns showed me I felt annoyed or upset more than I realized. It gave me the hard data I needed to make changes to feel better.
The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk
This book taught me to get out of my head to heal.
What stuck with me: Trauma lingers in the physical body. Moving the body helps release the lingering trauma. So I needed to connect more with my physical body. Not easy. I didn’t feel my arms and legs in space. I had to concentrate on them or put my hand on them to feel them as connected to me. Guided somatic meditations and my qigong practice helped with this.
Running on Empty: Overcome Your Childhood Emotional Neglect and Running on Empty No More: Transform Your Relationships with Your Partner, Your Parents and Your Children by Jonice Webb
These 2 books were external validation that I didn’t get needed emotional support growing up. And that’s a generational problem, so it wasn’t my parents’ fault. They didn’t get what they needed either.
But it happened and it affected me and that is a real problem. I needed this external validation since my internal validation wasn’t enough at the time.
When the Body Says No: Exploring the Stress-Disease Connection by Gabor Maté
This book taught me that ignoring the body’s needs can manifest as serious physical illness.
I kind of already knew this. Every time I missed too many hours of sleep, I got a 24-hour cold that resolved if I slept all day. My body always forced me to rest before I missed too much sleep. This book made me think: I need to listen to my body’s small warnings now before they become more serious.
Looking back, I see my answer to healing was in my body, not my mind. I had to quiet my mind to hear my body’s urgent warning:
We’re tired. It’s time to rest.
Edited to add: I added the article links to one webpage. See them here: https://healingresources.my.canva.site/