December 22, 2023 • 25 mins
In this episode of My Time, Tony Hernandez Pumarejo will be telling us what autistic burnout is and the impact it has on the mental health of autistic people (and also any ordinary person).
For more information on autistic burnout, I share this article: https://www.autism.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/professional-practice/autistic-burnout
Website: www.tonyhernandezpumarejo.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Tony Hernandez Pumarejo, writer and author, professional and motivational speaker, TV
(00:17):
presenter, life coach, and international ambassador for autism and mental health.
He's proud to invite you to his podcast, My Time with Tony Hernandez Pumarejo.
(00:38):
Hi, and welcome to this new episode of My Time with Tony Hernandez Pumarejo. And this is your
host, Tony Hernandez Pumarejo. I'm truly honored and I'm privileged to be able to present this
episode to all of you who are, especially you, that you are taking time from your busy schedule
(00:59):
and the things of life to listen or to watch me. And your time is very valuable and I want to make
sure that this is worth your time. And if you haven't done so yet, please subscribe to my podcast,
My Time in all the platforms, YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, and many, many other
(01:21):
path, you know, also Apple Podcasts, you know, and Google Podcasts as well. So if you haven't done so
yet, please, please subscribe to this podcast. I'm telling you right now, it's going to be a great,
great experience. And again, thank you so much for tuning in to My Time with Tony Hernandez Pumarejo.
And the first thing I want to do is that today I want to talk about this topic, which I have been
(01:45):
very curious to talk about for some time. But it's a topic that impacts everybody, especially
people with autism or autistic people and other special needs, neurodiversion, neurodiversity people
all over the world and how it is the topic of burnout, especially in autism, there's this thing
(02:10):
called autistic burnout. So what we're going to do is that we're going to first start by defining
what is autistic burnout. And I was able to find an article of the the National Autistic Society
from the UK, which has a pretty good article about understanding autistic burnout. I would like to
(02:35):
share with all of you right now. So let's go to that. The National Autistic Society of the UK,
they brought this article, you know, mentioning about autistic burnout. And you're wondering
why I'm talking about burnout. What is autistic burnout? You're going to see in very, very shortly.
So according to this article, it says here, Dr. Dora, where he maker, it says Portland State
(03:01):
University must be the US. You know, what is the definition of autistic burnout? From what we learn,
quote, from what we learn, we create the following definition of autistic burnout.
Autistic burnout is a syndrome concept conceptualized as a result from chronic life stress
(03:23):
and mismatch of expectations and abilities without adequate supports. It is characterized
by pervasive long term, typically three months or more, exhaustion, loss of function, and reduce
tolerance to stimulus. And here you see a little bit the reasons why burnout occur. One is masking,
(03:46):
you know, autistic people and neurodivergent people mask their traits and ups and downs.
And because we had to conform to a, what is a, it was called a extroverted society, very social
focused society. And that can create a lot of stress. You know, everybody, you know, everybody
has come, has come to burnout, but it's even more prevalent within the autism and autistic
(04:12):
population. Obviously, the stress from living in the world, as mentioned, not set up to accommodate
autistic people, life changes. And, and yeah, that's, that's about it for just a preview about
autistic burnout I would like to share with all of you. And you may, you're wondering why I'm
bringing this up, why I'm bringing the topic about autistic burnout. The reason I'm bringing it in is
(04:38):
because I just wanted to share a perspective of things. I wanted to share what has been my
experience so far dealing with this, especially in the last year or so. As you know, as you, if you
follow up to my career, you have seen my life story, the ups and downs, since I was, especially
(05:04):
since I was diagnosed with autism at age three. And I also talk about mental health, which is part
of me, you know, in my case, of my life story, dealing with stress, anxiety, which is one of the
things that I still deal with to this very day. But one of the things that I've dealt, that I've
dealt more and more recently is burnout. You know, burnout from different things, especially all work
(05:29):
related, you know, work related, struggling to get to life. And yeah, and then going through that,
you know, this is something that has had a profound impact in my life. And I just wanted to talk about
this with all of you today. I want to go back to autism month, autism, world autism month,
(05:54):
autism acceptance month, whatever you want to call it. What is autism month? And one thing that I was,
you know, as part of autism month, you know, a lot of times, you know, especially if you're part
of this community and you're an autistic advocate, we tend to get requests to do presentations,
(06:16):
interviews, collaborations, especially to share our story for autism month, right?
And I've been doing that for years, especially as part of being an advocate. And I get requests for
collaborations, speaking engagements, interviews, and, and we didn't expect, you know, to talk about,
you know, autism, especially my story as an autistic self advocate. But this year, you know,
(06:40):
there were so many things happening that, you know, it got frustrating because I was working with
different collaborations. Again, I'm not mentioning or not naming anybody, but I'm
anybody or anyone. As I said, I just, and I'm using my story, but this is a story for many others as
well. You know, he got, because I got to deal with so many things that it became very frustrating.
(07:06):
And I got completely burned out with autism month because, you know, a lot of times people take,
you know, and I feel a lot of times people take care, you know, take advantage of my kindness.
And that's one of my characteristics. And it can be very frustrating. I became so frustrating
with autism month. I personally don't like autism month that I was completely burned out.
(07:30):
And I kind of still kind of burned out into this, you know, up to this, up to today, to be honest,
because of so many things that I've been going through. And as I was mentioning,
going through so many things, you know, when I started my, I want to go back when I started my
(07:53):
advocacy career, you know, I started as a volunteer, you know, more than 10 years ago,
I started as in a volunteer with an autism organization in my area. And this was my first
time working in the community, you know, help my goal was to help people that have the same
(08:14):
diagnosis, the same condition that I have. And because of my life, if you haven't done so yet,
please, I encourage you to read my book, my book, my book, my book, my book, my book, my book, my
book Spiritual Freedom Without Sentimental In
(08:45):
through my story and to not go what I went through growing up, autistic, from as a child
all the way to adult. And I began collaboration with different organizations, you know, this
autism organization, then I went to another autism organization. Then as the years went by,
I graduated. I've also worked, I have worked since more than 10 years, first part-time,
(09:11):
then full-time jobs in jobs that require a lot of social communication, you know, retail, sales,
marketing, management, very high-pressured environments. And then now I'm working full-time
as an autism professional with an autism organization, paid position, which is my 9 to 5 job.
(09:35):
But in addition to my job, I also do other projects outside of that. I do speaking engagements,
I have my book, I have this podcast, I do consulting, and I do different projects. And
when I was starting, especially at beginning as a speaker, I understand that I needed to start
(09:56):
somewhere. And then as I started, the way I did it was to volunteer my service, my time,
to a different organization so that way I can start somewhere for free. And I volunteer to do
speaking engagements for the Rotary Club, Toastmasters, and many other entities for free,
(10:17):
because I wanted to build my brand to eventually become, and which is still what I'm working on to
this very day, to work as a full-time motivational speaker. And it's been true ups and downs.
Sometimes I haven't got, a lot of times I've not got speaking engagements because obviously
(10:38):
it's not my full-time job. You know, time management is something that I'm trying to
improve each day to better manage my time. And especially when you have a full-time job,
you have other projects, not only that, but you also have your life, you know, my health,
take care of my health, family, friends. You have a life that you have to take care of.
And it can be very frustrating, especially because we are to be adjusted to the ways of this
(11:03):
extroverted world. That it can be frustrating for autistics. And we can be completely burned out,
you know, with the stress, with the anxiety, with the high demand which puts on us to be able to
conform ourselves to the extroverted, to the normal world, as they call it. And, you know,
(11:25):
as going back to speaking engagements, I began to get paid for different paid speaking engagements.
But something that's been very frustrating with me is that a lot of times, you know, people,
you know, people or organizations reach out to me for engagements and they want it as a volunteer
base. And other organizations have asked me for time for this project here, this project there.
(11:49):
But the reality is that I'm only one person. I'm only one. And in terms of my speaking
engagement, it's a service. You know, it's a professional speaker and I want, you know,
I need to get, you know, the ideal things to get paid for the service that I provide.
And it's not because that I'm hungry, I'm money driven. Well, I have my financial goal. Don't
(12:10):
get me wrong. But not talking specifically about myself, but I'm talking with my conversations
with other autistic advocate speakers that do work in the community. And they have expressed
their frustration that a lot of times these organizations take us for granted. Take us for
granted. And sometimes they may say, oh, they have done everything, but we need this, we need that,
(12:34):
we need your help, we need your advice. But a lot of times, and some of you may relate to this,
they don't understand what we go through. It's a process to be able to do all of this.
It takes effort, it takes work to get to do, to be in these positions, to talk in front of a crowd,
to do a podcast, to do a media interview, to talk about your book, to talk about your story,
(12:59):
to help others and to work with this community. Autism is very difficult. There's different
opinions about autism, it's a disability, it's a condition, it's a neurological disability,
special condition. But it's not easy. It's frustrating. It could be hard, it could be
(13:19):
heartbreaking, it could be sad. And the reason I'm talking about this is because I'm going to be
honest and straight with all of you. Autism is not always the doctor, you know, or somebody
who's saying using autism as a superpower. It is not always like that. There are ups and downs.
(13:40):
And this is the way I'm going to do things in my podcast, to talk to the ups and downs about
autism in here. And I do that as a base on my working experience and my personal experience. So
that's why I wanted to make that clear. But to not lose the point, going back to the speaking
engagements, a lot of times I feel like organizations or entities or people don't
(14:07):
think into consideration of what we go through, that we need support as well. A lot of times
people want their services for free. And again, don't get me wrong, I love volunteering work.
I love volunteering. But when you have something that is a service and you take advantage of,
(14:27):
we cannot pay you and all of that, then again, this is a debate. Again, I'm just talking about
different things that I've gone through. Again, years of working in this community. So I'm just
being honest. I've been in row with all of you guys. And the thing is that it can be very
frustrating. I felt so frustrated. I have felt that they were taking advantage of me or using me
(14:51):
or not. I'm not blaming them. I'm not blaming the organization. I have let myself not to set the
boundaries. And because of that, I let others use me or take advantage of my kindness and all of
that. My being responsible. That's the way I see it. And as a result of that, and as a result,
I'm not pulling boundaries and putting straight in terms of what I offer and what we can do.
(15:16):
And I got completely burned out. And not only that, but also other things happening in my life right
now, happening in my life recently, mental health, wellness, being burned out is not fun. A lot of
times to make social media posts, it feels like it takes me an hour to make a social media post
(15:40):
instead of taking me a few seconds or be able to do this podcast, to do an interview, to do a video.
A lot of times I cannot think because I'm so burned out, especially when it comes to April,
because it's the highest demand. That's when most people care or pay attention to autism.
While in reality, autism is a 24 seven, seven day thing that impacts millions and millions of
(16:06):
people around the world. That's the reality. And I just wanted to share this experience with all of
you because the reality is that we need to talk about this. Burnout is part of mental health.
Burnout is part of the mental health process. And I'm very big in mental health, especially with
(16:30):
anxiety, my story. And yes, that's something that I've been dealing with. I just wanted to share with
all of you guys about being dealing with burnout. And I think that this is something that we need to
talk about. I think that in terms of what we can do, what we should do first, we need to talk about
(16:53):
this as part of the overall mental health, you know, topic about mental health, which right now,
especially in a world, there's a lot of problems with mental health. There's a mental health crisis
everywhere in the world. That's the reality. We need to talk about that. We need to talk about
(17:13):
self care. We need to talk about the, hey, just because you may see me that I'm doing well in
life and I'm talking about autism doesn't mean that I no longer need supports. I do. I need help.
And some people may say, ah, you don't look like autistic and all that, which is another topic.
We'll leave it on that. But reality is that we need to do much better in terms of support. We
(17:40):
need to do much better in regards to autism in terms of burnout and mental health. We need to
do more about that. So what we can do in regards to burnout for an autistic individual, I will say
first focus on yourself, take care of yourself, your physical health, mental health, emotional
(18:02):
health, spiritual health is crucial. If you don't have health, you have no life. And I'm a person
of faith. Find something, you know, your higher power, as I said, belief in, you know, finding God
to guide you towards what he wants, you know, the God wants you to do. You know, for me without God,
(18:23):
I have no life and I put everything, my life in his hands and I will, and I follow his will
to be able to do the mission that he asked for me on my daily life. That's things that bring me
peace, you know, do exercise, walk, read books, watch TV's. I have an hobby, which we can talk
(18:44):
about another time more in detail, which is the hobby for, you know, about going watching things
from the past, like, you know, TV shows, movies, video games, based on my, especially my previous
hobbies. I like doing that as well. And that takes me away or disconnect myself from what's
(19:07):
going on in the real world. Some may say I'm getting delusional, but it's something that
I, I say it's a coping mechanism. That's what I wanted to work, find coping mechanism. And autistic
people, even the parents, the parents of children with autism and adults with autism find ways to
cope with all the stress happening around the world. And that's something we need to talk about,
(19:30):
self-care. And I talk about this with parents as well, especially with parents, because
parents go through a lot of stress, but even more parents of autism, children with autism and other
special needs, they grow into a lot of stress. And in my talks and my consulting calls with the
(19:50):
community, I always recommend parents to focus on taking care of themselves first, because if they
don't take care of themselves first, then how can they take care of their loved one with autism,
mental health and other conditions? Self-care, health is important. And it's not easy. It's a
very demanding world, but it's not impossible. But we need to talk about this more and to come up
(20:16):
with better solutions, because, you know, it's, it's, it's created a lot of problems and we can do
better. And I believe if we work together through education, talk about openly without no stigmas
or stereotypes about mental health, especially burnout, you know, especially in our community,
(20:38):
then we can, we can make the right steps and move ahead in the right direction. So if your parent
that is watching this or a caretaker, especially if you work with families with autism, my
recommendation is to, you know, self-care, you know, focus if you have, if you believe in God,
put in your prayer, put, you know, put your hands in your life in God's hands and let him let
(21:04):
leave the way health, they can carry yourself disconnect. A lot of times, you know, for me,
I like to do other things outside of autism, because again, my job is autism almost every day
outside of my main job with my all my projects. And I like to do other things. And that's the
reason why I've been burned out is that, you know, for things for autism, it can get so overwhelming
(21:29):
that, you know, and I'm not saying that based on my situation, but also my work, you know,
as I said, autism is an ups and downs. Sure. There's inspirational, beautiful stories about
autism and there's a creative, you know, things about autism because every individual with autism,
no matter the level, no matter level one, level two, level three, level four, whatever, can achieve
(21:55):
a great quality of life. We see those stories every day. But also based on my job, I had to
deal with calls, emails and chats, talking with the community, talking with parents that are
concerned about their loved one, potentially being autistic or concerned about their child and his or
her education or even worse situations, losing, not having health insurance or a parent not having an
(22:21):
income, not having a job to take care of their loved one with autism. People, families with loved
ones with autism, homeless in the street and autistic adults in jail, no home, no job.
A lot of them losing their parents and the issues with families and who's going to take care of them
(22:46):
as they grow up. I deal with these calls every day and it's not easy and I love this community.
Don't get me wrong. I love the autism and the autistic community, special needs,
neurodivergent communities, because without this community, I would not be here right now.
(23:07):
This community gave me purpose. But it's not easy to deal with these calls and these life
situations each day. People being bullied, especially with autism. That's a
great burnout to me as well, as a professional, as an advocate of this community.
(23:28):
If you're an autistic adult, self-care is important. Set boundaries.
And focus on what you can do every day. There's so much you can do, ups and downs.
But don't let that discourage you or take over you and take care of yourself.
Hopefully, you guys were able to learn something from this. I always say
(23:51):
in my podcast or speaking engagement or my book, if you learn something from this,
if you can take one thing from this episode, then I would have done my job. So let me know
what you think about burnout, especially autistic burnout. If you're watching me,
have you gone through autistic burnout? Or you're in burnout, even if you're a normal person.
(24:13):
What do you think? What else do you think needs to be done? I would like to see you read your
comments, whether it's on YouTube or any other platform, and I would like to know what you think
of it. If you want to reach out to me on my social media, I would like to start this conversation
and come up with solutions to be able to confront this problem of burnout, which is having an impact
(24:39):
in a lot of people's lives. So if you haven't done so yet, I invite you again to subscribe to
all my podcasts, all platforms, and follow me on my social media under Tony Hernandez Pumarejo.
And I really appreciate you from taking time away from your busy schedule to listen to me and to
watch me today. And this has been Tony Hernandez Pumarejo. And until next time, I'll see you later.
(25:04):
God bless you and have a wonderful day. Bye bye.
(25:35):
you can purchase it on Amazon or any book selling platform.
You can also obtain a copy through his website. So until the next time you meet.
Thank you and have a wonderful day.
Blessings.
Tony Hernandez Pumarejo, writer and author, professional and motivational speaker, TV
(00:17):
presenter, life coach, and international ambassador for autism and mental health.
He's proud to invite you to his podcast, My Time with Tony Hernandez Pumarejo.
(00:38):
Hi, and welcome to this new episode of My Time with Tony Hernandez Pumarejo. And this is your
host, Tony Hernandez Pumarejo. I'm truly honored and I'm privileged to be able to present this
episode to all of you who are, especially you, that you are taking time from your busy schedule
(00:59):
and the things of life to listen or to watch me. And your time is very valuable and I want to make
sure that this is worth your time. And if you haven't done so yet, please subscribe to my podcast,
My Time in all the platforms, YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, and many, many other
(01:21):
path, you know, also Apple Podcasts, you know, and Google Podcasts as well. So if you haven't done so
yet, please, please subscribe to this podcast. I'm telling you right now, it's going to be a great,
great experience. And again, thank you so much for tuning in to My Time with Tony Hernandez Pumarejo.
And the first thing I want to do is that today I want to talk about this topic, which I have been
(01:45):
very curious to talk about for some time. But it's a topic that impacts everybody, especially
people with autism or autistic people and other special needs, neurodiversion, neurodiversity people
all over the world and how it is the topic of burnout, especially in autism, there's this thing
(02:10):
called autistic burnout. So what we're going to do is that we're going to first start by defining
what is autistic burnout. And I was able to find an article of the the National Autistic Society
from the UK, which has a pretty good article about understanding autistic burnout. I would like to
(02:35):
share with all of you right now. So let's go to that. The National Autistic Society of the UK,
they brought this article, you know, mentioning about autistic burnout. And you're wondering
why I'm talking about burnout. What is autistic burnout? You're going to see in very, very shortly.
So according to this article, it says here, Dr. Dora, where he maker, it says Portland State
(03:01):
University must be the US. You know, what is the definition of autistic burnout? From what we learn,
quote, from what we learn, we create the following definition of autistic burnout.
Autistic burnout is a syndrome concept conceptualized as a result from chronic life stress
(03:23):
and mismatch of expectations and abilities without adequate supports. It is characterized
by pervasive long term, typically three months or more, exhaustion, loss of function, and reduce
tolerance to stimulus. And here you see a little bit the reasons why burnout occur. One is masking,
(03:46):
you know, autistic people and neurodivergent people mask their traits and ups and downs.
And because we had to conform to a, what is a, it was called a extroverted society, very social
focused society. And that can create a lot of stress. You know, everybody, you know, everybody
has come, has come to burnout, but it's even more prevalent within the autism and autistic
(04:12):
population. Obviously, the stress from living in the world, as mentioned, not set up to accommodate
autistic people, life changes. And, and yeah, that's, that's about it for just a preview about
autistic burnout I would like to share with all of you. And you may, you're wondering why I'm
bringing this up, why I'm bringing the topic about autistic burnout. The reason I'm bringing it in is
(04:38):
because I just wanted to share a perspective of things. I wanted to share what has been my
experience so far dealing with this, especially in the last year or so. As you know, as you, if you
follow up to my career, you have seen my life story, the ups and downs, since I was, especially
(05:04):
since I was diagnosed with autism at age three. And I also talk about mental health, which is part
of me, you know, in my case, of my life story, dealing with stress, anxiety, which is one of the
things that I still deal with to this very day. But one of the things that I've dealt, that I've
dealt more and more recently is burnout. You know, burnout from different things, especially all work
(05:29):
related, you know, work related, struggling to get to life. And yeah, and then going through that,
you know, this is something that has had a profound impact in my life. And I just wanted to talk about
this with all of you today. I want to go back to autism month, autism, world autism month,
(05:54):
autism acceptance month, whatever you want to call it. What is autism month? And one thing that I was,
you know, as part of autism month, you know, a lot of times, you know, especially if you're part
of this community and you're an autistic advocate, we tend to get requests to do presentations,
(06:16):
interviews, collaborations, especially to share our story for autism month, right?
And I've been doing that for years, especially as part of being an advocate. And I get requests for
collaborations, speaking engagements, interviews, and, and we didn't expect, you know, to talk about,
you know, autism, especially my story as an autistic self advocate. But this year, you know,
(06:40):
there were so many things happening that, you know, it got frustrating because I was working with
different collaborations. Again, I'm not mentioning or not naming anybody, but I'm
anybody or anyone. As I said, I just, and I'm using my story, but this is a story for many others as
well. You know, he got, because I got to deal with so many things that it became very frustrating.
(07:06):
And I got completely burned out with autism month because, you know, a lot of times people take,
you know, and I feel a lot of times people take care, you know, take advantage of my kindness.
And that's one of my characteristics. And it can be very frustrating. I became so frustrating
with autism month. I personally don't like autism month that I was completely burned out.
(07:30):
And I kind of still kind of burned out into this, you know, up to this, up to today, to be honest,
because of so many things that I've been going through. And as I was mentioning,
going through so many things, you know, when I started my, I want to go back when I started my
(07:53):
advocacy career, you know, I started as a volunteer, you know, more than 10 years ago,
I started as in a volunteer with an autism organization in my area. And this was my first
time working in the community, you know, help my goal was to help people that have the same
(08:14):
diagnosis, the same condition that I have. And because of my life, if you haven't done so yet,
please, I encourage you to read my book, my book, my book, my book, my book, my book, my book, my
book Spiritual Freedom Without Sentimental In
(08:45):
through my story and to not go what I went through growing up, autistic, from as a child
all the way to adult. And I began collaboration with different organizations, you know, this
autism organization, then I went to another autism organization. Then as the years went by,
I graduated. I've also worked, I have worked since more than 10 years, first part-time,
(09:11):
then full-time jobs in jobs that require a lot of social communication, you know, retail, sales,
marketing, management, very high-pressured environments. And then now I'm working full-time
as an autism professional with an autism organization, paid position, which is my 9 to 5 job.
(09:35):
But in addition to my job, I also do other projects outside of that. I do speaking engagements,
I have my book, I have this podcast, I do consulting, and I do different projects. And
when I was starting, especially at beginning as a speaker, I understand that I needed to start
(09:56):
somewhere. And then as I started, the way I did it was to volunteer my service, my time,
to a different organization so that way I can start somewhere for free. And I volunteer to do
speaking engagements for the Rotary Club, Toastmasters, and many other entities for free,
(10:17):
because I wanted to build my brand to eventually become, and which is still what I'm working on to
this very day, to work as a full-time motivational speaker. And it's been true ups and downs.
Sometimes I haven't got, a lot of times I've not got speaking engagements because obviously
(10:38):
it's not my full-time job. You know, time management is something that I'm trying to
improve each day to better manage my time. And especially when you have a full-time job,
you have other projects, not only that, but you also have your life, you know, my health,
take care of my health, family, friends. You have a life that you have to take care of.
And it can be very frustrating, especially because we are to be adjusted to the ways of this
(11:03):
extroverted world. That it can be frustrating for autistics. And we can be completely burned out,
you know, with the stress, with the anxiety, with the high demand which puts on us to be able to
conform ourselves to the extroverted, to the normal world, as they call it. And, you know,
(11:25):
as going back to speaking engagements, I began to get paid for different paid speaking engagements.
But something that's been very frustrating with me is that a lot of times, you know, people,
you know, people or organizations reach out to me for engagements and they want it as a volunteer
base. And other organizations have asked me for time for this project here, this project there.
(11:49):
But the reality is that I'm only one person. I'm only one. And in terms of my speaking
engagement, it's a service. You know, it's a professional speaker and I want, you know,
I need to get, you know, the ideal things to get paid for the service that I provide.
And it's not because that I'm hungry, I'm money driven. Well, I have my financial goal. Don't
(12:10):
get me wrong. But not talking specifically about myself, but I'm talking with my conversations
with other autistic advocate speakers that do work in the community. And they have expressed
their frustration that a lot of times these organizations take us for granted. Take us for
granted. And sometimes they may say, oh, they have done everything, but we need this, we need that,
(12:34):
we need your help, we need your advice. But a lot of times, and some of you may relate to this,
they don't understand what we go through. It's a process to be able to do all of this.
It takes effort, it takes work to get to do, to be in these positions, to talk in front of a crowd,
to do a podcast, to do a media interview, to talk about your book, to talk about your story,
(12:59):
to help others and to work with this community. Autism is very difficult. There's different
opinions about autism, it's a disability, it's a condition, it's a neurological disability,
special condition. But it's not easy. It's frustrating. It could be hard, it could be
(13:19):
heartbreaking, it could be sad. And the reason I'm talking about this is because I'm going to be
honest and straight with all of you. Autism is not always the doctor, you know, or somebody
who's saying using autism as a superpower. It is not always like that. There are ups and downs.
(13:40):
And this is the way I'm going to do things in my podcast, to talk to the ups and downs about
autism in here. And I do that as a base on my working experience and my personal experience. So
that's why I wanted to make that clear. But to not lose the point, going back to the speaking
engagements, a lot of times I feel like organizations or entities or people don't
(14:07):
think into consideration of what we go through, that we need support as well. A lot of times
people want their services for free. And again, don't get me wrong, I love volunteering work.
I love volunteering. But when you have something that is a service and you take advantage of,
(14:27):
we cannot pay you and all of that, then again, this is a debate. Again, I'm just talking about
different things that I've gone through. Again, years of working in this community. So I'm just
being honest. I've been in row with all of you guys. And the thing is that it can be very
frustrating. I felt so frustrated. I have felt that they were taking advantage of me or using me
(14:51):
or not. I'm not blaming them. I'm not blaming the organization. I have let myself not to set the
boundaries. And because of that, I let others use me or take advantage of my kindness and all of
that. My being responsible. That's the way I see it. And as a result of that, and as a result,
I'm not pulling boundaries and putting straight in terms of what I offer and what we can do.
(15:16):
And I got completely burned out. And not only that, but also other things happening in my life right
now, happening in my life recently, mental health, wellness, being burned out is not fun. A lot of
times to make social media posts, it feels like it takes me an hour to make a social media post
(15:40):
instead of taking me a few seconds or be able to do this podcast, to do an interview, to do a video.
A lot of times I cannot think because I'm so burned out, especially when it comes to April,
because it's the highest demand. That's when most people care or pay attention to autism.
While in reality, autism is a 24 seven, seven day thing that impacts millions and millions of
(16:06):
people around the world. That's the reality. And I just wanted to share this experience with all of
you because the reality is that we need to talk about this. Burnout is part of mental health.
Burnout is part of the mental health process. And I'm very big in mental health, especially with
(16:30):
anxiety, my story. And yes, that's something that I've been dealing with. I just wanted to share with
all of you guys about being dealing with burnout. And I think that this is something that we need to
talk about. I think that in terms of what we can do, what we should do first, we need to talk about
(16:53):
this as part of the overall mental health, you know, topic about mental health, which right now,
especially in a world, there's a lot of problems with mental health. There's a mental health crisis
everywhere in the world. That's the reality. We need to talk about that. We need to talk about
(17:13):
self care. We need to talk about the, hey, just because you may see me that I'm doing well in
life and I'm talking about autism doesn't mean that I no longer need supports. I do. I need help.
And some people may say, ah, you don't look like autistic and all that, which is another topic.
We'll leave it on that. But reality is that we need to do much better in terms of support. We
(17:40):
need to do much better in regards to autism in terms of burnout and mental health. We need to
do more about that. So what we can do in regards to burnout for an autistic individual, I will say
first focus on yourself, take care of yourself, your physical health, mental health, emotional
(18:02):
health, spiritual health is crucial. If you don't have health, you have no life. And I'm a person
of faith. Find something, you know, your higher power, as I said, belief in, you know, finding God
to guide you towards what he wants, you know, the God wants you to do. You know, for me without God,
(18:23):
I have no life and I put everything, my life in his hands and I will, and I follow his will
to be able to do the mission that he asked for me on my daily life. That's things that bring me
peace, you know, do exercise, walk, read books, watch TV's. I have an hobby, which we can talk
(18:44):
about another time more in detail, which is the hobby for, you know, about going watching things
from the past, like, you know, TV shows, movies, video games, based on my, especially my previous
hobbies. I like doing that as well. And that takes me away or disconnect myself from what's
(19:07):
going on in the real world. Some may say I'm getting delusional, but it's something that
I, I say it's a coping mechanism. That's what I wanted to work, find coping mechanism. And autistic
people, even the parents, the parents of children with autism and adults with autism find ways to
cope with all the stress happening around the world. And that's something we need to talk about,
(19:30):
self-care. And I talk about this with parents as well, especially with parents, because
parents go through a lot of stress, but even more parents of autism, children with autism and other
special needs, they grow into a lot of stress. And in my talks and my consulting calls with the
(19:50):
community, I always recommend parents to focus on taking care of themselves first, because if they
don't take care of themselves first, then how can they take care of their loved one with autism,
mental health and other conditions? Self-care, health is important. And it's not easy. It's a
very demanding world, but it's not impossible. But we need to talk about this more and to come up
(20:16):
with better solutions, because, you know, it's, it's, it's created a lot of problems and we can do
better. And I believe if we work together through education, talk about openly without no stigmas
or stereotypes about mental health, especially burnout, you know, especially in our community,
(20:38):
then we can, we can make the right steps and move ahead in the right direction. So if your parent
that is watching this or a caretaker, especially if you work with families with autism, my
recommendation is to, you know, self-care, you know, focus if you have, if you believe in God,
put in your prayer, put, you know, put your hands in your life in God's hands and let him let
(21:04):
leave the way health, they can carry yourself disconnect. A lot of times, you know, for me,
I like to do other things outside of autism, because again, my job is autism almost every day
outside of my main job with my all my projects. And I like to do other things. And that's the
reason why I've been burned out is that, you know, for things for autism, it can get so overwhelming
(21:29):
that, you know, and I'm not saying that based on my situation, but also my work, you know,
as I said, autism is an ups and downs. Sure. There's inspirational, beautiful stories about
autism and there's a creative, you know, things about autism because every individual with autism,
no matter the level, no matter level one, level two, level three, level four, whatever, can achieve
(21:55):
a great quality of life. We see those stories every day. But also based on my job, I had to
deal with calls, emails and chats, talking with the community, talking with parents that are
concerned about their loved one, potentially being autistic or concerned about their child and his or
her education or even worse situations, losing, not having health insurance or a parent not having an
(22:21):
income, not having a job to take care of their loved one with autism. People, families with loved
ones with autism, homeless in the street and autistic adults in jail, no home, no job.
A lot of them losing their parents and the issues with families and who's going to take care of them
(22:46):
as they grow up. I deal with these calls every day and it's not easy and I love this community.
Don't get me wrong. I love the autism and the autistic community, special needs,
neurodivergent communities, because without this community, I would not be here right now.
(23:07):
This community gave me purpose. But it's not easy to deal with these calls and these life
situations each day. People being bullied, especially with autism. That's a
great burnout to me as well, as a professional, as an advocate of this community.
(23:28):
If you're an autistic adult, self-care is important. Set boundaries.
And focus on what you can do every day. There's so much you can do, ups and downs.
But don't let that discourage you or take over you and take care of yourself.
Hopefully, you guys were able to learn something from this. I always say
(23:51):
in my podcast or speaking engagement or my book, if you learn something from this,
if you can take one thing from this episode, then I would have done my job. So let me know
what you think about burnout, especially autistic burnout. If you're watching me,
have you gone through autistic burnout? Or you're in burnout, even if you're a normal person.
(24:13):
What do you think? What else do you think needs to be done? I would like to see you read your
comments, whether it's on YouTube or any other platform, and I would like to know what you think
of it. If you want to reach out to me on my social media, I would like to start this conversation
and come up with solutions to be able to confront this problem of burnout, which is having an impact
(24:39):
in a lot of people's lives. So if you haven't done so yet, I invite you again to subscribe to
all my podcasts, all platforms, and follow me on my social media under Tony Hernandez Pumarejo.
And I really appreciate you from taking time away from your busy schedule to listen to me and to
watch me today. And this has been Tony Hernandez Pumarejo. And until next time, I'll see you later.
(25:04):
God bless you and have a wonderful day. Bye bye.
(25:35):
you can purchase it on Amazon or any book selling platform.
You can also obtain a copy through his website. So until the next time you meet.
Thank you and have a wonderful day.
Blessings.
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