From being frustrated with myself to wanting to give up on friendships and opportunities alike. Going hermit mode feels the safest in my life right now, but its not fulfilling. Can anyone relate?

Seeking Advice

I would love some advice or comradery.

Tonight I decided to journal a bit because I was feeling depressed and weird (perhaps my period isn't helping). I was reflecting on a few things.

Being frustrated around my struggles with friendship and feeling accepted in community. Time and time again, I have felt I have a bit of a childlike "magical" approach to making friends, and I assume people want to be friends with me more than they do it seems. Or I just assume someone has pure intentions when they don't. It all seems so much easier for everyone else.
Something else I was noticing in friendships as a pattern was that on top of feeling like no one likes me, I was being used by the ones that do. For my style, my ideas, etc. All things they had the social battery and skills to execute publicly better than I could.
I was thinking about how I have one friend, maybe one person in my life total, that I feel I can be my WHOLE self around. Like, could invite willingly into my messy house at its worst kind of friend. It's my high school best friend, who travels a ton, so I only see her sometimes. In any other friendship, relationship, dynamic, I feel that I am either being just a slice of myself, or whatever the "best" version of myself is that day, or in some way am tailoring different parts of me to that friendship. Even if its authentic parts of me that I share, its not all of me. And it feels like a performance constantly upon reflection. Trying on different parts of me with people to see what lands and what doesn't. It's like I am scared to be my whole self, or just don't feel comfortable doing so, around most people because what if its not good enough (like its been before).
The fact that it feels easier right now to go hermit mode and not be perceived by anyone because even the awareness of being perceived by a new acquaintance is too much.

With those in mind, I let myself journal it out and I wrote a list called "Things I kinda feel like giving up on right now" as a form of catharsis and radical truth. Turns out... the list includes pretty much everything? Here's a summary of most, not all, things included:

My close friendships
My medium close friendships (this category actually gives me the most anxiety?)
My acquaintances/new friend potentials
Job opportunities
Creative projects
Cleaning
Decorating my home
Dressing cute
Curating my life or "creating her" at ALL
Working out
Eating well
My comfort interests (I was surprised I put these down. These are the interests that are like long time special interests that I usually don't even talk about with people because they make fun of them or they are uncool. Maybe this is just a spur of the moment I am tired of it all thing)
Trying to not be agoraphobic and doing more things during my days
Being the perfect ANYTHING (daughter, friend, etc.)/being the "nice one"

And the list of things I DON'T feel like giving up on is much shorter...

My partner (who, BTW, I still don't feel I can totally be myself in front of. I find I feel best with them when I am "performing well" in life, have a clean space. I even... started white lying about having extracurriculars I do because they seemed so excited about it. The reality of my life feels... too dim to let them into completely)
My pet
That one friend from high school
And... that's it.

I'm honestly just a little concerned that pretty much my whole life feels to overwhelming for me and I just want to throw it all to the wind. It scares me that just withdrawing feels the most comfortable and safe. It upsets me that pursuing more from life in really any way, for more than a few months (let alone a few weeks), makes me want to give up on it entirely. And the thing is, I have had this cycle before of basically getting "far" enough to have an opportunity for "success" in some way present itself for me, and that is exactly where I give up from being burnt out and overwhelmed. My brain just doesn't like it.

Anyways, I would love to know if you have any advice, or similar experiences, when it comes to these feelings I am having. <3

in AuDHDWomenby Interesting_Ad9295

96%

23d

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eyes_on_the_sky

23d

Ok we're sort of twins, down to the having 1 close friend from high school and also being on my period right now 😂 And mostly because I also entered hermit mode some time ago, mostly due to burnout, and now have mostly come out of it EXCEPT for relationships / connecting to others irl in general, which is still eluding me.

As someone who is also big on writing lists in my journal and then analyzing them, I feel like there might be a few different categories going on with your thoughts... Like some of these things I feel like are ok, healthy even, to give up on or reevaluate, others make me wonder if you are potentially dealing with some burnout or overwhelm.

Things that are good to question: I see a few surface-level masking-related things on this list, like "Dressing cute," decorating your home a certain way, even working out could potentially be related if you are doing it to physically look a certain way rather than from enjoyment. As someone who's been gradually unmasking, I am a BIG advocate for questioning all these things! I went from "dressing cute" to mostly wearing things like oversized T-shirts and cargo pants, and I am SO MUCH comfier. Every once in awhile now I go for a cute day haha, but only when I really feel like it. I am a fan of home decorating but my house is going to look unconventional, I don't even want a couch in my next apartment, just a bunch of cushions and bean bags spread across the floor. Making these changes unfortunately does mean you could lose people in your life / not connect to them the same way, even though a lot of these changes are superficial NTs tend to flock to others that look & act like them so if you stop that... they might go away

Things that are harder to question, but still good: It is also a good thing to question friendships and your impulse towards "being the perfect X." Like I said, I've been going through this a lot lately too. It started with a lot more questioning of my childhood, eventually realizing how much CPTSD I was carrying from my parents' emotional abuse / neglect that left me with very little knowledge of who I actually was. Now that I am unmasking and finding myself more, I'm like wait... DO I connect to any of these "friends"? Some of them have been in my life for 10 years or so now yet I still feel like they don't know me at all, and maybe I don't know them. I feel bored & anxious around some of them, like I don't actually know how to connect. It's been making me realize friendships, for me, were always "whoever is cool with hanging out with me," because so many people did not want to hang out with me. I never, never stopped to question myself and ask "Do I actually like hanging out with THEM?" And if I had, I unfortunately think that most of my "friends" wouldn't be my friends now. Even my 1 best friend from high school, it's complicated now, as my life has gone on I've grown and changed so much as I've learned about myself, and I feel like she's stayed stagnant, living a life she doesn't really like. And I had empathy at first, but after like 10 years of it... it's just hard, idk. It's hard to give someone support and patience and time but then they never actually grow or change, like, kind of heartbreaking. I sometimes feel like I just need a hard reset and to move far away so I can try actually being myself while meeting new people for a bit and just see what happens. Like, I need practice, because I don't know how to be myself with people who knew me when I used to be different. I don't know how to evaluate, on my own merits, whether or not I want to be friends with someone, and I feel like I'm holding everyone hostage while I take forever to figure it out. Idk, it's hard, but a lot of people who make effort to heal go through this and you're definitely not alone.

Things that raise concern for me: There were a few items on your list that I would venture to say are not as good that you're losing interest in... namely your creative projects & comfort interests. The line between depression & regular burnout & autistic burnout is kind of weird, I definitely went through something major in the last few years and I lean towards calling it autistic burnout myself. But a hallmark of it for me was that I lost interest in almost everything, but NOT my special interests, in fact my special interests started feeling like the only important thing in my life. From your words I couldn't tell if it was "tired of others' reactions to my special interests" or "tired of the special interests altogether." Because if it's others' reactions, then I wonder if you would still love doing them if you do let yourself go full hermit mode... But if it is doing them in itself then you could be suffering from a more general burnout / depression. I know for me, part of my unmasking was returning to anime, something I used to love in middle / high school but basically distanced myself from in college to make friends... Even now it's taken a long while for that interest to "spark" again, like I have to keep reminding myself not to feel guilty for engaging with it and it's hard to get lost in it like I used to because I'm always cognizant of being perceived a certain way.

I know I didn't put "Jobs" anywhere but I feel like it could go in 2 or 3, like maybe the job opportunities aren't appealing because they're not best suited to who you really are, or the work environment is stressing you out more than you're admitting... or maybe you are dealing with burnout and will have to do less work for a bit if at all possible, or at least not take on a more intense role than you're currently in. Maybe your brain shuts down bc it's protecting you from burnout, or maybe it's a deeper-rooted shame / insecurity that you'll have to process. A bit hard to tell from the info I have.

Anyways overall I would say, for the things that are good to question & relatively easy, like clothes, you should start exploring as much as you can. For the things that are harder to question, maybe start journaling your thoughts out on WHY you want to give up on friends, etc. For the things that could be concerning... idk I guess same with trying to evaluate what it behind your impulse there. Speak to a therapist about it if you have one, or read up on things like autistic burnout if you don't. You may also just be getting to a place in your life where you feel safe & good and actually WANT to unmask, which can be super confusing because just when things get stable life is like ~now change everything about yourself~... But yeah basically that is what I went through in the early 2020s lol, and then burned out, all kind of awful, but now look at me, 2024 and basically a whole new person ✨ with a few lingering issues that I'm working on lol. But like it's going to be okay, you just need to let yourself start exploring.

Interesting_Ad9295

23d

Thank you so much 🥺 this is such a thoughtful response. I will definitely journal and ponder this stuff- I wouldn’t be surprised if this is autistic burnout because I feel like I’ve been trying to be accepted by society in so many different ways or “prove people wrong” for years and nothing is landing quite right and im finally just done with it all. and I just want to be in my safe hermit cocoon and make art again but just for me (I feel like I was always even making stuff through the lens of what people will think). What you said about “holding friends hostage while you figure things out” is such a great way to describe this feeling! And yeah, I think I wrote my special interests down in that area because when I was journaling I was in a “I’m tired of EVERYTHING” state and it freaked me out that that’s where I was at. With jobs, and life in general, I’ve been unemployed job searching for 9 months and I’m on the precipice of a job offer and it actually made me depressed because I feel like my brain won’t actually be able to handle it (but I need the money). On paper it feels good to potentially get a great job offer, it feels validating. But with this job, and with another freelance opportunity I have rn and many opportunities that have come before, I tend to be GREAT at the interview stage or the pitching myself stage. I’m charismatic and can easily adapt. I’ll sell myself so well that I’ll get the opportunity and then I’m like shit… this stuff hurts my brain and I don’t actually want to do it. It’s weird. I want to want to do it. It’s like my creative/career interests don’t always logistically align with what my brain likes- it’s frustrating. But yeah I’m totally going to look in autistic burnout! I only recently made the connection with having autism in addition to my ADHD so it’s a whole new slice of me I’m exploring.

eyes_on_the_sky

23d

I’ve been unemployed job searching for 9 months and I’m on the precipice of a job offer and it actually made me depressed because I feel like my brain won’t actually be able to handle it (but I need the money)

Ooh, I've been there too. Being unemployed for like, >1 year was part of my long burnout stage, and I was very much in a mindset of "I never want to work a 9 to 5 again!!" Unfortunately the reality of making that work can be difficult, I ended up eventually caving and applying to places again, and accepted an offer for a pretty corporate-type job. However--it's remote 4 of 5 days a week and that's a HUGE help. Going into the office definitely involves the normal masking and pretending you care about ~business~ but then I can mostly be at home in yoga pants just getting my tasks done and taking breaks when I need. So I guess that's just to say, our brains can def be really "black and white" about thinking certain situations will never work out, when there's nuance to everything... I don't LOVE the job but it's very much tolerable, and the amount of money it pays me is awesome and will help me move away from my parents, who I've had to stay with while recovering from my burnout. I'm not giving up on my creativity, but it may take time to support myself on that and in the meantime it's ok to have something that's not totally aligned but is satisfying my salary needs. That felt really gross to me in the earlier burnout stages but as I recovered it began to feel more tolerable... but I'm trying to force myself not to forget that initial feeling because I think my life would be best if I could support myself more independently.

Good luck figuring it all out <3