📍 So what's the difference between A DHD burnout sensitivity and trauma burnout? 📍

Yesterday I was having a conversation with somebody and she, she's neurodivergent. We like looked in each other inside of, in like a coworking space and we looked at each other and we're like. You're like, you're a spicy too, and we're talking about the difference between having neurodivergent burnout versus having difficulties with burnout because you're quite sensitive nervous system versus it being an effect of trauma and anxiety.

And when you know the type of burnout that you are dealing with, you can pour your energy into the correct kind of fixes or support for that. Whoever I found, you know, I've been supporting people with anxiety and OCD or sensitivity, chronic illness, um, complex PTSD and trauma as a trauma therapist and coach, uh, for seven years now.

And. There are a lot of differences, but there is also a lot of overlap. I like to think of it as like a Venn diagram. What I found is that when you're kind of taking on the advice that is not really made for your specific situation, it can feel incredibly discouraging and it's such a pity because there is such a, there's so much.

Support and people who give you that information, they're trying to be helpful. But if you don't have somebody who's like very specialized in that realm and can kind of identify the different types, it, it's, it sucks. You don't have a lot of energy anyway to support yourself, and now you've just put all this energy into something that wasn't helpful.

So what I wanna help you with today is to help you swap the difference between A DHD burnout. Um. HSP burnout, which is highly sensitive person burnout and PTSD or complex PTSD or trauma related burnout. And then there's situational burnout. Like none of that is really impacting me, but you know, I'm at my job, uh, or I'm in my business.

And then I want you to, I'm gonna help you understand why self-care can help one person, but completely backfire for another, and then start making small, doable changes that meet your body where it is and with what you need. So let's. Kind of drop ourselves into some context, which is that burnout is not about being tired, although being tired is a part of it, it's, I like to think of it as it's being out of rhythm with your natural expression and your natural needs, so it can show up differently in each person because we have very different wiring, different histories and different thresholds, things that are.

Very easy for me and acceptable might be very difficult for you. That's, that's logical. Right? And understanding that difference isn't necessarily about putting ourselves in a box. So this is not a diagnosis, it's about meeting yourself with compassion and a little bit of understanding so that you can focus less on like that anxious thought of like, I gotta like figure this out.

And more like. Okay, cool. So if this is more of my tendency now, how can I support myself? I have written myself a little graph here and I'm gonna be reading from it. I'll put it on my website so that you can see it as well. Or slash substack is a good place for this. I'll put it there. So in general, A DHD burnout has a nervous system pattern of.

Hyper and hypo arousals from masking or task switching. So that's why you're like, you can go really, really up and then really, really down. You can kind of cycle through that. You can be like really, really focused on something. You're like, 100% I can only do this. My mind will only focus on this. And you're activated, you're motivated to do it.

Uh, you'll do like that 12 hour work day 'cause you're like, yes, this is amazing and context. This is really wonderful. There is nothing wrong with you engaging in this, however, if you're not careful while you do it, if you don't also breathe and also eat, and also relax your shoulders and also sleep well, and also have nice thoughts about yourself and other people.

You're going to be really exhausted. You also need to be in touch with your body here and maybe stop at about 80 or 90% instead of waiting for yourself to get to a a hundred percent and then exhausting yourself. A lot of the work that I do with my Neurodivergent clients is getting understanding of, okay, when, what are the signs that my body gives me when I'm at 80%, and could I stop there and let myself feel back up?

So that I don't have such a bad, um, crash. This is particularly true if you are on any type of medication because what that does is it plays with your emotional regulation and your ability to connect with those emotions. So a lot of my clients will have a big emotional crash after these like intense focus periods, and that's very.

Uncomfortable, I think is the correct word. Um. These can also be exacerbated if you are masking. So you're kind of playing the role of the person that you think you should be, um, or you're task switching. So you, your mind has to kind of flip between two different things and you can't be in the focus that you want just 'cause of that specific, um, that's hard for most people.

But when you have a DHD, it's the way that your brain works. It's a little bit more difficult, it requires more mental effort, and that can create more burnout. Um. When you're at the other side of that, there's this like big down and it's like, well, even the things that I want to do, like that feels like too much.

That is one of the main types of A DHD burnout. Not to mention, of course, there's the, the mental taps. Like, I feel like I have lots of, um, like a quote, I felt this way and I was speaking to the person in the kitchen yesterday about this of like, I feel like I have a lot of like. Mental mathematics and mental jumping that I have to do to kind of manage my energy and think about how I'll be able to focus for this task.

And if I'm doing that and like, you know, how does that relate to having my cycle and will I have enough energy for that? And then I have to think about if I'm taking medication, what will that look like and what are other people gonna do? And there's also mental gymnastics to make sure that you're gonna be available for the tasks that you need to be available.

And that creates a whole cognitive load that is very tiring. So you need to be mindful of that. Then we have HSP burnout, and if you're not familiar with. What HSP means, what I'm talking about is a highly sensitive person. There's some really wonderful resources on the internet about this. You can do a test.

There's a great book about it, but essentially you might be a highly sensitive person if you're, you're sensitive to things. So what we, people who have experienced like childhood trauma. Or people who have experience or identify with being empathic might be sensitive, or if you have chronic illness, chronic fatigue, and it just means the science shows us that your body processes things more than other people.

So it goes through the kind of like, think of it as like an additional layer of processing. So you pick up on things that others don't. That means you have to process things. You might feel like you're a slow processor. Um, you might, you might just feel like you're sensory. It's kind of like a sensory sensitivity, and it's a really beautiful thing, evolutionary because we need people to be sensitive to things and we need people who are not so sensitive so they can go and do other things.

So it's. But it's hard in a world where there's a lot of sensory kind of input and you feel if you have to process all of that, and there can be kind of an emotional stimulation and having to process all of these things can contribute to a specific type of burnout where you feel like I've just absorbed everything.

Noise, emotion, energy, like I just feel overwhelmed with it all. It is exhausting. And then we need to kind of figure out a couple of different things. To support that type of better. And I'll be clear, like you can have all of these different types, but they're attributed to different things. Um, then we have.

C-P-T-S-D, so complex PTSD, or if you experience any type of trauma that is usually trauma driven over functioning to shut down. So you're like holding it all together. You're doing a really good job. Maybe you're people pleasing, maybe you feel really guilty. Maybe you haven't set boundaries. Maybe you're like doing, you're hyper independent, and that's.

Your your trauma response. I'm not gonna use this podcast to talk about different types of trauma response responses. If you scroll down, you'll see different types of trauma responses. I'm also kind of assuming that you've maybe like, done some of that. You've been to therapy. Um, so you have a general idea.

Uh, so maybe I'm not gonna use this podcast like go into that, but you. Your mind and your body are hypervigilant and doing some loops and some extra work because your body has learned that the world is not safe for whatever reason that is. So your burnout, the burnout that comes from this is like holding it all together, playing these like trauma performance games and feeling like you fall apart when you are alone.

Then we have situational burnout. You are just in a high stress environment. There's a lot happening, and it's been happening for too long. This one can usually be resolved by removing yourself from the stress. This is why sometimes taking a holiday works. However, if you take a holiday and you return back and you still can't and then you get burnt out again or you still feel exhausted by the end of your holiday, that is a sign that there is something deeper going on that we need to address it.

An example of addressing it would be like, for some of my clients we've done, um, okay. One of them has a DHD and we've learned that she really works better having like three focused birth days. Um, and then. The rest of the week, she kind of just like flits about and does what she can and she that that works with her hyper focus cycle.

But we've also had to build in regulation and downregulation activities, going to the pool, spending time in nature, deep breathing. So that she can not burn out after those three days. Um, uh, myself, I identify as somebody who's really highly sensitive, and a lot of that means being really careful about how much I take in.

So I'm really mindful about, uh, like, uh, stimuli, right? Like my phone or music or other people. And I have really strong boundaries around that. And I'm also, I have emotional processing practice that I practice every day of, like releasing other people's energy from mine and then processing my own emotions.

And I teach that to you guys, and I'm careful with this, the, the texts and the things that I use. And I work towards the things that I favor and I honor that sensitivity. And when things become too much with compassion, I let myself release them through different practices. I'm really careful. I don't like bright lights that drains me.

I don't let myself sit in places with bright lights. So the point is, you are not weak. You're not doing anything wrong. You're wired differently. Your body knows it, and it wants to put you in places where your wiring is honored and loved and nourished and seen for its value. So this is why generic recovery advice fails because it's ignoring your specific needs.

In three steps. This is basically what I try to teach clients. Number one, safety before clarity. You can't think your way out of burnout if your body feels like it is under attack. Create that felt sense of safety inside of your body. Somatic therapists like myself, like other somatic therapists, will be good at helping you with this.

Number two. Capacity before change. You cannot make sustainable, sustainable changes that you'll follow through on if your body doesn't feel like it has capacity. If it feels like it's too much, but you need to make change, it means that you need to build capacity. Um, I'll make sure that I insert like one of my, I'm one of my, um.

Podcast on that, lemme just write myself in our input podcast on capacity inside of the show notes. In fact, that's the next thing that you're gonna listen to. You're gonna listen to my podcast on capacity now, then. Strategy only works. Your mind wants to strategize. You got plans, I hear, but your mind only works if it has the capacity for that strategy.

I love your strategy. We still need to focus on capacity and then we can get strategy and then we'll be smart about the strategy and we'll be creative about it. And a lot of the time it just kind of naturally follows. To be honest. I love strategizing. It's really fun. But we obviously, some, we don't really need to think that hard about it.

I hope this has been helpful. I have actually also A PDF that has some of these resourcefulness options kind of in action. Um, some ideas for you, so you can also download that down. I was gonna go through it here, but I feel like we're getting to too much, and so I'll put that down below in the show notes and maybe I'll do another episode on those.

But for me personally. This is enough. See, look at me honoring my own sensitive overwhelm. That is an example, but I'm still gonna give you that information down below in the show notes. Let me know how this resonates and yeah, speak to you soon.