How did I get here? Retracing my steps to breakdown

Gen Memory, Self-portrait with curlews, 2025

This post contains a strong content warning.

Damn.

My team is on board with the “Gen has reached breakdown or burnout” theory that was gently suggested by my trauma-specialist social worker counsellor a few weeks ago.

My number one goal when leaving my old life was to not have a breakdown.

Breakdowns are not good.  They are very hard to recover from, and they have a tendency to leave unpleasant after-effects like eating disorders, personality changes, and a reduction in self-sufficiency and productivity.

Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn.

It’s interesting to be inside my own breakdown (neuropsychology nerd alert!) and to sift back through the events (the ones that my brain hasn’t blocked out, anyway) that came before.

It’s interesting to me because I have three friends that I met in the late 80s-early 90s (when I was 17-21 years of age) who had breakdowns in their forties and fifties.  That seems like an atypically high frequency for the general population, and a coincidence, given I’m also in my fifties.

Or is it? 

Two of these friends were teachers, like I was, and the other was a lawyer.

At the time of breakdown, all were highly intelligent, empathetic and generous people who worked too hard and put their own needs last, just like me.

One of the teachers was ascertained as gifted (they were born in another country), but all presented as gifted individuals, regardless of ascertainment, just like me.

One was LGBT, one was single, and one was a gender non-conforming AFAB, all just like me.

So perhaps I should have been expecting to one day reach breakdown, rather than hoping to avoid it. 

Hmmm.

Are there any more coincidences (or ‘red flags’) that I missed over my five and a half decades prior to breakdown?

Yes, there are – paedophilia.  It’s been peppered through my life experience in a very atypical way.  Paedophilia is a damn big red flag that was always explained away, resulted in victim-blaming, or was laughed about.  That’s right – laughed about.

Here is the data:

• I personally experienced a repeated paedophile community-perpetrated incident when I was 11 years of age

• There were two paedophile incidents in my father’s family (one community- perpetrated and one family-perpetrated)

• There was a paedophile incident on my side of the family through marriage (community-perpetrated)

• There was a paedophile incident in the family I married into

• There was a repeated paedophile incident in my circle of close friends when I was a young adult (community-perpetrated)

Now, without any doubt, this is an atypically high frequency for the population.

I predict that around about now, dear reader, you are thinking that my friends and I are all autistic.  But you would be wrong.

Goddamn, do I get autism-blamed a lot. 

I get it from family, friends, colleagues, and the media, but never from a mental health professional who is qualified and competent to assess me as such.

My psychiatrist has told me I’m not autistic, and to quote them, they are an ‘expert’ on the subject.  That is good enough for me.  But even if I humour you, and assess myself against the criteria for ASD3, ASD2, ASD1, sub-clinical autism, and ‘normal’, hey guess what – I fall between ‘normal’ and sub-clinical.  I do have a few autistic traits, and I’ve known that for quite a few years – I quite like my traits; I’m even proud of them.  But I am not autistic, I’m gifted.

I’m not experiencing autistic burnout - I’m experiencing gifted burnout.

You can’t victim-blame me for my ridiculously unfair and abusive life experience because I’m naively autistic.

I’M NOT AUTISTIC!

I’M GIFTED!!!

We’ve got this all wrong, global society.  Autism is not the new gifted, it’s its own separate thing.  Autism is a neurological disorder; giftedness is not.  And if we keep denying that gifteds exists, then people like me are going to continue to be sexually exploited, used, worn down, burnt out, and explained away into non-existence.

True – giftedness is a different way of seeing, understanding, and experiencing the world, like with autism.  Gifteds have heightened sensory experiences, just like autistics do.  But we don’t need to reduce neuroatypicality to one brand or flavour, just so it’s easier for the neurotypicals to understand.  Autism and giftedness are two separate presentations of neuroatypicality, and a person can have one, or the other, or both.

What is common between autistics and gifteds, is that they both suffer in a world that was not built for them, and that does not understand them.

Please don’t assume that because I am different, I am broken, or to blame.  It’s not my fault I’m having a breakdown.  I’ve tried so hard to avoid this, and sought so much professional help to fortify myself.

But at the end of the day, I’m a formerly homeless, sexually assaulted, abused, neglected, victimised, disabled, chronically ill, socially isolated, left-handed, gender diverse, highly intelligent, atypical person who just does not fit easily into the world that the neurotypicals have built for me.

And that’s why I’ve reached breakdown.

Gen Memory

July 2025