Hi, I’m a little burnt out, and I need an internet hug

I am heavy in autistic burnout this week for multiple reasons… to start, I’m a PRN nurse and I worked two shifts this week for the first time since Christmas (when I went in with THE FLU bc they guilted me, and I did wear a mask but then later found out I had NOT JUST THE FLU, but the SUPERFLU 😭)

And I had a postpartum magnesium patient, which means she could literally just stop breathing at any moment (not that this happens constantly , and we do have protocol and calcium gluconate available to immediately combat magnesium toxicity), and typically they do not come upstairs til after they’re done the mag bc this is high risk and requires hourly assessments… but I guess something changed while I was away??? Or maybe bc things were busy downstairs, Idk… and the cafeteria also changed things up which just frazzled my nervous system even more

AND she also had tried to hemorrhage during delivery which is just another risk factor 😭 So I got thrown into the deep end of the pool when I’m already rusty and don’t necessarily trust my reflex assessment skills (a big deal when it comes to magnesium toxicity), and it was only a 4 hour shift, but I also think I have OCPD and scrupulous OCD, so I panic spiral over feeling incompetent and dangerous

For additional context, I was repeatedly discriminated against early in my nursing career and made to feel incompetent and dangerous bc I am a bottom up processor and people often struggled to explain things in a way I could understand. At the time, I didn’t have the distress idea that I might be autistic, and I had no idea that I have a different learning style, so I internalized this belief that bc I couldn’t learn the way they taught, I must be stupid

As a former gifted kid, that was especially difficult, but now it’s created a situation where I can barely work bc one time I literally stayed up ALL NIGHT after a partial shift, panicking that I had somehow accidentally injured a newborn baby during a routine RSV injection and caused significant harm or even death (false memory OCD type stuff)… I had to take Benadryl to sleep, and it was awful

I don’t tell people I struggle like this bc I feel like it makes me look even more incompetent

Plus my kids were sick this week and home from school, so I got zero alone time to decompress, and I’m learning I require long episodes of zero unpredictability (no noise, no unexpected input, no demands) or my nervous system will straight up detonate

I’m in total burnout, just spinning my wheels right now… I made my husband take the kids to his mom’s house last night and I took a long bath and still couldn’t fall asleep til 3 am and of course woke up early

I know not everyone has THAT level of support, and he’s tolerated me being borderline unhinged the past two days (bc I worked two days in a row bc why? 😭 Idk apparently I hate myself), so I’m infinitely grateful for that

I just feel so stuck and I can’t get out of my head right now