Burnout and Neurodiversity: When the World Wasn’t Made for You

There’s a particular sense of being absolutely and utterly lost that doesn’t come from not trying hard enough.

It comes from doing all the things you’re meant to do — reading the books, following the advice, showing up, pushing through — and still feeling as though something isn’t quite lining up. As if you’re working hard to fit into a life that doesn’t seem to hold you in the way you hoped it would.

For many people, this shows up as overwhelming exhaustion. Or confusion. Or a sense of being slightly out of step with the world around you. You might tell yourself you need more confidence, more clarity, more discipline. Or you might wonder why change seems to come more easily to other people.

This is often the moment people arrive here — not because they want to reinvent themselves, but because they’re looking for something steadier to stand on and anchor themselves in.

One of the things we keep returning to through the podcast A Thought I Kept is the idea that sometimes it’s not a new plan we need, but a new way of seeing. A thought that doesn’t tell us what to do, but helps us understand what’s already happening.

In a recent conversation, Matthew Bellringer shared one such idea. Their “thought kept” was:

“ neurodiversity — and more specifically, the understanding that people experience the world in fundamentally different ways.”

Not just think differently. Not just behave differently. But experience differently: how information lands, how emotions move through the body, how energy rises and falls, how environments feel, how much effort it takes just to get through the day.

Matthew spoke about how this understanding helped them make sense of years of feeling overwhelmed, burnt out, or misunderstood — not as personal failure, but as a mismatch between their nervous system and the systems they were trying to survive within. Burnout, in this light, wasn’t a sign of weakness or poor resilience. It was a signal. A body doing its best under sustained conditions that didn’t meet its needs.

This matters because burnout is often framed as something to “recover from” so we can return to how things were before. But if you’ve reached burnout — whether suddenly or slowly — it’s often because how things were before was never truly sustainable for you in the first place.

For people who are neurodivergent — diagnosed or not — this can be especially true. Many learn early on how to mask, adapt, and perform in ways that keep them functioning, even when it costs them deeply. They may appear capable, creative, competent, even successful — while quietly running on empty.

And for those who love, work with, or manage neurodivergent people, this idea opens something too. It invites a pause before judgement. A moment of curiosity instead of assumption. A chance to ask not “why isn’t this working?” but “what might be happening here that I can’t see?”

What’s important is that this idea doesn’t demand that you identify in any particular way. You don’t need a label for it to be useful. You don’t need to decide whether it “applies” to you. You can simply notice what happens when you hold the possibility that your experience of the world is valid, even if it’s not the dominant one.

Used as a lens, this thought can soften old stories. It can help explain why certain wellbeing advice has never quite landed. Why rest that looks like stillness feels agitating rather than restoring. Why structure can feel comforting for one person and constricting for another. Why what helps your friend recover leaves you feeling worse.

It can also return you to yourself.

Instead of asking how to fix what feels wrong, you might start asking gentler questions. What environments help me feel more like myself? Where does my energy actually go? What does my nervous system need to feel safe enough to rest, curious enough to engage?

This isn’t about optimisation or self-improvement. It’s about orientation. About finding a framework that helps you trust your own signals again, rather than overriding them in the hope of becoming someone else.

At If Lost Start Here, we believe that change doesn’t begin with pressure. It begins with understanding. With recognising that you’re not behind, broken, or failing — you’re responding, with more awareness, to the life you’re living.

Sometimes, one idea can hold that understanding for you when everything else feels wobbly. A thought you can return to when things don’t make sense. A lens that helps you see yourself, and others, with a little more compassion.

If this idea resonates, listen to the full conversation with Matthew Bellringer on A Thought I Kept.

And if you’re finding yourself at a point where you want support, explore the coaching and resources we offer here.