Dyslexic Burnout: Signs and Practical Resets

What you will take from this episode

Burnout is more than a busy day. It is emotional, mental and sometimes physical exhaustion that builds under prolonged stress.
For me, overload can create a strange cycle: too much stimulation feels exhausting, while too little can leave me flat and disengaged.
I often spot burnout through frustration, snapping, fatigue, anxiety, low motivation and the feeling that I cannot keep up.
Meditation does not have to mean sitting perfectly still. Different approaches, including active attention exercises, may suit different brains.
A genuinely restful day, realistic short-term goals, routines and visible reminders can make recovery feel more possible.

When the accelerator in your brain will not switch off

Have you ever had so much happening that you cannot see the wood for the trees? You are getting through it all, technically. But inside, your mind is racing, your body is tense, and even a tiny extra request feels like someone has added another spinning plate to the circus.

That is the feeling I have been sitting with lately. I have been moving house, dealing with tradespeople, running big events, working in my web design business and trying to keep normal life moving at the same time. I like being busy. I genuinely do. It is rarely boring.

But there is a point where busy stops feeling exciting and starts feeling like my brain has had its accelerator pinned down. It keeps going, going, going, and I have to consciously work out how to take my foot off the pedal.

That is what I mean when I talk about dyslexic burnout. I am not using it as a diagnosis or saying every person with dyslexia has the same experience. I mean the emotional, mental and often physical exhaustion that can build when stress and frustration keep rolling on without enough recovery time.

If this sounds familiar, the adult dyslexia podcast is a good place to find more honest conversations about the patterns many of us notice in everyday life.

Dyslexic burnout is often more than being tired

A hard day does not automatically equal burnout. We all have days where a cup of tea, a walk, a decent sleep or zoning out with something silly on television helps us come back to ourselves.

Burnout feels more prolonged than that. The pressure keeps landing on the same core systems, mentally, emotionally or physically, until you do not feel like you are recovering properly between rounds.

For me, the mental and emotional side is usually the hardest bit. Physical tiredness can sometimes help because it makes me slow down. Mental stress is different. It can leave me feeling like I need to do ten things immediately, even when I am sitting still.

The signs can be sneaky at first. You may feel inadequate because you are trying to run at 150 percent and cannot keep it up. You might lose motivation, feel zoned out, become frustrated by everything, feel exhausted, want to hide in bed, or notice that anxiety is sitting in your gut.

I know I need to pay attention when I become short with my wife. It is not about her. It is an internal signal that I am overloaded and the stress is leaking out sideways. Owning that, apologising and taking stock matters.

If you are still working out whether your struggles fit a dyslexia pattern, the free adult dyslexia quiz can help you reflect on familiar traits.

Why stimulation can tip into overload

One of the odd things about my brain is that I can swing between burnout and being too chilled out. When a lot is happening, I can be on edge and desperate for a break. Then, when everything quietens down, I can feel bored, lethargic or like I do not care enough to get moving again.

It sounds a bit ridiculous when I say it out loud, but I know I am not alone in it. Some neurodivergent minds seem to crave stimulation, novelty and things to care about deeply. The trouble is that the same drive can make it easy to overdo it.

I think of it a bit like overclocking a computer. You can push it to run faster, but you cannot expect it to operate at that level forever without consequences. My version of that is trying to hold too many responsibilities, decisions and emotional investments in my head at once.

Caring is a major part of the equation for me. When I really want something to work, I put a huge amount of pressure on myself. In the past I tried to care less, or lower every expectation, so I would not get stressed. Sometimes that helped a little, but it did not feel like the whole answer.

That is especially important if you run a business or have a role where every problem feels personal, and I share more on that tension in my thoughts on solving business problems without burning out.

Symbolic illustration of a computer running too fast to represent overstimulation and burnout.

Meditation is not one thing, and it does not have to look perfect

Meditation is still one of my biggest tools for dealing with burnout. When I am doing it five or more times a week, I notice I am in a much better mental headspace. I think of it as exercise for my brain.

The important bit is that meditation is not one single activity. Plenty of people try an app once or twice, find it irritating or impossible, then decide meditation is not for them. That is a bit like trying jogging twice, hating it, and concluding that all exercise is terrible.

I hate burpees, for example. Jogging is not really my thing either. I would rather walk at a decent pace or sprint. That does not mean movement itself is the problem. It means I need to find a version that works for me.

The same applies here. In the episode, I mention an idea from a therapist who works with people with ADHD, dyslexia and other neurodivergent challenges. Rather than demanding that someone sit quietly with a very busy mind, he might start with a focused listening exercise in a café.

You close your eyes and pick out individual sounds: the coffee machine, footsteps, voices, a bird outside. You are giving your brain something specific to notice. I like this because it treats attention as something to practise, rather than a test you either pass or fail.

If you are curious about a gentler sensory reset, this exploration of breathwork and sound healing explores breathwork and sound healing through an ADHD and dyslexia lens.

Small resets beat waiting for a perfect holiday

One of the best things I did recently was have a completely wasted day. And I mean that as a compliment. I had almost nothing I had to do, helped my mother-in-law move a little furniture, got a walk in the sun, then went home and gave myself permission to properly chill out.

I watched bad television. I did not try to turn rest into a productivity project. I reminded myself that there was nothing I had to do that day. The difference I felt the next day was huge.

That will not always be possible, of course. But it reminded me that rest does not have to be earned only after you have reached breaking point. A proper break in the day can be a useful circuit breaker before everything gets too loud.

Structure helps me as well. Moving house has made that more obvious. Simple routines remove some of the decisions that pile up in a busy brain. Realistic goals help too. I generally set goals a year ahead or less, rather than making giant plans so far away that I can endlessly tell myself I will start tomorrow.

I also keep quick tools where I can see them. I have put a few prompts on my screensaver so I do not have to remember them in the middle of overload: meditate for 20 minutes, walk in the sun, sit down, take a break.

Two mental questions I come back to are: ‘Does this actually matter?’ and ‘Will I remember this in 12 months?’ Most of the time, the thing consuming all my attention will not make the list. That does not mean my feelings are silly. It just helps me zoom out and choose my next move with a bit more perspective.

Building that kind of consistency can be hard when your energy is all over the place, and how I stay consistent with a neurodivergent brain may give you a helpful next thought.

If you want to understand your own experience of dyslexia and ADHD more clearly, I have put much more of what I have learned into Dyslexia and ADHD Explained From the Inside.

Illustration of an adult woman taking a calm, guilt-free rest break at home.

A kinder way to respond to dyslexic burnout

If your brain feels stuck on overdrive, you do not need to solve your whole life before dinner. Start smaller. Notice the signs, name the overload and choose one reset that is actually available to you today, whether that is a walk, a rest, a routine, a sound-focused meditation or making one goal more realistic.

For me, dyslexic burnout is not proof that I am failing. It is usually information. It is my system telling me that the pace, pressure or emotional load has got too high for too long.

Read the full episode transcript

Hey everybody, Stephen here from the Truth About Dyslexia. In today's episode, I want to talk a little bit about dyslexic burnout. As I'm coming to the end of this crazy period of house moving and tradespeople and all this stuff all happening at once, it's been really good to reflect on what that looks like in my life, how to continue to improve it, and just a couple of tips I've learned recently that have really started to help me. So let's dive in. Okay, let's dive into this episode. So let's start with the definition of kind of dyslexic burnout, as I would call it, or neurodiverse burnout.

I guess what we're really talking about is the state of emotional, mental, and often physical exhaustion caused by prolonged stress or frustration. Okay, that's what burnout really is. It's a prolonged state. You know, many of us deal with these little things in our lives day to day, but then we usually get a chance to have a cup of tea or whatever your zone-out thing is, and you get to relax from it and kind of come back from it. But it's these prolonged states, both mentally, physically, emotionally. It could be any of these, I guess, core systems in our lives, our bodies, around us, that just keep being put under stress.

And if you're, I guess for me personally, the biggest challenge is always the mental side and the emotional. Physical, you know, often physical exhaustion I think helps me because it tires me out. But the mental and emotional stress, especially when it goes on for a period of time, you know, it's really frustrating. It's kind of like my brain has,someone's put the accelerator on in my brain, and I can't take the foot off the pedal. It just keeps going and going and going. And I have to be very, very conscious about trying to get out of that burnout.

Now, with this period of time, this probably, I'd like to say the last four weeks especially, I've just had so much happening. Like I run these major events where we have over 300 people coming to them, a heap of stuff on. I have my web design business. I've got moving house. We've got all these tradespeople coming through, all this stuff. You know, and it's madness.

And I kind of can't see the wood for the trees half the time, you know, when I'm in it. It's really tiring. And oddly, I love it because it's not boring. But there's another part of me where I'm always on edge. I've always got this elevated cortisol, or I've got to do this, I've got to do that kind of vibe. And I kind of go through patterns of this where so much is happening, and then I'll go through a period where I'll feel really bored because I'm not having any of the stress.

And it's really frustrating, right? Like we kind of go back and forth from, like, burnout to over chill out. You know, chill out can be as bad for me as burnout. Like if I'm too chilled, I can become lethargic. I can just not care too much. And then I start to build myself back up to burnout again.

Isn't that crazy? Isn't it weird how our brains work? I'm sure there's a few of you out there who are nodding and agreeing. But this is kind of how the neurodiverse mind works. It needs the stimulation to keep going. And if I'm honest, I've read some interesting studies, less about dyslexia, more about ADHD, that show you how our lifespan is lower than the average person.

And to me, that's because of this need for overstimulation. I kind of, like, I think of it as overclocking a computer. You know, if your computer runs at one speed, but you cool it down heavily and you do some funky geeky stuff, you can make the computer run faster and operate at a higher level. But it can only do it for so long before it breaks. And that's kind of what I see as the ADHD dyslexic kind of mindset. And I use these two very closely because I see so many common patterns.

Some people qualify as a dyslexic but don't qualify as ADHD in the overall testing metrics, and vice versa. Some qualify as ADHD but don't qualify as dyslexic because they don't quite have the same challenges that are tested. And, you know, this kind of became very clear to me as I go off on a slight tangent, when I was listening to a speaker on another podcast talk about health markers and how many current health markers that doctors test are really poorly sought out or really poorly created. So imagine diabetes. Like, what classes you as a diabetic versus pre-diabetic versus not diabetic is a very broad and poor range. I was listening to this doctor and he just said, you know, the amount of people that actually should be classed as having pretty much diabetes is a lot higher than we class it, because it's only classed when it gets to a certain level.

That's so extreme that you're like, there's real issues. Does that make sense? And so because they're not classed as diabetic, people don't take as many actions to solve it, and thus they actually reach the range they go to. Does that make sense? And so I feel similar with dyslexia and ADHD. The amount of 40 to 50 to 60-year-olds I come across that I look at and go, well, you fit majority of the profile I look at, but they've never been tested, or if they were tested, they weren't quite picked up.

It's mind-blowing, right? And so after that completely random tangent, you know, if we come back to burnout, some of the symptoms usually include, like, feelings of inadequacy, like, I just can't do this. You know, you're running at 150% and you feel inadequate because you can't keep running at 150%. You can lack motivation. You know, when you're so burnt out from doing so much, you just don't know what to do next or why to do it, or you just feel, like, zoned out. You know, frustration, just, you know, getting frustrated at everything.

You know, I know when this is happening is when I start to snap at my wife, not because of her, but because of what's going on around me and in my state. It's an internal issue, not an external one, and I have to apologize, which I'm very, you know, I do. It doesn't happen often, but occasionally. You know, fatigue, tiredness. You just want to curl up in bed and sleep is always a big one. You know, and of course anxiety, which is that feeling I find in my gut of, you know, not being sure where the future is.

You know, anxiety is the future, depression is usually the past. And so this can, you know, this can be triggered by a bunch of things. Usually I see it more than anything as overload. And usually also, like with dyslexics especially, those with ADHD, us neurodiverse people, I find us being very emotionally connected. And when we care about things, you know, I know when I care about something and I want it to work, I put so much pressure on myself to do that because I care about it. I'm emotionally invested in it.

Like if I didn't care about these things, it wouldn't matter. I can't burn out if I don't care about something. You know, why would I burn out? I wouldn't care. So it's like, I remember in the early days, I used to really try and care about things less. You know, I'd lower my expectations.

So if I don't have expectations, then I can't be stressed. Or if I don't care about something, I can't, you know. And so I found myself over the years trying to balance what I care about and what I don't care about so that it doesn't impact my stress levels. And sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I don't think it's the best coping strategy. But coping strategies that I use and that I really love, you know, and I come back to this a heap, is meditations a big one.

When I'm doing it five plus times a week, I'm in my best mental headspace. You know, meditation you've got to think of as exercise for your brain. And listening to a really good speaker, I can't, the problem with speakers these days, everyone's name seems really hard to pronounce. I wish there was a few more John Smiths or Bob Joneses or stuff that I could remember. But this guy, amazing, amazing speaker, and he put it like this. He goes, he often sees clients, he's a therapist, often sees clients with ADHD and dyslexia and other neurodiverse challenges.

And he said many of them will say to him, I can't meditate. And he asks them, How did you, you know, how did you come to that conclusion? And nine times out of ten, they heard about meditation from a friend or a podcast or an app, and they tried it once or twice, and it didn't work, and so they gave up on it and blamed meditation as a whole. And he said, It's so common that this is happening with people trying to deal with this burnout or anxiety, whatever the case being. And he said a couple of things. He said, one, you never, you know, most of us are learning meditation not from expert teachers, but from, you know, apps and stuff that doesn't really know us or understand us.

It's kind of like, if you imagine, if I ask you a question, what is there an exercise that you really, really hate? Maybe it's cycling. Maybe some people hate the gym. Others run. Running can be painful. What do you really dislike?

Like, I hate burpees. I don't know if you've heard of those, down on the ground, jump up. I don't know, just don't like them. There's a bunch of things that people like and dislike. Jogging is the other one for me. I like to either walk at a reasonable pace or sprint.

I take that bit, the running-jogging bit in the middle. For some reason, I don't like it. It just doesn't work with me. Now, the only exercise I'd ever tried was jogging, and I turned around and said, Oh, I hate jogging. I hate exercise. I just hate exercise.

Exercise is terrible. What a horrible thing, because I jogged twice, didn't like it, and I blamed all exercises for it. Then I'd be in the same point as many people are with meditation. Because meditation, there are 10, 12, 15, 20,there's probably more than that,types of meditation out there, different styles, ways to do it, ways to connect. And so, you know, many people give up on something like meditation because they've had a taste of it, didn't quite work, and so they've left it. Whereas if you find the right meditation for you, it can be valuable.

And this guy talks about what he did with a lot of ADHD kids, as he said, what you have to do when you're starting out is you have to tire the mind out so you can reach a meditative state. And he explained it like this: if you send a kid to the playground for an hour who's got ADHD and you get them to run around like a crazy thing, use all the energy they've got in their bones up, boom, love it, let them run around for a whole hour, and then you get them to come in and ask them to sit down. Now, nine times out of ten, more likely to sit down for a prolonged period of time because their body is tired than if you were to ask them to sit down before they went and run around for an hour. Does that make sense? So you're basically using the body's own way of being to get the most out of it. And so this is the same with the mind.

If you want to meditate and you need to start training your brain, because if your brain's not used to this, it's not gonna,I don't want to say it's just not gonna enjoy it because it's new, it's fresh, it's scary. And so what he talked about is he would take people to a cafe or a coffee shop, and he would ask the person to close their eyes and try and listen to the different sounds they could make out. Didn't have to say them; they could if they wanted to, but just to identify, like coffee machine, people walking, footsteps, a bird got into the cafe and is chirping, and trying to use their brains to actually focus on individual sounds, which is part of training the brain to be able to focus on particular points. So stuff like that was pretty amazing. I'll try and add his link to the podcast I listen to in here, and some of his videos,they're really, really good. So I'll pop that in the show notes for this podcast.

But that's kind of one of the coping strategies. Meditation by far is my top one for dealing with burnout, 100%. The second has probably recently been a completely wasted day. I had one yesterday. I loved it. I literally got up.

We had to do next to nothing. I think I had, I think I went and helped my mother-in-law move a bit of furniture for about 15 minutes. She's moving house close to us, so it was really easy. Got a bit of a walk in the sun, and then I literally went home and just chilled out. I let my brain rest. I reminded myself, there's nothing you have to do today at all, and just watched bad television and just completely zoned out.

And that was fantastic. I've come into today so rested versus usual, and so it's fantastic. I'm really enjoying it. Other things that are good coping strategies if you're dealing with burnout is structured routines. So making sure you've got those routines in place. I'm noticing these more and more as I've moved house, and that's been fantastic.

Setting realistic goals. Another thing I heard recently was around, you know, people set these giant goals that they can't live up to and just always feel like a failure. You're much better to actually only set shorter-term goals. Like I only ever set a year into the future. I sometimes set some bigger intentions, but nine times out of ten it's a year into the future or even less. And I make them realistic things that I can achieve over a period of time.

Because the longer you set goals out into the future, the easier it is to say, I'll do that tomorrow. The closer they are, the easier you get things done. So setting realistic goals is always good. And also, you know, probably the last thing is... Allowing yourself to have rest and breaks in the day. Like I've literally on my screensaver added five or six techniques that I can use in the moment to remind myself that they exist, from go sit down and meditate for 20 minutes, go for a walk in the sun.

Use different techniques. Like there's one I talk about where I zoom out over my head, realize how small I am in the world and how little my problems are. I also use another technique called, Does this actually matter? And it's thinking about, in 12 months' time, will I remember this moment? And 999 times out of 100, that's a lot, by the way, I won't remember that moment. I think there's probably five or six things a year that I'll actually remember when I actually get into next year.

So tools like that really help in the moment and making sure they're easily accessible and reminded to you is huge. So just wanted to share today, guys, a bit about dyslexic burnout, neurodiverse burnout, and a few tips to help you on your path. Have an epic rest of your day. Thanks for listening to the Truth About Dyslexia. This podcast is sponsored by Added Nutrition and our new product, Added Sleep. It's designed for brains wired differently.

If you want to sleep better, maybe give it a try. Use the code TRUTHABOUTDYSLEXIA to get a $10 credit on your order at addednutrition. com. Link in the show notes.