Anyone who knows me knows that I often struggle with setting boundaries in my personal and professional life. I’m a “hard worker,” and I’m used to having to do everything if I want anything to get done, so at work, I tend to bite off more than I can chew. And most employers, whether they mean to or not, get really reliant on my doing more than my fair share of work, which just feeds into this never-ending loop where I burn myself out indefinitely.

When I get myself stuck in one of these loops, I often struggle in my personal life, not wanting to give up any of my goals or hobbies for the rest that I need. Add to this the fact that I’m autistic and have PTSD, and my threshold for certain types of stressors seem much lower than the average person’s, and what you’ll find is that I spend a lot of time upset with myself for not being able to function the way everyone around me appears to.

A lot of this has to do with perception, I know, and the illusion that everyone else is doing more and achieving success more easily than me, but in some ways, that’s flat-out true. Right now, I have a job that allows me to work from home three days a week, which has hugely reduced the amount of stress in my every day and allows me to work faster and more efficiently without sustaining the negative impacts I get from working in an office.

But the other two days a week? I go home exhausted and unable to do a thing after work. Usually, I can’t even bring myself to cook dinner, so I end up eating raw fruit, cheese, crackers, and lunch meat in a makeshift charcuterie board. And it’s hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t experienced exactly why being in the office is so exhausting.

How do I make them understand that even though it seems like I’m happily whittling away at my to-do list on my computer like everyone—and exactly as I would be at home—on the inside I’m raging a constant battle against a bombardment of distractions and harsh stimuli that to everyone else, go basically unnoticed? The fluorescent lights hurt my head, even when the ones above my desk are turned off, the air flow is awful and even when it’s cold in the room, I feel like I’m going to puke because it’s just dead air, there’s constant noise and conversations, my chair sucks, and there’s all this pressure to look and act “normal”. And because I’m so focused on not letting any of the things I’m experiencing be viewable from the outside, I don’t tend to take breaks when I’m at the office. I hyper focus from one task to the next, going hours without moving or stretching, eat at my desk, and then finally get to the end of the day feeling like I just got hit by a truck.

My brain is basically a live wire, and everything in my environment touches it in some way. So what happens then when I get home, and it’s finally quiet, and I have natural light, and the temperature is, however I want it to be, and I have my pets for comfort, and no one is demanding I act or look a certain way? I shut down.

See, I know what I should do. I know that I need to continue my hobbies, to get outside, to exercise, and to eat well. I know rationally that all of these things will actually help me even out. But in the moment, when my brain is in survival mode and I’m out of energy, doing any of those things is as daunting as climbing a mountain with no training. Plus, I know that trying to force myself to write in moments like this results in bad writing.

So on those days, I try to be kind to myself. I remind myself that it’s okay to not make progress every single day. That not every day is going to be a “successful” day (and that it doesn’t need to be). And I’m learning, oh so very slowly, to accept that I need accommodations everywhere in my life, not just the consolidations I make in my personal life.

In the future, I know I need to focus on remote work and companies that truly value diversity and work/life balance. This isn’t something that I can just make do without. And in the meantime? I need to put myself first and take time off when I need it without feeling guilty for doing so.

And if my writing comes along slower than I planned, if I don’t hit every milestone I set for myself or reach success in the same way or at the same time as my peers, I need to be okay with that. I need to be kind to myself and understand that holding myself to the “same” standard as I perceived everyone else to held to isn’t as fair as I might make myself believe (and probably isn’t accurate anyway).

Alright, that was a long one this week. But I know I’m not the only writer to struggle with these feelings, and I’m definitely not the only neurodiverse adult struggling with these feelings. So I felt like it was important to talk about this while I was struggling with it.

Be gentle with yourselves, readers. You’re juggling a lot and it’s okay (and healthy) to take breaks. If we all keep telling each other this, maybe one day it won’t be so hard to accept.

Do something for yourself today. Something totally selfish. You deserve it.