Accommodations suggestions?

[yogabanana]

I'm on medical leave for burnout and will hopefully go back in about a month. I've got a formal diagnosis appointment scheduled for next month (separate one for my son). I didn't want to get diagnosed before but with the burnout I am worried I need it for protecting my job.

I work from home already and have a fair bit of flexibility. Issues are mostly video calls and phone calls. I'm not sure I can get away with being excused from these as they are arguably an essential part of the job.

I'm also scared because i am a social worker who is burned out partially from masking and now that I need to mask less I worry that people. Won't understand, or worse they will say I can't be a social worker anymore because of their biases. I've got performance reviews that prove I can do my job. But that's also with a fair amount of masking.

I'm trying to find a therapist to help with my burnout recovery plan but figured maybe people here have figured this out too.

 

[VictorR]

Indeed, when something that makes up a significant part of one's duties is potentially the item that would need to be removed or altered to fit a need, there is the possibility that you would be found unsuitable for that job going forward.

Do they have any primarily non-contact type jobs that you could potentially make a lateral move into?

Or is there the potential for job carving (taking pieces of various jobs to create a custom job for you)?

 

[Duncan74]

I'm on medical leave for burnout and will hopefully go back in about a month. I've got a formal diagnosis appointment scheduled for next month (separate one for my son). I didn't want to get diagnosed before but with the burnout I am worried I need it for protecting my job.

I work from home already and have a fair bit of flexibility. Issues are mostly video calls and phone calls. I'm not sure I can get away with being excused from these as they are arguably an essential part of the job.

I'm also scared because i am a social worker who is burned out partially from masking and now that I need to mask less I worry that people. Won't understand, or worse they will say I can't be a social worker anymore because of their biases. I've got performance reviews that prove I can do my job. But that's also with a fair amount of masking.

I'm trying to find a therapist to help with my burnout recovery plan but figured maybe people here have figured this out too.

I'm awaiting my formal assessment/diagnosis, and am on that rollercoaster of 'yay I understand myself' to 'oh I can't do all the things I've been doing' to 'I've not changed, it's just my understanding' to 'will i still be motivated to mask as much as I used to'.

This latter is perhaps what I picked up from the bit above I italicised. I'm still figuring this out, but I am thinking that before I masked to pretend to be 'normal' as best I could, and going forward I still need to do the same actions to make it easier for the NTs to keep up with me. Or of course I do need to make some serious lifestyle changes and subscribe to the stereotype life of someone with ASD that says they can't do the job I do at the level I do.

In a year's time I may have a better answer, and my guess it will be in the middle, as in I'll change a few things of my role/life to play more of the time in my 'sweet spot' and less at the extreme of the bit that I need to really 'mask/accommodate' for. But for the last 3 years I've been doing this in midst of a pandemic, and just because I now know why I get exhausted and can't influence everyone, only some does not mean I completely give up.