Late-Identified Burnout Chronicles: Trying to Sustain the Unsustainable
When doing your best still feels like falling short
There’s a specific kind of burnout that doesn’t feel like burnout at first. It feels like failure. It feels like everyone else is keeping up, and you’re the sole exception, despite your significant effort. When you don’t yet have language for your neurodivergence, there’s only one place to put that experience: on yourself.
The following story centers on work, not because burnout starts there, but because it’s often where it builds and is felt the most. For many, work is where self-worth, success, and the ability to sustain yourself and your family intersect. It carries an outsized impact when things start to break down. For neurodivergent adults, work environments often require sustained masking, constant adaptation, and ongoing performance under pressure. Support and recovery are often limited. What builds there doesn’t stay there. It carries into home, relationships, and daily life, especially when there’s no space to rest or be yourself.
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[Late-Identified Burnout Chronicles: Trying to Sustain the Unsustainable]
The System Worked. Until It Didn’t.
Between 2005 and 2009, I worked in admissions for a publicly traded, online, for-profit higher education company during a period of rapid expansion in the U.S. The industry positioned itself as a solution for unconventional students without traditional pathways to higher education. The model relied on federal Title IV funding, and success depended on volume. Students didn’t need to finish programs. They only needed to enroll for the model to remain profitable.
I came into the role somewhat naively. I didn’t treat it as a sales process. I focused on helping prospective students achieve their educational goals. I was thorough, sometimes seen as too thorough. I followed the rules and made sure they understood what they were agreeing to. When I didn’t enroll as many students as some of my peers, I was often told that was why I struggled to “close,” which is sales language for securing an enrollment. The thing is, I was good at getting students started. Many of my peers could enroll quickly but struggled to get people to follow through. I focused on preparing them to begin and, eventually, matriculate.
Despite that, or maybe because of it, I advanced quickly. At the time, I took it as a sign I was doing something right. I started as an Admissions Advisor in a call center and moved into a Director of Admissions role in about 18 months. The environment was defined by long hours and constant pressure. Overtime was strongly encouraged, often adding up to 20 extra hours a week to meet admissions goals. That meant nights, weekends, and some holidays. It was exhausting and unsustainable. The culture was “all-in,” built around a “work hard, play hard” mentality that blurred the line between performance and burnout from the start. Workdays often stretched into the evening. Nights often ended at local bars with coworkers, with drinks frequently covered by the company.
This was the first time in my career that I successfully moved into a management role. As an unidentified autistic, I focused most of my energy on learning the processes in any job I had so I could excel. When I was motivated, I worked to improve them. At the same time, I was heavily masking through fawning. I paid close attention to both individual and systemic needs and worked to meet them. I believed that combination would make me a good manager. It hadn’t happened anywhere else, even though I tried. Maybe my previous efforts came across as wanting it “too much.” That wasn’t an issue here.
Looking back, that’s part of what makes this story hard to hold. The one organization that rewarded me for my strengths did so to build something that was ultimately disposable. I was part of it. I was also part of dismantling it, without the perspective to see the bigger picture of what was happening. What I did impacted real people and real lives. In my most successful management role, I was used in ways I didn’t realize until much later. When things went wrong, I blamed myself. I’m getting ahead of myself, but it’s important context for what comes next.
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When Effort Becomes Identity
As an Admissions Advisor, I took on a volunteer role leading the “Morale Committee” after the previous lead was promoted. Early in the site’s development, I saw it as an opportunity for advancement and stepped into it. During “Crunch Week,” the final week of the admissions cycle, overtime was the norm. My role was to support admissions advisors through it by helping maintain morale with catered meals, raffles, and a steady supply of fidget toys. I also joined a mentor team that supported new advisors through their first few admissions cycles. Both experiences reinforced my reputation as someone who cared about motivating and supporting the team. They also reflected how I used pattern recognition to create opportunities for my own growth.
Early on, I was recognized for my work with students. At one annual, site-wide event, a student I’d worked with was flown in to share her experience. She talked about how starting school had changed her life. I was recognized as a leader in student care, which led to a management role focused on improving the quality of enrollments and helping students prepare for and begin their programs. Around that time, a director I met in a management development course recognized my ability to motivate advisors and coach for performance. He asked me to step into an Associate Director role on his team. I agreed and was successful. As the site grew quickly, I was promoted to Director within a few weeks.
As an Associate Director, and eventually a Director, one of my favorite parts of the role was breaking the enrollment process into stages. I analyzed how prospective students (leads) moved through the steps of the enrollment process for every advisor, tracking how they converted along the way. I also revisited closed leads and reassigned them to advisors who might succeed with a different approach. That work was deeply satisfying. At the time, I saw it as a way to improve results. Looking back, it reflected strengths I didn’t yet have language for.
I used that insight to identify where advisors were struggling. I created personalized plans to improve outcomes and worked to find leads they could successfully enroll. I also prioritized respect and individual motivation, often writing thank-you letters to acknowledge the effort and contributions I saw. When advisors weren’t able to improve and were released for performance, many were accepting because we had already spent time understanding their challenges and recognizing their efforts.
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When the Pattern Breaks
At the same time, our site struggled to match the overall performance of more established sites. Lead distribution was inconsistent and constantly changing, which made it difficult to build any stable strategy. Success often depended more on access to viable leads than on effort or skill. I kept trying to make it work by creating new strategies, revisiting leads, and increasing effort across the board. I believed that if we improved each individual advisor’s conversion rates, results would follow.
They didn’t.
No matter how much I did, my team struggled to find consistent success. We’d meet our enrollment goal one cycle, then miss the next two before hitting it again. This wasn’t unique to my team. Most teams at our site struggled with consistency. In leadership meetings, the message was simple: we weren’t working hard or smart enough. I believed that too, so I worked harder.
What I couldn’t see at the time was that many of the leads we were given were never meant to convert into enrollments. The company was so desperate for volume that it purchased leads from online aggregators using tactics that required people to share their name and contact information to “win a free iPhone” or “win a vacation to Hawaii.” The people filling out those forms weren’t intending to enroll at an online university. They were trying to win something. At the same time, more schools were entering the market while the pool of viable students seemed to be shrinking. Those same leads were then sold to multiple competitors.
On top of that, we struggled with a hiring issue. As Directors, we were pressured to hire, which meant prioritizing speed over fit. Declining “too many” applicants after interviews often resulted in negative feedback from both recruiters and leadership. We needed to fill seats! I followed the logic I was given and tried not to rock the boat. It already felt unstable without adding more friction. Even with constantly changing directives and low-quality resources, the results were framed as our responsibility. We were expected to make gold from straw, like Rumpelstiltskin. It was a recipe for failure from the start.
Through all of this, I could see the bigger picture, even if I couldn’t name the problems. I noticed disconnects between financial aid, admissions, and academic advising, so I created an interdepartmental exchange program to improve the student experience and increase start and completion rates. I was criticized for focusing on something that “didn’t make a difference” and told to “focus on my job.”
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The Cost of Not Knowing
At the same time, I was an unidentified neurodivergent adult under constant stress. I often turned to heavy alcohol use for relief, alongside many of my peers. I had little rest and relied on masking and caffeine to maintain performance. I was already operating beyond my capacity in an environment that rewarded overextension, especially for those willing to push past their limits.
Meanwhile, leadership was working desperately to meet corporate projections in an over-saturated market on the verge of collapse. Leads and working hours were constantly manipulated based on a speed-to-contact model. Policies and processes changed at a whiplash-inducing pace. At one point, my team changed overnight. I went from managing about 50 advisors across two groups on the same five-day schedule to around 70 advisors across three groups working different schedules seven days a week. I was responsible for teams working ten-hour shifts every day of the week. With the pressure to succeed, taking time off felt hard to justify. I think that was part of the design.
Eventually, pressure increased, and the system tightened. Leadership shifted from pushing hires to pushing terminations based on performance. If advisors aren’t enrolling, they’ve got to go! What was framed as “focused managerial support” was actually an aggressive reduction strategy.
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Collapse Doesn’t Always Look Like Collapse From the Inside
After four years of giving almost all my time and energy to the job, everything started to fall in on itself. The admissions advisor pool had been culled based on performance, and I could see the writing on the wall that management, including me, would be next. By then, the message had taken hold: if I was struggling; it meant I wasn’t doing enough. Being fired felt like confirmation of failure.
At a certain point, I realized I couldn’t continue in the same way and took paid medical leave. Some saw it as weakness. I saw it as my only logical option. I spent that time in weekly counseling to prepare for being fired and what came next. It felt like the most realistic and effective use of the time and resources I had.
I still didn’t fully understand what was happening. I didn’t know I was neurodivergent, in crisis, and experiencing severe burnout. All I knew was that continuing was impossible. I interpreted everything through performance and failure, blaming myself and increasing effort even as my capacity was already exceeded.
I was fired within two weeks of returning from my leave.
Looking Back With Different Language
The site grew rapidly and, in the end, declined at the same rate. Admissions functions ceased less than a year after I was fired. By then, most of the team had already been released based on performance. I was responsible for part of that. In the end, I was a casualty along with everyone else. What had once been framed as opportunity and growth unraveled, leaving behind a trail of people who had tried to make it work and took the failure personally. We weren’t failing in isolation. We were part of a business model where success wasn’t built to last.
Looking back, the problem wasn’t effort, strategy, or care. I had all three. I was trying to excel in a system where outcomes were misaligned, pressure was constant, and sustainability wasn’t part of the design. The burnout I experienced didn’t come from a lack of effort. It came from sustained overextension in conditions that couldn’t produce consistent success.
At the time, I could see pieces of it. I noticed issues with lead quality. I felt the impact of constant shifts in directives, staffing, and expectations. I experienced the pressure of being pushed to hire, then pushed to terminate for performance. I lived the reality of a role that kept expanding while my capacity was already exceeded. I was working without rest because that’s what the environment required. What I couldn’t do was connect those pieces into a bigger picture. I didn’t yet understand how those conditions worked together to shape outcomes, or how little control I actually had over them.
There’s another layer I need to name.
I carry remorse for being part of a system that took advantage of people seeking education and the opportunities it can create. Many students enrolled with the hope of something different, often without the support needed to complete their programs. When that didn’t happen, the consequences followed them. Defaulting on loans could limit their future access to Title IV funding and make it harder to return to school later.
I also regret the frequent presentation of funding. In some cases, people led students to believe that tuition surplus was unearned income, ignoring its loan origin and repayment obligation. For many, that misunderstanding had lasting financial consequences and further limited future educational opportunities.
The intent behind Title IV funding is to support access to education. In practice, I was part of a for-profit system that leveraged that intent to generate revenue for corporate shareholders. At the time, I didn’t see it that way. I used to say, often, “There’s nothing wrong with making a profit if you’re helping someone earn a degree that will change their life for the better.” I tried to focus on the positive and ignore the realities that didn’t fit that narrative. Looking back, I can see the privilege in that mindset, shaped by my role and the type of work I was doing. I didn’t perceive the full picture, though that doesn’t erase my participation in it.
I also think about the people I hired, worked alongside, and managed. We were all adults, capable of making our own decisions. At the same time, we were operating within a system that wasn’t transparent about its long-term stability or intentions. Many believed the work was sustainable. Many believed it was fair. Many were supporting themselves and their families through it. If I could go back, I would be more direct. I would tell them this was likely temporary. Make the money you can. Build the skills you can. Don’t count on it to last. I understand I wasn’t responsible for the system itself. At the same time, I was part of it. Naming that matters.
Like many adults with unidentified neurodivergence, I didn’t question the system. I questioned myself. I internalized outcomes I didn’t control and carried them as personal failure. I pushed harder in response to problems that effort alone couldn’t solve. What I was experiencing had a pattern, even if I couldn’t see it at the time.
If you’ve had a similar experience, not just at work but in your home, relationships, or communities, where you kept showing up, adapting, and trying to make things work without understanding why they weren’t, you’re not alone. It’s hard to see when the issue isn’t your effort, but the conditions you’ve been trying to sustain. It can be even harder when those patterns have been reinforced over time, shaping how you see yourself.
At the time, it looked like I couldn’t keep up. Looking back, I was trying to sustain something that wasn’t sustainable.
Questions You Can Sit With
If you saw yourself in this pattern of pushing through, adapting, and eventually burning out, you’re not alone. A lot of late-identified adults reach this point carrying a mix of exhaustion, confusion, self-doubt, and often a quiet sense of shame. Not because they haven’t tried, but because they’ve been trying for a long time in ways that were never meant to be sustainable.
The questions I offer below aren’t designed to diagnose anything or to give you the “right” answers. They’re here to help you notice patterns, shift how you interpret your experiences, and create a little space between what’s happening and what you’ve been taught to believe about it. Sometimes that space is where things begin to change.
You can explore these at your own pace through independent reflection, journaling, therapy, counseling, group work, or coaching. Take what works and leave what doesn’t. Your experience is your own, and not every question will resonate in the same way.
Where in my life have I been trying to sustain something that isn’t sustainable? (notice where effort has been ongoing, but the conditions haven’t meaningfully supported you in return)
What have I been taught to interpret as personal failure that might actually be a mismatch in conditions or expectations? (gently question the stories you’ve been told, or have internalized, regarding responsibility and performance)
When things haven’t worked, how have I explained that to myself? (bring awareness to patterns of self-blame, especially when other factors may have been at play)
What patterns of overextension or pushing through have I come to see as “normal?” (recognize what may have been adaptive over time, but is no longer sustainable)
What has it cost me to keep going in the same way? (create space to acknowledge the impact, not as judgment, but as information)
What might change if I viewed my capacity as information instead of a limitation? (invite a different relationship with your limits, one that can support more sustainable ways of moving forward)
You don’t have to resolve any of this right now, and you don’t have to fix anything today. If you’ve spent years believing the problem was you, even beginning to question that can matter. Noticing that something hasn’t been working, and allowing that to be true without immediately blaming yourself, can be a meaningful shift. That’s often where this process begins.
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