A Video That Explains Why I've Felt Exhausted by “Easy” Things

I’ve become a big fan of the Auticate with Chris & Debby YouTube channel. Like me, Chris is AuDHD and wasn’t diagnosed until his 40s. His videos have given me practical tips, but more importantly, he shares experiences that resonate and make me feel seen.

Check out the above video “5 ‘Normal’ Things that Exhaust High Masking Autistics” to see if they connect with you, or want to better understand the autistic and AuDHD experience.

Here are my own reflections on the five things he lists:

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1. Surprise Interruption: When Momentum Shatters

This has been one of my biggest lifelong struggles. For years, I couldn’t understand why nobody else seemed to grasp that being yanked out of focus felt as welcome as a flaming ice pick jabbed into my eyeball.

Executive dysfunction and transitions mean it often takes a whole ritual parade to get started. But once laser focus kicks in, an interruption feels like an explosive five-car pileup. My entire body tenses, my brain floods with rage, and yes, I’ve unfairly exploded on innocent family members. At least now, I understand why.

Losing momentum often means the project dies. I’ll scrap it and “start fresh,” even when it doesn’t need restarting. Autistic inertia also plays a part, as it's an ordeal to stop before the task is finished. Neurotypicals don’t seem to have this to the same extent, which is why I've pushed back so hard when told to pause for dinner or leave the house mid-task.

Strategies help: I carve out quiet times for deep focus, try breaking projects into chunks, and practice calming myself when interruptions happen. But if I know I’m expecting a phone call or visitor? Forget it. My brain refuses to start anything big. I’ll just sit, staring at a blank screen, waiting for the inevitable disruption.

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2. Cooking a Meal: A Daily Battlefield

Hearing Chris describe this one made me internally leap for joy. For so long, I thought something was “wrong” with me because half the day would be spent psyching myself up for the monumental task of making dinner. Not cooking isn’t an option when three hungry people expect food by evening.

Decision fatigue hits hard. This is why my family eats spaghetti… a lot. Add in sensory overload from smells, sounds, and textures, plus the chaos of timing multiple dishes so nothing is cold, and dinner becomes a minefield. Quick 20-minute meals? For me, that’s more like an hour-long survival challenge, complete with smoke alarm fanfare.

And yes, even “easy” frozen dinners still require mental juggling with timers, food groups, plating. Sometimes my brain just needs a low-stakes night.

I do find joy in cooking when I have energy, and sometimes improvising on the fly can be fun. But then there are dishes. Each one feels like its own mini-boss battle: which to soak, which to scrub, what order to attack them in. Every plate demands a strategy.

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3. Small Talk: The Awkward Olympics

“How are you doing?” is the ultimate riddle. Sometimes it’s rhetorical. Sometimes it’s not. Sometimes they want the weather. Sometimes they want my soul. My track record includes oversharing, blurting, and total shutdown, none of which make for smooth small talk.

Before leaving the house, I’ll run through imaginary conversations, rehearsing responses. But real-life chats rarely follow the script. Then I find myself fighting to look attentive while my mind is already on a rocket ship elsewhere.

It’s exhausting. I’d much rather go deep with people I trust than play verbal ping-pong with strangers.

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4. Task Switching: A Mental Tug-of-War

My brain prefers “zones.” Laundry zone. Writing zone. Socializing zone. Switching between them feels like being yanked out of orbit. The energy drain is massive, and the task I left behind keeps nagging me while I’m supposed to be focused on the next.

From school to home life to work to creative projects, task switching has been agony. I’d comply with the new task but quietly tell myself, This is just practice, I’ll redo it later when my brain is ready. Of course, I rarely got that chance, and people around me would scold: “Why are you doing it again?” I couldn’t explain the storm happening inside.

Even now, unfinished tasks haunt me until I either abandon them completely or start over from scratch. My brain loves a reset, even when it isn’t needed.

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5. Masking in Everyday Life: The Hardest Role of All

People often compliment me on how natural I seem on stage. The truth? Performing in theatre is easier than performing in life. At least on stage, there’s a script. In daily interactions, I’m constantly improvising and memorizing the “right” way to be.

As a kid, my peers scolded me for staring. Really, I was studying them, trying to decode how I was supposed to act so I wouldn’t be labeled weird, dumb, or awkward. Even loved ones would point out my quirks as “wrong.” Without knowing I was AuDHD, I believed I was broken and failing at normal, so I tried harder to mimic.

A typical day meant silently chanting reminders: greet properly, make eye contact, laugh at the right moment, don’t obsess over special interests, fit in. All that mental rehearsal meant I missed most of what was actually being said.

Masking is the exhausting full-time role I never auditioned for.

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Why This Resonates

I deeply relate to Chris’s video. If you do too, know this: you are not broken, strange, or failing at life. You’re wired differently, and that makes the world more interesting, more surprising, and more creative.

That’s why finding voices like Auticate matters so much. It’s one of the rare spaces where I don’t have to explain myself, because someone else is already saying the words I didn’t know I needed.