I’m autistic and believe I am suffering from autistic burnout / stress. I am having increased meltdowns / shutdowns, increased sensory overload and noise sensitivity, insomnia, anxiety and gastric issues. I’m struggling with basic executive function type tasks like self-care and household chores and I’m just so exhausted.
I know I need to be signed off and I know it needs to be for several weeks to allow me to get back to being able to function enough for work. Work is also the main contributor to my stress and anxiety because they are very poor at implementing reasonable adjustments and I am seen as a problem and expected to act neurotypical all the time.
I explained all this in an econsult form submitted on Tuesday. Just spoken to a doctor who didn’t ask me anything about what I’d written or ask for more detail. Just said what do you want and have you had any treatment. I said I needed to be signed off work and she asked how long for. Last time this happened (about a year and a half ago) it took about 6 weeks to get back to a properly functioning state so that’s what I said. She then said I’ll give you two weeks but has actually only given one week. One week is not going to be enough and is actually going to increase the anxiety I’m feeling because now I’m going to have to go through the trauma of speaking to the doctors again in a weeks time and worrying about whether they’re going to make me go back to work.
How can I make it clear in a weeks time that the most helpful thing would be to just sign me off for 4 weeks so I can focus on what I need to do to reset?