Queer, Neurodivergent & Tired

Understanding Chronic Burnout When You are Navigating Multiple Identities

You wake up. You have already used up your spoon supply for the week, and it is only Tuesday.

The cup of tea sits cooling on your bedside table, that quintessentially British ritual of comfort that somehow no longer feels comforting. Instead, it feels like one more thing. One more thing to remember, one more thing to manage, one more thing that requires you to exist in a world that was not quite designed with you in mind.

If this resonates with you, you are not lazy or broken.

Your exhaustion is the result of navigating multiple identities, multiple systems that were not built for you.

Your marginalised identities overlap. They compound. They create demands that most people around you cannot even perceive.

Consider the numbers.

LGBTQ+ people and mental health: Research from the American Psychological Association shows 40% of transgender adults have attempted suicide, compared to 4.6% of the general population.

The intersection of queer and neurodivergent: The rate of autism in the transgender population is between 6% and 14%, compared to roughly 1% in the general population.

ADHD and underdiagnosis: Roughly 5% of adults have ADHD. But women and LGBTQ+ individuals remain significantly underdiagnosed.

You are not carrying one burden. You are carrying the weight of navigating systems that were designed without you in mind.

tired

One of the most exhausting parts of holding multiple stigmatised identities is the constant invisible work you make, often without realising it.

Which parts of yourself do you reveal today? To whom? At what cost?

Many neurodivergent people engage in "masking." This is the process of concealing who you actually are to fit what others expect. Research from the University of Edinburgh found that autistic people, particularly women, expend enormous amounts of mental energy on this. Every. Single. Day.

Now imagine doing this whilst simultaneously managing the emotional labour of existing as a queer person.

Imagine constantly reading the room, deciding whether your truth is safe today, monitoring energy, calculating risk.

Research from The Trevor Project found that LGBTQ+ young people face harassment and discrimination at school, at home, and online. Your vigilance becomes embodied. Your nervous system learns to stay on alert. Always.

It is rather like being asked to run a marathon whilst simultaneously reading a map and translating it into three languages.

You are bound to feel tired.

What you are experiencing may be called depression. Laziness. Being "too sensitive." Failure to cope. What it actually is, is burnout, proper, legitimate, clinically significant burnout.

The three components of burnout:

Emotional exhaustion: You feel depleted from constantly managing multiple selves.

Depersonalisation: You find yourself detached from aspects of your identity that should feel joyful.

Reduced accomplishment: Your sense of achievement becomes difficult to locate when the world consistently sends the message that simply surviving another day is the achievement.

Persistent discrimination also creates what researchers call "minority stress." The American Psychological Association defines it as chronic stress stemming from prejudice, discrimination, and stigma.

This is not the ordinary stress of life. This is the stress of being perceived as wrong simply for existing.

Your exhaustion is not just psychological. It is physiological.

Neurodivergent nervous systems operate differently. ADHD brains tend toward either understimulation or overstimulation. Autistic nervous systems are highly sensitive to sensory input, social demands, and change. Your arousal baseline is not the same as neurotypical people around you.

Now add to this the chronic activation of your stress response system due to living as a marginalised person. Your body is essentially running at high alert constantly.

Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score, reminds us that trauma and chronic stress literally change the architecture of our brains and bodies.

Your exhaustion is not laziness. Your exhaustion is your body telling you it has been through something. Many things, perhaps.

Those things might include: social rejection, medical gaslighting, misgendering, accessibility barriers, medication trials, loss of community, fear of not fitting anywhere, hypervigilance required to stay safe, grief for the person you were expected to be.

Your exhaustion makes sense.

Three Things That Actually Help

Stop waiting to feel ready enough.

You do not need to feel better before you deserve support. You deserve it now. Whether that is therapy with someone who understands intersectionality, community with other multiply marginalised people, workplace accommodation, or simply permission to rest.

You are ready. You have always been ready.

Redefine what success looks like.

Your culture has sold you the myth that your value is determined by productivity. That is a particular cruelty designed for multiply marginalised people. You are already working so much harder just to exist.

Perhaps today, success is getting out of bed. Perhaps this week, success is telling one person something true about yourself. Perhaps this month, success is noticing that you did not die from being yourself, which is actually rather remarkable.

Get curious about your exhaustion.

When do you feel most drained? What precedes the worst days? What small things help, even marginally? You are a scientist studying your own experience. That data matters.

The Peculiar Gift

Living at the intersection of multiple marginalised identities is genuinely harder. The data bears this out. The lived experience of thousands of people bears this out. Your experience bears this out.

And yet.

There is something that happens when you learn to survive this, with the right support, reflection, strategies and tools. You start to see the world from angles that many people never have access to.

You develop a kind of clarity, a resilience that is not about toughing it out.

The very fact that you are here, still showing up for yourself despite the exhaustion, despite everything.

You are remarkable.

A Final Word

If you are struggling with exhaustion related to your multiple identities, speaking with a counsellor or therapist experienced in LGBTQ+ and neurodivergent issues can be transformative.

You deserve support that sees all of you, not fragments of you.

And you deserve rest that feels like restoration, not resignation. Let's talk.

Sources:

American Psychological Association: LGBTQ+ mental health and suicide statistics

The Trevor Project: LGBTQ+ youth experiences of harassment and discrimination

University of Edinburgh: Research on autistic masking and neurodivergent women

Dr. Bessel van der Kolk: The Body Keeps the Score (2014)

Kimberlé Crenshaw: Intersectionality framework