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Today I recorded my final session for You and I Are Polar Opposites! I voiced the delightfully dead inside Home Room Teacher & the much more lively Hasegawa! Directors Emily Fajardo & Dani Chambers & my engineers were all wonderful! This show may have saved me & I’ll tell ya why.

About a year ago I realized something was wrong. I felt terrible - achy, exhausted, stressed, burnt out - all the bad stuff despite actively improving my health and getting in better shape! My voice was weak, my throat was chronically dry & scratchy & it affected my work & stressed me out further.

Then I was cast as the teacher in Polar Opposites and I was happy to say I killed the role! I was such a natural fit! Oh no… I was a natural fit for this exhausted, dead inside human being. Sure, it was played for laughs, but I could not ignore that I fit him so well because I was becoming him.

I figured it was a number of things, so I addressed them individually, but nothing really changed longterm. I wondered if I was falling out of love with acting, if the stress of pursuing it was hurting my health. To be frank, I also genuinely feel I was mistreated by certain directors.

This all came to a head fairly recently. I was feeling the most overwhelmed, drained, frustrated I’ve ever been. Despite my hard work, despite trying to be kind and respectful, why couldn’t I get further in my career? Why did it seem like nobody accepted me or wanted me here? What more must I do?!

Then a friend on the spectrum suggested I may be masking. I didn’t think so, but then I tried stopping. Holy cow. It changed my world. I did not realize how much energy I was putting into to presenting myself in a way that felt acceptable to the world, yet still being rejected anyway.

It’s been around four weeks since I made the discovery. I’ve consciously stopped masking this entire time & feel the best I have in so long. My body & voice have bounced back tremendously! It is looking highly likely that I am on the spectrum & was experiencing autistic burnout.

For the uninitiated, it is when an autistic person expends too much energy masking & exposing themselves to overwhelming stimuli. The nervous system gets overloaded & it takes its toll on the mind & body. It’s been educational. I’m learning what generally tolerable things are exhausting for me.

I have never aimed to be difficult or unprofessional, and yet I feel some directors have deemed me such. We’ll see if this information getting out changes how I’m treated, but generally I have found voice acting professionals are less open minded & progressive than they want you to think they are.