Sonia Gray

It's described as an occupational phenomenon.

Excessive demands at work that become overwhelming.

But what Daryl Lee and her colleagues are seeing is not all about external demands.

It's the demands an individual is forced to place on themselves, often from very early on in life, just for survival.

That masking and the effort that takes places these kids' systems under immense stress.

Think of it as like a computer that gets overloaded.

It starts glitching, it's buffering, and then it shuts down.

Disk is full.

It refuses to work until you delete some of the data.

Not just the odd file or photo.

What's needed is a complete system reset.

But burnout isn't the only thing Daryl Lee has noticed recently in her clinic.

There's also a change in how neurodivergence is presenting.

Daryl Lee's not the only clinician I've spoken to who has seen more complexity in presentations in the last year.

We can only speculate on why this might be.

More financial pressures in families, higher academic expectations, a global conflict.

There is a lot to navigate.

Yeah.

I was just reminded when you were talking of something a teacher said to me a few years ago that I interviewed.

She said, 20 years ago, we were pretty sure we knew the world that we were preparing kids for.