My sister says she wants to support me, but I feel rejected whenever I'm honest about my autistic burnout
I'm currently navigating a deep (autistic) burnout. My sister wants to be there for me and frequently asks how I am. However when I tell her that I'm still struggling and why, she replies by saying how I only ever see the negative in things and how hard it is for her to always hear how I'm struggling. I know she wants to be there for me but I dread communicating with her because I feel I have to mask what is really going on or risk getting rejected again and again.
Autistic burnout is a neurological state that can take months to move through, and being told you are too negative while you are in it is one of the most isolating things that can happen.
Your sister is asking a question she cannot really take the answer to. That is not you being uncharitable. When someone invites honesty and then responds to it with their own distress, they are not actually asking how you are. They are asking for reassurance that you are okay. Those are completely different requests. So yes, you are masking. Not because you are being dishonest, but because telling the truth has cost you every single time. Your nervous system has learned that. Of course you dread it. The problem with masking in burnout is that it potentially deepens it. You are using energy you do not have to protect someone from the reality of what you are going through. You cannot make her more able to hold difficulty than she currently is. But you can be honest with yourself about what this dynamic is costing your capacity right now, and whether they are the person you can be really honest with.
It might be worth asking whether there is one person in your life who can actually take the full weight of how you are doing, so your sister does not have to be that person. Because she has shown you, consistently, that this is past her capacity.
That does not mean the relationship is over. It means you stop going to a shop that does not stock what you need, and hopefully can find it somewhere else while you recover.
My partner says he finds me difficult to be around when I'm experiencing burnout
My partner cannot understand that I am often exhausted from masking and socialising. He says I just need to try harder as I make it difficult for him to be around me. How should I approach this?
Masking is not a choice you are making to avoid effort. It is what your nervous system has been doing, probably for decades, to keep you safe in a world that was not built for how your brain works. By the time you get home, you are not being difficult. You are depleted.
The problem with "try harder" is that it assumes there is a reserve you are choosing not to access. There is not. Masking fatigue is physiological. Your body has been running on high alert, monitoring every social cue, managing every response, suppressing instincts all day. Coming home and being told to do more of that is like finishing a marathon and being handed another race number.
His experience of you being hard to be around is real to him. That is worth acknowledging. But his interpretation of why, that you are not trying, is not accurate, and it is important you do not absorb it as truth.
A few things that might help: Find a moment when neither of you is in the middle of it to explain what masking actually does to your body. Not to win an argument. So he has something more accurate to work with than "she just needs to push through."
It is also worth asking what he actually needs from you in those moments. Sometimes a partner saying you are difficult is really saying they feel shut out or helpless. That does not make his response okay, but it might open a different conversation.
And for you, separate from him, the question is whether you have any recovery time built into your day before you walk through the door. Even ten minutes can change what you have available.
My sister says I don't share enough, yet rarely responds when I open up
When I email my older sister (I'm one of 4 sisters), she replies once, but then doesn't respond to my response. Then nothing for a month or more. We don't see each other as in different countries. And if I mention anything too deep she brushes over it. I know my reaction is worsened by RSD and I've tried lessening my responses, but then I'm told I don't share enough. What should I do. By the way, she doesn't believe I'm neurodivergent despite our family being full of neurodiversity. I want to feel less hurt and more connected.
Thank you for sharing. It sounds like you are trying to calibrate to a system that keeps changing the rules on you. For a neurodivergent brain, that kind of unpredictable feedback is one of the most dysregulating things there is.
The month-long silences are frustrating. When a response might come or might not, your nervous system stays on alert the whole time. That is how RSD operates inside a relationship that runs on inconsistent signals. You are not overreacting. You are doing exactly what a nervous system does when it cannot predict what is coming.
You have tried adjusting the amount of information you share. Sharing less, then being told you do not share enough. That contradiction cannot be fixed by changing the amount you share. The ambivalence lives in her, not in the amount you share.
Her not believing you are neurodivergent is its own layer of hurt, separate from the emails.
Being unseen by someone who probably has her own version of this, just unacknowledged, lands differently than being unseen by a stranger.
You mentioned neither of you has a relationship with your younger siblings. Is emotional distance your family's normal register? Her communication pattern may not be about you specifically. It may be the full range she has available given the familial dynamics. That does not make it less painful. But it does change where you direct your energy. You are carrying two separate things. Wanting to feel less hurt, and feeling more connected.
Less hurt is nervous system work, about tolerating the uncertainty of the wait without it pulling you under. More connection requires a different question: what does connection actually look like with this person, within the range she can comfortably operate in? Perhaps shorter messages, a different rhythm altogether, might get you more of her than a long email does.