u/Evhaanc

Hey all, I’m an RBT been in the field for about 2 years now. I have a love hate relationship with this field. Anyways, I’m currently on a school case that I’ve been on since September. This case itself has been extremely challenging in many different aspects. School being hard to work out, clients behaviors being very intense and unpredictable, and high amount of pressure in general. Randomly around March I started to experience anxiety during the nights. This would keep me up for hours. It comes and goes and this week has been the hardest week I’ve had so far. I’ve had one sleepless night already that I worked through and tonight I dealt again with another sleepless night. I’m planning on taking the day off for my mental well being because I think I’ve hit my breaking point and am completely maxed out and burnt out. I feel extremely guilty for doing this as I feel I’m ruining my kiddos day and letting my anxiety win. But in reality I believe that as strong as I know I am there’s a point where it’s just tooo much. Just looking for some support honestly. & yes my supervisors are aware of how I’m feeling and are incredibly supportive thankfully.

I work in school-based ABA and I’m trying to decide what to do next year about a case I’ve been on for a while.
I originally planned to just reduce my hours, but over time I’ve realized the overall school environment + case demands have been more emotionally draining than I expected (constant changes, communication load, and feeling mentally “on” outside of work). It’s also started affecting my sleep and making it hard to fully disconnect after work. (It’s 2am) :/
I’m now considering stepping completely off the case, even though I care about the client and feel guilty about losing consistency.

I’m trying to figure out what’s “normal stress” in this field vs. actual burnout that means a change is needed.
TIA