Understanding and Managing Autistic Burnout: Tips for Autistic Adults
Autistic people understand that the world wasn’t built for us. Being forced to navigate such a world causes tremendous exhaustion due to things like sensory overload, social demands, and the need to mask our autistic traits—hiding our true selves to better fit into society. Masking is not dissimilar from a trauma response. We learn to mask as children—often before a diagnosis is accessible—due to the “mistakes” we make and the consequences of those mistakes. The constant bombardment of expectations, bright lights, loud noises, and general societal pressure, leads to a condition called autistic aurnout. Recognizing your own burnout symptoms can help you move through the burnout state safely and productively, and hopefully we’ll emerge on the other side together, with a little less masking and some valuable learning. In this article, we’ll go over some of the symptoms of autistic burnout, causes, short- and long-term steps to mitigate it, and lifestyle changes that can help prevent future burnouts.
If you believe you’re in the middle of autistic burnout right now, I want you to take a deep breath, get comfortable, and stay with me. We’re going to get through this together—which is funny, because we don’t like being with other people. But through this text, I’m here with you.
Any article where I discuss symptoms and steps, I feel it’s critical to be clear that I am not a medical professional. I am an autistic writer with opinions and ideas, sharing my experiences with you via a personal blog. You should discuss your concerns with a trained professional and use this as a part of your self-directed research only. Any advice I give is because these things have worked for me, but that doesn’t mean they will work for you.
What is Autistic Burnout?
Autistic burnout is a state of prolonged shutdown that causes autistic people extreme mental and/or physical exhaustion. This impacts day-to-day life, such as self-care and social interactions, increases anxiety, depression, and sensory sensitivities, and can lead to meltdowns or shutdowns at an increased frequency and severity than an otherwise “normal” autistic person. Burnout can introduce—or increase—dangerous thoughts like self-harm and suicide.
Autistic burnout can cause that fight-or-flight feeling, and I can look back at my life and see a few times when burnout got me into flight mode. Long before my diagnosis, I went into burnout as a young adult and got a Greyhound bus (remember those?), travelling from Vancouver, BC to Toronto, Ontario. I left all my stuff in my apartment and abandoned it, just got on a bus and went to Toronto. No money, no plan, no contacts. In the middle of winter. I spent a week in Toronto homeless, sleeping on the streets of downtown. My flight response nearly killed me, and I’m lucky that at the time I had a few friends left who were able to get me a bus ticket home. Some kind strangers on the bus fed me after they realized I wasn’t eating for the first day and a half of the trip.
It's important to be able to recognize the signs of approaching autistic burnout, or the symptoms of existing burnout, so self-identify and begin implementing a plan to work through it. Having a plan in place before you enter burnout is best, but how many of us actually plan ahead like that?
Recognizing Signs & Symptoms
There are tons of symptoms online via a quick search, but I’m going to focus on the specific signs and symptoms I recognize in myself.
Mental fatigue—physically, I’m not tired—but mentally I just want to check out for a while. I end up sitting in my chair, sometimes for an hour or more, not doing anything.
Headaches—I have always suffered from headaches, but autistic headaches are completely debilitating. The last one lasted 36 hours, and you can only take so much Tylenol or Advil in a day before it’s too much.
Loss of Motivation—I have some pretty exciting projects in the works. I’ve lost 50 pounds, and plan to lose another 50. I’ve got this blog, my Twitch stream and YouTube channel. I’m even exploring other projects to find ways to share my creativity, but when I can’t motivate myself to work on any of these things, all the ideas in the world can’t help me.
Self-Care suffers—Not sure how to word this one, but it’s a combination of not meeting my nutritive or self-care needs. It leads to disordered eating habits and a lack of self-care. I shower, but I forget (or neglect) to shave, brush my teeth, put on deodorant, and wear clean clothes.
Social Withdrawal—On my best day, I’m not keen to interact with people, but during burnout, that aversion to people is much higher. What I find funny about this, is I enjoy the live chat on Twitch, and reading and responding to comments on YouTube and TikTok.
Your signs and symptoms will almost certainly be different. We will probably have some overlap, but once you identify the signs of autistic burnout, you can start to manage those specific things—hopefully before burnout starts. For me, it starts with increased frequency and severity of headaches is a pretty major sign to me, as that’s one of the first things I notice. The second thing I notice is usually on my first work day, Tuesday, when I’ve forgotten to shave on Monday night. Mental fatigue follows the headaches, and then everything else kind of rolls in after that.
Causes of Autistic Burnout
The most common cause of autistic burnout is masking. High-masking autistic individuals are in constant risk of reaching burnout state because of the energy required just to exist in this world. I’ve previously discussed unmasking at home, and I believe a key factor in my mild success has been the ability to unmask at home over the past two years. I have started unmasking at work, but that process is much more complex. I declined to attend a social event last month for the first time, and that was okay. It gives me hope that things will get better over time.
Sensory overload can be a huge factor as well. Many undiagnosed years ago, I worked in retail, and every year at Christmas it became difficult to continue doing the good quality work I was doing. Christmas music blasting in the speakers, bright colors and shiny decorations everywhere, and so many people. Lights were too bright, people were too loud, and there was no escape from it. Above, I talked about getting on a bus to Toronto. Well, after three Christmas seasons at Walmart, I got on a plane and moved to China. Like Toronto, arriving in China was a huge shock to my system that jolted me out of burnout, but this time I had done things properly—I had a job and apartment lined up, and the school I worked at immediately made sure I had a support network available to me. It was a great experience, and one of the best things to ever come of an autistic burnout. But it could have gone catastrophically wrong, and I often consider how lucky I was.
As I identify specific causes of burnout, I do my best to avoid those. One example is I hate speaking on the phone. I haven’t answered my phone at work for about six months now—I tell people to email me, and if we need to speak on the phone, we can schedule a call. But usually, we don’t need to speak on the phone.
I already mentioned declining social events—this is another one that I plan to continue with. I will not be attending social functions, especially work social functions. I have limited bandwidth for dinner parties—but I need to know everyone well enough to have them in my “safe people” category. My safe people category is people I’m not afraid to be my true self in front of—I don’t feel the need to mask who I am with them.
Immediate Steps to Take When Experiencing Burnout
Once you determine that you’re in burnout, it’s important to put together a plan—that plan might be simply survival to start, or it might be a plan to get out of burnout. And it’s okay if that plan changes weekly, daily, or hourly.
If you have access to a safe person, immediately engage with that safe person and ask for support. Specifically, before doing anything, ask your safe person for their opinion. If I had done this before my sudden move to Toronto, I might have avoided a week of sleeping in bus shelters. I did this before my move to China, and my safe people thought it was a good idea. It wasn’t an escape; it was a reboot. It was a chance to learn a new language, experience a new culture, and broaden my horizons. Everything about moving to China was optimistic.
Your safe people aren’t there to tell you not to do something—they’re there to offer support and guidance via opinions and thoughts. If your safe person is a therapist or doctor, they may approach it from a place of facts and research—which is also valuable, but not something I have access to.
It’s important to rest during burnout. That doesn’t mean more sleep—that means more downtime. Take an hour or two for yourself. Play a game you enjoy, watch a movie or show.. set a reasonable amount of time and then stop and move onto something more productive—or don’t. Sometimes you just need a full day of not taking things too seriously, but it’s important to ensure that it’s not feeding the negativity of burnout. If you binge a new show, and nine hours later you get up and realize you feel like shit, celebrate the fact that you tried a new show—that’s not something autistic people can easily do. Then maybe go clean something, giving you that transition from relax to productive, especially in an area that makes you feel good. I feel great when I come home to a clean kitchen, so I like to make sure the kitchen is clean before I leave. That way, when I get home, I get to enjoy my work from the day before.
If you have identified things that cause burnout, it’s critical to eliminate them during burnout so they don’t extend the burnout. For me, this is bright lights and loud noise, so I wear noise-cancelling headphones and I turn down the lights. I have a few lights in my home where instead of two to three bulbs, I just use one.
Long-term Strategies for Recovery
And when you’ve identified the causes of burnout, you can implement a long-term plan that will limit exposure in the future. If, like me, social interactions drain a battery you cannot easily recharge, setting a boundary is technique to utilize. I’ve informed my boss that any future social events will be an auto-decline from me. The amount of work and masking that I need to do just to attend one of these events is far too great for any perceived value. And that’s the worst part—I don’t get any value out of them anyway. And nobody is getting value out of me forcing myself to be there. I’ve also worked hard to build a “no yelling” household. No matter how frustrated we might be, with each other or with something else, we never yell. We can be frustrated, but we need to approach it from a place of calm and work through it together. I spent my childhood being shouted at, so this was an easy boundary for me to set and follow.
My kids and I have nightly “table time” after I get home from work. This no-screens time is an opportunity for the kids to show me their schoolwork and discuss any issues they’re having. A daily check in allows us to assess each other’s mental state in the moment and talk about issues we need to address. I do my best to be a “safe person” for my kids because I didn’t have one growing up.
I got my diagnosis, but the kids haven’t had their diagnostic testing done (yet). We approach autistic topics not with an assumption that the kids are autistic, but that everyone deserves to prioritize their needs and that they need to advocate for themselves. They’re encouraged to ask for help when they need it—not because they’re autistic or not, but because they need help. Teaching them self-advocacy now will help them whether they get diagnosed or not; it helps them identify and prioritize their needs.
Building a Sustainable Lifestyle to Prevent Future Burnout
The above boundaries will help build a sustainable lifestyle, but there’s more to it. A sustainable lifestyle needs to include things you like, things that are healthy, things to enjoy, and challenges. Those are best accomplished with support systems in place, which is why I make sure my kids feel supported in everything they do. I help and encourage them to explore their interests and test their limits, while making sure they have a safe space to come back to if it’s not as great as they thought. This safety allows them to explore their world at their own pace and come back to a safe and happy home to de-stress if needed, or just to talk about how amazing the experience was.
As an adult, pacing is a big part of the equation. If your world moves at twice the speed of sound, you’ll never have time to slow down and let yourself process things. I find that processing time is critical—this might seem like wasted time but just taking the time to do nothing is important. I talked about it as unscheduled time before here, but I’ve come to understand it better over the months.
If you can pace yourself and prioritize your needs, both at home and at work, you might be able to turn this thing around.
Share Your Story
This is where the collaborative nature of the Internet best shines. There’s a comment box at the bottom, and I urge you to leave a comment with your techniques, your triggers, your struggles, and your wins. Share your story, because it’s only through the collective thoughts and ideas that we can learn more about ourselves and our struggles. Not everything out there is going to resonate with you, but there are people out there telling a similar story to yours. I have found tremendous value in reading and listening to the stories of other autistic people—whether it be comments on Reddit, blog posts like this, TikTok videos, or Twitch streams with the #autismawareness tag. Whether you’re diagnosed, self-diagnosed, or still exploring—please share.
