Definition of autistic burnout
Autistic burnout is a syndrome conceptualised as resulting from chronic life stress and a mismatch of expectations and abilities without adequate supports. It is characterised by pervasive, long-term (typically 3+ months) exhaustion, loss of function, and reduced tolerance to stimuli.
Reasons why autistic burnout might occur
A collection of life stressors.
- Masking autistic traits, for example by suppressing autistic behaviours, pretending to be non-autistic, or working very hard to act in a non-autistic way.
- Difficult or unreachable expectations from family, school, work, or society in general.
- Stress from living in a world not set up to accommodate autistic people, for example managing the stress of having to be in noisy environments.
- Life-changes and transitions that are stressful for anyone, for example transitioning from school to work, experiencing a mental health crisis, or the death of someone close.
Experiencing barriers to getting support or relief from the stress.
- Gas-lighting or dismissal when attempting to describe the autistic burnout, for example being told that everyone has these experiences, that they just need to try harder, or that they are making it up.
- Poor boundaries or self-advocacy with respect to saying no, taking a break, or asking for help. This may be due to trauma, fear, lack of assistance in learning how, and a history of negative responses from others when they tried.
- Inability to take a break from stress that is so pervasive (“How do you take a break from life?”).
- Insufficient external resources and supports, for example inadequate disability services, lack of useful social support.
Together, life stressors can contribute to a cumulative load of stress and the barriers to support means you may be unable to get relief from the stress. Expectations on the person far exceed anything they feel able to do. Every part of them may give up and autistic burnout is the result.
Reducing or Preventing Autistic Burnout
Ways to find relief or prevent autistic burnout, and advice.
- Acceptance and support – interacting with others who accept you for who you are, without any need to mask or pretend. This could be one-on-one with family members or friends; on a community level of groups with accepting cultures; or on a peer level, especially finding other autistic people who could validate their experiences and offer information and emotional/social support from lived experience.
- Being autistic – attending to autistic needs like stimming and spending time with intense interests and comfort items, unmasking, using autistic strengths or doing things in an autistic way.
- Formal supports – receiving reasonable adjustments at school or work, physical support like someone to provide groceries, and mental health support.
- Reduced load – taking time off, more breaks, reducing social activity or other types of more stressful activities.
- Self-advocacy and health – learning how to set healthy boundaries and expectations from others, and what to do when others aren’t respecting boundaries. Learning how to ask for help in a way others might be responsive to, and leading as healthy a lifestyle as possible (for example participants described how exercising, sleeping, eating well, and doing things that made them happy helped them out of autistic burnout once they had enough energy to do them).
- Self-knowledge – learning how to recognise and act on the early signs of autistic burnout (for example by cancelling social plans to have more rest), having an autism diagnosis, and understanding one’s own patterns of behaviour and feelings.