Autistic Burnout: Symptoms, Why it Happens and Recovery

Burnout can affect everybody, whether it's an over demanding work life or a personal life plagued with responsibilities. But autistic burnout symptoms can be hard to catch as burnout and tricky to recover from as a result. Within this blog, we will discuss what exactly autistic burnout is, the symptoms to look out for, how it occurs and how to recover.

What are the Symptoms of Autistic Burnout?

Autistic burnout refers to long-term exhaustion and loss of function as a result of chronic life stress and mismatch of expectations without adequate support. To be considered long-term, the exhaustion prevails for typically 3+ months, causing a loss of energy even for simple daily activities. This means there can be a loss of functioning, making life almost impossible to navigate. Trying to conduct a task with autistic burnout can feel like your body is using up all its energy to climb a steep mountain only to find yourself not even halfway. That's why recognising when you are in burnout by identifying the symptoms is the first step in addressing it.

To know if yourself or someone you know is experiencing autistic burnout, here are some symptoms to look out for:

• Chronic fatigue/ Exhaustion

• A loss of skills, such as thinking skills, planning or organising

• Reduced tolerance to stimulus, such as noise, lighting or others

• Increased sensory overload

• Frequent meltdown and shutdowns

• Heightened stress and anxiety

• Difficulty with self care

Understanding what your individual burnout symptoms are is important. Symptoms they tend fall into these 3 categories.

• Physical symptoms, such as sleep issues, fatigue and aches

• Emotional symptoms, such as anxiety or emotional dysregulation

• Cognitive symptoms, such as difficulty focusing and feeling overwhelmed

Now being aware of the symptoms, we will look to why it happens.

What Causes Autistic Burnout?

Autistic burnout can occur for many reasons, with one of the main being the sustained effort of living in a world not adapted to or supportive for autistic people. This can lead to masking, where Autistic individuals perform an act to hide their identity and fit in with neurotypical individuals.

• 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

• This can lead to burnout, as Autistic individuals use up there energy to pretend to be a version of themselves that isn't true

• Masking can occur due to fear of being judged or disliked especially in group settings

Alternative reasons for Autism burnout occurring:

• 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

• Co-occuring conditions, such as mental health problems like depression and anxiety

• Trauma, experiencing traumatic events or PTSD can contribute to feelings of overwhelming stress

When you feel able to, it can be important to try to understand what might be contributing to burnout, especially if it is repeated like a cycle. You can then work on changing your environment, support or the ways you manage the stressors.

Next we will look at what you do to tackle if you or someone you know is experiencing autistic burnout.

Recovery from Autistic Burnout

Here are some of the main strategies to help recover from autistic burnout. Note that some people find a traffic light system helpful - you can use some strategies when things are good (i.e. the 'green zone') to prevent burnout from happening; some in the build up to an episode of burnout ('amber') to reduce the impact or stop it escalating; and some when you are in full burnout ('red') to reduce the distress and recovery. You might want to map out which would fit in what zone for you.

• Acceptance and support – engaging with others who embraced them as they were, without pressure to mask or pretend. This might occur in one-on-one relationships with family or friends, within communities that foster inclusive cultures, or among peers, particularly connecting with other autistic people who could affirm their experiences and provide both practical information and emotional or social support grounded in lived experience.

• Formal supports – accessing structured assistance such as reasonable accommodations in school or the workplace, practical help like grocery provision, and mental health services

• Being autistic – honouring autistic needs, such as stimming, engaging with intense interests or comfort items, unmasking, and drawing on autistic strengths or approaching activities in authentically autistic ways.

• Self-advocacy and health – developing skills to set and maintain healthy boundaries, knowing how to respond when those boundaries are not respected, and learning to ask for help in ways others are more likely to understand and act on.

• Reduced load – taking time off, more breaks, reducing social activity or other types of more stressful activities.

• 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.

We hope this has been a helpful introduction to the symptoms, definition and recovery from autistic burnout. We provide diagnostic assessments for autism in adults, which include looking at and making sense of any episodes of autistic burnout to help you move forwards in the future. Click here to learn more about our assessments. We also have other blog posts on autism, such as what to expect in an assessment, and tips for managing ADHD, such as overcoming task paralysis.