Coming Home to You: Recognizing + Recovering from Autistic Burnout

Over the past year, I've begun exploring whether I might be Autistic as well as ADHD. Last summer, my new (at that point) therapist, who is neurodivergent herself and neurodivergent/trauma-informed, recommended that I get assessed for autism. I’ve been exploring my mind and identity from this new perspective ever since.

Can I just say that this learning journey has unlocked SO MUCH for me - so much understanding, compassion, and constructive identity renovation. So many moments of reframing that finally allowed me to answer the questions, “Why are you like this? Why is this apparently-normal-for-people thing so hard for you?”

(Quick side note: If you're on this journey, I seriously recommend the same book my therapist recommended to me - Unmasking Autism, by Devon Price.)

In any case, I just listened to this podcast about autistic burnout and BOY did it hit. It unlocked a bunch of memories, giving me new insight into times I've struggled or been called out for reasons I didn't fully understand - often having to do with not understanding the social rules of a situation.

I was specifically remembering a time when, as a new professional a few years out of college, I was told that I wasn't allowed to shut my office door all day to get work done, because it was alienating my colleagues.

There was a lot going on in my life at that time, and I was working really hard to show up and excel in my new role - but I was struggling because people constantly wandered into my office and sat down, wanting to just 'shoot the shit'. I found this immensely distracting, as it took me out of what I can now identify as hyperfocus.

I have never been a person who enjoys small talk - another common Autistic trait. "Small talk" is generally loaded with social conventions and small social cues that we may miss or misinterpret, making it a stressful, high-resource-demand activity for us.

For example, understanding that when someone asks "How are you?", they don't actually want an honest, reflective answer. They certainly don't want a long answer. They're looking for, "Oh good - you?"

So small talk isn't only boring to me (omg it's the same pattern over and over WHYYYYYYYYY and PLEASE can we discuss something with substance!), it takes a lot of resources to figure out how to not be a weirdo in a scenario that neurotypical people seem to actually find relaxing, low-key, a "break" between tasks.

I didn't understand why I was being corrected for preserving my mental space in order to do a genuinely badass job at my actual work - something I voiced to my boss.

He replied, "Colleen, the people IS the work."

It was great advice that I've carried with me since, but I've had to find my own (Autistic, as it turns out) way to access this professional wisdom. At that time - overwhelmed by life, and not yet understanding that my brain is biologically different from others’ and therefore has different strengths and needs - I struggled to figure out how to unravel the “people v productivity” conundrum.

Listening to this podcast today helped me realize that I was experiencing the early stages of Autistic Burnout. Several months later, I was diagnosed as going through a ‘depressive episode’. I accepted that, and did my best to follow the treatment protocol, even though the diagnosis never felt quite right, and the treatment plan didn’t really work for me.

If you frequent any adult late-diagnosis communities, you’ll hear this same story over and over.

“I didn’t really feel depressed, and I wanted to participate in XYZ, I just couldn’t figure out how to. It was like I was trapped on a submarine in essential-functions-only mode, unable to effectively communicate with anyone above the water line.”

This story starts to make a lot more sense when you understand what Autistic Burnout is. Here’s a quick overview from Spectrum:

‘Autistic burnout’ is the intense physical, mental or emotional exhaustion, often accompanied by a loss of skills, that some adults with autism experience. Many autistic people say it results mainly from the cumulative effect of having to navigate a world that is designed for neurotypical people (so socially-loaded interactions like professional small talk can be especially hard, keeping us locked in a loop.)

Burnout may especially affect autistic adults who have strong cognitive and language abilities and are working or going to school with neurotypical people.

Like many aspects of autism, burnout varies greatly from person to person. Some autistic people experience it as an overwhelming sense of physical exhaustion. They may have more difficulty managing their emotions than usual and be prone to outbursts of sadness or anger. Burnout may manifest as intense anxiety or contribute to depression or suicidal behavior. It may involve an increase in autism traits such as repetitive behaviors, increased sensitivity to sensory input or difficulty with change.

Burnout can sometimes result in a loss of skills: An autistic woman who usually has strong verbal abilities may, for example, suddenly find herself unable to talk.

I want to especially note here that we need to ditch our Rain Man, rocking and shutting down stereotypes if we want to understand and be able to notice our version of Autistic Burnout. Like autism itself, there are many, many different ways way this can present, effect us, and/or debilitate us. We (or our health care providers) are otherwise much more likely to misidentify Autistic Burnout as something else, like depression - particularly in folks with high support needs, high intellectual/language capacity, or special interests that ‘cancel out’ stereotypical Autistic expressions or challenges.

For example, if your special interest is people and you’re hyperverbal, you’re less likely to feel “socially awkward”, which makes it less likely that you or anyone else will identify Autism or Autistic Burnout when it shows up. It can also feel extra confusing for both you and others.

“You’re usually so social, engaged, and great with people - I don’t understand why you’re suddenly so incapacitated and unable to do/be what you do/are ‘normally’!”

Here are just some of the ways that Autistic Burnout can show up:

• Executive dysfunction and/or loss of skills (that you typically have)

• Decision fatigue, or the inability to make even small decisions once you’ve made it through your suddenly much more limited daily bandwidth allotment (like using up all your brain to make it through work, a “must do”, then not having the mental bandwidth to decide what to eat for dinner, resulting in you just going to bed hungry and more under-resourced.)

• Depression-like symptoms, like extreme physical and/or mental fatigue or exhaustion, lack of motivation, not being able to get out of bed, loss of hygiene, loss of interest in things you typically enjoy, loss of curiousity

• Difficulty with daily living activities, like getting dressed, showering, doing dishes, making meals, or running errands

• Lowered social-relational ability and/or an inability to participate in scenarios where you have to navigate social dynamics, rules, or conventions - frequently paired with increased social anxiety and/or social withdrawl

• Masking, sometimes accompanied with coping mechanisms like alcohol, or sudden inability to mask (to try to perform as neurotypical in order to hide the areas your identity or behaviors diverge from the norm)

• Irritability and snappishness, which can exacerbate the social anxiety and/or social withdrawl

• Reduced tolerance to stimulus and/or increased sensory sensitivity

• Memory issues resulting from higher stress and anxiety

• Increased demand avoidance, or ability/desire to do or respond to other people’s asks

Dr. Megan Neff, a neurodivergent therapist and one of the hosts of the Divergent Conversations podcast, said something that just hit me in one of those tender places where you think, “Oh man, I just want to go back in time and give that me such a big hug.” She said:

“What a brutal irony, if it turns out the ways to recover from autistic burnout are inherently depressing,” because they require us to stop participating in the things that we both love and need to feel good about ourselves and our lives? “Like in order to feel better, you have to also stop doing the things we ALL need, that give life meaning and make us feel good”, such as social connection, intimacy, communication, movement, pursuing our curiosity and interests, and taking care of ourselves in the basic ways like showering, cooking meals, and getting dressed for the day. We thrive on connection, on getting dressed and looking good, like anyone else - and living in some kind of “low power, essential functions only” mode doesn’t feel good, even if it’s what we need at that time.

It’s no wonder this gets misdiagnosed - and mistreated - so often. And it’s no wonder that it so frequently leads to tragic outcomes in Autistic individuals, like actual depression (in addition to everything else) or even suicide.

So what do we do about this, if we want to take care of ourselves and actually recover from Autistic Burnout?

Dr. Neff shared several tactics she employs herself and with her therapy clients, including:

• Developing your interroceptive awareness, or your awareness of how your body feels, and how it feels in the context of emotions, sensory input, etc., so that you are more able to identify overstimulus and respond to the specific experiences your body is having or reacting to.

• Sensory soothing - sensory-friendly environmental shifts or activities you can engage in to sooth your nervous system. Dr. Neff has an AWESOME checklist of sensory calming activites you can check out here!

• Focusing on interacting with people you can unmask with, so that you can still engage in necessary and meaningful social interaction without it overtaxing your fried brain

• Setting boundaries and managing expectations

• Dropping “nice to have” or “should do” demands so you have enough energy and attention to engage in what you have to do (keep your job to pay the bills) and need to do to feel better (connect with your partner)

The most important thing you can do for yourself, as an Autistic individual, is learn how to cultivate a less-depleting life that supports you in preventing Autistic Burnout to begin with.

Creating a life that doesn’t lead to burnout, Autistic or otherwise, is obviously easier said than done, and something I discuss a LOT in my work with ALL my clients. The basic principle underlying neurocoaching is, “your brain works better when you feel better,” so this approach is meaningful to anyone, regardless of neurotype.

My solution to this is ongoing (and started even before I realized I was AuDHD), and in many ways is an answer to 25-year-old me’s question, “How do I DO ‘the work’ AND let people BE the work at the same time, without compromising one or the other?”

I realized somewhere along the way that I'm sort of all-or-nothing when it comes to focus, so I just went ALL IN on people - making them my primary "special interest", and absorbing as much neuroscience, anthropology, sociology, neuropsychology, communication skills, user experience design, etc as I could. Now people are my LITERAL job - the thing I focus on to the exclusion of almost anything else.

This exclusive attention makes me a GREAT coach. It also means I can't work on other projects AND expect myself to be socially functional and regulated as the same time - something I have to be thoughtful about as I plan my days, and something that it’s important for me to manage expectations around.

For example - a lot of people have thought I was upset or pissed off when I’m deeply involved with something on my computer, like writing an article or designing a new presentation deck. Apparently my “focus face” is other people’s “resting bitch face”. So I have to explicitly say, “Hey, if I’m ever super focused on something, and my face looks mad, or I’m giving minimal responses to any bids for attention, please know that I am not actually upset with you or even with what I’m focused on. It’s just that 100% of my energy and attention are on what I’m currently doing, and I’m not really able to take anything else in right now.”

I’ve learned to communicate about this, so that no one is hurt or offended, and so that they understand how to engage me when needed or desired. It goes something like this:

“If you ever really need or really want my attention when I’m in hyperfocus, please come up to me, put your hand on my shoulder, and say, “Hey - I need your attention for a minute. Let me know when you’re ready.” This gives me the opportunity to finish my thought or quickly wrap up my sub-task, find a place to pause, and then turn to give you my full, listening attention. I want to give you my full attention and participation, but if you start talking while I’m in hyperfocus, without giving me the opportunity to intentionally switch gears, I’m not going to be able to take it in.”

This is particularly important, because if someone “pops in” to quickly convey important information, like a time or place we’re meeting later, I’m not going to retain it. It’s MY job to communicate that and show up for the promised transition and attention, and THEIR job to engage me in a way that I CAN show up.

This type of communication - of setting boundaries and managing expectations - has been absolutely critical to my ability to design and show up for a life that feels good to both me and the people I share it with. And it still doesn’t prevent me from tipping into burnout sometimes. I’ve just gotten a lot better at not shaming myself when I need time or space to recover, because I know that (1) compassion predicates emotional regulation, and (2) my ability to regulate my emotions determines my ability to access my prefrontal cortex (and my executive functions like decision-making, social-relational ability, and problem-solving).

I hope that this article helps you to start noticing, reframing, recovering from, or even preventing Autistic Burnout. More than anything, though, I hope that this information supports to begin offering yourself greater compassion.

You aren’t broken, and neither is your brain. If you lived in a world designed for minds like ours, you wouldn’t be constantly put in situations that deplete you and lead to these sometimes disabling Autistic “symptoms”. You’re a person who’s been told you're driving an automatic, when it turns out you’ve actually been driving a stick shift all this time. And that’s great news - because you can learn how to drive a different kind of car. It might be challenging, but we can do hard things. You can do hard things. And I’m here to support you the whole way.