What is an Autistic Burnout?

This is an experience where individuals on the spectrum, especially high functioning adult autistics experience a sense of physical, emotional, and mental shutdown due to pushing themselves beyond their scope of abilities for a prolonged period of time. They feel an overwhelming desire to rest and a total inability to move forward with routine daily tasks.

In children, this is often termed “regression” as it is seen that the children, in the process of trying to reach the expectations & demands of being typical, end up having reached a saturation point that they withdraw into themselves and appear lost or in their own world.

What does Burnout look like?

• difficulty to maintain self-regulation
• has difficulty in maintaining eye contact, communication, and social interactions
• increase in stereotypical behaviors
• heightened emotions increased the tendency to have meltdowns
• faces problems with engaging productively in ADLs
• increased feelings of fatigue and need to rest but finds it difficult to fall asleep

How are Masking & Burnout related?

It has been reported that imitating neurotypicals – Autistic “Masking” – in order to blend in with the normal population often leads to the “Burnout” phenomenon in autistics.

Masking of one’s difficulties or variations in coping with daily life tasks often occurs either consciously or unconsciously in both children and adults. Studies have shown that this process of masking starts developing from as young as 6 months of age.

How to recover from Burnout?

In Children :

• Rely on, open up to, and share one’s feelings or difficulties with a trusted friend, teacher, or counselor.
• request for more frequent sensory breaks in between classes in order to cope with sensory overload like noisy environment, crowded classrooms, or game time.
• making accommodations/ changes to IEP study plans
• allow time to recharge oneself in a quiet space like the library/ school garden during break time
• identify those specific times when social interactions and demands of school may seem beyond one’s capacity and make alternative arrangements or allow oneself leeway in those tasks which seem challenging (eg. deep conversation about one’s emotions, making small talk, learning that requires prolonged attention, maintaining sustained eye contact)

In Adults:

• minimize the environmental stimuli (use dim lights, soft slow music for calming, use of earplugs, growing microgreens, or growing a small ecosystem in a closed space)
• keep in touch with others through emails, texts, or other social media rather than through phone calls or talking face-to-face
• entrusting one problem to a trusted friend  or co-worker may prove to be helpful
• adjust work schedule to flexi-hours, work from home options, and in dire situations taking medical leaves or even a long sabbatical from work is warranted.

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Blog Submitted by:     Alin Mary Isac (Occupational Therapist)