Hi everyone. Kelly Mahler, occupational therapist. And I want to take the time to talk about something called Autistic Burnout (and How Interoception Can Help). Maybe you’ve heard the word burnout before, but autistic burnout is different. It is more than just stress and fatigue. It is a deep, full body neurological response to living in a world that is not set up to support the autistic brain and body. Things like constant sensory bombardment and social pressures, sudden changes, lack of support, and accommodations can really just build up slowly over time until a person’s system just can’t take it anymore. And what makes autistic burnout even harder is that this is not a widely discussed topic (yet), and many times the early signs of burnout are not recognized by the autistic person themselves and/or professionals. Often times it is only recognized when a person hits a very significant crisis point.
Autistic burnout is complex and deeply personal, yet there are patterns and common threads that can help us all better understand and validate the experience. Below are some key insights that shed light on what autistic burnout really is, what contributes to it, and why interoception plays such an important role. These points are drawn from lived experiences and emerging research—and they highlight just how important it is to shift our approach to one that centers curiosity, compassion, and respect for autistic ways of being.
5 Helpful Things to Know About Autistic Burnout
1. Autistic Burnout Is Not the Same as General Burnout
The first thing that’s important to know about autistic burnout is that it’s not the same as general burnout. It’s not just being stressed, it’s not just being tired. It is a whole body neurological shutdown. It can be very serious. It’s involuntary, it’s not a choice. And rest doesn’t always help because the system is deeply, deeply dysregulated.
Many people struggle when they reach this point of autistic burnout. They can struggle to complete basic daily tasks like showering or cooking or cleaning. They might lose access to communication, and maybe they might have some cognitive effects, like their memory or focus might decline. Many times this burnout makes it very hard for people to maintain jobs or attend school or nurture their relationships or live independently. They might need a lot more supports and accommodations than before the burnout. And many times, the conventional advice, like “just do more self-care” or “just take a break”, is really very unhelpful and oftentimes very much falls short because we need to consider the nervous system and how this is a response of a very dysregulated system.
2. Masking Is a Major Contributor to Autistic Burnout
Masking is a major contributor to autistic burnout. Masking is largely a trauma response where a person is forced to hide their authentic self in order to meet neuron normative standards to fit in with what society dictates. And many autistic people are forced to mask from very early on in life, and they’re masking for years in school, in work, in relationships, many times without even realizing it.
It’s almost like they’re performing or forced to perform this neurotypical way of being in the world. And so that performance requires such significant level of energy to continually hide who you are as a person. Although this is many times involuntary, it still requires a great deal of effort to mask, to suppress what your body needs to thrive in this world in order to get by. And eventually, because of the significant amount of energy that that performance requires, it really disrupts the ability to sense what your authentic needs are laying the groundwork for this burnout. And so we know from many people that have experienced autistic burnout that it’s oftentimes caused by this long-term masking and trying to meet society’s expectations.
3. Sensory and Interoception Changes Are a Common Part of Burnout
Sensory changes are a common part of the autistic burnout experience. Many autistic people report sensory differences from a very young age. But oftentimes when burnout is present, it can create sensory changes where sensations may be even more intense and/or muted.
For example, someone might become overwhelmed by exteroceptive sensation like sounds or lights or textures that were previously tolerable. They might experience more sensory shutdowns. They might need increased control over their environment in order to function. We also know that many people in autistic burnout report interoceptive changes or changes to the way their body feels. Some people report losing touch with the inner signals letting them know when they’re hungry or thirsty or in pain or they need to rest.
I’ve heard people describe their emotions as fuzzy or becoming inaccessible, so almost like their body is numb or feeling “like a ghost”. Without that reliable connection to the body, the burnout process can be compounded even more. It’s really hard to notice that you’re heading towards a crash or to know exactly what is creating distress in your body or to know exactly what your body needs, if disruption to the interoception connection is present.
4. Many People Don’t Recognize Autistic Burnout Until Their Body Shuts Down
That leads to number 4: many autistic people don’t recognize that they’re in burnout until a total collapse. We hear this from many people that experience autistic burnout, that if an autistic person is encountering a lived experience or life that is really conditioning them to ignore the way their body feels they’re masking to survive. They are under forms of compliance, which teach that you need to ignore the way your body feels to please other people.
That interoception connection is very much derailed. And so being able to rely on your body, your interoceptive system to give you important signals about what’s going on in your body, including but not limited to heading towards autistic burnout can be really compromised. And so without those reliable interoceptive signals, those early warning signals oftentimes get missed. So many times a person will describe their autistic burnout as a sudden shutdown moment that lead up was invisible. That gradual burnout experience was not recognized because of the lived experience surrounding that person. And many times we hear that that delay in recognition also leads to guilt and shame, and many times even misdiagnoses like depression.
5. We Need to Learn More about Autistic Burnout—and the Role of Interoception
The whole point of this discussion is that we need more information about autistic burnout. We need to be listening to the community and what they’re sharing about their experiences. We need to have more research that is led by autistic researchers to understand the autistic experience and really work together to create more preventative measures, as well as learning about how we can support the healing of autistic burnout.
Final Thoughts:
I have a brand new course that is all about this topic of autistic burnout, taught with David Gray Hammond and Tanya Adkin. We’re going to be talking about a lot of factors that contribute to the autistic experience, especially this burnout experience. And we’re going to be talking about prevention and healing processes. Until next time.
