What autistic burnout feels like

If you’re looking for the standard definition of autistic burnout, here it is: heightened sensory sensitivities, pervasive exhaustion, and loss of skills, including things like executive function and sometimes even speech.

All of that is true.

And now do you want to know what the lived experience of autistic burnout feels like?

When I was a kid, once in a while in autumn we would take my dad’s magnifying glass outside.

We’d grab a leaf, then sit on the patio, using the magnifying glass to focus the sun’s rays onto the leaf.

In seconds, a small hole would burn through the leaf. A wisp of smoke would trail through the air.

The sun’s normally warm, innocuous rays transformed into an intense, potentially dangerous force.

That’s what I think of when I think about autistic burnout – both my own lived experience and that of the women I work with. 

At its core, burnout magnifies some of the key components of being autistic to the point where your nervous system becomes overwhelmed and essentially starts to overheat. 

In other words, it reaches the point that your nervous system demands attention and care before you’re able to resume functioning more or less the way you typically do.

Let’s take a look at some of the ways autistic burnout might affect you, starting with the three biggest.

Your sensory system gets even more sensitive

In general, autistic people are more sensitive to sensory input than neurotypical people. In burnout, though, those sensitivities can become downright physically painful. Even the smallest sensory input drains energy.

Lights that used to feel bright might feel blinding. Noises that used to feel loud might feel deafening. Places that used to feel busy might feel downright chaotic.

Effectively, your nervous system becomes even less able to filter out sensory input when you’re in autistic burnout.

You might find yourself needing to wear sunglasses even inside. You might need to wear noise canceling headphones even at home. You might need to forego the grocery store entirely and rely on DoorDash for a while.

When I hit autistic burnout, I replaced my plates and bowls, which had blue and green designs, with plates and bowls that are solid white. Once I did that, it became so much less draining to eat a meal.

These things might seem ridiculous to neurotypical people, but any accommodations you can make for yourself will make it that much easier to get through what is a very difficult time.

A persistent, pervasive exhaustion

Autistic people tend to tire more easily than neurotypical people for a number of reasons, even when they’re not in burnout. 

Autistic brains absorb a lot more sensory input; they have to exert more energy and process more information to navigate interacting with neurotypical people; and because they process information in a bottom-up way, they also require more energy to make meaning from a situation.

All of that is what’s happening day to day for autistic brains. In autistic burnout, though, that energy drain is magnified. The fatigue is pervasive and relentless. Things that normally restore energy, like spending time alone in a low-sensory environment, become much less restorative.

Even if people are still functioning to one degree or another while in burnout, that pervasive exhaustion remains a constant. 

One woman described it this way: “There’s just this lens of tiredness all the time.”

This isn’t the standard kind of tired you feel at the end of a busy week. It’s not even the kind of tired you feel when you haven’t slept well for a few days. 

It’s more like your entire nervous system is constantly on the brink of shutting down.

Even things that normally require a small amount of effort, like chatting with coworkers or taking a shower, start requiring exponentially more energy.

Eventually even the smallest, simplest tasks start to feel overwhelming.

Loss of skills 

One of the scariest aspects of autistic burnout for many people is often the loss of skills they experience.

This commonly impacts executive function. So it can affect anything involving working memory, planning, organizing, task initiation, or tending to daily tasks that used to be automatic. 

Even self-care can become much harder during burnout. 

“Some days waking up and getting dressed is the hardest thing,” one woman told me.

This can be especially confusing for people who have always been capable and responsible.

From the outside, they may still appear functional.

But internally, everything requires far more effort than it used to.

In some cases, people lose access to more basic skills during burnout. 

I’ve heard a number of women talk about being unable to access the ability to speak at various points during burnout. I know one woman whose eyesight was impacted.

Emotions can feel more intense

Just as autistic people experience sensory input more intensely, they also tend to experience emotions more intensely because of neurological differences and other factors.

And in burnout, emotions can feel even more intense and harder to move through.

Instead of surfacing and then passing naturally, feelings can start looping.

One woman described it like this: 

“If something brought up sorrow, I would just get pulled into this tide pool where everything kept swirling around and around.”

Memories, worries, and fears all get pulled into the emotional current.

When the nervous system is already overloaded, it has less capacity to regulate these waves.

Social interactions become much more draining

During burnout, many people notice their social capacity shrinking.

Even before burnout, social interactions – especially with neurotypical people – usually require a lot of energy. 

And afterward, it often takes quite a bit of time alone to process the interaction and to recover both emotionally and in terms of recouping energy.

In burnout, interactions that once felt relatively manageable can suddenly feel utterly exhausting.

One woman described going to dinner with colleagues and feeling afterward as if she had just taken an exam.

She realized that throughout the meal, she had been scrutinizing everyone else’s words, facial expressions, tone of voice, and body language – as well as her own – with an intensity that far surpassed what was typical for her. 

And instead of relaxing afterward, she found herself replaying the entire evening, analyzing for hours what she had said and how people had reacted. 

Even if the interaction itself was pleasant, the energy cost was much higher than it used to be.

Masking starts to feel impossible

For many autistic adults, burnout reveals just how much energy masking requires.

It takes tremendous effort to constantly monitor what you’re saying, how you’re saying it, what facial expressions you’re making, what tone of voice you’re using, and on and on.

Simultaneously, you’re constantly scanning all the people around you to decode what they’re actually trying to communicate versus what they’re saying, scrutinizing their microexpressions to try to decipher their emotional state, and on and on.

In burnout, you simply no longer have enough energy to maintain the level of masking that’s become second nature to you.

So in addition to navigating the burnout itself, sometimes people also find themselves needing to navigate the ripple effects of people seeing them in their authentically autistic state for the first time.

People around you might witness you having an autistic shutdown for the first time.

Or they might see you stimming in more visible ways. 

Or interacting in ways they’re not accustomed to.

As a result, sometimes people in burnout end up revealing their autism to people they had previously opted not to disclose it to.

Work that used to feel manageable starts to feel nearly impossible

If there’s one point at which autistic burnout becomes impossible to ignore, it’s when burnout starts to interfere with work.

That’s where so many of the other impacts of burnout intersect and become exponentially harder.

The incessant buzz of conversation at the office becomes too much for heightened sensory sensitivities.

Exhaustion makes every task feel impossible.

Every Teams message has the potential to trigger an emotional tidal wave.

Exchanging the obligatory pleasantries with coworkers sucks the life out of you.

Executive function challenges make responding to a single email feel overwhelming.

It gets to a point where every work day feels impossible – and unbearable.

Especially for people whose identity is closely linked with their work, all of this can feel nearly unbearable. 

This can be especially confusing and unsettling for people who had previously built successful careers.

The future can feel strangely blank

Burnout can also affect how you imagine the future.

Many autistic people rely on their ability to envision possibilities and plan long-term.

During burnout, that capacity can temporarily disappear.

In my first or second session with a new client, I often ask them to envision their life a year from now and describe it.

When someone tells me that they can’t, or that all they see is darkness, that’s usually a pretty good indication that they’re in burnout.

“It’s so blank – it’s just darkness,” one woman told me.

When the nervous system is in survival mode, long-term thinking often fades into the background.

The focus becomes simply getting through the present.

As is the case with many characteristics of autistic burnout, once a person’s nervous system has had a chance to adequately recover from burnout, they recover the ability to envision the future.

What you need to remember about burnout

Too often, autistic women think they’re somehow at fault for ending up in burnout.

They are not.

And too often, autistic women think that the limitations and challenges brought by burnout are permanent.

They are not. 

Burnout is not a character flaw, and it’s not a permanent loss of the ability to navigate the world successfully.

It is your nervous system’s way of telling you that it’s time to stop masking and stop pushing past your capacity.

It is your nervous system’s way of telling you that it’s time to make changes to bring your life into alignment with who you truly are.

And heeding that message is the first step toward lasting Recovery.

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If this resonated, you might want to read one of these next:

• Why highly capable autistic women burn out
  

• How long does autistic burnout last?