Understanding autistic fatigue and burnout

Do you have days where you struggle to function, or you can’t even think straight? Has it ever got to the point where it feels like your brain has gone offline?  Do you get stuck in thought loops, thinking the same things over and again? Perhaps you find that a single event or outing knocks you with exhaustion and you need a whole day to recover afterwards?

If you are autistic or suspect you are and this sounds familiar, you might be struggling with autistic fatigue or burnout. Fatigue and burnout can happen to anybody but being autistic can make extreme depletion much more likely.

It's a common concern that I see when working with autistic people in my practice. So I want to say this clearly: your experience is real, and it's not your fault. Autistic people are wired in a completely different way to neurotypical people, and trying to keep up in a neurotypical world and meet its expectations can take a toll that is often underestimated.

This blog explains the concept of autistic burnout and fatigue, including what it is, why it happens and practical strategies to try that can help deal with autistic burnout.

What is autistic fatigue?

The terms ‘autistic fatigue’ and ‘autistic burnout’ were developed by members of the autistic community trying to describe their experiences of extreme exhaustion. Both involve intense physical, mental and emotional exhaustion from the stress and sustained effort of navigating a world not built for autistic people. Autistic burnout often follows a period of long-term stress, a particularly stressful experience or significant life event.

Autistic fatigue isn’t the same as tiredness; it doesn’t lift with a good night’s sleep or a weekend off. Autistic burnout affects all aspects of a person’s life – it’s different to professional burnout, which is related to the pressures of work alone.

If you go to your GP, they may well diagnose you with stress, anxiety or depression. This is because autistic burnout still hasn’t been established as a diagnosable condition.

However, research¹ has been carried out to clarify the term ‘autistic burnout’. In 2020, a team of researchers (Raymaker et al) interviewed members of the autistic community and analysed social media content describing autistic experiences of burnout.

The team found that people describing autistic burnout were talking about the same unique causes and symptoms.

They identified that autistic adults described its three main characteristics as: chronic exhaustion, reduced cognitive skills and increased sensory sensitivity.

What are the signs of autistic fatigue and burnout?

While autistic people experience fatigue and burnout in different ways, there are some key similarities. The common signs and symptoms are:

• Extreme, persistent exhaustion

• Loss of cognitive skills/decrease in thinking power

• Increased sensory sensitivity

• Withdrawal from people/activities

• More frequent meltdowns or shutdowns.

What this looks like in daily life

Tiredness can feel all-consuming, where even the smallest tasks need a massive effort. You might feel so exhausted it’s a struggle to get out of bed.

If you already had difficulty with certain sounds, lighting or textures, these sensitivities can become magnified. Some people become aware of sensitivities they had not noticed before.

The impact on your cognitive skills means that you might struggle to find words, process information, solve problems or make decisions that usually wouldn’t take much effort. It can affect all parts of life, not just work – some of my clients describe how their brain almost grinds to a halt, stopping them from even holding conversations in a way that they’re used to.

Many of my clients also worry about the impact on their relationships, work or family life, the concern and guilt piling on top of the exhaustion itself. Even when there are people in your life who are there to support you, you might find yourself quietly asking: “How much longer until they give up on me?”

All of this combines to create a feeling of overwhelm and inability to cope. It can affect your self-esteem and lead to depression, anxiety and thoughts of self-harm.

What causes autistic fatigue and burnout?

Autistic burnout is the result of long-term, cumulative stress, combined with lack of proper support. When stress builds over time without enough opportunity to recover, your ability to cope gradually deteriorates. Autistic people can manage brief peaks in stress, but they need periods of relative calm to return to their baseline.

 What often happens in the case of autistic burnout is that people keep pushing through for a long time before recognising what's happening. The stress carries forward and compounds, until even small things can feel completely unmanageable.

And what is behind this stress? Firstly, there are all the stresses and strains faced by neurotypical people, but on top of that are additional layers faced by autistic people. It’s usually an accumulation of several factors:

• External expectations chronically outweigh your ability to meet them – there’s a lack of accommodation or understanding (in work, school, relationships)

• Chronic masking to ‘pass’ as non-autistic and meet social/communication demands

• Sensory overload

• Significant change or life transitions.

How to manage autistic fatigue and burnout

Autistic fatigue and burnout come from stress that builds up over time, which means that recovery and relief will also take time. Some strategies that can help include:

• Taking time off work

• Energy pacing – building breaks into your day, like taking a short walk or wearing noise cancelling headphones with calming music if you can’t find a quiet space; taking a nap in the afternoon or when you get home

• Having time without the ‘mask’ where possible

• Making adjustments to your environment (at work and at home) to accommodate your sensory needs

• Physical movement – whether it’s stimming, stretching out, going for a walk

• Scheduling regular recovery time into your diary, not just as a last resort

• Scaling back your self-expectations – burnout isn’t solved by trying harder. It often helps to consciously lower expectations of yourself for a while, rather than pushing through at your usual pace.

These suggestions are a good place to start, but you are the only one who can work out what you really need. Start trying little things and evaluate how they make you feel. Often the smallest, most consistent changes make the biggest difference over time.

Can therapy help?

If any of this resonates for you, please know that what you’re going through isn’t a sign that there is something wrong with you. It’s a response to a sustained effort in a world that asks more of autistic people than it gives back.

Therapy won’t make the world around you less demanding but it can offer a place to understand your own needs more clearly: what depletes you, what restores you and where you might have more choice than it currently feels like you have.

Working together we can build a clearer sense of what your own limits are, without judgement. Often this is about building self-acceptance – understanding that your needs are valid, even when they don’t match other people’s expectations.

If you’d like to find out more about working with me, I offer a free initial consultation. You can get in touch via my contact page and we can take it from there, at whatever pace feels right for you.

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If you need urgent mental health support and need to talk to someone immediately, you can call the NHS on 111 or the Samaritans on 116 123.

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References:

1. Raymaker, D. M. et al. (2020) ‘Having All of Your Internal Resources Exhausted Beyond Measure and Being Left with No Clean-Up Crew’: Defining Autistic Burnout. Autism in Adulthood, 2, (2) p132-143