If you know an autistic individual would you recognise if they were at the point of burnout? Are you autistic, would you recognise this in yourself? The truth is it is an unspoken about and relatively unknown subject. This means autistic individuals go though life with little to no understanding of what this means and with zero support.
If you are a autistic individual or a parent/ close support network of an autistic individual I can be fairly safe in saying that from the diagnosis process through to where you are today very few if any professional will have explained burnout to you.
Despite this Autistic Burnout is something that affects almost every individual on the spectrum from the day we are born until the day we die. Yet it remains that nobody apart from autistic individuals who seem to know anything about it. This leads to decline in individuals mental health and impacts on their quality of life. Surly this can change.
As the summer holidays continue I am sure I am not alone in having days when I am 'peopled out'. This weeks post I wanted to share some thoughts around burnout, self compassion, and the influence and stigma society places on this! I see burnout from two perspectives, social burn out or that feeling of being 'peopled out' and then autism burnout. Bear with me as I try and explain these concepts and some of my coping strategies that I have learnt over the years.
Last week I had a lovely few days away but am feeling that now. I spent a few days away with a friend from university the onto a family gathering of over 20 people who I haven't seen for a while! Today I have enjoyed my bed and dog company! My brain has been working overtime for the past 4 days. Constant social/ information processing, and masking, engaging in conversations and depicting social cues. Believe me it is exhausting. This doesn't make it any less enjoyable and I have to say I had a lovely time but have learnt that I now need to plan in 'recovery time'.
I see my brain in a similar way to my legs after a run. The run is good and important but I know that if my body did this everyday it might start to protest. After physical exercise our bodies need rest days to recover and rest. All our brains are the same but especially the autistic brain. I know that when I spend a lot of time with people my brain starts to shutdown, I become grumpy, irritable and anxious. This isn't pleasant for me or anyone around me and over the years I have learnt to recognise and respond to this.
Many people see me as someone who likes an early night, which I won't argue with! Over the years this has become a day to day coping strategy for me when it comes to dealing with social burnout. By taking myself to bed at 21:30/22:00 it allows me some alone time to calm myself and turn off for bed. I can feel anxious if I know that something is happening that will mean a late evening or an unpredictable finish time in the evening, this is taking away my reprocessing time meaning that sleep will be impacted.
Fatigue and the burnout in a more general sense the can affects us all at times. However autistic individuals are more vulnerable due to the heightened pressure of everyday life, dealing with sensory overload, anxiety and navigating social situations.
Autistic burnout can present with both physical and emotional/ mental symptoms. I can experience physical pains for example headaches and stomach aches. Heightened sensitivities to sensory stimulus and regression in my abilities e.g. my ability to understand, process and recall information. It can create a sense of brain fog. For me though one of the biggest things I experience is extreme exhaustion.
Autistic burnout can be brought on for a number of reasons but most commonly sensory overload, masking, suppressing stimming activity, and a sense of not meeting other peoples expectations. If left unrecognised and unsupported it can have serious impacts on individuals mental health. This is something I have experienced when previously ignoring/ not recognising burnout. It led to me being diagnosed as depressed and took me many months or if I'm honest years to full recover from.
I feel it is important to touch on schooling here too as this is a period in my life when I felt I was in almost a permanent state of autistic burnout. I would frequently come home from school and have an out burst in behaviour because I was so overwhelmed and exhausted. I won't go into this much as I have touched on it in previous posts ('Welcome' & 'What I wish every teacher could know') but I wanted to highlight again how significant this is when it comes to schooling. throughout year 8 and 9 the way that I managed this was to do a 4 lesson day, the 5th lesson of the day was my rest and reprocessing time in the student support base. This massively reduced the outbursts at home and meant I was able enjoy evenings (As were my parents and sisters!!).
Like everything society likes to have an opinion and personally I feel there is a lot of stigma when it comes to autistic burnout. I feel massive guilt when I have taken 'me' days off when I am so overwhelmed I know I won't cope going out. I also feel really guilty and am often hard on myself for being antisocial. These are all things that deep down I know aren't true but are images that society give. I am not physically unwell so why should I have a day off? I am 22 years old, why should I be wanting to go to bed at 9pm? This guilt and torment only adds to the exhaustion!
So what have I learnt. First of all social fatigue and autistic burn out is real!! I have learnt over the years some of the more day to day things I can do to manage for example going to bed earlier to allow some down time. Or when at work just saying 'I am popping to the loo' this gives me a few minutes alone to process and reboot with out anyone suspecting a thing!! I have also learnt that talking to people is really important, be honest and tell people when you are on the edge of burnout. sometimes nothing can save it but other times some slightly adapted conditions make a big difference in preventing a full burnout. This is something I have to admit I am not very good at, I feel I can just keep going and don't want to let myself or anyone else down but eventually my body tells me otherwise! Finally one it is really important to reduce expectations. If i know I have got a few busy social days planned I know that I need to plan a day to 'recover' this doesn't necessarily mean lying in bed all day (Although it can if needed!) but just alone time. In doing this I know that I am not setting myself up to fail.
Finally how might you recognise burnout in yourself/ others. It is a very personal thing but a few things to look out for may be:
- increased frustration
- extreme fatigue
- difficulties in emotional regulation/ more frequent outbursts
- increased or decreased need for sensory stimuli
- inability to react appropriately to change
- decreased cognition and memory function
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