Understanding autistic burn out

Last weekend I was having erratic outbursts, sobbing uncontrollably while driving, self-harming, and having repetitive suicidal ideation. Someone on the outside might have perceived me as having a mental breakdown. In many ways I was, but not due to depression or recognisably traumatic experiences.

I’ve written before about autistic meltdowns, and after a good few weeks of them I think it’s safe to say I’m actually experiencing autistic burn out. Where an autistic meltdown might be akin to a pressure valve being released, autistic burn out is like a sinking ship where no amount of frantic offloading of water is going to stop the inevitable.

In retrospect I’ve experienced autistic burn out about 6 times in my life, with half of those times being in the last couple of years. The reason for this is not because my life has become harder necessarily, but because I have decades worth of masking that I’m unravelling from being a late-diagnosed autistic. The prevalence has also increased due to having young children. Autistic burn out can be a result of persistent exposure to overstimulation without time for recuperation, and while many parents experience this with young children it’s my hunch that autistic people’s threshold gets hit faster and needs longer to tail off.

How autistic burn out affects me
On reflection I can now see the warning signs for this round of burn out way back in the summer. I’d started needing to numb myself because the world was becoming too intense - my rejection sensivity was in overdrive; any noise out of the ordinary was piercing through my brain; I had less visual and touch tolerance when saying good morning to my nesting partner.

I had multiple meltdowns at Legoland with my kids until I eventually microdosed some mushrooms to act as a blanket to my brain. That should’ve been the moment to cancel plans and rest. But it’s hard to do that when you work, care for others, have commitments to friends and family, or have deadlines that affect your living situation.

By the time the kids returned to school I’d become manic in my thought patterns, and had entered self-destruct mode. I rushed into decisions like getting my wisdom tooth removed, which in turn sent my whole body and brain into a spiral. The pain became all consuming, I was hyper-fixating on my bodily experience of the world, and there was no way to escape the sensory overload of it.

All of this culminated in me becoming increasingly clumsy and unco-ordinated (making it hard to do activities that usually regulate my brain like boxing and causing me to hyperfixate on questions about the extent of my dysphoria and possible dyspraxia), my memory began to fail me (to the point where the only thing that ever existed was the pain I was experiencing in that present moment), and it became difficult for me to think about cooking and eating (which in turn reduced my ability to focus and led to exhaustion).

How to manage it
While I haven’t yet discovered the magic button that stops the ship from sinking, I am lucky to have a a whole load of life boats that help me to stem the situation. My nesting partner often spots these spirals much earlier than me, and will start to respond by ensuring I centre eating and sleeping. I have friends who understand my suicidal tendencies and who rally around me with easy socialising, voice notes and check-ins. Due to my work in the Equity and Inclusion space my clients are generally more understanding and flexible than people working in different environments. And I’ve put in place consistent routines that I know are good for my brain and body like working at our local community farm on Mondays and Fridays.

But I’m still learning how to communicate my needs during these times. This time round it was a big step for me to say to friends and my kids' dad that my mental health was in a bad place - and as a result I started accepting offers of help with school runs and other daily chores. It is also the first time in a long time that I’ve actively cancelled plans on people and told them why - and their continued commitment to our connection through that has been so healing.

How to recover from it
I finally hit the point of recovery when one of my partners, in spite of having been barraged by traumatic outbursts all weekend, put me on an early train to London to spend time out of the house. I spent all day with a friend who centred my special interests, and then spent two nights cocooning with my partner in a cosy airbnb. It might seem counterintuitive to travel to a overstimulating place like London when you are burnt out but doing that alongside people who are centring my needs was just the right combination of stimulating and safe.

More often than not I find that employers or partners or friends can misunderstand your inability to function in one regard, as an inability to function full stop. And I feel like this is what has caused burn out to turn into depression for me in the past. What I need in order to recover is a rearticulation of my needs, and potentially exposure to the types of activities and spaces that my brain has been lacking during the build up to burn out.

Reducing likelihood of burnout in the future

The reality is my burnout isn’t to do with a straightforward type of stress, or through overdoing it in any particular area of my life. It is to do with exposure to situations that are basically unavoidable. Even activities I love can contribute to the potential of meltdowns or longer term burn out - such as going dancing with friends. But there are things I can keep a closer eye on to ensure the overstimulation doesn’t build up over time. Whether that’s paying attention to how much alone time I’m factoring in after a big day of socialising or travelling, or creating more routines around exercise, eating and sleep. And more people in my life understanding autistic meltdowns and burnout also helps because those people can help me pay attention to my limits and boundaries - and provide ideas to me around regulation. I absolutely love the ways friends share fidget toys, encourage me to stim or offer me other options for connecting when I’m overcommitting myself.

If you’ve benefited from reading this blog please consider donating to support our housing co-operative - a space that I hope will help more people like me to avoid burn out in the future!