Edition 4: Autistic Burnout by Guest Writer Niraj Shah

Welcome back to Dopamine Diaries!

I’m super excited about this edition because it’s been written by a fantastic guest writer, Niraj Shah AIA . Niraj is an autistic self-advocate who, as part of his advocacy work, writes blogs and has given talks on neurodiversity to various audiences.

Intro

What is Autistic Burnout? Autistic burnout occurs when, over a period of time, the pressures and challenges of everyday life outweigh the coping strategies that an autistic person has to deal with. The consequences of autistic burnout include mental and emotional exhaustion, loss of motivation and a loss of skills. 

In around September 2021, Niraj hit the point of autistic burnout after months of stress and not having the right accommodations and support to deal with the stress. In this edition, Niraj will talk about what led to his autistic burnout, how it felt at the time, and give some tips on how to overcome it.

The rest of the article is written in the first person from Niraj’s perspective. 

My Autistic Burnout Story

I finished university in June 2020 and started my graduate job in September 2020, both of which happened during the pandemic. The entire first year of my graduate job was remote, so I didn’t have the accommodations and support that would have come from meeting colleagues in person. This made it much harder to settle in the working world after it started to get "back to normal".

Meeting friends face to face helped my well-being considerably, and having that taken away was a big hit to my well-being. I also bottled up a lot of my emotions, whereas usually, I would have opened up about them when meeting people face to face. 

The accumulation of stress that resulted from starting a new job during the pandemic, combined with not having the face-to-face support to tackle the stress, meant that I eventually hit a point of autistic burnout in September 2021. 

What Autistic burnout looks like 

When I reached the point of autistic burnout, I remember feeling extremely low. I knew that I reached a point where it would take a long time to recover from. This felt different to normal burnout as I felt totally overwhelmed and incapable of navigating a neurotypical world.

I was feeling empty in terms of motivation and emotional capacity, which made it a real struggle when it came to working in my day job. I also had exams at the time when I reached the point of autistic burnout made things even more challenging right from the start. 

I also remember feeling regret and blaming myself when I reached the point of autistic burnout. This was because there were signs beforehand that I was burning out from the stress, and I didn’t do anything about it. It took me reaching the drastic point of severe autistic burnout to take action and do something about it. 

The road to recovery 

As of today, I have fortunately made considerable progress in recovering from autistic burnout. Initially, the main thing that started my recovery from autistic burnout was meeting friends and work colleagues face to face. Meeting people face to face was a good first step as it helped improve my well-being, which provided a good foundation when it came to tackling the stresses and challenges that continued to come my way.

Interestingly enough, there is a stereotype that autistic people don’t like socialising, but actually, socialising and interacting with others can play a big part in helping an Autistic person recover from burnout. Over time, things continued to improve as I started to settle in the workplace and have a better work-life balance. However, it was a process that took time rather than something that happened overnight.

From my experiences, overcoming autistic burnout is difficult, but it can be done. Here are two tips that I would give:

1. Use your support system

To put it simply, overcoming autistic burnout is something that you cannot do alone. This is because the recovery journey is a long and difficult one, and trying to do it on your own will be extremely isolating. When I told people in my support system that I had reached the point of autistic burnout, all of them wanted to support and help me, even if they didn’t have lived experiences of being autistic themselves.

Your support system would want to be there for you in your journey of recovering from autistic burnout, and it is important you use that to your advantage. Everyone in your support system can help in different ways.

Some people in your support system can help provide reasonable adjustments (eg at work) that can help you overcome autistic burnout, whereas others can be good listeners and people to bounce ideas off when you need to open up.

2. Accept the realities of Autistic burnout

The hardest things for me were, firstly, accepting that I reached a point of autistic burnout, and secondly, acknowledging that it would take a while to overcome it. However, coming to terms with these realities was essential. Whilst autistic burnout is a horrible thing to experience, being in denial about it when you reach that point won’t do you any good in the long run. If you fully accept that you have reached autistic burnout, then you can do something about it compared to if you were in denial.

It is also important to accept that it would take a while to overcome autistic burnout to avoid setting unrealistic expectations on yourself. It can be tempting to try and do lots of things in a short space of time with the intention of recovering from autistic burnout quickly. However, the reality is that this approach can make things rushed, which can end up hindering your recovery from autistic burnout. It's extremely important to take a slower but more measured approach when it comes to recovering from autistic burnout.    

Thank you so much to Niraj for an absolutely fantastic first guest edition of Dopamine Diaries. I hope my wonderful subscribers have found it beneficial to learn more about Autistic burnout from Niraj's personal perspective.

I would highly recommend you connect with Niraj on LinkedIn; he has some very insightful content, particularly around his experience of being an Autistic person in the workplace. He also has his own blog which you can subscribe to on LinkedIn here and on Medium here.

Do you want to contribute to a guest edition of Dopamine Diaries or have a topic you'd love for me to cover? Get in touch with me on LinkedIn!

Thanks for reading and stay fabulous!

Parul x