As a person-centred counsellor, I see the distress caused when someone exists in a state of incongruence. I see the anxiety when a client discounts their needs to please others and hear the confusion when someone loses their sense of who they are and what they want from life.
Let鈥檚 take a moment to consider an individual who has had to change and mould themselves constantly, just to get through the day. Their senses are bombarded, their body is overstimulated, and people react in confusing ways. They鈥檝e tried to learn the social scripts and hide the challenges they experience, but they don鈥檛 go away. People have called them oversensitive, dismissed their concerns and refused to change systems to accommodate them.聽
This client is autistic, and they are exhausted from trying to navigate in a world which doesn鈥檛 work for them. They have no energy left for daily tasks, and they fear they are losing skills they once had, even stringing a sentence together is difficult now. No matter how much they sleep, the fatigue is consuming. They feel tearful, hopeless and people have told them they seem depressed.聽
Are they depressed? Yes, because it makes them feel low and worthless when their most basic needs are treated like a burden. They feel like a problem to be solved, an inconvenience and an outsider. And yet there is more going on here. They are experiencing autistic burnout.聽
There are many overlaps with depression but looking closer we can see that this is a consequence of living in a society which is disabling, which demands and expects certain ways of processing and behaving, and which does not provide adequate adjustments to meet these tasks of living.聽
Whilst anyone can experience burnout, this is often characterised by excessive stress in one area of life, for example, an unmanageable workload, or high levels of caring responsibility. This experience can be debilitating but can often be relieved through lifestyle changes and addressing the cause of stress. Autistic burnout may last for much longer and has often developed over many years and many situations. Factors which may increase the risk of autistic burnout include pressure to suppress or mask autistic behaviours, being in environments which cause sensory overload, transitions, and misunderstandings during communication with others. This may be exacerbated further due to feelings of invalidation when the individual describes how much they are struggling.聽
So why do we need to talk about autistic burnout? This is part of making our practice neuro-affirmative. We must commit to a practice which accommodates for an individual鈥檚 sensory, communication and processing needs. When we acknowledge how society disables autistic individuals, we can support our clients in identifying and honouring their own needs. When we work with an individual, it鈥檚 worth asking wider questions. How can we shape society so that there鈥檚 space for everyone? Autistic burnout needn鈥檛 be inevitable, and we can work with our clients to help them build lives which work for them.聽
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