Stop the World I Want to Get Off!

Burnout is not (yet) a diagnosable condition, however, it is a mental health crisis. The NAS defines it as “a state of physical and mental fatigue, heightened stress, and diminished capacity to manage life skills, sensory input, and/or social interactions, which comes from years of being severely overtaxed by the strain of trying to live up to demands that are out of sync with our needs” (Raymaker, 2020).
The Autistic Advocate (Kieran Rose) describes the common autistic experience (a low level burnout) “where your day, just living, talking to people, being assaulted by senses, exhausts you to the point where you can only collapse in a heap at the end of the day, or at the end of the week, depending on your constitution”. However, he distinguishes this from full-scale burnout, which he describes as “the shutting down of mind and body. If you’ve ever had a problem with a computer and it’s had to go into safe mode – that would describe what happens to the brain – it runs on limited function, not all services are available.”
So often the signs of the former daily/weekly cyclic burnout are there, and although many would view this as a child ‘coping’ or ‘managing the school day’ it is unsustainable and not conducive to their mental or physical health – and will ultimately need to the complete burnout Rose identifies. Many autistic children are completely unable to manage parties at weekends, play dates after school, family outings, holidays even – not necessarily because of their general autistic needs but because they are so heightened by exhaustion and so much in need of downtime/recharge time. Every single day in school is so draining that all time out of school is needed to lift the lid on their emotions, reregulate, recharge and hibernate away from the world. This is a lost childhood. These are the children whose parents felt that during lockdown they ‘got their child back’ and ‘saw their child smile or laugh again’. That’s not ok. This is not an ok way for a child to live. This is not thriving…it is barely surviving. These children end up in a constant state of high alert, becoming like ‘meerkats’, always on the look out for the next uncomfortable feeling. bodies flooded with cortisol. This, over prolonged periods of time, causes trauma and leads to that full-scale burnout – the cumulative impact of being in an environment that is not conducive to your neurology.
This book aims to help parents and professionals identify and take steps to prevent low-level burnout erupting into longer-term shutdown, and provides advice and guidance to support recovery if shutdown has occurred.