Autistic Burnout Or Depression? Start Here

You Don’t Have to Know Which One It Is. If you’re here because you can’t tell whether this is autistic burnout or depression, set that question down beside you for a few minutes, because you don’t have to solve it to deserve rest. Notice what’s holding you up right now, whether it’s the chair, the bed, or the floor, and let it do some of the work you’ve been doing alone. Maybe your words, your tolerance for sound, or skills that used to come easily have gone quiet, and that can be your nervous system pulling its resources inward to protect you. For these next few breaths there’s nothing to mask, nothing to perform, and no one you need to explain yourself to. Whatever this turns out to be, the next step only has to be small: a dimmer light, a softer texture, one less demand, one breath at a time.

Transcript

Autistic burnout or depression. Hi, I'm Kori. I'm a late diagnosed ADHD therapist. The usual depression advice made you feel worse. You're neurodivergent. This one's for you. You often hear, Get out of bed, Go for a walk, Fake it till you make it. Try something fun. Hang out with your friends. Power through. This is standard advice for depression. And for a lot of people, Maybe it helps. But for neurodivergent people who are experiencing burnout. None of this is going to help. I sit with many autistic clients each week who have done it all and crashed even harder. Then they figured they were failing at therapy too. Sometimes what's happening isn't depression, It's actually autistic burnout. And the two can look almost identical from the outside. Exhaustion, Withdrawal, Not being able to do the things that you once did. And burnout and depression can happen at the exact same time, Which is another reason why burnout gets missed. So here are a few differences to hold on to and pay attention to. First, What happens when you drop some demands? In burnout, When you finally get relief from people, Noise, Expectations, All of the shoulds in your life, The masking, The social plans, The putting on a happy face, When all of that gets put down, What happens? Can you exhale? Does some of your energy come back? In depression, The heaviness tends to follow you even into the quiet. Second, First, Pay attention to the things that you love. In burnout, Your special interests and comfort things often still feel good. Sometimes they're the only thing that you can do, But often we don't have the energy to do much else. In depression, The joy seems to drain out of everything. What makes it worse? Burnout gets worse with more social activity. Or social input. More pushing. Socializing and interacting with other people often means masking. It often means getting up, Getting dressed, Doing all the things that feel so impossibly hard. It might mean sitting at a meal. It might mean making small talk. It might mean putting on a happy face. And if after you do all that, You feel worse, Chances are you could be dealing with burnout. Because when you're burned out and somebody tells you to power through, Your brain hears, Add more demands, And you sink even further. Skill loss. In burnout, It's common to lose access to abilities that you once had. Better executive functioning, Speech, Tolerance for sensory input, Better analytical ability, More patience, The ability to turn on and off socially. These are all hallmarks of burnout. Now, None of this is a self-diagnosis checklist, But it might be a starting point for a better conversation with someone who knows what they're looking at. If you're getting treatment for depression, Something doesn't fit, Something doesn't feel right, And you're not getting better, Please don't stop anything on your own. You might need to go to your provider and say, Hey, I'm autistic, Or I think I might be, And I'd like you to look at burnout too. That one sentence with the right provider can change absolutely everything about your treatment plan. And if your provider doesn't know what autistic burnout is, That's not your fault. That's a gap in their training. And it's a really important gap to fill. So if they can't fill it, It might be time to see someone who knows a little bit more about what's going on for you. If it were me or someone I love, I'd send them to a provider that says neuroaffirming on their website. They're much more likely to know what your particular brain and body needs when it's burned out. A lot of the work that I do is to help other providers learn more about autistic burnout so that they know what they're looking at too. It's very common for doctors to call autistic burnout depression. One small thing for you to try today, Next time someone suggests powering through, Ask yourself, Would this add a demand or remove one? The answer to that question will tell you a lot about what you need to do next. The best thing you can do for yourself when you're burned out is to remove all the demands that you can. You're probably going to need to rest more, Move less, Socialize less, Push yourself less, And give yourself time for low effort special interests that might give you energy. If you want to learn more about burnout, Check out my page. There are guided practices that are built for days when everything feels like it's too much. Burnout can get better, But we need to treat it like what it is, And it's not laziness, It's not lack of motivation, And it's not just depression. Thanks for listening today. So glad you're here.

Reviews

Thank you so much!! That was super helpful!! I hope you keep posting!! with much gratitude 🙏💕🌻☺️

Insightful! This made perfect sense after wondering what's wrong with me and doing research on accessibility practitioner grief, I realize it's not depression. Fortunately we live in your area and I run the disability ERG at Johns Hopkins. Although we don't necessarily consider neurodivergence has a disability per se, it is our workplace environments and social structures that are disabling. I'm sharing your retreat with my colleagues. It sounds like a pretty good disability ERG field trip. We just had a long conversation with one of our colleagues about why her wedding was going to be so exhausting, and I love that she planned for downtime. And rented an Farm in Maryland for the entire weekend so that other ND guests could also be in a safe and calming space with downtime.