For the last few years, I have heard the term “autistic burnout” without realizing what it really is. But lately I realized how it can affect me not in its traditional long term, but when there is too much on the plate of the day and I have reached my limit.

Autistic burnout is a prolonged state of intense fatigue, decreased executive functioning or life skills, and increased sensory processing sensitivity experienced by autistic people. In essence, burnout is exhaustion. While it can be prolonged, in my case, it can be after doing  too much in one day. This has been further exasperated by the COVID-19 Pandemic and has taken some time for me to recover from doing too much in one day or not being able to complete all that I start in one day.

It can also be hurtful when others ask to do things that seem interesting or fun, but there is just not the ability to do so. Life as always can throw its punches and one day last week, it did. With an early morning doctor’s appointment to my mother’s car battery going dead in the parking lot after (thankfully, we had a family member come “jump” us in short order, but then we needed to go get a new battery. Then there was grocery shopping, dropping off our groceries at our respective houses, lunch and our hair appointments.

Then there was some laundry that needed to be done, and I decided to clean my bedroom. At that point I was showing signs of fatigue and needing to rest more. Then my mom had called asking me to go to a festivity in the next county over, I may have been a little pushy in saying “no”, but I just knew that I couldn’t do it. At that point, I had known that I was fried.

It got to the point that I laid down after getting the rest of the laundry completed and the next thing I know, the alarm to take my bedtime meds had gone off and thankfully, I complied and fell asleep. While I am an early riser, it had come to reality that at times there is too much that can be done in one day that can cause short-tern autistic burnout.

The world is not built for us as autistic people, and even as the world can be more accommodating, there are just limits to what autistic people can do when they are stretched too far. There are too many capabilities in life and there cannot always be the capability in autistic people to realize when they are doing too much but when they know that they have reached their limit, it is important to understand and accept it for what it is without questioning them further.

While autistic burnout may be a new term, I am learning more and more how it is affecting me in certain elements. Therefore, it is understanding the necessity of having more rest periods and more sleep when it is needed because the world sometimes is too much. I am being better at recognizing it and telling others when I have had too much rather than acting out towards others when being overwhelmed, but ultimately it comes to finally understanding and accepting that it is too much.