The Shame Architecture of Autistic Burnout
Autistic Burnout gets talked about a lot now, but very often in vague or aesthetic ways that can translate to a reel. People describe being tired, overwhelmed, “fried,” or done with the world. That captures part of it, but not all of it. If we want to have any hope of preventing or easing autistic burnout, we need to start by naming it accurately.
The first formal research that actually took autistic burnout seriously came from Dr. Dora Raymaker and the AASPIRE team in the United States. Autistic adults in that study described autistic burnout as chronic exhaustion, loss of skills, and reduced tolerance to stimulus, caused by life stressors piling up and a lack of real support or relief. The researchers define autistic burnout as a long-term state of exhaustion, loss of function, and reduced tolerance to stimulus that arises from chronic stress and a mismatch between expectations and abilities without adequate supports.
In other words: burnout isn’t just “being tired.” It’s what happens when you’ve been asked to live a life that doesn’t fit your bodymind for too long, with too little support, until the system can no longer keep up.
Alongside that research definition, this is the working definition I use in my own teaching and work. I’m including it in full here, because I don’t believe we can talk honestly about shame and burnout without first being very precise about what burnout actually is.
I define Autistic Burnout as a prolonged, cumulative state of nervous system, emotional, sensory, and cognitive depletion. It arises when autistic humans are forced to operate in environments that consistently deny or violate our needs - especially when masking, emotional labor, relational misattunement, sensory overload, and the expectation to perform “normalcy” go unrelieved for too long.
