When My System Shut Down: Autistic Burnout

Autistic burnout isn’t just exhaustion — it’s a full-body shutdown that happens when masking, sensory overload, and constant demands push the system past its limits. Here’s what it felt like, how I recognized it, and why awareness matters more than ever.

Slowing Down All the Way to Stop

I didn’t recognize it at first. I just knew that everything in me was slowing down — like my body was pressing a hard brake while my mind kept trying to move.

For months, I had been pushing through everything that life expected of me: masking at work, managing parenting demands, keeping up with conversations, meetings, small talk, decisions, and the relentless noises and textures of the world. Each demand took a little more from me than I had to give, but I didn’t know how to stop. I thought exhaustion was normal. My doctor told me “of course you’re tired, you’re a mom”. My mom warned, “That’s what happens when you burn your candle at both ends”. I thought to myself, “Is this really what being an adult feels like? Well, I guess I need to get over it and push on. Everyone else is… and they make it look so easy”.

Then one day, I just… stopped. Literally.

My body refused. My mind was still awake, active adding to the various mental lists: tasks, ideas, questions, etc. However, my muscles wouldn’t cooperate. My vision was blurry, my eyes felt heavy and needed extra time to focus. Every motion — standing, speaking, brushing my hair — became a calculation, a mental lift I couldn’t quite manage.

“It wasn’t laziness. It wasn’t depression. It was. my entire system shutting down to protect itself. “

Inside Autistic Burnout

Autistic burnout isn’t just fatigue. It’s a collapse of functioning — physical, emotional, and cognitive.

For me, it felt like being trapped between wanting to live and not having the energy to exist.

Words, which usually come easily to me, started disappearing when I tried to speak. Producing sound felt physically difficult. I often went quiet, communicating through text because forming words out loud simply wouldn’t work.

Sometimes my body felt physically paralyzed, a state I refer to as “stuck”. While I’m not truly immobile, I certainly feel physically stuck. I might sit up, planning to stand up and get a glass of water, and end up sitting there “stuck” for ten minutes or more before standing up. I had to consciously plan and convince myself to move. The simple task of getting a drink of water required a kind of mental choreography.

My muscles were tense, my energy gone. I felt anxious for no reason and disconnected from everything. Eating, drinking, hygiene — things that usually ran in the background — became nonexistent. I wanted connection but couldn’t tolerate the effort of socializing. It was an awful mix of loneliness and depletion.

Why It Happens

For many autistic people, burnout builds silently. It’s a cumulative effect of masking, sensory overload, unmet needs, and living in a world that isn’t built for our wiring (think Apple in a PC world).

Masking — the effort to appear “normal” or fit in socially — uses enormous energy. So do the constant adaptations: filtering sounds, regulating emotions, decoding social cues, and suppressing natural responses that others find “too much.”

Add work stress, parenting responsibilities, sensory demands, and the expectation to keep performing — and eventually, the body says no. Autistic burnout is that “no.” It’s a shutdown after too much sustained demand without enough recovery.

It often lasts weeks or months. For me, burnout usually lasts between three and six months before I begin to feel myself returning — slowly, carefully, with a new kind of awareness.

What Helped Me Understand

What made the difference wasn’t “fixing” it — it was recognizing what it was and accepting that I couldn’t just push through it.

Understanding that my body wasn’t betraying me — it was protecting me — changed everything. It wasn’t a lack of willpower or a mental breakdown. It was my system saying: you’ve pushed too hard for too long.

Accepting that there is no quick recovery was (and still is) the most challenging part of burnout for me. Recovery looks like unmasking, rest, sensory safety, rest, and dropping the guilt about doing less. It looks like being radically honest about capacity — even when the world keeps demanding more.

Why Awareness Matters

Too often, autistic burnout is mistaken for depression, laziness, or poor self-care. But it’s not about motivation; it’s about depletion. When we don’t understand that, people push themselves harder — and the cycle continues, the burnout worsens, and recovery takes longer. The consequences become greater.

Awareness matters because so many autistic adults are living at the edge of burnout all the time. We are parenting, working, masking, surviving — often with no safety nets or validation.

Recognizing autistic burnout is an act of compassion, not just for ourselves but for our communities. It’s a reminder that our systems have limits, that recovery isn’t weakness, and that our way of functioning deserves understanding — not judgment or denial. Like Byron Katie says, “When I argue with reality I lose, but only every time.”

I’m still learning how to check in with myself, how to live without burning out again. I am still learning what my body’s no sounds like. I am still navigating the precarious intersection of acceptance, internalized ableism, and denial.