Welcome to the second part of my series on healing Autistic burnout. If you’re just joining us, I highly recommend starting from the beginning to fully understand what Autistic burnout is and how to address it. For those who have been following along, thank you for continuing this journey with me. Today, we will delve into the importance of making a plan to recover from Autistic burnout.
Autistic burnout is a state of chronic exhaustion, loss of skills, and reduced tolerance to sensory input, often resulting from inadequate rest and recovery. Prioritizing rest and incorporating effective recovery strategies can significantly enhance our resilience and overall well-being.
I’m not going to tell you that you have to make a plan for healing and preventing Autistic burnout. I’m especially not going to say that to any of my PDA friends out there. Instead I’ll just say that you could make a plan. If you want to. Totally up to you.
I won’t tell you that having a plan will help you feel better quicker. But it might.
Okay, enough messing around. If you choose to make a plan for healing and preventing Autistic burnout, this is what I recommend. Think about the strategies I shared in part five:
- Support
- Sensory Plan
- Rest
- Replenish
- Routine & Safety
We’ll cover each area in more detail later, but for now think about two questions for each of those strategies.
- Where am I strong in this area?
- Where do I have solid and trustworthy support
- What sensory experiences make me happy
- What do I do right now that ensures I get enough rest
- How do I replenish myself? Where do I find joy
- Which routines, when I follow them, give me great results? What are my safe go-to places, people, clothing, food, etc?
- What gives me trouble in each of these areas?
- Where do I feel overwhelmed or what do I really hate doing and would love some additional support?
- What sensory experiences are painful or make me angry?
- What’s getting in the way of getting enough rest? Are there other types of rest that might be helpful?
- What sucks the life out of me? What are the one or two things that, if I could get them out of my life tomorrow, would give me the biggest sense of relief?
- What routines and safety items do I let go of when I get stressed or overwhelmed? Which ones would be the most helpful if I could hang on to them?
In a perfect world, you would have more of the things you identified in the first question, and less of the things you identified in the second question. Maybe you can’t make everything happen, but you can certainly make some of them happen, and get fairly close to the rest of it.
Making more of 1 and less of 2 is your plan for healing from and preventing Autistic burnout. That may feel simplistic yet overwhelming at the same time. Not to worry. The rest of this series will walk you through answering these questions and developing concrete strategies for increasing the things in the first list, and decreasing the things in the second list.
For this plan to be most effective, there are a few important things I’d like you to know.
First, I recommend that you have a physical copy of your plan in an easily accessible and visible location. I find that when I’m in overwhelm or burnout, I’m probably not going to fire up my laptop and open a file. I’m not going to search through my notes app on my phone. I’m probably not even going to look through the notebooks on my shelf to find the one with the plan in it on page 37.
Nope. I need a physical copy of that plan in plain sight where all I have to do to access it is to pick it up.
Second, I recommend writing out your plan in a way that’s going to be accessible to your brain when you’re in overwhelm or burnout. A wall of text may not be helpful. It might be better to use an outline or a bulleted list. Maybe a deck of index cards would work best for you. I keep a small notebook on my shelf with only one strategy on each page.
I also don’t have the strategies in any particular order. I know that, when I need it most, I’m not going to read through my notebook front to back. Instead, I randomly flip through it until I find a strategy that looks doable and helpful at that moment.
Third, I’m going to give you some homework. I know, I know. But it’s pretty homework and I think it will be useful to you. I’d like you to go look at the Autism Spectrum Wheel on Matt Lowry’s website. It’s the beautiful graphic with the rainbow circle titled The Autism Spectrum.
The domains on this circle may help you think about what you could use more of for the first question and think about what you might want less of for the second question. In case the link doesn’t work, the domains listed around the circle are
- Interoception
- Emotional intensity
- Communication differences
- Relationship differences
- Executive functioning
- SPINs (special interests)
- Stims
- Exteroception
- Proprioception
The rest of this series will offer suggestions, thought or journaling prompts, and ideas for developing each section of your plan.
Conclusion
Prioritizing rest and recovery is vital in managing and preventing Autistic burnout. By having a written plan for healing, you’ll be able to access your most effective coping strategies when you need them the most. In the next part of this series, we will discuss the importance of a sensory plan in preventing and healing from Autistic burnout.
Takeaways:
- Reflect on what you need more of in your life and what you need less of to promote your healing.
- Make a written plan.
- Consider the 9 domain’s in Matt Lowry’s Autism Wheel when considering what you want in your plan
Let me know in the comments: What do you need more of to enhance your healing? What do you need less of? Sharing your experiences can provide valuable support to others in the community!
Living Fully Neurodivergent 
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