“Having All of Your Internal Resources Exhausted Beyond Measure and Being Left with No Clean-Up Crew”: Defining Autistic Burnout

Autistic burnout defined with autistic adults, not about them: chronic exhaustion, lost skills, less tolerance, and what helped recovery.

Raymaker, D. M. et al. (2020). “Having All of Your Internal Resources Exhausted Beyond Measure and Being Left with No Clean-Up Crew”: Defining Autistic Burnout. Autism in Adulthood, 2(2), 132–143.

Type

Journal article

Find it

doi.org/10.1089/aut.2019.0079

Checked

Against the abstract, 15 September 2026

Why it is on the list

A community-based participatory study characterised autistic burnout as chronic exhaustion, loss of skills and reduced tolerance to stimulus. The study linked this to cumulative load with no way to get relief. What participants associated with recovery was acceptance and support, time off or lower expectations, and doing things in an autistic way, including unmasking. The authors draw the link week 7 draws: teaching people to mask has a downstream cost.