Tag Archives: autistic burnout

Why Autistic Masking is Unsustainable (and What to do Instead)

Here’s where the problem comes in – the more you mask, the less energy you have to mask. But the more you mask, the more you are expected to mask. Drop the mask, and you potentially lose vital and important relationships and your survival capacity is diminished in direct ratio to that.

Since masking long term isn’t sustainable, and since expending more energy than you can recuperate on a regular basis will lead to exhaustion and burnout, autistic people who have to mask in order to obtain the basic needs for survival will inevitably crash and burn.

How to be a REAL Ally to the Autistic Community

So many of us in the autistic community are already doing immense amounts of emotional labor for non-autistic people by creating lots and lots and lots of educational content, from our unique perspectives, on what it means to be autistic. We’re already doing the heavy lifting.

All you, a non-autistic person, have to do is watch it, think about it, and maybe change how you interact with autistic people a bit. The weight of this process has been on us, autistic people, to advocate for ourselves. The least the neurotypical society we find ourselves in can do is take the time to listen to what we write and say and take it under advisement.