Review: The Ultimate Guide to Autistic Burnout

After six months of waiting with bated breath, I finally have had a chance to read The Ultimate Guide to Autistic Burnout by my colleagues Dr. Natalie Engelbrecht ND RP, Dr. Debra Bercovici PhD, Eva Silvertant, and Kendall Jones.

This book serves as an evidence-based guide to understanding autistic burnout, and is actually a 2-in-1 set containing a clinical version, and a non-clinical version. The clinical version is aimed at clinicians, while the non-clinical version is aimed at autistic people and those who support them.

It’s reassuring to know I have a roadmap to recover from burnout; and reading other autistic people’s burnout stories made me feel less alone.

– Jade

What I love about the book

Here is what I love about the book:

It is extremely well-organized and beautifully formatted. While it contains rich details, it is also easily skimmable, which makes it easy to jump straight to any section you need.

While the language used in each version differs, both the clinical and non-clinical sections are clear and comprehensive, with plenty of research studies providing the most up-to-date scientific context.

The clinical and non-clinical versions both contain a large overlap in information, but each has a stronger focus on the topics most relevant to their respective intended audiences. For example, the clinical version goes into more detail on how clinicians can talk to autistic patients, while the non-clinical version goes into more detail on how autistic patients can communicate with their clinicians.

By including anecdotes from autistic people who have experienced burnout, this book ensures that diverse voices in the autistic community contribute to how this book’s readers understand autistic burnout.

What could be added

One weakness of this book is that it does not focus on the intersectional experiences of autistic individuals who are members of other minority groups beyond autism (i.e., LGBTQAI+, ethnic minorities, people with co-occurring disabilities, and so forth).

The authors hope to include a section discussing these intersectional experiences in a future update to the guide, as stresses from the intersectional minority experience can contribute to autistic burnout as well. Not only that, but it can compound many of the causes and contributing factors of autistic burnout that are described in the book.

How this book helped me

While I found this whole book helpful, I especially appreciated the section that compares and contrasts autistic burnout with depression, as well as occupational burnout.

I have definitely experienced autistic and occupational burnout, and I am pretty sure I’ve been struggling with depression over the past year as well. While I think this is a complex topic that researchers haven’t fully explored, the comparison chart helped me to differentiate a bit between autistic burnout and depression to get a better understanding of my own symptoms and experiences. The convenient inclusion of linked psychometrics for all three provided additional insights.

Another section I appreciated was the ‘Treating Autistic Burnout’ section. This section provides a step-by-step process for how an autistic person can modify their environment and habits to support recovery from autistic burnout. I’ve never really had a “plan” when I experience burnout. It’s reassuring to know I have a roadmap for the next time it happens.

Finally, I really enjoyed the section near the end that included personal stories from other autistic people regarding their own experiences with autistic burnout. These anecdotes gave me an understanding of the many ways that burnout can be triggered and manifest, and things that helped other autistic people during their burnout; and it also helped me feel less alone.

Supplementary materials

The Ultimate Guide to Autistic Burnout includes a number of handy supplementary materials, including:

• A Symptom Form for medical visits, which can help you better inform your doctor about the problem you’re dealing with
• A Severity Scale which can be used to indicate the severity of your symptoms or the level of pain you’re in, so that your doctor will take you seriously (we tend to underreport our pain inadvertently, or are otherwise misunderstood by our doctors)
• A Quick Reference Guide to Autistic Burnout (useful for clinicians, but it could also help to bring this to your doctor or other medical professional, so they have a quick overview of what you’re struggling with)
• A brief document called, ‘Explaining Autistic Burnout to Friends & Family’, which does exactly what the name suggests
• An Energy Inventory, which you can use to get an idea of what things drain you, what things energize you, and where the energy deficits that contribute to autistic burnout come from
• Autistic burnout posters, which you could print to have a reminder of the different aspects of autistic burnout, or give to your medical professional for use in their office

I particularly appreciate the Symptom Form, especially its symptom Severity Scale included at the bottom. I have chronic pain, and I’ve learned over the years of dealing with doctors that symptom scales that highlight how much the patient is focused on the symptoms seem to communicate better to the provider the seriousness of the condition. So, this is a genuinely useful symptom scale.

For more information on what’s in the book and what supplementary materials it comes with, read Eva’s post:

About: The Ultimate Guide to Autistic Burnout

All told, The Ultimate Guide to Autistic Burnout is an indispensable tool for clinicians and autistic patients alike to communicate about burnout and work together toward a treatment plan. You can find the book in e-book (PDF) format in the Embrace Autism store, and a physical copy of the book on Amazon:

Embrace Autism Store | Amazon