Autistic Catatonia and "Autistic Burnout": Some Possible Overlaps (Part 4 of 5)

 In what follows I will begin the work of drawing a comparison between "autistic burnout" and "autistic catatonia," to show their quite suggestive similarities. My point here is not to make a conclusive case--I am not a medical researcher, or a public health researcher, and in any case I only thought of all these things this past weekend. It is only to provide food for thought, and perhaps some casual "aha!" moments, for other people, and maybe to provide a basis for my own and others' further reading and writing. 

There are a number of suggestive connections between mild/moderate catatonic deterioration and what autistic people frequently call "autistic burnout." Both autistic people writing about burnout and clinicians writing about catatonia frequently discuss loss of speech, either partial or total: at times this might take the form of difficulty finding the right word (anomia), of slowed speech or of partial speech; at other times, the autistic person might become completely nonspeaking. (The anonymous author of the blog "Musings of an Aspie" offers a compelling record of their own experience of partial speech loss, in "Uncooperative Words and Where Do I Go From Here.") 

Other shared features might be more subtle. As an example, I've included a simple graphic made by @actuallyautisticalien and circulated on reddit.com/autisminwomen. 

The telltale features of "autistic burnout," according to @ActuallyAutisticAlien, include "loss of skills," "seeming more 'clumsy'" (loss of motor skills or coordination), profound exhaustion, memory loss, "not getting things done" (loss of volition/loss of independence), "seeming more autistic" (a vague catch-all which was nonetheless noted, in more clinical language, by the clinicians quoted earlier in this essay), and "digestive issues," which can be a sign of dysautonomia. There is an obvious and profound similarity between @ActuallyAutisticAlien's "signs of autistic burnout" and the clinical descriptions of autistic catatonia given on the previous page.

At times, subjective descriptions of autistic burnout go beyond loss of speech, loss of coordination, loss of volition, and other typical features to describe more severe experiences that may well be catatonia. Kieran Rose, of The Autistic Advocate, writes of his experiences with severe autistic burnout as follows: 

Autistic Burnout is exactly that: the shutting down of mind and body. ... If you’ve ever had a problem with a computer and it’s had to go into safe mode--that would describe what happens to the brain – it runs on limited function, not all services are available--its access to the Internet... denied and unable to connect. ... Physically I often imagine it as the need for hibernation, where the body effectively stops all but the most important functions, the heart rate slowed, breathing distributed evenly and slowly, hovering on the precipice between sleep and death.

To me--speaking only as a single reader, and by no means as an authority--Rose's account resonates with many descriptions I have read of autistic catatonia, as also my own experiences of (what I believe to be) the disorder. This is all the more true as Rose describes his encounter with "autistic burnout" (or catatonia) in its most severe form: 

my physical body and mind started shutting down.  I could feel each system in my body closing off as gravity got heavier than it had ever been.  I didn’t know what to do – did not understand what was happening to me – I had no way to communicate this.

I cannot speak for Rose, of course, but to my subjective ear, this account speaks--with devastating specificity--to the loneliness, trauma, and terror of the autistic person who is experiencing progressive catatonia and has no way to describe this experience to others, much less to be taken seriously. This experience of complete isolation, of a lack of language to cry out for help, is not uncommon to such accounts.