Component 7. Increasing structure, routine, and consistency.

I want to acknowledge upfront that this part of the advice is really really hard for some people because it assumes that you have access to someone who can take care of you, whether that's home staff or a family member or a friend. Obviously many, many of us are not in that boat. I want to keep thinking about how to handle burnout if you're on your own, but for now I am focusing on recapping Dr. Shah's advice to the best of my ability, so I am going to talk about what to do if you have help.

Dr. Shah writes, "Often, providing one-on-one support from a small group of consistent people can provide security, stability, predictability, and consistency and enable the individual to start recovering while other changes are being planned and implemented."

On the one hand, to autistic people, this advice can seem incredibly obvious, and also impossible. (I will talk about the impossibility later.) I do want to point out one way in which it's not obvious, however. If you're used to dealing with burnout by getting as much rest as you can, and by withdrawing from the world as much as possible, it's really important to note that this recovery strategy can be counterproductive. If you are resting so much that your days are becoming really unstructured, or that you are losing routine, or that the only kinds of routines that you have involve really passive kinds of enjoyment (music, long rides in the car with no clear destination, favorite movies on repeat, super-repetitive computer games), you might actually be making things worse.

If you've been burned out forever, and it's getting worse, and no amount of resting seems to help, try switching it up if you can. Do whatever you can to get some personal support for a month or two--move home, call on a family member, hire an aide, just do as much as you can by asking for help. If you are really ill, you will need to go to a hospital. Try to stick to your routine--but only the fun and good parts. Get rid of everything else, and do as much of the good stuff as you can. Try to get someone to take you to your absolute favorite place in the world--ideally somewhere outside--and walk with you arm-in-arm if you can't really walk by yourself anymore. Try to get people to help you move into the world, even if you're not really mobile anymore. If someone says, "Hey, can I bring you anything from you?" ask instead if they can bring you somewhere, instead. (This is all from the book; I'm not waxing poetic or something.) I do realize that this advice sounds exhausting and terrible, but it helped me recover from three years of profound, disabling burnout, in about three months. The trick is that you really can't be pushing yourself mentally or physically (or at least not very much). Your goal is not to get stronger by pushing yourself; it's just to start visiting your old favorite places again, especially at first. Then you can kind of link other activities to the positive, "favorite" activities, but slowly.

This advice is very counterintuitive but it is backed by Science! and it really did help me a lot personally. 







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