When Autistic Burnout Meets Ho-Ho-Ho: Understanding Autistic Burnout During the “Most Wonderful Time of the Year”
If you arrived at this holiday season already running on empty, you’re not alone. Between economic uncertainty, political turmoil, increasing workplace demands, and the accumulated weight of the past few years post-Covid, many of us showed up for the holidays in a state of profound exhaustion. Even many people for whom this is their favorite time of year are feeling drained and anxious as 2025 draws (staggers? sputters?) to a close.
And if you’re neurodivergent – autistic, ADHD, AuDHD, PDA, and so on – the holidays can hit especially hard. When complex trauma enters the mix, especially relational trauma connected to the very people we’re expected to spend time with over the holidays, this time of year can be anything but jolly.
Understanding Neurodiversity-Affirming and Trauma-Informed Care: A Different Path to Healing
Neurodiversity-affirming care doesn't see autism, ADHD, or other forms of neurodivergence as disorders that need to be cured. Instead, it recognizes that different brains have different needs, different strengths, and different ways of navigating the world. The focus shifts from trying to make someone “normal” to helping them thrive as their authentic selves.
Seasonal Transitions and Neurodivergence
Over the past 8 years of work with neurodivergent children and adults, I’ve noticed an intriguing phenomenon. Every spring and fall, as well as at other times of the year where there are major changes in weather patterns, the neurodivergent people with whom I’m involved seem to experience a significant increase in dysregulation. When I was still a school-based therapist, this would show up as meltdowns, shut-downs, school avoidance, anxiety, and difficulty focusing and maintaining behavioral expectations in class.
Now that I work primarily with adults, I see more issues with increased difficulty in basic functioning, volatile moods, depression, anxiety, and sensory overload. It has seemed to me, the more I’ve thought about this and observed this phenomenon, that neurodivergent people of all ages experience major changes in weather patterns and circadian rhythms as stress, with all the impacts that stress has on vulnerable nervous systems…