Bringing Joy Back into your Life
25 February – written by Katrin Kemmerzehl – Blog
Some autistic people and people with ADHD or AuDHD know this feeling deeply: a kind of exhaustion that goes beyond ordinary tiredness and is not always eased by rest alone. During burnout, everyday tasks can begin to feel overwhelming, sensory experiences more intense, and even the things that once brought comfort, interest, or joy can start to feel far away.
Autistic and ADHD burnout is more than just “being tired” or “stressed.” It is increasingly understood as a whole-system collapse affecting thinking, emotion, sensory processing, identity, and functioning (Higgins et al., 2021).
Importantly, it is not caused by personal weakness or a lack of resilience. Burnout is a predictable response to prolonged overload in environments that do not adequately support neurodivergent nervous systems.
This article explores what autistic and ADHD burnout is, why joy often disappears, and how bringing joy back, gently and compassionately, can be an important part of recovery.
What is autistic and ADHD burnout?
Burnout often develops slowly and gradually. Many people describe coping for years, sometimes decades, before reaching a point where their usual strategies stop working and they feel more and more overwhelmed.
Autistic burnout has been described as chronic physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion, often accompanied by loss of skills and reduced tolerance for sensory and social demands (Raymaker et al., 2020).
ADHD burnout, while less clearly defined in research, is commonly associated with prolonged effortful self-regulation, executive functioning strain, and cycles of overexertion followed by collapse (Barkley, 2015).
Burnout may include:
- Exhaustion that does not resolve with rest
- Heightened sensory sensitivity, e.g. light or noise sensitivity
- Reduced executive functioning, e.g. lack of concentration
- Shutdowns, meltdowns, or emotional volatility
- Reduced verbal capacity, such as difficulty finding words
- Withdrawal from previously meaningful activities such as hobbies and interests
Interestingly, burnout is often context-dependent. Many autistic and ADHD adults report improvement when demands and overwhelm are reduced or environments become more accommodating (Higgins et al., 2021).
This reinforces the understanding that burnout is not a personal failure. It is a response to chronic mismatch between person and environment.
The hidden cost of masking and “coping well”
One of the strongest contributors to neurodivergent burnout is masking. It describes the constant work of suppressing or adapting autistic or ADHD traits so they align with what others expect.
Lori Gottlieb frequently writes about how distress is often hidden behind competence and apparent functionality. In Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, she highlights how people who appear to be “doing fine” are often those struggling the most internally (Gottlieb, 2019).
For many autistic and ADHD adults, masking becomes a long-term survival strategy. It involves constant self-monitoring of behaviour, tone, emotional responses, and productivity. Over time, this places sustained strain on our cognitive and emotional resources.
From a physiological perspective, prolonged masking keeps the body’s stress response active. Over time, this leads to increased allostatic load – the cumulative wear and tear on the body and brain caused by repeated stress (McEwen & Akil, 2020).
Why joy disappears during burnout
During burnout, people often find that joy, creativity, and a sense of aliveness begin to fade into the background. Life can start to revolve around simply getting through the day, managing demands, and holding things together. In this state, it can become harder to feel curious, playful, spontaneous, or emotionally connected to ourselves and the world around us.
Rather than something being “wrong,” this is often the mind and body narrowing their focus towards coping, predictability, and survival when life has felt too much for too long.
Even activities that once felt deeply nourishing may feel effortful, distant, or inaccessible. Many people describe this experience as losing a sense of themselves.
Irvin Yalom emphasises that psychological distress intensifies when people feel disconnected from authenticity, meaning, and aliveness (Yalom, 1980).
In burnout, this sense of disconnection often emerges when a person has been carrying too much for too long. The good news is that joy is rarely truly gone. More often, it has simply become quieter or harder to reach beneath exhaustion, pressure, and the ongoing effort of coping.
Moving towards Self-compassion
Many autistic and ADHD adults have grown up internalising messages that they are “too sensitive,” “lazy,” or “not trying hard enough.” During burnout, these narratives often become louder.
A self-compassionate reframe invites a different question: What have I been coping with for a long time?
Removing shame does not free us from personal responsibility, but it alleviates an unnecessary burden.
Gottlieb consistently emphasises that emotional distress makes sense when understood in context. Symptoms are often logical responses to prolonged strain rather than evidence of personal defect (Gottlieb, 2019).
Emotional first aid
Guy Winch introduces the concept of emotional first aid as the psychological equivalent of tending to a physical wound (Winch, 2017).
His work highlights how emotional pain is often ignored, minimised, or pushed through, even though it requires care just as urgently as physical injury.
This idea can feel particularly relevant for neurodivergent people, many of whom spend long periods managing overwhelm, pressure, or the effort of adapting to environments that do not always fit them well. When someone is already exhausted or stretched beyond their limits, expecting themselves to simply “push through” or immediately regain motivation can be deeply unkind. Often, what is needed first is not more pressure, but more understanding, gentleness, and space to recover.
Letting Joy Come Back in Its Own Time
Emotional first aid during burnout may begin with acknowledging pain without judgment, softening unnecessary demands, and responding to ourselves with more care than criticism.
At times, the priority is not pushing forward, but finding steadiness, rest, and small moments of reconnection with ourselves and the world around us. As life begins to feel a little lighter and more manageable again, many people find that energy, interest, and a sense of joy slowly begin to return.
When people talk about recovering from burnout, joy is often framed as something we need to actively “get back” through motivation, positivity, or effort. For many neurodivergent people, this can feel tiring rather than encouraging, especially when burnout has already involved long periods of pushing through overwhelm or trying to keep up with expectations.
Often, joy returns more gently. It tends to reappear when life begins to feel more manageable, supportive, and emotionally sustainable, rather than through forcing ourselves to feel better.
Everyday warmth
As Kim-Joy suggests, joy does not have to be extraordinary or high-energy to count. She gently challenges the idea that we must constantly optimise ourselves or chase big, glittering goals in order to feel fulfilled.
Instead, she suggests that joy can grow through self-acceptance, playfulness, and allowing ourselves to enjoy what genuinely feels comforting or interesting to us (Kim-Joy, 2025).
In that sense, joy is less about achievement and more about permission. In everyday life, that might look like:
- Holding a warm mug in both hands and noticing the heat
- Arranging something neatly on a desk or table because it feels satisfying
- Watching light move slowly across the wall in the afternoon
- Stroking a pet and feeling your breathing slow down
- Finishing a small task and thinking, “that’s enough for today.”
These moments are small, but they are regulating. And often, regulation is where joy begins.
Yalom describes moments of healing as experiences of presence and authenticity, brief but meaningful reconnections with oneself (Yalom, 1980).
For autistic and ADHD adults, these moments are often found in familiar, repeatable activities, sensory comfort, special interests, or creative engagement without evaluation.
Joy may feel small. It may not resemble happiness. Sometimes it feels like relief, absorption, or a sense that things are manageable for a moment. During burnout, this is enough.
The courage to do less
One of the easiest things to do when you’re recovering from burnout is to aim for “getting back to normal,” even when that version of normal is what exhausted you in the first place.
Both Lori Gottlieb and Irvin Yalom write about the emotional work involved in letting go of who we believe we should be, and how unsettling yet necessary that process can feel (Gottlieb, 2019; Yalom, 2008).
For many autistic and ADHD adults, recovery doesn’t come from doing more. It often comes from doing less: Less pressure. Less masking. Fewer demands. Clearer boundaries. More predictability.
This can feel counterintuitive in a culture that values endurance and productivity, but allowing yourself space and time means also responding more kindly to your body, your nervous system and your needs.
Therapy: Making Space for Authenticity
Neurodiversity-affirming therapy can support burnout recovery by validating lived experience, supporting identity exploration, and helping a person move towards a way of being that feels more aligned. Less about outward success, and more about inner sustainability.
Rather than focusing solely on symptom reduction, therapy can become a space for meaning-making, self-trust, and lasting change. It offers a space for authenticity and it becomes a place where the story begins to make sense (Yalom, 2008; Gottlieb, 2019).
Burnout can make joy feel distant, but it often comes back once things begin to feel a little safer and less demanding. Recovery often starts with permission — permission to slow down, to do less, to get help and to listen more kindly to yourself.
Therapy can be a place where that permission is held and supported. Having a consistent space, gently held over time, to explore this together can make all the difference. If this resonates, you’re warmly welcome to get in touch.
References
- Barkley, R. A. (2015). Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: A Handbook for Diagnosis and Treatment (4th ed.). Guilford Press.
- Gottlieb, L. (2019). Maybe You Should Talk to Someone. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
- Higgins, J. M., Arnold, S. R. C., Weise, J., Pellicano, E., & Trollor, J. N. (2021). Defining autistic burnout through experts by lived experience: Grounded Delphi method investigating #AutisticBurnout. Autism, 25(8), 2356–2369. https://doi.org/10.1177/13623613211019858
- Kim-Joy. (2025). Ordinary joy: A realistic guide to being yourself. Quadrille.
- McEwen, B. S., & Akil, H. (2020). Revisiting the stress concept. Journal of Neuroscience, 40(1), 12–21.
- Neff, K. D. (2011). Self-Compassion. William Morrow.
- Raymaker, D. M., et al. (2020). Defining autistic burnout. Autism in Adulthood, 2(2), 132–143.
- Winch, G. (2017). Emotional First Aid. Penguin.
- Yalom, I. D. (1980). Existential Psychotherapy. Basic Books
Katrin Kemmerzehl
I am a qualified psychotherapeutic counsellor in Newcastle upon Tyne.
Please get in touch if you’re interested in arranging a consultation.