Something I have noticed when working with people who have both autism and ADHD is that recovery from burnout can sometimes be a bit confusing.

You start to feel better, but then something else seems to get worse.

When someone is really burnt out, everything can feel difficult. Work is difficult, talking to people is difficult, making decisions is difficult. Sometimes even relatively ordinary things like answering an email or deciding what to have for dinner feel like they require far more energy than they should.

There can be more sensory sensitivity, more need for routine and predictability and much less tolerance for other people or unexpected demands.

Then, gradually, things start to improve.

Maybe you’ve been off work for a while. Maybe you’ve reduced your hours or started putting some boundaries in place. Maybe you’ve finally realised that constantly forcing yourself to function in exactly the same way as everybody else isn’t actually working.

You have a bit more energy.

And then something rather strange can happen.

The ADHD comes roaring back.

“I thought I was getting better?”

Suddenly there are ideas again.

You want to start things.

You get enthusiastic about work. You find something interesting and spend three hours completely absorbed in it. You start thinking about a new hobby, a new project, changing something in the house, going somewhere, learning something.

Your brain feels switched on again.

Which is great.

Except that it can also feel slightly out of control.

You might have a morning where you are absolutely flying. Meetings go brilliantly. You’re talking, thinking, making connections, solving problems and feeling completely engaged.

Then you get to the afternoon and you’re staring at the computer screen.

You read the same paragraph three times.

Nothing is going in.

And this can be frightening if you have previously experienced burnout because you recognise that feeling.

You think, Oh no. I’m doing it again.

And sometimes you probably are.

Autism and ADHD can want completely different things

Having both autism and ADHD can be a strange combination.

The autistic part of somebody may really like routine. Knowing what’s happening. Familiarity. Having things organised in a particular way.

The ADHD part can get bored rigid with exactly the same thing.

One part wants Tuesday to happen exactly as planned.

The other part desperately wants something interesting to happen on Tuesday.

And actually, when life is going reasonably well, people often find ways of balancing these things without necessarily realising that’s what they’re doing.

There is enough structure to feel safe and enough novelty to keep things interesting.

Burnout can upset that balance completely.

When somebody is exhausted, they don’t have the spare capacity for novelty and excitement. Their world can become smaller because they’re trying to reduce the amount of information and demands coming in.

So the autistic difficulties can sometimes become much more obvious.

Then when energy starts returning, the ADHD characteristics that seemed to have disappeared haven’t necessarily disappeared at all.

They may just have been buried underneath exhaustion.

Having energy again doesn’t mean you have unlimited energy

I think this is one of the biggest traps in burnout recovery.

You have spent months feeling like you can’t do anything.

Then suddenly you have a good day.

So obviously you do everything.

Because why wouldn’t you?

You haven’t been able to concentrate properly for months and now something has caught your attention and you can concentrate brilliantly.

You haven’t felt enthusiastic about work and suddenly you do.

You haven’t wanted to go anywhere and suddenly you want to do six different things.

It feels like getting yourself back.

The problem is that we can mistake having some capacity again for having all of our capacity back.

And ADHD isn’t particularly good at saying:

This is going really well. I think I’ll stop now.

It tends to say:

This is going really well. LET’S KEEP GOING.

Hyperfocus has a cost

Hyperfocus can be incredibly useful.

You can get an enormous amount done when your brain decides something is interesting.

The difficulty is that you don’t necessarily notice what it’s costing while you’re doing it.

You can forget to eat. You don’t notice that you’re tired. You sit in the same position for hours. You don’t take a break because stopping feels ridiculous when you’re finally being productive.

Then you stop.

And you’re absolutely shattered.

I think this is where it can be useful to stop asking:

Can I do this?

and start asking:

What will doing this cost me afterwards?

Because those are actually two very different questions.

You may absolutely be capable of having four intense meetings in one morning.

The question is whether having those four meetings means you are incapable of doing anything meaningful for the rest of the day.

If it does, then four meetings cost considerably more than four hours.

The boom and bust cycle

This is something a lot of neurodivergent people will recognise.

Feel good.

Do loads.

Crash.

Recover.

Feel good.

Do loads.

Crash.

And repeat.

The frustrating thing is that on the good day it seems completely unreasonable to slow down.

You’re not tired.

You’re enjoying yourself.

You’re finally getting things done.

Why would you stop?

Because sometimes the best time to rest is before you need to.

That’s not something that comes naturally to everybody.

We tend to think of rest as something we earn by becoming exhausted.

But if you are recovering from burnout, waiting until you’re exhausted before you stop is probably too late.

Sometimes you need a circuit breaker

I quite like the idea of a circuit breaker.

Something that physically interrupts what you’re doing before you disappear down the rabbit hole for another four hours.

That might be going for a walk.

Going swimming.

Eating lunch somewhere away from your computer.

Taking the dog out.

Going outside.

It doesn’t necessarily mean lying on the sofa doing absolutely nothing.

In fact, for an ADHD brain, being told to “just rest” can be incredibly irritating.

Sometimes changing what your brain is doing is enough.

The important thing is that there is a break in the intensity.

And ideally that break happens before your brain has completely run out of power.

Your ADHD probably hasn’t got worse

And your autism probably hasn’t got better either.

At least, not in quite the way it might feel.

There isn’t good evidence that recovering from autistic burnout somehow makes ADHD worse.

What is much more likely is that different things become more noticeable depending on how stressed, tired or overwhelmed we are.

When somebody is severely burnt out, exhaustion can drown everything else out.

When the exhaustion begins to lift, other parts of them become visible again.

Including the excitable, interested, impulsive, enthusiastic ADHD bits.

That isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

In fact, sometimes it is a sign that somebody is recovering.

The difficulty is learning what to do with all that returning energy.

Because if every time the battery gets back to 60% you immediately use the entire 60%, you’re going to keep ending up at zero.

Recovery doesn’t have to mean having a boring life

I think this is important because advice about burnout can sometimes sound miserable.

Do less.

Reduce your commitments.

Say no to things.

Rest.

Slow down.

Avoid stress.

For someone with ADHD that can sound less like recovery and more like a prison sentence.

ADHD brains often need interest, stimulation, challenge and novelty.

The answer isn’t necessarily to remove those things.

It’s learning how much they cost and how to balance them with the other things your brain needs.

And when you have both autism and ADHD, those needs can look completely contradictory.

You might need routine and novelty.

Predictability and spontaneity.

Time alone and stimulation.

Hyperfocus and interruptions.

Rest and something interesting to do.

There isn’t necessarily a perfect balance that you eventually discover and then stick to forever.

It changes.

Some weeks we can manage more than others. Sometimes work takes more out of us. Sometimes life does.

Perhaps part of recovering from burnout is getting better at noticing that rather than constantly fighting against it.

And maybe the real sign that you’re getting better isn’t that you can push yourself as hard as you used to.

Maybe it’s getting to the point where you know you could carry on —

but you don’t.