Autistic burnout is not just tiredness. It’s not something that goes away after a weekend under a blanket or an extra night of sleep. Burnout is an exhaustion of resources after years of pushing through environments, demands, and expectations that were never designed with Autistic people in mind. It feels like running out of road, out of energy, and often out of words. Skills you once had may disappear. Even the smallest daily task can feel impossible.
One of the heaviest burdens to shoulder in Autistic burnout is the shame that comes with it. Shame that you can’t do what you used to do. Shame that you can’t keep up with your peers, family, or colleagues. Your needs look different from what society has told you is acceptable. That shame isn’t yours to carry. It was placed on you by expectations that were never designed with Autistic lives in mind.
When we talk about rehabilitation, people often imagine bouncing back to their previous state. But Autistic burnout rehabilitation is about slowly, carefully, and deliberately finding ways to exist again without drowning. It’s about letting go of shame and giving yourself permission to live differently. This is where lilipadding comes in.
What is Lilipadding?
The image is simple; a river stretching out in front of you. On the other side is “normal life”, work, relationships, daily routines. In burnout, that river is wide and fast-moving, and the thought of getting across in one big leap feels impossible.
Instead of leaping, lilipadding is the practice of stepping from one small safe place to another. Each lilipad is a safe and conscious step. It’s a destination in itself. It could be as small as brushing your teeth, answering one message, or just drinking a glass of water, but each of these things takes you to a new destination.
Normative society might say those things are insignificant. But the truth is each lilipad is a step on a journey of survival and self-discovery. Part of lilipadding is learning to reject the shame that comes from measuring yourself against expectations that were never built for you. Lilipadding is making space for self-discovery and redesign. It is as much an act of neuroqueering as it is a rehabilitation process.
Lilipadding is about creating safe places to land so you can slowly make your way through burnout without demanding impossible leaps. It’s about honouring the reality that transitions are hard, and that moving from one moment to the next is a practice in itself. It is a journey that you create that takes you to the destination you need rather than the one you were told to reach.
Recognising When You Need a Lilipad
The first step is noticing when the leap is too big. Burnout shows up in different ways:
- Brain Fog– forgetting simple words, struggling to read, losing track of time.
- Altered Interoception– feeling numb, easily irritable, or unable to connect with others.
- Physical Exhaustion– not just tiredness, but a bone-deep heaviness. It doesn’t always mean a need for sleep.
- Collapse of Coping Strategies– suddenly the things you used to push through with don’t work anymore. The skills you once had deplete.
When these warnings show up, shame often creeps in. You might think;
Why can’t I just do it? Everyone else can.
But lilipadding offers a different script;
I don’t need to do it all. I only need to find the next lilipad.
Letting go of shame is part of the work. Burnout is not a personal failure. It’s the result of being forced to carry too much for too long.
Curating Your Lilipads
Think of lilipads as anchors you can rest on. They don’t have to be impressive or productive. In fact, the smaller the better. Some examples:
- Lying under a weighted blanket for five minutes.
- Eating the same simple breakfast every morning.
- Watching the same television show over and over for predictability.
- Having boundaries in your availability and communication.
- Lighting a familiar candle or putting on the same playlist.
- Drinking one glass of water before checking your phone.
You might feel ashamed that “all I did today was drink water and lie under a blanket.” But shame is not the truth. The truth is; you created a lilipad, a safe point on your journey. It is like reaching the save point in a video game. Just because you have stopped here a while does not mean you have abandoned the game altogether. You are still progressing.
Moving Across the Water
Lilipadding is about progress without pressure. Rehabilitation from Autistic burnout doesn’t take a linear path from start to finish, and it rarely progresses quickly. Some days that might feel like you’ve crossed three lilipads with ease. Other days, staying put on one lilipad all day is enough. Both are valid.
The weight of shame often makes us feel we should be moving faster. But shame is just another demand to leap, and lilipadding is about refusing unnecessary or harmful demands.
What if I Slip?
Slipping off a lilipad is not failure. The current of Autistic burnout will pull you under sometimes. That doesn’t mean you’ve lost progress. This is why in curating your lilipad you create an anchor, a point of return to your journey and not a loss of direction. The metaphorical respawn point.
Shame might whisper that you’re lazy. Falling in is part of crossing the river. Each time you climb back onto a lilipad, you are proving that rehabilitation is possible.
Systemic Barriers and Lilipadding with Support
Autistic Burnout doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It isn’t as simple as poor coping skills or not taking enough rest. Burnout is the result of living in a world that constantly demands the overburdening of our attentional resources.
Shame is part of those systemic barriers. We are told to feel ashamed for resting, for needing adjustments, for not keeping up. Shame becomes a demand on our attention itself, we are constantly self-analysing and self-criticising. Part of lilipadding is refusing to carry unnecessary weight any longer.
Support from others works best when it helps us let go of shame instead of adding to it. That means:
- Accepting Autistic communication.
- Respecting our boundaries without pushing.
- Celebrating the wins no matter their scale.
- Rejecting the influence of neuronormative standards.
Beyond Survival: Lilipadding as a Way of Life
At first, lilipadding might feel like a crisis tool. But over time, it becomes a philosophy for living more gently and with felt safety to be who you wish to be.
Part of that philosophy is rejecting the culture that tells us our worth is measured by productivity. Burnout thrives in normativity. Lilipadding loosens dilutes its impact. When you treat lilipadding as a daily practice, you begin to live on your terms. It is a Self-synchronicity.
Conclusion
Autistic burnout is frightening and often invisible to those around us. But rehabilitation does not come from forcing ourselves to leap back into the lives we had before; the life we had before is what led us to the burnout we are experiencing now. Rehabilitation comes from curating the most self-synchronous steps on a journey of our design, towards a new way of being.
So if today all you can manage is one breath, one tiny step forward, that is enough. That is lilipadding. That is what becomes living again.
