Dora Raymaker (left) and Christina Nicolaidis edit the new journal Autism in Adulthood. By Emily WillinghamProfessional burnout is all too familiar: Go at something too hard for too long, and the motivational tank empties.
But burnout for an autistic person isn’t always about overwork, Dora Raymaker, an autistic systems scientist at Portland State University (PSU), found in a study of autistic workers.
Instead, the need to mask autistic behaviors through a workday with nonautistic people can cause chronic exhaustion, reduced ability to tolerate stimuli like light or sound, and loss of skills, the study showed through interviews and a survey of social media comments.The work, which Raymaker’s team published last month, highlights a new trend