Care-Less Era: Your Nervous System Keeps the Score

In this episode of 'Women Who Are Autistic', Annelise, a life, career, and financial coach, delves into how the nervous system impacts autistic individuals, especially post-COVID. She explains the positive effects of the COVID era on her clients and the challenges faced with returning to pre-pandemic routines. Annelise distinguishes between burnout and breaking points, two different nervous system states requiring different forms of regulation. She offers practical advice for managing these conditions and discusses how to support autistic individuals during meltdowns. Join her in exploring ways to build a life that doesn't lead to burnout.

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Transcript

Audio Only - All Participants 0:00

Hello everyone and welcome to the Women Who Are Autistic. The podcast for being different isn't just accepted. It's celebrated. I am Annelise your life, career, and financial coach, and I help autistic women build lives that feel aligned, meaningful, and unapologetically authentic. Each week we'll explore neurodiversity identity, work, money, and the messy magic of being human. If you are new here or are not aware, this New Year's series for 2026 is all about being in a careless era. This is episode four of the season. If you have not listened to the others, I encourage you to do so as each episode will build on the other. I wanna say this gently. I'm not offering advice. I'm not telling you what you should do or what you shouldn't do. I'm just sharing what I'm unlearning and what's helping me right now. Take what feels supportive, leave what doesn't, and if at any point listening feels like too much, you're allowed to pause, skip, or stop. Your nervous system gets to lead. This is a series about choosing to care less about the things that quietly drain us. Not because we're giving up, but because we're finally protecting ourselves. Today's episode is about how your nervous system keeps the score, so grab your favorite sensory friendly beverage and get comfy. Let's dive in and rethink what's possible together. I wanna start today by naming something I keep hearing from my clients. Something that surprises people when they first hear it. COVID was actually phenomenal for my clients. That's right. It was actually such a great time, and I don't say that lightly. For many autistic adults, COVID shuts offered something they had rarely, if ever, in their life, and that was relief. For the first time, the world slowed down, people were suddenly asked to live in ways that autistic people are often judged for: people had to stay home. They couldn't socialize. They reduced sensory input, and they structured their life around safety instead of performance. And for many of my clients that created real healing. Working from home meant they could exist in an environment that felt safe to their nervous system. They could take breaks when they needed them. They could stem without being watched. They could regulate without explaining themselves. For some that meant walking during Zoom meetings for others. It meant pacing, rolling, stretching, laying down, or turning cameras off. Regulation wasn't something they had to earn, but it was built into their day. Fast forward to now, many of those same clients are being asked or forced to return to the office, and here's where confusion starts for them. They'll say things like, I'm not burned out anymore, but I'm falling apart. I thought I was better, so why am I melting down again? None of the things that helped before are working now. What they're experiencing isn't failure. It isn't regression and it most definitely is not emotional immaturity. It is just a different nervous system state. So when someone says I was better during COVID, what they're really saying is my nervous system was finally allowed to exist without being constantly provoked. The grief now isn't just about returning to the office. It's about realizing how much easier life felt when accommodations were normalized. The careless era isn't about not caring. It's about no longer sacrificing your nervous system to meet expectations that were never designed for you. It's about asking a different question. What if the goal isn't going back to how things were, but building a life that doesn't require burnout in the first place? This isn't about fixing yourself. It's about finally listening to what your body has been telling you all along. Today I wanna talk about the difference between burnout and what I call breaking points because they are not the same thing and they require very different forms of regulation. Before I define either one, I need to say this clearly. Burnout and breaking points are not behavioral problems. They are not character flaws, and they are not a lack of coping skills. What they are are nervous system responses. Let's start with burnout. Burnout is chronic. It happens after long-term exposure to things like masking, sensory overload, social pressure, unrealistic expectations, and not enough recovery time. In burnout, the nervous system is collapsed. There is very little energy available. Burnout often looks like extreme exhaustion, whether that would be mental, physical, or emotional. There's a loss of skills.During burnout there's a reduced tolerance for stimulation. There's often withdrawal and a shutdown. Burnout is a deep need for less rather than more. This is also where autistics who struggle with interoception or your body's way of sensing, hunger, thirst, can come into play. Regulation during burnout is about restoration. That usually means rest, reduced demands. Isolation that feels safe. Predictability, low input soothing. Things like quiet rooms, baths, familiar routines, limited communication. Now here's where things shift. As people begin to recover from burnout, capacity slowly comes back. But that doesn't mean the nervous system is suddenly resilient. This is where breaking points come in. See, breaking points are acute and they happen when someone has some capacity but is pushed past their current window of tolerance. Breaking points often look like meltdowns, sudden tears, panic, rage or a sudden state of shock. You're feeling completely fine. And then the next moment you're not in a breaking point. The nervous system isn't collapsed, it's overactivated. And this is why burnout tools stop working. Stillness, silence, or isolation can actually make breaking points worse. Breaking points, trap energy in the body and increase agitation. See, unlike burnout, which requires rest breaking points, require a discharge. And I love giving my clients these regular. I guess neurotypical events that could actually help the discharge. In breaking points the most helpful ways to discharge is through movement such as heavy weight lifting or intense cardio, such as swimming or hit workouts. And another to discharge is by releasing. Screaming is very helpful with this. So I tell my clients, go to hockey games or sporting events where everyone else is screaming. You will fit in and everybody else is doing it. Another form of release is going to local batting cages or somewhere where you can tee off for golf. Or going outside and getting breakable objects. And I know this is gonna look crazy to your neighbors, but you can do this at home in obviously safe environments outside or go somewhere that offers breaking objects with hammers or something like that. They do this for ax throwing. It's a similar type of, place you could go to. But if you wanted to do this at home, you can get unwanted dishes or breakable items, throw'em against a wall, that is an option. Or you can release by going to Axe throwing. These are just some examples of. For discharge, but the discharge, in breaking points lets the nervous system complete the stress response. I wanna do a section in this episode and dedicate it to people who support autistic individuals or who are witnessing in public a meltdown, or a breaking point, and they wanna help, but they don't know how. During an autistic meltdown, it can look like someone suddenly can't hear you. And in many cases, that's functionally true. What's happening isn't refusal or ignoring. It's that auditory processing temporarily shut down the ears may still be working. But the brain can't decode sound, especially speech. Language is a high level brain function. And during a breaking point or meltdown, the nervous system diverts resources away from those areas. So voices may sound muffled far away, or like noise without meaning. For some people during a meltdown or shutdown, it's like going deaf. They can see lips moving, but there is no sound that is coming through to the brain to make sense. This is why talking more, repeating instructions or raising your voice often escalate the situation. See, the autistic individual or person isn't choosing not to respond. Their brain literally cannot take in language in that moment. This is a capacity issue, not a behavioral issue. During an autistic meltdown, some senses, especially hearing contemporarily go offline, not because the person doesn't care, not because they're being defiant, but because the nervous system is in survival mode and the language processing is no longer accessible. Meltdowns aren't emotional outbursts. They're neurological overload. So if you're supporting an autistic person during a meltdown, here's what helps. Instead of assuming they're not listening, assume they can't process sound right now, or even that they are deaf. You wanna reduce language, lower sensory input. Use presence over instruction. See, during a meltdown for the autistic individual, most times silence, safety and time are often far more regulating than your words. Once the nervous system settles, the communication and the ability to hear starts to return. Not because they decided to comply, but because this capacity came back. When someone is in a breaking point meltdown, the most important thing to do is understand this. They are not choosing this. Okay. I really wanna clarify this because in the past when I was working. In as a behavioral analyst, they oftentimes I would hear from parents or from support of autistic children, I need you to help them fix in choosing to have a meltdown in the store. And I would tell them, your child is not choosing to have a meltdown. And during a meltdown, they cannot think their way out of it. Rather, in that moment, the nervous system is in full overdrive. And this can be triggered especially in public, but it can be triggered by the lights, LED lights. It can be triggered by. They're going from school to work, or it's just back and back and back, and they're not able to take a break. Okay? There it can be literally anything that you personally struggle with that can trigger this. And it is important for us autistics to keep track and to notice. What is actually triggering our shutdowns or meltdowns? Okay, back to where we were during a meltdown. The language reasoning and compliance are totally offline. So the best support. You parents, partners, coworkers, bosses, the best support you can do is not fixing, explaining, or calming the autistic individual down. The best support you could do is presence without demand. That can look like clearing the area, the hallway, what have you, for that individual to have privacy. It can be stepping back to give them space, or it can be simply just sitting there by them and being present It can be you reducing input, like lowering the lights, giving them a quiet space, saying less instead of more. If you do speak at all. Use simple, predictable phrases like, you're safe. I'm here. Take your time. I will be here when you are ready. Allow a safe release for the autistic individual allowing them to have movement crying stemming, because that's how the nervous system discharges stress. Don't stop it unless there's immediate danger. If you are sitting by them, they will pick up if you are nervous or if you are angry, that can actually make. The discharge or the shutdown or meltdown or what I call breaking point worse. So if you are gonna be present physically with the individual, make sure your body as a supporter, your body is calm because a calm body is more powerful than your words. And remember, a meltdown is not a behavior to correct. It's a nervous system event to support. When an autistic individual body settles and the communication returns. It's not because they finally decided to behave, but simply that their capacity came back. Coming up, we will break down how to tell whether you're in burnout, a breaking point, or somewhere in between so you can stop using the wrong tools for the wrong state. I am so grateful you spent this time with me today, and I hope something here gave you support, clarity, or even a little bit of peace. If you'd like more conversations like this, I'd love for you to subscribe or follow so you don't miss out on future episodes. Your support helps this podcast reach other autistic women or individuals and neurodivergent people. Neurotypical people who might be looking for a space like this too. If this episode resonated with you leaving a review is one of the most meaningful ways to support the show. And if there are topics you need help with, questions you wanna explore, or even if what I'm talking about isn't quite what you're looking for, I truly wanna hear from you. You can connect with me on Instagram. My profile is linked in the show notes, and if you know someone who might benefit from today's episode, please feel free to share it with them, sending you calm and compassion. Until next time. I.