A somatic and integrative exploration of ND burnout, how your client experiences their body, masking fatigue, and what may be needed to thrive.

Autistic and ADHD burnout is one of the most significant presentations a therapist working with neurodivergent clients will encounter. It is frequently misread as depression, chronic fatigue, or a motivation problem. It is treated with approaches that, however well-intentioned, ask more of a system that is already running on empty, and it is almost always preceded by years of something therapists rarely have a name for: the sustained, exhausting labour of masking and pushing through.

Burnout in neurodivergent people is not simply tiredness. It is a systemic collapse that can affect cognition, sensory tolerance, emotional regulation, and the capacity for social engagement. Burnout can also be exacerbated in ND clients with low interoception skills who don’t pick up on signals such as hunger, tiredness, or needing to pee, let alone being close to burnout. I speak from personal experience of this phenomenon.

Together, we will explore what autistic and ADHD burnout actually looks like, how it develops, how masking fatigue contributes to and sustains it, and how the body carries the cost long before the client finds words for what is happening. We will look at how to introduce somatic and body-oriented awareness in ways that are accessible and low-demand, and crucially, how to avoid therapeutic approaches that inadvertently increase the load on an already depleted nervous system.

What makes this workshop distinctive is its refusal to treat burnout as a problem to be fixed quickly. Working somatically with ND clients requires a different kind of attunement, slower, less directive, more attuned to the body's signals than to the therapy room's conventions. You will leave with a clearer clinical picture of burnout, practical somatic tools adapted for neurodivergent nervous systems, and a framework for supporting recovery that centres regulation, demand reduction, and relational safety above all else.

Description supplied by the event organiser.