Nervous System Tips for Neurodivergent Folks in Burnout & Meltdown Mode
As neurodivergent (autistic, ADHD, highly sensitive) people, we face an uphill battle when it comes to regulating our nervous systems: the stressors of everyday life, the weight of collective traumas, and a world that wasn’t built for our wiring. Neurodivergent therapist, Liz Zhou, shares reflections on how to take care of ourselves in hard times.
These letters originally appeared in Liz’s Neurodivergent Letters, an affirming weekly email series for highly sensitive, neurodivergent adults who feel burnt out from wearing masks all day & are re-learning who they really are.
TABLE OF CONTENTS 🔍
LETTER #1: What if you’re too burnt out to enjoy your life?
Burnout looks different for everyone, but one of the most obvious signs is this:
The hardest part of your day is getting out of bed. The best part is getting back in bed. Everything in between is a slog.
Many of my clients talk about this struggle. The feeling that life is just a cycle of:
work
eat & drink water
recover from work
try to squeeze in a hobby or social life
count down the days till the weekend
stare at the wall because your brain is too fried to do anything else
crawl out of bed on Monday
rinse & repeat
Do you relate to this, too?
It’s not easy existing as a human being in capitalism. Add a highly sensitive nervous system and neurodivergence on top of that, and we’ve got a recipe for major burnout.
So, whether you’re deep in burnout or just starting to notice a few signs, I want to share a couple invitations with you:
What’s 1 thing on your to-do list that you don’t absolutely need to do? Go ahead and cross that off.
What’s 1 thing that brings you joy, that you can intentionally seek out today?
Keep it simple. Just notice the first things that come to mind.
For example, maybe “deep-clean the kitchen sink” has been on your to-do list forever, but you never got around to it and just seeing it on your list makes you feel panicky. Can you cross that off, let it go for now? Can a clean-ish sink be good enough?
One myth of capitalism that keeps us in burnout is that we always have to be doing something “productive”; otherwise, we're “worthless.” So, deleting to-dos is like reminding our nervous systems, “Hey, we can just be right now. It’s totally okay to not be doing something.”
Next, notice what naturally brings you joy. Maybe it’s watching your dog get the zoomies at the park, or a song that makes you want to sing and dance like nobody’s watching.
See if you can be extra present for that experience. Take a deep breath and really let it in.
Or find ways to duplicate this experience across the week. If you only listen to music during your morning commute, consider making it an intentional, 15-minute ritual before you go to bed, too.
Remember: recovering from burnout isn’t an overnight thing, and it may take some time (because we’re humans, not machines).
But it’s never too late to start making a couple of simple shifts so you can feel even 10% more energized tomorrow.
P.S. If guided practices are helpful for you, you might enjoy this 6-min meditation:
LETTER #2: When you reach a boiling point
Pssssssssshhhhhhhh.
That’s the sound I hear when my pot of milk boils over and spills onto the stove. Oops.
Drinking cacao is part of my morning ritual. It’s simple enough: I boil almond milk and mix it with cacao powder. I love the warmth & rich flavor of cacao, and the way it wakes me up but doesn’t give me jitters like coffee.
Some mornings, it’s also part of my ritual to clean up spilled milk, because I wasn’t paying attention to the stove and the milk boiled over quicker than I was expecting.
One second, everything seemed fine. The next second… pssshhhhh. A mess.
I’m sharing this story because it’s a visual representation of what a nervous system meltdown can feel like.
One second, we might seem fine. The next second, we might “boil over” — and suddenly, we’re not fine; our nervous systems become dysregulated, our brains overstimulated, and it feels like there’s a huge mess to clean up.
If you relate to this, you’re definitely not alone.
I want to normalize the ways that, as highly sensitive & neurodivergent people, we might struggle with dysregulation, meltdowns, shutdowns, or any other state that feels challenging to navigate.
What can we do about this?
Back to the spilled-milk analogy. Even though, to my eyes, it seems like the milk suddenly boils over without warning, in reality there’s a lot going on beneath the surface that leads up to the boiling point. The milk gets warmer, creates little bubbles, starts to froth up and move around in the pot.
If I pay close attention, I’ll notice these subtle signs that the boiling point is near.
The same idea applies to our nervous systems. Even though a meltdown may feel sudden & unexpected, there might be subtle signs leading up to that dysregulation point.
The signs are different for each of us. For some, it’s sweaty palms, a slight increase in heart rate, or shortening of the breath. Maybe thoughts move faster or slower. Feelings may become more intense, or numbed-out.
If we observe our nervous systems as if it were a pot on the stove, we might notice lots of moments between “everything is fine” and “everything is not fine.”
The boiling point might feel more predictable, less abrupt. And importantly, we might have the chance to turn down the temperature before the pot boils over and spills.
A question to reflect on: How does your nervous system let you know if it’s reaching a boiling point?
LETTER #3: One person’s calm is another person’s chaos
“It’s too quiet here,” one of my college dorm mates is saying. “I couldn’t even sleep last night.”
It’s our second day attending college in middle-of-nowhere, Vermont, and we’re still acclimating to our new rural environment. Half-unpacked suitcases lay in our half-decorated rooms. Everyone is still learning each other’s names and how to not get lost on the way to the bathroom.
My dorm mate explains that, having grown up in a big city, they aren’t used to pitch-black nights, where you’re more likely to see a shooting star than a skyscraper.
Nor are they used to such eerily quiet nights, devoid of sirens, honking, or the sounds of city life that make them feel at home.
A few days pass. My dorm mate reports that they’re finally getting some rest — by playing music on their phone & keeping a night light on as they lie in bed. They’ve figured out a way to recreate the conditions they’re used to falling asleep in: gentle background activity, instead of utter nothingness.
As for me? I sleep like a log in the silence of our rural Vermont campus. The lack of stimulation is soothing to me; exactly what my nervous system needs.
I mention this story because it’s a reminder that each nervous system is uniquely designed.
What’s calming to one person might be overstimulating to another.
The soft lighting & music that allowed my college dorm mate to finally get some rest, would’ve put my entire body on edge.
Meanwhile, the darkness & silence that I crave would have had them tossing & turning for hours.
There’s no one experience that is universally calming, soothing, or helpful for everyone. That’s okay.
My invitation for you:
Stay curious about what your nervous system needs.
Notice what feels good, bad, or neutral for you; what experiences you crave, and what you prefer to avoid.
Use your observations to build self-care practices that work for you.
Your nervous system is telling you something important. How is it to listen & follow its lead?
LETTER #4: What is nervous system healing really about?
Nervous system healing is about…
learning to be kind to yourself
learning to trust your intuition
learning practical skills to take care of your nervous system, like breathing techniques & sensory-soothing strategies — and importantly, finding the ones that actually work for you
processing painful past experiences that may have gotten “stuck” in your nervous system & that you’re ready to release (which is where brain-body therapies like Internal Family Systems, Brainspotting, and EMDR are really helpful)
And, we can’t talk about nervous system healing without also talking about how…
The systems around us are constantly impacting our nervous system health.
Lack of access to healthcare & basic social safety nets takes a huge toll on the nervous system.
The pressures of capitalism — the feeling of running on a hamster wheel that never stops spinning — can take a huge toll on the nervous system.
The chronic stress of living in an unsafe, unjust environment can also take a huge toll on the nervous system.
In other words: Our nervous systems don’t exist in a vacuum; they exist within the context of our institutions, systems, and dynamics of privilege, power, and oppression.
Which means that individual healing, while important, is just one part of the puzzle.
As a therapist & coach specializing in nervous system healing, I’ve seen how nervous system healing is often portrayed as a personal quest.
“Just learn the right breathing techniques, pick an affirmation, and follow the perfect self-care plan, and ta-da! – your nervous system is healed in 3 easy steps.”
^ That’s the messaging I see a lot (only slightly exaggerating for dramatic effect).
And while that may work for some people, I see nervous system healing as far more than just a series of steps or a toolbox of self-soothing strategies.
Nervous system healing is also about examining how the systems we live under – capitalism, colonialism — contribute to our burnout, anxiety, and chronic stress, and reminding ourselves that it makes sense if we’re feeling exhausted.
There’s no point in pretending that there aren’t other factors at play — like, hello, the state of the world right now — that make it extra hard to take care of ourselves and be well right now.
I say all this not to bring our collective spirits down, but to acknowledge the truth of what we’re navigating here. Because it can be really easy to blame and shame ourselves for not “healing fast enough” or “getting over it already”…
But when there are multiple crises happening around the world, and our interconnectedness as human beings means that we are impacted by what’s happening in our communities near and far, then it makes sense if your nervous system is struggling right now.
Whether your nervous system is responding to this moment by wanting to fight, wanting to flee, wanting to freeze, or not knowing what to do or how to feel — all of that makes sense. It doesn’t mean you’re crazy, it means you’re human.
If you need a few ideas on how to help your nervous system right now (because yes, individual healing & self-care are still deeply important — they’re just part of a bigger picture), here are my invitations for you:
Listen to your favorite song.
Connect with an element of nature — the sunshine, a breath of fresh air, a body of water near you.
Rest, wherever and whenever possible.
Cuddle with a pet.
Connect with someone who makes you feel seen & heard.
To our individual & collective healing,
Liz
LETTER #5: It’s OK if your nervous system isn’t calm right now
As a therapist & coach specializing in nervous system healing, I don’t expect myself (or my clients) to be calm all the time.
Because it doesn’t make sense to be calm all the time.
And I don’t believe perpetual calm should be the goal.
Let me break it down…
We’ve all heard how important it is to “regulate our nervous systems.”
To be honest, though… I find “nervous system regulation” to be overrated. (At least, the way it’s talked about nowadays.)
Hear me out: I do think it’s important to take care of ourselves & learn ways to shift out of fight/flight/freeze mode.
Especially if, like me, you’re a highly sensitive, neurodivergent person — because we’re extra prone to sensory overload & burnout.
But something about the term “nervous system regulation” feels rigid to me, as if we're being graded on how well we can hold it all together.
So, what I focus on instead is nervous system flexibility.
Flexibility means that even if we become “dysregulated“ (think: anxious, depressed, frozen, melting down, lashing out), we eventually come back to center. No matter how hard life shakes us, we bounce back… in our own time.
Flexibility means we don’t rush ourselves to “calm down & get over it.” We don’t make ourselves wrong for being angry or sad.
Flexibility means we allow ourselves to:
grieve
cry
laugh
scream
smile
feel nothing
feel everything
connect
retreat
reconnect
…all in a span of an hour. Or a day. Or a week.
And is it not a beautiful & important thing to experience our full range as human beings?
That is the power of a flexible nervous system.
Summary of Nervous System Tips for Neurodivergent Folks
What’s 1 thing on your to-do list that you don’t absolutely need to do? Cross that off.
What’s 1 thing that brings you joy, that you can intentionally seek out today?
Each nervous system is uniquely designed. Stay curious about what your nervous system needs.
We can learn to track the signs leading up to a meltdown. How does your nervous system let you know if it’s reaching a boiling point?
Our nervous systems don’t exist in a vacuum; they exist within the context of our world. The systems we live under – capitalism, colonialism, all the -isms — contribute to our burnout, and this conversation is incomplete if we don’t acknowledge that.
Nervous system flexibility — the ability to move through a range of experiences — is more important than being calm all the time.
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About the Author
Liz Zhou (she/her) is a neurodivergent therapist, coach, and speaker. She helps highly sensitive, neurodivergent adults & couples heal their nervous systems and connect with their authentic selves, using brain-body modalities (Brainspotting, EMDR, IFS, psychedelic integration) that are quicker & more effective than traditional talk therapy. Liz offers Nervous System Healing Intensives online worldwide.
