Introduction

1Commonly autism researchers have suggested medical treatments or behavioural interventions aimed at decreasing particular behavioural expressions among autistic people, such as repetitive behaviours (Malone et al., 2005; De Filippis & Wagner, 2016) or anxiety symptoms (Yamada et al., 2020) rather trying to understand what the behaviours really mean and underlying causes. In contrast, Bellamy et al. (2021: 2209) have noted that “autistic people report difficulties with the demands of a neurotypical world,” showing the impact of the environment on everyday difficulties, for example, decision-making, stressing the importance of creating more enabling, autism-friendly environments in order for autistic people to thrive.

2Research on autism from a neurodiversity perspective (Bertilsdotter Rosqvist, Chown & Stenning, 2020) views autism and autistic behavioural expressions as something to be understood and interpreted in relation to autistic people’s coping with “the demands of a neurotypical world” (Bellamy et al., 2021), and the impact of the environment on everyday difficulties. This paper explores what can be referred to as autistic energy management, which can be understood as both a consequence of neurotypical demands, but also as autistic coping strategies, and as a way of living for autistic people.

3From a strength-based neurodiversity therapeutic approach, Zener (2019) has stressed the importance of supporting autistic people in their energy management, connected to time and energy, to not experience autistic burnout (Zener, 2019). Burnout, inertia, meltdown, and shutdown (BIMS) have been identified as important parts of some autistic people’s lives, where these “multifaceted experiences are often misunderstood by neurotypical adults, which contributes to inadequate support in managing BIMS” (Phung et al., 2021: 741421).

4Central in energy management is to interpret internal and external signs of overload, in time to prevent meltdowns. Common among autistic individuals is to experience a stimulus overload or sensory overload (Siegelman, 2005), which can be caused by hyper- and hyposensitivity (O’Neill & Jones, 1997), auditory, visual, and tactile stimuli (Max & Burke, 1997), communication difficulties (Çorlu & Yantaç, 2016), and by caretakers not adapting to the autistic individual’s needs (Rodrigues et al., 2020). These sensory overloads might cause autistic people to suffer a meltdown (Boyd et al., 2022), which can lead to behaviour that is injurious to themselves of to others (Sivasangari et al., 2019), and increased levels of anxiety (Top et al., 2018).

5Closely connected to overloads and meltdowns among autistic people is autistic fatigue and autistic burnout. Fatigue is a common experience in the autistic community (Keville, Meek & Ludlow, 2021), especially when experiencing atypical sensory reactivity and social communication difficulties, such as when trying to communicate in a noisy environment (Sturrock et al., 2022). Autistic burnout is characterized as a long-term mental, physical, and emotional exhaustion that increases over time, and often appears in connection to stressful life events or transitions. Autistic burnout has significant negative consequences for autistic people’s mental health, wellbeing, and quality of life (Mantzalas et al., 2022ab). Although commonly described on social media by autistic people, and autistic people stressing mental health challenges from burnout (Raymaker et al., 2020), there is little recognition of autistic burnout in the academic literature. Anecdotally, autistic burnout is described as a debilitating condition that severely impacts functioning, is linked to suicidal ideation and is driven by the stress of masking and living in an unaccommodating neurotypical world (Higgins et al., 2021).

6Camouflaging or masking is a social phenomenon utilized by both autistic and non-autistic people – consciously or unconsciously – in everyday social interactions (Cook et al., 2021ab; Pearson & Rose, 2021): “an unsurprising response to the deficit narrative and accompanying stigma that has developed around autism” (Pearson & Rose, 2021: 52). Autistic people often use camouflaging strategies to hide their characteristics or to seem non-autistic in different social interactions to adapt to neurotypical norms on social communication, and to be valued by others. However, these strategies have personal costs such as fatigue, anxiety, difficulties in friendships (Cook et al., 2021ab), burnout, suicidality, mental health issues, and late or missed diagnosis (Pearson & Rose, 2021).

7Some research has explored the possibilities of autistic resilience in relation to the demands of a neurotypical world and its consequences connected to autistic energy management (Higgins et al., 2021; Raymaker et al., 2020; Mantzalas et al., 2022ab). Resilience is described as “a dynamic process through which people adjust to adversity and buffer anxiety and depression” (Taylor et al., 2022: 250), or an ability to “‘bounce back’ following difficult emotional experiences, and the flexibility to adapt to stressful and demanding situations” (Hwang et al., 2020: 1572). Research has stressed the importance of resilience among autistic people in issues concerning suicidality (O’Halloran, Poey & Wilson, 2022), depression (Taylor et al., 2022), and well-being (Bailey et al., 2020). However, the research on autism and resilience is overall quite scarce, specifically regarding the connection between autistic resilience and mental health (Muniandy et al., 2021; Hwang et al., 2020), self-perception (Nguyen et al., 2020), and positive self-experiences, support and well-being (Bailey et al., 2020).

8Several researchers have stressed the importance of listening to and acknowledging the feelings and experiences of people with autism, but also their coping strategies to understand and support autistic people (Spillers, Sensui & Linton, 2014; Rodgers et al., 2018). A focus on autistic individual’s strengths and resilience strategies can create better support systems for autistic people (Cost et al., 2021) and develop more effective strategies of mental health (Muniandy et al., 2021). Autistic behaviour expressions that has been interpreted as problem behaviours that should be diminished or eliminated, can from a neurodiversity perspective be reinterpreted as coping behaviours related to autistic fatigue or the consequences of autistic fatigue, such as autistic burnout, meltdown, overload, or recovery from fatigue, but also of resilience. Research, from a neurodiversity perspective, has foremost focused on the outcome of fatigue or living in a constant fatigue, such as autistic burnout, autistic meltdown, autistic overload, or to recover from these expressions of fatigue, such as autistic recovery. When discussing autistic resilience, this is just partly associated with an energy account in balance, or as a matter of self-conscious everyday balancing and accounting, with other words, autistic energy management and a preventive everyday work of autistic people to support their wellbeing and avoid mental illness. The aim of the paper is to explore how five young autistic adults are actively engaged in energy management in order to manage their energy levels in relation to work, leisure activities, and social relationships.

Theoretical frameworks

9Murray, Lesser, and Lawson (2005) have formulated the theory of monotropism, which takes autism as cognitive difference as starting point. According to Murray (2018): “The central idea of monotropism […] is that in autism, processing resource strongly tends to localise and concentrate to the exclusion of other input; an atypicality from which many other differences can be seen to follow. Understanding this concept fully requires a view of mind as a system of interests which inform cognitive, perceptual, and emotional processes.” Autistic people are referred to as “monotropic thinkers,” while non-autistic people are referred to as “polytropic thinkers.” Polytropism implies the existence of many co-aroused interests constantly establishing and reinforcing connections between each other. To be monotropic includes having an attention tunnel with a hyper-awareness, but a hypo-awareness outside of it, resulting in large areas of potential information not being registered (Murray, Lesser & Lawson, 2005). Being within an attention tunnel means to benefit from being given more time to accommodate one’s set-shifting problems. This is also associated with what has been referred to as autistic inertia (Buckle et al., 2021), characterised by feelings of “‘getting stuck’, of being unable to move on without prompts” (Murray, Lesser & Lawson, 2005: 144). Murray, Lesser, and Lawson (2005) notes that autistic individuals tend to find it easy to know what to do when it involves something they are interested in, while often struggling with leisure time.

10In line with the idea of the monotropic and polytropic thinkers, Bertilsdotter Rosqvist (2019) introduces the idea of different motivation drives behind sociality and learning; on the one hand interest-based motivation for sociality and learning which is associated with the monotropic thinker, on the other hand socially based sociality and motivation for learning driven by social interest, which is associated with the polytropic thinker. Rather than viewing autistic sociality as a deficit version of non-autistic sociality, Bertilsdotter Rosqvist (2019) argues that autistic sociality and learning are informed by an interest-based sociality, including the importance of authenticity, talking with engagement and genuine knowledge about the content (ibid.: 176).

11Some researchers have sought to explore the possibilities of building interventions based upon a positive youth development philosophy focusing on the interests of autistic people to enhance their social engagement. For example, Diener et al. (2016) explored the possibilities of technology workshops, showing how the participants during the intervention developed authentic relationships with their peers as a result of humour, shared interests, physical activities, and good-natured competition. Similarly, First et al. (2019) have argued that it is important to identify young autistic people’s coping experiences when planning and implementing programs, services and policies intended to support young autistic people in their transition to adulthood.

Methods

12This study was part of a larger research project with the overall objective of exploring different aspects of experiences of supported employment interventions amongst autistic adults or adults with a learning difficulty. The whole data set consisted of sixteen in-depth interviews with five men and three women who were recruited with the support of coaches at the vocational service intervention centre. Seven of the participants were in their twenties to thirties and one was in his early forties. All participants lived in or in the close vicinity of Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. The sample included young adults from both middle-class and working-class backgrounds, where class is understood in relation to higher education. Six of the participants were born in Sweden and two were born abroad but migrated to Sweden in their early years. The interviews were conducted by Bertilsdotter Rosqvist in Swedish and covered experiences or expectations of work life in the ordinary labour market, experiences of life outside of work life (including leisure, social and personal relationships) and experiences of support (including self-supporting strategies). The interviews lasted between 30 and 120 minutes. This study has been approved by the Regional Ethical Review Board in Umeå, Sweden [2017/43–31].

13In this study, the data consisted of twelve in-depth interviews with four of the young autistic men and one of the young autistic women. None of these interviewees had a learning difficulty. These interviews were conducted in pairs or individually and they took place at the office of the vocational rehabilitation service provider.

1) Alice, in her 20s, is currently in a vocational rehabilitation intervention where she together with a coach are mapping out her interests and strengths in order to match these with a potential employer’s need: interviewed three times individually.

2) Hugo, in his 20s, is responsible for the company’s webpage and provides software support to colleagues: interviewed three times individually.

3) Lucas, in his 20s, holds a managerial position that involves customer responsibility: interviewed three times individually.

4) Oscar, in his 20s, works as archivist at a museum: interviewed once in pair with another participant, and once individually.

5) William, in his early 40s, has a solitary work which involves archiving: interviewed three times, twice in pair with another participant, once individually.

14Qualitative inductive content analysis was used to analyse the data (Elo & Kyngäs, 2008). Initially, all interviews from the data set were read several times by all authors to get an overall impression of the material. After reading through the whole data set, four general themes emerged: energy management, support, learning and self-reflexivity. For this study data about energy management was analysed. During the thematization of the data, we noted that the data about energy management only included interviews with four of the autistic male and one of the autistic female interviewees without a learning difficulty. After thematization, we coded the data about energy management. The coding process was influenced by classical grounded theory, guided by the constant comparative method and memo writing. Individual line-by-line coding was performed separately by the authors, and discussions and comparisons were made in relation to emerging categories (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). Categories were compared and similar categories were merged into categories. In the findings, the categories are illustrated by quotations and examples from the data.

15The data is limited concerning the number of interviewees and interviews included in this paper: interviews with five autistic interviewees, among them one woman and four men. However, the data is rich and in-depth, and we experienced a saturation in the data concerning the identified themes.

Findings

16Sustaining energy management was identified as an overall theme concerning how functionality was discussed, understood, and expressed by the young autistic adults related to energy consumption. The young adults tried to understand and learn more about their energy levels and energy needs, and how they could create strategies for managing their energy. Three main energy saving strategies were identified: selecting social interaction, balancing energy levels, and estimating energy consumption.

Selecting social interaction

17Selecting social interaction concerns learning how social contacts both can generate and consume energy. Choice and limitation of social interaction with family members, friends and co-workers fluctuate and are adapted to the perceived energy level in relation to the estimated effort required to participate in a certain social activity. Selecting social interaction includes identifying and adapting different types of social interactions in relation to both the type of activity and perceived and actual social requirements from oneself and others, as well as the estimated meaning and value related to the social activity in which the social interaction takes place.

18Spending time with others is mentioned as an important need among the young adults, albeit to varying degrees regarding the frequency and intensity where the issue of energy management becomes central. This is expressed by Oscar: “Ironically, I also refuel energy through others so at the same time as others are my weakness, they are also my strength” (Oscar, interview 2). The choice of socialising also depends on the energies of the people you are attracted to and if and how your energy is compatible with theirs since one’s emotional energy is affected by other people’s emotional energy. Or as Alice puts it:

I think I’m infected. Although I don’t know, if someone comes and is very hyper, I don’t get hyper myself. Just stressed *laughter*. Um, it feels best when someone is calm, I guess. [I] Don’t know. It feels like it’s ok if someone is hyper, as long as they don’t expect others to keep up 100 % *laughter*. (Alice, interview 2)

19A central aspect of the balancing act of maintaining a functional energy level are other people’s abilities to recognise and be sensitive to different energy levels of others. When others do not acknowledge different social needs and patterns of interaction, it can be difficult to manage a social relationship. Qualities mentioned by the young adults as important in relationships with other people are honesty, clarity and sharing a common interest in the subject of the discussion (Bertilsdotter Rosqvist, 2019). Alice explains:

Both my mother and my father […] It feels like they have a lot of monologues, talk about things that they find interesting, and don’t really know what I find interesting. (Alice, interview 2)

20Preference for an interest-driven sociality (Bertilsdotter Rosqvist, 2019) is the reason why Alice hardly has any relationship with her parents. This might also be explained by monotropism where autistic people’s attention span is compared to a tunnel of hyper-awareness, resulting in less attention to the outside of the tunnel (Murray, 2018; Murray, Lesser & Lawson, 2005). Thus, topics or interests taking place outside the “monotropic tunnel” might lead to feelings of uninterest or possibly a high level of energy consumption by trying to socialise outside of the interest-driven sociality (Bertilsdotter Rosqvist, 2019; Murray, 2018; Murray, Lesser & Lawson, 2005).

21The preference of interest-driven sociality is also found in Oscar’s story. Oscar says that he gets energy from interesting conversations where people respect and listen to each other. If that is not the case, Oscar will choose to withdraw from the relationship since it “drains too much of the [my] energy” (Oscar, interview 2). Oscar’s feeling of certain relationships draining his energy and Alice withdrawal from her might be explained by what Bertilsdotter Rosqvist (2019) refers to as socially based sociality where the sociality is based around the social group rather than the common interests. Like Oscar and Alice, the young autistic adults in Bertilsdotter Rosqvist (2019) found the socially based sociality both tiring and energy consuming.

Balancing energy levels

22Through the identification of individual energy levels, the young adults try to balance their energy in order to manage their everyday life of leisure and work. Leisure and work are connected in terms of energy; how the energy spent during working hours affects leisure time and vice versa. All of the young adults mainly talk about how work takes energy from their leisure time in different ways. Work makes them feel exhausted when they come home from work, which sometimes makes them feel depressed or burned out. Hugo, Lucas, and Oscar describe how they lack the energy to socialise with relatives and friends, resulting in them not socialising to the same extent as before or not socialising at all. Hugo describes this feeling:

[t]his job has generally been good for me, so I’ve felt better mentally, but it has spilt over to most other things really, I have much less energy to meet my family and friends on the weekends. As it happens, I don’t feel that I have the energy for it often, even if I would like to, it’s just not possible, I still haven’t come up with a good solution, on how to do it. (Hugo, interview 2)

23Hugo tries to balance work and leisure time so that not all his energy is used for work. In the future he wants to be able to participate in social gatherings because they can “refill” his energy. Lucas has realised that it is easier to control his energy levels after work, since there is no external pressure related to work performance and social norms:

[d]uring leisure time, everyone usually knows what helps them to relax (Bertilsdotter Rosqvist: Mm.) so in working life it’s probably harder to succeed in finding the balance of “yes how do I relax?” versus “what do I do to not get stressed?” (Lucas, interview 3)

24In our study, we find stress to be strongly related to the young autistic adults’ energy levels balancing work and leisure time (First et al., 2019). Different strategies for how the young adults try to sustain the balance between work and leisure are highlighted. At work, one strategy is for the young adults to admit and communicate their need to avoid people and situations that are perceived as stressful and energy-intensive, and to avoid depression and burnout (Mantzalas et al., 2022ab). Another strategy is to get, or demand, the opportunity to recover energy-wise at work through, for example, breaks or not having to participate in all social contexts that the workplace offers and sometimes (unofficially) demands from the employees. These strategies need to be supported by the management at their workplaces that can provide guidance in both the choice of work and tasks as well as being available for continuous dialogue about the young adults’ work environment and social well-being (Zener, 2019). In the latter strategy, Oscar highlights the importance of having a supportive work environment, where both his manager and colleagues accept and understand Oscar’s need to be able to decide when and to what extent he can participate in the social interactions and activities at work:

It’s up to me […] My boss prefers that I come down and talk to the others [co-workers] and be a little social with them but it’s a bit off and on sometimes I do it sometimes I don’t. It depends on my general mood (Bertilsdotter Rosqvist: Ah.) And she [the boss] lets me decide on that part so that’s why it’s so it’s quite adapted work for me. (Oscar, interview 2)

25To save energy after work hours or during weekends, the young adults focus on winding down. Common ways to unwind and gather energy can be summarised in two overarching approaches: doing something that does not require much focus and effort, such as playing games, watching TV series and movies, or getting involved in interests that may require a high focus, such as family genealogy, creative writing or tinkering with computers.

26The strategies of energy saving by balancing energy levels identified among the young autistic adults have several similarities with First et al.’s (2019) study of strategies and resources young autistic people utilise to handle the stress of their adulthood transition. Both groups mentioned leisure time activities (e.g. video games, TV, movies, books, and music) and seeking support. In our study, seeking support included mainly support from the management of the workplace. This support might decrease stress, lead to a better balance between work and leisure time and potentially lead to building self-esteem and confidence – which First et al. (2019) identify as another stress coping strategy.

Estimating energy consumption

27By being familiar with their energy levels and estimating how much energy different activities require and give, the young adults try to prevent energy imbalances. Among the young adults two different approaches were identified: trying to calculate and visualise energy, and sensing energy.

28Trying to calculate and visualise energy involves using schedules or notes where the number of hours per activity is calculated. Alice prioritises having a “meaningful everyday life” where the workload at work must not consume too much of her energy that it will affect her everyday life. To calculate how much Alice feels she can work, she has estimated how many hours a week she needs for necessary needs and how many hours are left for work and leisure:

Then there are only 68 hours left. Then I thought that, if you were to work, if it’s 40 hours you work, then it feels like, then there are only 28 hours left. Then it felt like my life would feel completely meaningless all of a sudden. Then it felt like I wouldn’t have time for everything I want to do. It feels like it needs to be the other way around. It needs to be maybe 20-28 hours I work, and then I get 40 hours to spend on what I think is meaningful. And of course, I don’t know if there’s a job that can feel very meaningful [to me], so it doesn’t matter how long I work. But right now it feels like, it’s difficult… (Alice, interview 2)

29Among the young adults, Alice has the most developed strategy for estimating energy consumption:

I have a calendar where I write down things that I have in mind. […] A day is divided into two parts. One part is what I intend to do, and the other part is, what I actually did. Then I figure out like, how many hours did I meet my boyfriend? If I have met my boyfriend very little, then I usually feel… it feels very sad *little laugh*. It feels lonely because I do not have many friends besides him. Um. I basically only have two friends. One that I usually meet once a month, and one that I have on the internet. (Alice, interview 2)

30By the end of each day, Alice makes a summary of her daily activities. Apart from keeping track of time, the calendar helps her to identify her feelings towards different activities. Some weeks she had planned to spend more time with her boyfriend than she actually did. Noticing the discrepancy between her wishes and needs in relation to reality, makes her realise that she feels lonely and potentially could benefit from having more friends.

31Through calculation and follow-up, Alice tries to estimate how much time and energy certain tasks take. When she rearranges her schedule for the forthcoming week where she tries to make relevant adjustments, where she adapts her planned activities to estimated time and energy consumption:

I have a list at home, like a cleaning [list]. I wrote down that it takes about 25 minutes to vacuum the apartment. It may take ten minutes to dust. So, I have a list of how long everything takes… And I think it’s really nice to have […] So, every week, I already have a template, and then I redo it for every week […] I have a list where I write down everything that I need to plan and how long it’ll take. And then I have everything visually as well – how long it’ll take. It feels like I’m pretty good at estimating how long things will take. (Alice, interview 1)

32For Alice, the visual becomes a way to increase her ability to estimate available energy. Trying to understand energy consumption “from the outside” by estimating, evaluating, and then learning to make accurate calculations of energy levels for future calculations can mitigate or even prevent experiences of energy imbalance.

33Sensing energy is related to being emotionally aware of how different energy levels are experienced. Identifying and trusting one’s own feelings, can be understood as sensing or experiencing energy “from within,” without relying on external information through calendars, schedules or notes. For Hugo, sensing energy is linked to being in his interest-driven monotropic (Murray, Lesser & Lawson, 2005) focus in which he loses track of time and hunger. Over time he has learned that he needs to be aware of situations in which he becomes absorbed and even though he does not feel hungry or tired, he makes himself take a break to sustain his energy:

you learn that you are in the zone, and in some way, you recognise the feeling. This, I have to keep in mind: how long I sit with this really. (Hugo, interview 2)

34Although Alice to a great extent handles her energy management through visualisation and estimation, there are situations when she lets her feelings guide her to make decisions and manage her energy, for example, when buying clothes. Instead of having a “long list in her head” with various parameters that need to be fulfilled before she can buy any clothes, she describes how she strives for feeling strongly about an item of clothing, almost like the sensation of falling in love. Alice says:

The first thing I really get a very strong feeling for, an item of clothing. So, it’s kind of like I look at clothes, because otherwise it takes a very long time. (Alice, interview 2)

35In this sense, the feeling serves as a way for Alice to gather energy to be able to buy clothes instead of a list of different requirements that the garment must meet where the energy risks running out due to the high demands.

36William relies on his own sense of knowing how much energy something takes, and associates this with something ordinary, as something that “most others” do. William explains it as:

[I] mostly do as others do. [I] think about what I shall do now […] I do what I feel like doing. For example, if I [want to] watch a TV series or something on TV, I do it. (William, interview 2)

37Some of the young adults find it difficult to identify when their energy (usually) disappears quickly, and to know how to identify which energy-intensive situations to avoid and which situations are impossible to handle energy-wise. However, other informants do not seem to experience (the same) difficulties in identifying and recognising these energy-intensive situations or knowing how to deal with them. Nevertheless, all of the young adults underline the importance of understanding themselves and their way of functioning based on energy levels. By knowing oneself, it also becomes easier to understand others and their needs (Zener, 2019; Phung et al., 2021). Reflecting on situations that required a lot of energy can by itself, function as an energy management strategy.

Conclusions

39Energy management strategies serve as different ways for the young autistic adults to sustain their energy balance by trying to understand what increases or reduces their energy levels. In this way, energy management can be understood as ways of living, where the informants’ individual energy levels, the contexts in which they find themselves and the strategies they use to influence and form central parts of their everyday life. Fundamental to energy management strategies is knowing oneself and being aware of when the energy needs to be maintained or refilled, which is achieved through developing self-knowledge, self-awareness, and self-reflection (Bertilsdotter Rosqvist et al., 2022).

40Closely related to both functionality and energy levels were sociality, social relationships, and social interactions with others. The young autistic adults expressed how people’s energies affect their own energy in terms of what energies one is attracted to and how different energies are (in)compatible. Not understanding or respecting each other’s energies can make it difficult to manage a social relationship. Hence, the young autistic adults bring forward energy as a crucial part of – and criterion for – social relationships.

41The young autistic adults’ functionality, energy levels and sociality were analysed in terms of monotropism (Murray, 2018; Murray, Lesser & Lawson, 2005) and interest-based sociality versus socially based sociality (Bertilsdotter Rosqvist, 2019) in the sense that they expressed how they were prone to interact socially in interest-based topics. Common interests were not only brought forward as a preference when socialising, but also expressed in terms of how uninteresting topics, falling outside of the “monotropic tunnel”, were experienced as tiring and energy-consuming (Bertilsdotter Rosqvist, 2019; Murray, 2018; Murray, Lesser & Lawson, 2005).

42The energy management strategies utilized by the young autistic adults in our study is concerned with both getting to know oneself and how one functions. However, this does not only concern a question of identity work. It is also a question of trying to avoid negative consequences of energy imbalance, such as depression, fatigue, or burnout (Keville, Meek & Ludlow, 2021), which can affect their mental health, wellbeing, and quality of life (Mantzalas et al., 2022ab). One imbalance several of the young autistic adults in our study express is the balance between work and leisure. They often feel exhausted coming home from work, and they express how this can make them feel depressed or burned out.

43Developing their energy management strategies can be understood in relation to resilience, that is how one adjust to challenges, “bounce back” difficult emotional experiences, and one’s flexibility in adapting to situations that are stressful and demanding (Taylor et al., 2022; Hwang et al., 2020). By being able to balance work time and leisure time, and having enough energy for both, the young autistic adults can create a greater sense of resilience and empowerment. With a low sense of resilience, autistic people are more exposed to suicidality, depression, and lower quality of life (O’Halloran, Poey & Wilson, 2022; Taylor et al., 2022; Bailey et al., 2020). Energy management and resilience can thus increase their self-awareness, and decrease the risk of them experiencing fatigue, depression and burnout.

44Building on a neurodiversity perspective on autism and resilience, focusing on autistic individual’s strengths and resilience strategies can create better support systems for autistic people (Cost et al., 2021), and develop more effective strategies of mental health (Muniandy et al., 2021) by involving the autistic community and taking part of their experiences (Heselton, 2021). From this perspective, the young autistic adults become individuals with different functionalities, needs and proneness to different coping strategies where managing one’s energy levels is crucial (Jaysane-Darr, 2020). Several researchers have stressed the importance of listening to and acknowledging the feelings and experiences of people with autism, but also their coping strategies to understand and support autistic people (Spillers et al, 2014; Rodgers et al., 2018) – adapted to fluctuating levels of energy (First et al., 2019).

45By listening to and learning about the individual autistic clients – specifically how they develop and utilize energy management strategies – the practitioners, such as social workers, can learn more about autism (Dinecola & Lemieux, 2015; Preece & Jordan, 2007), offer support adapted to the individual client’s needs (Rodgers et al., 2018), identify coping strategies (First et al., 2019), challenge borders, societal values and stigma for young autistic adults leading to unemployment (Milen & Nicholas, 2017; Newman, Christopher & Berry, 2000), supporting the client in having a meaningful life and strive for social inclusion (Bishop-FitzOscar et al., 2019; Milen & Nicholas, 2017).