The Cost of Displacement: Autistic Burnout in a World Without Anchors

This past week, I’ve been living without internet at home. My phone hotspot is just strong enough to send emails, but not stable enough for the video calls I rely on in my work as a psychotherapist. And so, in order to keep showing up; to clients, to colleagues, to commitments; I’ve had to move across London, day by day, hour by hour, visiting friends’ homes just to find a signal strong enough to work.

On paper, that might sound like a practical workaround. But in practice, it’s been quietly brutal. Each journey across the city — the changes in lighting, sounds, smells, temperatures, social expectations — drains me. Each unfamiliar room asks me to navigate new sensory landscapes, new colours, new rules. Each day, I’m displaced — from my rhythms, from my quiet, from my anchoring. It’s not just inconvenient. It’s depleting.

I don’t think people always understand what it costs an autistic person to be repeatedly, forcibly dislocated from their environment. It’s not about being fussy or resistant to change-it’s about the way we regulate, perceive, and orient ourselves through place. My ability to be present — emotionally, cognitively, interpersonally-is intimately tied to being in the right surroundings. For me, that place is home.

The Colours That Keep Me Whole

My home isn’t just familiar it is calibrated. Every element has been chosen not just for comfort, but for survival. The colours on my walls, for example, are not neutral or decorative. They are protective. I’ve chosen hues that absorb and soften light, colours that hold me, that allow my nervous system to unclench.

White walls that are so often assumed to be “calming” or “clean” do the opposite for me. White and beige rooms are exhausting. The light bounces off them harshly, unrelentingly. The blankness feels like a sensory vacuum, sucking away my ability to focus or settle. These are not “neutral” spaces. Instead, they are spaces that erase. I feel undone inside them. They present to me blue light or green light auras.

Without my chosen colours, textures, sounds such as the quiet hum of my own kettle, the softness of a familiar blanket, the angle of light I’ve grown used to, my body stays in a low-level panic. I can still function. I can even appear “fine.” But inside, the cost is mounting. And over time, that cost becomes burnout.

I Can’t Deliver from Disconnection

This week has made one thing painfully clear: I cannot deliver my work (not fully, not ethically, not sustainably) unless I am held by the environment that allows me to be regulated. I am a deeply ethical, committed practitioner. But I’m also an autistic one. And that means I do not work well under fragmented, displaced conditions. I do not thrive in borrowed spaces. I cannot perform through depletion.

Psychotherapy requires attunement: to myself, to the other, to the moment. And that attunement breaks when my own nervous system is in survival mode, when I’m asking my brain to track new bus routes, rely on taxis to get me there on time, tolerate new smells, mask new discomforts, and speak with warmth while silently screaming for quiet.

This isn’t about fragility. It’s about truth. My best work emerges from groundedness—not from being pushed to the edge of my tolerance to appear competent.

Multiplicity Includes Place

Returning to Annemarie Mol, this is another form of multiplicity: the self that can practice, the self that can be present and attuned, is enacted in my place, with my colours, in my regulated state. Dislocate that, and a different version of me emerges — scattered, struggling, depleted. Still real, still deserving of care, but not able to offer the same care in return.

So when systems or expectations ignore that—when it’s assumed that “work is work” and can happen anywhere, anytime, with the same outcome, that’s a fundamental misunderstanding of how bodies like mine function, encounter, exist.... Of how place, regulation, and presence are all entwined.