Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi All,
I've been trying to understand my experiences in the context of things like Meltdowns, Overload and Shutdowns. I've been struggling to match my experiences to the terms though and was hoping people here could help give insights into them to match them up. Or are they just typical human emotions that aren't autism related?
For example:
I've had an episode where I saw someone linked to a past traumatic event and after a few minutes went completely non-verbal, heavy breathing, collapsed to the ground next to my car kind of thing. Is this an implosive version of a meltdown? Is it an anxiety attack, or does that tend to have more thoughts and fears along with it?
I find identifying meltdowns particularly tricky given that I'm not prone to violence or aggression particularly, which in most online research tends to get linked to meltdowns.
So how do you know the difference between a shutdown, a meltdown, or something else?
Any insights or questions welcome!
Thanks,Craig
I can tell you the definitions that I use, but as tfw7 said, they're not very precisely defined terms, and they do seem to shade into each other, and are very closely related. So bear in mind that I'm speaking mostly about my personal experiences of them.
After a shut-down or melt-down you will usually feel extremely drained and tired, and probably need to sleep, use sensory comforters, or stim a lot. Recovery from only an anxiety attack is usually quicker and easier, but not always.
Just to confuse you even further (I'm sorry), there another one you might hear that I might as well introduce to complete the set.
You'll note with all of those that stress and anxiety seem to come up a lot. In one way or another, stress causes all of them, if you include extreme emotions, having trouble communicating with the world, and sensory sensitivities as sources of stress, which they surely are. Anything you can do which lowers the amount of stress in your life will help.
ooh yeah, burn out, I get that. "Running on empty" or "just not feeling it" were the phrases I used pre-diagnosis when anyone asked how i felt and it was that kind of thing where it's a gradual build up.