How many meltdowns a week?

Totally depends - as a child I melted down quite a bit (can't remember exactly how often), as a teenager/young woman trying to cope with a difficult childhood and undiagnosed AS I melted down a couple of times a week and sometimes more. Once I got a grip on the AS, and counselling for anxiety and depression - and in the 'old days' of the 80s and 90s when you could sign on for long-ish periods without hassle or study on full grants and scholarships I would have very few meltdowns because I was able to manage a recovery routine over a few months really well - stay at home, sleep enough, eat properly and spend ages planning nutrition etc and nurturing kefir cultures etc, go for a long walk, listen to some music and stim, lose myself in my interest du jour. When I was doing my PhD they used to leave you alone - I'd work round the clock for a few weeks then flake into recovery routine for a few weeks - that worked totally for me, few meltdowns. Fast forward to new millennium and crushing economic pressure and stressful work environments - I'm usually OK if I'm at home but will melt down if I've had a particularly stressful time at work or had to travel a lot etc. Like you, I can usually head it off, if I'm at home, with music and stimming but if I'm out I'm f****d - my best hope is to get home *before* I start yelling and hitting myself around the head in public ;) Sometimes I'm too stupid (and lacking in self-awareness) to tell an NT friend when I need to be alone and I'll get overwhelmed and melt down over something trivial like a kitchen implement in the wrong cupboard so I can't find it. The best I can say for the whole topic is that I manage it better and better as I get older (despite external conditions getting much more challenging) and I now only tend to melt down mildly in airport security etc - so you've the likelihood of improvement to look forward to :D  And some of my savvier NT friends have learned to read the runes and take themselves off when they see signs that I'm not coping. In my experience, it *does* get a lot better as your coping techniques get more effective and remembering to do them more like 'second nature'.

Totally depends - as a child I melted down quite a bit (can't remember exactly how often), as a teenager/young woman trying to cope with a difficult childhood and undiagnosed AS I melted down a couple of times a week and sometimes more. Once I got a grip on the AS, and counselling for anxiety and depression - and in the 'old days' of the 80s and 90s when you could sign on for long-ish periods without hassle or study on full grants and scholarships I would have very few meltdowns because I was able to manage a recovery routine over a few months really well - stay at home, sleep enough, eat properly and spend ages planning nutrition etc and nurturing kefir cultures etc, go for a long walk, listen to some music and stim, lose myself in my interest du jour. When I was doing my PhD they used to leave you alone - I'd work round the clock for a few weeks then flake into recovery routine for a few weeks - that worked totally for me, few meltdowns. Fast forward to new millennium and crushing economic pressure and stressful work environments - I'm usually OK if I'm at home but will melt down if I've had a particularly stressful time at work or had to travel a lot etc. Like you, I can usually head it off, if I'm at home, with music and stimming but if I'm out I'm f****d - my best hope is to get home *before* I start yelling and hitting myself around the head in public ;) Sometimes I'm too stupid (and lacking in self-awareness) to tell an NT friend when I need to be alone and I'll get overwhelmed and melt down over something trivial like a kitchen implement in the wrong cupboard so I can't find it. The best I can say for the whole topic is that I manage it better and better as I get older (despite external conditions getting much more challenging) and I now only tend to melt down mildly in airport security etc - so you've the likelihood of improvement to look forward to :D  And some of my savvier NT friends have learned to read the runes and take themselves off when they see signs that I'm not coping. In my experience, it *does* get a lot better as your coping techniques get more effective and remembering to do them more like 'second nature'.