*Autistic Shutdowns collection* - Do you experience these ?

yes of course it helps,,,,, the shut downs all vary greatly and someone will be just like you  ---- thats how u will be helping others 

thanks for your contribution :)

I was going to save this til later but since I just experienced one I think I should write it down now.

So the the sun woke me up earlier than I wanted it too and I couldn't get back to sleep, so I got up, did my routine, sat here and responded to a comment and then started watching some Trailer Park boys.

But everything felt wrong.

The stimuli in my body was wrong like I could feel processes that I dont want to feel, the feel of the air on my skin was wrong like the heat from my body was at battle with the cold air, everything just felt like conflict... and it was too much, I had to shut down.

So i crawled onto my bed and did something that I only learnt the label for recently, stimming. All those movements that i do that irritate other people, the things I would get told off for in school like swinging on my chair or having the table pressed against my face, stimming. The flicking and the destruction of fragile objects close to hand, stimming. So that's what i did and for the first time realised what was happening. So I was flicking my foot for what seemed about 10 mins (we'll never know how long it was) and then finally the processes in my body seemed to level off, everything seemed to reach an equilibrium... but that wasn't the end of it.

The stimming stopped and i felt okay but i couldn't move, my brain was saying "alright time to get up now" but nothing, its like the sheer amount of energy/will power/connection that it would take to engage my body is just to much. So i lay there, again for what feels like a short time, then i get little movements back, little flicks of my nails on my hand, extending a finger to touch the wall in front of me. the flicking then turns into tapping which becomes a little pattern of music? beat? I get some use of my arms back and i try to keep momentum, keep the swinging and the tapping going, and then eventually, and again I didnt realise this till now, i let out an "argh!" or a growl and im finnaly able to swing myself up from my core, then sit there staring as i gather the energy to move. Funny thing is, i don't remember getting off the bed, I found myself in my chair where I am now, clearly having made some sort of decision to be here, so here I am, writing about the experience.

Does this help? Because it has certainly helped me!

glad u got use out of this collection :)

Thank you for this description. I can totally relate to your experiences but have never been able to articulate what I see/feel. 

thanks for adding to this collection

no problem yours is pretty unique! Thanks for your response and contribution. It was a very interesting read.

Thanks aidie – I’m a new user!  I’m trying to understand shut downs, melt downs, and burn out…

What I mostly experience is an overwhelming need to get somewhere safe and go to sleep.  That is typically to get home and go to bed but can be get to my car, lock the doors and go to sleep - not much good on a hot day though.  Going to sleep resets my brain.

Sometimes I dissociate.  A few weeks ago I was safely sitting on a rock in space in a warm and sunny spot while my psychologist talked me through my ASD assessment report.  The moon was just in front of me with the Earth off in the distance - it was pleasant!

I have also had a few catatonic experiences which occurred when I was already somewhere safe – and just froze standing or sitting where I was. 

just replying, so new users can contribute.

thanks for adding to this collection

The behaviours of autistic shutdown and autistic burnout are both quite similar but autistic shutdown happens suddenly like for example, my reaction to an overwhelming sensory environment might be to shutdown. Burnout is similar to shutdown but burnout happens after a period of time ranging from a few hours all the way up to a few months, even a few years.

i am not expert enough to decide,, but birth, no matter what, probably is the most traumatic thing that happens to the human body as part of our natural life cycle.   it is a pattern that women athletes, just after child birth can break world records because they have been through something more traumatic so a new record is no longer unachievable ! 

Yeah, I think I had a few like that when my son was a baby and I was on mat leave, I'd come to with tears rolling down my cheeks, half an hour gone on the clock, and my lad just waking to be fed, realising my body hadn't moved all that time, the news had been on TV and I hadn't heard a word.

I thought it was PTSD from my c-section. Maybe it was. Or maybe it was autistic shut down caused by the trauma of the c-section. Don't know. They stopped when I went back to work, anyway.

I've had a couple recently.

I wish I had a video of me as a toddler. Maybe that's what happened then.

two

www.youtube.com/watch

these are the type I have, there are also standing freezing ones as well

one

www.youtube.com/watch

I'll look for it

thanks you have added a very valuable contribution to this collection. There is one video of a french girl having a shutdown in Youtube 

Thanks for this thread aidie, I've read through a lot of these and it's been very informative indeed. I have been very confused by these term melt down, shut down and burn out, also autistic catatonia.

Speaking to my mother in preparation for my assessment, there seem to have been a lot of chilhood episodes when I withdrew into myself and became completely unresponsive (importantly including, but not exclusively when taken to the doctor), and many times I had explosive emotional outbursts over things she could not understand. And yet she is adamant I never threw the usual toddler tantrums because I could not have what I wanted. In that regard, I was a well behaved kid.

As an adult, I have often had periods of an exhaustion and emotional or sensory overwhelm that I believe have caused something similar, but mostly (but not always) I've managed to get myself away and the consequences happened behind locked doors. Somehow, I think I've been managing them, such that other than the lost time, I've coped well enough to protect life's necessities like my job...but yes going into it one of the major things I notice is a feeling of distance from the world and an inability to absorb what is going on around me.

There is one very dramatic, distressing and dangerous exception to the management of these things: medical situations!! I have a duel medical phobias; my own body on the one hand, but all medical environments, people and procedures on the other.

Even as a 2 year old, my mother said I would refuse to speak to or otherwise respond to the doctor (fear induced shut down, or withdrawn type melt down???). As an adult faced with doctors something comes over me, the world seems a mile away, I can't make out anything said to me, it's all just a sea of voices boring into my brain, I can't speak, I'm suddenly acutely aware of the sensory things around me, the colour of an item of clothing, perhaps or a single bright light in the room and this becomes the only thing I am aware of. Then I am rooted to the spot and they can't move me, or I have an overwhelming impulse to run. There have been instances when staff have had to almost bash down toilet doors to get me out or call the police because I've bolted from the building. But I cannot remember much of what happened after that zone out. I rely mainly on what I am told afterward to know.

Two years ago, they took 6 of my teeth under a general. For the first time, the moment of zone out included a rhythmic banging of my head against the wall. Afterward (K, I had been stuffed full of drugs by then), I bolted and headed straight to a major A road. They called police.

I could not eat for days, I could not speak for almost three weeks. I felt ZERO pain but I was totally and constantly overpowered (still am) by the disgusting feel of my mouth.

So many dental and doctors appointments since, or occasions when I have been pushed to be aware of my body, or illness and they are all resulting in something similar; rhythmically battering myself, shouting and effing and blinding (I would normally never do that), cut off my hair, taken sudden flight into the path of danger or with only one conscious thought in mind....I won't say it. 

I have read that autistic melt down/shut down occurs when a situation is overwhelming and inescapable. Trapped between my body and them, yes this is inescapable!!

I have been trying so hard to explain to MH services for years:

• I do not want these episodes
• There is very little or no conscious thought during them - I do not decide
• I can't remember everything about them afterward
• I can't communicate during them
• I can't absorb anything said to me during them
• The ONLY thing I feel is abject terror

But they aren't listening. They keep twittering at me about controlling emotions. But there is only one unmanaged emotion here and it feels like there is no control for me to have. They keep asking me what's going on, when I can hardly speak, or if I can only single words will come out or else a tirade of expletives. Why did they think I would know what's going on? They've dismissed me as unwilling to explore my thoughts and emotions, but I can't tell them any more than is in those bullet points, because that's all I know and all I feel.

They've responded through out as though I'm a horrible person who really could decide not to do this and have dismissed me as undeserving of any help. The last time I broke down like this in the doctor's, she was shouting at me to "stop it", but then phoned the crisis team, who spent 30 seconds on the phone telling me to ring the Semaritans. They won't even try to help me.

I think I have always has shut down/melt down over other situations of overwhelm, but as an adult, in most cases I have learned to feel the build up, get myself away and let them pass. They've been exhausting, confusing, but not dangerous or very disruptive for others. Only on rare occasions has anyone else even seen. If these are autistic phenomenon (my assessment is awaited), I could have gone my whole life not knowing that.

However, my body and medical situations are provoking something of a different order altogether and it's getting dangerous in lots of ways. I need to see a doctor for a few things and I DARE not. I have spent over two years trying to figure this out alone. And true to aspie form, no amount of investigating thought and feeling could give me any answers. I had to analyse the detail and research my way through a thousand psychology articles and blog posts on the internet for a match to the component parts of the experience, and apply a process of elimination to all the possibilities, to come to a conclusion, that autism could underlie the phobias and be responsible for the reaction.

I read that melt down/shut down cannot be stopped once started (and these episodes certainly are like that) but you can avoid or manage the triggers. I am now understanding that the triggers are a) my own body b) everything about the situation I have to be in to treat my body. There is no way to avoid this, and I can't see a way to manage it. I'm scared.

I am still struggling to seperate shut down from melt down...it's looking like I'm experiencing both here with a shift over my life time from shut down in medical situations to melt down - perhaps? Still analysing...

The going Silent can happen maybe once a week, the trance is less frequent, perhaps once or twice a month. 

Thank you aidie for confirming them as shutdowns. 

Yes that is a shutdown how often do they occur for you

thanks for this contribution to this collection. it will help others

I go into a trance, completely unaware of surroundings and won't hear my name being called. I am more likely to go totally silent and withdrawn. This is normally because work is getting too loud, then lights will seem brighter and I become overly aware of everything.

I think this is a shutdown, but I'm still learning/understanding.