Apologising for behaviour?

Yo never need to apologise for being overwhelmed, the meltdown is an involuntary response to stress that your autistic neurology cannot process. Meltdowns are a natural and vital means of re-regulating the autistic nervous system. I know that you might have felt obligated to apologise, but a meltdown is completely out of your control and necessary for you to feel calm again later.

It's not just about you! That's the main issue here. It's about the person that's in the receiving end of your meltdown too. Imagine that the meltdown also involved physical violence and the next day you said nothing but there was the recipient with a broken leg and bruised body. I think they'd feel pretty challenged not to at least hear a 'sorry' and 'are you okay'!! That's how role feel after your meltdowns, broken and bruised. It's caring for the other person's feelings and how they've been traumatized by your meltdown. IT'S NOT ALL ABOUT YOU!!!

It's not just about you! That's the main issue here. It's about the person that's in the receiving end of your meltdown too. Imagine that the meltdown also involved physical violence and the next day you said nothing but there was the recipient with a broken leg and bruised body. I think they'd feel pretty challenged not to at least hear a 'sorry' and 'are you okay'!! That's how role feel after your meltdowns, broken and bruised. It's caring for the other person's feelings and how they've been traumatized by your meltdown. IT'S NOT ALL ABOUT YOU!!!

NAS88108 said:

It's not just about you! That's the main issue here.

This is a very good point. The issue is the OPs behaviour up to the point of meltdown when they were being frustrated.

We have to exist in a society when the "high functioning" group of autists can more or less get by and integrate to a degree. We cannot expect the same society to put up with our bad behaviour just because we have a disability tag,

If someone in a wheelchair was being a real a-hole to me in the street just because they were frustrated then I would tell them to behave (probably in more colourful language) as they have no right to upset me by being abusive.

I believe we have a responsibility to educate ourselves in what expected behaviour standards are and follow them as much as is reasonable. This will vary from individual to individual depending on their intelligence, ability and capacity.

For us as a very small part of society (2-5% of the population are "high functioning" I believe) to expect dispensation to be a-holes just because we are frustrated is unfair to the other 95-98%. If we are in meltdown then this is a different story but up to this point we need to accept responsibility for our actions.

If crowds stress you to the point of a violent meltdown then you avoid crowds. If flying does this then don't fly and so on. Most of this is pretty common sense.

There will always be unexpected events that stress us but I believe we need to take the responsibility to teach ourselves how to get out (or avoid getting into) such situations whenever possible and to learn as much mastery as we are capable of over our anxiety / sensory build up.

I suspect not everyone will agree with this assessment.