Is this meltdown, shutdown, or something else?

As a recently diagnosed 44 year old autistic, I’m still beginning to match past and ongoing experiences to newly discovered terminology. 

I’m also realising that m, while there’s comfort in the broad commonalities of this invaluable community, one can also feel quite alone in just how bespoke/unique one’s own particular case of being autistic is, feels like, etc. I mean when going though the threads and posts and there’s never that exact match hoped for to *precisely* how you feel, and how strongly. Because we’re all unique of course - why am I surprised? 

but I’m hoping that if I attempt to describe the inner experience of something that happens to me every so often (most recently beginning yesterday and still hitting hard today) then one of more of you may recognise is as having sufficient overlap with your own experiences to tell me whether I’m correct in applying the meltdown’ or ‘shutdown’ descriptor to it, or whether it’s a hybrid of the two. Or something for which an even more precise label exists that I haven’t yet chanced upon. 

To use yesterday as the example, I was in work and already finding concentration hard due sensory overstimulation. The (very defendable- given Covid) decision of colleagues to have all the windows open, was making the room feel ice cold to me, the sunny weather was refracting off the walls, and the noise of some machinery out in the roof was humming away relentlessly. That in itself is par for the course, and I do what I can to offset it - sunglasses go on, hoody  goes on and up (not passive-aggressively, I just don’t want to freeze) and I have earplugs which are on standby just in case it helps. 

Anyway, a meeting (thankfully only a very occasional part of my job) rolled round at 2 pm but just before it, something (objectively) ‘small’ and not related to the meeting that others would be amazed was even a trigger for me got me in to a panicked and obsessively ruminating state - instantly. I needed time to process it, to work out why it spiked fear and despair in me so intensely etc. but the meeting wasn’t going to wait. So there I was, invisibly having a panic attack and unable to force myself to smile or fake laugh at the preliminary banter, so preoccupied was I with a hundred spiralling thoughts unrelated to the meeting itself. But having to force myself to take in the rapidly disseminated information and revelations about some important changes to workflow, team size, team structure etc. as well as how new policies will be influencing all if this in yet to be fully determined ways. I’m terrible at that even on a good day - how goes everyone just absorb stuff so instantly and so skilfully synthesise it Ito conclusions about actions to take etc.? It’s incredible to witness, but makes me feel like the stupidest person in the virtual room. 

I therefore found my usual meeting anxiety (it borders on situational mutism at times) ten times worse than usual and felt I’d come across as disinterested, annoyed, sullenly  silent etc. 

when it ended, I had both the revelations of the meeting and the still spiralling thoughts and emotions from the other thing vying for attention and exceeding my bandwidth for coping quite substantially. My inability to fully set aside one to address the other caused some sort of mental implosion. When I get like that though, I have to start talking it through, explaining myself, apologising for not coping as well as I ‘should’ and so on. As a consequence, three different colleagues (between 3 and 5 pm) had a ton of my stream of consciousness offloaded into them, while I incessantly sought closure on some things, reassurance in others, clarification about things I’d failed to grasp, and also as much specificity about the near future, and validation of my own mode of being. By the end, the lines had become blurred between work stuff and personal issues (very abstractly communicated only to avoid oversharing if possible, but probably just confusing them)  pouring my heart out a relentless pace that I couldn’t seem to pull out of. 

when I got home, I was still imploding (though the talking had somewhat helped) and had started to experience something very like fever of the start of a flu. I went for a lie down, couldn’t get warm even with the heat on and blankets over me, shivered for ages, felt like I was burning up, a sore throat/glandular feeling too. And total exhaustion with it. I’ve had this happen before after other moments of overload and over-communication as a coping mechanism. I think they’re worse since I hit my forties as there’s less resilience in the bank to keep a breakdown at bay. But also more profundity to long-delayed penny-drop moments that others might more organically have processed decades back. There have been much bigger versions of yesterday’s unraveling , Though this was unpleasant enough. 

About three years ago I had my first giant one, that went on for weeks, months even - zero appetite, needing to escape all ambient complexity and just ruminate endlessly on all-consuming thoughts and worries, seeking a closure that was never coming. An equally traumatic one happened in Late 2020 and in some ways is still unfolding, maybe forever. But yesterday was still awful, and strange, and embarrassing, and has revived a never-entirely-dormant grief about situations lost and seemingly irrecoverable. The horror and suffering of that ongoing revelation is so hard to bear some days that I doubt I could ever adequately communicate it’s intensity to anyone no matter how long I spoke about it, tearfully or stoically or otherwise.

Anyway, does that rising and all-consuming panic and in particular does that fever experience strike s chord with anyone? Or am I some sort of weird anomaly even here?! Any answers or sense of not being alone would be more appreciated that you’ll ever know! Though please don’t make stuff up to make me feel better- just whatever authentically chimes with or diverges from your own experiences. Thanks!