Meltdowns?

My last big burnout came from being promoted from the position of a technician in a bank to head of IT Support with 26 people reporting to me and 45,000 office users around the world under our support.

It took a month but as I was without managenet mentoring / support it quickly spiralled and the stress grew to the point I couldn't sleep, barely took time to eat and was tense as a board. I wasn't aware of my autism back them and with hindsight I would never have accepted the position had I known.

Luckily I got a job in IT security at another bank back in my home town on a 35 hour week just completing security access requests - bliss! That lasted for 3 months until the first bank called and asked me to come back as a technician as almost all the team had left and the management had been sacked. I got a 60% rise which made it worth while.

Iain this was such a useful list of links, thank you. 

I can confirm I have had the autistic burnout before - I had to take a lot of time off work and have had to have some special measures put in place on my return to work life so I can function.It isn't fun to get pushed to the point that you're unable to actually put one foot in front of the other. 

Autumn_Trees said:

Anyway, if anyone can share their experience of what happens/means when someone talks about meltdowns that would be helpful. 

It helps to understand the definitions of these terms as they are often confused.

Meltdowns:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-forgotten-women/202307/what-is-an-autistic-meltdown

According to the National Autistic Society in the U.K., an autistic meltdown is an intense response to an overwhelming sensory or emotional stimuli. When this happens, the autistic person temporarily loses all control of their behavior.

Burnout

https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/autistic-burnout-explained/
Autistic burnout’ is the intense physical, mental or emotional exhaustion, often accompanied by a loss of skills.


With a meltdown you basically shut down and with burnout you can function a little but it is painful.

Burnout can come in stages as it builds while a meltdown tends to be abrupt and total.

I've suffered levels of burnout throughout my life but luckily not a meltdown that I can recall. For me it feels like more and more weight being put on my shoulders and my mind starts to reach for the coping mechanisms which tends to make things worse as I'm no longer focusing on what is causing the burnout.

Hey Chloe, thanks for your response! 

Interesting that you and the poster above you mentioned hurting yourselves. 

While I have not experienced these kinds of meltdowns (not as an adult anyway) I do have a long history of self harm and attempts on my own life. So maybe I am taking all that anger and bad energy and just reflecting it inwards, against myself, rather than letting it out in these screaming and crying kinds of ways? For what it's worth, I think the meltdown behaviour sounds a lot more healthy than my thing. 

I take a few medicines but the one that has really made me go quite 'numb' is Risperidone. It's an antipsychotic. I don't recommend taking it if you don't need it though.

My meltdowns are a complete loss of control of my own behaviour, I will try to calm down by taking myself to a quiet place where I can be alone, I will rock, or scream in to a pillow, if I am am really distressed I hurt myself to get rid of all of that energy. Then I normally get really tied and need to sleep. Meltdowns happen when I’m overwhelmed. I’m really interested if you are happy to say, what kind of medication you are on? I would love to find something that prevented meltdowns, unless you don’t have them anyway regardless of meds I guess it’s hard to know?

Okay, after posting this I was wracked with fear that someone was going to tell me I'm 'not autistic' because I don't get these. So thank you for explaining that it isn't for everyone. 

I get very sad, depressed, low. I get angry with situations (eg. injustice) and with myself for getting stuff wrong, but it doesn't come out in a physical way really. 

So it's basically a build up of bad energy that has to somehow come out and it comes out in screaming and crying and falling down and stuff. I think I get it now. 

So sorry you have to go through this - but thank you for explaining.

Not everyone has meltdowns! Maybe you really don't and that's normal for you, it doesn't have to be due to medication. You might find your experiences reflected better in accounts of shutdowns, or maybe this is just a part of autistic experience that's less applicable to you. You're not less autistic without it 

For me, yes, a meltdown feels (and presumably looks) the same as it did when I was a kid. It's not a tantrum though. It feels like I'm getting more and more overwhelmed and upset, with this horrible tense energy building up inside. When the meltdown itself finally starts it does feel sort of like losing my temper, but I don't really have any control over it- if I genuinely lose my temper I'm able to squash it down a bit if I need to until I calm down, but with a meltdown it will always come out eventually.

Meltdowns make me want to scream, cry, and fling myself about to get all that horrible energy out of my body. Sometimes they make me want to hurt myself, not because I actually want to cause myself pain but because I need something to focus on other than that 'final straw' that triggered the meltdown. I'm somebody who masks a lot so what people usually see is me stomping off in a huff and going off to sulk, but what's really happening is me escaping the situation while the mask is rapidly slipping and then going off to cry (the most socially acceptable way to release the horrible energy) until I feel better again.