Help with autistic partners mood swings and meltdowns

Hi

The main way you can support you partner by being very constant and honest - so they can predict and rely on your behaviour not to change when they need support.    If you are reliable, they can cope much better so you will see a more stable person.

A lot of things you perceive as mood swings and meltdown are a result of overload where there are too many things happening all at once and each requires a chunk of processing to be able to put them to bed in their mind.     if some of these things are about you or something you have done, there's a load more processing needed because we try to think of the best way to say something about it - but there are so many possibilities - and most would immediately cause a fight that we go round in circles in our head trying to model the perfect answer.     You will see this action going on as 'shutdown' where we literally don't know what to do that won;t make things worse.      If you try to press us for answers or you put pressure on us during that time, we are likely to snap at you - and maybe say something really hurtful that we don't really mean.

You see this spiky personality - but in reality, the person inside us is just trying really hard to arrange things in their head to be calm and sensible - but life works against us and keeps loading more stress on top before we've dealt with what's on our plate right now.

The other problem is NTs tend to confuse our processing by adding layers of changing emotions on top of what they say - so it's really confusing.

I have found the best way to calm things down is redirection / distraction.   Leave them alone for a little while to start to get things in order and then casually mention something they like in a passive way - for example, if they are into cars, mention something about an upcoming car show.   This will tend to help them parcel up all the stressful things and push them to one side while all their processing power transfers to something nice - you will probably see a night & day immediate change in their demeanour.     

Remember, all their stress is just to one side so they will be on a hair-trigger for a little while - but they will often want to engage - we don't like being stressed.   It helps us if when talking about (the car show) that you are talking about ways to enjoy it by removing any possible pitfalls that could spoil the day.       This is practical things like if it's a long way, suggest spending a night in a hotel to reduce the driving  - or maybe taking a picnic etc.      The more you make things fun and stress-free, the more balanced and interactive your partner will be.

Hi

The main way you can support you partner by being very constant and honest - so they can predict and rely on your behaviour not to change when they need support.    If you are reliable, they can cope much better so you will see a more stable person.

A lot of things you perceive as mood swings and meltdown are a result of overload where there are too many things happening all at once and each requires a chunk of processing to be able to put them to bed in their mind.     if some of these things are about you or something you have done, there's a load more processing needed because we try to think of the best way to say something about it - but there are so many possibilities - and most would immediately cause a fight that we go round in circles in our head trying to model the perfect answer.     You will see this action going on as 'shutdown' where we literally don't know what to do that won;t make things worse.      If you try to press us for answers or you put pressure on us during that time, we are likely to snap at you - and maybe say something really hurtful that we don't really mean.

You see this spiky personality - but in reality, the person inside us is just trying really hard to arrange things in their head to be calm and sensible - but life works against us and keeps loading more stress on top before we've dealt with what's on our plate right now.

The other problem is NTs tend to confuse our processing by adding layers of changing emotions on top of what they say - so it's really confusing.

I have found the best way to calm things down is redirection / distraction.   Leave them alone for a little while to start to get things in order and then casually mention something they like in a passive way - for example, if they are into cars, mention something about an upcoming car show.   This will tend to help them parcel up all the stressful things and push them to one side while all their processing power transfers to something nice - you will probably see a night & day immediate change in their demeanour.     

Remember, all their stress is just to one side so they will be on a hair-trigger for a little while - but they will often want to engage - we don't like being stressed.   It helps us if when talking about (the car show) that you are talking about ways to enjoy it by removing any possible pitfalls that could spoil the day.       This is practical things like if it's a long way, suggest spending a night in a hotel to reduce the driving  - or maybe taking a picnic etc.      The more you make things fun and stress-free, the more balanced and interactive your partner will be.