Newly diagnosed 33yo woman - any advice from other women on emotional overwhelm/meltdowns?

Hello Emma,

At 54 I’ve overcome meltdowns but I spent a difficult decade with them after having children and having less control over my day to day life. 

So here’s my advice based on my experience and of course we’re all unique so take from it what you will but at least be encouraged that it should improve over time.

• once having a meltdown you can’t do much about it, so I would only try to do what you need to get through it (retreat, distraction, not trying to talk things through!) Note Tony Attwood says that we’re usually very smart but our thinking deteriorates during a meltdown.
• When you’re feeling good/better and not in a meltdown, that is the time to focus on your health and thinking and circumstances so as to reduce the severity of your meltdowns in the future. That is my biggest learning.
• Be kind to yourself after a meltdown (and during if possible).

I very much relate to your situation so I’m cheering for you that things will get better!!!

Helen

I had to make a great deal of changes in my 20's and then into my 30's. All without a diagnostic, but I just kept running into walls / errors. The first thing I had to continually sort was my biology. Working out allergies and deficiencies was quite difficult. A hormone balance helped, but I had much less control over the intensity of impact for a few days of the month. Sensory impact was already a problem, but add another person - and I dated several who were simply not a good match, let's say, the kind who enjoyed watching me break down, and that needed to change. 

The second thing I had to learn was to remove myself from others who weren't concerned about my best interests. That included a parent who was a bit sadistic, individuals who accused me of all kinds of nonsense and those I thought were friends but were unkind at best. I hadn't understood how to identify the difference between Boundaries and Abuse because my tolerance for abuse was so low. I grew up in rather unfortunate circumstances. Reading The Artists Way was a first step toward learning to identify either those I just shouldn't be around or those who were intentionally cruel. 

That said I have had dated a few more reasonable others - someone capable and interested in working through problems to find understanding.

Many of us don't mature properly, we might take a lot longer to grow up an part of the reason is difficulty with social cues, a difficulty understanding the self (sometimes from never feeling seen), and these lead to a difficulty relating with others (empathy), and never learning how to invest in friends or relation-ships / how to Relate With. I needed wiser older women to sit down with me and explain some basic ways of being I had never learned that everyone else did actually get a memo on. 

I think someone mentioned alexithymia - which is good to look up. I not only have difficulty identifying my emotions (there's too many tangled up all at once), but when I was younger I was incredibly withdrawn, if not frozen. Almost a hypo-sensory state, seemingly 'apathetic' when not breaking down (but apathy is not survival mode). I was incredibly unaware of everything that was affecting me. The fact was, I was Hyper-Sensory and in a perpetual state of being overwhelmed, so it didn't take much to tip the ice.

However, one thing in particular can be horrendous: Interruptions. They're rude for start, so it's ok to call that out. But if you've been demanded of, surprised, pushed, never given a moment to breathe or feel the need to constantly escape, and so on, this may be something to start at. Interruptions aren't just antithetical to our Design, they are Hell on Earth. They are anything which stops a flow. A missing set of keys, a broken kettle, pressing the wrong button, an accident, a word that won't come to mind and so on. Have a look at Monotropism.org it's quite helpful in understanding Being Autistic. This positive aspect of being (monotropic) has a dark reality to contend with. If this is new to you, a helpful tip is this: You cannot force a process and you cannot cut a process short.

Meltdowns are not fun. Before I knew I was autistic I thought they were panic attacks. But sometimes they feel almost like a toddler temper tantrum, except that is a rather unhelpful way to look at them!

One of the main things you need to do asap is to change how you think of them and thus how you speak to yourself. Instead of beating yourself up, accept that it is part of being autistic. Now you know why it happens you can work on methods of reducing it. Being kind to yourself is much more likely to reduce them than being mean to yourself.

Try telling yourself you didn't choose to have a meltdown, you didn't want to have a meltdown, you did not enjoy having the meltdown. Try to see it more like it was an asthma attack or coughing fit or migraine, not your fault, but it will have drained you and made you feel unwell. The best thing you can do for both yourself and your partner is to try and recover as fast as possible. So try a simple apology then go off to a quiet safe space and do what makes you feel calm for half an hour or however long it takes.

As Glitter said, everyone has different triggers and you will have to try to identify your own. The good news is you now know what is going on so you have more ideas where to look. My suggestions for where to look include: are you tired? Always  harder to keep a lid on then. Do you have sensory overwhelm? It is useful to know what you might be hypersensitive to, loud noises, certain textures, even smells or temperatures. Is there anything obvious stressing you? A change to routine is always stressful, but there might have been another stress as well which you thought was nothing, but they all add up! If each of these things is like a button being pressed, when enough buttons have been pressed a meltdown is triggered. Sometimes the final button might be a tiny straw (it often is) but it is not just that which has caused it but all the other buttons as well, which is why on other days you might be able to handle the same trigger just fine.

I have identified one or two situations which often stress me to the point of meltdown, so if possible I have a rest before they will happen and try to do something calm and pleasant like watch youtube videos or crochet or read. I also warn my husband that this thing might make me meltdown and can he try to not trigger me more, although he is very bad at this and keeps asking why I am like that, which triggers me to want to yell at him! I am working on controlling my reaction to that as he doesn't seem able to not say it. But as I am aware of it, I will not be caught off guard and can try to divert by calmly reminding him he doesn't like me when I'm angry!

It is possible you also have alexythymia, which means you might not find it easy to identify and recognise your emotions and feelings so they can build up to explosion point without you realising it is creeping up on you. I don't seem to always notice I am getting too hot until i suddenly feel aaargh I'm boiling get this jumper off me now!

The best way to avoid meltdowns is to learn to read your own emotional state and recognise when you are having the kind of feelings that build up to it.  It might help to ask your partner because they might recognise your signs of stress before you do.  Everyone's triggers are different, and it could be a combination of factors- tiredness and hormones for me, and things not being the way I expect them to be.  Finding ways to sooth myself, like somewhere dark and quiet, or something tactile can help bring me back down a bit.

If a calm emotional state is level 1, and a meltdown is level 10, it's about learning to spot when your at level 6 or 7 and taking a break.  Of course sometimes I still miss it, or I don't get the chance to walk away when I need to and then things get out of hand, but that's okay too.  Negative emotions are a part of life.  It's okay to get angry, the trick is how we deal with that anger.

In school we use charts to help children recognise and communicate where they are on the scale (they call it 5 point scale if you want to Google for ideas) and I'm actually thinking of making one for myself. I want to make it a robot theme, with comments like "functioning in acceptable parameters" and "suboptimal: run diagnostic tests."  Or maybe a spaceship, then I could have "warp core breach imminent!" as the final stage.  But that's just my sense of humour about it.