Emotional Buildup

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So I'm familiar with what a meltdown is but I'm not sure how to tell when I'm having one. Aside from that, I want to know if any of you are familiar with this phenomenon and what can be done about it.

So simply put, I experience major emotional build ups. Sometimes I wake up, and from that moment onwards everything goes wrong. My headphones are broken, my door falls off it's hinges, my bed literally breaks and the mattress falls to the next floor, my car doesn't turn on, my windows are all spontaneously shattered. I don't understand what this is, but all these add up into some unknown ghost emotion. It's like rage but confusion mixed in, and I have not the faintest idea what I am experiencing. I can't tell what's going on around me and I can't rationalize, and I'm filled with SEVERE emotion and unrecognizable pain. It is a rather undesirable experience and I would like to know if any of you experience it and what you do to alleviate it.

I also have another issue, and I am just putting this here so I don't create 20 forum posts. Basically, I get obsessed with things that bother me. Someone tells me I am weak, well that will follow me around for the rest of my life up till this point. What is reality? Well that question will bother me endlessly. It's like, whenever something negative happens it just follows me around until I hit the bottom, then it keeps going.

Thanks if you've read this, I don't know how else to write any of this even though I have much more that is bothering me, I'm terrible with putting my thoughts into words.

Emotional Buildup: I used to have emotional buildups as you describe very often. I don't know if it's a meltdown. I don't fully understand the word meltdown as it pertains to adults. Even though I've researched it, I don't really have a vivid understanding of what it means. I've certainly felt as if my emotions are out of control (is this a meltdown if I don't relay those feelings to external world?) It used to happen quite often. However, I think I learned to shut-down to prevent myself from getting physically out of control. So shutdown is definitely a concept I understand. I shut down in new situations, and in situations where I have to talk to new, or a lot of people. Also, it occurs when I am in an argument with someone and I feel that they aren't listening to or understanding me. It feels like I'm dead, I can't move or talk without a tremendous effort. Over the years I've developed some good strategies for keeping myself alert in these situations, so I haven't shutdown in a number of years. I can share some of them if you want.


Reality: I believe that reality is constructed by individuals; it doesn't really exist, although there are real actions that occur in the world: reactions that occur and physical states that exist (temporarily). These actions and temporary states might be called reality, but when people talk colloquially about 'reality', they are usually talking about a subjective impression of an event, and the subjective impression is built upon many layers of emergent properties.

Whoa! Any more details on what might shatter your windows? Do you see or hear it happening? In general, it sounds as if you are getting hijacked by your amygdala, which is only wired for surviving violent events. Usually, the neocortex overrides it if the problem is not actually life-threatening, but when it is out of the circuit, most brain functions are severely impaired, making us very accident-prone in a civilized environment.

I know that feeling. It's very intense. I swing between wanting to violently break things and just wanting to stay in bed and sleep all day. I don't know if it's anger or sadness. It just hurts, but sometimes it's just nothingness.

Quite possibly depression.

I had a bad year last year. A lot of things went wrong and I'm too tired to put my life back together and start again even tough I have to.

Sound familiar. I've punched through doors and windows as well. I've learned to recognise the signs of an imminent meltdown and I try to take steps to destress. If I've been having lots of little stress triggers over a short period of time, say a week, then I know that something's going to blow at some point. That's when I go climbing or a long (several hours) walk on my own along our sea cliifs, anything that takes me away from other potential triggers. It doesn't work all the time but it helps. If I do meltdown I try and remove myself from the trigger as fast as possible and start slow breathing - generally it'll take a few hours until I'm approaching normallity again. My family know to leave me alone when I'm like this.

Another thing I do is get angry about the small things in life that irritate. I grump about people not indicating in cars, people blocking aisles in supermarkets, people walking too slowly. I've found that a slow and steady release of tension like this avoids massive meltdowns. It does mean that people think of you as a grumpy bastard though



Again, me too. There's stuff from years ago that still annoy me. Things that others have done but mostly things that I've done - why did I react to that situation in that way?



Thank you for using paragraphs and not just a wall-of-text That makes it so much easier!

I get emotional buildup caused by many things in my life. Being called the wrong prefixes, emotional abuse from family - mainly my mum, periods of harsh weather and being singled out by 2 people who used to like me just because I'm showing my true colours now (Black, red and gold instead of Red, white and blue). People who don't allow for crying (my mum) are also the cause. I've been raised by her in a very stupid way.

I experience the emotional build up that you described sometimes, too. The stuff that you describe, to deal immediate issues that go wrong and stress me out at the moment r over the course of a day, I might deal with by venting. For me, doing artwork or going for walks helps a lot with this, although it does not always stop it.

There are other issues that have more long term emotional effects, build up slower but are less likely to go away. They tend to make my breaking point for a meltdown easier to reach over time. I've failed to figure out how to avoid this, except to either face the problem head on if possible (despite it often stressing me terribly at the moment I am trying to deal with it) or let my meltdown happen and refresh myself emotionally.

I also get obsessed with things that bother me, sometimes dwelling on mistakes I make long after they happen. Heck, sometimes I find out, after spending days thinking about something that I will find out the other people involved didn't even see it as a big deal. There are other ways I have messed up or been told something negative and I will think about and cringe over it for YEARS! And I can't make the thoughts go away no matter how hard I try.

I'm starting to understand meltdowns better with this and similar vids on "Amygdala Hijacking" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YM3cXZ7CFls
Getting stressed by several minor irritants can help put our systems on a hair trigger, so that things that are normally OK can suddenly shut down all but the most primitive parts of the brain. The narrator is amazed that it can take hours for the rush of hormones to clear, but in my experience, they can also renew themselves for weeks if the threat is still present.

I often fear I'll go off on someone and end up in prison due to the spontaneous release of emotional buildup. I handle it by screaming in the shower. Generally, I hate the shower because I hate the feel of having wet hair, but sometimes I have to just stand in there and scream uncontrollably into the stream of hot water. Then I'm exhausted, so I stare into space for a few hours to recover.

I can definitely relate to the issues you're describing. Some days are just bad days where everything pisses you off and the best thing you can do is take it easy and find a non-destructive way to let out your frustration. This usually happens if bigger stressors are piling up in the background. Maybe the picture frame being slightly skewed is what pushes you over the edge, but you're actually upset because a trip you've been looking forward to got cancelled and your dog is sick.

I can tell when a meltdown is coming on when I start to curse a lot and stop breathing properly, and start getting the urge to destroy something.

Being stuck on negative things is very common in people with autism, from what I've seen. It might be a more extreme version of the human brain's tendency to focus on the negative because the negative is what is most likely to kill us if we were still living in the woods. I like to imagine that my negative thoughts are a really annoying little sibling. "Yes, Bob, I do remember when my pants fell down in front of the whole class. But that was in second grade and it really doesn't have any effect on how people see me now." I do this with anxious thoughts as well. It doesn't make the thoughts go away forever, but it can lessen their effect. Eventually they might fade away almost completely.