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Meltdown problems

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Acarakat
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Joined: 9 Feb 2017
Gender: Female
Posts: 7
Location: Wisconsin

09 Feb 2017, 12:23 pm

So, I have absolutely dehabilitating meltdowns on a fairly regular basis. I'm 17, an aspie, and have coping methods, but I never managed to subdue my stimming. I rock and flap and whatnot. I draw in class to still my hands and listen to music to stop the head rolling. Unfortunately the stress builds up, fast. :oops: I have to leave the classroom so often it effects my performance at school, but if I don't I end up either freezing in place and being unable to move or speak, or I end up a writhing mess on the floor of my IEP advisor's classroom bending backwards into such insane positions you'd think I was possessed. How do I deal with this? How can I make them go away? Is that even possible? I just want to be able to sit through a class normally and get along with all my classmates.



wrongcitizen
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Joined: 22 Oct 2016
Gender: Male
Posts: 696

11 Feb 2017, 1:22 am

Haha, for me its the opposite. I do "stim" but its my legs, it's not hand movements or it's (I literally cannot remember the word so I'm going to replace it with twitching) twitching with objects, like playing around or fidgeting. I always have to hold something.

So onto the meltdowns. I find that I lock up when I "melt down". At home, I explode, my parents and family I assume become extremely disturbed like they should be, because they have this near adult screaming and destroying everything, complaining that the furniture is out to get him. Yea, I believe that when my furniture starts to be annoying. Otherwise in school or other public environments I just become silent, and I kind of depersonalize into a flurry of negative emotions and frustrations which take me over so I'm not "there" anymore.

Several times I've exploded in public and it wasn't pretty. When there's multiple people talking to me at once I have to jokingly tell them I have no idea what's going on and that one person should talk to me at a time. They usually do because they can relate (because no one likes it when 4 people talk to them at once) but sometimes when there's multiple people insulting me and I have a logical response they of course won't listen to that, so several times I've broken out into a huge rage, cried and screamed and whatnot. It was pretty bad. My eyes still often water when even the slightest thing bothers me, but I generally have control over it now, unless its really bad.

I guess my advice for you would be to meditate on your emotions. What has worked best for me is eastern religions like Taoism, but anything you want will work for you. Just try to understand them and try to rationalize with them by adding words to describe them. One of the big issues with AS is a disconnect between emotions and rationality, so we need to form this manually, while neurotypicals and others are naturally more fused. Also, if freezing in place helps you then I would do that, you shouldn't care what others think if you can't really control it but I would try to remove the writhing mess problems because that's what attracts negative attention from peers, and that in turn leads to worse meltdowns. The stress build up is also normal, especially in people with AS or an anxiety spectrum disorder, in a social environment.



Acarakat
Emu Egg
Emu Egg

Joined: 9 Feb 2017
Gender: Female
Posts: 7
Location: Wisconsin

11 Feb 2017, 7:41 am

wrongcitizen wrote:
Haha, for me its the opposite. I do "stim" but its my legs, it's not hand movements or it's (I literally cannot remember the word so I'm going to replace it with twitching) twitching with objects, like playing around or fidgeting. I always have to hold something.

So onto the meltdowns. I find that I lock up when I "melt down". At home, I explode, my parents and family I assume become extremely disturbed like they should be, because they have this near adult screaming and destroying everything, complaining that the furniture is out to get him. Yea, I believe that when my furniture starts to be annoying. Otherwise in school or other public environments I just become silent, and I kind of depersonalize into a flurry of negative emotions and frustrations which take me over so I'm not "there" anymore.

Several times I've exploded in public and it wasn't pretty. When there's multiple people talking to me at once I have to jokingly tell them I have no idea what's going on and that one person should talk to me at a time. They usually do because they can relate (because no one likes it when 4 people talk to them at once) but sometimes when there's multiple people insulting me and I have a logical response they of course won't listen to that, so several times I've broken out into a huge rage, cried and screamed and whatnot. It was pretty bad. My eyes still often water when even the slightest thing bothers me, but I generally have control over it now, unless its really bad.

I guess my advice for you would be to meditate on your emotions. What has worked best for me is eastern religions like Taoism, but anything you want will work for you. Just try to understand them and try to rationalize with them by adding words to describe them. One of the big issues with AS is a disconnect between emotions and rationality, so we need to form this manually, while neurotypicals and others are naturally more fused. Also, if freezing in place helps you then I would do that, you shouldn't care what others think if you can't really control it but I would try to remove the writhing mess problems because that's what attracts negative attention from peers, and that in turn leads to worse meltdowns. The stress build up is also normal, especially in people with AS or an anxiety spectrum disorder, in a social environment.


I actually have both, an asd disorder, an anxiety disorder, and likely a depressive disorder. They feed off each other and the worse my anxiety and deprrssion get the more my meltdowns increase in number and severity. Unfortunately, the source of much of my anxiety and depression is my mother. She regularly manipulates and abuses me emotionally, which takes a toll. That's how I got those other ones in the first place. I still have to wait a year and a few months to get out of the house and away from her, so unfortunately I don't see the problem going away very soon. It's really confusing. :cry: