i do not have meltdowns

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I've only had two meltdowns my entire life. They both happened in group settings. This is one reason I don't like groups.

I used to have more problems with 'losing it' when I was a kid, particularly in fights with my brother; in my own defense, he was pretty cruel to me at times. Now that I'm an adult and can remove myself from bad situations, I'm much less likely to lose control.

Could somebody please give a better definition for our broadly used term "meltdown"?

And why do they happen?

I know I have them, but I'm not sure what-all qualifies.
I've spent a lot of time today thinking about what happened over the past couple of days...puzzling things over as usual. I don't get really upset very often and I'm never quite sure how to cope with it. Being the kind of person I am my brain is *always* going to look for a cause, and that's that. I'm not so sure it's blame and just more of my variety of autism, and that's a mess because if it weren't for the puzzling I wouldn't have had the meltdown in the first place.
I need to learn to see the warning signs a little better and develop a strategy for dealing with them.

I can explain what I perceive as happening with my kids: It is the consequence of overstimulation. That stimulation can be emotional or physical. On one end of the spectrum, you have the shutdown, which is what my daughter usually does. She becomes mute and largely unresponsive to the world around her. She looks like she is in a daze. If it gets bad enough, she simply goes to sleep, no matter where she is. On the other end of the spectrum, you have the meltdown, which my daughter sometimes does. She loses control and becomes loud and sometimes violent. She cannot respond to reasoning or directions and if she is verbal, the only thing she does is repeat the exact same thing over and over again. She is not in control of her behavior. You can not "give in" to her to get her to stop. The only thing that helps is if you keep her safe until it runs it's course, or best yet, prevent it from happening. My son also does a version of a meltdown where he cries uncontrollably and inconsolably. Like my daughter, you cannot reason with him and he cannot respond to directions. All you can do is keep him safe until it passes.

My daughter does tantrum. It is different in that her behavior is goal directed and she remains able to argue with you and assert her desires. But there is often the same amount of yelling, kicking, and screaming as there is with a meltdown. But if you would capitulate and give her what she wanted, she would stop.

A tantrum can become a meltdown.

That's all I can think of right now and remember, I am only describing what I think is going on with my kids. I do not have first hand knowledge of melting down. Though I do think I experienced a shut down once. I was under extreme distress and people's voices sounded far away and muffled and I couldn't find the will to speak. I felt slightly like I wasn't in my body anymore. It was really weird and I hope it never happens again.

I apparently get a mild version of the crying meltdown followed by a mild version of shutdown...can function at home through it. I really don't mind being in mild shutdown mode, but it bothers people around me to have me so quiet.

I hear a lot of people talk about meltdowns and shutdowns. Does anybody know why we are so prone to them?
I'm not one to get upset very often, but when I do (and I have a hard time figuring out why) it drives me crazy. I am simply not comfortable with strong emotions and I'm not sure what to do with them.

I don't think most NT's are always in control either. They make fun of people who are always in control all the time.

I have less of them lately.


Some time ago, I was hitting my head on something, having a royal meltdown, but I was thinking while I did it. I thought "here I am, doing this again, and this is dumb".

So I stopped, and then began to think about why I kept ending up there.

What I began to realize is this: if you can't be fireproof, why stand in the fire? If you can't get wet, why go into the water? If the NTs are allowed to make every attempt to mold their lives and be in control (even to the expense of others life liberty and property) for their own safety and comfort, why am I not allowed?

So then, I patterned situations that cause me to melt down, and simply started to avoid them. I take on the right to stay out of the fire.

"A man's got to know his limitations" an old redneck friend of mine used to say. Well, he was more right than even he knew.

So when my girlfriend is flying off the handle and goes into hyper-screech mode, I walk away. I won't get on that merrygoround because I know I'll be melting down at the end of the ride. If my job is turning into a clusterf*ck, I disconnect my concern over the matters at hand and take measures to cover my own butt (that is, do the job right per the book without emotional investment or "ownership", and let the drama queens and wanna-be big fish go rot and/or eat each other). If I think there is going to be a sitaution where I know people are going to be knucklheads, and it's going to be "planet knucklhead" where all the rules are based on their own dumb ideas and how they see things, I won't play. I won't be expending my energy fighting the urge to blow up nor end up needing to spend a day trying to recuperate and get their "idoms" out of my system.

In the common vernacular of things, I would be called "a quitter" or referred to as "can't handle it". But by whose rules? By what standards? Do I have to be stuck in the same traffic as everybody else or I am "a quitter"? If I know the back road or can pick different hours, I will.

I have the freedom to do so, and real liberty is not needing permisson or acceptance from someone else. I have the right not to melt down, and can take measures to avoid it.

I would agree it is wise to avoid the triggers of your meltdowns. I would not call it quitting, I would call it being smart.