What are your meltdowns like?

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Yeah, this is why I always hate the police. I've always had a huge fear of them. I guess I just fear these kinds of issues would happen to me and I wouldn't know what to do. It sucks that people don't realize that not every person who has Autism is non-verbal.

I can't speak for anyone else, but when I do the "breaking things" it's not part of my coping routine or a "meltdown strategy." I am not in any shape to initiate coping measures or strategies when I'm having a meltdown. I hate that this happens and would do anything to insure it didn't.

Many sympathies for how your family - and especially your husband - were put through the wringer, though.

Same here, if I get pulled over for speeding or anything I freeze, I can't even speak. I always get a ticket because I can't even respond to them speaking to me. Afterwards I almost pass out, once I punched a hole through my dash, and I destroyed the steering wheel once, what a mess. I guess for me the silver lining is these concerns keep me from driving too fast.

the first sign for me that something is going wrong is that I suffer really bad sleep paralysis for about a week and I just know that at some point I'm going to explode and it could be anything that tips me over the edge. I go like a ravings nutter and it could go on for hours, it feels like my head is pounding and I just wish that someone would knock me out, I get all these thoughts that go over and over and I don't know where they've come from and then when it stops I just want to sleep. I'm not sure why it happens but it is the worst thing about being me.

My meltdowns are what cause people to call me a "sook" or a "crybaby" and they bully me to see this happen. Basically, I burst into tears and start crying. Occasionally there is also shouting, but only when people really p*** me off during a meltdown. Also when I was younger, it would get to the point where I put my head in my arms and go silent.

When I am having a meltdown, DO NOT:
- continue to bully me. This only makes it worse, as stated above.
- let me hear, through you or other people, that you think I can control it and do it on purpose. Seriously, if I could control it, I wouldn't be having meltdowns. I'm not the kind of person who would deliberately have a meltdown to get someone in trouble.
- ask me what is wrong. Especially if I say "I don't want to talk about it" If I say that, you shouldn't ask again.
- tell me to stop shouting. Chances are, especially in a meltdown, I think I'm not shouting. I happen to have a loud voice, and if you tell me I'm shouting, I will demonstrate shouting for you to let you know the difference between talking and shouting. If my voice is a little too loud for you, just tell me nicely that I am talking too loud.
- follow me when I storm off. This means I want to be alone for a while, and people following me won't help me.

That's it for now!

That sounds a lot like me. I used to do the same because I felt like if I cried, it would just make me prone to lashing out or doing something that would make them ridicule me more. The problem was when I was in school, I pretty much closed off every emotion I had because my teachers nor my classmates cared about what I was feeling except that I was being too emotional or that I was making strange facial expressions and doing odd behaviors that encouraged them. It was if they expected me to control it when I couldn't.

But as the years passed, I got used to locking everything inside that my emotional issues increased and got worse. Now I can't even hold down a job or go to college without having a massive meltdown/outburst because of the lack of expression for emotional output. It sucks because people don't understand the s**t I went through and they just push me to do things. It would make me want to scream but I didn't because I was taught by teachers and classmates all my life I was too sensitive... if only I would have been diagnosed with Autism at an early age and known I had it... then maybe I would have been able to better except my behaviors... but I got diagnosed at 13.

As for the judge's statement of my husband "being emotionally incapacitated", Hubby is the parent. Baby in the other room, screaming because her teeth hurt. Hubby is melting down because of computer+migraine+his child is yelling. He is pounding his head and fists against the wall instead of -what I guess the judge thought- most parents would do, suck it up and tend to the kid.

The police heard the banging and the crying. They broke the regular door/lock, because Hubby didn't hear them yelling. With a migraine and in that much pain, he wouldn't have heard Jesus coming. Grab the kid out of her room (meanwhile husband is still pounding in the other room). They thought he was on drugs. He wouldn't open the office door, so they flattened it. THEN Fior went berserk and they police pepper sprayed and tasered him.

We are lucky Fior dodged the angry management and parenting classes with a very lengthy letter from his shrink. I had to go to the domestic violence class. Why? Who the hell knows. I work out and run. I could out muscle and stomp Jay to death if angered enough.

The whole point of this ugly story is physical violence against objects can get you into a heap of trouble. The system doesn't give a s**t if you have bipolar disorder, autism NOTHING. I could be manic as hell, tear up our living room, and with Fior calling the cops. I would get trouble. Meds not working? You spiral out of control? Too bad, so sad. I doubt having a Medic Alert bracelet would have helped Fior, especially since our child was the main reason the phone call was placed.

I understand many can not help what they do during a melt down/out burst. Fior now goes into a bathroom and runs water on his hands. For some reason that helps. AND I leave him the hell alone.

Tawaki (NT wife to)
Fior (not yet officially diagnosed Aspie, testing within the month!)

Edit: Misread what I replied to.

Last edited by Verdandi on 14 Nov 2011, 8:52 am, edited 1 time in total.

I have both but I am more prone to meltdowns than outbursts. Outbursts are most likely to happen in public, and meltdowns mostly happen when I'm alone by myself. Lots of crying is involved and I also usually throw a thing or two *making sure NOT to take my rage out on my computer or anything breakable that I greatly value*.

One time I had an outburst/meltdown at work because of an a**hole customer that I ended up ripping the huge stainless steel prep table out and slamming it back against the wall in a rage. The table is heavy as hell because it also has a bunch of full boxes of sauce bags underneath but in that state I become Incredible Hulk-like. My co-worker was scared s**tless but that one I was mostly able to get it over with quickly because I did not want him to see me in that state, plus I also felt like having a meltdown would be letting him down because he depends on me as the unofficial "shift leader", but not before also throwing the back desk chair against the wall and almost breaking it. After the chair is when I felt relief and told him "I'm better now."

Subway customers can be the absolute scum of the earth. You wouldn't believe how some people get over something as petty as a sandwich or 40 cents difference on a drink.

My vision gets shaky and my eyes begin twitching like crazy. No matter how much I stim, I can't calm down. Then I start hyperventilating, crying, or both. If you keep putting more and more pressure on me, I smack my head against whatever's in front of me. I might start screaming. I scream and scream but it doesn't change anything.

My parents have always tried to stop me from having meltdown. If they did, it would only get worse and worse and I might hit them or something. I need to touch something soft. I need something to make me secure again.

After all of that, I won't talk, sometimes for days. I might stim a lot or tic if you ask me. It might just make things worse than they need to be.

I know the feeling. Keep in mind during the following anecdote (for topic relevance) that I was fighting a meltdown the entire time.

When I was eighteen, I got mugged while waiting at a bus stop at night. I was in shock and crying uncontrollably when I got on the bus, and (assuming out of sympathy) the bus driver let me on even though I couldn't pay. I was so disregulated that I all I could think is that I needed to find my roommate. He's my best friend and my "safe person," so I swear I'd go to him before anyone else.

Anyway, I was so overwhelmed and anxious that I got off at the wrong bus stop - at the opposite end of town and about two miles from where my friend worked. I had my headphones on to try and drown out the noisy traffic while I walked, and the hood of my coat on because it was raining really hard. I was so focused on getting to my friend's work that I didn't notice the police officer yelling at me and chasing me until he grabbed me by the arm and spun me around and informed me.

Now, I was all ready inconsolable and overstimulated from the mugging, but with this cop grabbing me and shining his flashlight in my face, I fell back into frantically crying and stimming. He was so out of line - yanked my headphones and my hood off, yelled at me when I wouldn't respond, and threatened to take me to the station. I had no idea why he was harassing me so much. I finally forced myself to talk to him, telling him my name and where I was going, why I was going there, and "no, my mom doesn't know where I am because I don't live with her."

It turns out, I matched the description of a runaway girl in the area and he thought I was her. Once he was satisfied with the knowledge that I was not a runaway and just a frightened teenage mugging victim, he told me to "have a good night" and left.

He didn't care/listen to the fact that I had just been mugged, treated me like a criminal that needed to be apprehended (seriously, if you're trying to catch a runaway, is THAT how you go about it?) and then left me standing there in the rain, completely at a loss.

I don't remember how I ended up getting to my friend's work, but all of a sudden, I was standing in the doorway (he worked at the front desk of a small hotel) soaking wet, shaking, and completely non-verbal.

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My meltdowns, including the one I had that night, include banging my fists into my head, pulling my hair, frantically repetitive vocalizations (otherwise non-verbal,) hysterical crying, hyperventilation, intense stimming, overstimulation of senses, etc. I feel as if reality has twisted itself into a psychological nightmare from which I cannot escape. I can see and hear, but the sounds and images seem to be detached and foreign - sensing without understanding. Everything moves too fast while I move too slow. All I will remember is blackness, a phantom sensation of my skin being on fire, and endless screaming/ringing inside my head.

Then I sleep for the remainder of the day and avoid all human contact for up to a week afterwards.

I think "meltdown" and "outburst" are the best ways of describing them. For me, both usually ramp up in intensity over time until I'm at maximum meltdown/outburst.

For meltdowns, My senses start to blur together, what use to be 500 crystal clear conversations start to become one amorphous noise, I usually end up looking straight down, or close to it because I can't focus on anything in my sight. And I kind of just start to zone out, get in a angry/pissed off mood, and usually shutdown any sort of social interaction I had going on. If I'm walking somewhere as it happens, I'll usually walk faster than normal, maybe put my hood up if it's that kind of day.

For outbursts, these happen a lot less often, and are basically just me without any sort of filter. Raw emotion pouring through every bone/muscle. In one particular instance, I was working on a game jam (make a game in a week) with a group of people. Everyone was at my apartment and kind of hanging out. There being ~8 people, and roughly 4 or so conversations in a cramped space, combined with various activities that weren't part of the jam, I already felt my tension rising. I tried to keep my cool, but the jam wasn't going as the rest of them usually do, people weren't working, everyone having random conversations do doing random activities. That combined with no one agreeing on anything, ramped me up to an outburst. I ended up screaming, crying, and just generally yelling/bursting out at people. After yelling and "demanding" people to do certain things, they kind of shrug it off as "Kafke being Kafke..." and then they tell me to "chill out", "don't stress about it", etc. I end up raging out of the room, and into my bedroom, slamming the door on my way. Then I went under my bed covers and laid there for a good 30-60 minutes. Came back out and the same thing almost happened again.

I only subverted it by putting on headphones, drowning everything out, and just working on it by myself.

I don't have them as much as I used to, but when they were a real (almost daily) problem, it was like a panic attack with lots of tears and verbal issues. My instinct was/is always to hide, but then to find a "safe" person to avoid self harm (I never engaged in self-harm in front of others; even when I could barely understand what I was doing, it made me feel watched). Well, except the hair pulling, but that is really more of a tic or stim than self harm.

It is more likely to be anger now than tears. I think part of this is because all the therapy I had helped me to understand my triggers, help me get some control, and helped me stop thinking, "This is happening because I am a bad person, and I deserve this." I might shake, my vision may grow hazy, my tics will come out, and I will need to strip conversation down to a very basic level, but I can still communicate. Usually my triggers now are other people yelling, loud "angry" noises, stomping, etc. Therapy has helped me to learn to say, "Your behavior is not appropriate. You are upsetting me," and leave the room for a bit. If I keep exposing myself to a trigger, I will go to total meltdown and have the tears, mental processing issues, etc. Even discovering that I have the power to leave, and I do not have to stay in a situation that is setting me off, was hugely helpful. Not having such a powerless feeling seems to take the edge off them a bit. Now a lot of my triggers (the mall, driving a car, large quantities of numbers, men in a certain style of dress) hardly bother me. I cannot thank the various therapists I have seen enough!

ETA: I realize what I wrote might be insensitive towards people who have done therapy and not had the results I did. I do realize that I am very lucky. Some people will try much harder than I have and with better therapists, and only make a little progress. I really am truly grateful, though. Without help, I would never have been able to hold a job or finish my degree.

I'm amazed that so many people are able to control the urge to scream or cry during meltdowns. My meltdowns involve screaming at the top of my lungs uncontrollably until I lose my voice