How long do your shutdowns typically last?

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I have shutdowns several times a week that last usually for a few hours (or until I can sleep).

But I also get longer periods (several days or weeks) where I feel like I am in a constant level of shutdown. At these times I don't feel like I can "re-set" myself, and usually until I can completely withdraw from everything around me for a decent period of time, it just goes on and on. When I feel like this (like now) EVERYTHING is too much and I feel like anything could tip me into being absolutely non-functional or into meltdown. I desperately want to be alone, I find it hard to do simple tasks that I can usually manage, I am VERY sensitive to all stimuli.....

Before I was diagnosed I thought this was depression (or just questionable mental health).

Does anyone have these longer shutdowns? They do exist, right?

They definitely exist. I've had shutdowns that go weeks to months before.

I've also had a different kind of shutdown go permanent. Like where an individual skill shuts down, and it just never comes back no matter what I do.

I'm extremely prone to both kinds of shutdown -- the "overall shutdown" and the "single-skill shutdown". This has meant that I really have to streamline everything in my life so that whatever I do uses as little brain-space as possible, because use just a little more than I have to spare and I'm stuck in a seemingly neverending cycle of shutdowns. Sometimes if the "overall shutdowns" last long enough, they seem to cause "single-skill shutdowns" that can be long-lasting or even permanent.

I've noticed that my capacity for overload has drastically reduced over time. I used to be able to go to school, regular school even (and even a semi-exclusive private school for awhile). And... I may have had meltdowns and shutdowns when I got home, and had to run to the bathroom to take breaks just to avoid melting down at school (which also happened often enough), but I was able generally to do this, over and over again, for years, without just crashing in a massive and obvious way. (I did have shutdowns, but my mom would call me in sick to school when they were severe enough.)

I started burning out at the age of around twelve, had to take most of the school year off from school while I was thirteen, got accelerated into college (which at least didn't require me being in school all day) when I was fourteen (through a huge and terrible misunderstanding that my shutting down was the result of boredom rather than massive, massive overstimulation), and then after that, I crashed and burned in a way where I was shutting down in some ways for years afterwards, it was like... I'd start shutting down, I'd try fighting against it, shut down and crash hard, barely recover from that, decide to push myself even harder, and shut down and crash even harder, and I never actually left one shutdown fully before hitting the next one. Which meant I was in and out of psych wards with a lot of confusion as to why this was happening (and my reactions to it didn't help them figure it out, but I at least got my autism diagnosis during that period), and a lot of emotional issues because I knew I was losing and losing and losing ground and didn't know why (and was under huge pressure to "improve" due to them talking about keeping me in mental institutions indefinitely).

Anyway, it was a few years before I really learned what being autistic meant, and that out of the various diagnoses and misdiagnoses it was one of the correct ones. But even so, I was still losing a lot of ground (I have an autism-related movement disorder that's progressive, although saying that... it's almost just another way of describing the sort of thing I just talked about; many of these shutdowns affect movement-related skills).

So I've had to streamline everything. I cannot spend an ounce of extra energy on, say, pretending to be normal, because that ounce of extra energy could mean hitting shutdown really hard again. I have to be very careful -- it goes against my nature not to push myself to the limit. And yet since many of my skills require putting a fair bit of energy into them (for instance, recognizing my surroundings, communicating, etc.), I have to sort of do a really delicate balancing act, and that balancing act still doesn't prevent further shutdowns. But I'm basically massively prone to shutdowns at this time in my life, so I know totally what you mean about weeks or months of them.

Thankyou anbuend.

I too work hard to streamline all that I can under the belief that I need to preserve as much energy as possible. There are just an endless number of things that can throw us off course. And in some ways the more that I try to (and am effective) at streamlining, the harder I fall when it doesn't stay perfect.

I am having a period like that right now, I think (link). I didn't think of it as a long-term shutdown, but everything is too much and anything can tip me into being non-functional, it's hard to do some simple tasks, and I am sensitive to all stimuli.

So I think I know what you mean. This has been going for me since early December (with it starting up in late November), and while the cause for it ended at the end of January, everything else has continued.

I read your link Verdandi and it does sound very similar to what I am talking about.

I had only ever heard of shutdowns as being short term (couple of hour) things, but searching around WP there is quite a lot of talk about it also being a long (er) term issue, often misdiagnosed as depression and other mental health issues.

I suppose that it is like everything else with AS, shutdowns can be experienced in many different ways.

I've been wondering how much of my long-term depression was actual depression and how much was long-term shutdowns. I think one thing I'd thought was a symptom of atypical depression might actually be a kind of short-term shutdown, as I keep having it without the depression and I keep not having it in the manner expected of depression...but it happens during overload - I thought it was leaden paralysis, but it's like I can't move, or can't move very much for a period of time, and it doesn't keep me bedridden (although I go to bed until it stops most of the time - and then lay down and do nothing for up to 2-3 hours).

Despite this going on, though, this has been the least depressed I've been in about 15 years. The symptoms continue (aside from anhedonia, boredom, and suicidal ideation, anyway) much the same as they have off and on.

I try not to think too much about what was really going on in my past when I was in and out of mental health services for years. I wonder how much I could have been spared from if I had known that I DESPERATELY needed routines and that taking myself out of situations that were triggering me was ok. I spent 5 years of uni in a living hell that I desperately needed help to get through. I am positive that depression played a role, but it was no doubt being exacerbated by existing in a way I that I simply couldn't.

I think a big part of my depression was how much effort and energy I was putting into trying to be NT. Despite being suicidal enough to be a danger to myself in the past and needing therapy badly after leaving my parents' home and later leaving my ex, I somehow avoided getting into the mental health system. I think this is both a good and a bad thing - a friend of mine who has very similar mental health issues to mine ended up institutionalized for a year as a teenager. Overall, I can't help but think that my push harder -> crash and burn -> push harder again cycle contributed to a lot of things going badly, and that includes long-term shutdown.

Usually a couple of hours up to three days. I can't be depressed for longer than three days. Go figure. It looks like my mental ability outweighs my emotional ability.

I used to think I was having longer shutdowns when I started to feel slower and my symptoms got worse. But that still happens so I don't see them as shutdowns, more I'm just trying to cope under stress. Or I'm feeling hyper or I'm recovering from a seizure. I usually have more seizures than shutdowns now. I'm not sure which one I prefer. Both can have loss of speech and temporary paralysis.

Being in the mental health service really only led to me feeling intense failure and exasperation that I was not "improving". And led to me being passed from one service to the next under the opinion that I was "not trying hard enough" to recover. Of course, it makes infinite more sense now why I wasn't getting better.

I too was a serious risk to myself. And that was all that they could see. The depression/anxiety and a bunch of issues that (perhaps I couldn't verbalize well enough), but were never taken seriously. They were simply too disparate, and 10+ years ago (at least in Australia) I'm not sure that the professionals really "knew" AS. Especially in a female adult.

I did feel like it took the cloud of depression to come off me completely so that I could see (and explain) my issues well. So, although its hard to accept, I can see why it may have been hard to diagnose me earlier.

I've definitely had that go on for long periods, like weeks or months. I'd even say years (maybe there were breaks in it, but 95% of was overloaded-time). There was a time when a night of sleep (or even a nap) would take care of it, but, at a certain point I could fall asleep in that state and wake up still in it. That, and continuing to push like a madman, lead to the piling of one on top of the other as someone else described.

I seem to have some permanent level of it, in that certain cognitive abilities have been reduced for many years, now. (I kind of feel like I might be able to get that back, but it seems like what it might require might not be possible.)

I remember one scary thing about realizing all this was wondering, "what if what I need is something the world won't believe and/or let me have?" Luckily for me, things worked out fairly ok, and I hope it does for anyone else who is dealing with this stuff.

Someone mentioned depression, I think? I've also had a hard time disentangling that. For me, it seems to be part of the overall 'stew,' but it's not the whole answer, either. For years, I was on anti-depressants which actually made things worse. Then, I tried working on the cognitive stuff in various ways, but that also failed. However, getting significantly un-overloaded and anti-depressants actually seems to be working, unlike trying to approach one or the other as the "main" problem.

I always thought I had depression, but maybe it's this. I'm thinking there is an inherent problem with normal people diagnosing us.

I am pretty sure that if I had gone into the mental health system that I wouldn't have been diagnosed at the time - it was only two years after the DSM-IV's publication and three years after ICD-10, and I am not sure how long it took for awareness to trickle down. I think I was first aware of AS in the early 2000s.

You could have ended up diagnosed, though. I did, although I was diagnosed with PDDNOS/autism (as in, autism was the diagnosis given out loud, PDDNOS was put on paper to make it look "less hopeless" for insurance). That was the year after AS was added. But I was lucky -- I got someone who was highly aware of the many different ways that autism could look like. And I was still a child then, so it helped, since he was a child psychiatrist. (I don't know your age, but autistic people have a lot of trouble getting diagnosed in the adult psych system compared to the child psych system. The downside of the child psych system on the other hand, is fewer rights.)

I'm 41, and was 26-27 when I was seriously suicidal. I am assuming because of adulthood that it would have been unlikely, although I have no idea how autistic I came across (and even come across, although I feel like I come across as "more autistic" now) so I could have been diagnosed, maybe, but it seems slim, and other stuff at the time could have gone in any direction.

Right now trying to get diagnosed in the adult psych system. I am hoping it goes well, but not a lot of faith.

I could have easily ended up in the psych system as a teen, which: I am pretty sure I was much more obviously autistic then, and could have been diagnosed, but at the same time it was the 80s and I could have just been institutionalized for any number of things that may or may not have been true. So, it could have been good or bad, and I am okay with how things turned out.

Live all alone in a cabin on 40 remote acres. This move has helped me tremendously with shutdowns. Even so, I sometimes spend 20 or more hours in bed on the weekends just trying to regain focus. I have bad days sometimes for weeks in a row where I can barely process or do anything. It sux....