Ever wonder why.... (meltdowns)

Post Reply New Topic

Ever wonder why some people tend to have meltdowns where they tend to be very loud and violent but other people tend to have very quiet ones? I'm just wondering if anyone had any ideas as to why this could be? My first thought was could it be that the persons body could release more adrenaline causing you to act out compaired to the quiet person whos body doesnt release as much..

I don't think it's quite that simple. I have a hyperactive adrenaline reflex, from fighting as a child and cooking professionally as an adult. My adrenaline kicks in instantaneously whenever it's needed. Yet, I don't ever have explosive meltdowns, I have dissociative curl-up-in-a-ball shutdowns.

Maybe more environmentally shaped, i.e. if you have gotten negative feedback from being loud, tend to have quiet meltdowns; if quiet meltdowns allowed people to continue practices that bother you, tend to now have louder ones?

I have very verbal meltdowns. I yell, scream, swear and argue. I express as much rage as I can, and I try not to harm any objects or people. The only person I may harm is myself, and the only objects I may harm is a door by slamming it or kicking it.

My meltdowns are similar behaviour to this:-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YersIyzsOpc

Mine may be a bit more verbal, but it's the same body language and actions as this boy.

But even when I was a child I still had verbal meltdowns, and I expressed how I felt very easily but still by having a meltdown. I really can't say why some have quiet meltdowns and others don't. We're all different I suppose, and I have very mild AS and I am female, so maybe it's to do with that, I don't know.

(verbally.)

My meltdowns are regularly caused by a person invading my personal space, that is, lack of distance and being touched, especially by strangers and unexpectedly. If i would hit them this means i had to stay close and have to endure more physical contact. So primarily i try to get out of the situation and regain distance, but curse and yell and have been told that my glare is very frightening in such states.

My meltdowns are caused by either anxiety, irritation or anger.

I call the anxiety meltdowns ''panic attacks'', which are usually caused by snow being forecasted. Snow makes me anxious because I have Social Phobia, one of the symptoms of this being afraid to draw attention to oneself, which I can't avoid when it is icy because I'm more prone to slipping down on ice due to my balance issues, plus I go all stiff because I think everybody's watching me, which makes me slip even more (it's a mind over matter thing). Also I know how immature some people are, the way they have to humiliate a person when they fall, instead of giving them empathy (see? This is one evidence how NTs can lack empathy). But I can't avoid going out because the ice is sometimes prolonged for weeks, and I can't just shut myself away for weeks, especially if I had a local job.

I call the irritation meltdowns ''meltdowns'' because I do actually melt down. When something like the internet cuts off at awkward times and causing a disruption to my task I was trying to do on the internet, I sometimes drop onto the floor and start crying loudly like a 3-year-old, and I yell out loud how much I hate modern technology because it's never as reliable as you think it is, and how they raise the phone bill but make the internet connection unpredictable, and so on.

And I call the anger meltdowns ''outbursts'' or ''nervous breakdowns'', and usually this is triggered off by thinking too deeply why I'm an Aspie and nobody else in the family is, and how they get to live a life with average social skills and I can't, and that I'm not very clever either and so I've just got to live like it. Also I start realising how much I absolutely loathe myself and want to get away from myself but can't, and the way I am and the wrong vibes and body language I always give off, and how I have to avoid social situations because of my social awkwardness, and so on. I know I can't keep wallowing in pain about it, which most of the time I try to forget it and get on with life, but I can't always help dwelling on it from time to time.

I would have said adrenalin had something to do with it, but if there's an example when not, IDK. It's certainly not differentiated by the line whether loud yelling, kicking and hitting was tolerated or not by parents. Maybe, if I had been beaten up a couple of times for doing that, which I hadn't, it might have cured me... converting my meltdowns into shutdowns.

Oh, I think that might me right there. As a kid, I did have explosive meltdowns where I would knock holes in the drywall with my forehead or smash my knuckles up on the door frame or a cement wall. Not anymore though. Don't exactly know what broke me from the tendency, as the sum of my childhood memories are thankfully few.

I thought you would connect "irritation meltdowns" to accumulating sensory irritation. Meltdowns caused by prolonged irritation from sensory sensitivity then would be classified as the 4th type.

The closest thing I've had to a meltdown is I'll clench my teeth as hard as I can and say as many curse words as possible to myself while I get an urge to destroy things. I can control myself though, with the exception of the teeth clenching. I can't stop that when I'm angry.

I will cry or stim crazy or pace. I have thrown things or hit during my meltdowns. I even yell and shout too. My husband calls that a meltdown while I call myself crying a meltdown.


It took me a while to see there are different levels of meltdowns and it's also a spectrum so I guess I do have them more than I thought. me stimming like crazy when I am anxious or having anxiety and feel one coming is a meltdown I suppose. If I yell at my husband during an argument, meltdown I suppose. I even clinched my fists in high school when i get frustrated so I suppose that was me having a meltdown. Whenever I got outbursts, I suppose that was a meltdown.

my theory is extroverts are more likely to outwardly express things than introverts...that is probably just part of it though.

I don't stim or pace or anything. I only kind of stim when I'm happy. I don't do it when I'm angry.

Sometimes my angry outbursts are more similar to the actions of an NT having a nervous breakdown. I've seen an NT having a nervous breakdown before, and it was similar to my frequent outbursts, although my outbursts aren't typical nervous breakdowns I'm just saying they're similar.

I started having primarily meltdowns rather than shutdowns afterI had gone through a period of time where I had withdrawn too much and kept emotions in too much. It was partially fear of hitting another year of that state.

I had recently had a dna test done to find out my ancestry. One of the extra tests you can buy has to do with a gene called Monoamine Oxidase A (Warrior Gene). Apparently if you have this gene you are more prone to risk taking and aggressive activities. Perhaps this gene has something to do with more aggressive meltdowns?

I'm not a person who takes risk easily, yet I hardly know what a shutdown is, I almost exclusively have meltdowns.

@ Sweatleaf, It makes sense that being an extrovert (i.e. relatively less aloof) may have something to do with being prone to have meltdowns rather than shutdowns.

@ League_Girl, seeing different levels of meltdowns as a spectrum is a good approach, IMHO. Too often we only have bits of it, still they can do much harm in social situations, like family disputes or skirmishes at the workplace or in the street (road rage).