shutdowns - possible to avoid?

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I have been having back some hard shutdowns and was no more responsive at all.
Now I wonder what is causing these (I hardly have meltdowns or tantrums (= those not at all) but often these shutdowns).
I know it is by being overloaded, but still I miss the "final triggers" somehow.
Does anyone knows how to avoid it or how to become responsive more quickly again?
I don't know, how to "come back" from these...I mean alone, without someone needs to change my lying-posture, moving my arms etc.

Make sure you're not getting hungry or dehydrated, those both make meltdowns and shutdowns more common.

If you're getting overloaded, don't try to avoid just the final trigger, try to avoid the overload getting worse at all. If its sensory overload, then look into things like earplugs or headphones, stim toys, cats....

Look to see if there's anything that helps you get out of one faster. Keep that with you always if you can find something like that. (I carry my kindle everwhere, and at home always have my kitty).

Thank you, Tuttle.
Last time was in therapy:
I'm feeling not so well lately, because my executive functions are gotten worse and I am extremely isolated.
I have to take the train to get there, the station and the train were absolutely crowded (but here I could use then headphones).
When arriving I always get 1/2 hour resting-time in a silent room to get more calm, but it was not sufficient this time.
My talking was slow and I was a lot withdrawing already.
Then conversation changed and I didn't know any answer anymore and went into shutdown.
That stayed until the finish and I was all shaking going home and crying.

Where can I begin avoiding it?

If its happening when you're going to therapy, it might also make sense to let your therapist know things that are nice for you to talk about.

My therapist explicitly asks me about my cat if I'm withdrawing or after anything that'd be particularly hard for me to talk about. She's noticed I'm happiest when talking about my kitty, so wants to take advantage of that.

Thank you, Tuttle.

No, it is not only in therapie, but also in contact with people more in general, but at the moment she is the only one I really have contact with except for my partner, but he leaves me alone a lot, so I am most of the time by myself.
My therapist does it too, switching the topic when she sees I am feeling uncomfortable and also asks me eg. about my cats or something SI-related. But sometimes it goes wrong, then I become too unresponsive with everything and I don't know myself what is really going on at that moment.
It is this sorts of shutdowns which made me unable to function in school and in doing any further education (apart from other things) but I became unresponsive when teachers directed questions at me and later in further education I got expelled at three institutions because I became unresponsive too often and people didn't understand it and got very mad at me and expelled me for good..

Tuttle, nice that you have a kitty too.
Mine are "grown-ups" now.

I had a pretty bad shutdown last week after eating under an overhead light. I thought that I was going to spend the whole evening screwed up afterwards and would not be able to recover until I had slept all night, but it was a chance to test out a plan that I had thought about to recover more quickly from shutdowns. I got an iPad for Christmas, and my only game on it is Bejeweled Blitz. It's a very addictive game requiring no mental functioning eggsept for visual inspection and finger movements, both of which I can still do during shutdowns even if I can't even go to the kitchen to get a cup of tea. It's a very repetitive game, and I find that repetitive activities have always helped me reset my brain from overloads. So I played Bejeweled Blitz for a couple of hours, and after that, I felt a lot better, not entirely back to normal, but not shutdown either. Then, I could finally take a shower like I could not do during a shutdown, and I felt pretty much normal after taking a shower, like my head was cleared. I am sure that Bejeweled Blitz played a major role in my relatively fast recovery from this shutdown last week. Then, yesterday, I was feeling very anxious and discombobulated and a little meltdownish over something, so I started playing Bejeweled Blitz again. And after half an hour or so, I felt a lot better, and I could go downstairs and eat dinner in the dark, which I felt that I could not do earlier. There is something about this repetitive activity that is good for getting me moving again. The other good news was that I got a couple of new high scores.

Here is a link to played Bejeweled 2 free online: Bejeweled 2

When I am in a crowded place even with headphones I find it helpful to look away from all the chaos. On the train look out of the window, unless the speed of passing scenery is overwhelming. Sometimes it is and sometimes it actually feels good. You can always look down at your hands or the back of the seat. When the train stops at a platform looks at the do-not-cross line or at any stones. Sometimes if it's light I look at the tracks.

Oh yes, and playing games as a distraction is good too. I do find-a-words.

Unfortunately, I have no idear how to go about dealing with people during shutdowns. Really the only thing that I can say to people during shutdowns is to leave me alone, which is ok with iMother, but not so much with anyone else. Maybe we just need to carry around cards saying something about I am having a shutdown and cannot functionally communicate at this time. But I don't know if people will take this the wrong way. People always take things the wrong way, like you are ignoring or evading them on purpose. I remember that I was often unable to answer any direct questions, even simple ones, during shutdowns, and I always had shutdowns during lab meetings. So I always said some stupid disorganized irrelevant line that was something that I had said before and remembered saying when asked a question or sometimes just that I didn't know, because I couldn't even understand what the questions were asking most of the time. Brain was just not working at all.

Thank you pensieve.
You point out an important point as well, the visual overload.
In the train I always carry a little book with me I can write in.
It always starts: -train- and than the date and I write down the (up to now) 700 first characters of pi down to have something to concentrate on.
If a train is not too crowded I can enjoy looking out of the window and even the sound of the train itself has something "calming".
Sometimes then I am so "caught" into this little book, that when I look up I get for a moment very anxious seeing all this people around me.

Edit: this took me a long time to write, I might therefore repeat something that someone else posted earlier.

Do you notice moments before that if something more is going to happen, you'll be negatively affected or everything will shut down completely?

During therapy sessions, being able to point at a card or hold up a card during that last moments might help to stop your therapist dead in her tracks. That would help only if she would indeed stop right away and not make things worse.

You'd also have to figure out an alternative on what is safe to do and say. Whatever she is going to say or whatever you are going to do next need to be "safe" in the sense of that what will happen next won't set off the shutdown at that moment. It wouldn't by any help if the two of you would accidentally fully set off the shutdown while trying to avoid it.

That means waiting until the very last moment before the shutdown takes full effect won't do, it would be too risky. You'd have to be able to notice earlier (don't know if you can notice or can't notice) and then notify her by a simple word or sign (such as a card or a hand signal).

That could mean you'd often alarm her when you're feeling so-so, perhaps "just" a little stressed and not already slipping into a shutdown but I consider that "false alarm" favourable to it being too late.

I stopped caring about "false alarm" when it concerns my meltdowns, for example. Speech too though that's harder to manage given the fact that speech is so fundamental to everything.

If my shirt's "wrong" and too much has piled up, I'll retreat for a couple of minutes and immediately do something else/do nothing. The "wrong shirt" happened to me earlier today and I was literally nowhere near a meltdown, just realised after a couple of minutes of fussing that somehow I was suddenly feeling a lot more stressed than what I felt - so I pulled back anyway though the moment was super inconvenient.

You know, you could even have a small set of (coloured) cards whose meaning you decided on together with your therapist and one is for a day like the one you wrote about.

Or one for a day even worse than that when you feel like you struggle really hard to express your thoughts and feelings at all even at the start of your therapy session. Being able to give a clear symbol to your therapist during the first few minutes instead of having to rely on words for the next 5-10 minutes (and answering when she didn't quite understand about how you feel today or how your speech/skills are today or when she wants to make sure that she understood what you said correctly) could help if you'd feel comfortable with such a method.

Thank you Sora.

Your card is a good advice.
I think, that I do not show signs clear enough that I am going to be unresponsive, and I guess it is because I have this "fall-outs" anyway the whole session (I had this thread about "dissolving into patterns" = it happens a lot to me, that I withdraw for a period of time anyway watching the wallpaper and "getting lost" into it).
My therapist told me, that I should give signs more clear when I want to stop, but it was to abstact for me, because I thought I had to give this signs in voice but this cards feel better.

I got expelled, because I was at very specialized institutes, where they only select a small number of people each year, so you need to work close to people.

Thank you Tuttle, btbnnyr, pensieve, Sora.
You are being very helpful and provide good advices!