"Meltdowns"-definition please?

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Several times on this site I have seen several people post stuff about experiencing/having "meltdowns."

As a former rabid environmental campaigner, I must confess that the only definition of "meltdown" I am familiar with is the ones that can be a risk if a nuclear reactor overheats. (Now I feel stupid.)

Can someone define the term "meltdown" as used in an aspie sense/on this site. I take it it refers to anger or coping (or not coping.)

Thanks!

Julie

A meltdown is an emotional outburst caused by stressful events. I have them every 3 weeks (but I used to only have them once every 6 months).

Tim

Thank you!

Woah.......Something ELSE to add to the list of "things I thought happened just to me..." what people call "overreactions." Maybe to them something else isn't important, but it is to ME so I react (top losing somthing, not doing something, something done to me i don't like) in proportion to it's importance to ME.
Julie

When someone says they're having a meltdown, it means that their core is unable to cool down and their fuel assemblies are beginning to melt. It's rather uncomfortable.

meltdown yeah we overreact to an obnoxious stimulus......the purpose of a meldown is to tell others around us to stop what they are doing and to recognise we are stressed...meltdowns oocur and they are very stressful for others to watch and witness....

Like when at school, sometimes, when it goty too much or there was a frickin' gang of people bullying me at once, my reaction to being bulliedc was to cringe in a corner, flap my hands around, put them over my ears and thern SCREAM till they left or were driven off by a teacher? Does that class as a meltdown to you?

Julie

emotional meltdowns or breakdown. i know what those are like

Temper tantrums, screaming outbursts, excessive stimming episodes, shutting down and not talking, etc... Basically, it occurs due to stressful events. I think it tends to occur more commonly in children than with adults, though adults tend to experience them in a different way, say getting depressed or something. I imagine it's part of the learning process, telling others that things are quite different and that we desire to be understood. It also has a lot to do with sensory experiences. It is basically a sudden part of our personality that is completely different and can last just for a few minutes up to one day, sometimes a few days. It all depends on the person.

- Ray M -

I had many of these meltdowns before. I've done it in front of a girl I loved with whole bunch of my former friends. That caused the girl to cry and it also got the attention of a local security person. Which caused me to leave.

I don't tend to get really angry, though i'm deffinantly a very iritable person and will snap and get moody when i'm stressed out or over whelmed. By best comping mechenism for stress or sensory overload is to phase out, go somewhere else in my head, proably with a lot of stimming, i do this in clubs or noisy pubs alot (or used to i very rarely go now).
However i have REALLY lost my temper a few times and that has been a bit of a disaster, because i see red and don't remember anything i do while i'm like that. I've broken a few things and hit my sister, this was a christmas and i had been drinking too....all in all a BAD day. Anyway, these very rare occasions do seem to really frighten people so i'm glad they don't happen to often.
I do have a lot of coping strategies to help keep myself unstressed so i don't blow up. They seem to work quite well.

If I'm expecting one of my sports teams to win and they don't, I have a meltdown. I did this for almost every Eagles and Flyers loss last year and every Phillies loss this year up until a month ago when I was able to write off the season. I will try to always expect a loss from now on, but that might be hard with the football since there are only 16 games and each one means so much.

A wicked shiit straight to China!

In the process of realizing I'm very likely an Aspie here, and I also thought it was just 'me being weird'. An awful lot of my supposed 'weirdnesses' that I never imagined would relate to AS in fact do.

I cn feel a meltdown building up inside, but there's nothing I can do to stop it. I tend to go into the anger/abuse mode first, then it sort of breaks and changes into crying and depression instead.

The worst melt-down I ever had was a few months ago when I broke down and started to hysterically cry. It was so embarassing for me afterward that I haven't shed so much as a single tear since.

The definition of a 'meltdown' varies because different Aspeis 'melt down' in different ways (unless I'm thinking of something totally different)

A 'meltdown' for me is where I'm over stimulated and my brain turns off like a computer that crashes. I loose control of motor skills, I start hyper ventilating, I say whatever comes to mind, I'm shaking and staggering. During this stage of the 'meltdown' my brain will erase snippets of memory from my brain. So I won't know really what I did in the last few seconds. I may have an idea...but not a lot else. Also, if I try to look back on these events, I'll be watching the memory in the third person.
(i.e. I'll be watching myself 'melt down'. Like being out of body. Sortta cool really). Once that stage is cleared, I'll regain a bit of control of my speech -mind you I'll be sarcastic. Also, my movements will be thick and choppy and my thoughts will be all hazy. I'll feel sedated because functions in my brain are 'off-line' if you will. It's like part of your consciousness has been put in darkness. I will also experience the need to crawl into a tight corner or under something like a water fountain or into a cupboard. It feels soooo good to do that. ^^U
Anyway, after that stage is cleared, I can start to feel my mental functions coming back 'on-line' as though someone's turning the lights back on inside my head one room at a time. I stop shaking, I become more awake, I'm not sarcastic or snide anymore, my movement returns to normal and I feel very calm. (This last part of the meltdown is the best because...well, it's sort of like rebooting a computer. Once they computer's back on it can perform all kinds of tasks quickly because all the old programs (my emotions or thoughts) have been shutdown.)

That's how I explain a melt down. Or at least one type of melt down that I have. The other is mostly just a temper tantrum. ^^U I hope I described the right thing, it's getting late and I'm not thinking clearly right now...so...yeah.

Good night.

Jeez.....I recall precisely THREE bof those "red mists" as i call them.

1)At school-I was 9 or 10 years old and a girl was bullying me. This girl had been for months and that day I just lost it. All I can recall is coming around straddling her back and thumping it, but the girl had bite marks, sratch and finger gouges too and was screaming her eyes out,. Two teachers hauled me off her and demanded to know what was going on.Her sister ,made some remark about the mites saying ""Better get you checked for rabies" and all I recall seeing was the sister's throat and my hands reaching for it, like tunnel vision. It took the same 2 teachers to hold me back.
The bully in question refused to go back to school for a week till I rang up and told her it wouldn't happen again.

Oddly enough she stayed away from me for the most part after that.

2) At a different school when I was fourteen, three big boys bullied a small friend of mine. Again I don't recall most of it though I DO recall kicking the first in the nuts, holding the second one six inches off the ground against a wall (he was bigger than me, too!) and chasiung the other across the school sports firld till he got over a high chain-link fence. Trying to climb those terrifies me, the wobbling, so I didn't pursue. (It was witnessed, and back on the OTHER meanning of "meltdown", oddly enough it was not long after that I got nicknames "Chernobyl Features" by a friendly acquaintance as a result of my temper!) I also LOST that friend that day-she started calling ME names. Go fig.....

3) I was looking after a 3-year-old child when I was 17 years old, and another ex-classmate (read "class-bully) from the school I used to go to came over and tried to take over looking after her. Acutely aware that I was responsible for the child unless her mother said otherwise, I refused. This other girl went on and ion, calling me nbames and telling me to "F***ing well leave" and the use of this language in front of a three year old combined with an outraged "Who does she think she is to talk to me like I'm a piece of dog s***?" made me lose it, and the red mist came down. This girl had a gorgeous thick wavy head of red hair. By the time I came out of it, two-thirds of it was detatched from her head, more was grasped in both my hands and the girl, scalp bleeding, ran off screaming. I took the child back to her mum and then told my mum what had happened, just in time as the phone rang with the other girl's furious parent on the other end, threatening to have me in court for assault.

My mum's reply was "Your daughter has made my daughter's last four years at school a misery. My daughter told me what your daughter tried to do and she was correct-in law she is resp[onsible for that child. If my daughter had agreed, handed care of the child over to Melanie (the red-head's name) and that child had subsequently been hurt, my daughter would have been the one held responsible. When she refused, Melanie started swearing at her and called her names. Take her to court if you want, but you do and we'll just let them know that my daughter was provoked." She then put the phone down

We never heard from that family again.

I'm not proud of any of these events, but they happened, and sound a lot like what you describe, Morphia.

Julie