Meltdowns

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My observation from the NTs in these videos is that an NT meltdown is far more methodical, meaning it takes them more time to get wound up and they don't go as completely ballistic (even when throwing things they seem slower and more "organised" about it somehow), verbal, meaning they have more of a tendency to shout at and verbally attack those around them that aren't directly in their way (I think aspies mostly just yell at people trying to talk to or interact with them), and social, meaning they deliberately engage with others and try to pick fights with them, like the man in the first one who went up to the front desk and started yelling about the coffee, or the second one, where the man stood on the chair and screamed about his computer.

i don;t know if what I experienced was a meltdown of not, wasn't pleasant though. Went for a job interview yesterday, all went well and they called straight away saying they want me back for a 2nd interview next week. problem is I don't cope well with change and I don't cope well with stress and pressure.

If I get the new job I will be travelling between 3 offices and I will have quite a bit more expectation and pressure on me there. I usually try to avoid things like that and spend my time hoping no one speaks to me and I can just hide away but now and again I push myself as i don't want AS to hold me back. Was getting worked up about it all yesterday and it all got to much and I just started ranting about it all and I couldn't calm myself down, just panicking a lot about things.

My confidence and self worth are just non existent these days.

I know my limits, know what i can deal/cope with and what i am best at yet I feel always pushed by others to do more and more and it just makes me unhappy.

yeah, having gone to school with autistic kids most of my life, and seeing plenty of meltdowns -
you are right, those are different.

That's a good point about them going to look for people, they are more calculated about it.

I don't really yell at people unless I'm under extreme overload conditions -although the people around me never understand about that - since they don't experience overload the same way I do, it looks to them like I'm being a brat.

The example from yesterday, the woman at work that I yelled at, then had to apologize - this woman is so sweet. I don't think you could find a kinder person. BUT she has OCD and severely. So when I don't have work to do, I have been known to go find her and work on projects with her, I like her a lot. and can work well with her despite her OCD.

But when I am extremely busy and she is OCDing all over me, I want to swat her. Yesterday she asked me for some help with a project and I told her I was under a big deadline, asked if it was ok if we did it the next day (today). She said yes. Then she kept coming to my desk asking me the same question repeatedly, not because she needed more information, but because she was checking and rechecking. The second time she asked me, a bigwig was standing at my desk and I said too aggressively in front of him, I'M WORKING, NOT NOW! (I should have known right then I was on the verge of a meltdown.)

But even after that she kept coming back and the whole time I was under pressure to finish the job and having computer problems and people kept asking me to do other things and the woman sitting next to be was babbling on the phone with her shrieking laughter all day and eating her stinky food. And I was worried about my cat because I had upset him (which had happened because I was worried about this deadline coming up and he was yowling persistently and literally tripping me when I walked).

It wasn't like - I'm mad at you and I'm telling you off. I actually have sympathy for her OCD, I wasn't mad at her, I just WANTED HER TO GET AWAY FROM ME AND STAY AWAY FROM ME.

I don't btw lose total control, maybe that means it's not a melt down. I've only ever done that once, I couldn't even remember the whole incident. My huge brother was trying to pull me down and he couldn't. Maybe I am just having tantrums these days, but they are related to sensory stimulation and stress.

I agree about how severity of meltdowns is unrelated to placement on the spectrum (and personally think the autism spectrum is actually many spectrums, because autism is made up of many things -- and a person can be at the highest end of one of those spectrums and the lowest end of another).

I think meltdowns (and the severity of them) are more compicated than just whether or not you can control your emotions appropriately .... (and I've deleted all the stuff I wrote here because I realized I can't speak for anybody but myself and was basically speaking for other people whose experience I don't know)

The reason I don't have as many meltdowns as I used to (I used to have a lot of meltdowns -- measured in times per day or week) is not that I control my emotions better than I used to,it's because I have learned how (and am able to) generally avoid the things that cause the meltdowns in the first place -- if I can't avoid those things and keep my stress levels within manage-able limits for my brain, I can't avoid meltdowns. The severity of my meltdowns actually hasn't changed at all since I was child, even though as I grew up I did develop better emotional self-control.

It's harder for me to avoid most of the things that cause them because I'm around people at work all day. The best way I've found so far to help me with them is to use the same thing that causes them to begin with, sensory overload. I just try to overload with good sensory to block out the bad. Sometimes I play with my plushy at work and talk to it (like they didn't think I was nuts before) to try and store up a "good overload" reserve, I think it's been helping. Doesn't always work though, sometimes it gets me anyway. I also listen to a lot of music.

Meltdowns for me a very rare because I have learned to take care of myself and to recognize long enough beforehand to keep them from striking. For me, there are of two types:

1) Sudden uncontrollable anger outburst that makes me lose my head. I get hostile, scream at people, and usually storm off in red anger.
2) Slow overwhelm and overload that makes me shut down. I become very quiet and dissociate entirely.

I wonder where that would place me on the "spectrum" of meltdowns?

I shout to myself about things but sometimes when I get upset the volume of my voice can increase and people think that I am shouting at them. For instance, I don't think this was a meltdown, but there was an incident when I went into the supermarket a few weeks ago. I was rushing to catch my bus back home and the self service till would not scan my shopping and kept telling me I needed to ask for assistance. I became upset during this process, especially when I couldn't find an assistant to help me. Being flustered I ranted to myself about the machine whilst trying not to burst into tears. By the time an assistant was found I was speaking rather loudly about how the machine would not process my shopping and that I needed to catch my bus and that I was in a rush and could she make the machine work properly please.

However, during that process I managed to detect that my voice was too loud and informed her that I was not shouting at her but that I was upset and getting into a faff because I did not want to miss the bus and I couldn't make the machine work properly.

She got the machine working and I left the supermarket with my shopping and managed to make it in time to catch my bus.

That has happened roughly twice in Sainsbury. The second time the lady put my shopping through for me because I was getting upset again, which was very nice of her.

On another occasion some time ago I became upset by the noise and the crowds (trolleys everywhere, people walking at me in all directions, no space to move, everyone talking at once, the sound of trolley wheels and people walking, the beeping of the checkout/tills, someone talking on the tannoy) in the supermarket and the fact that they have moved what I was looking for again, I couldn't find an assistant to ask and was left wondering around and around getting in a huff against all the noise trying to find what I was seeking. My eyesight was going blurry and I felt like I was about to blow my top so eventually I slammed my basket on the floor, exclaimed 'Oh for f**k sake' and walked out without any shopping at all.

I do not attack people though, in fact if I do shout at them I usually don't mean to (cases where I felt I was being bullied and tried to defend myself don't count...although I don't do that often either as in real life I will try to avoid bullies rather than face them...I was a runner).

I really have to stop having these upsets in supermarkets...I worry one day they will ban me if I keep having faffs whilst I am in there.

Don't know if my upsets are NT or not.

I get the same way; my meltdowns can be triggered by seemingly random things that would be no more than a minor annoyance to other people. I haven't yet found the pattern of others' behaviour that triggers them for me, so someone can say something mildly irritating or snide and my rage will suddenly jump from zero to sixty in seconds flat and I have to leave before I try to attack them. I then proceed to go to my room or some other quiet out of the way place and attack inanimate objects. I've come close to sensory overload in stores a few times; mostly I respond to situations like that by shutting down. I lose all my energy and all interest in what others are doing, stop paying attention to the things around me and stay that way until I get home.