Meltdowns and self-harm.

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I have almost daily meltdowns where I usually end up injured or with a sore head and knuckles.

I am on olanzapine and clomipramine for mental health problems (see signature). They help with my mental health but my meltdowns are still bad.

I used to see a psychologist but the NHS limited how many sessions we could have so I don't see him anymore.

I have an occupational therapist and a support worker (the "carers" here are crap so I don't include them in my support network).

Buy so far nothing's helped with the meltdowns. These frequent meltdowns give me migraines and make me go non-verbal at times. And I am sure it's doing no good to my brain.

Does anyone have any practical solutions to this problem...

well really it starts with you. I used to self harm during meltdowns a lot but learned coping mechanisms not let things reach the meltdown point. you need to recognize future situations before you are in them and try to redirect to something else. one thing that always caused me problems are frustrating task, sometimes its a good idea to just throw up your hands and walk away for a little while. before things reach the meltdown point

Thanks, I'll give that a try.

I have a problem with hurting myself during meltdowns too. I usually will have a headache afterwards and some type of hand or foot/leg injury. My chairs in my kitchen also have some battle wounds. My mom tried to learn a technique to help me by side tracking my attention. She will say "do you like pineapples?" or something else similarly random and innocent, it's so random that it does distract me for few a seconds and then she will start laughing at my funny expression and it starts the whole winding down process. Not sure if you can teach someone around you this method, but it does help me sometimes.

I hit my head when I am overwhelmed by whatever is distressing me (be it physical stimuli or emotional). The more overwhelmed the worse the meltdown and more likely I am to head hit.

I have not managed to stop them but I have managed to reduce them by staying away from things that cause me distress if I am able to.

In my opinion the best way to avoid meltdowns is to create a different "coping" method than is currently being used for a specific situation that leads to a meltdown.

Okay, that was a kinda "duh" statement, but I reckon it's kind of a reminder that it's not so much the melt-down that needs coped with - if one can satisfactorily cope with the situation that would otherwise lead to a meltdown. (and therefore avoid the meltdown)

I figure humans have about 15-20 thousand behavior scenarios -if you please- and will need adequate coping/handling/responding to pretty much all of these to avoid meltdowns. So if one were to create appropriate coping methods for these situations as they come up - in about 3 or so years, one or two day meltdown events would be down to about every other month or so. In my experience.

It's also possible to change the actual meltdown response to something else.

Thanks for the advice everyone.

I'll have a look into what brands I am buying (I need to get that flavourless toothpaste again) and as for changing the response, sounds hard but I will give it a try.

If you want to stop melting down you need to stop being so damn hot! (Attractive)

Sorry if you find this to be spam, just wanted to lighten the mood.

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Unapologetically, Norny.
-chronically drunk

Not sure if I have meltdowns tbh. I just get very worked up if I am having a lot of anxiety and end up ranting about stuff , my mrs says she can't calm me down or make me see sense. Afterwards I would rather just be on my own a lot.

Would that be meltdown territory?

I have all that too. Meltdowns, self harm, migraines.
As far as meltdowns go, my therapy has helped in that im able to be somewhat more objective about them and talk myself down better. Shutting myself in a dark room and breathing deep helps. Avoiding things I have learned can trigger a meltdown helps.