Your last aspie shutdown and its triggers

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I had a shutdown once when I walked with someone I knew, and we had to switch trains, an unexpected event, plust the trip lasted much longer than I thought it would.

so when I met this lady's friend, he held out his hand and greeted me, and I just stood there unable to speak, move, or think. thank Got it took just a few minutes to get my senses back. but my senses were under attack.

Over spring break, I stayed with my uncle and his family- whom I had never met before. I also met my grandfather and stayed with him for a day. It was staying with him that made me shut down. It took us like two hours to drive to his house and the entire time, he would not stop talking. He would not give me two seconds of silence (in which to process everything that was going on around me) and he kept telling me the same stories over and over and over again. Oh, and every once in awhile he would go to point to something and he would stick his arm in my face. I HATE when people invade my personal space. So by the time we got to his house I had completely shut down and was exhausted. It was terrible.

Not sure if I actually have shutdowns, but the last rage outburst I had was at the beginning of this year before I went on antidepressants. SInce then I've been able to handle my emotions a bit better.

I've not heard much mention of shutdowns before, but would that include freezing for 2-3 minutes at the side of the road due to sensory overload? Often come to my senses to find my friends at the other side of the road looking confused/waving and staring at me lol

I've had a bunch of small shutdowns recently just due to being tired from working long odd hours the last few weeks, but I think the most significant one was at the beginning of my new job a few months ago.

The people that I am working with decided that it would be good for me to spend some one-on-one time with each of our engineers during the first week so they basically passed me around to each other for a couple of hours at a time without any real time to get away from them (they also don't know I'm Autistic). So, I found it interesting to see what everyone was working on for the first couple of days and was even able to engage with them to some extent, even though I'm usually mute around people I've just met. By the end of the week, though I was so worn out from this that I was basically just absently listening to the engineers that I was with and could no longer bring myself to ask questions. I had withdrawn so much that four different people took me on the exact same building tour, but I couldn't bring myself to speak up and tell them that somebody else had already done it.

Yesterday, when my housing officer gave me yet more bad news.

What happened with the housing officer?

I don't usually shut down completely during the situation. I feel like I'm lagging. Once I get myself out of the situation, I go find a quiet place to calm down and I completely lose my sense of time. I snap out of the trance and it could be a few minutes later, or two hours. Social anxiety is my biggest trigger, but driving can do it too. Anything that gets me frustrated will stick me in a loop of trying to calm down and getting pissed off all over again until the problem is either solved or given to someone else. The last time that happened I couldn't find the pot I needed to cook dinner. It took 45 minutes of repeatedly going through every place it would rationally be, giving up because if I didn't stop I was going to start breaking stuff, my mom coming home to find me cocooned on my bed (which is my most reliable calm-down method), telling her why, and finding out Dad had my soup pot upstairs because the roof was leaking. Even though we have a stack of buckets in the garage.

@kraftie - It's a slightly long story... :-/

Basically a few weeks ago, because I wasn't getting anywhere with the housing process, my housing officer decided to accelerate the process by going down the "homelessness" route. This meant my mum had to write a letter of eviction and sent it to the council's housing department. She wanted to set the eviction date for the end of December, but he insisted the sooner, the better (I wasn't there for this particular conversation...) So the date was set for 30th November. Obviously that's been and gone, and I'm still at home.

Have heard nothing back from the council. So yesterday, after a session with my psychologist, I had a brief talk with my housing officer (he works in the same building). He told me that my mum needs to start putting pressure on the council by phoning them and asking them to hurry up, I'm going to be evicted. He then said the council might place me in temporary accommodation for the moment, but come out with a "no" answer anyway. In which case I would be turfed out of the temporary accommodation and taken off the housing register.

I lost it mentally at that last one. I withdrew into almost total silence. A few minutes later, I burst out that there was no way I was going into temporary accommodation without a decision from the council first - absolutely no way.

It's just a really horrible waiting game.

I sense that it will happen for you. I could understand the impatience. I would feel the same.

I locked myself in my room, cut myself, and stimmed and writhed in bed for an hour.

That's just yesterday.

It wasn't my last, but it is the one I remember most strongly. I was on Yr 6 school camp out at a big camp run by a few people in the northern Australian bushland near where I lived. It was about 10pm at night and the teachers had everyone running around and yelling and shouting really loudly under bright lights mixed in with dark shadows and with loud music. I was wandering through the crowd, unsure of what to do, when everything just became surreal and dreamlike, like nothing was real, and the noises and my perception of reality was blurred. I became light headed and just had to sit down under a powerpole for a while. I have had many experiences where everything around me has become surreal and dreamlike, which I presume is a shutdown due to sensory overload.

I'm just coming out of it right now, thankfully.

I have been studying non stop for about 9-12 hours per day for semester finals and then saw my friends who began to talking to me, all normal stuff, but the socialization + stress from studying and finals tipped me over the edge.