Triangle.

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Please go easy on me as what I write is a bit tender on my mind. I wasn't going to put this on the forum but I sent it as a PM to a certain trusted person who is not yet able to reply, but then I thought I can be brave and share.
I am trying to fathom things out. I guess only those of you who are me or can experience being me may fully understand? And who can be me but me? Unless one or two of you have partial shutdowns in the same way as I do which so far only one member has described the same, and I did try to contact this person to ask more questions but the person didn't reply, so I feel a little isolated when discussing this knowing few of you have the same.....

Triange... What I mean by this is..... First you need the base which is that sometimes certain feelings I may not be always able to tell the difference between one feeling and the next, and this is an example of that which I am going to share. So this is the first aspect I will ention to give some background to this so you will understand where I am coming from.
I will call this "Feelings".
I didn't even know that I do this until I joined this site. Am I imagining I do this or do I do this? I do not know which is the first question I ask myself (Actually the last question as I am working backwards on this to describe it to you).
Faintings and Shutdowns
These are the two other sides to the puzzle. When I have had a blood test, I often faint, or I shut down. Now refer to what I have said above. To me both fainting and shutting down feel the same. I can't tell the difference and this can be because either what I mentioned above, or I am not fainting at all but am shutting down, or when I think I am shutting down I am fainting. I could start to faint but then shut down....
Now I have been racking my brain for a few weeks trying to work out the differences between these two and I have come up with the following conclusion:-
1. If I faint, when I recover I don't mind fuss. I am pleased to have the attention.
2. If I have gone into a shutdown, when I come out of it the last thing I want is fuss as with fuss I am in danger of having another shutdown... Example from real life:-
I once went in the hospital which involves a long wait of about 45 minutes to an hour 30 minutes on average in the waiting room. We take a ticket and we wait in thw crowded room for our number to come up, and then we get our blood taken. I am already wound up as I have gone through corridors, and then I don't agree with the dissinfectant smell or bleach smells. Then there is the waiting room sitting among many other people. So I am partly shutting down sometimes even before I get to go near the place where they take my blood.
So on this one occasion I either fainted or I shut down. I believe I started to faint which switched to a shutdown but I am not too sure. It is more likely I was going into a shutdown. Now what is the first thing the nurses do? They start to try to keep me awake and concious. They keep giving me attention and forcing me to talk to them. They ask things like "What day is it?" Things that I am screamingnout on the inside of me for them to leave me alone as I need to close my eyes and lie back and do nothing with no fuss and no bright lights etc.. I could do witn some cola or chocolate... Though usually as they have tried to force me out of shutting down, I doubt cola or chocolate will do much by then.
I was in there for so long that when I could eventually sit up, they put me in a wheeled hospital chair and took me down to A&E to recover, and put a machine on me that bleeped when my pulse went etc... I was there for a while. I was concerned as car parking was limited to 6 hours and I didn't want to get a fine, and by the time I was able to get back to the car it was over six hours. The man who saw me in A&E that afternoon said "There's something else beside fainting going on here. Are you autistic?" I said "No, I don't think so" (This was before I put two and two together which made me ask for an assessment). Anyway. Once I was outside in the fresh air and away from the hospital I recovered.

[ Extra information. The reason for so many blood tests is that I never knew anything about shutdowns and partial shutdowns etc, so I was never able to properly describe what was going on to doctors, so they were testing things to see why I was having issues, and all these tests related to my body and not my mind... It never occurred to me that it was possible for the mind to shut down with stress, or how outside things can trigger the mind into a partial or sometimes full (But for a short period of time in my case) shutdown. A past doctor said it was allergy related which sent me years of going off corse in my hunt to find the cause.

Secondly, I am a bit touchy when I found out that I blend some feelings together like shutdown and fainting. It is possible that I never faint but each time I shut down? I have worked it out that what I get is not the other way round. In other words, I don't faint all the time when I get what I call partial shutdowns, and I am certain of this because of how I come out of the event and what prevents me from recovering.
To find out I blend some feelings together where I can't tell them apart makes me feel a bit like I am stupid? I know I'm not, but it makes me feel vunerable. It hits my confidence as I never knew I did this. I never knew it was possible. I am scared incase I discover more things like this! ]

Question. How do I know if I am shutting down or fainting? I don't like anything to do with blood so would this be more likely a faint or me shutting down because of the thought of blood? Ummm. As both shutdowns and fainting feel the same to me...
It could be that I only faint, but I say no to this as the cause of the situation and the recovery are classic shutdown.... It is more likely that if I was only doing one, it would be shutting dowm usually in partial shutdown form. I am on the fringes as I write as I am slightly stressed as I write due to the context.
Any ideas?


[Be aware I've ammended this several times before posting, so I hope it makes sense. ]