Never had a meltdown

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I was professionally diagnosed on the NHS with Asperger's last year at age 27 (under the ICD criteria, not DSM), even though I've spent my whole life feeling 'different'. I've read through the descriptions of a meltdown - where people start screaming due to sensory overload - and I can't say I've ever had one. I get plenty of shutdowns though, where I go very quiet when there's too much stimulation and want to leave the scene ASAP.

Is this normal? Does it mean that I'm only very mildly autistic?

It is normal. Every autistic person is different. You don't have to have all the symptoms.

It also seems to be a function of stress. Overall as your life is going and the situation at hand.

Being diagnosed at 27 likely means being more on the mild side. A lot of the stuff you read about regarding meltdowns and stimming (hand flapping etc) is focused more on children with with significant autism. So while you are expected to have difficulties in many areas, you're not expected to exhibit some of the more extreme traits. Meltdowns and shutdowns both usually occur for the same reason. And as I'm getting older I'm tending to experience shutdowns more often than meltdowns.

I haven't had a major one in almost 8 years.

It's normal not to have recognizable meltdowns, i.e public displays of frustration. I tend to have internal meltdowns whilst not showing much emotion. I suspect that's common.

Nope....nothing "wrong" with "having never had a meltdown."

You've had "shutdowns"---which is at least "rather autistic."

I get shutdowns.

Sometimes, it seems like I also get meltdowns, too. But they are more related to frustration, most of the time, than to any "sensory overload."

Shutdowns are very much an autistic presentation. I am much more of the shutdown then meltdown type. Shutdowns have the same cause as a meltdown in autistics, sensory overload and difficulty handling multitasking.

Thanks for the replies, everyone. They're really helpful.

I don't get meltdowns either, I get shutdowns, and they're always the result of too strong negative emotions, or info overload, or too much going on and/or multitasking. Sensory issues are very mild for me (except my heat tolerance) and never creates shutdowns.

I would say I have had shutdowns most of my life but no meltdowns, but carefully examining my life, I know that I have had both. However, meltdowns for me are rare. As a very young child I may have had them as I used to get such tempers, but with my Dads correction they turned into shutdowns from the age of about six to seven years old.
Now, maybe about once every year or few years I have a meltdown, and it comes out in a different way which I call a "Claustrophobic Mind". I have done a few stupid things in the past while I have been like this! My thoughts start to go wild.

Anyway. Yes. You can certainly have shutdowns and no meltdowns.

I seem to be a medium-level Aspie but I've never had anything that could properly be called a meltdown. I would imagine a meltdown is the result of stress and frustration going into the red and not getting managed in time. I've always put a lot of effort into keeping my stress levels low, probably at the expense of missing a lot of opportunities and losing a lot of time that could be spent more usefully, but I'd rather not risk pushing myself too hard. I've also got a calm, stable temperament - the stereotype British thing really - and I don't get ruffled easily. I haven't made a heart-rending, dramatic spectacle of myself since I was a child.

I've experienced something that might be called shutdown, but even that is limited to briefly being unable to think - the capability returns very quickly. I've often been unable to follow what people are saying, for example in lectures (because they're not interactive and I seem to need to be actively involved with the thing before I can take in more than a sentence or two in real time) or comprehending such things as verbal directions on how to get to a place, in bureaucratic meetings, or in any situation where I get too uncomfortable, bored or impatient but daren't just leave. But it's plausible that none of this would qualify as a "proper" shutdown.

So yes I'm sure it's possible to have ASD but to be lucky enough never to have meltdowns or particularly debilitating shutdowns.

Wow ToughDiamond. You are fortunate in not experiencing either meltdowns or shutdowns. I count myself fortunate that most of the shutdowns I experience are partial shutdowns. I rarely have a full shutdown as I can usually orevent this by removing the stress somehow. Also, if I do fully shutdown, I don't think I shutdown for long. I am guessing a few seconds. Though I did fully shutdown late one evening and I naturally woke in the morning. So I do not know where the shutdown ended and the sleep began. That is the only occasion that I can remember this happening. I was soo tired! But shutdowns and sleeping do feel different. To me shutdowns and fainting feel the same, but differ when I come out of them. A shutdown I want no fuss. If I get fuss where someone tries to force me out of one (Usually by not understanding what it is... E.g. when I had one in a hospital) I go straight back into another shutdown.
I once had this going for a blood test in the local hospital. They eventually took me to A&E to recover. A doctor there asked if I had autism. I said I didn't know. At the time I did not know, though by then I had had a few moments where people had asked or told me I had asperges or autism, and I had ignored it thinking "Why did they say that?" Every time I was coming out of a shutdown, a nurse of someone was trying to get me to talk or was trying to talk to me to get me to pull out (Assuming I had fainted), hence I was there foe six hours in and out of shutdowns trying to recover.
Now I mentioned shutdowns and fainting feeling the same. The few times I have fainted (Ironically also due to blood tests) if I have fuss I am happy about the attention. (Who doesn't mind a little fuss? Haha! But if I have the same fuss with a shutdown I am the opposite where I shut down again).
So though the two things feel the same as my feelings can blend into each other so I feel the same for two events, or vice versa (I am still explorinh myself to try to work out feelings. Last week I made a giant leap forward with the help of Kraftie in here by describing a feeling I have always had on and off tnroughout most of my life and realized it is anxiety. Prior to this if a doctor said "Do you suffer from anxiety?" I would say "No", because I was not able to associate the name with the feeling if that makes sense? It could be I have all my feelings intact but have never realized what some of them are called? But often when more then one feeling come at the sae time I may have difficulty working out how I feel if I am asked, as I may only be able to describe one or two of the strongest feelings if rhat makes sense?).

^
Yes alexithymia is just what you've described I think - difficulty in naming and describing emotions. Obviously anybody with such a difficulty might be at risk of ignoring the strain they're under until it's too late and then they could have a meltdown. I guess in my own case I might not be able to quickly pinpoint the exact words for my feelings, but I usually know immediately when I'm getting into a bad place emotionally. Often the first sign is that my ears start to burn. I suspect that I might be unusually honest with myself about how I feel, I've seen a lot of people seeming to put a gloss on their own feelings, as if they're trying to pretend to themselves that they can handle things, that they're feeling happy and good, when they're actually getting stressed out to the nines. Then their stress gradually builds up unnoticed until suddenly they reach breaking point, the mask slips and they lose their tempers. I just don't try to kid myself like that. I might not say anything about it, I might not complain, I might even feign a "nothing wrong here" expression, but if I'm feeling even slightly bad, I know.

I also probably do a lot of overkill with my stress / comfort management, going to great lengths to make sure I have props and crutches to hand. For example, if I have to go and be with a group of people I don't know, my first response is "oh no, what are they going to subject me to now that they won't warn me about?" Then I start pondering "is there any way I can arrange to have a panic button, a socially-acceptable way out, or at least a rest break if I start finding it all too much?" I think about how I'm going to be able to control my temperature, I'll take plenty of nicotine gum and a vaping pen with me, maybe I'll down a large dose of CBD oil, maybe earplugs or headphones. I'll try to anticipate anything that could go wrong and to have strategies ready to stop that happening. You'd think I was about to climb Everest or something. I gather I do a lot of "defensive pessimism," which is IMO a good strategy for stress management, the only downside being the risk of missing out on positive opportunities, though if I had a public meltdown I don't suppose that would exactly open doors for me, so maybe I'm not missing out so much.

So I'm very much on my guard against getting stressed out, it's at the front of my mind whenever I have to deal with people, to stop them from dropping me into a stressful situation. It's one of the main things I dislike about people, as a rule they're so oblivious to what their endless insensitive initiatives might do to me. If you're not very firm with people they'll likely push you into the most appalling environments without even knowing they're doing it. They can't help it. They mostly don't understand ASD. And because they're not going to protect you, you have to protect yourself.