Possible self-soothe for meltdowns. Radical, though
This would have to be applied very early in a meltdown for it to work, and it could be dangerous if it turns out that I am wrong about how this stuff works. If meltdowns are caused by a sudden efflux of norepinephrine and other stress hormones in magnesium/calcium-deficient areas of the brain, it seems possible that some of the symptoms could be alleviated by distributing these chemicals to other parts of the brain. What this means subjectively would be intellectually and physically embracing some of the anger that occurs during such a meltdown. By doing so, my hypothesis is that stress hormone levels would be reduced in the delicate areas that are affected by these strange mood fluctuations. To do this, you'd open up chemical channels to other parts of your brain by verbally and physically expressing this surge of anger. You would go for a jog or engage in some other physical activity to move it out to your motors, and you'd give yourself an opportunity for a socio-political rant to move it out to areas of the brain in which your thought processes and vocabulary skills are engaged.
If you feel uncomfortable with doing things like this during or preceding a meltdown or won't always be able to get away long enough to pursue such engagement, you could still induce the long-term effects by simply writing down angry thoughts on politics, society or life in general and reading them out loud, perhaps even record yourself to make sure that you are really engaging yourself in these 'negative' emotions. Hopefully, doing so would have the effect of opening up channels for stress hormones to disperse, thereby cushioning the shock to your system that is caused by these rapid hormone fluctuations. You'd mainly want to try to engage parts of your brain that are typically NOT engaged during a meltdown.
This is very hypothetical, though, so I'd like to retract any overt or implied recommendation of actually employing this, particularly if you are a danger to yourself and others during these meltdowns. What I'm doing here is toying around with peculiar ideas that I think ought to work physiologically, but this method could also be dangerous if I am dramatically wrong about how the chemistry of these things actually works. If I am correct, however, this method of encouraging stress hormone dispersal could serve to control some of the damaging effects of autism.
KingdomOfRats
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am think it could only work in people who have mild meltdowns,as the more extreme meltdowns [headbanging,seized up with a inner pain and self attacking etc] are too debilitating and accute to reverse,there is not the same chance as with mild meltdowns to have normalised thinking at the same time.