Do I stim? or get meltdowns?

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I relate with so much of what people are saying, the only 2 things I am uncertain on are stimming and meltdowns, but both are mentioned quite commonly on these forums.

About stimming

I have never rocked myself to sleep or anything like that. I sometimes get like involutary muscle movements. So say you know when you move your fingers and you can see the tendons in your forearm flex. I get that in different parts of my body sometimes lasting for a couple of minutes like muscle spasms (but only on a very small scale), is this any form of stimming? Or when I was 17 I used walk right along the edge of the curb on the pavement, everyone used to ask me why I did it and I couldn't say, just like some kind of routine, I didn't choose to do it, just used to sort of fall into it. Have done it since, but used to do it all the time then. Is that any form of stimming?

Also meltdowns - not sure what one is

I've had panic attacks etc, but get the impression thats not what they are. It's strange, but this has happened a few times - a girl I fancy has come on to me in a big way when we are alone. I suddenly can't handle it and have to run out of the room, usually offending them or making them think I'm not interested or gay. This has happened a few times in my life, is that a meltdown? Complete inability to cope? Or emotional overload? or are they the same thing? Any hot blooded male would have jumped straight in, I'm straight and fancied these women, but couldn't handle it. I sort of prefer to take things slower. Takes long enough to actually kiss a girl, they virtually have to be blatant before I make a pass at them, sometimes they are not blatant enough and I miss the opportunity completely, only later everyone says "why didn't you kiss her?" and I realise I missed the boat, or was never actually chatting them up, they just thought I was. I have got this inability to cope at other times, never discussed it with my friends, they'd think it was a bit too weird. One thing with me is that I get completely wrapped up in the conversation, oblivious almost to the girl I'm talking to, so for instance I having a laugh with them, unaware they are falling for me, I was in love with the conversation then suddenly they show their feelings and I can't handle it, takes me by surprise so to speak and suddenly I can't think or handle it, end up running away. If I get carried away with a conversation with a man sometimes everyone thinks I'm gay, or the guy might ask me out for a drink. I'm not gay, don't care if anybody thinks I am, just is confusing, I'm not actually flirting, just find the conversation enthralling.

So do I stim? and get meltdowns? does anyone else get carried away with conversations like I do?

I didn't think I stimmed and didn't know what it was until reading WP then released I probably do/did but my kids used to correct me - they tell me to put my hands down all the time.
Also I thought I had petit mal epilepsy until I heard about meltdowns (again recently on joining WP). I think it is different for everyone, some get uncontrolable angry/upset and others shut down brain/body function.
I do get caught up in conversation, if I am on a topic I like and in good talking mode, recently colleagues said that I seemed to get along well in conversation about a topic but when I thought about it it wasn't a 'conversation', it was me talking and not really taking any notice if anyone was interested to listen or in their responses, I was just talking and saying what I wanted to say.
I miss out totally on pickup queues and if someone is blatant and asks me out straight I run away. A person who works in the shop I go to asked for my phone number and if i wanted to go out so I never went back and had to find another shop.

A meltdown is basically being overwhelmed by a situation (emotionally or something, I guess) and as a result of being unable to handle it you "act out" (become violent, emotional, try to hide, out of control stimming, etc.). Most people, if you try to explain your emotional state to them, will tell you you're over-reacting, especially because the exact feeling of a meltdown is difficult to put in words and usually if you think back on it you'll begin to think you over-reacted too.

I think I pretty much got it; it's harder than I thought to explain it.

thegodofhats I like your name, can I be a minion?

Thanks alexbeetle and thegodofhats.

Pretty sure I've had meltdowns then, just not sure about stimming.

I get the involuntary muscle spasms, too, although it sounds like that's just a coincidence. My stimming's pretty minor, I used to bite my knuckles, so much and so often that I built up a solid lump of hard skin over them, I actually had to cut it off with a knife once to make it easier to bend my fingers. Really, the only stim I've consistently had is drumming my fingers. It's so small that I don't think anyone, including myself, really noticed it 'til I started reading up on AS, but now I know, I think it's definitely a stim. I'll do it a lot when I'm thinking about what to say, and I think it's more common when I'm trying to decide how to reply to a post online, because my fingers are hovering over a keyboard. When I was in school, I used to try and draw out fractals, too, which may or may not be one, it was the same pattern repeated again and again and again until it go to small that it was just a smudge.

Don't know if I have meltdowns, if I do they're not expressed by exploding, more like shutting down and just getting consumed in the idea that I can't cope with my life, and I'll not really pay attention to what I'm doing. Usually only happens in the evening when I'm alone after a day I've found really hard, which is why I wonder if they truly are meltdowns - those aren't "sensory overload" situations. I think my sister used to cause them, she knew just exactly how to push my buttons so I'd lose the ability to cope and I'd lash out, violently, but even then it's only happened a few times.

Someone on Tribe.net had contacted me a little while ago and in that conversation, knowing she was AS and I thought I was, she'd mentioned something about meltdowns (although she didn't use the word meltdown). What struck me as a little bit odd about the way she mentioned it was that it seemed she expected me to understand what she was talking about, rather than having explained it before hand... and yet... I did understand it. This thread here is the first time I've heard it described specifically in the context of AS. I've lost a few jobs because of it. Specifically when my wife and I were still together, all three times when she became pregnant with one of our children, I had a meltdown and got fired because of it within a day or two before finding out she was pregnant. I had some fairly remarkable "couvade" symptoms (sympathetic pregnancy) and I think subliminally my brain/body knew she was pregnant before either of us were conscious of it and the meltdown in those cases was a response to that. I've had other meltdowns ... one in particular about 18 months ago that I responded to someone on a mailing list during the meltdown. It made me really worried about my career because I've always been very open about my identity and very vocal about my opinions and knowing that people would be able to find that thread via google. My father had a violent temper when I was growing up and I had interpreted much of my own tendancies as learned from him although as far back as I can remember I was always afraid of hurting someone. So even though I got into a lot of fights as a kid, I always held myself back because I was afraid of hurting the other person. Since then I worked really hard to change those habits and I managed to direct the occasional meltdown into inanimate objects and some verbal. That I recall, I haven't acted out my rage physically even toward an inanimate object in over six years (when my ex and I were splitting up), so thankfully I've been able to control that.

In my case the meltdowns have become more frequent and life has been a lot harder for me in the last year. It's a long story... I've begun to think I might have been better off if I had remained painfully shy and introverted which was something I started deliberately changing about myself when I was very young... but apparently because of some of the experiences that are common to AS, being outgoing has got me fired from a lot of jobs over the years. By the time I got to Austin in June last year and got fired then in August from the job that brought me here with most of my belongings still in storage in Virginia, I really lost it. It's only the 2nd time in my life that I've seriously considered suicide. A few months later I was arrested for driving with a suspended license. The license was suspended in 2000 for failure to pay child support. I failed to pay child support because my average salary over the past 6 years (it's even in my taxes, including contract work) has been $25k, which is little more than half of what the state expects me to earn. Some of that is because I worked for companies that went out of business, some of it is because I got fired in response to experiences that are common to autistics. I only discovered that I'm probably autistic (undiagnosed / self-diagnosed) a month or so ago. So by the time I even knew that I wasn't alone, I'd already spent a night in jail for "being poor" (that's not what's on the report, but if you read between the lines, that's the actual reason), and 6+ years of my life with the sword of Damocles hanging over my head, continually telling me that I'm an as*hole and they're going to put me in jail for not being a minimum $40k+ income earner and being able to keep those jobs and be happy living in apartments that resemble tar-shacks while most of my money goes to ensure my kids have more toys than they ever had when my ex and I were together (they have a Playstation in every room now). I got so bad, so consistently angry about it all before finding out that I'm probably autistic, that I couldn't even think about pursuing programming work, even on contract, without becoming violently enraged again. Which is a large part of the reason that I now have serious concerns about being evicted from my apartment.

Like Alexbeetle, some years ago I'd considered the possibility that I might have petit mal epilepsy. I'd seen a neurologist who didn't say "you're epileptic", he just said "there are some suspicious squiggles" on my EEG. They tried a couple of different anti-seizure meds which had different effects but which were ultimately either unhelpful or in some cases made things worse. One of them gave me chest pains. I also am constantly doing things with my hands -- sometimes it's conscious, sometimes it's not. Though I've never had the problem of being overpowered by someone expressing romantic interest in me. It just doesn't happen often. Though I do tend to blush and become a bit more introverted when someone expresses interest.

So if stimming is intended to regulate the nervous system, what happens if the person doesn't stim? Is it intended to prevent sensory overload or something?

There's a thread on here about whether guitar playing is stimming. I play cards on the computer for hours on end and don't get bored, it sort of calms me. If this is stimming, then I do things like this all the time and have done in various guises throughout my life. I've also had quite a few meltdowns.

I've never got violent, nothing beyond verbal aggression. I thought I had ODD, AS is systematic with ODD, but could that just be an outlet of a meltdown? I once (once!) hit a guy, even slowed down my fist when I threw it so I didn't hurt him, but it landed.

I feel quite convinced now that I get both meltdowns and stimming.
Thanks for the help.