Difference between meltdowns and outbursts?

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I'm not sure if I have meltdowns or not. What are Aspie meltdowns, and what sort of things does the Aspie do in the typical Aspie meltdown? (I know we do things in different ways, but there must be some sort of general explanation for ''meltdown'').
Are meltdowns non-verbal? Do they involve not telling anyone about their feelings? What triggers them off? Does anxiety or hearing bad news trigger them off?

If they are what they seem to me, then I don't have them. My meltdowns are very verbal, and they happen at home, and I'm never having an outburst when I'm on my own - it's always at someone, or to. They involve arguing, swearing, crying, accusing, and even sometimes going hysterical. And the whole outburst involves expressing how I feel. In fact, seeing me having an outburst is like watching Eastenders. They are always bickering and arguing and screaming at eachother in Eastenders, and they are what my outbursts are like (except I use the worst language there is). So my outbursts don’t involve me sitting in a corner rocking back and forth, grunting repetitively. In fact, I've never done that in my life. My outbursts have always been verbal and argumentative, with a whole range of negative emotions all at once (angry, anxious, upset, sad, scared, irritated). If I am feeling all of these negative emotions at once, it ''blows a fuse''.
For example - the swine flu is worrying me because of the number of deaths, and I'm more worried of losing loved ones than myself. And each time I hear another person has died from it, it puts me into panic mode. And I start crying, and telling the person in the room with me why it's making me cry, and how it makes me scared, and so on. Then I start getting angry about it, because I start telling the person about who might bring the swine flu home, and that I would feel angry at whoever brings it home, and so on.

But I thought the whole point of an Aspie meltdown is because Aspies can't tell how they are feeling so they melt down instead. It doesn't seem that way for me. In fact, it's the opposite for me. Having an outburst is telling how I feel about a huge worry. So do I call mine outbursts, or panic attacks, or what?

I think they're pretty much the same thing, The word "meltdown" is just used more often because it's the "in" word or something. When I was younger and living in a home before my diagnosis the staff always called them "outbursts" no matter what. Shortly before my diagnosis my outbursts became more frequent and severe. I could be raging and screaming and my language would go up from PG to R, or I could be bawling and crying hysterically, it didn't matter to them, they thought I was a threat to myself and others so they left me to die alone at the hospital.

My son is 11 and his outbursts sound a lot like yours. He is considered very high functioning and one of his strengths is his verbal ability. Controlling his emotions appropriately is not, but we are working on it. I think his meltdowns happen for several reasons: 1. He has a high level of anxiety all the time. 2. He is not able to tap into his feelings early on in the game when we might be able to talk it out, so we get to a level where things are just totally out of control for him. 3. Outside overstimulation factors definitely weigh in big time for him. Lack of sleep, bad food, his perceptions of others being upset with him, snow, a holiday, lol, all of these seem to fill up his cup and when we get to overflow, it's very hard to reign in.

I used to love snow when I was still at school. If anything, I might have had a mini outburst when it was not going to snow. But now I've got something into my head about snow which has started to make me hate it, and now I have frequent outbursts about it in winter time. Snow causes me a lot of anxieties; the slippery icy paths it reduces to, the increased amount of car accidents, the fuss, the schools being closed at the drop of a hat..... I hate it. The icy paths are a big issue for me, because I have mild Agoraphobia. I've read somewhere that some people with mild Agoraphobia worry about something embarrassing happening to them when out in public, and slipping over is one of them for me. I've experienced adults sniggering and giggling at me like a couple of 6 year olds, when just my foot kept on uncontrollably slipping on a patch of ice on the path, and it really lowered my self-esteem. I know people can just say, ''oh just ignore the other people, don't worry about what they think'', because it's just not that simple to say that to someone in a highly anxious state like me, especially if I feel everybody is watching me......it all gets me into a panic, and causes major panic attacks, which turn into outbursts. So it's not sensory issues what trigger them off (well I only have sensory issues with my ears), and it's not inability of expressing my feelings what trigger them off. It's things what make me anxious but are beyond anyone's control, like snow, flu's, people...all these are beyond anyone's control. Unless I lock myself up in a cupboard for the rest of my life, there is really no chance I can avoid snow, flu's, and people. And I can't just have the boring attitude, ''oh I can't avoid them so I've just got to face them and not be anxious'', because then I would most probably turn myself into a robot and not have any thoughts or emotions.

I would like to watch a clip of an Aspie adult or teenager having a meltdown on Youtube, but it only comes up with children having meltdowns, or adults just talking about meltdowns.

Whether I melt down or not depends on whether somebody hurts my feelings or not. If somebody says something that hurts my feelings, I'm likely to have a meltdown and start crying uncontrolably. The thing that triggers mine are internal factors like he fact that I think in terms of feelings and emotions, instead of in terms of logic. I knew a man who's just like me. He was in my college class. He was my favourite collegue becuase of that. He didn't get all angry and nasty about our professors when thing didn't go his way. He sut down and cried instead. I feel that there's a certain charm to that. It's almost cute in my eyes.