Trying to understand meltdowns...

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When you have meltdowns how aware are you of the cause of the meltdown?

What kind of thoughts, feelings, and behaviours do you tend to have before and during meltdowns?

How long lasting are the effects of the meltdowns?

Sometimes but not always and more often there are things that contributed to it that I did not realize but may relize the trigger but this is not always the case.



THIS varies considerably! depends on what trigger the meltdown whats going on during the day and the severity of the meltdown and the behaviors can vary from yelling to crying to head banning and head punching (self injury) After I am usually drained



This varies self injury can leave long term effects, bruices, cuts, scars and bite wounds to a few minutes. this varies off on the severity of the meltdown as well and how long the meltdown lasts.

Getting better at better at being aware of the cause. Used to get into a blind rage about tiny things that obviously weren't the main trigger and have no clue why. Now I generally know exactly why.

Before - panic at benign things like people's voices that sound like they're asking a question, people talking to me at all, my dog following me (sweetly as always). Hyperventilating. Feel adrenaline and very scared/restless. Extremely irritable, everything annoys me, humanity disgusts me, society disgusts me. Yelling at these benign stimuli, rocking, pacing, whimpering, leaning against a wall like I don't have the strength to stand on my own, having the urge to curl up on the floor and stay there, shrieking in response to sudden noises, repeating over and over to anyone near (family) "Why am I here" or "what is the point of my life" or "Oh God, oh God, oh God." And especially "I can only take so much. I can only take so much and I CAN'T TAKE A SINGLE THING MORE." May even appear schizophrenic, my family started asking me if I heard voices cause I'd just start whimpering No no no stop it stop it stop it be quiet!" when no one was in the room but I say that to myslef, to all the aggravators in my environment and to consciousness itself. I just want it to stop. Hands shaking uncontrollably.

Meltdowns used to culminate in me throwing something and breaking it and a huge argument ensuing over me destroying property. Then I'd spend a good hour cleaning up every shard of glass and it would take me the whole time to calm down but as soon as I'd thrown the thing I'd no longer be angry, just sad and scared and exhausted and in a daze.

Now that I am a "mature adult" who does not throw things anymore it takes much longer to have any kind of release from the tension/overwhelm. Might play piano in a very forceful way for an hour and a half or so to calm down and sing at the top of my lungs, my respond to anyone who talks to me by shouting, might start crying and shaking. I don't really have a good satisfying outlet anymore now that I've decided I can no longer fling property around like a tantrumy four-year-old. So stay in a heightened state of anxiety for days, weeks, months until some kind of release presents itself.

I usually only figure out the cause long after the meltdown is over... if then. I'm getting better at figuring them out, but so many meltdowns are due to a complex mix of stresses, it isn't easy. Although one of the most obvious ones is "Ooops, I must be coming down with something." That is the best single way to be sure I'm getting sick. I do wonder, sometimes, if the stress of a meltdown strains my immune system and I'm more likely to come down with something afterward. But the most sudden, incomprehensible ones are the hardest of all to avoid, and in the aftermath, it is clear that I'm already sick, that the first sign was the meltdown.

Before a meltdown, I'm usually desperately trying to contain the pressure. The struggle is so hard, usually I don't even have enough spare processing capacity to figure out a meltdown is imminent. I'm just trying to hold the universe together while the full force of the Big Bang is trying to rip it apart. During, fury and sadness, and a sort of disembodied, "oh, no, here we go again, on the rollercoaster to hell", and I yell and shake and in the worst cases, pound on myself. During those meltdowns, I am literally driven to try to destroy myself; during others, I am on thin ice in that regard. I'm just not rational enough to go about it very well. It isn't like there's a conscious "I want to kill myself" type thought; it is just rage spilling out and reflecting back inward, this mindless drive that turns on me. And my body temperature soars; no one would be able to take my temperature at those moments, but from experience of fevers, I'd say I run a fever of at least 102 to 103. And, of course, I sweat, profusely.

I have managed to learn - usually - to bottle them up until I'm in private. At least I'm spared the humiliation of an audience. But without anyone else around to distract me, they are even more intense, so it is not all good.

Even a minor one will leave me wrecked for hours. Most of them have me feeling awful for at least the rest of that day and all of the next. The worst of them have effects that last for a week or more.

When I was younger and had what most people would call a meltdown, it was usually over something I was really hyped up about or greatly looking forward to, and looking back, when those plans were hampered by someone, I really had the sense that they were being inconsiderate of me and my needs because they did not understand the things that were important to me, as they often differed from the types of things that were important to them.

For example, my mother might have told me we were going to the mall later that day, where I would usually get mashed potatoes at a lunch counter. The entire day, I might be greatly looking forward to getting those mashed potatoes. It might be the highlight of my day. So if the plans were changed for a seemingly small reason which ultimately minimized how significant going to the lunch counter was for me, I would understandably fall to pieces.

I recall once a similar thing happened when I had a classmate over when I was 9. I didn't have many friends...at the time, none actually, and someone had encouraged me to invite one of my classmates over who I had hoped to be friends with and she accepted.

Keep in mind that it had probably been a few years since I had a friend over to play. Things were going quite well, and it was a hot day, so I asked my mother if she could take us to the public pool for a while and she said no. If I had friends over frequently I would have understood but having a friend over was a very special occasion for me...I'd often watch my siblings and their friends when they came over and my mother would frequently drive my older sister and her friends to the mall, or take my younger sister and her friends to the park, so I didn't understand why I should be deprived of such things in life....something so significant to me, simply because it was a small inconvenience to my mother.

She did not understand that it was so significant and important to me and again I fell to pieces and my classmate went home. The next time I had a friend over who was not a neighbor was when I was 14, because that is how socially impaired I was.

So having a friend over was a very special event.

I have noticed that most of my melt downs are caused by stress, like when I am trying to do my homework and I can't understand it, or when people touch my stuff and change my things around because they don't like the way I have things set up. That really makes me angry because I have things set up a particular way for a reason, so when they get changed it sometimes makes me think that people don't care about the way I like things. They only want things their way which is true most of the time. I also sometime have melt down over little things, like when my cat follows me around the house yelling at me.





Before a meltdown I can feel myself becoming really worked up and angry. Sometimes I can avert them by closing myself off in my room, but if it's something like homework, which I have to do, I really can't stop them. I usually yell, hit myself, bite myself, throw things, bang my head against the wall, and/or stomp on the floor. Sometimes I try to scratch myself with my pencil.






It depends upon if I can get away or not. If I can get away they usually don't last long except that I need a lot of time to cool down and be by myself (sometimes this includes no animals). If it is something I can;t get away from, like homework, then I try and take some time to cool off and then try it again later. If I still can't get it then I might either leave it unfinished or copy the answers (yes I know that's cheating, but I would rather cheat than maybe give myself a black eye).