Page 1 of 1 [ 12 posts ] 


How often do you meltdown/shutdown?
At least once a day 12%  12%  [ 2 ]
At least once a week 24%  24%  [ 4 ]
At least once a month 24%  24%  [ 4 ]
At least once every six months 6%  6%  [ 1 ]
At least once a year 6%  6%  [ 1 ]
Less than once a year 12%  12%  [ 2 ]
Never 18%  18%  [ 3 ]
Total votes : 17

Arganger
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 30 Apr 2018
Age: 22
Gender: Female
Posts: 1,707
Location: Colorado

02 Nov 2018, 11:16 pm

Currently I've been having at least one meltdown a month.
For a few years I had it down to once a year.
As a child it was daily.

I have had three within October to now. Not fun at all. Lots of close calls as well.


_________________
Diagnosed autistic level 2, ODD, anxiety, dyspraxic, essential tremors, depression (Doubted), CAPD, hyper mobility syndrome
Suspected; PTSD (Treated, as my counselor did notice), possible PCOS, PMDD, Learning disabilities (Sure of it, unknown what they are), possibly something wrong with immune system (Sick about as much as I'm not) Possible EDS- hyper mobility type (Will be getting tested, suggested by doctor) dysautonomia


Lil_miss_lois
Yellow-bellied Woodpecker
Yellow-bellied Woodpecker

Joined: 13 May 2018
Gender: Female
Posts: 73
Location: South Yorkshire

03 Nov 2018, 2:42 am

It completely depends on what's going off in my life. My day to day life is pretty controlled so it's not often.
Christmas increases it because we have to visit family and it's too much for me but no one cares.
I also do an activity that brings on so many but I love it, so when I'm doing that it can be multiple times a week I meltdown.

Can you feel them coming on or know what triggers them? Csn you take a breather and get away from the stimulus to bring it down?


_________________
Your neurodiverse (Aspie) score: 175 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 32 of 200
Personality type: “The Logician” (INTP-T)


nick007
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 4 May 2010
Age: 41
Gender: Male
Posts: 27,059
Location: was Louisiana but now Vermont in the police state called USA

03 Nov 2018, 8:40 am

I had meltdowns alot as a kid & in my 20s because of stress from parents on my back, skewl & stress of my mom being on my back when I wasn't working. I don't get them that often now that I'm living with my girlfriend. She's also on the spectrum or at least has lots of overlapping issues. How often I have them kind of varies.


_________________
"I don't have an anger problem, I have an idiot problem!"
~King Of The Hill


"Hear all, trust nothing"
~Ferengi Rule Of Acquisition #190
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Ru ... cquisition


AceofPens
Velociraptor
Velociraptor

User avatar

Joined: 8 Jun 2017
Gender: Female
Posts: 439
Location: United States

03 Nov 2018, 9:03 am

I don't have meltdowns anymore, though I had them a few times a week as a kid (from toddlerhood up until I was about eleven or twelve; they became less and less frequent with age). As for shutdowns, it would depend on how you define it. I've seen so many different definitions, I'm not even sure if I've ever had one. What I call "shutdowns" I experience in "phases" of varying severity.

First, I become unable to focus. I struggle to complete tasks I've set for myself, such as finding an item in a grocery store or a book in the library. If it develops further, I experience something like the antithesis of sensory overload - I lose the ability to take in/interpret information. In very severe shutdowns, I lose the ability to understand speech entirely. The third phase marks the point at which I become uncommunicative. It becomes physically and mentally strenuous to make my mouth form words. The final phase would be utter exhaustion. Physically and mentally, I'm totally drained. I can't talk or read, I won't even try to listen to music, which is my usual method of unwinding. My memory of those periods is hazy, like I was drifting in and out of sleep, although I am fully conscious the whole time. This phase usually only hits once I'm out of the situation that's stressing me out, which is lucky. If it happened in public, I don't know what I'd do.

But anyway, if the above counts as a shutdown (and I'm not certain that it does), then I experience a shutdown every time I leave the house, on some level. It's usually limited to the first and second phases, however, as long as I'm somewhere familiar and I don't stay too long (over an hour). I experience major shutdowns usually only in response to sudden changes in plans and sensory overload, events which vary depending on necessity and the people around me. I don't have them as often as I did in my early teens, though.


_________________
I have not the kind affections of a pigeon. - Ralph Waldo Emerson


IstominFan
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 25 Nov 2016
Age: 59
Gender: Female
Posts: 11,114
Location: Santa Maria, CA.

03 Nov 2018, 9:12 am

If there are a series of bad events going on, I will melt down or shut down. October seems to be a pretty bad month because something bad always seems to happen.



Arganger
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 30 Apr 2018
Age: 22
Gender: Female
Posts: 1,707
Location: Colorado

03 Nov 2018, 9:18 am

AceofPens wrote:
I don't have meltdowns anymore, though I had them a few times a week as a kid (from toddlerhood up until I was about eleven or twelve; they became less and less frequent with age). As for shutdowns, it would depend on how you define it. I've seen so many different definitions, I'm not even sure if I've ever had one. What I call "shutdowns" I experience in "phases" of varying severity.

First, I become unable to focus. I struggle to complete tasks I've set for myself, such as finding an item in a grocery store or a book in the library. If it develops further, I experience something like the antithesis of sensory overload - I lose the ability to take in/interpret information. In very severe shutdowns, I lose the ability to understand speech entirely. The third phase marks the point at which I become uncommunicative. It becomes physically and mentally strenuous to make my mouth form words. The final phase would be utter exhaustion. Physically and mentally, I'm totally drained. I can't talk or read, I won't even try to listen to music, which is my usual method of unwinding. My memory of those periods is hazy, like I was drifting in and out of sleep, although I am fully conscious the whole time. This phase usually only hits once I'm out of the situation that's stressing me out, which is lucky. If it happened in public, I don't know what I'd do.

But anyway, if the above counts as a shutdown (and I'm not certain that it does), then I experience a shutdown every time I leave the house, on some level. It's usually limited to the first and second phases, however, as long as I'm somewhere familiar and I don't stay too long (over an hour). I experience major shutdowns usually only in response to sudden changes in plans and sensory overload, events which vary depending on necessity and the people around me. I don't have them as often as I did in my early teens, though.


That would probably be classified as a mild shutdown.

My own shutdowns can last a very long time, days, weeks sometimes longer, and are quite strange. I lose speech (But I also do in meltdown), but I also start to lose feeling in my body to the point I sometimes try to hurt myself just to try to feel anything, and things feel more and more hazy and less real as it goes on to the point I feel like a robot, or like my body is on audiopilot. Things in general look gray (I've noticed that for some reason the color and brightness of my environment changes on mood, which is odd), I stop being able to read or pick things out of my environment.

I don't have these, but I am told that severe shutdowns basically put you in a coma.


_________________
Diagnosed autistic level 2, ODD, anxiety, dyspraxic, essential tremors, depression (Doubted), CAPD, hyper mobility syndrome
Suspected; PTSD (Treated, as my counselor did notice), possible PCOS, PMDD, Learning disabilities (Sure of it, unknown what they are), possibly something wrong with immune system (Sick about as much as I'm not) Possible EDS- hyper mobility type (Will be getting tested, suggested by doctor) dysautonomia


Arganger
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 30 Apr 2018
Age: 22
Gender: Female
Posts: 1,707
Location: Colorado

03 Nov 2018, 9:34 am

Lil_miss_lois wrote:
It completely depends on what's going off in my life. My day to day life is pretty controlled so it's not often.
Christmas increases it because we have to visit family and it's too much for me but no one cares.
I also do an activity that brings on so many but I love it, so when I'm doing that it can be multiple times a week I meltdown.

Can you feel them coming on or know what triggers them? Csn you take a breather and get away from the stimulus to bring it down?


Depends.
Within the last three or so years most meltdowns have been triggered by smokers. Those are so sudden and overwhelming that I cannot bring it down as I meltdown right away. I can get myself out of a meltdown rather quickly, which is good because I have ran into the street more times than I like to admit.

But even after a meltdown it isn't over.
I have a few sensitive hours, that I am likely to meltdown from little in
I lose speech for a few minutes to hours
I have diarrhea and stomach pain
Nausea, some times throwing up
I become prone to pulling my back

When it comes to other triggers I have become very skilled at calming myself down, removing myself and standing up for myself. For instance this last time I was at a small charity art auction that some of my paintings were in. There was a deaf guy who may of also been autistic and was rapping constantly there, and he kept banging his foot down which was triggering like three other autistic people very badly, one even leaving.I was able to ask him to stop that and he did. Though when both of us can barely understand the other and I was having trouble talking that was not easy.
The meltdown that day was from a smoker outside (In a no smoking area none the less).

I hate smokers.

Does that answer?


_________________
Diagnosed autistic level 2, ODD, anxiety, dyspraxic, essential tremors, depression (Doubted), CAPD, hyper mobility syndrome
Suspected; PTSD (Treated, as my counselor did notice), possible PCOS, PMDD, Learning disabilities (Sure of it, unknown what they are), possibly something wrong with immune system (Sick about as much as I'm not) Possible EDS- hyper mobility type (Will be getting tested, suggested by doctor) dysautonomia


Lil_miss_lois
Yellow-bellied Woodpecker
Yellow-bellied Woodpecker

Joined: 13 May 2018
Gender: Female
Posts: 73
Location: South Yorkshire

03 Nov 2018, 11:09 am

Ah right, the rapid on set ones are rare for me, they tend to build, but then i panic that ones building and it makes it worse!

I have loss of speech too, before during and after. Feel like the pressures blocking my throat.
Afterwards I'll pant for hours if it's a bad one, like they way you pant when you've just ran really far or nearly drowned, but for hours and hours :lol:

It's cracking good fun isn't it?! And all my family don't believe in autism, like it isn't a big problem, just being awkward!

The smoking trigger must suck, you can't really avoid it, it's everywhere


_________________
Your neurodiverse (Aspie) score: 175 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 32 of 200
Personality type: “The Logician” (INTP-T)


kraftiekortie
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 4 Feb 2014
Gender: Male
Posts: 87,510
Location: Queens, NYC

03 Nov 2018, 11:38 am

I tend to have mild meltdowns/shutdowns owing to frustration/sensory overload.

They never last too long.



superaliengirl
Toucan
Toucan

Joined: 20 Mar 2018
Gender: Female
Posts: 289
Location: Scandinavia

03 Nov 2018, 11:46 am

I don't have meltdowns. I guess I might have mild shutdowns because during an argument I rarely argue back but instead I go silent and just sit there or walk into my room and shut the door, also if i'm at social events or at work or school I usually go to the bathroom and sit there/pace back and forth in there for a while when things get too much for me.



IsabellaLinton
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 1 Nov 2017
Gender: Female
Posts: 67,988
Location: Chez Quis

03 Nov 2018, 11:58 am

kraftiekortie wrote:
I tend to have mild meltdowns/shutdowns owing to frustration/sensory overload.

They never last too long.


I shut down for a few hours nearly every day, or even more frequently if I'm overstimulated.

Full-scale meltdowns have been much less frequent than they used to be. I'd say once a month, if that. I live a nearly reclusive lifestyle so there aren't a lot of triggers to give me meltdowns unless I have a panic attack and allow myself to implode.



AceofPens
Velociraptor
Velociraptor

User avatar

Joined: 8 Jun 2017
Gender: Female
Posts: 439
Location: United States

03 Nov 2018, 12:18 pm

Arganger wrote:

That would probably be classified as a mild shutdown.

My own shutdowns can last a very long time, days, weeks sometimes longer, and are quite strange. I lose speech (But I also do in meltdown), but I also start to lose feeling in my body to the point I sometimes try to hurt myself just to try to feel anything, and things feel more and more hazy and less real as it goes on to the point I feel like a robot, or like my body is on audiopilot. Things in general look gray (I've noticed that for some reason the color and brightness of my environment changes on mood, which is odd), I stop being able to read or pick things out of my environment.

I don't have these, but I am told that severe shutdowns basically put you in a coma.


That sounds more like derealization or depersonalization to me, especially the physical numbness and the change in brightness. I used to experience those episodes for weeks at a time when I was younger, but they went away as my stress levels improved. Usually, a particularly bad shutdown would predispose me to them for a few months afterwards. They were much easier than the shutdowns, though. During a shutdown I can't perform simple tasks, and they're so susceptible to escalating into their severe form that I can't attend school or work. I can't even go places like the library alone because I depend on other people to help me once it reaches the breaking point.


_________________
I have not the kind affections of a pigeon. - Ralph Waldo Emerson