Autistic Meltdowns

Many people may have heard or used the term “meltdown”. It is generally used when a child has a tantrum, the parents will often refer to it as a meltdown.

But what is the difference when an Autistic has a meltdown, and what are they?

As any parent knows, a tantrum is basically a reaction to the child not getting their way or something they want. It’s a basic manipulation technique that children develop, seeing that when they do it, they may get their way. With tantrums, it’s a way to get attention or to get what they want.

A meltdown, for an Autistic, is for very different reasons. It is not to get attention, it is not to get our way. We don’t care who is watching, or if anyone is watching, because it happens when there is too much happening for us, that it overwhelms our system and ends in a sort of short circuit in our brains and bodies.

Meltdowns can happen for a lot of reasons, depending on the person and our sensitivities, our environment and our coping difficulties. They can also happen if a routine is interrupted, is we are hungry and a thousand other reasons.

I have extreme sound sensitivities. Certain pitches of sound will literally shut me down instantly, I can no longer think and all I want to do is get the sound “out” of me. One of them is the scraping of a fork on a plate. The sound it makes automatically makes me stop whatever I am doing and makes me want to stab myself to make the sound stop. It makes my skin crawl, it sticks in my mind and can take me up to half an hour to recover from it. That would be an example of a meltdown, albeit a mild one.

2 days ago, I woke up, brought my daughter out to the living room, put on her cartoons, changed her, made her bottle, then made my coffee, went out for a cigarette and checked my Social Media – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, then checked my podcast page to see if there were any more listens, checked my YouTube page to see how my latest video was doing, then checked my Etsy page to see if I had any sales. This is my daily routine, always in that order.

When I checked my Etsy page, I had a sale, my first! But upon checking the order, I realized that for some reason, the colors I had uploaded did not show on the purchase page, only black. The customer was my Dad, who is not an easy person to deal with at times, and I knew he would be irritated when I asked him what color he wanted. So, my stress started going up from there. I asked him what color he wanted, and he said Navy. So, I had to go to my Printful account and see what had gone wrong. For some reason, when I synced the product to my Etsy account, it didn’t sync all of the colors, only black. Stress rising.
I went and synced manually the Navy t-shirt, then, I decided to contact Printful Customer Service to see if anything can be done to ensure the correct color was sent. At first, the agent didn’t understand what I meant (stress getting higher), so I had to very elaborately explain the situation and after half an hour, got the issue resolved and could process the order.
During this time, my daughter decided that she was going to get into anything and everything, screaming, running around, throwing things, getting up on the table, taking pots and pans out, and my stress hit the ceiling.

I was on the verge of a complete meltdown, everything was out of order in my day, the noise of my daughters cartoons, her making noise, the stress of the order, it was too much for my senses. Every sound was more amplified than normal, I was finding it harder and harder to just hold a single thought in my mind, I couldn’t focus. I didn’t want to have a meltdown in front of my daughter as she is very sensitive to my emotional states and gets very upset if I get hurt or cry. So I had to fight with every ounce of my being to wait until my daughter went down for her nap.
Also, during all of this, while I had made my daughter something to eat, I had not eaten all day, another factor that played into my inability to deal with everything.

By the time my daughter went for her nap, I had tears welling up in my eyes, it was all about to come out, whether I want to or not. I was shaking almost uncontrollably, my body was twitching, I was counting like a madman, I was shutting down.

The crying isn’t a mourning or sad response to the situation, it’s the bodies way of releasing all of the stress and tension I was carrying. It comes from a very deep place, it’s a sobbing, uncontrollable, almost violent release. And afterward, I felt exhausted. I finally realized that I hadn’t eaten, and made some sandwiches with an urgency that, if anyone was watching, would have seemed crazy. After I ate, I started to feel myself again, I was slowly recuperating to the point where I could function and think clearly.
This is a meltdown.

Not all meltdowns are crying. I have had meltdowns where I had an inexplicable anger, I yelled and screamed, threw things, kicked things and just went off the rails. But almost invariably, later, I cry. I think some of it is from confusion, because I was only recently diagnosed, so am now able to see them for what they were. I was not able to identify why I felt that way, why I was reacting that way, why I couldn’t think, but there are a few factors that I can now identify.

1 – I have to remember to eat. When I was single, I would often forget to eat. I would get focused on something (Autistic Hyperfocus), lose track of time and my needs, such as eating.

2 – Work. While work is stressful for most people, I have a sound sensitivity and a light sensitivity, and I worked in a call center. At the end of the day, I was spent. I was emotionally, mentally and physically exhausted and had no idea why. Even on relatively relaxed days, I got home feeling that way and would often have a meltdown or would realize I was falling into a depression. I knew I battled with depression because of my C-PTSD diagnosis at 19, so I chalked it all up to that. Now I know better. While I have been unemployed for 3 years now, 2 from the cyst in my brain and waiting for surgery, I am trying to create an online business so that I don’t have to force myself to work in an environment that I know will have consequences on my mental and physical health.

3 – I have to keep my routine. I have a morning routine and an evening routine. During the afternoons, I have a general routine, but it is not one that bothers me if it is changed. If it gets interrupted, or I am not able to fulfill my routines, I get grumpy and short tempered and have very little patience.

4 – I have to be constantly aware of my state of mind and do whatever is necessary to try and decompress, or defuse, an impending meltdown. I have a 2 year old daughter to look after, so it is imperative that I learn to regulate myself and ensure that I am doing well in order to be able to look after her and her needs. My daughter, it turns out, is great at helping me decompress. She seems to have a 6th sense for her Daddy and will come give me a hug out of the blue, sensing that I am getting stressed out. She makes me laugh and we go out in the yard and play, sing and dance together, and it really works wonders on me.

Not all Autistics have the same triggers or the same kinds of meltdowns, so it is important that if you have an Autistic person in your life, that you are aware of their routines and how they react to different stimuli and environments. If you see them start to stim, or act a little “off”, then be prepared to leave and get them back home or somewhere quiet and know how to help them decompress. Recognize the difference between a tantrum and a meltdown, and you will be helping your Autistic friend or loved one in a way you can’t imagine.

If you want to listen to my podcast, here is the link: https://anchor.fm/peelingbackthemask/episodes/Peeling-Back-The-Mask-Introduction-elk3br