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http://www.jamesmw.com/meltdown.htm

Good read and good points. It makes the point that to prevent a child melting down you need to listen to them. My question is, what if they won't talk? How do you get them to verbalise their feelings?

In many case you cannot get them to verbalize and trying to do so can often make the anxiety worse. You will however learn to “read” their anxiety level and pick out the environmental issues or social limitations or other stressors and develop supports to minimize their effects. Often it is a cumulative effect of ongoing and accumulating anxiety with a final trigger.

It just takes time and an accumulated knowledge of aspergers.

bookwormde

i just want to point out that one thing I can't stand is people saying I don't talk. I do talk - they don't listen, and often that's because they are incorrectly assuming that there has to be something significantly more to what is there.

I was once in a mental hospital for a suicide attempt. I told the staff everything that led up to it - it was a spur of the moment decision brought on by something that should have never happened in a million years. In retrospect it was a minor thing but it was probably a few years before I could see it that way. There was no plan, no months of suicidal thought. Granted I'd had everal unkown suicide attempts in the past, but like this one, most of the ones up to it were all spur of the moment decisions. I'd take the pills, hope to die, go to sleep, wake up dizzy and disoriented in the morning and no longer care about the issue that had led to the rash decision. Thinking back, I now realize each suicide attempt was a meltdown - some children bang the walls, I grabbed the nearest pills. I didn't go out of my way to get them - I only took them if they were in my sight while i was angry. the hospital staff wouldn't begin to believe that so they decided I wasn't telling them things. I was in the hospital an extra week because of that stupidity. i remember a black lady telling me I couldn't leave until i started talking to them. I replied upset, "i don't want to talk anymore because I've been talking but all anyone ever says is that I'm not." She replied "I understand that, but you need to talk more." There was't any more to possibly tell them unless I was going to make things up and being as I value honesty I wasn't about to start lying.

As a child i also wouldn't talk to anyone who indicated they thought I was a liar. I was honest and if they weren't going to believe why should I talk in the first place? They could just as easily make up reasons without first listening to me explain my side. When i got out of that hospital I began to see a therapist. I had wanted to talk her, even though she was female which made it difficult in the first place. But on the second visit, she asked if she could talk to my dad and I said yes. She spoke to him in front of me. His version of events were not what happened - ie he said I through the remote control at him. I threw my gameboy at him. I wasn't even watching the stupid tv - this whole thing started because i took the time to save my gameboy game when he wanted me off the couch to watch the superbowl.

He left and the idiot therapist wanted to know why I through the remote control at him. She also asked some other questions that showed beyond a doubt she took his story as truth. Hello, we went over what happened last week - I wasn't watching tv and I didn't have the remote control. If she believed me, as she purported to do so, she never would have considered asking questions like "why did I throw the remote control" because she would have known that I didn't even access to the remote. i've no tolerance for liars. So I ended up sitting through 2 or 3 sessions refusing to say a word before it was decided that it was pointless for me to get therapy. Considering I've had reason to hate my parents since I was 8 and have never been able to trust them, I wasn't going to explain my reason for not talking to this idiot and say that I was willing to try again but with a male therapist. I saw a therapist this past summer. One of the first things I told her was about my previous bad experience with therapists and that I stopped talking to any who said something that I construed as calling me a liar. I had some instances where I'm sure just about everyone would agree the therapist was an idiot. I do understand today that most people would consider the case I just described as an honest mistake of detail


Recently my bf's dad said i don't talk much and that he's only going to ask me if there is anything I want to talk about so many times. At first I was surprised because I consider him to be someone I can tell anything to, including things I don't even mention online and I've even cried freely in front of him a few times. But I realized what he was talking about. For the most part, I won't talk if I can't do so without showing emotion - so nothing upsetting. I also won't explain my feelings, regardless of how much they're hurting me, if I have reason to believe the person i'm explaining to them will think they aren't something to be upset by, or at least not much. For example, just before this conversation bf's dad asked me not to tell all my health problems to bf as his worry was preventing him from doing his schoolwork. Hearing that made my hurt literally ache and made me feel really alone in life, especially when bf's dad asked if I talked to my parents at all (I don't). But I didn't think it was appropriate for me to be in physical pain so i remained silent for a bit. Also, this wasn't the first time in recent days that I was feeling rapid heart beat and chest pain, so I was really worried that I would go to sleep and never wake up. My feelings of being alone in life, and knowing that someone kindly asking you to consider how relaying your health problems to the person you have is being detrimental to them shouldn't result in physical pain, or even tears, kept me from saying anything.

because of these reasons I can tell alot more on the computer than I could ever begin to on the phone or in person. Unfortunately you can't get therapy online, and all the therapists available to me are female, so I'll probably always just have to work out the trauma from my parents on my own

Last edited by Triangular_Trees on 08 May 2008, 8:06 am, edited 1 time in total.

Triangular Trees- why can't you get a male therapist ?
As far as the bf's father goes, well, so many people just don't understand autistic or aspergerish behavior. From an NT perspective, i've found they often feel as if : a. you're hiding something....b. you're rude.....c. you're lacking appropriate emotional response, and are therefore cold & unfeeling.......c. you are mean.
You can't make the bf's dad understand you. You can change the way you view him, though. He's a dad who's worried about his son's success, health & well-being. He ( the dad) does not know how to communicate this to you without appearing "wimpy". This is why he chooses to make you feel guilty for expressing totally appropriate emotions over your own health concerns.

Hang in there. Take care of yourself.

.


There are no male therapists in the area that I can afford to see. The ones available to me are all female. Though once I get done fighting with the insurance company I should have reached the high deductable on my insurance so that might change.

Bfs dad wasn't trying to make me feel guilty. He took great lengths to keep it from upsetting me - ie saying this didn't mean that he didn't also care about me, asking if i understood why he was saying it, etc. he also called back about 15 minutes later with suggestions for what I should do in regards to eating/moving in regards to my health - but he had to leave a message because I had shut my phone off by then. and Bf is in in danger of failing some classes. He already has to take one course this summer because he just "died" in it. I've no idea what bf told his mom about our conversation prior to his dad calling me, but his worry for me concerned her enough that she went to see him the very next day (a 6 hour drive).

Bf's dad is also an aspie. He can understand me better than most. Though 've found the more he cares about you the worse he is to discuss problems with because he gets in a mindset that X is best for you because of Y and than insists you must do X, and its not always easy to convince him that Y isn't true. When he doesn't care much about you, he'll sit there and listen to everything you have to say and then make suggestions. I've only recently convinced him that it isn't my lifestyle but an endocrine disorder that has largely led me to be overweight. And I think i only succeeded in that because he spent a lot of time researching female problems to help determine what is currently wrong with me. I still don't know the problem, but I began eating a special diet based on his research and insistance I start it, and I've been getting my energy back ever since. Before I started, I couldn't walk downstairs to eat. Walking for 30 minutes meant sleeping for 15 hours. Just a few days after I began I was able to walk a mile and while I still needed to sleep afterward it was only for an hour.

Last edited by Triangular_Trees on 08 May 2008, 12:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

well, sounds like you'll be ok