HELP - Coping with meltdowns as an adult?

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[Merculangelo - can you tell me what your mom could have done that would have been helpful? My son can't tell me what he needs (he doesn't know) and I sure would like to help. Sometimes it seems that when the meltdown is triggered by sensory stuff he needs deep pressure which comes from being restrained. . Once he was actually able to verbalize - mom please restrain me, before he started hitting & kicking.[/quote]


If she couldn't do anything else, she could have stopped what she was doing and looked at me, just for a minute I guess, and not in anger or frustration or exasperation at me, told me to sit down or something, helped me figure out whether it was the lights or my clothes or if I needed to pee or if i was hungry....to make me feel like I wasn't just a kind of haunting angry ghost and that I existed. Because it was my last attempt at communicating. If even that is received negatively, its like i'm being told that I should just not exist...thats when the stearing wheel completely disappears and the car smashes into the building.

Friends. Friends are really important. Find one or two that you can really talk to. Girls are often better at listening and lending emotional support. Making friends is the first thing I did to heal myself after a long depressive stint and suicide attempt.

I've tried to do the same after similar. However, easier said than done. Like I mentioned in my earlier response, I have a much better grip on my "meltdowns" than when I was depressed or when I was younger. However, though I have a few friends, any friends who were exposed to such things did not last long. Basically most people do not want to deal with such things or even hear you talk about them, and witnessing this stuff makes them even more uncomfortable. The only ones who have seen me melt down and are still around are family members, and they don't get it either. They didnt' even get it when it happened. They wouldn't realize that I needed to get away from what was going on and generally made it worse by preventing me from taking some time alone. Even when I tried to explain afterwards (as an adult, I didn't really try explaining as a kid and nobody asked, they just made assumptions), they didn't get it. This is part of the reason I strongly recommend leaving the area as soon as possible... not only will it help you calm down faster by removing the various stimuli, but it prevents people you care about (or even ones you just have to work with, etc) from witnessing you at the peak of it. It will not help your relations with them. My ex husband was not good with them when I was married either. He wanted to "help" me, but he just got freaked out himself and he wouldn't' leave me alone when what I really needed was to get away from everything for a little bit, so it just made it worse.

Honestly, I even regret telling the one friend I have told about how bad my depression got (I shared it because she was going through something similar and I thought it might help to know someone else had been through it successfully). At first she acted grateful but then she immediately distanced herself, as typically seems to happen when I "overshare" such details of my various issues, or people see me in "non normal" states. Having friends helps... but most people in my experience are not prepared to be that sort of friend.

That's exactly what happened with my ex-bf, as well. No matter how often I tried to explain.

Recently I called my mom while I was having a borderline meltdown at school, and she just started yelling at me, so then it turned into a full-blown meltdown. I was hoping she would talk me through it and help me calm down. She did feel bad about her reaction, afterwards.

I hate meltdowns. They just happen at the spur of the moment, and they're not good. Nobody in my family likes them. They have caused depression for my brother, stress for my mum, and anger for my dad. They've even made my cat a bit afraid of me. Ohh, WHY does AS have to involve having these meltdowns??? It's making me resent having AS.