Meltdowns vs tantrums?

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It took a while to tell her. Each time I started to recover she would ask "What is your name? What is your address? When is your date of birth? What day is it?" etc... And it took me a few shutdown recoveries for me to get her to stop doing this, as I could only get a single word out at a time.

"STOP"............(Shutdown)..........."ASKING"............(Shutdown)............"ME"........... (Shutdown).............."QUESTIONS!".............(Shutdown)...........

This took a good while to say and she did eventually stop, but I was soo exhausted through having so many shutdowns that it took ages before I could sit up. They needed me to sit up to put ,e in a chair so they could take me down to the A&E. A doctor there said he did not think it was the usual fainting and asked if I had autism. I said "I don't think so" (I did not know anything about autism back then but was surprized why so many people had been asking me or telling me over several years! I thought they were all joking and had conspired together to play a prank on me! I honestly thought that, but this doctor could not have said that to prank me which puzzled me!)

Yikes. How long ago was that?

I think about 3 years ago?

Okay.

I had been for many blood tests over the years to try to find out what was causing me the issues which I now know are called shutdowns. It was a major breakthrough to find this site and I was able to ask questions and a member gave me the link that I have put on the thing below my postings. Part of it describes me so accurately that when I read it I looked to check that I had not written it myself! The bit about having a partial shutdown while driving a car. (I have never had a full shutdown while driving as I relax while driving).

It must suck know that if only you took the people who said you were autistic more seriously you would've found out much sooner. I don't think I should learn to drive. I've never had the desire too. I'm sure it must've been scary having a partial shutdown while driving. I have some trouble relating to the other people on this forum cause the people who are my age haven't dealt with burnout and other issues i've had to deal with. While the older people have a lot more experience in life. Atleast, in the way you're talking about. I understand being frustrated cause you weren't diagnosed earlier. I mean I went to OT for a year when i was 6. and went through a lengthy assesment. There is no way they wouldn't have guessed it.

Partial shutdowns are gradual when driving and I can feel them starting a long time before I have to pull in, and I pull in earlier then I need to. If I feel one starting I just look for somewhere nice to pull in. Take a break.
It is when cycling or walking I get the issues as when doing physical exercises they come on quicker as I am not so relaxed. I once had a deeper end of a partial shutdown blurring onto a full shutdown while cycling. It happens quicker on the bike. I knew what was happening and I was pushing myself too hard at the time. I was doing around 25mph and I ended up slumped across the handlebars with one arm dangling down to wards the road on either side of the bike. The steering was going all over the place! I managed to be able to move my arms when I started to pull out of it a few seconds later and I gained control of the bars to prevent myself from crashing. The strength in my hands did not return for a while so I could not put on the brakes. I drifted for a few hundred yards and came to a halt where I went to put my foot down and ended up almost falling over sideways as my foot would not take my weight. In a full shutdown, or just before a full shutdown happens, I lose control of my body and it flops down like jelly! My leg was like this!
On another similar occasion while cycling where I had tried to push through a partial shutdown (As my Mum said I should ignore them so they did not impact my life, which I did try, though I did not know what they were back then), I ended up pulling in and went to put my foot down on a grass verge, and my foot did not hold my wright, and I ended up having a shutdosn upsidown with my head stuck in a ditch partly filled with water. My bicycle helment kept me from drowning. I was stuck there for a while with the occasional car passing by wondering what I was doing! Haha. I could not move for some time.
When walking, if I try to push through I look as if I am drunk, which is great because people ignore me so I can recover when I end up on the floor. If people made a fuss of me I would never be able to recover! A nightmare scinario would be if some concerned person would dial 999 and I would end up in hospital with multiple shutdowns caused by the hospital smells and the corridors etc... Where if I was left alone 20 minutes later I would be fine. Mind you, something to eat aids my recovery.

I know I have possibly said this on another thread, but when I had meltdowns in childhood, it was due to sensory interrogation and hallucinations and not being able to distinguish nightmare from real life. I had no internal mind or body or ego or words and was completely external, just a spirit. I did not know I existed, was just experiencing what I was experiencing. I am going to simplify this and describe my childhood as a long, uneasy trip on a high dose of LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide), which I have never took, but I imagine, through the mind's eye, that is what it was like.

I did have tantrums at home when I was getting abused, but not for attention, as an expression too escape from the situation. From there would just not speak around them ar*eholes and avoided or walked away from them silently when experiencing sensory overload in public.

Hallucinatory beings and perceptual changes came back in college after not experiencing them since childhood, that may have been a long term shutdown or reaction to burnout, though I enjoyed my hallucinations.

At family parties I would be experiencing shutdowns and would not be able to speak, or would stutter while talking (voice shake). Overwhelming but did find distraction techniques to cope: washing up, cleaning after the party, recycling the bottles.

When I go into what may be a shutdown, it is like a gentle collapsing of the self and environment, the onset is somewhat a spiritual experience, alterations in consciousness, starts with one auditory thought, then mangled thoughts, then thought blocking, then I sleep it off and pray that the upcoming day shall be a peaceful and okay one! Sometimes, it is a manual overload, as I noticed introverting curtain internal and external stress factors for too long can cause temporary mental health complications, so sometimes I just have to scream really loud (on my own) to release all the tension in my body and mind.

That sounds like a nightmare. but I guess your not really aware of it the entire time right? I had some like partial fainting thing going on a few weeks ago. I assume it's like that. You lose control of your body limbs everything feels kinda fuzzy. I ended up spilling my drink everywhere. It happened again later that night. But are you like dimly aware of your surrondings or is it like a total blackout or what?

Now what you describe as partial fainting is similar... I know for sure that these are shutdowns mainly through how I come out of them. If I have fainted, I welcome fuss as it helps me to recover. If I have shutdown, be it partially or full, I want some peace and quiet. The last thing I want is people saying things like "Ignore it and it will go away" or the various things people say when they don't understand and assume that they understand.
If I get a full shutdown, I loose my eyesight as it goes black, and while it goes black I get loud tinitus, and I also have a panic feeling as I am trying to prevent it from happening. I can sometimes get shaky and clammy if I have had more then one shutdown because they rob me of energy. It is surprizing how much energy the brain needs when it is under stress.
Now I was once knocked out by injection to have teeth removed. It is a different experience altogether.
A shutdown I have lost my ability to use my body, and my eyesight and hearing... Well. I don't know what happens to my hearing as for a short time I can only hear loud tinitus (The note starts from a mid range pitch to a low pitch as my eyesight dims to black), but I am somehow still aware of my surroundings. Also as I am recovering from either a full or the deeper end of a partial shutdown, my ability to comprehend spoken English is hampered. It is as if someone is speaking a foreign language and yet I recognize the words but I don't make any sense of them. Wierdly, between several months and a couple of years later, I can think back and make sense of every word as it reaches my long term memory... But until then, no matter how many times I go over what was said, I may remember it word for word, but those words said at that event don't compute, even though I speak them daily!

I hope this makes sense. Going into a partial shutdown does feel something similar to a faint.

hmm interesting

Something to consider. Not saying that it is or not.

[color=#0077aa] I don't know what you are implying but the partial fainting only lasted a few seconds. I've never experienced shutdowns. My sensory issues aren't that severe. and are more tactile. [color]

For me, a full shutdown does not last that long but partial shutdowns can, and also the recovery stages last longer. I have to lengthen the recovery to prevent going back into a shutdown.

Meltdowns are caused by sensory overload, information overload, difficulty communicating, and frustration in general.

Tantrums generally have a goal in mind. They stop once the goal is accomplished, but meltdowns can go for just a few minutes to hours and are usually inconsolable.

For me it was an acute reaction , without any specific aim . I wasn't cognitively together enough to think 'If I do x I can get y' . It was reactive rather than deliberate & reasoned.