What is a meltdown ? examples and causes

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I don't really have meltdowns anymore, although that's partly because I now take Ritalin.

When I was a little kid (like...up until maybe twelve...which I guess isn't that little) I would have meltdowns when something changed. I was one of those kids who lined up his toy cars and airplanes and took the parts off and put them back on for hours on end instead of driving them around making vrooming noises. I would also line up my markers and my pens and my art papers. Everything had a very specific place it had to be. If it was moved, I would panic, and have what seemed to my mum like never-ending tantrums and was completely inconsolable. I also like didn't like having to change my activities. If by some miracle I was doing something quiet, I would freak out if anybody tried to get me to stop doing it. Or, if I was running around, I couldn't stop without a lot of screaming, crying and general raging.

When I was a teenager, I would often have meltdowns because I couldn't get people to understand me. It took me a very, very long time to develop an emotional vocabulary (and it's still a work in progress) and I used to just talk in visual metaphors when I had to talk about feelings or situations....I have pictures of feelings and events, and so if I didn't have the words for something, I'd just talk about the picture. Other people REALLY didn't get my metaphors and at the time I didn't realize this. This was horribly frustrating and terrifying (I thought I was crazy for quite a while) and I would have "teenager tantrums" with screaming and crying, but less flailing and more slamming of doors and destruction of personal possessions.

Until my late teens, I was sometimes self-destructive during the most serious of meltdowns I ever had--meaning I would end up beating my head against things or just generally, literally, beating myself up.

I have always had meltdowns because of sensory issues--too many noises at once, or really high-pitched sounds (that, most frustratingly, other people often can't hear or can only barely hear), too much visible movement or weird and painful lights.

After me and my mum learned about AS, I got help developing emotional vocabulary and social skills, and figured out what it was exactly that was so overwhelming as to cause me to completely lose control of myself (triggers, like bright lights, not being able to communicate, too much noise), I learned how to diffuse meltdowns. Now I can recognize that feeling of rising pressure that means I'm starting to freak out, and remove myself from situations that are overwhelming me. I also developed confidence in saying that I don't have the words for something, or in asking questions to figure out how to explain things, to see what other people mean, or to see if they actually understand what I'm saying. Plus, the meds help control my trigger-happy brain and I don't react to things as severely or quickly as I used to. At first though, when I was younger, my mum learned that if she just hugged me reeeeeally tightly, or wrapped me in a blanket and hugged me really tight, I could usually calm down exponentially faster. It's like that all-encompassing tight hug would block out everything else and also bring me back down to earth from the nebulous whirlpool that was my overwhelmed brain (gave me something to focus on or something).

Everyone calls my meltdowns "emotional freak-outs." I generally enter a mild state of panic, I get very irritable, I start stimming like crazy, and any attempt to tell me to "snap out of it and focus" will cause me to unleash a torrent of vicious, angry, emotional comments without thinking (comments I always regret later because I didn't really mean them).

A classic example of this happened when I was in 11th grade and was sitting with some friends and classmates during lunch. While I was away from the table getting some croutons for my salad one of my classmates hid my milk. It caused a somewhat humorous but at the time embarrassing incident in which I blew the whole thing WAY out of proportion and I was acting like a little kid having a temper tantrum. Nowdays my friends and I look back humorously on the whole incident as the "Great Milk Freak-Out."

Over abundance of input/stimulus/whatever you want to call it... its just too much to handle.

i thought i knew what a meltdown was until a few saturday's ago, which was the same week i was diagnosed.

in the course of 3 hours, i:
realized that i once again was sick, this time with the flu (after just get over having pneumonia in Jan and having my tonsils yanked in Feb)
found out instead of getting a refund i owed several thousand dollars in taxes
discovered that i can't refi out of my mortgage because my debt-to-income ratio is too high
got fined by my HOA
found out the only real friend i have in this city is moving away

i made the mistake of calling the HOA manager to discuss the fine and ended up screaming into the phone until i was hoarse. i was shaking so badly from rage that i dropped it and the sound of the phone hitting the floor brought be back from wherever the hell it was i went to. i think something broke that day because i've been kind of numb ever since.

Check these out, people getting too angry!

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/24789/

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/41515/

Are these meltdowns, or is this just normal NT anger? I already have the opinion that meltdowns involve generally more than anger and frustration, and usually have some short period of impairment. What do you think?

I used to have them all the time, for reasons that were perfectly reasonable (to me at least) such as one occasion in which I left my pencil at my last class, and I had gotten exactly the number of steps in which I was half way between my last class and my next. I didn't realize that I could have gone back to my last class, as there were students there, and I didn't have it in my mind that I could disturb them to gather my misplaced pencil. I couldn't be certain that there would be a spare pencil at my next class.

my resulting meltdown caused my mother to be called in.

thankfully, I haven't had any since then, and I'm pretty much a different, calmer person now :)

It has a name? Yeah I have those all the time.

i only seem to have meltdowns when my parents prevoke me, its incredibly fustrating because in their eyes it shows my 'imaturity' and they think less of me. So does my brother he thinks im a kid, i dont feel like a kid sometimes i feel 3 years older then i am, most of my friends are older.

i dont know how to control it, i dont really understand my meltdowns. I think i have a sensory issue to my mum's voice because when she nags it goes really high pitched and goes through me

is this a noise sensory issue ?