Meltdown or tantrum?

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I have crying meltdowns even while completely and utterly alone in my own apartment. Nobody to "manipulate".....

If I had to pick a predominant emotion to associate with meltdowns it would be confusion. The more I think about it, the more I think anger is much more controlling and manipulative than crying, at least in adults. Though perhaps the opposite for children.

Animalcrackers said it well, I agree that no emotion is automatically linked to intention, if that were the case, life would be easier and much less complicated!!

But, Waterfalls, again what about anger expressed alone in a room? I can feel anger as part of certain of my meltdowns without there being another human there at all to "manipulate."

I think there is a lot of misunderstanding even among aspies about the things others are feeling -- and any intention behind them -- while undergoing their respective experiences.

Some of you seem to be quite convinced that any element of anger or crying is always going to be an act of manipulation or control over the witness to same, and I can tell you from my perspective alone that is simply not always true, and it's a rather shaming misunderstanding.

Everyone is different, and an expression or emotion you personally do not experience and don't understand someone else having doesn't always mean what you've decided it must mean.

If you don't experience that particular kind of meltdown, or should I say, some of the elements within it, you are not the best person to interpret it or accurately assign the psychological place it's coming from, figuratively.

For me too, the predominant emotion I feel in a meltdown is confusion. That is absolutely it for me.

I think for me... I have a hard time dealing with the emotions I feel. They start to build up inside, causing a huge amount of anxiety and emotional overload for me. It's not always about the toy (an example lol) I want. It's usually about the fact that I'm super angry and frustrated with the fact that I was told no. Since I don't express myself the same way a normal person does, it comes it as what I consider being an infantile meltdown. Basically, a meltdown that is very child-like and tantrumy almost. I do notice that once the feelings are either resolved, or my parents give in that I tend to calm myself down.

However, my meltdowns usually get really severe. If I have a meltdown, I end up crying so hard that I can hardly breathe. My mom says that when I do this, I rock myself vigorously back and forth. I think, as I said before, it's a release of anger and frustration over trying to get what I want at that moment. I don't think about the object of interest at all, but I believe it's related to the emotions I feel and can't control when someone says no to me. I am just a teensy bit spoiled too, so I think that makes it harder to really understand the word no.

It's like... telling a little child no and having them go ballistic because they don't like the word.

Basically, there is no specific definition of meltdown in autism, and each person chooses their own, so people think crying in a room for hours is a meltdown, others think being confused is a meltdown, others think an anger outburst is a meltdown. As with stimming, people classify whatever they want as meltdowns. I speak in general that I think crying outbursts are less likely to be meltdowns in the sense of sudden emotional dysregulation in autism than an angry aggressive possibly violent outburst involving hitting people and throwing things. A meltdown is ackshuly not a complicated emotional thing, it just goes off from a trigger. There is no how long it lasts showing that it is meltdown or not. It could last in hours of destruction or just take a few minutes. I would even say that the person having the meltdown is not aware of what they are doing or saying. It is not like someone feeling negative emotions and eggspressing them. It is like a totally different state of mind completely outside the norm and hard to understand when one is in the norm, like why the F did I do that or say that, what the F could have caused that behavior, there is no Fing way the normal me could engage in that.