Is there any way to stop or reduce shut downs?

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Is it possible to stop shutdowns before they occur? Or reduce the likelihood of them occurring? They are becoming a real problem for me right now.

I find that if I am rested and eat healthy and exercise regularly it helps my energy levels. This can affect how often or how severely i have meltdowns and shutdowns. I doubt you can stop them completely because at least for me they happen when I am having sensory or emotional overloads and I can't stop those completely unless I buy a mountain and put a fence around it and make it invitation only. But trying to keep your energy levels high and stable really helps. And trying to avoid stressful conversations and overly stimulating sensory environments helps too.

I found psychotherapy helped.

I went from shutting down several times a day to maybe twice a week.

Regular meditation or similar relaxation also helps.

I also agree with skibum - keep energy and hydration levels up, and avoid stressful situations.

My shutdowns are always a defense mechanism resulting from someone else being abusive to me, and I have little control over the behavior of others.

The pain in brain gains mainly in the plain!

I find if you can identify the beginning of a meltdown/shutdown, you might get better at avoiding it.

Kind of like taking a med for something at the first sign of trouble so it never gets full-blown. If I sense the stressers leading to a meltdown/shutdown, I try to get away from them in hopes that I can avert the result if I stay.

The only way I have found to stop a shutdown before it occurs is to identify what in my environment (or thinking) is triggering it and then take corrective action. If the trigger is environmental the answer is usually to remove myself from the situation or replace the triggering thought with a better one.

The only thing that works for me is to avoid sensory overload.

I don't have much control over the amount of sensory overload going on around me.

I usually have 1-3 shutdowns in a week, sometimes far more, very rarely do I have a week where it doesn't happen at all. If I try to hold one off then I start losing other things like speech, the ability to read, the ability to write, the ability to translate words into images or images back into words, the ability to move, the ability to process sound, the ability to process vision...

Most often though, I just end up letting it happen and laying down for a few hours. During that time I can't really move or speak or do anything, and once it passes I usually go to sleep. If I don't, sometimes effects like those that happen when I try to resist a shutdown kicks in, which accounts for many of the occasions I've lost speech.