How to help someone having a meltdown

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I am curious to find out what helps people when they have a meltdown. I don't know how to deal with my mother when she is like this and I wondered what helps anyone out there who suffers from the same thing. She gets upset and gets very angry and lashes out at the nearest person. She has no control over it and has alienated alot of people because she can't control her emotions. I am not sure whether to calm her down or just let her be.

Depends - in my experience often trying to calm just adds to the overload.

I tend [both incoming and outgoing] to lay low, go quiet, minimize inputs, cautious gentling [slow modulated voice and so].

But likely needs to be trial and [hopefully not too bad] error

As being very sympathetic to your mother. I just had an epic meltdown in front of a group of people this weekend. Somebody said the wrong thing and I took it to personally.

There are only a few ways to do stuff about it.
1 Identify and deal with triggers and causes.
2. Usually a person who is trusted can pull a person out of a meltdown if they make the person who is having it aware they are having it. This has to be done gently. Being in a state of shock does not help, and it really does take a calming voice.

A meltdown is the emotional processing centers of the brain not responding correctly. The intellectual processing centers do work to a certian degree. Reasoning with a person to get them on their own and pulling them out of a situation is the best thing. It usually takes 20 some minutes for a person who is experiencing a meltdown to calm down. Sometimes this is harder than other times.

Psychological space is important, when someone is trying to stop a meltdown it only adds to the feelings of fear. Remove yourself and any stimulation, if shes sensitive to noise or light draw the blinds or turn off the TV. Once she realizes no one is trying to stop her and she has the space to just melt down the fits will likely become shorter, this has been my experience.

With me, giving some space is good. A lot of NTs feel this need to "comfort" someone who seems to be in distress, but, for a lot of us, having people try to "comfort" us by getting close and hugging just makes things much worse. I think i sometimes cool off from a meltdown quicker if i'm distracted by something interesting.. It might be the ADD, but i can go from one mood extreme to the other in a matter of minutes depending on the situation. So, bringing up a special interest could possibly help. Oh, and if you need to talk to them, DON'T yell or act frustrated or whatever. That makes things so much worse for me, when people around me are overreacting it just fuels it. Staying calm and speaking clearly and precisely so that there is no confusion to add to the mix is good.

Stay calm, don't yell or belittle the person, don't talk down to them. Ignore the stares of on lookers.

go onto youtube and seach "surfin bird"

Is she aspie?


It's best to leave me be when I am in that stage and everyone needs to stay out of my way.

I think pretty-much everyone else has already covered it, but let her be alone, until she feels better, give her space, don't ask lots of questions; if she's like me when I have a meltdown I cannot speak for some time as communicating becomes very difficult (it's just another factor to the panic for me) and there's nothing worse than being asked:

"Are you okay?"

If it's a situational meltdown (in my case, being in a supermarket) it may help to get her out of the situation that's causing the meltdown if you can, talk calmly, try to avoid too much tactile stuff.

The only other thing I can add, when I'm in a meltdown I always worry my partner may feel either blame or responsibility for me, I just want to let you know that when this does happen, I have none of these feelings towards my partner (I'm just generally freaking out, which eventually becomes a tried embarrassment a while after I have calmed again) so please do not feel like you are in some way the cause/solution of this. If anything I feel gratitude to have her there, and that she is so good at being able to guide me out of problem situations when I get too upset and lose the ability to think clearly.

I think that the first thing to do is to quietly get out of her way until she gets over her meltdown. Then try to find and eliminate if possible the source that triggers her meltdowns; for example, too many people talking at the same time, loud noises (from a television, radio, stereo set, etc.), or even a change in the environment such as lighting from a new but different kind of light bulb. Each person on the spectrum is unique and each person will have a different cause that triggers a meltdown. All the best to you and your mother, musicboxforever.

With my sister, she usually blows up and heads to her room where she cries. My dad usually comes to her room and gently talks her down. Now that she has moved out, she doesn't melt down as much anymore.

Trying to comfort me and "talk me down" is about the worst thing you can do for me. I need to be quiet and alone. The best thing anyone can do for me, as my boyfriend has discovered, is to let me deal with it by myself and don't ask questions while it's happening.

Whatever you do, do *not* say or do anything that invalidates the feelings of the person having the meltdown. If there is one thing that shoves me further into meltdown-ville, that would be it.

Best wishes to you and your mom. It is SO awesome that you care enough about her to ask us for advice.

For me I need to be taken to a quiet area to just let it all out. Take out my frustrations on objects instead of people.
If I have a meltdown in a certain location I need to be taken from that location and I eventually calm down, though I go from meltdown to shutdown to normal behaviour.

Thank you for all the replies.

I have been feeling guilty because I tend to leave her to calm down by herself. She does reject any help, so I guess I am doing the right thing to just let her deal with it. My Dad, Sister and I have learned to tell her to go to bed when she is flaking out and it does help her. But I think we feel like we are being heartless by doing this. Like we are just hiding the problem in another room and keeping it out of our way. She is very sensitive to noise and flakes out when my Dad is playing certain music. He likes minimalistic post-rock jazz type music and Steve Reich, so you can imagine how annoying that would be even to an NT, but if you're sensitive to noise, it's a nightmare.

Leaguegirl. She is undiagnosed. My cousin has recently been diagnosed as autistic and after spending a bit of time with her I began to realise just how much she and my Mother have in common. Oddly, ever since I was a teenager my Mother has been telling me that she thinks my Dad and I are autistic. But she didn't see it in herself. The more I have been reading on this forum and on Aspie girls, I've just found that so much fits into place for us. My Mother's family are the sort that don't talk about things. They always knew that she was different, but it would have been beneath them to get help for her. Although, in the 60s and 70s I doubt she would have been diagnosed. I have told her my suspicions and she took it quite well. I think that maybe she has been thinking about it too. It's just such a shame that she has been living with this for so long and hasn't been given any help.

I had a melt-down yesterday, which could more accurately be called a shut-down.

It was very civilised; I explained that the pressure was too much and I went upstairs to lie down.

My wife came into our room and asked if I was ok.

I tried to explain how I see the world as a fact collecting journey and that I realise that most people are not like that and DON'T have perfect recall of information and that people are as difficult for me as perfect recall is for most NTs.

In answer to your question;

She listened and let me talk.