Short partial shutdowns

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So, I was just discussing ASDs on IRC and a recent shutdown I had came up. This ended up leading to my boyfriend mentioning how often I had shutdowns...

And I realized that they were far more often than I've ever thought if you include really short ones. I lose the ability to answer questions or show things to people or any of that regularly for a period of time between 5 minutes and three hours. Yet in this time I can seem mostly functional and I never thought of these as shutdowns.

Does anyone else have these? Where you can't do anything in regards to certain topics and if you're viewing it from that topic its without question a shutdown, yet if you avoid it you're almost functional?

Is it a shutdown?

I had never thought about this before...

I'm not sure if I understand. Partial shut downs to me are ones that just last one day but I may feel tired, unmotivated, sensory overload, cognitive slowness as well as motor slowness and possibly loss of speech. The external symptoms being not able to look at people, answer them or walk properly.

You think it could just be exhaustion? There's time where I don't answer people because I'm exhausted or unmedicated and feeling foggy...and cranky. And I'm not one for sharing my toys (sharing with people).

I'l have times when there's some trigger, and then for the next few hours I show all my signs of a shutdown if I'm approached with anything to do with that topic. However, not that topic and I'm fine.

Regularly this goes that I'm asked a simple question, I can't respond to it, I can't think about it, if I try to think about it my mind goes blank. I can't talk or type in response to it.

Yet in those periods if I swap what I'm thinking about to something like participating on wrongplanet and telling people about what I'm talking with people on here, and I look near fully functional.

But then if I go back to trying to think about the topic that I'd shutdown over, I'm back into completely unable to communicate, just stimming, and visibly shutdown to people around me.

(Not completely functional when I swap to something like wrongplanet because of still being more hypersensitive while doing that, and I likely am stimming a bit more than usual but don't remember well enough if I do that).

It's not just exhaustion, though that occurs at times. In these its a clear response to a specific thing, though it might be a tiny thing at other points in time.

I may very well, although I haven't specifically noticed. The fact I spend the majority of my time alone probably contributes to not noticing.

I do know there are times when I simply cannot put some things into words no matter how hard I try, and it can take up to a day before I can sort it out. I wonder if that's related - I'll have to pay more attention.

I just kinda randomly "zone out" for several minutes at a time. This occurs frequently, many times a day. Nothing emotional would be going on in my head, just something catches my attention, a sound, or an object, or the way the light falls on something. I'm just very intensely focused on whatever it was that caught my attention.
It can really get in the way of me getting things done a lot of the time.
I do have some control over exactly when this happens, but it takes a lot of energy to do so. It doesn't exactly happen when I'm driving a car. Maybe that's because when I'm driving I'm very focused on my driving, and the potential risks while driving necessitate a very high level of focus.
But any other time, I'm constantly popping in and out of my own world.
If I do happen to be around someone when this happens, they would have to say my name several times to snap me out of it.

It's something that has been going on for as long as I can remember. People who know me well, like close friends & family, just accept this behavior as part of who I am, they don't give it a second thought.

The more I ponder this, I start to think I might be more autistic than I had previously thought I was.

I do have times when it seems like the gears in my head get stuck. I can't answer simple questions or make simple decisions. It's like the processing just stops. I would think this is not just exhaustion but overload.

^ This applies to me as well.

Me three. Especially if involves having to shift my thoughts suddenly.

Also, I've realized that there are times when I'm somewhat overloaded and don't realize it. Afterwards, when the day is replaying in my mind, I can spot the more-frequent-than-usual disconnects (say, in a conversation) due to losing my thoughts much more frequently (because, say, I was in a noisy restaurant). It's like, at the time, I forget that I'm forgetting.

I get that too. It's a great description: it does feel like gears in my head get stuck! It seems like a result of too much happening, an overload or if something upsets me very much. I need to find a quiet place to recover from that. Most of the time I'd get back to normal state (you know, whatever "normal" is for me at the time), but sometimes it would leave me feeling down and tired for the rest of the day.

A.

Yeah, that is a good description.

What I find odd about the ones I mentioned here is that whether they're stuck is dependent on the subject. I might be unable to eat but completely able to participate on these forums.

For me it's a complete "mental lockout" when that happens. I can't do anything, I need a break.

I also have normal shutdowns. This is more wondering about these shutdowns that only affect some aspects of functioning and wondering if other people who get shutdowns get these as well.

Oh, I see. No, my short shutdowns are like that: complete, but they last several minutes at most.

Put it this way, yes, I think this happens to me. My therapist has noticed and commented on it, too. I often hit brick walls with certain topics talking to her, and digress far away and talk about other things, instead.

Usually, I can participate on the internet no matter what else I can't do. Sometimes I can't even really communicate online, but that's usually when a full shutdown is either about to happen or is happening.

The eating thing, though - I've gone through periods where I basically can't eat unless I can eat the one thing I really want.

Sometimes what prevents me from eating is that I can't eat unless I make a decision about what to eat, and I don't know how to make a decision about what to eat, so even though I'm hungry I won't be able to eat for the next few hours until the hunger overrides the block and forces me to eat.

I am really bad at making decisions or answering questions that I can't do quite right.

Yes, this happened today. It happens fairly often. Today I had 2 people shouting at me and asking me questions on our work in class and I completely shut down. Refused to talk to them or help my group mates at all. I was able to get something down for the assignment at least...