Meltdown advice help!!

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Hello everyone,

I have aspergers and my autism support group at college are making a film about autism and aspergers and I agreed to write it.

There is a scene which tells the audience about how meltdowns feel, however, I have hit writers block because I want another character to give the character, who is talking about meltdowns, advice.

What advice would you give to someone who has told you one of their meltdown stories??

And how would you help an autistic person deal with a big change?? (in the story it is a big change that triggers the meltdown)


Thanks for reading this and any help would be really appreciated

Hey girl, it's good to see you again. No one has ever given good me advice about how to handle my meltdowns. Well intended people who have no idea what I am going through have tried to tell me things but of course none of it was even remotely helpful and many times it would just make me worse.

But if I were to give myself advice, I would say, find a super quiet place, without anything breakable in it, preferably a dark or very dimly lit place with a very soft comfy chair or bed with good pillows if you need to hit or throw things, and just allow the meltdown to play itself out. Don't worry about it, don't feel guilty or ashamed, have some soft calming music if you like and if that helps you and just let it run its course. Don't try to resist it or stop it. What you don't want to do is add stress or more stimuli. But you have to let it complete itself on it's own. And when it's over give yourself permission to rest in a quiet place with as little stimuli as possible because you might be a little exhausted.

Hope this helps. And I hope to see your film when it's done.

Time.

Of course, staying away from the people that may give you one.

Trying to understand helps best. Unfortunately, some things you may never get.

Yeah, you have to let meltdowns run their course. The idea is to do so in a way that will limit the damage.

Getting to a quiet space alone is what everyone is suggesting, and I agree. This limits damage to yourself because you are reducing stimuli and other things that will make the meltdown worse. You are limiting damage to things by going somewhere soft. I have hit pillows before back when my meltdowns were more violent than they are now. You are limiting damage to relationships because you are getting alone rather than taking things out on the people near you.

The thing is, the people who are close to you need to know how to handle your meltdowns. They need to know that if you are escaping to be by yourself that they are not to bother you - they need to let the meltdown take it's course, too. They also need to know that you are getting away from them not because you don't love them but because you *do* love them and do not want to say or do anything in the midst of it that might hurt them.

So, in educating another aspie on dealing with meltdowns, I would say they need to educate those close to them as well.

Parents of kids with AS are probably learning these things from the therapists and counselors. But later on, anyone an Aspie lives with as an adult would probably need to be educated: roommates, close friends, spouses, kids, etc.

I agree with all the advice about getting to a calm, quiet place and being allowed to be alone and let it play out by itself without damage to anyone or anything. I also strongly, strongly agree that loved ones must be educated about meltdowns, what prompts them in that particular individual, and what that individual needs to get through them.

It's important that loved ones need to muster up within themselves a great deal of compassion and understanding about this aspect of the autism spectrum, lest they just feel anger, resentment, frustration or downright hatred of the person who suffers the meltdowns.

Those negative responses can happen in people who don't know that you can't help it and need support dealing with it, because without that understandin they instead just think you're one great big angry ass hole who freaks out "over nothing." The worst thing in the world is people around you who hate you for what you're suffering through, instead of having the enlightenment to instead be compassionate, concerned, and to try to help you get what you need to get through it, even if that's leaving you alone for a while, but doing that lovingly, not abandoning you hatefully.

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