How often do you meltdown/shutdown?

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Currently I've been having at least one meltdown a month.
For a few years I had it down to once a year.
As a child it was daily.

I have had three within October to now. Not fun at all. Lots of close calls as well.

It completely depends on what's going off in my life. My day to day life is pretty controlled so it's not often.
Christmas increases it because we have to visit family and it's too much for me but no one cares.
I also do an activity that brings on so many but I love it, so when I'm doing that it can be multiple times a week I meltdown.

Can you feel them coming on or know what triggers them? Csn you take a breather and get away from the stimulus to bring it down?

I had meltdowns alot as a kid & in my 20s because of stress from parents on my back, skewl & stress of my mom being on my back when I wasn't working. I don't get them that often now that I'm living with my girlfriend. She's also on the spectrum or at least has lots of overlapping issues. How often I have them kind of varies.

I don't have meltdowns anymore, though I had them a few times a week as a kid (from toddlerhood up until I was about eleven or twelve; they became less and less frequent with age). As for shutdowns, it would depend on how you define it. I've seen so many different definitions, I'm not even sure if I've ever had one. What I call "shutdowns" I experience in "phases" of varying severity.

First, I become unable to focus. I struggle to complete tasks I've set for myself, such as finding an item in a grocery store or a book in the library. If it develops further, I experience something like the antithesis of sensory overload - I lose the ability to take in/interpret information. In very severe shutdowns, I lose the ability to understand speech entirely. The third phase marks the point at which I become uncommunicative. It becomes physically and mentally strenuous to make my mouth form words. The final phase would be utter exhaustion. Physically and mentally, I'm totally drained. I can't talk or read, I won't even try to listen to music, which is my usual method of unwinding. My memory of those periods is hazy, like I was drifting in and out of sleep, although I am fully conscious the whole time. This phase usually only hits once I'm out of the situation that's stressing me out, which is lucky. If it happened in public, I don't know what I'd do.

But anyway, if the above counts as a shutdown (and I'm not certain that it does), then I experience a shutdown every time I leave the house, on some level. It's usually limited to the first and second phases, however, as long as I'm somewhere familiar and I don't stay too long (over an hour). I experience major shutdowns usually only in response to sudden changes in plans and sensory overload, events which vary depending on necessity and the people around me. I don't have them as often as I did in my early teens, though.

If there are a series of bad events going on, I will melt down or shut down. October seems to be a pretty bad month because something bad always seems to happen.

Ah right, the rapid on set ones are rare for me, they tend to build, but then i panic that ones building and it makes it worse!

I have loss of speech too, before during and after. Feel like the pressures blocking my throat.
Afterwards I'll pant for hours if it's a bad one, like they way you pant when you've just ran really far or nearly drowned, but for hours and hours

It's cracking good fun isn't it?! And all my family don't believe in autism, like it isn't a big problem, just being awkward!

The smoking trigger must suck, you can't really avoid it, it's everywhere

I tend to have mild meltdowns/shutdowns owing to frustration/sensory overload.

They never last too long.

I don't have meltdowns. I guess I might have mild shutdowns because during an argument I rarely argue back but instead I go silent and just sit there or walk into my room and shut the door, also if i'm at social events or at work or school I usually go to the bathroom and sit there/pace back and forth in there for a while when things get too much for me.