List the last time you had a shutdown or meltdown.

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Mountain Goat
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12 May 2020, 12:44 pm

Partial shutdown earlier today cause by a sudden unexpected event I was expected to deal with and I was not ready for it. A tap washer broke. Just about managed to turn the water off then had to lie down to recover from the partial shutdown event which took me a couple of hours (Roughtly) before I had recovered and prepare myself to change the washer. The actual job was easy enough. It was the stress of the unexpected event that caused it, and it took longer then expected to recover as someone downstairs (I think it was my brothers wife) sprayed some air freshner and the smell drifted into my upstairs bedroom, so I was dealing with that as well (Certain smells are triggers), and as I was already half shut down, I could not shout to get them to stop spraying it or to open the doors to let the smell out, as if I did try to communicate, it would have sent me into a full shutdown which I was trying to avoid.



Jakki
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12 May 2020, 2:03 pm

all these triggers , wonders if nervous breakdowns to varying levels could be used to describe some of these type of circumstances . ? just asking


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12 May 2020, 2:06 pm

Jakki wrote:
all these triggers , wonders if nervous breakdowns to varying levels could be used to describe some of these type of circumstances . ? just asking

For me? The triggers I get?



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12 May 2020, 2:26 pm

Mountain Goat wrote:
Jakki wrote:
all these triggers , wonders if nervous breakdowns to varying levels could be used to describe some of these type of circumstances . ? just asking

For me? The triggers I get?

yes am just curious , need help segrating terms heres . no offence intented.


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Mountain Goat
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12 May 2020, 3:00 pm

Jakki wrote:
Mountain Goat wrote:
Jakki wrote:
all these triggers , wonders if nervous breakdowns to varying levels could be used to describe some of these type of circumstances . ? just asking

For me? The triggers I get?

yes am just curious , need help segrating terms heres . no offence intented.


I don't know. I mean. Well. I had big issues each time I hit what I call burnout and it takes ages to recover. Really I believe it takes a couple of years? Each time I assumed that when I felt like I recovered which was after about six months or more, I clearly had not as when I tried to work very low hours part time job in a job I was very experienced in. I was actually under employed. But each time I tried working again when I thought I had recovered it was clear I had not and each time I hit what I call burnout I ended up in a big mental mess and each time hit me worse then the one before.
So I don't know if it was a mental breakdown I have had. If it is, I have had a few of them. How would I know what it is because I do not know without someone telling me after assessing me first? Uhmm. No idea! Haha. My Dad had a mental breakdown in his 40's.



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12 May 2020, 3:47 pm

must admit dear MG that do prefer terms , shutdown and meltdown , just btw ..... :D


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12 May 2020, 3:49 pm

My last thing that was sort of a shutdown/meltdown hybrid was because yesterday when I woke up, I had pain in the upper part of my chest, distinctly in the trachea, when I would breathe, probably as a result of ibuprofen getting stuck in my throat because I took it dry (I certainly won’t be doing that again). I still have it, and it’s sheer agony to lie down because of this (I’d rate the pain as barely below a migraine at its worst, and it is incapacitating if I make that mistake), but my body keeps insisting it wants to lie down because it’s tired/headachey/dizzy because of the anemia I’m currently dealing with. I thought it would at least feel mostly/completely better in the morning, but my mom asked Doctor Google and said it would probably take several days to feel better, and knowing that I’d have to just put up with it for another few days pushed me over the edge. Not helped by the fact that my current anemia treatment largely consists of “hurry up and wait,” which was also nudging me in that direction (I’ve been dealing with it since mid-February, I’m just a little tired of it by now).


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12 May 2020, 7:09 pm

I'm still unclear on whether I've ever experienced a meltdown or shutdown. I have only seen these terms defined from external observations of, mostly kids. I am an adult, and I don't experience my own existence from the outside. I simply don't know. :?:



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12 May 2020, 7:37 pm

Fern wrote:
I'm still unclear on whether I've ever experienced a meltdown or shutdown. I have only seen these terms defined from external observations of, mostly kids. I am an adult, and I don't experience my own existence from the outside. I simply don't know. :?:

I can say that if you have experienced a full shutdown you will know what it is, even if you may not know what the experience is called.
Partial shutdowns are a little more difficult as some senses start to shut down and one may not realize they have until one tries to use them.
Meltdowns... I know now that I have experienced them, but not to the extreme severity that others here may experience. A larger meltdown for me is rare and when I experience them (If they are meltdowns) it is all I can do is try to prevent myself from doing anything incase I regret it, which really pressurizes my head to the extent that I feel it will explode!
But I can talk in detail about shutdowns as if any issue I have had since a child that has caused me the most difficulty in life are the shutdowns as it is only very recently that I have learned the triggers through being on this site and learning soo much... You guys are super tallented, all of you! Do you know that exactly a year ago to this day, I had been experiencing shutdowns in full and partial form, and I did not know what they were called, and I did not even realize what the triggers were apart from a rough knowledge that I had a reaction to certain smells. (I assumed it was allergies they were setting off, but not long before joining this site, after a lifetime of continually asking for an allergy test after many years ago a doctor had suggested the shutdowns were caused by "Some sort of allergy", and the basic six point allergy test came up as clear, I knew the past doctors had made a mistake and it had to be something else).
Anyway. I hope what I put has made sense.



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12 May 2020, 11:18 pm

I was mentally shut down last week due to being depressed/worried about our lives changing and the uncertain future, but I have felt better since.


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13 May 2020, 4:44 am

Last shutdown would be around early December of last year.

Reason? Christmas party job event.
And I mean a job, it meant it's not something I enjoy to participate. The job itself isn't stressful, it's the chaos around me, the tension of urgency that's been there for the past several weeks, and just stress overall.

And how bad?
Bad enough to hurt my head into constant confusion, auditory distortion, forms of flat affect and lose layers of peripheral vision without consciously maintaining it through willpower.
But not bad enough to start losing words and withdrawing from any sensory and mental strain.


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13 May 2020, 2:03 pm

Just had a meltdown now as a person drove by my house blasting a stereo. Had another one two hours ago at the Walmart parking lot. I needed to get something there. I parked my car and as soon as I parked someone drove by blasting a stereo. I had a meltdown in my car and had to leave. I never even got to enter the store.


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16 May 2020, 2:18 am

I won't list all my meltdowns, I however a long time ago did upload a video about meltdowns on my YouTube channel "Aspie With Attitude". This is a very old episode and history still hasn't changed.


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Fern
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19 May 2020, 3:46 am

Mountain Goat wrote:
Fern wrote:
I'm still unclear on whether I've ever experienced a meltdown or shutdown. I have only seen these terms defined from external observations of, mostly kids. I am an adult, and I don't experience my own existence from the outside. I simply don't know. :?:

I can say that if you have experienced a full shutdown you will know what it is, even if you may not know what the experience is called.


I don't think that's accurate. There are plenty of things that aren't autistic shutdowns that can cause temporary immobility and non-responsiveness. You're presuming I've never experienced acute immobility and non-responsiveness in stressful situations, but I have. In fact, I straight up used to lose consciousness sometimes. It made test taking difficult and once or twice resulted in a banged head or a bloody nose. Rather, I'm just not sure I have sufficient information to rule out the other possible explanations. I've been told that full loss of consciousness is more extreme than a typical shutdown, but I've been evaluated and cleared of a sleep disorder, so it's not narcolepsy. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I was kind of hoping that you could explain what it's like a little. I get that you have them, but what is the experience like?



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19 May 2020, 5:29 am

Fern wrote:
Mountain Goat wrote:
Fern wrote:
I'm still unclear on whether I've ever experienced a meltdown or shutdown. I have only seen these terms defined from external observations of, mostly kids. I am an adult, and I don't experience my own existence from the outside. I simply don't know. :?:

I can say that if you have experienced a full shutdown you will know what it is, even if you may not know what the experience is called.


I don't think that's accurate. There are plenty of things that aren't autistic shutdowns that can cause temporary immobility and non-responsiveness. You're presuming I've never experienced acute immobility and non-responsiveness in stressful situations, but I have. In fact, I straight up used to lose consciousness sometimes. It made test taking difficult and once or twice resulted in a banged head or a bloody nose. Rather, I'm just not sure I have sufficient information to rule out the other possible explanations. I've been told that full loss of consciousness is more extreme than a typical shutdown, but I've been evaluated and cleared of a sleep disorder, so it's not narcolepsy. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I was kind of hoping that you could explain what it's like a little. I get that you have them, but what is the experience like?


It almost feels like fainting but is different. As my body starts to become... Uhmm. It slowly shuts down and stops working. Limp is a good term to use, as I can't use my body as it goes floppy. It is not a sudden process where I would suddenly collapse into a faint. It is slower. I have time to hold onto something to steady myself or time to put my hand out if I am heading downwards to the ground. Most of the time I will go to lie on the ground before my body starts to give way beneath me as it means I can recover quicker from it, as if I try to fight it and try to force myself to keep going (E.g. if I am not in a convenient place to end up on the floor!), I can delay it but then I get a full shutdown where I could have got away with a partial shutdown and saved myself going through an experience which is not nice to be in.
If I head into a full shutdown, I am on the ground or lying down somewhere, and I get a loud tinitus, and it lowers in note as my eyesight starts to dim and goes black. Then I am motionless on the floor unable to do anything and actually shut down. I have no ability to think. Just observe. Somehow, I do retain my ability to feel, so if someone walks past I will feel the air move. But I could be starting to pull out of the shutdown by then? When pulling out, if someone tries to talk to me I may not make
sense of all the words they say. I will recognize them as English words, and know I am familiar using them, but won't be able to make sense of those words... I can often go back in my memory months later (It takes a while for my memory to remember in detail what was said) and know word for word what was said while pulling out of the shutdown. This can be important because....
Well. What happens is I am doing all I can NOT to think so I can avoid going back into another shutdown and so I don't want people talking to me. I may have propped myself up to make it seem like I am naturally "With it" rather then ending up on the ground, or be sitting slouching in a chair, because I learnt years ago that people think that I am faking the whole experience and try to give me grief just when I am trying to avoid all stress and communication, and I also learnt that visibly, if I can make it seem like I am doing something natural, even though I have little or no control if my body shuts down for a few seconds, then they will never know and I will avoid stress and accumilative shutdowns... (Length of time while in a full shutdown is hard to tell. Maybe 10 seconds? Maybe 20? I don't know how to measure it? The whole shutdown experience can last half an hour or longer if it has gone deep and I am unable to regain my bodies strength, as I can be lying down in an uncomfortable position or even in a dangerous position... If I try and move my body too early I will get another full shutdown... So I will only move limbs when I need to make myself comfortable or if I have to, but if I have to (E.g. if my leg or arm is in the road) I will go back into the full shutdown as moving limbs while like this, or while in partial shutdown stage takes effort. It feels like I am wearing a heavy suit of armour! But it can take a long time of just lying there before I can sit up, and a while before I can walk again, and ages if I am still in a "Trigger" enviroment which caused the shutdown in the first place. My record was about four and a half to six hours when I visited my local hospital. I only went in to have a blood test. The stress of being in an enviroment where I am hypersensitive to the hospital smells (Bleach etc) and the stress of the waiting room, and then trying to cope with my blood being taken... I once had my blood taken in a church which hires a room in their building and did not shut down at all. Not even a partial shutdown... But in hospital I am sometimes in a partial shutdown zombie like state doing my best to walk through miles of corridors to get out and sometimes I don't make it and am stuck lying in a hospital corridor.
But the time it went a few minutes beyond six hours... Well. The nurse kept tapping me and trying to get me to tell her my date of birth, my name, where I live, what day it is etc, and I would try but go into another shutdown time and time again. The last few shutdowns I said inbetween them "Stop"... (Another shutdown)..... "Asking" (Shutdown)..."Me" (Shutdown)....."Questions!"... (Shutdown). This took me a while to say! Haha! She eventually got the hint! I was then eventually able to recover enough to sit up so they could put me in a hospital chair. I asked to be put outside on the grass but they insisted on taking me down to A&E.
All the time I was concerned as car parking only lasted 6 hours, and I went over it by a few minutes... I had to lie back in the car for a bit but I had to force myself to drive out of the hospital before I was really ready incase I had a fine, as I had no income at the time so a fine would mean serious trouble.
But anyway. While a partial shutdown slips into a full shutdown I have a type of panic as I am trying to prevent it from happening... And the panic turns to full shutdown where there is only loud tinitus and not only my eyesight but my hearing has gone. Everything has gone for that short moment. I am thinking of it now. I know when I start to recover I can hear people speak but make no sense of it.. Oh. This is what has happened to me in the past. I have been in work and was asked to cover the shop floor (Which is rare) and I knelt down turning my body to the shelves to make it look like I was working (When I was starting to shut down!) and I ended up on my hands and knees and may have shut down totally or came ever so close, and then started to recover, so I was able to go back to kneeling down hoping that doing this would not push me into another shutdown... So I did the movements slowly, and a work college who was in the temporary position of being in charge went to tell me something, and I could not make out what he was saying. I asked him to repeat it, and this happened three times (And all the time I was trying to not think so I could recover) and he said "Do you understand" and to avoid him telling me again I said "Yes". I didn't know what he was saying, but it was the ONLY way I could recover... And I later messed up and put him in it between him and the manger and I didn't know. It was months later when my long term memory kicked in that I was able to work out what he had said as I memorized the event word for word, but it was only months later that I was able to translate! For some reason my short term memory was not able to do this if it did not get what the words mean the first time?
By the next time I saw him when I started working there again (I think I called in as a customer) I apologized and he said he didn't remember. I think he was being kind.

Anyway. It is a danger of pulling out of a shutdown as I am doing all I can to not say anything...

The experience while a partial shutdown starts (Which I get before it slips into a full shutdown, but usually I am able to pull out of it by sitting or preferably lying down and stimming, and sometimes eating sugary foods helps like chocolate, though not always. Manually stimming I have only done for about a year and it really helps prevent shutdowns... I would stim before in hidden ways but they would start automatically, often without me knowing until I noticed myself doing them).
I can slip into a partial shutdown and often it is only when I notice things not working right in my body thatI realize I am in one? Example, I maybe carrying something and it drops out my hand. I could be walking and then find I can't keep to a straight line, and also another thing I notice is that I over compensate. If I am in a town centre walking past people, I wont go through a gap that one person will fit in. I will stop and wait for people to move as I need a gap you could fit three people in before I know I can do it? (If that makes sense?) Never had a full shutdown whilst driving as I relax while driving, but I have had partial shutdowns where I have felt the signs so have looked for somewhere to pull in. (I have driven miles like this if no where convenient to pull in as long as I stay calm and relaxed, but one of the signs is that I will overcompensate and be driving as if I am driving a big lorry. I will slow down when there is plenty of room to pass if that makes sense?
While cycling, I have had a full shutdown and it was majorly scary! Cycling, due to the physical exercize part is the same as walking, where if I start to shutdown it can happen quicker, especially if I was putting in a lot of physical effort at the time.
I once found myself with my body across the handlebars as my hands had lost their ability to grip and the bicycle handlebars were slapping back and fore... I only fully shut down for a moment but I just so happened to be stressed out and belting it doing around 25mph at the time. Both my arms were dangling down towards the ground! I managed to get my body to work enough to put my hands back on the handlebars and get the bike under control, but it took almost a quarter of a mile to stop as I could not pull the brakes. The bike came to a stop and I went to put my foot down to steady myself and it would not hold my weight! Luckily I keeled over towards the pavement.
I had another similar situation where I felt a shutdown coming on while cycling. I pulled in to the grass verge, my leg would not support my weight. I keeled over with the bike still on me and my helmet and head were in a ditch and luckily the depth of my helmet was enough to hold my head out of the water, as I was stuck like that for some time! :D

Driving in the car I am not really effected. It is odd as I relax soo much and enjoy that as long as I stay out of traffic jams I am fine. So I avoid cities etc. All is good.



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19 May 2020, 6:30 pm

At work yesterday. I got overwhelmed and had some sensory overload. I just returned to this job (my main job is at a grocery store but I also have a job at a restaurant to fill in a few more hours). The restaurant had been doing take-out only for awhile and had had to cut most of the staff, so I've just now returned since they've been able to reopen the dining room. I'm actually pretty good at the job but I just got overwhelmed yesterday. A lot of it was because there's a big change in the normal routine. This is one of those restaurants where there's counter service and the customers get their own drinks and seat themselves, but we deliver the food to their tables. Well, because of the whole virus thing, now we're not letting customers get their own drinks from the fountain. We're having to prepare the drinks for them as well as make sure all their food gets out to them and it was just really throwing me off. It was also miserably hot (I think the air conditioning wasn't working.). On top of that, we have to wear masks. I was getting so overheated and dehydrated, which was making me feel light-headed and I literally felt like I had wet my pants because I was sweating so much. I also wear glasses, and the mask makes them fog up when I breathe, so that was also driving me insane. Then I started getting really agitated by the sound of the phone ringing (we still are getting a lot of phone in orders so it was probably ringing more than usual). Because of all this, I started to mess up and forgot to put an item in the bag on two different take out orders. It was partly the manager's fault too, because he was the one doing expo and he gave me the ticket (indicating that the order was all ready) without giving me those items, but of course, the runners are always still supposed to read the ticket and make sure everything is there before taking the order out. But I was feeling a panic attack coming on and could hardly even read the tickets as my vision was starting to blur. My hands were so sweaty that I couldn't even get the bags open either. I just got overwhelmed and frustrated and pretty much froze. I also hit myself in the head when the phone rang for the umpteenth time. Eventually I just went outside and cried a bit. I'm embarrassed about it now. I tried to explain what happened to the manager I was working with and apologized. Luckily he was cool about it and told me he was the one who should apologize, since he had gotten kind of irritated and snappy with me.