I hardly ever have a "meltdown," but...

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On rare occasions in my life, I've been so angry and frustrated in certain situations, and acted below my age. But I think I'm good at avoiding situations where that will happen, so I don't think of myself as having meltdowns. The thing is, I can see myself having meltdowns. Often, when I'm wondering about the possible outcomes of any given situation, I'll imagine something that makes me extremely uncomfortable, and I write out this angry tirade in my head. Of course, those situations don't come to pass, but when imagining it, my heart begins to pound and I just feel really frustrated.

I guess I may as well mention a couple of "meltdown" like experiences I have had. One time, I was just pushed to the point of tears in middle school when my classmates repeatedly said something stupid they knew would frustrate me. Another time, my mom was insisting that I change deodorants because what I'd been using gave me a bit of a rash. Despite the fact that it would be completely logical to make a change over this, I have some sort of irrational aversion to switching hygiene products (despite the fact that I don't actually really care about them). I was just getting really mad, she wasn't giving up, and I ended up giving her a very light kick to her foot... without even thinking about the fact that she'd really hurt it some weeks before. She had the most horrible look on her face, I'd never seen her look at me that way before... and then she just broke down into tears, and didn't want anything to do with my apology. I couldn't believe I'd done that, regardless of whether she'd injured her foot previously, regardless of whether I was thinking about the injury or not. Another time, a suitemate in my college apartment that I really really strongly disliked was being loud on the phone early in the morning, waking me up. I got out of bed and shouted at the top of my lungs, giving him a piece of my mind. I don't know if this one really qualifies as a meltdown though, because it was very deliberate on my part (this guy was horrible to live with).

Do these seem like typical "meltdowns"? I guess it's good that these don't happen very often. Are there others who don't have meltdowns, but imagine them in your head?

Not really; I think they're within the range of something that might be occasional for non-autistics. Your reluctance to change deodorants is definitely an example of "change aversion", though, which is about as autistic as it comes...

You're kind of lucky to be able to inhibit yourself like that; I think that as we get older, we learn to do that--to predict when things are going to get overwhelming, and to deal with things before they get to the point that we have a meltdown. As a child, I had multiple daily meltdowns; as a teenager, multiple times weekly. Now they barely happen once or twice a month. I guess your learning curve was just faster.

I generally had my meltdowns at night. Not because I didn't want to go to bed, but because that is when I turn off my daily filters and my brain begins to process and download all the information of the day. Of course at times I was still pushed over the meltdown point at times, generally these melt downs would produce smaller meltdowns after wards because I was upset about the first meltdown...