What exactly is a meltdown?

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I guess this question may look dumb, but I don't know exactly what a meltdown is. I live in the Netehrlands, and when I looked this word up in an English-Dutch online dictionary, I couldn't find anything useful or relevant. When I typed the Dutch word for it in Google, I didn't find anything useful either. On Wikipedia I found that it is a tantrum.

What is it exactly, and what are the symptoms?

it feels like a cat being drowned, or plastic melting on your balls

Type "meltdown" into the search box here at WP and you'll get many hits where you can read about it.

it's an expression invented by aspies .... I never get what it really means.

Probably it's when you suddenly feel exhausted/overwhelmed and can't continue the task that you are working on for few minutes.

My definition of a meltdown is something Joon did on the bus in B&J. That's how I act when I have one except I am not hearing voices and I don't need to be hospitalized.

Looking from the outside, it's a kind of temper tantrum or explosion of anger that an Asperger individual engages in for no reason at all. The tantrums/explosions appear irrational and totally unbalanced to bystanders. They think the Asperger person is crazy or scary.

From the inside, it feels like a an overwhelming tide of emotions and thoughts that result from being subjected to a particularly outrageous injustice or intolerably offensive condition. The injustice or offensive condition becomes such an outrage that one cannot contain oneself and you have to do whatever you need to do to put a stop to the injustice or offensive condition. Often, the problem is really obvious, but everyone else (usually NT's) is being negligent, ignorant or corrupt. So when you throw your tantrum or have your outburst, it makes everyone defensive and hostile as if they don't know what you are talking about. I think the thing about meltdowns is that you can't really contain it even if you want to.

In reality, the meltdowns of Aspergers often result from some physical or sensory imbalance OR there is truly an injustice, corruption or offensive problem that normal people can see but they won't act on it for some reason.

if you have insufficient coolant, or lack of neutron-absorbing rods, the temperature of the reactor will reach such high levels, that the radioactive material will melt through the bottom of the reaction chamber. It will spread radioactivity and damage in a large radius. Think of Chernobyl (although that was actually hydrogen explosions)

imagine the emotional equivalent of that.

The injustice or offensive condition becomes such an outrage that one cannot contain oneself and you have to do whatever you need to do to put a stop to the injustice or offensive condition

Sometimes, it can be caused by even less. For instance when you had an extremely taxing weekend with a lot of social stuff (in hindsight, i overbooked it), and during lunch at work someone (once again) mentions that there's some patte in the corner of my mouth.

Reflecting on what happened after that comment was uttered, i can only describe the mind-proces as; shock that i forgot, and the realisation that the mouth-corner-thing happens to me quite often. Confusement on what the appropriate reaction is, because i was still processing the weekend in my head. The comment came at the worst possible time, i was contemplating something and was completely unprepared for it.

After the shock at the intrusion and still figuring out what the appropriate reaction is I grew frustrated, but i knew that was the wrong reaction, it went to wanting to cry because of the frustration, but i stamped that down, because that was the wrong one as well. So, I was frustrated but didn't want to cry. It wasn't a joke, but a sincere comment so there really is no reason to be frustrated. Then I grew angry with myself because i couldn't figure it out. Then frustration because i thought i had this under control, then anger.

And at that moment it turned into sheer terror at being unable to cope with it. I stood up too quickly, throwing back my chair in the proces, turned on my heels and ran out of the kitchen and locked myself up on the toilet. I was in disbelieve on what just happened, and more importantly wondering wtf just happened and what caused me to lose control like that for the first time after 6 years of being able to keep it under control.

A high-pressure cooker with no release valve.

---------------

In a talk later, I was described as storming out of the kitchen and slamming the door behind me, scaring the crap out of a friend and weirding out my co-workers. I do not remember slamming the door. I thought I ran, but apparently i stormed off with the most violently angry face they'd seen on me ever.

The proces i described above, from the initial well-meant comment to me storming out; 4 seconds.
(And just right now, i finally get a quote of someone uses to describe himself: From 0 to insanity in 3.578 seconds).

And I hate what happened. It took me 2 weeks of explaining to a friend and manager what happened, and that I was as honestly as weirded out by it as them, before it got accepted as a fluke happening due to excess stress. Ofcourse with the comment that I better be normal next time

P.S.: I didn't even now of Asperger when that one happened.

I always thought a meltdown was a tantrum x2.

You are a very good writer!

Thank you