Anyone else blackout during meltdowns?

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I noticed that when I have a meltdown due to bullying or harassment, even during some regular sensory meltdowns, I tend to blackout...this fact scares me, because I have no idea what I do during that time...but from what everyone else says about those incidents...I have a perpetual fear of it happening in public now that i'm 23. And I was wondering if anyone has experienced this as well or if it's just me.

What exactly do you experience when you 'blackout'? Or, since your might not know that much about it, what do other people say happens when you do this?

I've been under stress recently, I was very angry and upset last night as a boy was harassing/gaslighting me. At work today I had several 'blackout' moments; I was going through my paperwork and inputting stuff into the computer, and I kept randomly 'coming to' and realising that I hadn't been conscious for a moment. I don't know what I was doing while I wasn't aware; nobody in the office acted like anything was amiss so I must have looked pretty normal (productive even?) while it was happening. I got all my work done but there were pages I didn't remember doing.

Is this similar to what you experience? I too am very worried about blacking out in public, especially at work. I was doing payroll so the consequences would have been pretty severe if it had affected my work, not to mention colleagues' potential reactions.

just a gap in my memory from when i started getting close to the meltdown until after I'd calmed down...no memory of anything in-between, but everyone else who's seen it happen says I get very violent and highly aggressive...this is potentially a very dangerous situation being an adult.

When you calm down and return to awareness, what does it feel like? For me I get this sudden loud rush of noise and sensation like somebody's turned the volume back up, and that brings me out of it. It freaks me out, mainly because I don't know what I was doing in between.

Your experience with aggression does sound dangerous; scary too, I'm sorry . Do the other people calm you down or does it just pass after a time? I guess there wouldn't be much they could do if you're violent.

Hope you don't mind me asking lots of questions by the way, I've not spoken to many with a similar experience to my own.

the last time it happened I was 14 and during school (a school with staff that had mandatory restraint training for various types of people) so it passed after a while but...it still scares me when I think about what could happen if it happens in public..especially with all the stuff going around in the media these days. When I "come to" i'm largely just hyperventilating and shaking like i'm very cold or in shock. everything else that happened in-between I learn afterwards.

I feel cold when I 'come to' as well, that's weird; my senses feel overwhelmed and it takes a few moments to understand my surroundings. Yes, it's a particularly dangerous thing to have happen in law-enforcement situations, that's a scary thought... If it hasn't happened since you were 14, how old are you now, if you don't mind me asking? It would give a sense of how regularly this has happened to you.

i'm 23 right now, but back when i was getting bullied regularly (before the last time it happened) it was a fairly regular occurrence when it was caused by being bullied...that's why it scares me, every time i had a meltdown triggered by getting bullied or harassed, i blacked out during it...

It doesn't happen to me that often, but I do notice a link to overwhelming emotions/stresses when it does. i.e. I'm convinced I kept blacking out today because I was so angry and upset last night into this morning. Maybe it's because dealing with that emotion takes a lot of energy? Maybe you get aggressive as a form of protection, and your consciousness checks out in the meantime? I know this sort of thing is part of dissociative disorders, too.

Have you ever spoken to a professional like a doctor/psych about this? I'm always reluctant to so I never have.

It's never come up...I mean, for the first few minutes after "coming to" I can recall everything...but once i completely calm down, the memory is just gone...so I don't know how to explain it. I also don't see any therapists or psychologists/psychiatrists anymore, so it isn't likely to be brought to the forefront any time soon either. Being an adult I don't have problems with being harassed anymore, but it still concerns me on the off-chance it does happen. I was just curious if anyone else experienced blackouts during meltdowns.

Well hopefully you won't be put in that sort of situation now you're out of school. That's not to dismiss your concerns though, especially as some behaviours like this seem to get worse/more frequent in people as they get older . That's how it is with me anyway, it hardly happened when I was a teen and younger, probably because I'm finding I get more stressed and harassed now than I was at school. I'd like to know if anyone else has had these blackouts too, especially if they've got any tips/theories on them. I could do without them at work.

I took this "test" thing on a computer, and it said I was one of the least stressed people who'd taken it. I don't really get stressed because i largely don't worry about much of anything. i always ahd the "if it works, it works, if not, oh well" kind of attitude towards my school work. so I can't give any advice on managing stress, but I can say my release has always been video-games.

I don't mean stress in the traditional, ongoing sense. I'm not one to get stressed either, I don't see the point and a lot of the time I can't connect with things enough to get stressed anyway (a handy side-effect of derealisation). I just mean stress in a sudden, attacking sense, like if you're being bullied or harassed. That would put the brain under some stress right away, even if you're normally fine. Video-games are a good idea I usually draw.

I dont get the feeling you are "blacking out" at work. Rather, it seems to me that you are taking "cat naps." These are caused by not getting enough sleep.

This has happened to me.

My usual tactic with bullies was to give them a reason to back down or leave...but I imagine being a female would make that really difficult to accomplish. another side-effect of my anger is that the angrier i get, the less pain i feel...one kid broke my upper jaw on the bus my freshman year...and I didn't even feel it. it's actually still broken, because it's too late to do anything about it. (only discovered it 3 years ago while getting tooth implants) and that happened like 6 years ago (march 2010)

I don't think they are cat naps in this case, where you can't keep your eyes open. Somebody would definitely have seen if I was doing that and said something. Moreover though, I actually did my work while all this was going on. I 'came to' and I was on a different page of my paperwork, and my hand was writing . The list I work from is alphabetised so I knew where I was, and I definitely didn't consciously do some parts of it, but when I went back I had annotated them and done my sums just like I'm supposed to... That's why I suggested some kind of line hypnosis maybe? Fair enough I haven't been getting enough sleep, but I didn't fall asleep outright (good thing too because my manager was in the office ).

I've had this happen when I was driving. I would know the route, and take it---but I wouldn't remember it.

It doesn't happen to me too often at all, though.

LOL...I've been caught by my manager doing cat naps.