Biggest meltdown you've ever had?

Post Reply New Topic

Bit of background info first.

When I was in 8th grade, I was quietly dealing with strong emotions and feelings of loneliness. I had a speech teacher who I saw twice a week to develop my social skills, but I did NOT like her. She was pretty cold, and she hardly ever showed any compassion or smiled genuinely.

Anyways (sorry, this is kind of long)...

One fateful day, I went to one of my speech groups. I don't remember exactly what happened, but I think something my speech teacher said upset me. After that, my huge soda bottle of emotions EXPLODED. I started crying, and I was sent outside by my speech teacher. But I was crying quite loudly, and soon enough, she went outside and (rather disrespectfully) told me to be quiet.

That didn't help. I continued to cry my eyes out, and at some point, I cried hard enough to make my nose bleed. At this point, I stopped bawling and stared at the blood stains on the ground. I ran and quickly cleaned myself up in the bathroom before heading back and opening up my faucet of tears once again. This time, I was crying more quietly, but by then, the bell had rung and I had to gather my things.

My speech teacher HERSELF escorted me to my dad's car, where she "explained" the situation. My dad exploded after we left the school, making me cry again. When I returned home, though, my mom scolded my dad for screaming at me before eventually comforting me.

That was the biggest and baddest meltdown I've ever had. What was yours?

It's either around 3rd grade or around the equivalent of 8th grade. It usually either involved noises or people upsetting me.
It's just overwhelmingly chaotic, no one ever helps no matter their intent was -- it's just me.
Usually involved a lot of violence, yelling and running away.

Neither times anyone tried to scold me, or if it did I don't remember.
The aftermath is usually me being left alone and away from everyone.


Around these times, it gave me a serious reminder why I don't want to have emotions to deal with. It'll mess me up into losing control and it's also dangerous.

Gained Number Post Count (1).
Lose Time (n).

Lose more time here - Updates at least once a week.

When I was in year 8 (I think that translates to grade 7??) I got told that a child I had been told was my cousin, was in fact my half sibling. I know this is not what happened but in m memory, I see everything as having literally being turned on it's head. I can't really remember it accurately. It was such a massive shock to the system that I had what felt like an escalated panic attack for I believe more than an hour, screaming until my throat became incredibly sore. It was really bad.

I guess this is a long one, sorry.

This happened six-ish years ago when my husband and I first moved to Wisconsin from Alabama. His whole family lives here, and he has a HUGE family. Like just one of his brothers has eight children, that kind of huge. I get really socially anxious and just shut down if I have to deal with multiple people at once, so I told him I just couldn't see a big bunch of his family all at the same time.

So we moved to our new place and HIS ENTIRE FAMILY decides to visit us at once. OH MY GOD. He didn't plan it, he just invited his sister but EVERYONE showed up. This is SEVEN adults and TWELVE kids. I just stood there like a deer in headlights quietly nodding my head to everything they said.

It got worse when the kids started messing with my stuff. I have a dedicated room for all my collections and my art, and the little kids found the room (the eight kids from the one brother, they're all raised badly and allowed to do anything). They started going in there sifting through my art and messing with figurines. My sister-in-law calls out to them, I'm thinking she's going to tell them off, but INSTEAD she says "If you're going in there, just don't mess with anything but the toys and art!) Giving them PERMISSION to mess with my stuff! I mean WHAT?

Anyway, everyone was winding down and I was starting to calm down because I knew they were leaving. My husband said they were leaving afterwards. But then his sister invites EVERYONE out to eat at a restaurant. I just completely lost it, that wasn't the plan and I couldn't handle any more. I skittered off to the bathroom, curled up in a corner between the toilet and tub, and just sobbed and panicked for a good long time. Freaking out about my stuff being touched, freaking out about the change of plans, freaking out about the thought of being in an unfamiliar restaurant with almost 20 people... UGH.

My husband was super nice about it though, after that day he emailed everyone in the family and explained my issues and told them only a few people could come over at a time from now on.

I did not realize that these were called meltdowns. If that's the case I had one the other day which ended up in the deeper end of a partial shutdown.
I don't go violent. I do get frustrated etc. Oh dear. If these are called meltdowns then I get them. Are you sure these are meltdowns? Ok, most of mine are mild in comparisson but when I was a young child I used to really go well over the top in fits of frustrated rage and tears... I didn't get shutdowns back then until around the age of five or six when after a total shock where I was told I could have killed a girl (Both girls were neighbours children and we were very close friends as young children) when I had one of these moments, and it shocked me soo much that I just stopped having them, but from then on they turned into shutdowns instead.
I remember these events which could have been extreme meltdowns as I often would get such a burst of frustration and anger and emotional outbursts that I would just stop breathing and turn blue, and usually need one of my parents to hit me to get me to breathe again.
Haha. My Mum said that as a baby I used to scream and cry soo much that she very nearly through me out an upstairs bedroom window! She left me in a pram once outside a shop... But that was when she first had me and had completely forgot she had had a baby! Hahahahaha! Poor me! HAHA! (She got back home and realized that there was something missing! Hehe).
But when the first one of you mentioned about the teacher and you having a meltdown, my Mum did that just as you described while in secondary school where her favourite subject had a low result after an exam, and it came as such a shock to her that she completely ended up in a lengthy bout of uncontrollable crying and nothing she could do to stop.

But are these meltdowns? From what some of you are describing, I still occasionally get them, but in a milder way? In other words, I don't go out destroying things and would never hurt anyone and I don't shout loud etc... Is more frustration where I need to just go into my bedroom and shut the door and have some time alone, and if I don't get this I will end up in a shutdown...

These can't be a type of meltdown can they? I am in a bit of a shock if they are!

MG, I think what you're trying to say is that not all outbursts qualify as a "meltdown". But how would you define a meltdown?

I'm not sure I remember. Unfortunately as I approach that point I seem to not really remember the details, but I've certainly seen the aftermath. I started getting better with dealing with it in high school, I assume both through maturity and being baked all day. It wasn't only in response to bullying, but those were the main ones that other people saw. I realized early on, that even if I thought I saw other boys sometimes benefit socially from displaying their temper, it only ever harmed me socially, it didn't make me appear 'tough' it only ever made me a 'spazz' or 'psycho'. I guess you had to have meatheads for friends to benefit from it and I never really meshed well with those people even if I do share some traits.

It might have resulted in less physical bullying, but it also probably lead to 'bigger' physical bullying. I only once or twice had to deal with the trope of 'oh, when you go outside you and me', usually it was just 'oh no, i'm being herded again GR'UGH!' - crowds are stressful even when they're not trying to whoop you. Obviously that wasn't a time to worry about how people would tease me over losing my s**t later on because usually they were all there.

Since it was embarrassing to lose control to that extent with an audience I'd usually remove myself if it was an option, but that also meant I never got told what exactly happened. It still happened publicly though, especially after high school; computers not cooperating or performing slowly/becoming non-responsive used to really be a big trigger. I punched monitors at work when I did tech support more than a few times; I should have been fired long before I busted one, I don't know how they didn't fire me. A boss who had become very 'work mom'-ish called me in for what I was certain would be my termination and she told me they didn't have video of me hitting it but they had video of me switching it with the one at the workstation next to me. Realizing how lucky I got there made me start making a much larger effort to detach and 'internally deescalate' from those situations, as well as it lead to counselling and eventually being diagnosed with ASD. The burnout of constantly masking was a big factor in the deterioration of my overall mental state at the time.

The last significant time it happened I put my hand through one of those prefab doors like you might have on the rooms inside your house - both sides. I think that might have been 14 hours or so before I got chased and arrested and maybe a week after the incident with the monitor at work.

Channelling the frustration away from externalized rage was causing me to just shutdown entirely, or twitch and stim far more obviously than I ever had before, or self-harm, or just sit unavailable so I didn't get any customers. That last one was actually acceptable, at this point we were just overflow for our replacements we had just trained at a different call centre. I had been having panic attacks years before this, before I got into the chat department. I was overall in worse shape now and the thought of having to go back on the phones in two weeks was basically like being told it was imminent, I'd get the rat-in-a-bucket torture and it was only a matter of time.

I had never quit a job because well, it's destroying me mentally and physically and didn't even really get that was a thing that could be done that wasn't the same just choosing to quit for no good reason.

If it can be longer that a single day, those last two weeks doing tech support count as a whole. If not, the pieces individually count; the door was as bad as the worst ones in private when I was young, the monitor was about as bad as the ones I had in public when I was young and the breakdown in front of my boss, and then my doctor and then my HR supervisor over the shame I felt over not being able to handle talking on the phone all day was the worst one that didn't involve having to figure out why my hands are busted open again.

Also; JUHJUH-JUD it's just one of those days.

20 years ago a mug would have been way too palfrey to bother with, unless it was flying through a window or something. The last thing I smashed was a mug, 2 years ago.

In Istanbul in our hotel room during a summer holiday. I was probably 13-14 or so. My mum and her partner went out for the night and I was left some money to go to the restaurant by myself. Initially I was fine but as I was getting ready I just panicked. It was horrendous. I was alone, shaking, hysterical, everything was spinning. Emptied the mini bar and cried until everything blacked out.

My brain tries to forget meltdowns instantly after they are over with and same for shutdowns.
Meltdowns are very common for me but I dont mind them in retrospect unless someone saw me which is the worst ...

The meltdowns I remember well, and think are the worst, were things that occurred in front of others as I felt self conscious yet couldn't contain it .


The worst ones were probably all the times I cried in front of that man as I felt so yucky about crying in front of a stranger and couldn't stop and knowing that person didn't care and probably thought ai was doing it to evoke sympathy which I wasn't.

And one time my mom was there and she was disgusted by him bcuz she said when you began crying he kept staring in an angry way as if you had done something wrong and that makes that one the worst since I find that embarrassing..

She said a good person looks away instead of just staring at the person angrily.

Never had embarrassing meltdowns in front of other ppl apart from that.

Even at school I could contain myself and just leave the room and hide somewhere, so nobody knew.

25th of March 2007

Ohhh a really bad one. That i had nearly forgotten. After school (bcuz of the overwhelm sensory and otherwise-- n being made fun of by brothers on the drive home--and lots of tension with my mom who didnt understand anything)

My brothers had basically made fun of me (3 against 1 person)

during the whole car ride when i was ranting about school n how much i hated it and all the unfair things they do.

So basically they kept saying bad things about me as we were heading to the door of our apartment...

then my brother (the nice one) i turned n screamed at him to stop n he yelled back and pushed me several times.

. I then went ballistic crying and crying began and (i dont remember this i only know after) his face got scratches and right after that i realized he waz bleeding and my nails were not cut (not visibly long but just lobg enough) thar it actually cut not just scraped

Then the crying turned into saying sorry sorry oh no sorry and
crying about that..
My mom opened the door from all the loudness

He didn't get me in trouble .

He told my mom it was an argument and he was being unfair (or smthing like that)
First thing I did when I had calmed down (which took ages) was cut my nails at my dads suggestion.

Even tjough i told them i would never touch my brother again if we were fighting after that.

I was 14 at this time and he was 13.

I was 13 or 14. My mom was trying to teach me how to play tennis. I guess I got frustrated because I started crying. Then I threw the racket at her (missed) and ran off from the tennis court. My mom found me about half a mile away, sitting in some grass and crying. Now that I think about it, it was kind of insane.