Unless you can handle an unfiltered aspie, proceed with caution.įinally, there is euphoria. My filters don’t come back online right away. Mixed with anger, at myself mostly, for losing control. Patience, patience.Įxhaustion comes first. Interrupt and it’ll just start all over again a few minutes later. The physical cascade needs to run its course. The feeling of paralysis in my tongue and throat. There is emotion at the starting line, but a meltdown is a physical phenomenon: The racing heart. If it makes you uncomfortable to see me curled up in a ball on the floor, you should move–remove yourself from the situation. Whatever position I’ve ended up in is one that’s making me feel safe. Don’t try to pick me up, move me, or get me to change position. When you stop, that feeling–the utter relief, the exhaustion, the desperate need for air, the way you gulp it in, your whole body focused on expanding and contracting your lungs–that’s what crying feels like during a meltdown.
Imagine running as far as you can, as fast as you can. Either my threshold is rising or I’m becoming less sensitive to the precursors as I age. And no one knows whether to clean it up or just walk around it.Ī shutdown is a meltdown that never reached threshold level. The bobble, the slip, the momentary suspension of time just before the hard rind ruptures and spills its fruit, sad and messy, suddenly unpalatable. It feels like dropping a watermelon on the pavement on a hot summer day. Once I cross into that zone, there’s no going back. There is a tipping point. A mental red zone. My meltdowns aren’t so much about triggers as thresholds. There is an intense pressure in my head, suppressing the initiation of speech, suppressing the formation of language. Muteness: Complex speech feels impossible. But you can avoid doing the things that will make it worse. Can you do anything to make me feel better? Probably not. Do I want company? If you’re okay with sitting silently beside me. I’m conscious of the boundary between stimming and serious self-harm. Do I want the meltdown to be over? Yes, but not prematurely. The thing is: when that impulse arises, headbanging feels good. I’m 90% successful at staving off headbanging. A live wire throwing off electricity, charging the night air.
It feels like my whole body is thrumming, humming, singing, quivering. As the meltdowns have lessened, the shutdowns have increased. The implosions are down to a couple a year at most. My forties–I can count the explosions on one hand. I can’t get through an emotionally charged conversation with my husband–let alone a fight–without imploding. I pinball between implosions and explosions.Įarly twenties, into my thirties, the explosions become rare but the implosions grow worse. I slam doors, sob uncontrollably at the slightest provocation, storm out of the house, crank up my stereo. Hormone surges make internalizing impossible. Things come and go, seemingly without rhyme or reason. At various times I’m told that I don’t have meningitis, migraines, appendicitis.
So well that I end up in doctor’s offices and emergency rooms with mysterious headaches, high fevers, stiff necks and stomach bugs. Evolution of meltdowns over a lifetime:įor my first 12 years, I internalize well. Please don’t ask me if I want to talk about it, because:ī) I don’t have the resources necessary for talking I stave it off as best I can because:Ī) my brain is not an infinitely renewable resource The headbanging impulse is intermittent but strong. It feels like nothing will ever be right again. I’m not looking at you because I don’t want to see you seeing me this way. (I will, when I’m ready.) Everything will be fine. (It’s not.) You need to pull yourself together. It feels like a rubber band pulled to the snapping point. Have you ever seen a building implode? The charges go off somewhere deep inside and for a moment you swear nothing is going to happen and then seconds later–rubble and dust and a big gaping hole in the ground. While meltdowns are different for everyone, this is how I experience them.Ī meltdown can go one of two ways: explosion | implosion.Įverything flies outward. I’ve purposely left this raw and unedited, the way it unspooled in my head, to give you a feel for how chaotic a meltdown can be. Last weekend, I had a meltdown and the next morning I tried to capture some scattered impressions of it to share.
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