What is a meltdown?

While an autistic meltdown may superficially resemble a temper tantrum, it’s actually an involuntary response to overwhelming sensory input. Bright lights, loud noises, constant movement, sights, sounds, taste, smells, texture, and feelings of excitement or nervousness, are all possible mechanisms that can trigger a meltdown.

Since autism is a spectrum disorder, no two people with ASD will ever have precisely the same symptoms or triggering factors. For example, while there are many people with ASD who get profoundly stressed out at supermarkets, my interest in all things culinary has made a supermarket one of my favorite places to visit particularly if the store in question is known for the quality of its foreign imports or specialty meats like oxtail, lamb, and prime rib.

In many cases, a meltdown is preceded by a sense of growing agitation that is known by behavioral analysts and clinicians as “the rumble phase”. During the rumble phase, an autistic person will exhibit growing signs of distress. This could include fidgeting, rapid foot tapping, grimacing, and other tell tale behaviors. I myself will always stutter.

Although I have had the occasional screaming meltdown, as a child my parents conditioned me through repeated beatings to not do this. Most of my meltdowns have been internalized as a result.

Click on the above link to see my video about what an autistic meltdown looks like.

What is a shutdown?

Since my parents conditioned me to internalize my meltdowns, I generally don’t have screaming outbursts. I experience shutdowns. A shutdown is the opposite of a screaming meltdown. People with ASD who have shutdowns will literally shutdown and become uncommunicative. It’s almost as though we retreat behind the metaphorical defensive walls of our castle selves and raise the drawbridge to keep all of the stressors out. Some autistic redditors have reported experiencing diminished or complete sensory blocks during this time.

Whenever I have shutdown, I usually retain a diminished capacity to think and to observe but will lose the capacity to speak. If I try to force out words, all that comes out of my mouth is the sound of demented grunting. While I have found that I sometimes retain the ability to type on a computer keyboard or to text, I literally cannot speak until I’ve had time to emotionally reset in much the same way that a crashed computer will need time to reboot.

This has sometimes gotten me into trouble.

When I was a toddler, my parents would react to a screaming meltdown with beatings while screaming, “SHUT UP!”

I find it bitterly ironic that during my preteen years, if I experienced a shutdown, my angry parents would beat me for having remained silent.

“I JUST ASKED YOU A QUESTION! OPEN YOUR MOUTH AND TALK TO ME!”

(sigh)

By way of another example, I once had a teacher friend who who fainted in front of her elementary class. The panicked students ran to the office and when the school nurse was unable to revive “Beth” (not her real name), the office called 911.

An ambulance rushed Beth to the hospital. In running tests on her bloodwork, the lab found that she was critically short of several vitamins and minerals. When Beth recovered consciousness, the doctor learned that her nutritional deficiencies had been caused by the fact that she only ate fast food. Her food preferences were so limited that all she ate were burgers with fries, fried chicken, and pizza. Her diet did not include shellfish, liver, beans, spinach, broccoli, or other foods that were rich with iron. She would not eat fruit or vegetables, whole grain bread, rice, pasta, or dairy products.

After having promised the doctor that she would make an effort to eat a wider variety of foods, she was released from the hospital. As her friend, I was called to pick her up. As I was driving her to her home, she told me what the doctor had said and began to cry.

In an effort to cheer her up, I invited her to my apartment for dinner on the following Saturday. To help with broadening her diet, I produced one of my favorite meals; prime rib with loaded baked potatoes, steamed broccoli, a salad with a choice of Ranch or Italian dressings, and blueberry pie for dessert.

Beth poked at her meal without eating it.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. Since I liked my meat rare, I had served her a rare slice. I offered to pan fry it medium well or well done.

The woman burst into tears. “I like beef,” she admitted, “But only when it’s a burger.”

“I also like potatoes,” she added as she gestured at the baked potato that I had loaded with butter, sour cream, and melted cheese and topped with crumbled crispy bacon. “But only when they’re fries.”

“Lettuce, tomatoes, and onions properly belong on a burger,” she sniffed as she nodded towards the salad hat she had pushed away. “And McDonald’s only serves apple pies. They don’t make anything that looks like THAT,” she complained as she pointed at my made from scratch blueberry pie that I had topped with a dollop of whipped cream.

“What were you THINKING when you made this TERRIBLE MEAL?”

It was 1983 and as a 2nd year teacher, I was only making a bit over $17,000. Not only had some of the ingredients been expensive, but I had spent the better part of the afternoon preparing this meal. I remember thinking that the doctor had told Beth that she needed to expand her diet to include eating iron rich foods like broccoli. Although red meat was also a source of iron, prime rib was by far and away a much better source of red meat than ground beef because the latter had been made using ground scraps from dozens of beef carcasses.

All of these thoughts jumbled together in my head. When combined with Beth’s increasingly angry rant and the fact that she had completely disregarded all of the time and expense that had gone into preparing this meal, I abruptly found that I couldn’t talk.

“WELL? screamed Beth. “DON’T YOU HAVE ANYTHING TO SAY ABOUT WHY YOU MADE THIS AWFUL MEAL? WHY AREN’T YOU SPEAKING TO ME?”

Unable to meet her eyes and unable to speak, I stared at my dinner plate.

After glaring me, Beth stormed across my living room and told me that she was going to McDonald’s where she could get “real” food.

I locked the door behind her and spent the next hour quietly finishing my dinner. By the time I had finished my meal, I was able to resume talking. I later ended my friendship with Beth over issues related to her behavior. A doctor had told her what she had needed to do to be healthy but all she did in response was to whine and complain about how it wasn’t her fault that she only liked burgers, pizza, and fried chicken.

Unless she adjusted what she ate, her medical issues would likely become worse and I had no interest in standing by while watching her destroy her health. I did not appreciate being screamed at. I was also miffed that she had not appreciated the expense of the meal that I had made or the time and effort that had gone towards producing this meal. Her food preferences had been such that she hadn’t even bothered to taste what I had made.

Being someone who was a glass half full sort of guy, I saved the leftovers and ate particularly well over the next few days. At year’s end, I left to pursue my Master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction. I never saw Beth again.

What to do if someone has experienced a meltdown or a shutdown

If you are ever in a situation with a person who is either having a meltdown or a shutdown, please do the following:

  1. Guide this person to a safe, quiet area.
  2. If at all possible, reduce the lighting so that the room is darkened but not so much that it’s impossible to see.
  3. Give this person time to emotionally recover.

DO NOT:

  1. Traumatize this person further by screaming at them to shut up or to snap out of it.
  2. Try to reason with them while they are quietly recovering.
  3. Trivialize their feelings by observing that what they’re going through is entirely in their head.

How long can it take for a person to recover from a meltdown or a shutdown?

This is a difficult question to answer because there are simply too many variables. Possible variables might include:

  • What was the emotional condition of the person who was experiencing the meltdown or shutdown before the event occurred? If the person in question was already stressed out before having the meltdown or shutdown, the time needed for recovery could be longer.
  • How extreme were the antecedents i.e. the stressors that led to this event?
  • Have the stressors been removed and/or has the subject been placed in a quiet environment?
  • Was the subject under some type of anxiety medication? Did the medication wear off during the time in question and how would taking another dose affect one’s recovery?

According to the internet, it can take 20 minutes or more to come out of a meltdown or a shutdown. It can take longer depending upon the severity of the stressors that were involved. One woman on the Redditt autistic sub-form recounted that it took two days to come out of a shutdown after a parent passed away. I took the same length of time to recover when my emotional support cat, Bob, was killed and half eaten by a coyote.

Closing thoughts

Meltdowns and shutdowns are not mutually exclusive. Some autistic redditors have said that these involuntary reactions can be situational. Some may have meltdowns as a result of general stress. They may also have shutdowns when confronted with interpersonal conflict.