#also i made this into a poll halfway because my brain suddenly went “DATA” and now i'm interested in seeing what results will unfold

[steakout-05]

hell o do any other autistic people dislike the term 'meltdown'? for me, the word has a lot of negative connotations because it feels like i'm being degraded and referred to as an uncontrollable tantruming child. i think i have a lot of trauma associated with the word because every time it's been used about me, it's been from teachers who really should not have been around autistic children at all, using it to describe a kid they did not understand, a kid they only saw as bratty, unreasonable, stupid and purposely hard to deal with. it just makes me feel icky and it feels really infantilising to have a term that's usually associated with bratty kids be used to describe a hard-to-understand, unique and painful inner turmoil caused by sensory distress. but that's just my experience.

you know what? let's put a poll here for funsies because i'm genuinely interested in seeing what the people who come across this post think about the word!!