#sensory overload meltdown

[pandaspwnz]

Started off the day with the second worst sensory overload meltdown I've ever had. It's been around 2 and a half hours since I woke up and I'm still not completely over it, but I am however, extremely worn out from it. At least the only other time I had a worse one, it was already evening, but today I started off with one and it. sucks. ASS. Keeping my fingers crossed I recover soon and don't have a completely ruined day 😣

[my-autism-adhd-blog]

An Autistic Meltdown…

Is NOT a temper tantrum

Does NOT have a goal

Can happen with or without people around

Makes an autistic person vulnerable

Does NOT want to hurt anyone

Is NOT intentional

Is the result of some sort of overload

Lil Penguin Studios/Autism Happy Place

[monachopsis-11]

People always talk about how childhood autistic traits can be troubling and problematic for people (especially allistic parents) but how about ways childhood autistic traits can be helpful and convenient for parents? I’m putting some examples below from my childhood.

- my need for routines was helpful to my mom and made her life easier

- my ability to hyperfocus on interests and solitary activities allowed my parents to attend to my sister

- my preference for being with adults who were more predictable made me easier to handle

- I had a very strong internal sense of right and wrong that made me easy to reason with as long as I was given a reasonable explanation

- my difficulty expressing my emotions and internalizing them instead made me seem low maintenance

- compared to my sister who is very reactive my atypical responses weren’t noticeable

- because I was so independent I was easy to leave alone and overlook

- because my traits weren’t disruptive to my parents I was just seen as ‘mature,’ ‘smart,’ and ‘an old soul.’

- even though I was only social when people interacted on my terms I didn’t avoid people so I wasn’t seen as antisocial

- I talked so much that if I had a day I was struggling no one noticed because they were just used to me being chatty

- I had a decent early childhood before things got really challenging so my meltdowns weren’t bad or often at that age

- by the time I was at an age where those things would stand out I was more prone to disassociation and then having a meltdown when I was alone so they didn’t know

If anyone has any childhood autistic traits that were convenient to their parents and overlooked because of it please let me know in the comments! ⬇️

[beep-beep-robin]

quinni gallagher-jones + common autism traits

had to make gifs of her again, and felt the need to make a list (does anyone get that feeling?) - so, i combined both and more gifs are incoming soon-ish <3

[blackholemojis]

please can you make a word emoji for "autistic meltdown" "i'm having a meltdown" "having an autistic meltdown" and any other variety you might think of. If/when not able to speak, having a quick emoji to express what's happning in my brain might help me and others.

I wish I could include that many letters/words and make them fit right, but I did what I could for this one and included some other emojis I’ve done that could also be relevant

[ID: the following written in purple bubble letters: 1) autistic meltdown, 2) having a meltdown, 3) meltdown. /End ID]

Emojis for under/over stimulation

[ID: the following emojis in the same style: 1) understimulated, 2) overstimulated. /End ID]

General emotional/sensory things that might be contributing

[ID: the following emojis in the same style: 1) emotions too big right now, 2) sensory overload. /End ID]

Some more specific things that could possibly be meltdown inducing. Doesn’t hit all the sensory/input boxes but it’s the ones I have so far

[ID: the following emojis in the same style: 1) hearing too much, 2) seeing too much, 3) feeling too much, 4) thoughts too loud, 5) too much loud, 6) too much touch, 7) too many people, 8) too many voices. /End ID]

[jettvector]

meltdown

[structuredsucc]

For autistic (and some ADHD) people, internal sensations can be just as dysregulating as external ones.

Feeling excited, hungry, or in pain can also be a source of sensory overload and can contribute to us shutting down or melting down.

This is particularly tricky to navigate when alexithymia or poor interoception makes it hard (if not impossible) to pinpoint the source of these internal sensations

[mossy-rot]

reading about autistic meltdowns is crazy. in retrospect maybe that time i ended up sobbing self isolating and lashing out at people because I couldn't figure out how to set up my laptop the same way it had been before might've been because of The Autism

[tobias-robin]

Oh my god I will literally do anything for a Tim Drake no spleen sickfic or sensory overload one shot PLEASEEEE they’re always so good but I can never find any sensory overload or meltdown fics

[slow-burn-sally]

Fuck your fucking funeral

Fuck your fucking wedding

Fuck your fucking weekend away

Fuck your fucking camping trip

Fuck your fucking awards ceremony

Stop inviting me to things that might cause meltdowns or burnouts and then nagging at me and guilting me when I say no.

No, I don't care if this funeral is my "last chance to say goodbye".

No, I don't care that it's my cousin's wedding, and I "should be there to support him".

Family reunion? I don't fucking care. They can email me if they want to stay in touch. I can see them separately in quiet little coffee shops on un-crowded weekdays.

If you're fine with pressuring me into activities and behaviors that harm me, then I'm fine with telling you to

JUST FUCK OFF

sincerely, your autistic friend.

[ghostnamedmem]

I hate it when my autism things affect me like fuck off why cant i be nurotypical all i did today was go out to the shops for like an hour, that shouldn't be that much but it was sooo fucking tiring and stressful and now i feel on the verge of a meltdown im sick of treating myself like a nurotypical then getting mad at myself when im not

[drakkonyan]

Sometimes I remember the kinda meltdowns I had back in high school and feel like I was faking them because noise doesn't affect me that much. Like I can manage much more nowadays, maybe I just nocebo-ed myself into doing that. Maybe I just wanted attention and I'm a bad person and blah blah blah

And then my dad drags me to a restaurant with music so loud you must half yell to speak to eachother, there are drunk ppl screaming from the top of their lungs, there is a child somewhere somehow by some reason , this is an open kitchen and I wanna skin myself alive

[my-autism-adhd-blog]

Autistic Meltdown Iceberg

Neurodivergent_lou

[monachopsis-11]

I’m super curious what other self diagnosed, late diagnosed people thought about their meltdowns prior to discovering the autistic community. For example I remember a girl in my class missing a few days of school and when we asked about her the teacher just said she had a mental breakdown and I was like, so what? Something had happened in her family life and everyone was really worried but I could not for the life of me understand why everyone was making such a big deal about a mental breakdown, like hello- I have those every other day.

Of course I understand the difference now and have certainly experienced both but I had such a hard time understanding why everyone cared about her and not about me at the time. She missed a week of school and with how poor my mental health and accommodations were at the time I probably had four to seven meltdowns of varying intensity in that amount of time. I’d even tell friends and family that I had mental breakdowns and they were like “sure awesome go help with dinner okay?”

And of course I thought I was having some type of breakdown or psychotic episode, I was depressed, burnt out, overwhelmed, isolated, and every day I either collapsed into bed the second I got home or sat on my bedroom floor sobbing, pulling my hair, hitting myself, hitting my walls, pacing, rocking, and covering my ears.

The point of writing this is that I’d be incredibly interested in other late or self diagnosed peoples experience and thoughts with meltdowns before knowing what was really going on.

[beep-beep-robin]

tw: meltdown, harmful stimming, slight internalized ableism below the cut

eddie‘s hellfire shirt‘s seen better days. the print is coming off, it‘s starting to smell old - even when wayne‘s finally succesfully forced eddie to take it off for a day so he can wash it.

the day eddie accepts that it‘s probably time to throw it away, he has a meltdown. he‘d been wearing this shirt for years now, not everyday, but almost. it‘s his one piece of clothing that he‘d always felt comfortable in, the only thing he could wear on bad days without feeling like he was gonna have to throw up.

so now he‘s sitting on his bed, wearing the shirt, rocking back and forth and pulling on his hair, trying to reason with himself - the shirt‘s old, he could make a new one, it‘s gross - but it‘s no use. his brain is in emergency mode.

he‘s so focused on his panic and anger at himself, that he doesn‘t hear the knock on the door before it opens. steve walks in, sees eddie in distress, and immediately drops to the floor to kneel in front of the bed, looking up at eddie with concern visible on his face.

steve asks what‘s happened, but eddie can‘t seem to find any words. he just points at his shirt, points out the print, fingers trembling, before his hand goes back to pulling at his hair.

somehow steve manages to understand and calm eddie down a bit. eddie is aware that steve‘s making empty promises, he won‘t be able to get him a shirt that‘s the same as the one he‘s wearing now. even if he buys the exact same shirt, eddie knows that it‘ll feel different to him because it‘s newer, from a different batch, just plain different. the print isn‘t the issue, because he can just pop that onto the shirt himself.

still, hearing steve talk to him in a calming voice, reassuring him that everything‘s going to be fine and that he will actively try to help eddie get the same shirt back, it helps. he calms down just enough to stop torturing his hair, looking at steve’s face properly now for the first time since he’d walked in. the thought that even though eddie just basically lost his mind in front of steve and is probably covered in snot and tears, the latter is still looking at him with pure relief, love (platonic. eddie’s not trying to get his hopes up even further) and something else eddie can’t interpret on his face, makes eddie’s heart flutter.

eddie‘s not the biggest fan of being touched during and after a meltdown, and steve knows that (they‘d been hanging out for a while, and steve‘s witnessed another meltdown just weeks before), so they just sit side by side on his bed after he‘s come down from it, the metalhead nursing the tea steve‘s made him.

eddie‘s positively shocked when steve shows up again the next day to hand him a hellfire shirt. by the smell eddie can tell it‘s probably gareth‘s, and eddie could kiss steve for the genius idea of retrieving one of the other shirts that he‘d bought for the original members of the hellfire club (maybe that’s not the only reason he‘d kiss him though but eddie‘s going to keep that to himself). it smells different, slightly like gareth and a bit like steve, but it feels the same and it‘s much less worn than eddie‘s, because gareth didn‘t live in it as much as eddie did in his, apparently.

the relief that washes over eddie is immense. for a second he doesn‘t even know what to say, so he just throws his arms around steve in absolute disbelief at having someone apart from his uncle in his life that cares so much about the stupid little things that upset him that he’d go to these lengths to fix them.

especially steve. eddie was pretty worried about scaring the ex jock off when he started unmasking around him, but their friendship (?) just grew even stronger and steve‘s turned into the one person he can always turn to when things go south.

releasing each other from the hug, steve squeezes the others shoulders and tells eddie to go put the shirt on, but the latter is still thinking about his first instinct from a few moments earlier. he thinks of the expression on steve‘s face that washes over it so often when he‘s looking at eddie, no matter what the other is doing.

he thinks of accidental touches of hands, knees brushing together, hugs that last longer than they normally should. thinks of how caring steve is, how accepted and loved he makes eddie feel.

his eyes flicker down to steve‘s lips, back up to his eyes, and apparently steve is right there with him because he asks eddie if he can kiss him - and there’s that look again. eddie just nods and then they‘re kissing and his brain is struggling to catch up with what just happened but for a moment everything‘s perfect and eddie‘s, once again, in disbelief.

when they break apart, there‘s nothing but steve, steve, steve and he barely catches it when the other says that he‘s really been wanting to do this for a while now.

and all eddie can say to that is yeah, me too.

[milogoestogreendale]