 Meltdown! Ah, a big tantrum-y kind of thing versus shutdown, which tends to be like this, where we kind of go inside ourselves. I can very concretely say that for me, like, meltdowns are much, much more intense and horrible than shutdowns are. I generally find that my shutdowns are usually more akin to a protective response. Quite often, I feel like I have sort of this thought in my head that goes round during those times, that I can actually speak, that I can actually not do this and not have a meltdown and not get stressed and over-stimulated. But in almost every single, well, actually in every single circumstance, it is not the case. It's just kind of one of these thoughts. Autistic people in general tend to have one of two slightly different reactions when it comes to overwhelm, anxiety, over-stimulation, and those two things are both meltdowns and shutdowns. So today, we're going to be taking a look at a video from Pookey Night Smith on autism, meltdowns and shutdowns. What does it mean and how do I help? What is the difference between a meltdown and a shutdown? I'm going to answer that question briefly in today's video. Now, meltdown and shutdown are things that you will relatively commonly see in children with autism spectrum disorder or who struggle to emotionally regulate. Now, the big difference between- You don't need to stipulate autistic children. It is autistic adults as well. It's a little bit more common in kids just because of the difficulties with emotional regulation that kids just tend to have if they're autistic or not. But I won't go into that too much. The difference between meltdown and shutdown is that one of them gets our attention and the other one generally doesn't. But they are at heart really, really similar and the way in which we can support someone who is melting down or shutting down is also really similar. So the best way I found of understanding the difference between meltdown, which tends to look like this meltdown, a big tantrum-y kind of thing, versus shutdown, which tends to more like this, where we kind of go inside ourselves. The big best way I found of explaining it is thinking of, you know, the kind of common anxiety responses, fight, flight, freeze. And your meltdown is more like your fight, flight response, where you've got all this anxious energy coming around everywhere and it's coming out in a big, loud way somehow. Meltdown is like your freeze. They all like the deer in headlights and you completely shut down and go inside yourself. Yeah, I think that's a good characterization. As I mentioned at the start, this is going to be more of a solely sort of mainstream focus perspective. And I think this person, if I'm not wrong, is creating content for parents. So it's going to be like focused towards mainstream sort of understanding and awareness. Those books though, I know, they're so color coordinated. Do you think they just had books, which were that color? And they just put them on the shelf? Or did they selectively buy the books that had a particular color palette? Where are the gray books? Where are they like, are there some white ones at the side? A meltdown is not a tantrum? Yeah, I agree with that as well. I think that's an important stipulation to make, isn't it? Because tantrums are usually these things that kids do in sort of a manipulative fashion in order to get what they want. Sometimes with autistic kids, they can tantrum and then it can turn into a meltdown. But in general, meltdowns are not. They don't particularly have any purpose near a point at which we become so very much overstimulated to the point where we can't function and we have a lot of emotional sort of things that come out of us. And depending on what emotion brought us to that place and depending on the individual, it can express in lots of different ways. For me, generally anxiety related, sometimes it can be related to anger, very rare cases. And even even more rare cases, it can be related to like positive feelings like excitement or happiness. I characterize those as happy meltdowns. But you're right. I think the word that they used was tantrum-ish. I think that's an important kind of language change there. So it looks really different, but generally speaking, both shut down and meltdown are as a result of overwhelm. This is a child who is overwhelmed. Perhaps they are struggling with sensory or social overload, whereas they've got big, big feelings bubbling up inside that they don't quite know what to do with. And so their body goes into shut down or meltdown. In both cases, it's really important to remember that essentially shut down and meltdown, it's about the brain being completely overwhelmed. And that young person, therefore, is not going to be in a great position to have a conversation with you about this, to explain to you why they're shouting or withdrawing. They're not in a good place to process stuff. And so actually, generally with both shut down and meltdown, it's about getting through the next few minutes safely and sensitively so that then we can enable that child to continue with their day. So meltdown is more external. This can often look like what we might call... I think one thing that I do want to highlight is that there are some people out there who do view shut downs as being the internal version of a meltdown. But in my experience of having many, many meltdowns and shutdowns and panic attacks throughout my life, I can very concretely say that for me, like, meltdowns are much, much more intense and horrible than shutdowns are. I generally find that my shutdowns are usually more akin to a protective response rather than an internalized meltdown. They're definitely not fun. They definitely both come from overstimulation, overload, etc. But they don't particularly cause me much difficulty shut downs unless someone or some of the environmental circumstances pushes me to the point where I have a meltdown. My brain goes into berserk mode. You can also form not just freeze the fight or flight. That is very true. Very, very true. Cool, a tantrum. But we need to remember this is not a child who is being purposefully naughty. It's a child who right now is completely unable to cope for whatever reason. And we might not be able to understand those reasons and they might not ever be able to voice them. But right now they're not coping. When a young person is in meltdown, shouting's not going to help. The most important thing you can do is to keep them safe and to try really hard to stay calm. What they need is for you to feel safe, supportive and predictable at this time. And that can be really difficult because it can trigger difficult stuff for us when a child is big and loud and shouty and angry and aggressive. That's really hard. And sometimes we have to do our very best acting skills or remember be the swan. So trying to appear calm and serene as we glide across the water when actually we're frantically paddling. This is the time when your stock phrases can come in really helpful. I love, I love that analogy. That is a very, very good analogy. Be like the swan. I think that's a good thing. Safe, safe, supportive, calm. Very much have to keep your frame in these situations because you can't really reason someone out of a meltdown. The only way that you can really help in that situation is to reduce overstimulation to stay sort of a supportive, calm person in their vicinity and stop them from getting even more overstimulated and making the meltdown more intense. If they've done something, if like the kids done something wrong and they got told off and then they've had a meltdown, it's not a good idea to like approach the situation while they're in states of overstimulation like this because it's not going to work. It's not really going to sink into their head. It's not going to like teach them a lesson or anything like that. When they're in this state, no matter how they got into this state, you need to make sure that they're okay. Like conversations about the whole thing afterwards can be really important. And especially when it's an adult, if it's like your partner, if it's a stranger, if it's one of your friends, making sure that you highlight to them that your opinion of them has not changed is quite important because a lot of autistic people, including myself, even though I've done a lot of work in trying to sort of accept myself and such, you can get some very, very intense feelings of shame and even when it comes to shutdowns, to be honest, when I can't respond to people, it can be relatively, it can cause quite intense feelings of shame now and again. The meltdown is almost never about the thing that has triggered it. So fixing the last triggered is nothing, frustrating the NT that's trying to help. Yes. Yeah. And especially if they view it as like a tantrum or if it's something that the person is using for their gain, I've had situations even in adulthood where people are like, oh, you just made yourself get into a meltdown. It's like, no, that's not how it works. There can be so many internal thoughts that we have. Like when we are mute, when we are shutting down, when we are meltdown, and we sort of lack the cognitive ability or functioning in that particular moment, quite often I feel like I have sort of this, this thought in my head that goes around during those times that I can actually speak, that I can actually not do this and not have a meltdown and not get stressed and ever stimulated. But in almost every single, so well actually in every single circumstances, not the case. It's just kind of one of these thoughts that I get, which I think comes from my experiences of having meltdowns shut down in the past, you know, perhaps like something akin to like intentional, unintentional gaslighting around, you can control this that kind of thing and you don't need to do that and you're okay and all of those kind of types of things. It's a very internal thought that I've had. So if you have those thoughts, as an autistic adult, when you're having a meltdown and you have those thoughts after and they kind of haunt you a little bit, I get you. Like I relate and it's not your fault. Like you wouldn't choose to put yourself in a very horrific state for no reason. I used to have much more meltdowns when I was forced to socialize. 100%, that is a really, really big one that you've brought up, Nida. Forcing communication when somebody is mute or somebody is having a shutdown or a meltdown and they're not being very responsive can increase like the intensity of it because it's stressful and it's not nice to not be able to communicate and when someone is putting like social pressure on us, that can really sort of amplify it or it has done in my cases. Helpful. So remember those are those phrases that you prepare beforehand that you practice saying and then you say again and again and again like a broken record in these difficult times and that can be things like I'm ready to listen when you're ready to talk or you're safe, I've got you. Whatever the child that you're working with finds help for you can say it as many times as you need to and remember your lovely, calm, audio narrator type voice that helps to calm you and it helps also to calm them. Shutdown on the other hand unlike meltdown which is external, shutdown is internal. This is when a child will kind of turn in on themselves and they will often become very, very quiet and withdrawn. They might become completely unresponsive. So we often don't really even notice this because they tend not to be causing any trouble. If we're in one-to-one interaction with that child or they're part of group work for example and they go into shutdown then we can get quite frustrated because we can feel like they're being sort of truculent or rude or non-responsive and again we can sometimes then be constantly prompting them trying to get a response and actually right now they might not be capable of formulating and giving a response. So sometimes what they need again then here is for you to be that safe, calm, supportive, predictable adult and as they begin to calm then they will feel more able to engage with things. The kinds of things that you can do to help a child in this moment apart from just- I think as well I don't know if they're going to talk about it perhaps after but I think there needs to be some level of highlighting like their capabilities capabilities after as well. Like just because they have returned from having a meltdown to baseline does not mean that they are like their normal self. Usually my experiences after a meltdown tends to be that I'm very very heavily dissociated like my brain's working much slower and much more sensitive to those sensory things. Can sometimes find communication hard and I kind of want to be by myself and sort of relax, do my special interests, things of that nature. And the last thing I want to do is socialize and talk about things. So you know when I said like maybe wait until the meltdowns over to address things. I would wait longer. I'd give them some time like a day or so just to kind of regulate be them by themselves. Perhaps cancel commitments that you have just so that they can kind of regulate and be in their own space. Motions are a physical reaction. You may be able to control your response to a motion, but it's not possible to control its presence. Why is words there, Piranha and no degrees of you too? Harris says, I can sense when a meltdown or a shutdown is coming, I can usually control specifically when I allow it to happen. Unless something big happens, I ultimately can't stop it or prevent it. Yes, yes. I don't know if you know much about like epilepsy, but there's this concept I think called like the aurum that people of epilepsy get where they get this sort of of a worldly kind of sense that they're going to have you know, they're going to have like an epileptic attack. I don't know if that's the right phrase or terminology for it. I don't like the word fit because I feel like people misuse it fit like socially. I don't know. Feel free to correct me on that. But I get similar experiences with meltdowns. It's kind of like my vision sort of pulls out a little bit and like I get a bit more of like tunnel vision. I get this kind of wave of dissociation or like buzzing through my body. Usually when that happens, if I don't get myself out of a situation that's causing me stress or over stimulating or over stimulating me, generally it's not a good position to be in. Precedure thing is called an aura. I hate it when I know a meltdown is imminent but it won't come trying to force it doesn't work. Interesting. Yeah, that's, it's a weird thing. I mean, I haven't really heard many people talk about like sort of feeling the meltdown come on, but definitely for me, there was this kind of reality kind of shifting experience that I have. Often just generally being kind, safe and supportive. This can be things where things like an object that they find comforting can be really helpful. So at home, like a favorite toy at school, they might have a particular item that they keep with them that helps them to feel calm or connected and it can be helpful to give them that item at this time. When a child goes into shutdown, this is also a particularly high risk time when a child might engage in dangerous behaviors like self harm. Self harm is relatively common among young people who are autistic and it's in these kind of shut down moments when we're going in on ourselves and really retreating from everything around us when we might be more likely to kind of do ourselves harm. And the other thing to remember I think in my experience, it's a lot more akin to like meltdowns, but I'm sure it can happen. I mean, this kind of falls under the category of like harmful stimming. You know, something that regulates us that is not particularly good for us and there can be lots of different things. Particularly when I've had meltdowns in the past, I've been, you know, I have done these harmful kind of things. Self hitting, all of that kind of stuff. To remember here is that during those kind of shutdown moments, everything might seem quiet to you. There's not a lot going on. That child's just being quiet, but they might have a huge amount of different thoughts and feelings swirling around in their head. So things probably seem pretty noisy to them and it can be hard for them to work their way out of this without a little bit of support and guidance from a kind and caring adult. I don't know if that's necessarily true. Sometimes it can happen. Like if I've been particularly anxious, if it's kind of like a preventative style of like shutdown, talking about it like it's a flavour. But sometimes when I shut down, my brain just goes completely blank. Like sometimes that happens. And basically trying as much as I can to disconnect myself from reality, disconnect myself from my sensory experience. And so my brain sort of dulling everything and usually that includes like my thoughts and feelings. It's kind of like my brain just turns off a little bit partially. So I get one of those fish. Wait, is it like sharks? Like they show off like one part of their brain to sleep and then they show the other part of the brain. It might be completely wrong about that, but that could be a good analogy. I found that meldons can be quite directed in wood, like jumping on the emotional grenade instead of letting it blast. 100% pyro. I experienced something similar. There's a lot of thoughts that go in my head when I'm having a meldon, that's for sure. What would be the difference between shutdowns and dissociation? Are they somewhat related? You do experience a large amount of dissociation with shutdowns. You also experience dissociation with like depression. The amounts of dissociation can be obviously very relative. You can also get it if you indulge in a variety of different substances. Sometimes dissociation is quite a large element of them. But yeah, I mean, you're right. I mean, dissociations are a component of shutdowns, but shutdowns are not a component of dissociation. If that makes sense. Like, dissociation is split up into depersonalization and derealization. Depersonalization is when you don't feel like you're real, which is something that I experienced a lot in childhood. And to be honest as well, derealization, where the world around you doesn't feel real and you feel somewhat detached from reality in a sense. It's a very weird feeling. And if for any of you who have experienced dissociation over like a long period of time, like years or like months, and it's kind of like a consistent part of your life, it can be somewhat existential to a certain degree. And it's not really a part of my life as much as it once was. And it's very strange how sort of like reality changing experiencing dissociation on the long term can be. Again, all your usual calming strategies can really, really help here. Kind of soothing music or going to a less sensory overloaded environment. Just having a safe adult alongside to sit with us whilst we calm can really help. I'd love to hear what strategies have worked for you when you're trying to calm down a child who's either in shutdown or in meltdown. Are there any strategies that you have found that work for both situations or any that you found particularly helpful for one or the other? Do leave them in a comment below. There isn't necessarily a difference in the way that you would conduct yourself. I think perhaps the difference with the meltdown is to pay a bit more attention to their safety in that sense. Because with shutdowns, I don't really have... There's not really much of a danger to them in my experience. They're just kind of this protective kind of dissociating response to prevent having a meltdown. So just general anxiety, soothing things, things that capture our interests that are kind of regular and part of our daily routine could be little things like a mobile game. Even though perhaps a kid in the shutdown or an adult in the shutdown might not be able to communicate or move or function to the same degree. Things that they do regularly like on a regular basis that's kind of ingrained into their daily routine like playing a mobile game that they really love. Sometimes they're able to do that. And because I used to write so much on my notes page on my phone, if I can't communicate, a lot of the time I can communicate through writing. It just tends to be very disjointed and perhaps not making much sense. But I can do it to a certain degree if I'm having a shutdown. If I have a meltdown, no way. It's not happening. There's not really much that you can do other than keep the environment safe, do things that regulate them, things of that nature, reduce over stimulation. It goes for both of them. It's just, you know, you have that aspect of safety in meltdowns, which seems to be a bit more concerning. Below because people do read the comments and your ideas and suggestions are really helpful to other people in the same situation. Also, I might cherry pick a few and put together a future video on the topic. So remember, both shutdown and meltdown do matter. Neither are your fault, neither are the fault of the child. Both require an adult who is supportive, safe, and predictable to support the child through it. I mean, playing devil's advocate here, I think in most cases, when you are blaming yourself for them becoming overstimulated, I think that's a bad way of viewing it, looking at it. I do, however, think some people can cause people to have meltdowns. That is very sure. It's very true sometimes. But these things tend to be related to confrontation, in a sense, and not respecting someone's boundaries, not listening to the needs that they have. That tends to be the cases where that happens. It usually happens with strangers, not necessarily with close partners or parents or people that we know are quite regularly, but other people can definitely cause them sometimes. The other thing that often helps is just a little bit of time. This is happening at a point where our feelings are right up here, and with a little bit of time, those feelings will begin to dissipate and the child will become better able to manage and to put into place their other regular coping skills. But that was pookie night Smith, autism, meltdown and shutdown. What does it mean and how do I help? Pretty good video, actually. I think there's some things that need a little bit of illuminating, and I think it's generally things related to our internal experience. You know, obviously if they're an outsider and they're working with kids, they can think about what it might be like, but they don't necessarily have the inside kind of knowledge or experience of the actual thing. So I hope you have enjoyed this video. Make sure to like, subscribe and go drop a comment below below. What is your experience with shutdowns and meltdowns?