 Good day my wonderful people. Well I wouldn't say my wonderful people. You wonderful person. Thank you for tuning in. Today I've got a lovely episode for you on the dating and autistic series, the series, the top series on YouTube for understanding and working with autistic people in relationships. Even if you are or aren't autistic, you're going to get something from this video. The special topic of the day, meltdowns. What are they? What do they feel like? How do you prevent them? How do you notice when someone is having a meltdown? Autism shutdowns are not very known about, whereas there is a lot of content. I say content because it varies in its efficacy. Some other stuff out there on meltdowns come more under the category memes. Most people know what an autism meltdown is from memes, from jokes, from gaming communities. There's a lot of humor around autism. Depending on your views, it can be funny and it can't. It's only funny for me when it actually makes sense. If I watch a streamer or someone just like randomly saying that they're autistic because, I don't know, they did something wrong in the game or they forgot something, that doesn't make any sense. Why would we forget anything like that? We're hyper focused on it and planning every single bit of the game. You know, going off on the tangent here. So what is a shutdown? A meltdown. A meltdown is a lot of things. I'm going to explain what a meltdown is like for me. I've explained this sort of stage by stage model in my autism shutdown video. But due to that, most autistic people are like suffymic, struggle noticing, understanding, categorizing emotions, all that really important stuff for self-regulation. A large percentage of that time period of when we are getting, for example, more and more stressed, we will not particularly pick up on that, especially if we're focusing on something else. So there is a very small window between noticing that you're stressed and being able to do something about it and having a shutdown. Usually, the shutdown is the most important sort of step in this because it can prevent having a meltdown. If in the right environment and in the right sort of low sensory environment, if all of that stuff doesn't work, and obviously you can refer back to the shutdown video, the person may have a meltdown. Your brain is going at about a million miles per hour. It's not like a panic attack, although it's similar in some aspects. But it's usually characterized by kind of a pretty extreme regression in someone's social presentation. For me, when I have a meltdown, I can usually sort of control myself to some degree. If there is a lot of external factors that are adding to my stress while I'm in that meltdown, then it's likely that it can continue on for quite a significant amount of time. And there are a lot of aspects of having a meltdown that are to do with stimming. So rocking or, you know, for me, motor ticks, physical ticks, you know, those sort of semi voluntary actions that you do kind of like to rest, but just depending on whether I'm stressed enough, I get a lot of those. And it's extremely physically exhausting to be in that state. Every time I try to move a certain body part, it twitches about five or six times before I'm able to actually move that body part, which is a really difficult thing for, you know, keeping myself mobile, safe. You know, this is not something that I would want to happen in public just because of how vulnerable it makes me feel and makes me look. On paper, there is no reason for you to feel ashamed or sad or embarrassed about having a meltdown, but it really doesn't take away from just the difference in how you are not having a meltdown just in everyday life. And it's sort of the level of functioning and the presentation that you have when you're having a meltdown. They're very, very different. And it can, for me, it makes me feel extremely embarrassed and extremely sort of, you know, I want to go hide myself away. If this was to happen in public, I would want to go to the nearest toilet and just sit there for hours rather than, you know, be around other people and then people see me in that vulnerable, difficult state. There is a lot of dissociation. You can't really think properly. Your thoughts are like buzzing all sorts of different directions. And it's really hard to focus on a certain thing. You're very, very sensitive to other people, depending on their outward presentation. If they're very calm and lovely, it tends to be a bit easier to kind of calm down if they're not so much. And they're kind of, they're not really sure about this thing that's happening to you. They don't particularly understand why you're doing this. You know, they think that is something that you're doing actively, a voluntary thing that you're doing to get some sort of result. You know, depending on the environment, it depends on the severity of it. There can be a lot of cases where I'm really frustrated with something that I wanted to do, like my routine, and there's lots of different changes. And it's just because of that. Usually once the mount down passes can sort of get a little bit more back on track, if it gets a little bit too intense, then it can, it can literally exhaust my energy for the next two days, three days. It can make me feel really down on myself, really low self-esteem for like nearly a week or two, depending on whether I talk to the people who've seen me having the mount down. And I've really sort of worked through that sort of shame and guilt that I feel. So with the whole mount down, there's a lot of physical tension, there's a lot of anxiety, like a lot. It's almost painful. It's excessively difficult to try and have any sort of communication. Depending on how bad it is and depending on the situation, perhaps maybe you might be able to give single words or very, very simple sentences, but there will be no tonality in this. It will be extremely monotone. It will be almost a task and effort, like lifting like a really heavy weight in order to try and get these words out. The only thing that I can really communicate is affirmatives and, you know, the opposite of that. I don't know what that would be. Just processing the language and formulating a response takes a lot longer than usual, maybe up in, up into the range of about 10, 20 seconds sometimes. But the actual sort of inner world experience is perhaps in some ways not what people would expect. When they see you in that state, they don't think that you kind of you'll remember things and that you can think and that you are still a person inside. It very much looks almost like you've kind of regressed in your intelligence and that you kind of in this very vulnerable, perhaps a very exaggerated state. And so it's hard for people to comprehend that there is a person still inside there, you know, while this is happening. Quite often I can remember what the experience of them out down is. Perhaps it's a bit blurry. Perhaps the time is distorted quite a bit. Perhaps my understanding of the situation is a little bit different, but I can still remember what happens. So anyone who helps me, anyone who makes me feel worse, I know about that. I can still have thoughts. I can still want to express something in my head. I can think, okay, right, I want to tell them that I need to lower the lights and listen to some music. And then I try and it just doesn't come out. And it's extremely frustrating, especially if someone's trying to pressure you to communicate. It's so difficult. It's almost impossible in some circumstances. So you can kind of realize the intensity of what this experience is like. If you've had a panic attack before, there will be a lot of crossover in that. But there are some more typical things related to an autism meltdown than to a panic attack. I know what the difference is I can tell most of the time. With a panic attack, the adrenaline spikes, but it's the, it's the adrenaline that spikes up. It's the anxiety that goes up. And it's not necessarily characterized by me becoming mute or anything like that. I'll probably be a bit more in control of it. I could have a panic attack and perhaps still walk down the street kind of thing or communicate that I want to go inside or I want to change the atmosphere and be able to do that. Whereas if I'm having a meltdown, that capacity, that ability to think and act is very, very lowered. It's very difficult to do almost anything. And it's not something that I'm pleased to share. Like I hope that you can appreciate that I'm being quite vulnerable about this because from my outward presentation on YouTube, it doesn't really seem like this would be something that I experienced, but it is. And it does happen. Not so much in adulthood, but it still does happen. And there are specific triggers and things that happen that put me in that state. So you may come away from your first experience saying like it's kind of a holiday retreat, but you may feel almost fairly traumatized by your partner having a meltdown. It's not a pretty thing. I would sort of compare it to having like an epileptic fit. Obviously there are different types of epileptic fits and there are very strong differences between the two. But for arguing sake, it is kind of a good comparison. It's a good way to think about an autism meltdown because it's a lot easier to think in that sense of your brain just going haywire. This is a bad thing. You can't control all of these things and these are happening. And that's probably the most simple way of viewing it. It's a state of mind. It's a set of behaviors that come from this extreme anxiety, this extreme overload. You have to have the mindset of right, we need to wait this out. We need to try our best to make it comfortable. We need to make sure that if you can talk to them and that they're able to talk to you about perhaps the other feelings that are going on after the meltdown. You know, there's a lot of different sort of care aspects involved. It's not the best for someone's self-esteem. So a lot of the stuff that you can do that a lot of people don't do is the aftercare for it. Dealing with the meltdown, of course, very good, making sure that it's shorter, making sure that it's less intense, of course that it's going to be good, but you've got to get the aftercare as well. So you can spot a meltdown. It's very easy to spot mile away, but you understand what it's like to some degree, what it feels like. It's not a pleasant experience, of course. And you also know how to spot it. Now we have the how to help part, how to help the actual meltdown. Of course, the best way to help is not to encourage it to happen. If someone's having a shutdown, you know, watch that video of me talking about shutdowns. There's a lot that you can do to not make it worse and make sort of encourage them to have a meltdown. So keeping that in mind is obviously the best thing, prevention, better than treatment, better than the cure, all that kind of thing. But when they are actually having a meltdown, it can be very hard to know what to do if you don't have kind of a step-by-step guiding or rough guide in your head about how to tackle this situation, because you can't exactly ask them what would help and then just explain, okay, right. I'm feeling very overloaded by my senses and this and that and music would help and I'd like to just lay down and I'd like you to massage my legs or all of that stuff that could easily be communicated out of the meltdown is not easily communicated when the person is having it. So it's always important to have that conversation with your partner. Make sure that they understand what happens to them, try ask them what it feels like for them and what helps them and what makes things worse. It may be different to perhaps my experience. So that is, you know, the best thing to do, the prevention side of things, you know, making sure that you don't fresher them into doing a lot of socializing and going out in very busy places and, you know, when the mental health is not very good, all that kind of stuff probably going to help out a lot. So when they are actually having a meltdown, you've crossed the breaking point, the seal is off and they are in it for maybe one or two or three hours. Very intense pain, physical, mental, emotional for the person and perhaps also for you. The most important thing to do is not to rush them. A lot of people say put them in a situation or take them out of a stressful situation and put them in a situation that's better. Great idea if you have a kid and you can carry them with an avil, probably not a good idea to rush them because that can make them feel even more anxious I talked about the difficulty putting thoughts into action and that's the same thing. If you try to force someone to get out of a stressful situation too quickly, then it can possibly make it more intense for them. So make sure that you are always slow, slow and calm and understanding and listening. If they say that they don't want to move, don't move them, don't force them to move. I would encourage them to move because, you know, the second step, the ideal step would be to put them in a situation that's less stressful. A situation where it's less noisy, perhaps having some headphones on and listening to some relaxing music, not being around other people because obviously, you know, that self-conscious aspect, the shame and the guilt, it's going to be amplified by more people gathering around and watching you in this vulnerable state. So the ideal would be to just have you and them in a room, away from the public, away from all the sensory distress. That is the ideal. It's not always the case, perhaps if you are the cause of a malign, you've caused them to have a malign, you've pushed them when they're in a shut down state, forced them to communicate. You know, you feel very emotional and you feel like you want to talk about something really important but you push it way too far and they just get overloaded and they can't think and they can't act and they have a meltdown. Perhaps in this situation, it might be good to contact someone that they know so that they can talk to them and perhaps leave them alone. Obviously, a caveat to that is when they have a meltdown, they're not self-injurious. You know, the thing is with this is that even though you are their partner, you're not always qualified to help someone have a safer meltdown. If they tend to hit themselves, which does happen and it has happened to me in the past, you're not really trained to restrain them to make sure that they're okay. So I wouldn't go for physical restraint too much if they are hurting themselves. I would encourage them not to but you should always try and substitute it for something else that will help them calm down. So if they're hitting themselves, perhaps giving them something that's quite stimulating to them sensory wise, like something to squeeze or something to bite or anything, any kind of sensory toy that you can think about, something that they like and that calms them down. Substituting that with them hitting themselves is better than wrapping them up and just squeezing their arms together and restraining them because that's probably going to make them feel worse about themselves and it's also going to be fairly unpleasant. If they are doing any motor ticks or verbal ticks and repeating noises or phrases or doing very jerky movements that seem to be quite violent, I wouldn't say stop them from doing that because it's not really something that they control and it's usually the body's response to try and relieve the tension and the anxiety and the stress that they're feeling. Some more tips for trying to help in this situation would be simplifying the questions that you're asking, yes and no's. If they're in a state and they can't process and talk very well, perhaps they may want to nod or they may want to shake. So it's always good to give yes and no questions. Do you want the light off? They can say yes, I want the light off. It's too bright. They won't say that, they'll just nod the head or they'll say yes and then you do it and if you want to communicate to them in that state I would always just stick to that. It's important to make sure that you get your vocal tonality all well and good. You have to remember there still is a person inside that. This is still your partner and they can still remember things that happen during the meltdown. You know, it's good to make sure that you're treating them as a human being as a partner rather than a patient or someone that you care for. You need to make sure that you give them a lot of positive affirmation. You let them know that you're not being bothered by this, that you want to help, that they're concerned about you, that they care for you, that it doesn't affect your image of them. All of these things are really good because they'll make the after the meltdown a little bit easier. So let's go on to that aftercare. What does it look like? Once the meltdown subsides, it tends to go very, very slowly downwards up until a point where they look absolutely exhausted. Like they've just done two nights worth of work in one night, no sleeping. You know, they've been traumatized by this event. That's what they'll look like. They may get very depressed, especially if they already have mental health conditions. They may be extremely sensitive, they may be very, very self-conscious, very down on themselves, very low self-esteem. So in this situation it's important that you understand that perhaps they won't be up to the communication standard that they were for maybe a couple of days or a couple of hours depending on the person. It tends for me to be about one or two days where I gradually get more and more energy as these days subside after the meltdown. But for me the most important thing is to perhaps have some alone time to think about it. It may sound very counterintuitive, but you know, having that sort of alone time to just process what's happened, understand, get your thoughts in order, make sure that you've given enough time so that you can communicate what happened and what helped someone, what was good and what was bad within the context of the relationship. But what can you do? What can you do to make this this period of time easier? I would always look to doing something that they like. One of the things that I like the most is theme parks and trampoline parks and water parks. Probably that's not going to be the best thing for me to do in that state. You know, maybe just going about and just having a bounce in the trampoline or going to the gym or, you know, doing any of that stuff that kind of relaxes your body is very important. For me, it's very important for other people, you know, the idea of going to the gym after you've had a meltdown is like, maybe a couple of days after. The main thing for you to focus on is trying to reassure them, trying to say that you were willing to talk about it, trying to be open about it, trying to be open-minded about their responses. If you come out of the situation as a, right, this was really hard for you, and I'm really sorry that you feel felt that. Is there any way that I can help you feel better about it? Usually, there'll be a lot of shame and sort of stress around, you know, you're not finding them attractive anymore. They could develop a lot of self-esteem issues, tread lightly and tread calmly and tread positively. You need to make sure that they feel like having a meltdown in front of you hasn't affected the image that you have of them. It hasn't affected how you view them, how much you want to be in a relationship with them. You need to reassure them of this because they're probably going to go through a tough time, especially if it's the first time that they've had a meltdown. So just being aware of that and just being aware that you may need to be a bit more sensitive around them, perhaps a bit more emotionally open, perhaps a little bit more supportive than usual. But, you know, after that, that couple of days, they tend to go back to their original sort of mode of being, if you've done everything right in this, in these steps, then the meltdown won't happen from the preventative side or it will happen, but it won't be that intense and it will be a lot more manageable. And then eventually, once they come out of it, making sure that it doesn't, they don't feel like it's going to impact the relationship that you two have and that you understand them and that they feel comfortable having a meltdown around you and being in that vulnerable state. All of those things compiled into one is how you deal with meltdowns in a relationship. So I hope that has helped you. I do realize that I have been rambling on and on and on and on and on throughout this entire video. But if you want to stay up to date with all the stuff I have written versions of the videos that I make over on my Instagram account, you can find me on Facebook and Twitter if you want. But Instagram usually is the best place to go. Also, if you want to stay up to date with the autism series, that I do have the playlist for the autism dating series, if you want to check that out, all that stuff, that playlist is probably a good idea to watch if you are dating an autistic person. And if you want to get in contact about a collaboration about getting me to come speak at your school or getting me to do some training for a workforce or a workplace that you're involved in, please email me at AspergersGrowth at gmail.com or contact me via my website ThomasHenley.co.uk. If you want to try and support me and my work and the time that I put into the videos, I do have the join button on my page now. And it's the minimum amount that you can donate is one pound a month. So if you do find my videos somewhat useful and it's, you know, I've made the relationship world a little bit easy for you. I would really appreciate a join. Stay safe, stay cool, make sure you vaccinate it. Probably shouldn't have so that it's going to rile some anti-vaxxers up in the comments and drink some water. I'll see you later.