Meltdowns, shutdowns and burnout are all responses to over stimulation that are typically seen in autistic people. While I can't say I've personally experienced all 3 of these responses I've gathered enough information through research and the online autistic community to hopefully be able to accurately explain each one in an informative and helpful way. I was planning to cover all 3 of them in this post but while writing I realised that I had quite a lot to say about just meltdowns alone, so I thought I should leave shutdowns and burnout for another time - probably next week and/or the week after.
Meltdowns are probably the most commonly observed of the 3 from an outside or neurotypical perspective, and most people who see autistic meltdowns in children will mistake them for just childish tantrums. In reality though, they're far from it. A meltdown can occur in autistic children and adults alike, and not all autistic people experience them - I for example have never had one as far as I know. A meltdown is when the person's senses are overloaded from any external stimuli that they may be hyper sensitive to. This stimuli triggers the fight or flight response causing a need for the person to urgently get away to somewhere they can recover (flight), or it causes an outburst that can present itself in many different forms such as screaming, crying, hitting/kicking, self harm and more. Just as a point of reference there's a scene in Atypical on Netflix where Sam (the autistic main character) tries to flee from a situation to avoid a meltdown, but he can't escape it and ends up having a meltdown on the bus home. It's a difficult scene to watch but I think it makes a valid point in that meltdowns can happen anywhere and any time to autistics of any age and it gives an idea of what a meltdown might look like, although each person's meltdowns will be different.
Going back for a minute to meltdowns often being mistaken for tantrums, I think it's important to explain the difference. A tantrum is a behaviour carried out by children (usually when they don't get their own way) and is their way of displaying that they're unhappy with what's happening. A meltdown is an involuntary loss of emotional control in response to an external stimuli that the person is hypersensitive to, such as bright lights or loud noises for example. A meltdown does not mean that the person is a naughty child or a bad person, it's just their body's way of coping with the over stimulation by either fleeing to safety and/or physically expending the energy built up for the fight or flight response. It's also worth noting the wording I used a moment ago where I said it's a loss of control rather than a lack of control. It's not something that the person can help, it's not permanent and it also doesn't mean that they generally can't control their own actions.
I want to mention a few safety tips for both the person having a meltdown, and anybody that may be with them and/or looking after them. First of all for the person melting down, if you're going to be in a situation where you think a meltdown might happen please do what you can to avoid any hazards. For example, try to keep yourself away from any objects that might harm you or any height that you might fall from. Try to surround yourself with people who understand when you're melting down and what they can do to help you when you do. If you find yourself punching, kicking, headbutting or anything like that during a meltdown please try to do it into something soft that's not going to harm you like a pillow, and again try to distance yourself from objects that you could use for self harm.
Now, for any person who may be with the autistic person when they meltdown. Please do your best to make sure they stick to the safety advice above by removing any hazards or asking for help from other people if you need it/if it's available. Other than that the best thing you can do is stay with them to keep them safe, but at the same time leave them to it to get it all out of their system. When the meltdown is over the person will most likely be exhausted and upset, and depending on the person it can take anything up to a few days for them to fully recover. While you're helping them try to keep communication to a minimum by using short, direct phrases as they won't feel like talking much. For example if you want to offer them a drink, just asking "Drink?" would be far better than chatting unnecessarily. They can then just answer yes or no and still be as comfortable as they can be. Above all else, the person will just need to feel supported so do what you can in each situation to ensure that for them.
So that's a brief overview on meltdowns. As I've never had a meltdown myself I hope that I've used the information I've gathered to put together a helpful post for anybody interested or experiencing it. If there's anything I've missed or got wrong please feel free to share and discuss in the comments. I'll cover burnout and shutdown in a later post so stay tuned!
An Autistic Love Of Animals
I mentioned in a previous post that I've always loved animals, and that my dream job growing up was always to be an RSPCA inspector. This love of animals is something that I've seen a lot of autistics have in common when I've been scrolling Twitter. That observation, combined with the fact that we adopted a pair of pet rats (called Sprout and Parsnip - I'll put a picture or 2 down at the bottom for you) last week from the RSPCA, got me thinking... While we Brits are famously a nation of animal lovers, why is it that being autistic appears to present a near guarantee that we love animals?
I did a poll a few days ago on Twitter using the #AskingAutistics hashtag asking how autistic people feel about animals in comparison to humans. 32% of participants said that they like both humans and animals, with the other 68% indicating that they much prefer animals over people. That's near enough 2 in 3 people that don't like humans. Interestingly, nobody said they don't like animals. In my own personal experience I find that animals are non-judgmental, and as someone who was horrendously bullied at school and college the company of animals was a distraction and a huge escape for me. Animals don't judge you on whether you're overweight or autistic or anything like that. They'll only judge you on either how you are with them, or how they've been treated by humans in the past.
I grew up with loads of different animals as pets - dogs, rabbits, guinea pigs, gerbils, birds, crabs, lizards - you name it, I probably had it. The companionship side of things also played a huge factor, especially with my 2 dogs Henry and Mitzi that I had from when I was a toddler to me being about 16. With my difficulty in making friends I'm really glad that I grew up with at least 2 furry faces that were happy to see me every time I came home from school regardless of whether I was happy or sad.
One of the common difficulties seen in autism is in communication, especially when it comes to body language, reading between the lines, sarcasm and so on. With animals all these things are either easier to read or not applicable. If a dog comes bounding up to you wagging its tail it's quite clearly happy to see you and wants a fuss. A dog won't give you a sarcastic tail wag. Whereas if somebody talks to an autistic person we can't always tell if they mean what they're saying, what their reasons are for talking to you etc. This makes interaction with animals much simpler. Granted, we can't always tell what an animal wants or how it feels but they're a different species from us so there's going to be some form of language barrier regardless. Communicating with humans can often feel like communicating with a different species but with the difficulty ramped up.
Anxiety also plays a factor in communication, whether that's anxiety from the fact that you're speaking to somebody, from the situation, or from the environment that you find yourself in at the time. Lots of people (myself included) have social anxiety so I find that talking to people too much or for too long makes me nervous - particularly in one to one scenarios where all of the other person's attention is focused on me all of the time. Dealing with animals presents a much, much lower level of anxiety, unless of course you're phobic towards a certain type of animal. I don't always know what my cat or my rats want or how they feel, but because I don't have the anxiety with them that I would have with human interaction it's a hell of a lot easier to enjoy their company. And that goes for any other animals as well. The reduced anxiety also lets me pay more attention to what's actually going on with them and potentially notice any small details such as changes in behaviour or any physical symptoms that might need attention. It's also not uncommon for an autistic person to have a support animal to help ease their anxieties and keep them calm.
As well as those differences between dealing with people and dealing with animals I do view every life as valuable, although I find animals much more deserving of it than human beings as a whole. As a species we've got morals and ethics, and an awareness of the world around us as a bigger picture. With that awareness comes responsibility that we really need to live up to but often don't. Not only have we got a responsibility to the environment and to animals, but we've got a responsibility to each other that we neglect all too often. The way I look at it is that animals don't have that awareness or responsibility, so that gives them a degree of innocence and purity that we've not been living up to.
So there are my personal reasons for my love of animals rather than people. The comments from my Twitter poll didn't give much to go on in terms of reasons for people's preferences but there's definitely a clear love of animals within the autistic community, which in my estimation can only be a good thing. Let me know how you feel about animals, and I'll leave you with a photo of Spout and Parsnip.
[Image description: My 2 rats in their cage, sniffing through the bars to the outside. Parsnip is white with a grey head and is on the bottom. Sprout is white with a black head and is leaning on Parsnip's back with her front legs to reach the front of the cage. There is play equipment (rings, hammocks etc) in the background.]
I did a poll a few days ago on Twitter using the #AskingAutistics hashtag asking how autistic people feel about animals in comparison to humans. 32% of participants said that they like both humans and animals, with the other 68% indicating that they much prefer animals over people. That's near enough 2 in 3 people that don't like humans. Interestingly, nobody said they don't like animals. In my own personal experience I find that animals are non-judgmental, and as someone who was horrendously bullied at school and college the company of animals was a distraction and a huge escape for me. Animals don't judge you on whether you're overweight or autistic or anything like that. They'll only judge you on either how you are with them, or how they've been treated by humans in the past.
I grew up with loads of different animals as pets - dogs, rabbits, guinea pigs, gerbils, birds, crabs, lizards - you name it, I probably had it. The companionship side of things also played a huge factor, especially with my 2 dogs Henry and Mitzi that I had from when I was a toddler to me being about 16. With my difficulty in making friends I'm really glad that I grew up with at least 2 furry faces that were happy to see me every time I came home from school regardless of whether I was happy or sad.
One of the common difficulties seen in autism is in communication, especially when it comes to body language, reading between the lines, sarcasm and so on. With animals all these things are either easier to read or not applicable. If a dog comes bounding up to you wagging its tail it's quite clearly happy to see you and wants a fuss. A dog won't give you a sarcastic tail wag. Whereas if somebody talks to an autistic person we can't always tell if they mean what they're saying, what their reasons are for talking to you etc. This makes interaction with animals much simpler. Granted, we can't always tell what an animal wants or how it feels but they're a different species from us so there's going to be some form of language barrier regardless. Communicating with humans can often feel like communicating with a different species but with the difficulty ramped up.
Anxiety also plays a factor in communication, whether that's anxiety from the fact that you're speaking to somebody, from the situation, or from the environment that you find yourself in at the time. Lots of people (myself included) have social anxiety so I find that talking to people too much or for too long makes me nervous - particularly in one to one scenarios where all of the other person's attention is focused on me all of the time. Dealing with animals presents a much, much lower level of anxiety, unless of course you're phobic towards a certain type of animal. I don't always know what my cat or my rats want or how they feel, but because I don't have the anxiety with them that I would have with human interaction it's a hell of a lot easier to enjoy their company. And that goes for any other animals as well. The reduced anxiety also lets me pay more attention to what's actually going on with them and potentially notice any small details such as changes in behaviour or any physical symptoms that might need attention. It's also not uncommon for an autistic person to have a support animal to help ease their anxieties and keep them calm.
As well as those differences between dealing with people and dealing with animals I do view every life as valuable, although I find animals much more deserving of it than human beings as a whole. As a species we've got morals and ethics, and an awareness of the world around us as a bigger picture. With that awareness comes responsibility that we really need to live up to but often don't. Not only have we got a responsibility to the environment and to animals, but we've got a responsibility to each other that we neglect all too often. The way I look at it is that animals don't have that awareness or responsibility, so that gives them a degree of innocence and purity that we've not been living up to.
So there are my personal reasons for my love of animals rather than people. The comments from my Twitter poll didn't give much to go on in terms of reasons for people's preferences but there's definitely a clear love of animals within the autistic community, which in my estimation can only be a good thing. Let me know how you feel about animals, and I'll leave you with a photo of Spout and Parsnip.
The Tragic Story Of Bray Wyatt
This week's post isn't strictly autism-related, but it is about wrestling which has been my autistic special interest since I was 14, so it does still tie in... Vaguely. The internet wrestling community has been abuzz about Bray Wyatt's long awaited return, which has been built up to by a series of short episodes of Firefly Fun House. So with Bray's return imminent I thought there was no better time to look at his character direction and discuss my take on the character as a whole.
Let's go over the history of Bray Wyatt. In real life he is Windham Rotunda, brother to fellow WWE wrestler Bo Dallas, and he has also wrestled in WWE as Husky Harris during his very early days with the company. But here we're looking exclusively at the Bray Wyatt character (even though Firefly Fun House has featured some references to Husky Harris and real life scenarios).
Bray debuted in NXT back in 2012 and moved up to the main roster alongside Luke Harper and Erick Rowan as The Wyatt Family on 8th July 2013. His character (up until the Firefly Fun House) has always been that of an evil, semi-supernatural cult leader who has been lead by a higher power of sorts. This higher power was known as Sister Abigail and is the character after whom Bray's finishing move was named. Because Bray's monologues have always been very cryptic and nonsensical to a degree not much is known about Sister Abigail, except that she's a figure from his past, she appears to have been some sort of mentor to him and instrumental in establishing his cult leader status, and she's clearly somebody who he loved and cared for (although the exact nature of this affection isn't clear). She's also dead. In all of his feuds Bray would reference Sister Abigail, and in almost all of his feuds Bray would come up short in the payoff match at big pay per view events. He did win the WWE championship once at Elimination Chamber but this ultimately led to his challenger Randy Orton taking the title a couple of months later after burning the Wyatt Family compound and destroying Sister Abigail's remains in the process. Evidently, following Sister Abigail's influence didn't get him anywhere in the long run.
We fast forward now to 2018 where Bray had entered into a feud with Matt Hardy. This was a way of bringing Hardy's "Broken" gimmick to WWE for the first time - rebranded as "Woken" due to Impact! Wrestling still technically owning the gimmick. After The Ultimate Deletion match Bray was pushed into the Lake Of Reincarnation and wasn't seen again until around a month later when he returned at Wrestlemania to help Hardy win the Andre The Giant Memorial Battle Royal. From there it was established that he was now Woken as a result of his fall into the Lake Of Reincarnation and instead of following Sister Abigail he was following Matt Hardy. They formed a team called Deleters Of Worlds and won the Raw tag titles only to lose them a few short months later to long time jobbers The B Team (Bo Dallas and Curtis Axel). Again, this choice of leader lead to a small amount of glory which was short lived, but didn't amount to much in the long term.
After losing the tag titles Hardy took some time off to recover from injury and Bray hasn't been seen on a live WWE show since, with the one-off exception of a match at Starrcade in November 2018 against Baron Corbin. Fast forwarding again we land in April 2019 at the debut of the Firefly Fun House. This ran for 9 episodes and was presented as a children's TV show hosted by a new and improved (both physically and mentally) Bray Wyatt. Each episode showed Bray's attempt at redeeming himself and in episode 4 he showed us the darkness that was still in him, which manifested itself as a new character/alter-ego called The Fiend, although Bray insisted that he has learned how to harness this darkness and control it. As each creepy episode passed it became increasing clear that Bray's control over The Fiend was weakening and The Fiend was in fact the one controlling Bray as each week Bray would ask viewers to "let me in". The final episode aired a few weeks ago where The Fiend appeared to have taken total control over Bray and disappeared from the Fun House implying that he's on his way to Raw or Smackdown. While Bray is still yet to make his return to live WWE events - as The Fiend or otherwise - the world is now glued to this story line and hoping that it will be used to turn Bray into the monster that he's been presented as in the Firefly Fun House.
Regardless of how the new character direction works out in the long term, what I've taken from Bray's story so far is that Bray Wyatt himself is a poor, unfortunate soul who I would even go as far as calling pathetic. He can't seem to catch a break in life which has lead him to misguidedly following these various figures of power, be it Sister Abigail, Woken Matt Hardy or now The Fiend. Each time he follows one of these figures it seems to be a desperate attempt to turn his life around and prove his worth by doing their bidding but so far he has failed every time. I like to think that this is the overarching story of the Bray Wyatt character and brings an element of tragedy that I haven't yet heard anybody else theorise. Of course, this is just my own theory and may or may not be something that was intended by the WWE creative team. But I think it's a concept that adds yet more interest to where Bray's character is heading and I know I'm not alone in hoping that The Fiend turns Bray's fortunes around and allows him to start being used properly by Creative, especially now that Paul Heyman and Eric Bischoff are in charge of Raw and Smackdown. If my theory of tragedy is right, that means that the story will have to come full circle eventually but I don't want to get too far ahead of myself as WWE have done a fantastic job of rebuilding Bray through the Firefly Fun House by using a very slow build-up and I hope that means we're in store for a good, long, entertaining run with the new Bray Wyatt.
Only time will tell, but in the meantime all we can do is let him in.
Let's go over the history of Bray Wyatt. In real life he is Windham Rotunda, brother to fellow WWE wrestler Bo Dallas, and he has also wrestled in WWE as Husky Harris during his very early days with the company. But here we're looking exclusively at the Bray Wyatt character (even though Firefly Fun House has featured some references to Husky Harris and real life scenarios).
Bray debuted in NXT back in 2012 and moved up to the main roster alongside Luke Harper and Erick Rowan as The Wyatt Family on 8th July 2013. His character (up until the Firefly Fun House) has always been that of an evil, semi-supernatural cult leader who has been lead by a higher power of sorts. This higher power was known as Sister Abigail and is the character after whom Bray's finishing move was named. Because Bray's monologues have always been very cryptic and nonsensical to a degree not much is known about Sister Abigail, except that she's a figure from his past, she appears to have been some sort of mentor to him and instrumental in establishing his cult leader status, and she's clearly somebody who he loved and cared for (although the exact nature of this affection isn't clear). She's also dead. In all of his feuds Bray would reference Sister Abigail, and in almost all of his feuds Bray would come up short in the payoff match at big pay per view events. He did win the WWE championship once at Elimination Chamber but this ultimately led to his challenger Randy Orton taking the title a couple of months later after burning the Wyatt Family compound and destroying Sister Abigail's remains in the process. Evidently, following Sister Abigail's influence didn't get him anywhere in the long run.
We fast forward now to 2018 where Bray had entered into a feud with Matt Hardy. This was a way of bringing Hardy's "Broken" gimmick to WWE for the first time - rebranded as "Woken" due to Impact! Wrestling still technically owning the gimmick. After The Ultimate Deletion match Bray was pushed into the Lake Of Reincarnation and wasn't seen again until around a month later when he returned at Wrestlemania to help Hardy win the Andre The Giant Memorial Battle Royal. From there it was established that he was now Woken as a result of his fall into the Lake Of Reincarnation and instead of following Sister Abigail he was following Matt Hardy. They formed a team called Deleters Of Worlds and won the Raw tag titles only to lose them a few short months later to long time jobbers The B Team (Bo Dallas and Curtis Axel). Again, this choice of leader lead to a small amount of glory which was short lived, but didn't amount to much in the long term.
After losing the tag titles Hardy took some time off to recover from injury and Bray hasn't been seen on a live WWE show since, with the one-off exception of a match at Starrcade in November 2018 against Baron Corbin. Fast forwarding again we land in April 2019 at the debut of the Firefly Fun House. This ran for 9 episodes and was presented as a children's TV show hosted by a new and improved (both physically and mentally) Bray Wyatt. Each episode showed Bray's attempt at redeeming himself and in episode 4 he showed us the darkness that was still in him, which manifested itself as a new character/alter-ego called The Fiend, although Bray insisted that he has learned how to harness this darkness and control it. As each creepy episode passed it became increasing clear that Bray's control over The Fiend was weakening and The Fiend was in fact the one controlling Bray as each week Bray would ask viewers to "let me in". The final episode aired a few weeks ago where The Fiend appeared to have taken total control over Bray and disappeared from the Fun House implying that he's on his way to Raw or Smackdown. While Bray is still yet to make his return to live WWE events - as The Fiend or otherwise - the world is now glued to this story line and hoping that it will be used to turn Bray into the monster that he's been presented as in the Firefly Fun House.
Regardless of how the new character direction works out in the long term, what I've taken from Bray's story so far is that Bray Wyatt himself is a poor, unfortunate soul who I would even go as far as calling pathetic. He can't seem to catch a break in life which has lead him to misguidedly following these various figures of power, be it Sister Abigail, Woken Matt Hardy or now The Fiend. Each time he follows one of these figures it seems to be a desperate attempt to turn his life around and prove his worth by doing their bidding but so far he has failed every time. I like to think that this is the overarching story of the Bray Wyatt character and brings an element of tragedy that I haven't yet heard anybody else theorise. Of course, this is just my own theory and may or may not be something that was intended by the WWE creative team. But I think it's a concept that adds yet more interest to where Bray's character is heading and I know I'm not alone in hoping that The Fiend turns Bray's fortunes around and allows him to start being used properly by Creative, especially now that Paul Heyman and Eric Bischoff are in charge of Raw and Smackdown. If my theory of tragedy is right, that means that the story will have to come full circle eventually but I don't want to get too far ahead of myself as WWE have done a fantastic job of rebuilding Bray through the Firefly Fun House by using a very slow build-up and I hope that means we're in store for a good, long, entertaining run with the new Bray Wyatt.
Only time will tell, but in the meantime all we can do is let him in.
Alexithymia
Alexithymia:
Noun
The inability to recognise or describe one's own emotions.
I've known all my life that I struggle to understand and explain my own feelings but I only found out within the last year that it's an actual thing with a name. That discovery just helped everything click into place while I was waiting for my autism assessment. It's quite a common thing that's seen in a lot of autistics and can probably account for it's fair share of our social and communication difficulties.
It means that it can sometimes take me a while to process what I'm feeling about a situation and I might only realise how I feel later on, often when it's too late. And quite often my wife can tell if there's something wrong but when she asks about it I can only really give one of two responses; either "Nothing" or "I don't know" because there's nothing identifiably wrong and I genuinely don't know what the problem is. If I do figure out what's going on in my head it won't be until later on, in which case I bring it up with her again later. I think this is partly why I don't like conflict, and therefore why me and my wife have never really had an argument in the 8 years we've been together. I can't usually process things in the moment that are too heated and emotional so it doesn't put me in a good position, which means I avoid arguments at all costs.
One of the things that I've noticed in myself recently is that whenever I need to use emotive language I separate myself from what I'm saying, which I think might be a result of the difficulty in describing/expressing in alexithymia. So for example, instead of saying "I'd like that" I find my self saying "That'd be good." Or instead of "I hope so" it's just "Hopefully" so I'm basically removing myself from any emotional statement. I think this might play a role in my difficulty in making and maintaining friendships because people seem to bond over sharing emotions with each other, which I'm not good at. With that said though, I do think I'm getting a bit better when communicating online because showing empathy helps occasionally with what I do for work, so I've been working a little bit on it and trying to be more conscious of how I'm saying things.
Noun
The inability to recognise or describe one's own emotions.
I've known all my life that I struggle to understand and explain my own feelings but I only found out within the last year that it's an actual thing with a name. That discovery just helped everything click into place while I was waiting for my autism assessment. It's quite a common thing that's seen in a lot of autistics and can probably account for it's fair share of our social and communication difficulties.
It means that it can sometimes take me a while to process what I'm feeling about a situation and I might only realise how I feel later on, often when it's too late. And quite often my wife can tell if there's something wrong but when she asks about it I can only really give one of two responses; either "Nothing" or "I don't know" because there's nothing identifiably wrong and I genuinely don't know what the problem is. If I do figure out what's going on in my head it won't be until later on, in which case I bring it up with her again later. I think this is partly why I don't like conflict, and therefore why me and my wife have never really had an argument in the 8 years we've been together. I can't usually process things in the moment that are too heated and emotional so it doesn't put me in a good position, which means I avoid arguments at all costs.
One of the things that I've noticed in myself recently is that whenever I need to use emotive language I separate myself from what I'm saying, which I think might be a result of the difficulty in describing/expressing in alexithymia. So for example, instead of saying "I'd like that" I find my self saying "That'd be good." Or instead of "I hope so" it's just "Hopefully" so I'm basically removing myself from any emotional statement. I think this might play a role in my difficulty in making and maintaining friendships because people seem to bond over sharing emotions with each other, which I'm not good at. With that said though, I do think I'm getting a bit better when communicating online because showing empathy helps occasionally with what I do for work, so I've been working a little bit on it and trying to be more conscious of how I'm saying things.
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