That Scary Word — Meltdown
Preparation and acceptance are the keys.
Friend, let me ask you: What do you do when you have a day when Mercury seems to be in retrograde and you are on the autism spectrum?
Earth experienced such a day yesterday. The Crowdstrike Security update went awry and effected Microsoft and nearly everything else we depend upon.
But coincidentally, I also experienced such a day. (As above, so below? Implicate and explicate order? I half-jokingly ask.)
It is one of those days that autistic people plan for and anticipate on the calendar, except for the small problem of never knowing when the date will arrive. Many of us, being natural pattern seekers, try to crack the code of when the cosmic joker in the sky (he and I are on friendly terms) plans a new test for us as if we were trying to decode the game makers’ plans of the Hunger Games Quarter Quell while they scheduled terrifying staged threats in the arena depending on the hour of the day. Synchronicity or karma, if there is such a thing, is messier than this. It is not subject to patterns. Oh, how many autistic people wish that wasn’t the case!
A neurotypical probably gets merely annoyed when being tossed from department to department, never getting any real answers when calling — oh, let’s say for hypothetical purposes😉…insurance companies. After spending 3 or 4 hours on the phone only to still not have the problem resolved, a neurotypical may go to the gym and work off the emotional turmoil, put on some Netflix, or head to the bar and get drunk.
This autistic doesn’t do any of those things. My nervous system gets jacked up. I say to myself…“My problem still isn’t solved, and I’ve used every bit of energy and resources I have!” Panic then sets in. “What if my problem never gets solved? What if it is what it is, and there are no solutions?” You might not think so initially, but those are healthy questions if only they could be asked calmly.
Let’s pretend you are me momentarily. Sometimes, when dealing with big bureaucratic institutions that really only care about shareholders’ market profits, there are no solutions. Things are just the way they are. A significant negative change or changes in your health insurance policy sneaks up on you because you were too lazy to open a piece of snail mail you thought was junk on one particular day (let that be a warning to you), and you only find out about it after the fact when it is too late. You get scolded by agents with little sympathy because you were warned by mail. You try different workarounds and are fed various ideas that seem initially encouraging by well-meaning people, only for each one to fail abysmally — and, in fact, set you back even more. You prepare to call back repeatedly, to spin about in a merry-go-round-like dance that makes you feel like you are going somewhere when all you are doing is getting dizzy.
You ask questions the agents can barely understand because, just like a fish doesn’t know anything besides water, people only know what they know. In other words, you can’t ask the right questions unless you’ve been through something similar sometime before. The agents try their best, but your auditory processing challenges associated with autism wreak havoc on the phone interaction. You attempt to pay attention to everything being said, but you naturally hyperfocus on some things and completely miss others. You need many clarifications, repetitions, and reassurances. If you’re lucky, they oblige, but all the same, you wish there was another pair of ears in the room with you to catch bits and pieces of information that slip through the cracks.
Business hours end. What a relief! You literally CAN’T call anymore. But panic sets in yet again. “I have to wait till Monday until I can try to put a band-aid on my large open cut? WTF?”
I had a meltdown yesterday. Thankfully, no one saw or heard it. I kept it together enough with the agents on the phone, who did not get wind of my unadulterated panic but instead had to deal with my anxiety. I’ve developed enough coping and masking techniques to keep it together just long enough until I sneak away from public view. But it’s taxing because it requires tremendous acting skills — the attempt to assert the appearance of being in control of yourself with others but not feeling that way at all inside. Autistic people have to use these acting skills every day of our lives. I can’t speak for fellow autistics, but I think the Academy owes me a few nominations by now. My performance today was stellar.
A few years ago, I remember reading a story about Russell Lehmann, an internationally sought-after autistic public speaker who recounted his public meltdown in an airport, and I felt seen.
‘I remember sitting in the same exact spot for seven hours crying and not one person approached me. Not one person made eye contact with me,’ Russell, 26, says in a StoryCorps conversation. ‘The next day, once again, my flight was delayed, and that’s when I found an empty ticket counter. I sat behind it and I started sweating bullets, rocking back and forth, hyperventilating. I hadn’t had an episode like that probably since I was like 11.
The only difference between Russell and myself is that I have never been in that same situation — facing a canceled flight. I have been in similar situations where my flight has been delayed for several hours, and there was a possibility the flight might be canceled. But as long as there was hope of getting to my destination that day, I could will myself to keep it together, even if it meant landing at 3 a.m. and getting no sleep.
That could have been me, though. Easily.
Truth be told, I have faced horrific situations in life much worse than a canceled flight. And somehow, perhaps by the grace of God, I have managed to keep it together in public. But that is never a guarantee.
Any autistic person could be Russell, even if we haven’t yet gone through a full-blown meltdown in public during our adult years.
As platitudinous as this may sound, I have known for a long time I possess an unfair privilege that others, such as Latinos and Blacks, do not have if the dam couldn’t hold and I had a public meltdown that scared people due to my autism-induced panic. Sure, people may wander over to see what the commotion or hubbub was all about, and I may even go viral on a platform like TikTok for the meltdown. The police may even be called. That would all be terrible. However, one outcome that is less likely to happen to me is being shot at by them.
Take Ryan Gainer as an example. A black Californian autistic teenager was killed by sheriff’s deputies when police were called to his home during a “mental health episode” after he was told he could not use the video game console. A lawsuit has now been filed in federal court as a result of his precious life being prematurely taken.
Having a meltdown in public, then, is a luxury. If it happens and you can’t control it and you can get by without it being catastrophic, you have quite literally dodged a bullet.
You can compare a meltdown for an autistic person to any involuntary reflex. Picture yourself racing to the toilet to vomit. No one wants to see it happen, but it is not very likely anyone will call the police if it does. Once it’s over, the purification process is complete, and life returns to normal. Meltdowns are different because they are viewed as threatening and are poorly understood behaviors. As stated earlier, if a person “doesn’t know what they don’t know” and views the perceived behavior as volatile and threatening, the person having the meltdown is in real danger — ‘no hyperbole,’ as our president would say.
Both meltdowns and involuntary reflexes are just that — involuntary!
What helped me get through my episode yesterday? First, after the panic had passed and I was forced to deal with what the situation presented, I distracted myself with a few of my special interests. A little bit of Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto here, playing with the dog there, and watching old game shows for good measure — there is nothing wrong with a bit of mindlessness in today’s world. I didn’t light the fuse by watching politics, reading the news, or perseverating over what I will have to do on Monday that I failed to do today. As cliché as it might sound, I put it ‘on the backburner’ or ‘on the shelf.’
But this doesn’t “always” work for me. It works when I get lucky. The point is that having whatever strategies you are comfortable with does not totally eliminate the chances that a public meltdown will happen or that you can decompress quickly afterward, just like drinking peppermint tea can’t always prevent vomiting or taking Pepto Bismol can’t always prevent the other nasty bodily habit that shall go unnamed. But it can drastically reduce the odds of a meltdown. And by playing the percentages, it is possible that the odds ‘may be ever in your favor.’
One last thing: There is nothing wrong with you if you do have a meltdown. Please remember that. Our bodies are wired to respond neurologically in a certain way under various conditions, and many of us successfully fight off the chemistry inside ourselves routinely to survive. But it is hard to bat a thousand. If you do, you have learned some fantastic adaptive skills. Congratulations! But this does not mean you are better than someone who doesn’t have a perfect batting average. We are all doing the best that we can.
