Describe your shutdowns

Post Reply New Topic

I generally shutdown several afternoons/evenings per week. Almost every day I go to uni too. For me it is rarely one incident, it is a build up of all the processing and filtering required in a day. Eventually I reach my limit and shutdown. It is like I go into a haze. I stare at nothing, become very quiet, and if I do speak it is very robotic sounding. I feel absolutely exhausted and usually fall asleep wherever I am. My senses and my mind are completely confused, I am disorientated and overwhelmed.

One of the most difficult things that I have found is that doing "positive" things (things that I enjoy like reading or spending time with my friend) have a cost to my limits of coping. Last week I had a wonderful day with my friend, it was the best I had felt in weeks, and that night I crashed hard. The day after I had one of the worst meltdowns I've had in years. The level of interaction, despite it being a positive interaction, required so much processing and vigilance of the situation that I really paid for it later.

Most of the time though it is just the general strains of existing that is enough for me to shutdown. Most people find it difficult to understand how "nothing" can happen and I have this reaction. They don't see the level of work that I a doing just to get by in a day.

For me, shutdowns happen when I feel overwhelmed. They're rarely caused by just one thing - rather, it's a build-up of various stress-inducing things. It tends to last until I have some time away from everything to think about it all, and clear up whatever it is that's bothering me.

I had a shutdown this week after 2-3 really stressful days. I had way too much pressure to do extra things on top of what I normally have to do, and everything kept going wrong. I started off with some meltdowns, which included swearing and screaming down the phone at my husband when he called, and throwing things down the stairs, to in the end having a shutdown. I had to send the children upstairs, turn off the TV and lay down facing away from the light. I couldn't even cope with cooking the evening meal, and when my husband rang I told him so and told him to pick up and bring home a take-away. He told me to phone a take-away, but I couldn't even manage that. I just couldn't think any more. My brain wouldn't work and even people talking to me made me feel as if I'd have another meltdown. It really was like a total switch off.

I think my last really severe meltdown was on my 17th birthday when I was a junior in high school...this isn't at all easy for me to talk about, but I checked my grades online that night and found out that I had a D in my math class, and I started crying and just got super depressed....like, I followed my parents around begging them to just kill me in all kinds of gruesome, reprehensible ways....methods fit to punish someone as horrid a human being as I was.....

....There are still times when I wish they had.

Anyway, I can remember being sort of dazed and disoriented when I finally finished....like several people here have already reported. The thing is, I never thought of my depressions as actually being "meltdowns" until I read somehwere awhile back that there are different ways of melting down.

I get meltdowns but not shutdowns. My meltdowns occur these days as a result of living with many tiny nagging pains that continuously grate on my nerves. After a while of enduring it I simply cannot anymore and then take it out on other people. Then the cycle continues.

I tend to have little mini shutdowns when tired or overwhelmed. I just space out completely. And then I snap out of it a couple of minutes later. And then I zone out again. And snap out of it...

I just stare at the floor and ignore everything else. I retreat into my last bastion, my mind.