Mild Asperger's and shutdowns

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It's overwhelming right? I think everyone has them, not just auties.

Thanks for your answers everyone

Difficulty of communication is certainly a factor, yes, I remember I had a hard time answering some questions from the landlady (and I noticed a change in my voice too) when she went up to my room and writing this message gave me a headache so I had to wait an hour and do the meditation thing. I wonder if they are related to social overloading though, I also experience the latter but I can still do things of my own, like reading, just fine. I can't read well during a shutdown.

So my worst is stage 1 I guess I'm lucky indeed

Brain fog is a great word to describe it, yes, and all people seem to agree that taking a nap and generally getting so,e rest helps. I have some doubts though, if rest alone cut it then sleeping well should be enough, so there must be more to it. I shall try the heat pack at home, although meditation produced on me similar results of "oh I can't be laying around here all day, time to do stuff!" Also, I didn't know other people had "visual snow" I will see into that and whether shutdowns make it worse. I also wonder whether sensory overload makes them come faster, zi definitely experienced some of it three days ago.

I loved the computer analogy, so I shall try my hand with my own. My computer doesn't really BSOD, it's never that conspicuous, but it freezes. When it starts from a clean slate it can run well, but as it keeps going and going it starts to become a bit slower here and there, the memory begins clogging, but like a frog in slowly boiling water, I won't notice it unless I'm paying attention. Sooner or later it will get bad, but it will feel as if it has always been this way and hey, it still works. Even if all it does well in the end is word processing, it's something and it doesn't feel like it has failed, and this is also the kind of cartoon computer that works when slapped hard, so perhaps all it needs is more slapping only that's probably bad in the long term. During a shutdown, when it freezes, maybe it's the best time to reboot, but if I really needed to do something it would be able to, only it would take longer, do it badly, and perform worse afterwards.
Now that I know better what they look like and know ways to "reboot" I'm sure things will be better now. Days I suspect I've shut down in the past I played video games instead of resting, I have the strong suspicion they just make me feel better in the short term instead of really letting me go back to square one and recover.

I have read about this before and have a feeling the my shutdowns and meltdowns come from having both Aspergers and an Anxiety disorder, but yes when I shut down from stimulus overload or people I can't talk or speak in monotone if I am forced to speak in shutdown it will probably escalate into a meltdown which is not pretty and sometimes I beat on myself which I have done since I was younger, like head banging on a wall which I managed to finally stop doing some years ago, and then I will collapse into exhaustion.

I wish I had an answer for that but really I don't. When you think about the environment and what is out there to impose a threat on our existence and everyday being, what you have really got to do is go out there and be realistic, how you cope with the changes will happen in your own time, but to not everyone s agreeable timeslot. And that's okay, just as long as you stand your ground and not be walked all over like a trapeze artist falling into mugshot..
Mind you land on your own two feet was the catchline here.

ok i'll do my best to recall what happens when i shut down(because it effects memory i don't remember every detail about it) when i feel it's coming on i will have a sort of blank stare and i won't be able to think straight(and sometimes NOT AT ALL in extreme cases) and my vision will unfocus and refocus SEVERAL times a minute. my speech slows down even though i am still verbal while shut down and when i walk it seems like i am drunk but that's because of my equlibrium being seriously off. i feel completely useless sometimes when this happens but i know sometimes it cannot be avoided. but the best piece of advice i can give is to just let it run it's course because there's really nothing that can stop it once it occurs.
Sincerely:
aspiewhostandsalone

Reviving this old thread!

I get this brain fog after just a short time at work. Sometimes it's after a small hour-long meeting. Sometimes it's after ten minutes of chatting with someone in a busy hallway. Usually it hits me at around 1 or 3pm every day. I thought it was food-related, and regular exercise somehow makes it worse. The only thing that works is meditation and being alone.

Having the autistic label is new to me, and retroactively understanding who I am is difficult. Sometimes I sleep ten or twelve hours in a night. Now I'm connecting that to social burnout...and also sensory burnout...and stress in general. Bloating and undiagnosable food issues are somewhere in the mix. But I had never thought of myself as autistic before.

Now I'm worried I have very severe reactions to social situations. Ten minutes is fast, right? And beginning phase 1 of shutdown every day...?'

Phase 1 starts with flashes of disassociation that involve stimming behavior. I can't look people in the eye and start unfocusing; I pick at my hair; I zone out and miss whole minutes or longer. I've discovered grounding myself in the here and now and forcing myself to look people in the eyes actually helps, along with quiet deep breathing and mindful listening. But if I don't do that, then pretty soon I have the brainfog/mindache with restricted conversational ability. (I also get bloating, not sure why -- inflammation?) At that point, I can fight through it, but it's like swimming against a current. I usually have my afternoon conversations this way. This is where I usually am when I go home for the day and I spend the evening recovering. As others have said, this involves staring at words rather than reading them, watching re-runs, and generally being out of it. I can't meditate well in this state, but meditating around lunchtime helps stop the progression, which makes my evenings a lot better. (Now that I'm meditating, I have the brainpower to paint at night!)

If I ignore phase 1, I get phase 2: bitchy. "Why the hell are you interacting with me?" That's pretty common, since I have to work through phase 1 a lot, but usually it comes out on day 3 of intense social interaction without sufficient rest. Turns out two days of phase 1 is my limit, depending on the intensity and down time. Sometimes this is just Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday morning if I haven't done my job right the night before.

If I ignore phase 2 I get phase 3: echolalia. I use the same phrases over and over to say everything I mean. Usually I get a couple, like "Great!" and "OK." My thoughts go in circles, very fast. I can think things more complex than I can say. This is a nightmare. My body gets tight and my legs wrap around each other. I don't remember much about what this is like until it's happening again, and then it's very very familiar.

Phase 4 is complete shutdown. This looks like sleep.

I relate to this.
Normally I avoid most stress by not bothering to think about things that I recognize would cause me stress. Like if my dad tries to start a conversation about future plans, I'll walk out of the room or blatantly change the subject to something mundane.

But the past week has been particularly stressful for me. And yesterday I spent five hours with some assistance to put together a computer from parts.

This morning I felt fine until someone pointed out a part that hadn't been put on yet and had implications of a lot more work left to do.
And my brain struggled and I was messaging computer people about all the issues I thought of, and my plans for the morning and afternoon were mentally cancelled. And my stress heightened and I didn't know whether I felt like crying or breaking something. But I ended up picking the former, and I rocked in the fetal position for a while.

But my friend was messaging me, asking what was wrong and wanting to help. At first I told him in brief that I was stressed and what the stress was regarding. But then my mind only responded with things like, "no" and "stop." He was unhappy that I'd shut him down and I managed to reply that I was shutting myself down and he was collateral.

Another friend responded to something I'd sent him and had some encouraging words and I started to calm down, but then the first one again wanted me to tell him what was going on, and I cried harder because I somehow couldn't. I had no words about it in my head.

The whole thing lasted about three hours. The first friend said, "You shutting down when you get stressed is not good." And that got me thinking maybe I had had a shutdown. Was that a thing, and was it Aspergers-related? I'd thought meltdowns were, and I haven't had that since I was a little kid, when it's normal to have some. But shutdowns are more acceptable, less likely to have long-term repercussions. And though I don't recall any specifics, I'm pretty sure I have had similar instances at least a few times in my life prior.

So I suppose this might be a stage-1. But I also wondered whether it's something that a neurotypical would be just as likely to experience.

Are shutdowns most often like silent meltdowns; that is the impression of feeling more or less visibly irritated?

Shutdowns as silent meltdowns make sense. Like it would be received badly as a meltdown, and that would only make things worse. So it's contained. And it's internal. And the outside world is pushed back.

I don't think irritation is related, though.