Meltdown triggers

Post Reply New Topic

What sorts of things trigger your meltdowns?

many thing-overstimulation due to lots of people being around-being treated differently than the other people in my company at the same job level-not being kept in the loop and being treated like an afterthought.

You have no voting option for me - I very rarely have meltdowns.
My last meltdown was a month ago, the second last was 6 months before that, then 8 months...

Triggers for me always come down to lack of control - if I don't know my options, if I don't know if I can have my say, if I don't know the outcomes of situations, or/and if I'm being forced or pressured into doing something.

During childhood I had meltdowns all the time, at LEAST once per day. I can't remember any specific triggers, I just used to have meltdowns whenever someone talked to me, when I was called on in class, when someone bullied me, when I got stuck, etc.

Anxiety is a big one for me. Things that trigger my anxiety include people judging me or when I perceive people are judging me, being stared stared at and demanding people are probably my three biggest.

depends on your definition of meltdown. I'm kinda confuzzled on this one here.

Any form of stress overload, such as exercising, or working too hard. The meltdown comes when I start to relax after strenuous exertion.

I'm in the same boat as Bloodheart, I haven't had a meltdown in almost two years. Usually it takes a combination of hugely distressing events in a short space of time for me to even have a meltdown these days, which usually manifests as me just going absolutely loco at anything or anybody that tries to interact with me.

When I was younger I was much more prone to meltdowns because I didn't have the coping skills that I do now to avert them. Nowadays I tend to not care at all what other people think of me so it alleviates my anxiety.

Rarely.
Shutdowns are more common, and they are brought on by anything from overload to stress.

I get frustrated, but not to the degree of it being considered a "meltdown."

Rarely. What I experience more is when everything is too much, I just fade out and go on auto-pilot. It usually impossible to talk to me, and I am reduced to basic funtions like walking, eating and such. However, if I am in this state of mind, and you don't leave me the f**k alone, then I will have my meltdown. Something that triggers it "out of the pocket" if people touch my stuff, especially my mother. I am not chaotic. If I drop something somewhere, if nobody touches it, I'll remember its location for years to come. If someone takes it somewhere to "clean up the mess", like my mother or my grandma used to do, it almost always causes me to have my meltdown, becaue I HATE looking for MY stuff, things that belong to ME, and that I have to ask someone in order to get access to MY property.

The biggest trigger for me is when someone yells at me in an angry tone of voice.

For me the biggest trigger is tense situations. People yelling in an angry tone, or even worse starting making physical attacs!!
But also to much stress. Meltdowns are fairly seldom now, with the last one nearly half a year ago. But shutdowns, mostly, happens on a nearly daily basis. And at least two to tree times a week.
And stress can be triggered by a vast range of reasons...

Pressure and sitting in the back of taxis. Elbows in my sides drive me absolutely up the wall.

I will differentiate what will cause me high stress that would be considered unusual by others from meltdowns that have mostly the shape of tantrums in my case (these always have the characteristic of being triggered and out of my control)

Examples of "high stress" triggers:
- most of my sensory issues (smells, sounds, visual). E.g. tv, radio commercials.
- bus/tram/suburb.train leaves the stop in front of me or they are late to the timetable and I'm late bc of it too.
- crowded places, long queue at the cashier's
- somebody is late to an appointment
- sy drives the car not the way I think it's good/optimal

Meltdowns are unfortunately much harder to spot when they'll happen and what triggers them. Some examples:
- A colleague criticizes me and I feel he/she judges me unfairly or use unnecessarily hard expression/tone of voice/exaggeration/remark.
- Files of "Street fight". Passengers on bicycle lanes, cars honking on me while I'm cycling for whatever reason.
- Sometimes personal skirmishes might lead to it, when I lose my temper for some reason, usually because I'm unable to defend myself verbally and make my points clear to others.

Sometimes high stress or meltdowns are not discernible in this way, they may overlap.

No one laugh, because I have a silly meltdown trigger.

I don't like it when people say "tap on the shoulder"; that phrase is repulsive to me!

another 'rarely' here.
i get triggered mainly by crowds, be that busses, trains, birthdays or malls; a crowd gets on my nerves.
however; i have learned to cope with this; supress the anxiety untill i'm in a position where i can shutdown, preventing a true meltdown.