#autismmeltdowns

This was on my mind today. Having autism means there may always be an issue that’s not easily resolved that tips me mentally over the edge.

Also dealing with anxiety means it’s easier for me to have meltdowns, particularly when it comes to me struggling to cope with an issue or situation that someone else sees as normal. My thinking has never been normal, around what my brain sees as intense responses to overwhelming situations. Those I fail to cope with every time.

For those of us who get to deal with meltdowns, rather than others judge us, it’s important they help us identify and minimise our meltdown frequencies. Our behaviour around autism will always make sense to us in the context of our experiences of the world and how our brain interprets what we see, but to others we’re seen as being intense.

When it comes to others dealing with us, they may interpret or assign meaning to our behaviour based on what our behaviour would mean were they engaged in our behaviour, but they will always arrive at the wrong conclusions thinking we’ve misinterpreted our circumstances wrongly.

But it’s not just an issue that creates my meltdowns. A meltdown by definition can occur by my routine simply being out of order. Because of autism everything I do must follow in its correct order. Through our presenting behaviour we’re often seen as intense, stubborn and un-cooperative.

What I’m simply trying to do is preserve my integrity in the predictable order of the world in the only context I have available to me through autism. It’s easy for those without autism to judge us, based on their opinions and conclusions of us and that’s not right or fair.