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Meltdowns can be silent

6/10/2015

5 Comments

 
I’m attending a workshop about autism this week, and as I’m sitting there the presenter is talking about ‘rage behaviors’ for people on the spectrum during meltdowns. She lists a number of behaviors I’m perfectly familiar with…and gets to one that throws me.

Internalized behaviors. She says that, though our image of meltdowns is of external behaviors – shouting, throwing things, etc – some people get quiet. They’ll just go and hide under the desk and direct their rage at themselves instead of the world.

The presenter said she prefers those with external behaviors, because it’s so easy for the internalized behaviors to go undetected, and therefore go without help.

“Excuse me!” I said, raising my hand. “Could you talk some more about these internalized behaviors. Because I’m wondering if my sister has them. After she’s been getting melty [her term for almost meltdown-y] for a while, she gets really quiet. She won’t let me talk to her and she goes and hides and shuts down. I never realized that she had meltdowns, and now I’m concerned she might have been having them all along.”

I don’t remember her exact response, but the presenter commented something along the lines of how I’d answered my own question.

Later on that day I told Caley what I’d learned and asked her if she realized she was having meltdowns. She hadn’t known, either. “But you direct bad thoughts at yourself during that time?” I asked her. “Yes,” she said simply. “I just really, really, really don’t like me then.” And then she added. “That may be an understatement.”

It’s hard to help someone avoid meltdowns if you don’t realize they’re even a factor. And, though you may not have to worry about accidental property damage or self-injury, internalized meltdowns as Caley can attest to are still a very bad experience, one we want to help prevent.

That’s it. I just wanted to share the signs of, and mere existence of, quiet meltdowns with you all. Do any of you have experiences, yourself or with your child, with internalized behaviors during meltdowns?

-Creigh

5 Comments

Same Scenario, Different Paradigms

6/4/2015

0 Comments

 
One of the things about being a neurodiversity advocate that listens to and tries to amplify the voices of Autistic advocates is that I can look at the exact same scenario as someone else and see an entirely different story. Reading one of my textbooks about autism, I ran into this segment.

The book was describing how there had been a difference between a teen on the spectrum's self-ratings of how present they had been in 'body and in mind' during group and the neurotypical adult's rating of the same thing. The teen thought he'd been present, though he was pacing; the adult disagreed. One of his fellow teens spoke up on his behalf saying "He's autistic, of course he's pacing!"

The moral the book took from this is that his statement was a great time to talk to children about what is expected of them by their neurotypical peers. What I read was a teen advocating for his fellow peer for the acceptance of his autistic characteristics; advocating for his right to be himself rather than be forced to blend in with the neurotypical majority. I do understand that both sides have points, but to me the boy's advocacy is something to applaud rather than a time to introduce a lesson about conformity.

-Creigh

0 Comments

    About Creigh

    I'm a college student who grew up with my Autistic younger sister, Caley. I've got a bachelor's degree in Psychology and I'm currently studying for my Master's in Speech Language Pathology.

    Neither of those, however, have given me an understanding of autism. All of my understanding comes from learning from the many autistic people that I know. As a result, I have a very different outlook on autism than most, and a burning desire to tell the world what I've learned. This blog is one of the many areas in which I attempt to do that.


    *Note, none of these make me a professional, so advice I give is not professional advice.

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    Starting about in March 2014, all of these posts are originally published on Autism Spectrum Explained's Facebook page, and later reposted here for archiving purposes and easy access for ASE readers, including those who don't use Facebook. 

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