Meltdowns in Autistic Adults: Why They Happen, What They’re Like, and How to Live with Them

“Meltdown” is not a term often associated with adult life, but for many autistic adults, meltdowns are a reality. For us, meltdowns are not what you might picture at first: an inconsolable child, acting out over not getting what they want; they’re more like the release valve on a neurobiological pressure cooker.

Meltdowns are an involuntary response many autistic adults experience when our nervous systems are overwhelmed. The challenges autistic individuals face day to day, like navigating social expectations, sensory overstimulation, and more, often leave unresolved emotions and tension. These can build up and pass the point of containment, exploding outwardly as a meltdown, with feelings of intense distress and behaviors like crying, screaming, kicking, and stimming. While meltdowns can be managed, they can’t be stopped, and once they happen, recovery can be an extended process. Many autistic adults experience meltdowns, as can autistic people of all ages.

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Autistic nervous systems are overall more sensitive than those of neurotypicals, and meltdowns are one result of the heightened way we experience the world. This is partly due to hypersensitivity, which causes many autistics to have stronger responses to sensory stimuli than neurotypical people do. Many autistic individuals also experience hyposensitivity, where our perception of other sensory inputs is weaker than that of neurotypical people; this often leads us to seek out those sensations through actions like stimming. While both hyper- and hyposensitivity can cause distress, and can contribute towards the overwhelm that causes meltdowns, hypersensitivity is associated more closely with meltdowns.

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Because each autistic person’s sensory reality is unique to them, sensations that contribute to meltdowns vary individually, though they can often include inputs like loud noises, bright lights, crowded spaces, and unpleasant textures or tactile experiences. While an autistic person might be able to cope with these experiences in isolation, the cumulative effect of multiple distressing sensory inputs can often cause the kind of internal groundswell that leads to a meltdown. Other times, even more isolated inputs can push us over that edge.

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Meltdowns aren’t caused only by sensory overwhelm; other realities of the autistic adult experience contribute to pent-up distress and meltdowns. Experiences like emotional dysregulation, maneuvering through social performance, being misunderstood by neurotypicals, and managing anxiety and other mental health challenges which often co-occur with autism can all contribute to meltdowns, too. Many of us also move through life experiencing varying degrees of autistic burnout, which can limit our thresholds for tolerating day-to-day distress.

While a significant body of information exists concerning meltdowns, much of it focuses on meltdowns in autistic children—specifically, how parents perceive meltdowns through their children’s behaviors, and what parents can do to manage meltdowns. Comparatively little has been written about what it’s actually like to experience a meltdown at any age, let alone for autistic adults.

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For their 2023 article in the journal Autism, Laura Foran Lewis and Kailey Stevens sought to address this gap, interviewing 32 autistic adults in an effort to articulate how meltdowns actually feel for us. Distilling the overarching themes from their interviews, they identified the experiential tentpoles of meltdowns as overwhelm, intense emotion, disconnect from logic, struggles with self-control, emotional release, and seeking to avoid immediate or social harm.

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Most of those they spoke with described feeling “overwhelmed by information, senses, and social and emotional stress.” Their interviewees characterized meltdowns as “painful and distressing,” but also as a way of “letting go of” their intense emotions. Many reported trying and failing to stay in control of themselves during meltdowns, as well as not feeling like themselves.

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Most often, my own meltdowns are charted by intense feelings of anger, brought on by some combination of sensory distress, social overwhelm, and unbreakable cognitive loops. During a meltdown, all I feel able to do is scream. Even with all logical thinking evading me, I’m still painfully, urgently aware of the consequences of screaming and being heard, especially if I’m stuck in public. Sometimes, I can release the energy through other vocalizations, movements, or crying it out. Other times, I can melt down internally, masking my experience from those around me altogether. And other times, still, the screams just come out.

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The experience of a meltdown doesn’t end after re-regulating and releasing what needs to be released. Meltdowns leave most autistic adults wiped of energy, and it takes time to recover. This can be as quick as half an hour, but often, it can take until the next day, or even several days to restore our energy levels.

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Autistic individuals need a safe environment in which to recover from a meltdown; we need to show ourselves extra care around our emotional and sensory needs, and engage in intentful rest. While many autistic adults feel better after the release of a meltdown, the time it takes to arrive at that relief can be incredibly taxing.

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Clearly, meltdowns aren’t pleasant to experience. It can feel incredibly frustrating to lose logical thinking and feel so outside of your own self. The whole experience is exhausting. And, even with all the grace we deserve to show ourselves, it can feel embarrassing to release everything and lose control in this way.

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Meltdowns, however, aren’t something to be expunged or “cured”—they’re a reality for many autistic adults, they ought to be met with understanding and compassion.

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Autistic writer Maxfield Sparrow argues that, despite the pain they bring, meltdowns can actually be a benefit. In their piece “The Protective Gift of Meltdowns,” they describe meltdowns as their brain’s alarm system, something that alerts them that they are in an unsafe situation.

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Sparrow outlines their experience with alexithymia, or difficulty feeling emotions, and illuminates the way a pattern of meltdowns can show them they are being mistreated when their emotions can’t. They write, “If I have lots of shouting, freak-out, PTSD meltdowns when we spend time alone with each other, yes it’s an Autistic thing. But it also means you’re regularly doing something messed up.” They challenge the narrative that many of us have internalized, that melting down is a personal failure, embracing meltdowns as an unpleasant but valuable part of their life.

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Lewis and Stevens heard similar sentiments echoed among the 32 autistic adults they interviewed. They summarized, “meltdowns may serve a functional role in regulating emotions and making one’s voice heard. Meltdowns are diverse experiences that hold different meanings to different people.”

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Meltdowns play an important role in autistic neurobiology and autistic life—sometimes a painful one, but other times, a truly valuable one. Meltdowns release what needs to be released, give us physical cues about what’s overwhelming and hurting us, and can even help us advocate for needs we haven’t verbalized, or maybe haven’t even become aware of yet.

Meltdowns are a part of autistic adult life—it’s important for us to have a toolkit to manage and recover from them, as well as practice the self-care that can help prevent them in the first place.

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Identifying coping strategies while we are not actively melting down can make managing meltdowns a little easier. During a meltdown, autistics feel dysregulated and unsafe as a result of cumulative nervous system assault. Our  immediate needs are catharsis and regulation; clear, logical thought can feel inaccessible, and new information often too overwhelming to process. Determining in calmer moments what soothes us, regulates our nervous systems, and makes us feel safe can make it easier to navigate to these things when we’re in a meltdown.

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Each autistic individual has unique sensory and emotional needs, meaning each of us may find different tools helpful to cope with distress. These tools can include items like a weighted blanket, pillows to hold, hit, or throw, ear plugs or headphones, fidget toys, and many other things. Trusted loved ones can also be a valuable support, providing reassurance, co-regulating, ensuring the individual’s physical safety, or helping with immediate needs like food and water or offering physical items like the above that they know are helpful to their autistic loved one.

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Mindfulness techniques can also be supportive. While these approaches are often inaccessible during a meltdown, some autistic people find them helpful while recovering from one. Mindfulness can help us disconnect from looping and spiraling thoughts, and ground us in sensations in our bodies. Deep breathing can help the parasympathetic nervous system take over, signaling to the body that the danger has passed. Some autistic people also find mindfulness can support awareness of emotions and how they feel in the body. This awareness can help us realize before it’s too late when we’re heading towards a meltdown, and tend to our needs, when it’s possible to, before we reach the point of melting down.

Like neurotypicals, each autistic person understands their own needs to varying degrees—sometimes intuitively, sometimes through experience and exploration. Growing and practicing this awareness is a deeply individual process, but not one we have to embark on alone.

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Therapy with a provider who is trained to support autistic adults is a valuable way to build these awarenesses and prepare to cope with meltdowns. Neurodiversity-affirming therapy can help autistic individuals identify ways we can reduce strain to our nervous systems where possible, and ways we can care for ourselves and recover from overstimulation where it isn’t.

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Receiving a formal autism diagnosis can also be supportive for some in navigating meltdowns. Getting diagnosed with autism as an adult through Prosper Health has helped me better understand what I’m experiencing during a meltdown and why they happen. I’ve been able to work towards accepting meltdowns as a feature of my experience, not a bug—but also as something I can sometimes prevent, and other times manage.

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If meltdowns are affecting your quality of life, neurodiversity-affirming mental health care can be the key to the support and tools you need to care for your wellbeing.