05/11/2025
Meltdown or shutdown?
Autistic meltdown or shutdown occurs when autistic people become overwhelmed by sensory input. For autistic people, meltdowns and shutdowns are not something they choose – they’re instinctive reactions to being overwhelmed. A meltdown might look like shouting, crying, or other intense outward expressions of distress.
A shutdown, on the other hand, can mean going quiet, dissociating, or completely withdrawing. These reactions may look very different on the outside, both are deeply felt responses to sensory overload, emotional pressure, or just too much going on at once. They’re ways the mind and body try to cope when things become too much.
When anxiety runs high or there’s too much sensory input to process, the brain can go into survival mode – triggering a fight, flight, or freeze response. For autistic people, this can sometimes lead to a meltdown, which is often misunderstood as ‘temper tantrums’.
Autism meltdowns might come out in different ways – through loud sounds like shouting or crying, through physical actions like kicking or flapping, or a mix of both. In these moments, the person isn’t being difficult – they’ve reached a point where everything feels too much, and they can’t communicate what they’re feeling in any other way.
An autistic shutdown refers to the state in which autistic person withdraws into themselves from the surrounding. Unlike meltdowns, autistic shutdown occurs when the person experiencing sensory overload disconnects from the world in order to protect themselves.
A shutdown is often the body’s way of coping when things become too much – whether it’s due to emotional overwhelm, emotional stress, or just sheer exhaustion from constantly processing everything going on.
It is a quieter, less visible reaction to intense stress or overload. When an autistic person experiences a shutdown, it’s their way of coping with everything becoming too much.
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