Overcoming Autistic Shutdowns

You’ve been driving through a heavy fog for a while, but you don’t see the fog break ahead—you don’t notice it thinning as you drive through it. You just kind of realize the fog is gone, and then you feel a wave of relief, as now you’ll get slightly more warning if a deer jumps out, and we all know monsters and demons like to hide in fog. Autistic shutdown is a similar experience. When you’re in the thick, foggy shutdown, you cannot see the end; you cannot see the moments where the fog thins. It’s so emotionally exhausting that it takes all your energy to get out of bed in the morning, and to do the things you have to do? Cleaning, cooking, shopping. They all seem like impossible tasks. And that’s one of the worst parts: they are impossible tasks. When you have people who rely on you, it’s not possible to just let yourself be a slug. You have to get up and do the bare minimum. But while in an active shutdown, the bare minimum is too much. So, in one of my worst shutdown periods—and the worst since my diagnosis—I spent four entire days barely functional. This lasted from Friday afternoon to Monday night, and even now, on Tuesday morning, I’m suffering.

Understanding Autistic Shutdown

There is no shortage of professional sites out there that offer better definitions of autistic shutdown than I can provide. Instead, I’ll define what it means to me. A shutdown starts with feeling overloaded—like everything is just a bit too much. The first feeling that comes is a wish that I had a turtle shell I could just retreat into. It’s overstimulation from everything—people talking, lights, sounds, phone calls, knocks on the door, email notifications. This time around, I noticed that my English proficiency started to suffer, as I would randomly insert the wrong word into sentences—complete nonsense. Or I would forget a very simple word mid-sentence, get stuck, and lose track of the thought. This later evolved into total communication shutdown, where I became unable to get words out at all. Once the “wave” had passed, I could communicate and function enough to get through the rest of my work day and get home, but once home I started shutting down again.

But I cannot just ignore my kids, so I still had to engage with them. And I truly enjoy interacting with my kids—they keep me motivated to be better, to develop better understandings of myself. But there were limits—I couldn’t go shopping, but I couldn’t order food, and I couldn’t go pick it up. Being in a shutdown state has such a massive impact on daily life, and while you can power through a bad mood, you can’t power through autistic shutdown without some serious mental and physical consequences. So, instead, I sat down with the kids and explained that I was in the midst of a shutdown, and I would need their patience and understanding. I made sure they had dinner on Friday, plus breakfast and lunch on Saturday, and we would reassess how I felt on Saturday when I got home. I also made sure we had a plan for something fun to do when I got through it—in this case, it was baking chocolate chip cookies.

Coping and Self-Care

Since my diagnosis, I’ve been good about creating a sensory friendly environment at home. I have easy access to a few different headphones, depending on how my ears feel. I have my Noisy Grass hoodie, as well as some zippered hoodies in convenient places. But that only serves to not further overstimulate—it doesn’t really help me come down from overstimulation due to everything outside of my home.

Sunday and Monday are my days off, and I spent most of Sunday in low-energy mode. I didn’t cook, I didn’t clean, I didn’t shop. I survived, which is about the best I could hope for on a day like that. I hugged my kids. That’s important. I cancelled my stream, despite my previous article about how successful I was in keeping a stream schedule. I should revisit that article and make sure it has notes about cancelling streams and that has to be okay.

On Monday morning, I dragged myself out of bed at 6:45 AM and cooked for the kids. I drove them to school, as I always do on Monday, and then I went and got my favourite frozen pizza. I forgot coffee cream, which has kind of messed up my week, but at least I took care of my needs on Monday. By the end of the day, I started feeling better, and I even went live for a little over an hour, playing Railway Empire 2—the DLC was on sale so I used the last of my store credit. I went to bed a little late—10:30 instead of 10 PM, but it wouldn’t have mattered anyway as I couldn’t sleep. I did eventually fall asleep around midnight, which is not common for me. Usually, I go to bed and I sleep right away. It’s always been one of my favourite things about going to bed.

Emerging from Shutdown and Prevention

All good things come to an end, and luckily that’s also true of bad things. But as I’m on my commute on the way to another week of work, I’m starting this week at a much lower energy level and patience threshold. It’s going to have to be a week of closed doors and noise-cancelling headphones just to get through my week—and I’ll need to manage feelings of guilt for appearing anti-social. But I can’t risk another shutdown at work—and if it does happen, I don’t want anyone to see it.

I can take my time to get back into the routines I’m familiar with—saying hi to people in the office like a normal person. But going forward I need to prioritize prevention. This whole episode has shown me that I need to find techniques to prevent future shutdowns. Reacting when it happens doesn’t work.

I think as long as I take it easy this week and focus on limiting my interactions, and stay positive and productive in the things I enjoy, I should get through this week stronger than I started it.