Anami Grace | Made Up Life

One of the harder parts about unmasking my autism for myself and for the world was acknowledging my own autistic meltdowns and supporting myself through them. Because for me, I was so high masking that unless you knew me or understood autism, my meltdowns would have been invisible for you, because they were almost entirely internal infernos that I held inside at a high cost to myself.

And the support and intervention to help myself through these meltdowns is one of the most important (several) parts of the puzzle of me in creating a life that I loved.

I’m going to start by explaining how a meltdown feels and then we’ll go from there.

Someone had parked in my parking spot, I’d spent the day grocery shopping, I was hungry, tired, emotionally spent from *gestures vaguely* and I had just enough energy to move myself through getting groceries in the house and to heat up the gluten free burritos I’d bought, until someone parked in my spot.

I could already feel the fire rising up in my throat, and there was absolutely nothing I could do to stop it. I let out a guttural scream, like a deep from my throat UGHHHHHHHHHHHH, and stomped, cried, and almost threw up from frustration. The lights had been too bright while I was grocery shopping. I was too hungry, I was too tired, and I was SPENT emotionally.

Oh, and I was getting sick, and had a really terrible case of mom-shame about not having more bandwidth to help my sick child through being sick.

And yes, it is understandable to have a meltdown with all of that, but mine don’t look nuclear from the outside – but they feel like the end of my world as I know it.

I hate meltdowns. They give me such a sense of shame, fear, anxiety and I have figured out how to intervene on my own behalf to help myself three steps before the meltdown to help keep myself regulated and from literally throwing my head back and screaming. LOL.

But in this case I hadn’t taken into account how special my needs become when I am facing illness, and so there I was without a parking spot, losing my ever-loving shit, needing additional accommodations to help myself through a monster meltdown.

Because meltdowns are SO uncomfortable for everyone, I decided that it was important that I help myself through it and articulate it so that maybe others have the opportunity to help themselves through this really challenging part of experiencing life through the lens of autism.

The first thing I had to do was to identify my triggers, everyone’s are going to be different, because no two experiences of autism are exactly the same. Right? My triggers are being hungry, tired, sick, guilt, and shame. Oh, and lack of sunlight – it had been overcast for a week and I was at the end of my window of tolerance for freezing fog.

Meltdown levels are important too, if I had access to my parking spot I would have considered myself to have been at a yellow (proceed with caution) level of meltdown. But in a snap of a finger, I lost access to my frontal cortex, blew my top, and meltdown city. I would say that any of those triggers would put me at a constant state of yellow, so I have to be really careful to take extra special care of my needs if any of those states of being are present in my world.

I should back up and say that your amygdala sits at your brain stem, it’s the gatekeeper for your frontal cortex. It is the place where all information flows through and it sorts everything between danger and not danger. If it’s not danger, it gets to move forward to the frontal cortex which sits at the front of your forehead. My amygdala’s name is Lou, and Lou and I were in a very adversarial relationship until I was able to regulate my nervous system.

When I am in my natural state of contentment (let’s call this a green light) Lou and I vibe and we’re buddies. But when I venture anywhere close to my triggers, Lou’s heckles raise and my body goes into a little state of heightened awareness. This would be a yellow light to proceed with caution.

And red would be the point of no effective solution, and I’m going to have to pick up the pieces of my world afterward.

If I hit yellow, I need intervention within minutes in order to help move myself out of the meltdown danger zone.

So a lot of building a life I loved was holding accommodation for the state of being a little outside of my window of tolerance. And understanding that because I am the matriarch of my family, and the only adult able to care for myself, I had to create a method to intervene on my own behalf so that I could keep myself out of the meltdown cycle the majority of the time.

Interventions that work for me depend on what the trigger is, and often it’s multiple needs that I have to work through in order to hold my body in stasis once again. And a LOT of preventing a meltdown is in accommodations I’ve created for myself so that I have easy access to solutions when the need strikes.

Last night I was in the yellow zone, I had to pee, I had waited a little too long to start dinner, my house was cold – and I was cold. I’d had a meeting about some content creation I’m doing, and I had some creative needs that I’d been hoping to move through before I started dinner.

Oh, and I’m PDA (Pathological Demand Avoidant) type autistic, which means that demands feel like a threat to my autonomy and can trigger a fight/flight/freeze/faint/faun meltdown, so I have to be incredibly careful about how I move myself through multiple demands or all roads that could be intervention can lead to self-injury behavior. Which, spices up my human experience so much.

So, last night. I did a quick needs assessment within myself, and talked myself through all of the things that were giving me discomfort. I said “Anami Grace, you’re deeply uncomfortable right now, I’m sorry we waited so long to get you food, and now your body is cold, hungry, needing to go to the bathroom, and feels like it’s in danger because we had stuff going on. I’m going to meet your needs, but it’s going to take some effort, let’s work together to move ourselves through this discomfort and when we’re done I would like to spend some time outside to say goodbye to this day.”

I acknowledged my needs, validated them to myself, created a plan, and started with the easiest task first. Deciding to take action to help myself move through the discomfort of caring for an autistic body. I like to start with the easiest task first, but that’s not always the most important task to my body. Last night getting myself warm was the first task that had to be completed. So I went upstairs, changed into comfy clothes, put on my robe, and then went pee.

The other hard part about autism, is that it can be extraordinarily challenging to figure out what our body’s cues are telling us, I can’t always tell that my body needs something until it’s extremely distressing. So that’s also exciting.

But learning how to triage your body’s needs is one of the most important skills you can have if you’re wanting to expand your relationship with your neurospicy body.

I will often talk myself through it out loud because I naturally like to collaborate, but when you become comfortable and confident in knowing the language of your body it helps a lot when helping work within your capacity. When I wrote that sentence I was trying to also translate how my body speaks to me in language – and I got a sensation in my feet that said I needed to change positions as I wrote. LOL.

But this was a LOT of trial and error y’all.

Here are a few of the accommodations I’ve put into place that I have in my house most of the time to help myself be set up for success:

Snacks: I have to have something that is ready to eat at all times so that I can get calories in my body quickly. It has to be something I like, something that requires no effort to create, and something that will get me through whatever time it takes to make myself substantial food.

Headphones: Even if I don’t listen to music, just having them in my ears to block out a little of the ambient noise helps me feel like I can make it.

Sensory Safe Meals: I have a low/no effort food option to eat in my freezer at all times so that I can pop something in the air fryer as needed and this actually saves us from having to buy take out at least once a week. I like the gluten free chicken strips from Costco, I think they’re Feel Good? Brand.

Nature access: I need to be able to get outside and get some fresh air and move my body to co-regulate with nature.

Sleep: I need more sleep than my peers, and I am typically in bed by 9 pm at the latest so that I can show up as the most well rested human I can be.

An Exit Plan/Safety Plan: I have a plan to quickly get myself out of any situation that encroaches on my window of tolerance.

This is not a complete list of accommodations either. As soon as I hit publish on this post 15 more things I do to help myself will pop into my head. But the thing I’ve been working on for the past 10 years is creating a life that had natural accommodations built in for my needs. And it’s brilliant that I no longer have to hold myself in the mercy of having all good days in order to survive my life. And, actually. This has helped me create a whole bunch of brilliant days for myself because I no longer hold anyone else as responsible for my bullshit.

So, if you’re autistic, and you want help creating a life you love around your triggers, you’re welcome to reach out to me and we’ll see how we can work together to move you through your meltdowns too.

Anyway. Love and light to you all. Take care! Bye.