One method I had to deal with meltdowns when I was a child.

[Metalhead]

For one month when I was in third grade, I kept a vent journal in my closet. Whenever I felt a meltdown coming down at school or at home, I told myself I could let it all out on paper later. And for the month I had this journal, I had no major meltdowns. The journal was full of profanity and was completely unfiltered. My biggest mistake was thinking I had some privacy in my mother’s house.

My mother found my vent journal and started acting hysterically. There was no way I was going to explain to her what that was in her crazed state. She was screaming at me, slapping me in the face repeatedly. Then she told all of her friends she was worried I was turning into a psychotic person and that I would be a serial killer when I grew up, even though my vent journal had zero violent fantasies contained in it.

I gave up trying to control my meltdowns after that.

 

[Gerontius]

Your third-grade self was ingenious to come up with something as innovative as that, and for it to actually work on the first try.

 

[Metalhead]

Yeah, and another thing about my meltdowns was that it almost always was the tiniest of things that set them off, which led the doctors and my parents to believe I had an infantile mind. The big things that drive them were almost always beneath the surface in my life. The doctors thought chemical restraints would fix me and they often asked me if I blacked out during a meltdown. Really, the more I think about it, the more I realize nobody knew what they were doing with me back then.

 

[Thinx]

So sorry you as a child needed to vent, you were subjected to abuse and your mum allowed it to happen. Your mum appears to be odd and narcissistic. Probably you could usefully do work about her in therapy, and really move on through that, rather than only recalling this, my experience was it took more than one sets of therapy to achieve relative detachment from the bad or sad memories.

 

[Bolletje]

That’s a very clever way to channel meltdown energy. Too bad your mom couldn’t see that.

 

[Kalinychta]

Do you still have meltdowns, and if so, do you still keep the vent journal?

 

[Metalhead]

Do you still have meltdowns, and if so, do you still keep the vent journal?

I do not still have meltdowns today. I vent out my frustrations at the gym instead. Whatever works.