Shutdown vs Dissociation

[FayetheAspie]

How does one distinguish between an autistic shutdown vs a dissociative episode?

 

[Outdated]

I'm not sure that I understand either term fully, but I can dissociate myself from my emotional side. This often happens during domestic or family arguments where the emotional stress gets too much for me. When it gets to the level of overload the emotional side of me just switches off. I become very robotic and machine like and my responses become based on pure logic with no emotional attachments or interference.

 

[FayetheAspie]

@Outdated Dissociation involves symptoms like ones surroundings not feeling real, feeling like one is in a dream or fog, and can be as severe as feeling like one is outside of themselves just watching themselves move and talk while not feeling connected to the actions at all and possibly even actively wondering how their mouth, feet ect. are moving when they don't feel like they are doing the movements themselves yet knowing that they must be.

 

[UFO]

That description of dissociation sounds familiar...

I have read that shutdowns are more like reclusiveness, Finding some hiding place out of everything to load batteries. I do that when I get early warning signs, which might or might not be dissociation feelings. *)

I also understand that a shutdown is also losing ability to act (ie. one just stops and stands like not being able to know where to go, what to do), which is not exactly what happens to me, but close: I sit down and rest because I feel mentally exhausted, I start to stare at nothing and turn off my brains like I would be sleeping my eyes open. I don't remember anything (or at least much) from the episode. Dissociation preludes shutdown.

When it comes to dissociation episodes, more often I just have days when I don't feel specifically exhausted or overloaded or asocial but I still have these strange "something is not right" and "I can't get a grip of events around me" -feelings.

Social crashes that Outdated describes are usually not involved in either of phenomenons in my case. I am just angry and agitated and on the edge and eventually just exhausted afterwards. Arguments don't last long enough to cause me to go shutdown.

Actually, shutdowns are (luckily) so rare that I can't tell for sure what causes them and what happens to me during them. I am (again luckily) so resistant to stimuli that I don't dare to claim that I share same issues as most of you guys .

*) Interesting side note: I drank my first energy drink ever some time ago. I almost immediately felt all warning signs: I began to smell things, lights and especially contrasts began to disturb my eyes (edit: actually, on the second thought I don't think that happened, not in extraordinary degree), I had "I can't get a grip of events around me"-feeling, and I realized that I should not even try to think any complex puzzles. It went away in an hour. No more caffeine products to me... Does anyone else have same reactions?

 

[SusanLR]

Caffeine doesn't seem to bother me in the least, but I know the dissociative feeling all too well. I always called it feeling "spacey". Feeling overly anxious, especially out in a crowd when a lot of visual and sound sensory input is overwhelming. This can bring on these feelings of unreality. I just have to get away to somewhere quiet for a while or leave the noise. Derealization or depersonalization is the psych term used.

Shutdowns is when I let emotions get out of hand and go rather nonverbal.
I may need to just be to myself for hours before it leaves.

 

[FayetheAspie]

It seems almost like sometimes the shutdown or partial shutdown is perhaps a result of trying to settle the derealization symptoms when they get to strong and confusing though there can be times when shutdown is just extreme fear of the person screaming at you without derealization occurring. It's often like the stress triggers derealization and increased or continued pressure makes the feelings stronger until after a certain point you feel the derealization (odd feelings like things are not real sensations) trying to turn into depersonalization (feeling like your floating above yourself while hearing your body speak and /or watching it move while not understanding how it is) so you go motionless, deep breathe, perhaps cover your ears ,and let things go back to feeling normal so that the depersonalization doesn't kick in like you felt it try to or were afraid it would. I have only experienced full fledged depersonalization once and that was a few years ago but it's scary.