The meltdown itself ends, but the shame, rumination, anxiety, grief, and exhaustion can linger for hours, days, or even weeks—what Lisa calls the meltdown hangover. In this episode she names these after-effects and explains why, unlike a regular hangover, this one is fueled by your own thoughts and can therefore last as long as you keep them going.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN:
- What the common symptoms of a meltdown hangover are, from shame and rumination to grief, anxiety, and physical depletion.
- Why some parents stay in a chronic hangover state because they never fully recover between meltdowns.
- A set of questions you can use to identify your own meltdown-hangover symptoms as the first step toward changing them.
Listen
RELATED EPISODES:
- Meltdown Hangover Helpers for Autism Families (Ep #133)
- Behavior Barometers Part 2: Advanced Tools for Autism Parents (Ep #131)
TRANSCRIPT
You’re listening to episode 132 of The Autism Mom Coach, Meltdown Hangovers. Welcome to the Autism Mom Coach podcast. I am your host, Lisa Candara. I am a lawyer, a life coach, and most importantly, I am the full-time single mother of a teenager with autism. In this podcast, I am going to share with you the tools and strategies you need so you can fight like hell for your child without burning out.
Let’s get to it.
Hello everyone, and welcome to the podcast. I am so glad you’re here, and I hope you’re doing well. Before we get started, I have an announcement. On Thursday, September 19th at 7:00 p.m. Eastern, I am going to be hosting a pop-up open coaching call all about meltdowns. Any questions you have about behaviors, about meltdowns, about the topic we’re going to talk about today, meltdown hangovers.
For those of you who have downloaded the behavior barometer that I talked about in the last two episodes, you can ask me questions about your behavior barometer for your child. I can coach you on creating your response plan. Whatever it is about meltdowns and behaviors, whatever questions you have, come to my coaching call on September 19th at 7:00 p.m.
Eastern. To join this call or to receive the replay, you do need to register, and you can do that by going to the episode notes. Okay, onto today’s topic and the topic for next week. This is actually going to be a two-parter about meltdown hangovers. In this week’s episode, I’m going to talk to you about what a meltdown hangover is, and in next week’s episode, I am going to give you very specific steps of the things that you can do after a meltdown to reduce the intensity and the duration.
Okay, first, what is a meltdown hangover? Well, I’m guessing for all of you, you pretty much know what it is. I’m sure you’ve experienced it. I define it as the emotional, mental, and physical aftermath of a meltdown experienced by autism moms. Here are some of the signs and symptoms, and of course, I am taking this from my own personal experience with meltdown hangovers, as well as from the clients that I coach on these same topics.
First, exhaustion. Feeling completely drained and depleted, not only from managing the actual meltdown, but from all of the energy that you expended dreading it or resisting it in the first place. Two, shame and guilt. This sounds like a lot of should-ing yourself. Shame and guilt is a huge one for me, especially after meltdowns concerning homework.
My son is very much a perfectionist, so he always wanted to make sure he was getting his homework right, so there was tons of anxiety for him just surrounding the entire process. And even though I was there beside him to help him and guide him in any way, he would still get really angry with me, and he would definitely believe that I had no idea what I was talking about.
This was especially so for math, because math is taught right now in a way that looks foreign to me, and for sure not the way that I was taught math. So even when I was trying to help him through math problems, he would not believe my answers because I wasn’t doing it the same way that his teacher told him.
This got so bad that I was actually getting a calculator out to show him by multiplying and dividing things on the calculator to prove to him that the answer was actually correct, even though I had done it another way. Anyway, this led to huge amounts of frustration from me and from him. For my part, I was coming home from a day at work, trying to get dinner on the table, homework finished, do the bedtime routine, the whole thing, and maybe, just maybe, relax a second.
So there was a lot of yelling, a lot of screaming from both of us about the homework, and it would eventually end up in him running into his room, slamming the door, and me feeling frustrated, upset, and sad, and then also just being so mad at myself for getting as angry as I did, because after all, honestly, I didn’t care whether he did his homework or not.
To me, staying in school all day and performing in school was enough, and so the homework was just an extra layer. But he was so insistent that he do it and do it perfectly, and I was so frustrated with myself for getting so upset every single time Third, rumination. This is replaying the meltdown over and over in your brain.
“What could I have done differently? Why did I react this way? Were other people staring at us? I wonder what they think.” All of that. Rumination is a big one for me, and I see this for my clients too. With any meltdown that happens outside of the home or in front of other people, there is a lot of rumination over what other people saw, what they were thinking, and how they might have been perceiving you or your child.
Four, anxiety. Well, this just makes sense, right? You’ve been in a chronic stress fight-flight response with your child, and so of course afterwards you’re going to feel some anxiety. However, like I’ve said before, anxiety doesn’t happen by itself. Anxiety is something that we have the ability to either tamp down or amp up, and when we are spinning in shame and guilt and rumination, all of those thoughts are actually increasing our stress levels and our anxiety.
So not surprisingly, we’re going to feel anxious, especially if we’re thinking about the next meltdown and dreading tomorrow night’s homework assignment or getting up for school the next day or whatever it is where you’re anticipating that another meltdown might occur And then finally, grief and sadness.
I know for me, after my son’s meltdowns, I felt a lot of grief for him because I could see how basically tortured he is by his own brain and his own OCD and needing things to be perfect or needing things to be a certain way. I would feel really sad and helpless, and that would stay with me for a while.
It didn’t disappear as soon as the meltdown was over. So on that note, let’s talk about time frames. So when we’re talking about hangovers the way many of us think of them related to booze, we’re talking about meltdowns that might last a couple of hours or maybe even an entire day. But when it comes to meltdown hangovers, those can last a lot longer because we’re not just dealing with the physical symptoms like you are in an actual hangover that you can remedy pretty quickly by drinking water and eating.
In a meltdown hangover, many of those symptoms are our thoughts themselves, and because they are our own thoughts, we can keep them going for as long as we choose to. So that means meltdown hangovers can last anywhere from a few minutes to a few weeks. It really depends on the intensity of the meltdown itself, the duration of the meltdown itself, what your various triggers are.
Maybe this happened out in public. Maybe this happened around certain people. Maybe your child did something specifically that was really traumatic or upsetting to you. All of these factors can influence how long the meltdown hangover lasts. And then for some of us, the hangover is chronic because we are not recovering between meltdowns, and so we are perpetually in this state of the meltdown hangover, the overhang of shame, anxiety, the rumination, the sadness, and the exhaustion All right, with all that said, for this week, I want you to become familiar with what your meltdown hangover symptoms are.
Because once you become familiar with them and know what they are, that’s the first step in making changes, which is exactly what we’re going to talk about next week. Okay, here are some questions you can ask yourself to identify your meltdown hangover symptoms. First, what do you do as soon as the meltdown is over?
What are your energy levels? Are you shaking? Are you thirsty? What are your primary emotions? Are you ruminating about what happened? If so, for how long? What are your thoughts about yourself after a meltdown hangover? What are your thoughts about your child? Are you feeling guilty? If so, why are you feeling guilty?
Are you blaming yourself? If so, what exactly are you blaming yourself for? Do you pour yourself a drink? Do you get out the chips and ice cream? How do you talk to yourself? Is the voice inside of yourself being kind and reassuring and compassionate, or is it scolding you? All right. That is it for this week’s episode of the podcast.
Now remember, if you want to join my open coaching call on September 19th, go to the show notes now, and you can register. And also, in the past month, I’ve put out a lot of new resources. I’m going to leave a link to all of them in the show notes. Those are my behavior barometer that you can use to rate and assess your child’s meltdowns and also decide ahead of time how you want to respond to the meltdowns.
There is my five steps to stop escalating your child’s behaviors, and this is a resource that you can use so that when your child is melting down, you are not actually escalating them and prolonging the meltdown. You can get these resources in the show notes. All right, I will talk to you next week. Have a great week
Thanks for listening to The Autism Mom Coach. If you are ready to apply the principles you are learning in these episodes to your life, it is time to schedule a consultation call with me. Podcasts are great, but the ahas are fleeting. Real change comes from application and implementation, and this is exactly what we do in my one-on-one coaching program.
To schedule your consultation, go to my website, theautismmomcoach.com, work with me, and take the first step to taking better care of yourself so that you can show up as the parent you want to be for your child with autism.
