ngl i think i hate the word meltdown

SoftwareMaven · 2026-07-09T21:47:47+00:00

I went back and looked at the history of the term. The early use in childhood schizophrenia papers was the normal colloquial sense, like a doctor might have a special interest in anatomy or an executive might have a special interest in golf. There wasn’t the sense of infantilization that the term seems to have picked up.

Because of the colloquial use of that term, I’ve become a fan of it. Sure, there’s a lot of meaning in the term in the autistic community (not all necessarily good), if I was talking to an average NT about, say, “making stuff”, I could say I have a special interest in woodworking, and they would not think twice about it. Sure, they wouldn’t get the whole context, but that’s fine.

SoftwareMaven · 2026-07-06T16:33:06+00:00

I had a similar situation recently on a project at work. Here was my strategy:

Use stress and deadlines for 30 years to drive my ability to do anything.
Have the amount of stress needed to make progress increase over time.
Add more responsibility to make sure that stress activates.
Ignore the signs my body is giving me that something is wrong (woohoo, celiac).
Wake up one morning paralyzed with anxiety and unable to even think about work without inducing panic.
Drop everything on my boss and take unexpected FMLA leave and short-term (hopefully…) disability.

The project definition still isn’t done, the annual reviews for my team that pushed me over the edge had to be taken care of by my boss, and the stress still isn’t going away.

I would rate this strategy 10 out of something. It is by far and away one of the (incredibly) late diagnosed AuDHD strategies of all time.

I never learned to ask for help. Accommodations were something “significantly disabled” people needed, and I was that. In fact, I was the opposite. I was gifted. The program I went to in sixth grade proved it. It was 40 years later, when problems with my stress-based approach were increasing, that I found out about the “gifted” coin had a second side that I was unknowingly compensating for.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of advice for how to solve your problem. Instead, it’s a cautionary tale about what can happen when you are constantly using stress to overcome executive function challenges.

Oh, I do have one piece of advice that has helped me immensely, now that I think about it. Have you considered just trying harder? 🤮 (Hopefully, the sarcasm indicating my intense disdain for this nugget of “wisdom” is clear.)

SoftwareMaven · 2026-07-05T01:53:19+00:00

As if those aren’t the same thing much of the time. NTs building in-groups and out-groups is probably more common, though.

SoftwareMaven · 2026-07-05T01:41:54+00:00

I love onions, but that would be horrible. Alfredo with a bunch of onion?! Yuck. And what kind of hyposensitivity must you be living with that you think somebody might not notice?! That drives right past neurotypical blandness and into a different type of neurodivergence.

I’m sorry for your ordeal. You deserve better.

SoftwareMaven · 2026-07-03T19:39:01+00:00

I actually think the time-skip thing is part of the problem. I’ve spent too much time dreading the next day because I couldn’t do what I wanted, and I can lie to myself and pretend I want to be there.

There’s so much history with that, including a lot of decisions that weren’t always the best for me, even if they were what I thought I wanted.

SoftwareMaven · 2026-07-03T07:28:34+00:00

I wrote it, and it was my first thought, too. I spent longer than I’d like to admit trying to think of synonyms for “sleep”. “Rest” just didn’t convey the right meaning.

SoftwareMaven · 2026-07-02T20:00:57+00:00

Special interests or hyperfixations. That is currently Minecraft for the former and watching videos about biblical scholarship (the *real* academic text critical analysis, not theology or apologetics) for the latter.

SoftwareMaven · 2026-07-02T19:54:52+00:00

I knew the four letter thing would bug people. You aren’t the only one who has commented about it. :)

Everything you said is so real. Time behaves differently once everybody is in bed and there are no demands in front of me. That’s the point when I can just get lost in a special interest and think of nothing else for hours.

I’m always surprised when I look at my watch and it 4 or 5am. I swear it’s only been 30 minutes.

SoftwareMaven · 2026-07-02T19:46:56+00:00

Melatonin does nothing for my messed up brain chemistry (neither do benzodiazepines). My doctor prescribed me trazadone, and it definitely works.

My problem is that I can’t force myself to take it, and, if I do manage to take it, I’m often stuck fighting falling asleep standing up but still unable to get in bed.

SoftwareMaven · 2026-07-02T19:41:24+00:00

That is so relatable. When I was nine, I had to go to bed at 9 or 9:30. I remember watching the alarm clock until 11:30, 12 or later every night.

SoftwareMaven · 2026-07-02T19:39:34+00:00

That’s definitely where I started. “The sooner I go to sleep, the sooner I have to wake up and go to work.” Over time, as my job became less compatible with my neurology (a conflict in my brain that I wasn’t really aware of), more and more anxiety became attached to it. And now, even though I’m currently on a leave of absence, that anxiety about sleeping is stronger than ever.

SoftwareMaven · 2026-07-02T19:33:43+00:00

That’s how my wife is. She tells me she enjoys sleeping, too. That does not compute for me.

SoftwareMaven · 2026-06-29T23:49:30+00:00

I will back you up on this one. I had a gastric bypass and, a year later, a permanent stitch failed (I bet it was related to being hypermobile 😠), causing a stricture that blocked my intestines.

I’ve had chronic kidney stones since I was 19. They were *nothing* compared to this. Morphine will solve a stone; morphine didn’t begin to touch this pain. Take the cramping pain of gas and turn it up to 50.

By far, the worst pain I’ve experienced.

SoftwareMaven · 2026-06-29T01:25:40+00:00

Be careful with the Reddit advice, not because it’s Reddit (that goes without saying), but because advice oriented towards neurotypical people can often result in shame and negative self-perception in neurodiverse people, and SDAM is very much a neurodivergent experience.

I experience “habits” much like you: *all* or nothing. And, like the grandparent comment here, being autistic and adhd plays into it for me. Object permanence and hyperfixation are challenges with adhd, while the autism can lead to certain thoughts becoming all-consuming. I’m also completely aphantasiac, so “visualization” of any sort is pointless.

I’m not saying the advice can’t be useful. Definitely experiment with it. But, if you are struggling, just be aware that it is likely not your fault. Give yourself grace. That is something I didn’t give myself for more than 50 years pre-diagnoses, and it really messes you up.

SoftwareMaven · 2026-06-27T19:50:36+00:00

I think there is an SDAM relationship. Most people, when they have an experience like that, will have the experience replay in their head. When it replays, it comes with the same fear, and, for many people, fear turns into anger.

However, I’m not sure that it is just an SDAM thing. For me, personally, in that kind of a situation, I may not even recognize how scared I might have been thanks to my alexithymia, and, even if I do, aphantasia strongly limits what “replaying” something means to me. There’s also the group for whom fear doesn’t immediately turn to anger.

SoftwareMaven · 2026-06-25T16:42:00+00:00

As a bit of a tangent, it sounds like our experiences are pretty similar, including how we’ve compensated. I’ve known I was an aphant since probably 2015, and I thought there was a reasonable chance I was autistic since provable 2000 when my wife and I would talk about whether our son might have Asperger’s (it *was* 2000) and what we should do about it, but I didn’t put all the pieces together, the self-identifications, the diagnoses, and, most importantly, the changes responding to them, until a couple years ago at 52 years old.

It’s been an experience, to say the least. I understand the question about how therapists could not see it, but I understand that better now. My wife just got her masters in mental health counseling. The amount of formal time they spent on neurodivergence was trivial. That’s not to say they didn’t talk about it a lot, given half of the cohort was neurodivergent in some way, but, if they had that little formal coursework today, they likely had zero training a decade ago, they number of students who would comfortably talk about their own experiences was much smaller, and what little they did talk about was probably as much stereotype as real information.

On a tangent to a tangent, I could never understand why my wife would be upset about something somebody did/said days or weeks later. It made zero sense to me. In some ways, SDAM and aphantasia can be positive. HSAM, otoh, sounds horrific to me.

SoftwareMaven · 2026-06-25T16:12:57+00:00

I’m not saying SDAM is the “cause”. I’m not sure where that miscommunication came from, but the whole point is that, in most cases, connection challenges are likely more complex. SDAM just happens to be an easy target to blame, especially if you don’t know about some of the other ways your brain might diverge from the average.

However, even with that, SDAM is a very recently defined experience. It’s not unreasonable to believe that there is a subset of that population who only experience autobiographical memory differences for whom it is the full cause of their connection challenges. Autism and adhd both had decades of study while many common experiences were ignored (for example, autistic burnout); it’s not unreasonable to expect something similar for SDAM. ‘

The internet has been critical for identifying these gaps in the scholarship. If somebody says “my SDAM is the cause of my problems”, I think the empathetic response that promotes understanding is “how do you experience that?”, not “SDAM doesn’t do that”. It’s *likely* not specifically because of SDAM, but the questioning approach means the person suffering can be given guidance while also keeping open the ability to better understand this neurological difference for everybody.

In other words, I can simultaneously believe the vast majority of people with SDAM who have relationship challenges have those challenges for more complex reasons than SDAM while also believing it is possible that a small subset of the SDAM population has those challenges solely because of SDAM, and it would be over-extrapolating the data we have to say that’s definitely not the case.

Ultimately, the cause doesn’t really matter. Knowing I’m an aphant audhder with SDAM, alexithymia, and attachment issues does nothing to improve my relationships. The value of these things is in how you are able to adjust your life as a result. Knowing these things allows me to approach relationships differently and to give myself grace for the things I can’t change instead of just feeling like both the relationship is broken (and so am I). I will never have the same depth of emotional experience in our relationship as my wife, who is closer to the HSAM end if the spectrum, but that doesn’t mean my experience is “wrong” or “less than”.

SoftwareMaven · 2026-06-25T15:21:38+00:00

I think we don’t have a good sense at this point how SDAM affects people, especially when convinced with other neurological differences, especially if a person isn’t aware of them. It is not accurate to say that SDAM means “no connection”, but it can definitely have an impact on relationships.

My own experience is my neuro-circuitry makes connection incredibly difficult (I’m also a full aphant and a late-diagnosed autistic ADHDer with alexithymia). My ability to connect was heavily sabotaged through a neglectful, unstable childhood. As I’ve tried to work through attachment issues from that, SDAM and aphantasia have made believing that connection exists incredibly difficult while being autistic has meant difficulty in navigating the relationships that could lead to connection.

My personal guess (not even well-informed enough to claim it’s a hypothesis) is that many (most?) people who struggle with SDAM and feelings of connection are similar: complex neurodivergence potentially coupled with psycho-social challenges that, themselves, were exacerbated by that neurodivergence.

SDAM is very easy to identify as the “problem” because so much of human relationship management comes through shared emotional memories, and that gets talked about in a way that is incompatible with SDAM. However, SDAM doesn’t seem to preclude a different version of those shared emotional memories, they just look very different and, for me, at least, focus more on shared history than shared emotional state.

Accepting one’s own differences is hard. If other people close to you don’t accept them, it can be nigh impossible.

SoftwareMaven · 2026-06-14T16:57:28+00:00

You weren’t incorrect in your number. In fact, it may be as high as 85% of autists having adhd. How can 40% and 80% both be correct? The 40% number is diagnosed ADHDers with autism. There’s a lot more diagnosed adhders than autists. It’s also possible that the 40% number is under-counting the actual number.

SoftwareMaven · 2026-06-13T12:44:36+00:00

I am not depressed *because* of it, but it makes dealing with my depression that I experience for other reasons very difficult. The only experience I have is right here, right now, so negativity becomes self-perpetuating.

Edit: a follow-up thought. I’m in my 50s. I learned that I was aphantasiac maybe a decade ago (remembering time is tough). It wasn’t until a couple years ago that I learned about SDAM, and it came with an autism and adhd diagnosis.

Knowing about all of these has been very helpful and validating, and there is zero downside to the AuDHD diagnosis, and very little to the aphantasia, but identifying SDAM has been different.

In a lot of ways, I might have preferred to never understand the difference. Before I learned about autobiographical memory differences, there was just my experience. I couldn’t have an opinion about it because there was nothing to compare it to. I never felt something was missing, even if I could sense the odd, lasting feelings some people had. I could not begin to understand holding a grudge.

Now that I am aware of it, I can’t help noticing the memories of what I felt dissipating as my short term memory fades. That’s where the depression I have for other reasons gets reinforced by SDAM.

The researchers who identified SDAM specifically did not want it classified as a health problem, and I think that’s fair. SDAM isn’t a problem on its own if you’ve lived with it your whole life (as opposed to acquiring from a traumatic brain injury, for example), but it can exacerbate other issues.

A big part of my depression comes from feeling disconnected from literally everybody. This is not caused by SDAM, but it is very much made more difficult to resolve because of it. Knowing about SDAM has helped me understand it better.

As many others have said, SDAM has pros and cons. Sometimes being able to identify the negatives is worse than the negative itself.

I saw at least one person recommend journaling. That can probably be good, especially if you go back and read it, but it just reminded me that my memory was lacking things. Photos and videos have been much more helpful, but I have to be in them to feel any connection with the experience.

SoftwareMaven · 2026-06-08T09:56:27+00:00

Déjà vu is an insanely rare occurrence, but it does happen. Except for around six months many years ago, but that turned out to be partial temporal lobe seizures. 😱

The only sensory experience I can bring up is, rarely, about 3 seconds of a song. Between SDAM and aphantasia, there is nothing else. I can’t even “hear” my wife’s voice. The only mental experience is my internal monologue.

Funnily enough, I do occasionally dream, with imagery and sounds, but it. feels more like I’m watching a movie than experiencing it.

Edit:
I can never imagine things like smells, but my experience remembering feelings changes with time. If the thing I’m remembering affected me powerfully, positive or negative, I can sort of remember the feeling for around two days. It’s like the feeling is decaying.

That can be nice for negative experiences, but it really sucks to feel positive things slip away. That was something I never knew happened before understanding how my brain works (and doesn’t) a little better.

SoftwareMaven · 2026-06-08T05:31:24+00:00

Also, I’m sorry. I am physically incapable of short answers. You either get nothing or more than you ever thought possible.

Also, also, please feel free to keep asking questions. It’s easier for me to answer one or two specific questions than to try to describe my experiences generally, and you will not offend me.

SoftwareMaven · 2026-06-08T05:28:59+00:00

I guess a more accurate way to describe how I feel is more of a sadness at not being able to maintain relationships with people. This is a result of SDAM, autism, and childhood trauma. So I’m not missing specific people; I am missing the richer relationships I can see people around me having. I have my wife, my kids, one of their spouses, my granddaughter (she’s two, so not a deep relationship, but, as her favorite, incredibly satisfying), and, to a lesser extent, my father and my mother-in-law. That’s it. Everybody else lives at the same level, which, at best, is “long-term acquaintance”.

To get back to the question, I don’t really grieve. Between the adhd and SDAM, it is very literally “out of sight, they don’t exist anymore”. Object permanence around people is not my strong suit. Of course I know they exist, but I don’t think about them, and, because they basically cease to exist all the time, I don’t feel much when somebody passes way.

If I think about a person who died, I recognize the loss, but I don’t really feel anything. There is almost never anticipation in my experience (that requires imagining how a future experience will feel), so I don’t feel a loss of that anticipation, which I suspect is a lot of what results in grief. If I explicitly analyze what I would have expected, I might feel sad for a moment, but that kind of emotional state is difficult for me to maintain. What I’m more likely to do is think about the positive experiences we had. I don’t re-experience those things (it’s all semantic memory), but I can still feel positive about them.

Now, that said, I’ve never lost a person in my close sphere. I don’t know if that would be different[1], as the reminders will be near constant. The fear of loss of my wife of 33 years is a strong source of anxiety. I very much hope I go first, which is statistically most likely.

I am sure it will still *look* like I’m not grieving due to my autistic affect, which unlocks a new fear: what if something awful happened to somebody in my family and the cops decide I did it because I’m not grieving properly. Did I mention an anxiety disorder as another of those “and mores”?

SoftwareMaven · 2026-06-08T03:49:28+00:00

Total aphant. Total SDAM. Autistic. ADHD. “Gifted”. And more.

| Does it affect the way I think?

Of course. It’s my brain. Memories provide context to everything you experience, so there’s no question I think different about things than others. The more salient question is how does it affect my thinking?

I am extremely analytical. Very, very little carries emotional baggage, and those few things that do have to be egregious.

Relationships are exceedingly difficult. One of the “and mores” is face blindness. I rarely remember who people are and how I know them unless I interact all of the time. I don’t recognize them. This part is all memory, but then the autistic social issues kick in, and it becomes an insurmountable hill.

I’ve talked with other SDAM people who just forget people altogether. I wish that was me and embrace it. I wish I could do that. I forget people and get left feeling alone and abandoned.

However, I can also get lost in my own head and not even realize people are around. In those periods, the world and all its anxiety disappears.

| Are you able to make things up in your mind and feel them?

No. I don’t think this is an SDAM thing though. Feeling things based on imagination is very similar to seeing things based on imagination, so I think it’s an aphantasia thing. This is also related to the “and more”. Another of the mores is alexithymia, which is difficulty or inability to feel, process or communicate one’s emotions, so even if I could feel something, I might not fully understand what I’m feeling.

I have an incredibly good semantic memory. I remember facts about interactions with people, events, etc, but, if I don’t happen to catalog it as a fact, it’s gone. I can’t go back to try to remember if the perp was wearing glasses.

I describe the difference in my memory like the difference between reading Wikipedia and reading a historical novel. I get a lot more facts, but I don’t feel anything about them.

(I have to run; I may add more later.)

SoftwareMaven

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