Brain health · Sanctum

Meltdowns and shutdowns

When it gets to be too much, you do not have a wobble, you have a collapse. Either it erupts, the anger, the tears, the overload spilling out where everyone can see it, or you go the other way, silent, foggy, switched off, the lights on but no one home. Afterwards you are wrung out, and often ashamed.

A meltdown is not a tantrum, and a shutdown is not sulking or being rude. Both are what happens when a nervous system has taken in more than it can process and tips over. One discharges the overload outward, the other pulls the shutters down to protect you. Neither is chosen, and neither is something you can simply stop once it has started.

Because the eruption looks like bad behaviour and the shutdown looks like fine, both get misread. The meltdown is punished, the shutdown is missed entirely, and the build-up behind either, the masking, the sensory load, a whole day of holding on, goes unseen. People learn to fear their own reactions instead of understanding what tips them.

We look at what comes before the overload, not only the overload itself, because that is where it can actually be understood and eased. None of this is a diagnosis. It is what we explore with you.

Written by Dr Asad RaffiConsultant Psychiatrist · Founder & Medical Director