Lately, I've realized that, once again, I've been pushing myself so hard that I've let slip much of my hard won interroception from these past few years.

For decades, I would get angry. But it wasn't "anger". Yes, it was often an emotional reaction to a violation or injustice. What separates it from what what #neurotypical people experience is this: that anger, that rage,**would not subside, even when the situation was satisfactorily resolved.**

This is a hallmark of what is (infantilizingly) called an "autistic meltdown". For us #actuallyaudhd #actuallyautistic people, when overwhelmed with stimulus, the nervous system dysregulates, often wildly. The reaction is usually either explosive or implosive.

#Neurotypical folks can perhaps relate to this as "fight or freeze". Interestingly, I don't hear about "flight" as a typical reaction. In the face of meltdown/shutdown, flight requires rational thought. Meltdowns/shutdowns leave rational thought mostly unavailable.

When meltdown/shutdown is the baseline, I think our nervous systems deliberately try to tune out the early warnings—the finer grain signals. But, also, I'm fairly sure that, genetically, we're predisposed not to receive those signals. For instance, I seem to have a higher than average pain tolerance. We are both hyper and hypo sensitive but along different and unpredictable axis. "If you've met one autistic person then you've met one autistic person": we each have our own distinct sensitivities.

Cacophony rapidly shoves me toward meltdowns. The more stressed I am, physically or mentally, the more that unpredictable, shrill, and/or irregular noises set me off. For instance, I like coffee shops because I enjoy being *around* people sometimes. I also fucking hate coffee shops; the louder the susurrus, the faster it wears me down until I leave in a near-meltdown/rage. A busy restaurant can be agonizing.

And that's just my hearing!

But I'm especially auditory in my sensitivities. I adapted, years ago, by almost always wearing headphones and cranking up *my* music, sometimes with background brown noise, to drown out the madness around me. Controlled noise is better than cacophony.

I'm sure some #neurotypical people reading this are thinking, "Yeah, I sometimes feel like that." Trust me: not like this—or maybe you're also undiagnosed #autistic.

I was only diagnosed at the youthful age of 51, after all.

So when I push myself hard enough for long enough, I don't feel my nervous system straining: I just get **ANGRY**. I wouldn't realize how I was hurting. I wouldn't realize I was hurting. I would just go straight to **RAGE**.

It's a bad life. I won't live that way any more. It's why I've spent years understanding where my *actual limitations* are, instead of my former "doing my best" that left me psychologically/neurologically (in terms of strain) bleeding almost daily.