The Angry Jellyfish
Everything Is True
Ada Hoffmann's author newsletter
If you've listened to autistic people for any length of time then you already know about meltdowns. You've heard the spiel about how they aren't the same as tantrums - they're not "bad behavior" but a genuine loss of control in the face of something overwhelming.
I'm having a lot fewer meltdowns now that I have control over my living environment!
But that's not what I want to talk about.
Because meltdowns are genuine and instinctive, there is valuable information in them. Most autistic people's are conditioned to downplay the things that bother us, or to come up with reasons why they're not such a big deal, because they clearly aren’t a big deal to NTs, right? A meltdown shows us that it is, in fact, a big deal.
The meltdown mind's strengths are almost the polar opposite of the normal conscious mind's strengths. When I'm melting down, I may think wildly untrue things about the cause of the problem, the likely outcome, and what's to be done about it - but I am absolutely spot on about the fact that a problem is happening and that it is, in some way, intolerable to me.
My girlfriend, who is also neurodivergent, refers to these moments as "jellyfish stings." A jellyfish is squishy and soft-looking, and it drifts through the water. It doesn't have what we would define as a brain. But if you mess with it, it will sting you. It's not that the jellyfish is trying to get revenge, or prove a point, or anything. The sting happens on a cellular level, automatically.
I'm not very good at consciously enforcing my boundaries or processing anger. I am a champion rationalizer. When I feel deep down that someone has wronged me, I'm much more likely to reflexively find a reason why it's my fault, or not a big deal.
But the jellyfish sting is immune to rationalization. It lets me know in no uncertain terms that the problem is real.
The reason why this analogy helps me is because it reframes what's going on. I'm not "bad at" boundaries, I don't fail to sense where they are - it's just that I sense where they are differently.
When I think about it this way, I'm more likely to heed the information that my meltdowns are giving me, rather than filing them away (after the meltdown is over) as weird overreactions.
I also find that the jellyfish analogy is helping me pay attention to smaller stings. Things that aren't a meltdown, but that signal to me that things might be heading that way. Times when the thought of going ahead with something suddenly makes me worse at talking, or balky, or anxiously flapping my hands a lot. Thinking of these things as warnings from my inner jellyfish helps me take them seriously, and listen to the information they're giving me - and then maybe readjust my plans.