In this blog, our Trauma Ambassador Georgina compares how we treat technology in a heatwave to autistic shutdowns:
‘It has been hot recently. Hot enough that phones begin to display a message warning that they are too warm to function properly. They dim, close applications, slow down and sometimes stop working altogether until they have had chance to cool.
Interestingly, we do not tend to blame the phone.
We do not remind it that it worked perfectly yesterday, compare it to another phone sitting nearby or suggest that if it really tried hard enough it could carry on. We recognise that it has reached a limit. We move it out of the sun, stop asking it to do quite so much and allow it time to recover.
I have often wondered whether autistic shutdowns can be understood in a similar way.
For me, there are often many applications running quietly in the background. Sensory processing. Social interpretation. Anticipating change. Monitoring how I am coming across. Trying to understand expectations that feel unwritten. Remembering appointments, transitioning between roles, managing uncertainty and, perhaps most significantly, attempting to maintain the appearance that everything is operating as it should.
Most people see the functioning. They see the training sessions, meetings, emails, shopping trips, conversations and contributions. What they do not necessarily see is the processing power required to sustain these things, nor the heat generated by continually working within a system that can sometimes feel as though it was designed for a completely different operating system.
Eventually, something gives.
It may not even be something particularly significant. It can simply be one thing too many added to an already overloaded system. Suddenly, life can feel a little like a broken Teams call. The words are there somewhere, but they arrive delayed, distorted or not at all. The connection freezes. Other people continue speaking whilst you are trying desperately to work out what was missed. The harder you try to reconnect, the more fragmented things become. There is a sense that everyone else is still participating in the meeting whilst you are staring at a screen that seems unable to catch up.
At that point, my nervous system feels as though it displays its own warning:
“System too hot. Protective shutdown initiated.”
Words become difficult. Decisions feel impossible. Plans that seemed manageable hours earlier appear overwhelming. Messages remain unanswered. I retreat into quiet spaces, familiar routines, sleep or simply the absence of expectation. Not because I do not care, nor because I am unwilling, but because my system is attempting to prevent further damage.
Perhaps what autistic people need during these moments is what we instinctively offer our overheated phones: less demand, fewer applications running in the background, a quieter environment and permission to cool.
Because we understand that phones have limits.
Perhaps autistic people deserve the same understanding.
Perhaps shutdowns are not signs of failure, laziness or a lack of resilience. Perhaps they are evidence that someone has been coping for much longer than anyone realised, navigating a world that often asks them to work much harder than others simply to stay connected.
And perhaps, instead of asking, “How do we get the system working again?” we might ask, “What caused it to overheat in the first place?”‘
Georgina,
Trauma Ambassador