burnout 15 min

Autism Overwhelm Adults: Stopping the Spin

By Riot Updated 2026-02-21

The High-Stakes Emergency

Riot: Listen up. Overwhelm isn’t a “bad mood.” It’s not because you’re “being dramatic.” It’s because the simulation you’re living in has too many moving parts and your system is trying to process all of them at once. It’s like trying to run a high-def game on a machine with no cooling fans—eventually, the frame rate drops to zero and everything starts glitching.

When the spin starts, your only job is extraction. You don’t negotiate with the noise. You don’t “try harder” to be normal. You just get the hell out of the way.

The Sensory Overload

1. Recognizing the Spin

Riot: Most people miss the warning signs because they’re too busy trying to “fit in” or “be polite.” That’s a worst-case Ontario. You need to recognize the internal signals before the hardware fails.

  • The Tunnel Vision: The world starts to feel narrow. You can only focus on one thing, and that thing is usually the sound of someone chewing or the flicker of a fluorescent light.
  • The Internal Static: Your thoughts stop being clear. It’s like your brain is trying to tune into a radio station that doesn’t exist.
  • The Motor Glitch: You start stimming harder. You’re pacing, you’re tapping, or you’re literally shaking. This is your system trying to dump excess energy.

2. The Instant Extraction Protocol

Riot: When the spin is active, you don’t stay and play. You extract.

  1. Stop the Input: Whatever is happening, stop it. If you’re in a meeting, leave. If you’re at a party, walk out.
  2. Armor Up: Get your shades on. Get your earplugs in. If you have your boombox, get it going with something that you control. This is about overriding the environment with your own frequency.
  3. The Dark Room Reset: Find a space with zero light and zero noise. Sit there until the frame rate comes back up.

Tactical Armor

3. The Power of ‘No’

Riot: Leviticus always talks about “energy transmutation,” and he’s right. The easiest way to transmute negative energy is to stop saying “yes” to the things that break you.

  • Say No to the Small Talk: If someone is trying to engage you in a low-value social loop, just walk away. You don’t owe them a script.
  • Say No to the Over-Scheduling: If your calendar looks like a game of Tetris where you’re losing, start deleting blocks.

4. Reclaiming Your Agency

Riot: You are the player character in this cosmic play. If the simulation is too loud, change the settings. You don’t have to live in a world that wasn’t built for your hardware.

Stop pushing through. Start extracting. The world will still be there when you’re back at 60 FPS.

Tactical Data:

  • Extraction Probability: 100% (Required if spinning).
  • Processing Recovery: 20-60 minutes in a dark room.
  • Armor Effectiveness: Increases survival by 400%.