I understand you. After a meltdown it takes a week or so to get over it. Not the meltdown itself but the things I do during the meltdown cause me resentment and embarrassment.

@Ben Hackett we have the same pattern of meltdown unfortunately. My husband and my family is also really understanding. The fear of hurting someone else or break something leads me to self-harm (it also works as sensory regulatory I guess). I call myself Hulk (she- hulk). Your Gollum analogy makes a perfect sense for me. Exactly the same. I wish I had meltdowns like only crying, not a pure rage. Do you shutdown after a meltdown? I do.

@Ben Hackett same :D I have a lot of Hulk stuff. My shutdown can last days and I turn into non-verbal and hypersensitive. All of my life everybody (including me) thought that I had a mental illness. You can't imagine how important for me to hear someone else's experience is same as mine and it is autism.

@Ben Hackett yes we are twins :) I had bullied a lot since elementary school. And I still don't know how or why they chose me. And they also wanted to see me to transform and go insane. As a girl, with all that Hulk strength I don't remember how many fights I had with boys (actually now I understand that they were meltdowns and I was attacking them or breaking chairs etc.) I also hospitalized many times (caught during meltdowns in public) but I've never diagnosed with something. Because there wasn't complete match with other disorders or syndromes. Only depression. I assume after high school I lost my routine and I regressed. Now I am 39 years old. Only 2 years ago we discovered that I have asd. I am still self-diagnosed (comparing my formal test results with my sister's and my husband's) I can't get formal diagnose in my country because doctors are still not aware of high functioning autism and there is no center for adult diagnosis. But just learning was a huge relief for me and family. We read a lot about solutions to minimize the negative traits.