An Arts-Based Inquiry into Autistic Meltdown

This arts-based inquiry aims to evoke empathy and understanding of autistic meltdown by exploring representations in various artistic modalities of my personal meltdown experiences. I also reflect on the process by which three creative arts therapists created artistic responses to my multimedia video about meltdown. I chose to explore this topic through artistic expression because meltdown is an intense sensory and emotional experience that is hard to capture in everyday language but may be more expressible through artistic modalities. An arts-based inquiry into autistic meltdowns is meaningful because the experience has rarely been studied from the perspective of an autistic adult, even though meltdowns are a significant part of autistic experience. Meltdowns are misunderstood and pathologized by non-autistic individuals, who are referred to as allistic individuals within the autistic community. In addition, therapists often treat meltdowns as behaviors to be punished or eliminated. The reflections by the allistic creative arts therapists, however, show that the meltdown video created empathy and increased understanding and a desire to create a soothing space in which to keep the autistic person safe and protect their privacy during their meltdown.