The shutdown feeling isn’t as great as it may appear, unfortunately. Yes, it undeniably feels nice, but it really interferes with every day life. I go into the state pretty much automatically, and often don’t see that I’ve done it. Much time can be lost due to it.
Of course, this is most likely my body telling me that I need to take it easy and recover for a little while, which will be doing me good. If I’m in the middle of a busy day and need to get work done, it can be really annoying.

I’m not complaining – just trying to show how it can be as much of a nuisance as it can be a good thing too.

James

I was trying to explain that other adults have often commented that I appeared to be day dreaming, whilst my own experience of how I was feeling was very different.

I’ve not come across the site you mention before. I’ll check it out.

James

I’ve never experienced what you’re describing, and I’m very envious. It sounds quite lovely. My shutdowns usually happen when I’m past meltdown and into complete exhaustion. It doesn’t happen very often, but when it does, it’s like being buried under a very heavy weight. I used to call it depression, but it’s really not. It’s just my system grinding to a complete halt.

I’ve heard many autistic people say that they’ve been told to stop day-dreaming on a regular basis, but that hasn’t been my experience. I seldom day-dream. In fact, I’m at the other extreme. If I can’t focus on anything in particular, I’m hyper-vigilant about everything. I’m certain that it derives from being an abuse survivor; in my childhood, there was no room for day-dreaming. I had to pay attention constantly, just to protect myself. Fortunately, I don’t suffer much from the hyper-vigilance anymore. I’ve had enough years of safety that much of the fear has been worn away.

This shutdown thing is like a computer having a screen-saver on and then somebody moves the mouse or taps the keyboard. And of course we have to shut them down properly so that the hard drive and BIOS can work, and the RAM can process.

There was a really excellent site explaining shut down in an autistic sense.

http://www.shutdownsandstressinautism.com/

Look on page 2 and see if that sounds like you. And also Appendix 2 of the Shutdowns and Stress paper (the non-academic one) describes reactions from adults – at least a dozen.