“Let me tell ya. You gotta pay attention to signs. When life reaches out with a moment like this it’s a sin if you don’t reach back… I’m telling you.” ― The Silver Linings Playbook

Unquestionably, when tragedy or prolonged stress wears us down and everything we knew and felt to be true is gone, there’s little to nothing to hold on to, to climb our way up and back into the living. Many of you know what I’m talking about, here. You survived the death of a child, natural disaster, war, terrorism, school shooting, rape, sexual abuse, or some other deep traumatizing event that dragged you down into a mental collapse and physical exhaustion; what is referred to as a nervous breakdown.

And, you know just as well that in the emptiness and abyss, when the structures you’ve come to rely on are gone, an inner voice seems to say; “Come on, I know you can’t see why or how, right now, but reach back; there is more life ahead of you, I promise, no matter how far you have fallen.”  Whether it’s God  or intuition speaking to you, indeed, it feels like a sin if you do not reach back. Most assuredly, it is bad faith to believe that you are incapable of finding the silver lining in your troubles and of finding your way back from a mental collapse.

Nervous Breakdown

The Term

Nervous breakdown is popular language for describing the experience of having mentally collapsed, snapped, or deteriorated under too much pressure. It appeared first in literature in the Middle Ages, as melancholia; a mental state describing a collapse of pleasure and will, arising from a loss of self. Freud reintroduced melancholia to the medical community, when he contrasted it to mourning; a normal loss of pleasure and will that comes from mourning the loss of a loved one (Freud: Mourning and Melancholia). He believed melancholia resulted from a basic weakness in nerves, which led to the medical term neurasthenia. But, by the 1970s, neurasthenia was no longer used as a diagnostic category by the medical community. And, although nervous breakdown is not a clinical term, it still describes a process of mental collapse and physical exhaustion that results from a combination of environmental and psychological factors.

The Cause

A single event that is so unlike anything you have learned, know to be true, or expect to happen can be the trigger for a mental collapse and complete physical exhaustion. It’s an experience that you have no framework or structures of thinking to understand and to wrap your mind around. Take, for example, Pat (Bradley Cooper) from The Silver Linings Playbook. One seemingly uneventful day, Pat leaves work early, only to arrive home and walk in on his wife having sex with his best friend. The next thing Pat knew, he was standing over this man whom he had beaten to an inch of his life. In the span of a few minutes, Pat went from understanding himself as a happily married man with a respectable writing and teaching career to an emotionally volatile patient in a mental institution.

Thus, a nervous breakdown can result from a traumatic relationship event, like Pat’s from the Silver Lining Playbook. Or, it can come from events of natural disaster, terrorism, school shootings, suicide, war and rape. These types of Type 1, Post-Traumatic stressors challenge self-understanding to the point where it’s difficult to apply meaning to what’s happening and to organize the self around the experience. Mental collapse is very possible, at such times.

But, prolonged, unyielding stress, personal or professional, can also cause mental collapse. This is what happens to victims of prolonged sexual abuse, domestic violence, and even in seemingly less harmless situations in which people have been worn down mentally by years of having been deprived of their right to self-determine their existence (Complex Post-Traumatic Disorder).

The extent to which people lose their footholds in the real world depends upon a combination of the type and intensity of the stressor and the acute mental health conditions (Major Depression, Anxiety Disorder, Bipolar Disorder), and the neurotic (Obsessive-Compulsive and Hysterical) and ego-fragile (Narcissistic and Borderline) personality disorders that make one more vulnerable to mental collapse.

But, whichever the source, a mental collapse involves a collapse of the ego, which is the part of the psyche that helps you to reason, give meaning to, and to cope with what happens to you. If you have no patterns of understanding for what is occurring, the reasoning part of you has nothing to wrap itself around. Now, you are at risk for a nervous breakdown.

The Symptoms

The symptoms of a nervous breakdown vary with its cause. However, the symptoms most closely resemble what is clinically called Major Depression (crying easily, temper outbursts, misunderstanding and confusion, loss in pleasure and will, fatigue, guilt and hopelessness, feeling worthless, loss of meaning and purpose, deterioration in functioning, downward change in health habits, hygiene and sleep pattern, weight gain or loss, social isolation and withdrawal, suicidal thoughts, self-sabotage, depressed mood, anxiety, impulsive action). Today, a psychiatrist or clinical psychologist will not diagnose you with a nervous breakdown, even if you present with the causes and symptoms mentioned here. You will be diagnosed with Major Depression and whichever other acute or chronic mental health conditions that you have. Nonetheless, the clinician knows fully the extent of the mental collapse and the required treatments.

There is a Silver Lining

The silver lining to a nervous breakdown is the chance to realize one of the core truths of human beings. That is ~ you are first and foremost a possibility-maker. You can breathe life into nothingness, because you can visualize what can be. Through faith and hard work, you turn adversity into opportunity and reaffirm living. You are the phoenix who can rise from the ashes, and the lotus flower that can grow from mud. You can do this, simply because you are a human being. No thing or person can take this away from you.

Reach Up and Get Back to Living Once Again

I did not write Life’s Playbook, but, like many of you, I’ve had a couple of twists and turns on my personal journey that knocked me down, for a time. But, they taught me a lot about their benefits and the attitudes and actions needed to be able to reach up and get back to living once again. Let me share some of what I’ve learned with you.

Wisdom 1: Detours in your life journey are not a waste of time. In fact, in view of your whole life, the down time is short. Even so, you are positioned to learn a lot about yourself, in a very short time. A 38-year-old patient of mine was astounded when I told him that it would take him 2 to 7 years to find his way back to living a normal life once again. He suffered a nervous breakdown after a divorce that devastated him emotionally and financially. But, this wasn’t the whole story. He had an extremely stressful childhood (mother with a bipolar disorder and an alcoholic father) and had been drinking himself into alcoholism for over twenty years. He eventually came to understand the psychological and spiritual usefulness of this time in his life. He did recover from the divorce and from alcoholism. Today, he is 13 years sober and in recovery.

Wisdom 2: Treat your mental exhaustion, collapse, or breakdown, whatever name you want to give it as an opening to discovering new things about yourself.  Remember, fixed ideas about who you are and what things mean to you help you to make sense of experience. But, they also attend to features of experience that affirm them, so that little else can enter into your awareness. Thus, a collapse in a way of being is a chance for new information to come into your awareness. You have a chance to see more clearly if there’s anything about you or the way that you’ve been living that needs to change.

Wisdom 3: Use this time to ask yourself questions about life’s meaning and worth. Here, you will find the will to live again, rather than to simply exist as a broken shell. In a past article, I gave you questions that will help you to examine your true nature, like “Are you more than your suffering”. “Is there something greater than your material and public self that should be guiding your living?” You’ll find more of these questions in this link (Use this time of suffering as the source of your life’s great strength and beauty).

Wisdom 4: Develop a Hardy (Resilient) Attitude Toward Your Troubles. Do not let your present circumstances cause you to lose hope for a better future. Also, do not let your grief, hurt, and resentment stop you from healing. Your purpose is to make it through this hard time having learned much about your ability to endure life’s journey, and make the best of it. You have the power and resources to influence the direction and outcome of what has happened to you. See yourself in body, mind and spirit as a resilient person, and I assure you that resilient coping will follow. You will find an inner strength and determination that will push you to thrive, despite the nature and intensity of your loss.

There are several posts on Psychology in Everyday Life that you may want to take a look at that speak to the ideas in today’s article. They are: The Courage to Thrive Despite Great Loss and Change; This is Your Life, Create It; Five Commitments For Living Consciously; Don’t Look Back; Look Forward; and Use This Time of Suffering as the Source of Your Life’s Great Strength and Beauty. 

If you liked my post today, please let me know by selecting the LIKE icon that immediately follows. And, if you wish you let others know about the ideas in today’s post, please Tweet or Google+1 it. Take good care of yourself friends, and remember, wisdom is in life’s detours. Thus, play the detour well! Warmly Deborah.