When the Mind Snaps
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دکتر ترانه موذنی
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What is a Nervous Breakdown and What are its Symptoms?
The term “nervous breakdown” is sometimes used by people to describe stressful situations they are experiencing, in which they are temporarily unable to function normally in daily life.
Physical Symptoms of a Nervous Breakdown:
- Heart palpitations
- Muscle tension and soreness
- Sweaty palms
- Lightheadedness, dizziness, and imbalance
- Body tremors
- Involuntary movements of the limbs
- Abdominal pain and discomfort
- Fatigue and lack of energy
- Vague and unexplained pains in various parts of the body
- Unexplained coughs, frequent colds due to weakened immune system
- Nervous headaches
Mental Symptoms of a Nervous Breakdown:
- Unusual anxiety and stress
- Panic attacks
- Disruption of daily routine
- Decreased libido
- Impotence
- Insomnia
- Hypersomnia
- Intrusive thoughts
- Lack of desire to interact with friends or romantic partner
- Irritability, sudden and explosive anger
- Inability to concentrate, even to read a short paragraph or listen to the news headlines on TV
- Boredom and low mood
- Low tone of voice
Emotional Symptoms of a Nervous Breakdown:
- Constant feeling of being choked up and crying for no reason
- Feeling of loneliness and helplessness
- Feeling of guilt
- Not enjoying life
- Lack of interest in activities that were previously enjoyable
- Negative thinking and becoming pessimistic about everything and everyone
- Thoughts about the meaninglessness of life
- Desire to end life, planning and designing towards committing suicide
One of the best ways to prevent a nervous breakdown is to take care of your emotional and mental state. Learn more about yourself. Recognize your feelings and emotions and distinguish them from each other. Review the reason for the connection of your current emotions with past memories. Examine your previous nervous breakdown and experiences in this area and the factors that caused it. Recognize and identify the signs and symptoms of a nervous breakdown in yourself.
Seek help from your psychologist and psychiatrist as soon as you notice a significant change in one of your emotional states and mental conditions, be sure to discuss it with your psychologist. Use prescription drugs such as antidepressants or anti-anxiety drugs as directed by your doctor. Incorporate complementary therapies such as yoga, meditation, massage therapy, and acupuncture into your daily routine.
The following actions are effective to prevent any nervous breakdown:
- Instead of serving others, spend more time for yourself. Consider yourself a priority in your life.
- Do not answer messages and calls that cause you confusion and bewilderment, and establish the art of setting distance with those around you as much as possible.
- Instead of trusting people’s words, first consider their behavior and actions. The performance of those around you is the most important reference for your decision-making, not just your feelings about them or their words.
- Discard the mindset that people who love us will never leave us. People change with different situations and circumstances that arise for them. All people are temporarily present in life, and the only person who will remain for you in the end is only and only yourself.
- By prioritizing yourself, accept and embrace whatever happens. Do not entrust the key to your happiness to another person.
- Never establish a deep emotional relationship with someone who is still heartbroken and upset from the failure of a previous relationship. Because he has not been able to resolve this grief for himself and expects emotional care from you.
- Without a moment’s hesitation, adjust and organize your distance with those around you and put everyone in their place. If you cannot let go of people who have a bad nature due to the circumstances and situation you are in, try to accept them as they are and prioritize your own happiness with healthy selfishness.
- Prioritize your mental health.
Mental health can be summarized in two phrases:
- Reality acceptance: This means that the individual has the ability and power to accept the logical and natural consequences of his behavior. These consequences are part of the real world, and when we do not accept the consequences of our behavior and decisions and deny reality, we face serious harm in the direction of mental health.
- Responsibility acceptance: It means that the individual takes responsibility for satisfying his personal needs and does not infringe on the needs of others in order to achieve this goal, or does not satisfy his needs at the expense of ignoring the rights of others.
Strategies for Coping with a Nervous Breakdown
- Maintaining Good Habits: To maintain mental health and prevent a nervous breakdown, individuals should pay attention to points such as proper nutrition and having appropriate physical activity, which are important not only for general health but also for managing stress and anxiety. Eating calcium and fresh vegetables greatly helps reduce stress. Limiting caffeinated beverages or using tobacco is very effective in reducing symptoms of anxiety and restlessness.
- The Worst Thing in the World is Unemployment: Physical fatigue prevents mental fatigue. Having daily activities that can keep you busy, such as physical activities, exercising, work-related activities, does not allow your mind to wander, spin around itself, and generate negative thoughts.
- Limit Media Use: Take a break from television, mobile phones, and news for at least a few hours a day. Constant exposure to bad news causes us to suffer from bad news syndrome. Many of us constantly follow the news because we want to be aware of the situation around us. Signs of news syndrome are that you feel constant fatigue and have a low energy level. Loss of concentration during work and purposeful activity is another symptom of bad news syndrome.
- One of the things that is a precursor to a nervous breakdown is ambiguity and constant uncertainty in all daily matters: That is, when you do not have enough information about a subject and you have to make an important decision about the subject. Accepting ambiguity relatively and acknowledging the right to make mistakes for yourself can reduce your daily anxiety and reduce the likelihood of a nervous breakdown. Reaching the position of acceptance is the most important tool to overcome unpleasant situations.
- Do Not Neglect the Miracle of Writing: Transfer your anxieties to paper by writing. Many times, anxiety and restlessness increase negative emotions. Transfer the thoughts that cause anxiety from your mind to paper. In this way, you define a new capacity for your mind. This capacity building helps you to dwell less on negative thoughts.
- Be Sure to Maintain Your Social Relationships with Others: For humans as a social being, communication with other humans is vital and can prevent a nervous breakdown at an appropriate level. Fortunately, in today’s world, technology has made it easy and accessible for us to communicate in any situation. Be in touch with your friends and colleagues, especially with friends who are like-minded and have positive energy.
By observing the above, you can reduce the likelihood of a nervous breakdown and manage the fear resulting from it.
Historically, research on resilience has emphasized risk factors. Factors that also play an effective role in the creation and formation of a mental breakdown. Researchers have compiled a list of risk and traumatic factors, including physical and sexual abuse, divorce, loss, isolation, etc., which reduce positive developmental outcomes, and determined that each of these factors or a combination of them can increase the likelihood of achieving negative developmental outcomes.
However, this research has not specified why some people who were under the pressure of these factors still flourished and succeeded in their lives. In fact, it has not been determined why some people persevere amidst many difficulties, while others are shattered by the slightest problem in their lives.
What factors support such resistance and resilience, and what factors weaken healthy growth and life?
With the continuation of such studies, the concept of resilience emerged. Researchers have considered resilience as a skill that can be formed as a result of stressful life events and mental breakdown in a person. Resilience refers to the dynamic process of positive adaptation in a context where there is significant hardship.
This concept implies two important conditions:
- Exposure to a significant threat with severe hardship
- Achieving positive adaptation despite experiencing a difficult event
Therefore, resilience occurs when there is stress. Conversely, if there is no stress in a person’s environment, resilience cannot occur. An unpleasant event can make a person stronger, just as steel becomes stronger by heat. This marked a significant change in the conceptualization of human growth. Growth and healthy living do not mean how to avoid dangers that increase harmful consequences, but rather the discovery of positive and effective factors that support growth and healthy living. In this way, a more hopeful prognosis was presented for people who experienced negative events in their lives. These people, contrary to popular belief, are not doomed to failure or victims of past bitter events. Important factors of resilience that can be of great help to us in preventing mental breakdown include self-regulation, perseverance, self-care, communication, positivity, and flexibility.
Finally, clinical experiences show that approaches based on positive psychology have been very effective in solving mental problems. Based on this, the materials and skills in the field of resilience help you to gain more self-confidence. Feel more comfortable with yourself and show adaptive and successful reactions in the face of problems and challenges you face. Everyone has resilience, and everyone needs it. Social media can convince us that everyone around us lives without challenges and crises and with full support from their spouse and family. In this case, we ask in surprise: Why me? Why do I have these problems in my life, while others do not? But in reality, we do not know what is going on in the other person’s life. The reality is that we all face challenges, and we all have problems. We all need resilience.
Several main concepts that are in the skill of resilience are:
First, mindfulness, which means awareness of what is happening in our minds and here and now.
Second, we will discover the fact that what we focus on becomes reality. If we pay attention to the good things that happen and our strengths, we are more likely to experience positive factors in our lives. Also, it can be understood that the human brain is very soft and flexible. Modern neuroscience shows us that our brain is constantly rebuilding and evolving at every moment of life, and this good news shows the scene of many evidence-based actions that you can use to cultivate resilience. Always remember that we have many choices in life. It is true that the challenges and problems we face can be beyond our control, but resilience is more about the choices that are under our control.
Resilience is an active process that you can engage in. As we discover the main factors of strengthening resilience, including communication, flexibility, perseverance, self-regulation, positivity, and self-care, you will realize that you have many choices.