A mental breakdown is when you realize that you’re not who you thought you were. It is psychological death to a part of your character and leaves you feeling vulnerable and uncertain about your identity and your place in the world.
Breakdowns are extremely important times in your life because it is one of the only times to truly reshape your psyche. Your breakdown is generally caused by one of two things:
- You’ve been pushing yourself out of your comfort zone looking to grow and expand as a person.
- You’ve played it safe and avoided change as much as possible but life came along and forced change on you anyway. This could be in the form of loosing something you held tightly or realizing that you’re underdeveloped and have wasted years living in fear of change, but it came anyway.
Regardless of which category you fall under, take a deep look at yourself and what caused your breakdown. Ask yourself the right questions and you’ll be amazed what you can learn about the deepest levels of your subconscious. During a breakdown is one of the only times you’ll be able to see that deeply into yourself so make sure to take advantage.
I’m not one for self pity. I generally have a very high standard I expect of myself, however, I take special care to be nurturing to myself during a breakdown. Here are three tools I find particularly useful when going through a mental breakdown.
Crying
Crying is a very effective tool in letting emotional energy go. There’s a part of you that die and the energy needs to go somewhere, crying is a way to release that energy forever.
Writing
When you write, be sure to write what comes into your head and don’t edit it. Have the courage to put your thoughts onto the page even if they scare you or you are ashamed of them. Your thought’s aren’t you so don’t feel that is unacceptable to think that way. Just write down what comes up.
Meditation
Meditation is another crucial tool during mental breakdown. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, just sit down close your eyes and watch the energy in your body. It’s surprising how psychological pain can manifest as physical energy when you take the time to watch it.
A big theme in Buddhism and meditation is equanimity, meaning don’t react to the energy just observe it. If it’s painful don’t run from it, if it’s euphoric don’t cling to it, just watch it and let go.
The worst thing you can do in a psychological breakdown is create a story for you pain. Your mind may turn into a town hall meeting where all the different parts of your persona show up to air their grievances and offer theories about how you’re a victim and what external source is responsible for your pain. As the observer of your mind, just watch all that unfold, don’t vote for any proposition of how you’ve been wronged, just watch it and when you can, return your attention to the physical sensations.
Really all that is happening during a breakdown, is a deep subconscious part of your character has died and your mind is letting go of the energy that formed it. Letting it go is painful now, but if you learn how to let the process happen without interference, it goes quickly and when it’s gone it’s gone. You no longer have to deal with it.
If you try to avoid the pain by distracting yourself, it will take much longer and you run the risk of totally fucking yourself up psychologically. That’s basically what most of us did as kids, we had a psychological breakdown and didn’t have enough life experience to know how to handle it. So we went to the mental town hall meeting, took some really stupid advice and made it a fundamental building block of our character. It’s really a shame.
But it happens to everyone and as we get older we can reshape our character and let go of silly beliefs we adopted as children. As we go through mental breakdowns and subsequent rebirths, we become much stronger. Each time we go through the cycle, we take a step closer to self actualization and becoming the person that deep down we know we need to become.