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Nervous breakdowns and the causes thereof

Jan 29 2012.

In layman’s terms, a nervous breakdown is when somebody just “loses his marbles.” Scientifically, it is a severe mental illness that comes with a disruption of the mental and emotional stability of a person. It can hinder normal activity, and as such requires immediate attention. However, it does not refer to a specific mental illness, and is usually used in the context of severe anxiety and depression that may result in a psychological collapse.

Sometimes we may write it off as the person just not knowing how to deal with pressures and other stresses, but if someone in your family has had a nervous breakdown, or if you are worried about having one yourself, it might help to try to understand the emotions involved in the process. Among the many negative emotions that people deal with on a day to day basis, here are the top triggers of a nervous breakdown:

1. Depression – Depression comes when a person undergoes a prolonged season of extreme stress or anxiety. It is usually visible because a person can show lethargy, weakness, extreme tiredness, continuous aches and pains, among others. But other times, depressed people can fake a smile to ward off concerned loved ones. As such it is highly important that you pay attention to non-verbal cues more than the verbal ones. If you are the one feeling depressed, it might help to detect the roots of your despondency in the other emotions listed below.

2. Problems in an interpersonal relationship – This is one of the major causes of emotional breakdowns, as everybody has the need to feel loved and to love back. Once that desire is shunned, the person sometimes does not know how to move on, especially if he has believed that the shunning partner was the only person who had ever cared for him in the first place. This is why it is extremely important for people to know that their life does not revolve around only his partner, and that there is somebody else who loves him and can even love him more than that person can. This is why many people who believe in God can reportedly move on more easily than those who don’t: it’s because they firmly believe that no matter what happens, there is somebody who loves them.

3. Emotional trauma or abandonment – Another inherent fear in every person is the fear of being betrayed or abandoned. Whether or not the person is a physical orphan, sometimes an orphan mindset can just as easily eat away at one’s emotional health. This mindset tells you that nobody is looking after you for your future, your protection, or your provision, which results in extreme worry and a nagging fear that something is out to get you. This is a very ugly feeling to have, and many people have dealt with this by choosing to believe in a Supreme Being who cares for them. When you believe that the God who sees everything is actually working for your good, you can relax and not worry anymore about being abandoned, because it turns out that somebody is always there for you and will never leave you, like so many other people may have done before.

4. Condemnation – The last and one of the greatest causes of emotional breakdowns is persistent self-condemnation. If other people were to blame for making you feel bad, you can easily run away from them, but what if it’s all in your own head? This is why condemnation is known as a silent killer; people generally feel guilty about the things they have done wrong, and unless there is an answer, they will never believe that they have been forgiven or atoned for. This is why many people who found peace from their self-condemnation talk about a God who paid the price by hanging on a tree in place of His people. It releases you and sets you free from needing to punish yourself, because you know that someone else was already punished for you. Your conscience knows that somebody must pay, and thankfully, you do not deserve to suffer anymore because somebody did pay the price.

When you understand these basic triggers that could lead to a nervous breakdown, you can try to meet the emotional demands with the suggested solutions, and spare yourself the added emotional burden.

(Written by Jessica Lord)