[Doh2007]

"It" was once called a nervous breakdown. I never know what to call it. I've heard it called a lot of things, but is there an official name to describe when you are out of control of your life?

[ECHOES]

Don't know that there's an offiical term. I call it distressed (so does my T) or falling apart.

What would you like to call it?

[SeptemberMorn]

I always throught a "nervous breakdown" was when you'd start crying and couldn't stop... or you checkout out mentally and emotionally, as in disociating longer than a few minutes?

fragmentation?

feeling like you are breaking up...
dispersing into the world
or like you are exploding outwards
or dissipating...
or that you are liquid and are merging with your surroundings
the surroundings are sucking you up so you are dying as an independent being

loss of boundaries loss of self

Kohut talks about it as 'annihilation anxiety', i think...

kind of whatever the painful feelings (terror etc) are that everybody has to a greater or lesser extent. but sometimes they become so overwhelming it is hard to stay in the world and take some pleasure from the world and hard to do what you need to do.

thats kinda my version anyways. different people have their own way of describing it. in some ways it is an intensely personal experience that is different for different people. but in other ways it seem fairly public in the sense that everybody has got something...

can you write about it / describe it?

[Perna]

Check this out: http://anxiety-panic.com/dictionary/en-main.htm

It has "nervous breakdown" but says its out-dated. Haven't seen anything else I like, other than maybe "falling apart".

neurosis

manifests as neurotic depression or neurotic anxiety or neurotic OCD... the symptoms are meant to be defences against the pain... the pain... what is the pain about? how does it feel?

thats the idea of analytic theory anyhoo. freud thought it was about the oedipal conflict (desires conflicting with what we rationally need to do) the pain from that... kohut thought it was fear of being left alone to die when as an infant if we are abandoned then we will surely die... dissipate into the environment (as we do once we are dead). winnicot thought it was something similar...

'stress' is a pretty popular term currently...

but as for 'what it is'

how does it feel?

[eskielover]

In 1994 when I "fell apart "& "really lost it" I had my career as an aerospace engineer going on but ended up with the career not going in the direction I was comfortable with. I hated the department I was working in & hated the work I was doing for the first time in 15 year career. I was forcing myself to perform above average because I didn't want anyone to know how much I hated what I was doing which must have added to the stress. I tried hard to find another position at the company, but the director had this opinion that once you were working for him, he owned you. By Thanksgiving, all I could do was sit in my office with the door closed & cry when I wasn't BS'ing my way through the work. The strange thing was that during that time, we all were forced to put presentations together for a national convention. I took the manual & started putting all the buzz words together into a presentation without really knowing what I was talking about.....wouldn't you know it....my presentation was chosen to be presented at the convention. That just topped off my loosing it....I knew I couldn't present something i didn't know anything about.

By Christmas, I was in even worse shape & luckily, we had the time off between Christmas & New Years. I was hoping that I could settle down a bit.....but the first of the year came & I felt so sick I couldn't go back to work. Every time I even thought of going to work, I would start shaking inside & getting sick to my stomach. I kept calling in sick. This continued for over a week. Then the Northridge Earthquake hit & destroyed the freeway that I had to take to work. A great excuse to not have to go to work. It took over a week for them to set up any alternate route that we could use to get around the destroyed freeway. Then they expected me to go back to work. It took me 6 hours each way to drive to & from work....12 hours of driving for 9 hours of work....& then wouldn't let me not take lunch....so i had to stay the whole 9 hours. That gave me 4 hours to sleep. So for the 9 hours at work, all I could do was sit in my office & cry. I honestly didn't know what was going on with me....I had heard about nervous break downs & thought that might have been what was going on, but I had no knowledge about mental illnesses so I thought I might be having a heart problem so I ended up going to my GP. She told me to take a months leave of absense from work which I did. They would call me from work to see how I was doing & I would totally freak out....heart pounding, sweating & getting sick to my stomach everytime they called. They put on a heart monitor to check my heart out & found nothing. My medical insurance from work decided that I should go to a pdoc & have them analyze what what happening to me.

It just got worse & worse & they finally came up with the fact that it was panic attacks that I couldn't control.....the company wouldn't let me transfer to another department & that only kept the panic feelings going even worse. The worse part was that I kept getting worse & as I got worse, more horrible feelings kept coming up & I kept feeling more & more sick which turned into depression & then into suicidal feelings which landed me in the mental hospitals & pdocs trying to put a label on what my problem was.....I don't know how many different labels i went through during that time while they were trying to identify what was going on with me. Don't think they ever came up with a label for it until several years down the road after I lost the workman's comp case & had completely given up on life with several close suicide attempts. That was when I became major depression reoccurant along along with the major anxiety Dx.

Looking back, I realized that at the time, even the mental health professionals didn't have the words to know what to call it....& me who had never had any experience with mental health issues at all was so lost & confused that it made matters even worse. If the professionals didn't know what to call it, how in the world could I?

Debbie

[(JD)]

I think just saying "breakdown" would suffice for the average person. "Nervous breakdown" was never accurate anyway, because the nerves were working just fine. A mental breakdown is usually when something causes an acute reaction through depression or perhaps extreme anxiety.

I am thinking you are talking about a mental breakdown, feeling totally out of control of your life and like you are "falling apart" and unable to cope?"

[splitimage]

I like to describe my 8 weeks in the psych hospital as the time my life just imploded and I couldn't cope.

--splitimage

[Doh2007]

Wow! You guys rock!

I once called it "seeing fairies."

[nothemama8]

we perfer meltdown, cuz thats how we feel when it's happening

[okiedokie]

I was told by the pdocs the new terminology for a "nervous breakdown" is major depressive episode. Or maybe they were humoring me....I don't know. All I know is that I was a huge mess!
Okie

[pachyderm]

Decompensation.

I don't know if what you had is this, but this is the more accepted term (or was at one time) for when compensating defense mechanisms fail. As in heart attacks, when the heart muscle attempts over time to compensate for damage, and ultimately fails.

[ECHOES]

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
I once called it "seeing fairies."

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That's interesting. How did you decide to call it that? What was/is it like for you?

[Doh2007]

I was trying to go off of buspar. I was looking at the bird feeder and hummingbirds were turning into fairies. I'd see bugs fly by and when they got closer, they turned into birds.

It seems that each major depressive and/or psychotic episode has something unique that identifies it.

There was the time I went screaming out of my boss's office. That was at the beginning of the Iraq War and two family members in the Marines were going to war.

Meltdown works. Maybe one term doesn't fit all.

Now that I think about it, I think my doctor calls it the "active phase" of my disorder. I'm supposed to stay away from stress.

[ECHOES]

Thank you for sharing that. Sounds like going off the Buspar was hard to do.

I hope your family members who were sent to Iraq are home safe now.

[Doh2007]

That is so sweet of you. Yes, both boys came home whole and both have since left the service.