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written by Amir Khan
It’s another late night at the
office – you’re going on 60 hours this week. You’re working on a project
you know your boss is going to throw right back into your face. You finally
make it home, only to pass out on the couch, wake up and repeat your own
hellish version of "Groundhog’s Day." And somewhere between all the
meetings, revisions and stress, you snap.
It’s called a nervous breakdown, and
though it’s not an officially recognized diagnosis, clinical
psychologist Denee Jordan says it’s a perfect descriptor of what the
body goes through. “It’s similar to running a car without stopping or
taking care of it until it just breaks. Our system shuts down due to the
mounting stress,” says Jordan, director of mental health
services for the Exceptional Children’s Foundation, an organization
that helps children and adults with emotional or developmental issues.
Stress has become such a part of our
lives that we often think it’s normal to feel that way, Jordan adds, and it
keeps building until we can’t take it anymore. “We’re bombarded with
impossible expectations,” she says. “We’re encouraged to be burnt out. The
employee that works 17 hours a day is the one who gets the employee of the
month award, but then feels ashamed when he can no longer keep up the pace.”
Recognizing the Warning Signs
Nervous breakdowns don’t sneak up on
you, unless you let them. There are warning signs and symptoms that you’re pushing
your body too far, says Jonathan Jackson, director of the Center for
Psychological Services and Field Training at Adelphi University in New
York. “It means quite a number of different things to different people, but
there are some common experiences that we can identify,” he says.
Some people show symptoms that can
seem like the symptoms of a severe mental illness, Jackson says. “They can
experience an inability to distinguish what is real from what is imagined,
including delusions and hallucinations,” he says. “These symptoms can be so
disruptive that the person who is suffering them is unable to perform ordinary
activities. It's pretty easy to identify people who are in the midst of this
sort of breakdown, because they can't manage their distress, so they can't hide
it.”
others, it’s much more subtle.
“It could be a depression that takes hold slowly at first, and
builds to the point that the person has lost interest in life, feels hopeless
and has no energy to perform ordinary activities,” Jackson says. “This
presentation is not as easy to identify because it comes on slowly and because
people who are suffering this way often hide or deny it.”
When you deny how much stress you’re
under and let it build, the symptoms can get worse, Jordan says. “The more
stress we encounter, the higher our baseline gets,” she says. “We begin to
tolerate more and more stress in our lives, and it just spirals from there.”
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