Breakdown Feeling Quotes

I feel unspeakably lonely. And I feel - drained. It is a blank state of mind and soul I cannot describe to you as I think it would not make any difference. Also it is a very private feeling I have - that of melting into a perpetual nervous breakdown. I am often questioning myself what I further want to do, who I further wish to be; which parts of me, exactly, are still functioning properly. No answers, darling. At all.

It is important for a husband to understand that his words have tremendous power in his wife’s life. He needs to bless her with words. She’s given her life to love and care for him, to partner with him, to create a family together, to nurture his children. If he is always finding fault in something she’s doing, always putting her down, he will reap horrendous problems in his marriage and in his life. Moreover, many women today are depressed and feel emotionally abused because their husbands do not bless them with their words. One of the leading causes of emotional breakdowns among married women is the fact that women do not feel valued. One of the main reasons for that deficiency is because husbands are willfully or unwittingly withholding the words of approval women so desperately desire. If you want to see God do wonders in your marriage, start praising your spouse. Start appreciating and encouraging her. Every single day, a husband should tell his wife, “I love you. I appreciate you. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.” A wife should do the same for her husband. Your relationship would improve immensely if you’d simply start speaking kind, positive words, blessing your spouse instead of cursing him or her.

The bar staff and croupiers all wore black with the same green triangle logo emblazoned on their shirts, and contact lenses which made their eyes shine an eerie, vibrant green. The bar optics glowed with the same green light, the intensity of which was linked to the music. As the bartender walked away to fetch the drinks, a breakdown in the techno track commenced and the bottles began to palpitate. The bartender's eyes glowed with a hallucinatory felinity that made Mangle feel nervous.

And I know, knew for sure, with an absolute certainty, that this is rock bottom, this what the worst possible thing feels like. It is not some grand, wretched emotional breakdown. It is, in fact, so very mundane:…Rock Bottom is an inability to cope with the commonplace that is so extreme it makes even the grandest and loveliest things unbearable…Rock bottom is feeling that the only thing that matters in all of life is the one bad moment…Rock bottom is everything out of focus. It’s a failure of vision, a failure to see the world how it is, to see the good in what it is, and only to wonder why the hell things look the way they do and not—and not some other way.

You are constantly told in depression that your judgment is compromised, but a part of depression is that it touches cognition. That you are having a breakdown does not mean that your life isn't a mess. If there are issues you have successfully skirted or avoided for years, they come cropping back up and stare you full in the face, and one aspect of depression is a deep knowledge that the comforting doctors who assure you that your judgment is bad are wrong. You are in touch with the real terribleness of your life. You can accept rationally that later, after the medication sets in, you will be better able to deal with the terribleness, but you will not be free of it. When you are depressed, the past and future are absorbed entirely by the present moment, as in the world of a three-year-old. You cannot remember a time when you felt better, at least not clearly; and you certainly cannot imagine a future time when you will feel better.

If you want to give the devil a nervous breakdown, just get up every day and see how much good you can do.

Do you know how, when you are on the verge of a breakdown, the world pounds in your ears; a rush of blood, of consequence? Do you now how it feels when the truth cuts your tongue to ribbons, and still you have to speak it?

As soon as this day’s over, I plan on having a nervous breakdown. Feel free to leave me the fuck alone, or you’ll be pulled in with me. On the plus side, there’ll be ice cream, so it won’t be all bad.

There's a strange sensation - you recall it from childhood - about sleeping in the afternoon. You rise into a different world from the one in which you lay down. The shadows have been rearranged. There's a sensation of sad sweetness, as if something has been overlooked. I used to feel it coming out of the movies just before dinnertime, after the matinee. How, I wondered, did Broadway actors face it, this bittersweet sense of time's slipping past.

When I hear the phrase “Asians are next in line to be white,” I replace the word “white” with “disappear.” Asians are next in line to disappear. We are reputed to be so accomplished, and so law-abiding, we will disappear into this country’s amnesiac fog. We will not be the power but become absorbed by power, not share the power of whites but be stooges to a white ideology that exploited our ancestors. This country insists that our racial identity is beside the point, that it has nothing to do with being bullied, or passed over for promotion, or cut off every time we talk. Our race has nothing to do with this country, even, which is why we’re often listed as “Other” in polls and why we’re hard to find in racial breakdowns on reported rape or workplace discrimination or domestic abuse. It’s like being ghosted, I suppose, where, deprived of all social cues, I have no relational gauge for my own behavior. I ransack my mind for what I could have done, could have said. I stop trusting what I see, what I hear. My ego is in free fall while my superego is boundless, railing that my existence is not enough, never enough, so I become compulsive in my efforts to do better, be better, blindly following this country’s gospel of self-interest, proving my individual worth by expanding my net worth, until I vanish.

I think I just had a minor psychotic episode or maybe a breakdown or something, but it's cool; I'm feeling basically okay now," I replied, closing the van doors. "You?

We're all vulnerable. Mix the wrong feelings together, the right kind of bad with the wrong kind of good, and you'll wind up with a total breakdown.

All reality about me now appeared to be in tatters, taken down and reduced to the civil war of its particles. I held on very, very tight indeed. Because in addition to that feeling, that disintegration, there was rage. I wanted to break something.

Feeling the pain is the first step toward healing the pain. The longer we avoid the feeling, the more we delay our healing. We can numb it, ignore it, or pretend it doesn’t exist, but all those options lead to an eventual breakdown, not a breakthrough.

Cheng Xin now recalled the strange feeling she had experienced each time she had looked at Van Gogh’s painting. Everything else in the painting—the trees that seemed to be on fire, and the village and mountains at night—showed perspective and depth, but the starry sky above had no three-dimensionality at all, like a painting hanging in space. Because the starry night was two-dimensional. How could Van Gogh have painted such a thing in 1889? Did he, having suffered a second breakdown, truly leap across five centuries

Sometimes, breaking down is the bravest thing you can do.

my breakdown was like a furnace and what was burned away was any belief in my own feelings

I bury my face in my hands. And then Ryan does such a nice thing. He wraps his arm around my shoulders and pulls me in against him. I can feel his body heat through his cotton T-shirt, and directly in front of me are the worn, faded knees of his jeans. But most of all, I can smell him. And he smells sandy-warm, like a beach. No one can see my face in there protected by his chest. Which is good because I can’t stop crying. I mean, I’m really going for the world record in terms of an inappropriate public breakdown. But it doesn’t matter, it just doesn’t matter. I’m sheltered.

exI feel unspeakably lonely. And I feel - drained. It is a blank state of mind and soul I cannot describe to you as I think it would not make any difference. Also it is a very private feeling I have - that of melting into a perpetual nervous breakdown. I am often questioning myself what I further want to do, who I further wish to be; which parts of me, exactly, are still functioning properly. No answers, darling. At all.

When a stranger on the street makes a sexual comment, he is making a private assessment of me public. And though I’ve never been seriously worried that I would be attacked, it does make me feel unguarded, unprotected. Regardless of his motive, the stranger on the street makes an assumption based on my physique: He presumes I might be receptive to his unpoetic, unsolicited comments. (Would he allow a friend to say “Nice tits” to his mother? His sister? His daughter?) And although I should know better, I, too, equate my body with my soul and the result, at least sometimes, is a deep shame of both. Rape is a thousand times worse: The ultimate theft of self-control, it often leads to a breakdown in the victim’s sense of self-worth. Girls who are molested, for instance, often go on to engage in risky behavior—having intercourse at an early age, not using contraception, smoking, drinking, and doing drugs. This behavior, it seems to me, is at least in part because their self-perception as autonomous, worthy human beings in control of their environment has been taken from them.

At headquarters I tried to suppress some of the more fantastic rumours. After the bombing of Rangoon and many other places by Japanese Aircraft the local bazaars buzzed with rumours. One was to the effect the Germans had occupied Rangoon. …many villagers were openly discussing their coming flight to distant places of safety. Some hooligans, I had reason to believe, were planning to loot the Indian and Chinese shops and were storing large quantities of knives and spears in some caves in jungle places … One night I stood at the door of my house which overlooked the surrounding country and watched the outline of flames in various directions. The dome of heaven was splashed with a bloody glare as one burst of flame succeeded another. The night seemed to emphasise the feeling of universal unease … Captain Gribble

This is not a psychotic episode. This is a cleansing moment of clarity. I'm imbued, Max. I'm imbued with some special spirit. It's not a religious feeling at all. It's a shocking eruption of great electrical energy. I feel vivid and flashing, as if suddenly I'd been plugged into some great electromagnetic field. I feel connected to all living things. To flowers, birds, all the animals of the world. And even to some great, unseen, living force. What I think the Hindus call prana. But it's not a breakdown. I've never felt more orderly in my life. It is a shattering and beautiful sensation. It is the exalted flow of the space-time continuum, save that it is spaceless and timeless and... of such loveliness. I feel on the verge of some great, ultimate truth.

All the repressed emotions and subconscious desires in time lead to some kind of psychological or physiological breakdown, if kept unchecked.

I want to know if one of the reasons I sometimes feel like I am on the brink of a breakdown is partly because the world sometimes seems on the brink of a breakdown.

I wonder if anyone feels as though they're the same person they seem to remember. It would make them have a nervous breakdown. It probably wouldn't even make sense. I don't know if this is enough. I don't know what anybody else has told you.

It might not be pleasant for the listener, it might disempower and unsettle the witness to a breakdown, but crying was good. Crying was an acceptable outlet, even if it made you feel raw and empty inside, it was still better than that buildup of resentment that grew from not letting your emotions out.

I kept waiting for this momentous breakdown, with everything crashing down in some spectacular show. What I didn't recognize, is that all along I had been crumbling slowly and quietly, like unfired clay. It's almost boring how unspectacular it is. Nothing earth shattering happened, in fact that's the problem; day after day nothing happens. You just feel incapable, unfocused, disorganized, and defeated. Make some strong coffee and get to work. You're not alone.

And it is this very disruption, the breakdown of old habits and the rebuilding of new ones, that constitutes our feeling of being alive and in the world. The world is revealed to us, not by the fact that we come to have habits, but in the moments when, forced to abandon our old habits, we come to take up new ones.

I am trying. And I am afraid. I am afraid to write about side-stepping and feelings and overwork and depression and breakdown because I am still convinced that admitting vulnerability makes me weak, not strong. I am afraid of confirming that I am young and cute and powerless. I am afraid of admitting to all the hard stuff, all the bad stuff, all the unlikeable stuff. I am afraid of exposing myself. I am afraid of being pitied. Of being resented. Of being shouted at. I am afraid of being the disruptive woman. And of not being disruptive enough. I am afraid. But I am doing it anyway.

Show me a lifestyle that feels good all the time, I wanted to shout. Prove to me that your lifestyle is insured against longing. Show me a pie chart, a breakdown of breakdowns, the data on anguish.

Everything assumes a different intensity when you are feeling the pain of loss. Be prepared. A minor annoyance that you might once have managed with a shrug now becomes a nuclear crisis! You are no doubt going to do things perfectly imperfectly. That is part of our path as humans. Forget about striving for perfection while dealing with grief! If you beat yourself up every time you forget something, have a breakdown, or don't do something correctly then you're going to end up very black and blue. I guarantee you won't want to look in the mirror! So be kinder and more patient with yourself.

A society that fails to value communality — our need to belong, to care for one another, and to feel caring energy flowing toward us — is a society facing away from the essence of what it means to be human. Pathology cannot but ensue. To say so is not a moral assertion but an objective assessment. "When people start to lose a sense of meaning and get disconnected, that's where disease comes from, that's where breakdown in our health — mental, physical, social health — occurs," the psychiatrist and neuroscientist Bruce Perry told me. If a gene or virus were found that caused the same impacts on the population's well-being as disconnection does, news of it would bellow from front-page headlines. Because it transpires on so many levels and so pervasively, we almost take it for granted; it is the water we swim in. We are steeped in the normalized myth that we are, each of us, mere individuals striving to attain private goals. The more we define ourselves that way, the more estranged we become from vital aspects of who we are and what we need to be healthy. Among psychologists there is a wide-ranging consensus about what our core needs consist of. These have been variously listed as: - belonging, relatedness, or connectedness; - autonomy: a sense of control in one's life; - mastery or competence; - genuine self-esteem, not dependent on achievement, attainment, acquisition, or valuation by others; - trust: a sense of having the personal and social resources needed to sustain one through life; - purpose, meaning, transcendence: knowing oneself as part of something larger than isolated, self-centered concerns, whether that something is overtly spiritual or simply universal/humanistic, or, given our evolutionary origins, Nature. "The statement that the physical and mental life of man, and nature, are interdependent means simply that nature is interdependent with itself, for man is a part of nature." So wrote a twenty-six-year-old Karl Marx in 1844. None of this tells you anything you don't already know or intuit. You can check your own experience: What's it like when each of the above needs is met? What happens in your mind and body when it's lacking, denied, or withdrawn?

Before the breakdown, I was sweeter—judgmental, resentful, and angry on the inside—but sweeter on the outside. Today, I think I’m genuinely more compassionate, less judgmental and resentful, and way more serious about boundaries. I have no idea what this combination looks like on the outside, but it feels pretty powerful on the inside.

To: Anna Oliphant From: Etienne St. Clair Subject: Uncommon Prostitues I have nothing to say about prostitues (other than you'd make a terrible prostitute,the profession is much too unclean), I only wanted to type that. Isn't it odd we both have to spend Christmas with our fathers? Speaking of unpleasant matters,have you spoken with Bridge yet? I'm taking the bus to the hospital now.I expect a full breakdown of your Christmas dinner when I return. So far today,I've had a bowl of muesli. How does Mum eat that rubbish? I feel as if I've been gnawing on lumber. To: Etienne St. Clair From: Anna Oliphant Subject: Christmas Dinner MUESLY? It's Christmas,and you're eating CEREAL?? I'm mentally sending you a plate from my house. The turkey is in the oven,the gravy's on the stovetop,and the mashed potatoes and casseroles are being prepared as I type this. Wait. I bet you eat bread pudding and mince pies or something,don't you? Well, I'm mentally sending you bread pudding. Whatever that is. No, I haven't talked to Bridgette.Mom keeps bugging me to answer her calls,but winter break sucks enough already. (WHY is my dad here? SERIOUSLY. MAKE HIM LEAVE. He's wearing this giant white cable-knit sweater,and he looks like a pompous snowman,and he keeps rearranging the stuff on our kitchen cabinets. Mom is about to kill him. WHICH IS WHY SHE SHOULDN'T INVITE HIM OVER FOR HOLIDAYS). Anyway.I'd rather not add to the drama. P.S. I hope your mom is doing better. I'm so sorry you have to spend today in a hospital. I really do wish I could send you both a plate of turkey. To: Anna Oliphant From: Etienne St. Clair Subject: Re: Christmas Dinner YOU feel sorry for ME? I am not the one who has never tasted bread pudding. The hospital was the same. I won't bore you with the details. Though I had to wait an hour to catch the bus back,and it started raining.Now that I'm at the flat, my father has left for the hospital. We're each making stellar work of pretending the other doesn't exist. P.S. Mum says to tell you "Merry Christmas." So Merry Christmas from my mum, but Happy Christmas from me. To: Etienne St. Clair From: Anna Oliphant Subject: SAVE ME Worst.Dinner.Ever.It took less than five minutes for things to explode. My dad tried to force Seany to eat the green bean casserole, and when he wouldn't, Dad accused Mom of not feeding my brother enough vegetables. So she threw down her fork,and said that Dad had no right to tell her how to raise her children. And then he brought out the "I'm their father" crap, and she brought out the "You abandoned them" crap,and meanwhile, the WHOLE TIME my half-dead Nanna is shouting, "WHERE'S THE SALT! I CAN'T TASTE THE CASSEROLE! PASS THE SALT!" And then Granddad complained that Mom's turkey was "a wee dry," and she lost it. I mean,Mom just started screaming. And it freaked Seany out,and he ran to his room crying, and when I checked on him, he was UNWRAPPING A CANDY CANE!! I have no idea where it came from. He knows he can't eat Red Dye #40! So I grabbed it from him,and he cried harder, and Mom ran in and yelled at ME, like I'd given him the stupid thing. Not, "Thank you for saving my only son's life,Anna." And then Dad came in and the fighting resumed,and they didn't even notice that Seany was still sobbing. So I took him outside and fed him cookies,and now he's running aruond in circles,and my grandparents are still at the table, as if we're all going to sit back down and finish our meal. WHAT IS WRONG WITH MY FAMILY? And now Dad is knocking on my door. Great. Can this stupid holiday get any worse??

A common and traditionally masculine marital problem is created by the husband who, once he is married, devotes all his energies to climbing mountains and none to tending to his marriage, or base camp, expecting it to be there in perfect order whenever he chooses to return to it for rest and recreation without his assuming any responsibility for its maintenance. Sooner or later this “capitalist” approach to the problem fails and he returns to find his untended base camp a shambles, his neglected wife having been hospitalized for a nervous breakdown, having run off with another man, or in some other way having renounced her job as camp caretaker. An equally common and traditionally feminine marital problem is created by the wife who, once she is married, feels that the goal of her life has been achieved. To her the base camp is the peak. She cannot understand or empathize with her husband’s need for achievements and experiences beyond the marriage and reacts to them with jealousy and never-ending demands that he devote increasingly more energy to the home. Like other “communist” resolutions of the problem, this one creates a relationship that is suffocating and stultifying, from which the husband, feeling trapped and limited, may likely flee in a moment of “mid-life crisis.” The women’s liberation movement has been helpful in pointing the way to what is obviously the only ideal resolution: marriage as a truly cooperative institution, requiring great mutual contributions and care, time and energy, but existing for the primary purpose of nurturing each of the participants for individual journeys toward his or her own individual peaks of spiritual growth. Male and female both must tend the hearth and both must venture forth. As an adolescent I used to thrill to the words of love the early American poet Ann Bradstreet spoke to her husband: “If ever two were one, then we.”20 As I have grown, however, I have come to realize that it is the separateness of the partners that enriches the union. Great marriages cannot be constructed by individuals

john stuart mill knew several languages, advanced math and read many great books' before he was ten years old. his father taught him. in his early twenties he had a nervous breakdown and didn't leave his bed for three years. he read poetry and at started to feel better. he was a feminist and cared about human rights. five people went to his funeral

messenger thing: it’s hard to feel grateful when he’s robbed me of my last bit of hope, that it was something other than dementia that was causing my memory loss.

I am petrified in my dreams and I am petrified in reality because it is as if my dreams are reality and I am having a nervous breakdown and I have nowhere to turn. Nowhere. My mother, I sense, has just kind of given up on me, decided that she isn’t sure how she raised this, well, this thing, this rock-and-roll girl who has violated her body with a tattoo and a nose ring, and though she loves me very much, she no longer wants to be the one I run to. My father has never been the one I run to. We last spoke a couple of years ago. I don’t even know where he is. And then there are my friends, and they have their own lives. While they like to talk everything through, to analyze and hypothesize, what I really need, what I’m really looking for, is not something I can articulate. It’s nonverbal: love. I need the thing that happens when your brain shuts off and your heart turns on. And I know it’s around me somewhere, but I just can’t feel it.

This book, being about work, is, by its very nature, about violence - to the spirit as well as to the body. It is about ulcers as well as accidents, about shouting matches as well as fistfights, about nervous breakdowns as well as kicking the dog around. It is, above all (or beneath all), about daily humiliations. To survive the day is triumph enough for the walking wounded among the great many of us.

SMALL GHOST HAS ANOTHER BREAKDOWN small ghost watches the blood pump in your neck small ghost fills up the bathtub just to drain it small ghost wants to crawl into bed with her mother small ghost is so tired she’s so tired she’s so fucking tired the cobwebs in her head feel so heavy, you know? and it’s like when they started spinning themselves it wasn’t such a big deal but now that they’re here???? they’re just so heavy/she’s just so tired/she’s just so/she’s just she paces the kitchen walks past your new set of knives over and over has to remind herself twice in the span of five minutes you can’t kill something that’s already dead and isn’t that the point isn’t that why she became a small ghost anyway she can’t remember when she started digging her own grave but now she can’t stop hovering over it

When Sam’s having a hard time and being a total baby about the whole thing, I feel so much frustration and rage and self-doubt and worry that it’s like a mini-breakdown. I feel like my mind becomes a lake full of ugly fish and big clumps of algae and coral, of feelings and unhappy memories and rehearsals for future difficulties and failures. I paddle around in it like some crazy old dog, and then I remember that there’s a float in the middle of the lake and I can swim out to it and lie down in the sun. That float is about being loved, by my friends and by God and even sort of by me. And so I lie there and get warm and dry off, and I guess I get bored or else it is human nature because after a while I jump back into the lake, into all that crap. I guess the solution is just to keep trying to get back to the float. This morning Sam woke at 4:00, so

Our media, which are like a planetary nervous system, are far more sensitive to breakdowns than to breakthroughs. They filter out our creativity and successes, considering them less newsworthy than violence, war, and dissent. When we read newspapers and watch television news, we feel closer to a death in the social body than to an awakening. Yes, something is dying; however, the media do not recognize that something is also being born.

It is emotionally, spiritually impossible to have a sexual connection with a human being and not ignite certain emotional patterns, but they are a continual dead-end street when there is no relationship or true emotional feelings to go with the act. Therefore, there is a level of brutality, frustration, and eventually emotional disease which results in physical illness and breakdown because a significant pattern is being tremendously abused. Remember, you do get what you ask for.

Okay, this is a fictional character," Lily began. "And he's like a human." "What?" Adam asked her, looking befuddled. "What the fuck does that mean? He's like a human?" He shook his head and scowled at her. "He wears clothes!" she said frantically. I had a feeling that this game had Lily on the verge of a nervous breakdown. "He wears clothes. Great. Well, that narrows it down." The sands of the hourglass were pouring away and Braden, Cam, Jess and I, were laughing our asses off this exchange already. "And he walks upright!" she added waving her hands frantically. "I would hope that most of the people in this game walk upright! Give me a real fucking clue already!" Adam had that homicidal look again. "Duh huh!" she said desperately. "Hey! All you've told me is that he's a fictional character who wears clothes and walks upright. Don't duh huh me!" he spit out angrily. "No! No! he says that!" Suddenly she started making barking noises. "Are you okay?" he asked looking at her like she was nuts. "Has a place in Florida..." She looked seriously stressed out. I was starting to worry. "He's retired?" Adam asked, still looking confused. "He wears bright colored clothes. He tells jokes." "It sounds like you're describing my Uncle Murray," Adam was shaking his head. "Time!" I yelled, almost peeing myself I was laughing so hard. "Goofy! The answer was Goofy!" Lily said with disgust. "Goofy?! That was the best you could come up with for Goofy?!

There was a moment where it feels as if we both suddenly let go. Let our worries, our pain, and our sorrow go. Nothing else seemed to matter before it was right there, right now, where we were supposed to be. The past was irrelevant. The future is still undecided.

Sometimes, I feel like I’m just a step away from that, just one breakdown away from chopping my own dick off and slapping somebody with it. The only thing stopping me is that I happen to like my dick. It gives me some of the only pleasure I get out of this life I’ve been given.

Maumivu ya matatizo ya yule aliyekukosea hayana tofauti na maumivu ya matatizo ya wewe uliyekosewa. Adui yako (kwa mfano) akifiwa na mke aliyempenda sana, atajisikia vibaya kama utakavyojisikia vibaya kufiwa na mke uliyempenda sana. Kuwa na huruma kwa waliokukosea, wakati wa shida.

Max: Alice. How about we allow the elevator to move again, before you have a breakdown? Alice: I'm sorry. Max: It's okay. Let's just press the button ... Alice: No, not about that. About what I said. About how I felt. I'm sorry that I made you feel like you weren't enough, Max, because you are. I was afraid. For my whole life, the dreams were all I had. They were the only thing that made me feel less alone. And you were part of that. And you got over it, you learned how to funtion, but I didn't. And I didn't understand that when I lost the dreams, I wouldn't lose you, too.

The psychoanalyst Erik H. Erikson devoted a chapter in his Pulitzer Prize—winning book, Childhood and Society, to his reflections on the American identity. “This dynamic country,” he wrote, “subjects its inhabitants to more extreme contrasts and abrupt changes during a generation than is normally the case with other great nations.” Such trends have only accelerated since Erikson made that observation in 1950. The effects of rapid social and economic shifts on the parenting environment are too well known to need detailing here. The erosion of community, the breakdown of the extended family, the pressures on marriage relationships, the harried lives of nuclear families still intact and the growing sense of insecurity even in the midst of relative wealth have all combined to create an emotional milieu in which calm, attuned parenting is becoming alarmingly difficult. The result being successive generations of children in alienation, drug use and violence — what Robert Bly has astutely described as “the rage of the unparented.” Bly notes in The Sibling Society that “in 1935 the average working man had forty hours a week free, including Saturday. By 1990, it was down to seventeen hours. The twenty-three lost hours of free time a week since 1935 are the very hours in which the father could be a nurturing father, and find some center in himself, and the very hours in which the mother could feel she actually has a husband.” These patterns characterize not only the earlyyears of parenting, but entire childhoods. “Family meals, talks, reading together no longer take place,” writes Bly. “What the young need — stability, presence, attention, advice, good psychic food, unpolluted stories — is exactly what the sibling society won’t give them.

Very few breakthroughs come without a few breakdowns along the way. Stay the course. Our personal evolution brings so much brilliance to our life, but it can also bring some pain and discomfort with it. While our spiritual and emotional shifts do bring us closer to our best selves, they also simultaneously move us away from the space in which we may have been comfortably living before. These transitional periods, while necessary to our growth, often leave us feeling incredibly vulnerable. Be gentle with yourself. Moving from where you were to where you are takes some getting used to.

Caplan writes:   My study of personality psychology makes me one of the doubters. On the popular Myers-Briggs personality test, there is a huge Thinking-Feeling gap between men and women. For men, the breakdown is roughly 60% Thinking, 40% Feeling. For women, the breakdown is roughly 30% Thinking, 70% Feeling.

. . . Yes, I’m an aesthete. I like beauty. Yes – poor countries are beautiful. Poor people are beautiful. It’s a wonderful feeling to have money in a country where most people are poor, to ride in a taxi through horrible slums. Yes – a beggar can be beautiful. A beggar can have beautiful lips, beautiful eyes. You’re far from home. To you, her simple shawl seems elegant, direct, the right way to dress. You see her approaching from a great distance. She’s old, thin, and yes, she looks sick, very sick, near death. But her face is beautiful – seductive, luminous. You like her – you’re drawn to her. Yes, you think – there’s money in your purse – you’ll give her some of it. And a voice says – Why not all of it? Why not give her all you have? Be careful, that’s a question that could poison your life. Your love of beauty could actually kill you. If you hear that question, it means you’re sick. You’re mentally sick. You’ve had a breakdown.

We circle each other, our gazes remaining locked, the white dress fanning out and wrapping around our legs. Neither of us make any attempt to remove it as my free hand drops to her waist, hers on my shoulder. We spin and sway down the aisle in imperfect sync to the beat of the progressing song and eventually I feel my body relax, allowing a small smile to form.

When we can no longer rely on our coping mechanisms to help distract us from the problems in our lives, it can feel as though we've hit rock bottom. The reality is that this sort of awakening is what happens when we finally come to terms with the problems that have existed for a long time. The breakdown is often just the tipping point that precedes the breakthrough...

i have to believe that pain doesn't just wear our hearts out; that it stretches them with purpose, that it's meant to give us a pulse… in breakdown, we are broken open; in hurt, we find humility, passion is stirred from our aches, and empathy is a muscle that grows the more we feel… and so we come out brighter from our darkness. maybe if we let it… our pain can have beautiful purpose

When I hear the phrase “Asians are next in line to be white,” I replace the word “white” with “disappear.” Asians are next in line to disappear. We are reputed to be so accomplished, and so law-abiding, we will disappear into this country’s amnesiac fog. We will not be the power but become absorbed by power, not share the power of whites but be stooges to a white ideology that exploited our ancestors. This country insists that our racial identity is beside the point, that it has nothing to do with being bullied, or passed over for promotion, or cut off every time we talk. Our race has nothing to do with this country, even, which is why we’re often listed as “Other” in polls and why we’re hard to find in racial breakdowns on reported rape or workplace discrimination or domestic abuse.

Any obstruction of the natural processes of development... or getting stuck on a level unsuited to one's age; takes its revenge, if not immediately, then later on the onset of the second half of life, in the form of serious crises, nervous breakdowns, and all manner of physical and psychic sufferings. Mostly they are accompanied by vague feelings of guilt, by tormenting pangs of conscience, often not understood, in face of which the individual is helpless. He knows he is not guilty of any bad deed, he has not given way to an illicit impulse, and yet he is plagued by uncertainty, discontent, despair, and above all by anxiety - a constant, indefinable anxiety. And in truth he must usually be pronounced "guilty". His guilt does not lie in the fact that he has a neurosis, but in the fact that, knowing he has one, he does nothing to set about curing it.

Like a sponge, we absorb, not liquid, but energy. Each morning we wake up as a fresh, dry sponge, ready to take in the world around us. Throughout the day, we interact with people, various energies, and a range of vibration. Each time, we absorb energy – either a small amount or a great deal – depending on whether the contact is direct or residual. And when we are filled to the point that we can absorb no more, we sometimes feel like we might explode. We know this bursting point – it reveals itself in our over-stimulated, over-stressed, near-crazy minds. Sleep often releases the energetic buildup, yet meditation works just as well. Meditation throughout the day “wrings out” our soggy, spongy selves. Deliberate mindfulness in the present moment can keep us from absorbing things we don’t resonate with, so that we no longer reach the point of mental breakdowns or emotional overloads.

Walking alone in the dark early the next morning, New Year's Day, the coming year stretched out like a bleak and endless highway, leading nowhere.... Having held on for months, thinking that that if only we can get through to the new year, now I felt plunged into black ice, in danger of drowning.... Suddenly I understood our friends' concern. Could this be what precedes some kind of breakdown--a sudden shift to feel oblivion as temptation, even as seduction?

Even natural wonders aren't what they used to be, because nothing can be experienced without commentary. In the 1950s, we worried about how TV would affect our culture. Now our entire lives are a terrible talk show that we can't turn off. It often feels like we're struggling to find ourselves and each other in a crowded, noisy room. We are plagued, around the clock, by the shouting and confusion and fake intimacy of the global community, mid-nervous breakdown.

And it did not matter that all of this would pass, that’s what occurred to me. It didn’t matter this time and place would be gone, that these feelings would go to the place of all feelings once pure and complete. It didn’t matter that Sophie and Charlie and Ronnie Troy would slip out of my life, and Christy and Annie Mooney, and then Ganga and Doady, that all of them would be gone but be like remembered music or the amassed richness of a lived life. Because at that moment I understood that this in miniature was the world, a connective of human feeling, for the most part by far pulsing with the dream of the betterment of the other, and in this was an invisible current that, despite faults and breakdowns, was all the time being restored and switched back on and was running not because of past or future times but because, all times since beginning and to the end, the signal was still on, still pulsing, and still trying to love.

In leading his patients to understand that breakdown was nothing to be ashamed of, that horror and fear were inevitable responses to the trauma of war and were better acknowledged than suppressed, that feelings of tenderness for other men were natural and right, that tears were an acceptable and helpful part of grieving, he was setting himself against the whole tenor of their upbringing. They’d been trained to identify emotional repression as the essence of manliness.

In the Vassar study, there was a group of students who, in Senior year, neither suffered conflict to the point of breakdown, nor stopped their own growth to flee into marriage. These were students who were preparing for a profession. They gained in college interests deep enough to commit themselves to a career. The study revealed that virtually all such students with professional ambitions plan to marry, but marriage is for them an activity in which they will voluntarily choose to participate, rather than something that is necessary for any sense of personal identity. Such students have a clear sense of direction, a greater degree of independence and self-confidence than most. They maybe be engaged or deeply in-love, but they do not feel they must sacrifice their own individualities or their career ambitions if they wish to marry. With these girls, the psychologists did not get the impression --as they did with so many-- that interest in men and in marriage is a kind of defense against intellectual development. Their interest in a particular man was real.

His view of life has darkened since Mr. Banerji returned to India. There is some obscurity around this: it is not talked of much. My mother says he was homesick, and hints at a nervous breakdown, but there was more to it than that. “They wouldn’t promote him,” says my father. There’s a lot behind they (not we), and wouldn’t (not didn’t). “He wasn’t properly appreciated.” I think I know what this means. My father’s view of human nature has always been bleak, but scientists were excluded from it, and now they aren’t. He feels betrayed.

In the grocery store, there are only three other people, and one of them is a cashier. I pass a woman in the seafood section, and she smiles at me, but beneath her smile I see her wondering where everyone is. I feel our silliness, my reliance on the city’s density, which I have spent so much time hating but proves to be the last barrier between me and some inconceivable boss-level of concentrated loneliness. As I ladle the bisque into a cup, I try to focus solely on the soup and not on my teeth, my skin, and the gradual breakdown of my body into dust.

When we bring personality types together, communication breakdowns are inevitable…Thinking types may feel they’re being considerate by getting straight to a point in a conversation, unaware that their feeling friends perceive them as uncomfortably blunt. Intuitive types may think they are contributing by sharing their grand plans in a team meeting, unaware that the thought of so many changes at once completely stresses out their sensing colleagues. Extroverted types may feel disappointed when their spouses don’t immediately respond with enthusiasm to their ideas, ignorant that they just need time to think the ideas over.

Myth #3: Fasting Causes Low Blood Sugar Sometimes people worry that blood sugar will fall very low during fasting and they will become shaky and sweaty. Luckily, this does not actually happen. Blood sugar level is tightly monitored by the body, and there are multiple mechanisms to keep it in the proper range. During fasting, our body begins by breaking down glycogen (remember, that’s the glucose in short-term storage) in the liver to provide glucose. This happens every night as you sleep to keep blood sugars normal as you fast overnight. FASTING ALL-STARS AMY BERGER People who engage in fasting for religious or spiritual purposes often report feelings of extreme clear-headedness and physical and emotional well-being. Some even feel a sense of euphoria. They usually attribute this to achieving some kind of spiritual enlightenment, but the truth is much more down-to-earth and scientific than that: it’s the ketones! Ketones are a “superfood” for the brain. When the body and brain are fueled primarily by fatty acids and ketones, respectively, the “brain fog,” mood swings, and emotional instability that are caused by wild fluctuations in blood sugar become a thing of the past and clear thinking is the new normal. If you fast for longer than twenty-four to thirty-six hours, glycogen stores become depleted. The liver now can manufacture new glucose in a process called gluconeogenesis, using the glycerol that’s a by-product of the breakdown of fat. This means that we do not need to eat glucose for our blood glucose levels to remain normal. A related myth is that brain cells can only use glucose for energy. This is incorrect. Human brains, unique amongst animals, can also use ketone bodies—particles that are produced when fat is metabolized—as a fuel source. This allows us to function optimally even when food is not readily available. Ketones provide the majority of the energy we need. Consider the consequences if glucose were absolutely necessary for brain function. After twenty-four hours without food, glucose stored in our bodies in the form of glycogen is depleted. At that point, we’d become blubbering idiots as our brains shut down. In the Paleolithic era, our intellect was our only advantage against wild animals with their sharp claws, sharp fangs, and bulging muscles. Without it, humans would have become extinct long ago. When glucose is not available, the body begins to burn fat and produce ketone bodies, which are able to cross the blood-brain barrier to feed the brain cells. Up to 75 percent of the brain’s energy requirements can be met by ketones. Of course, that means that glucose still provides 25 percent of the brain’s energy requirements. So does this mean that we have to eat for our brains to function?

The most uniform and conspicuous feature of the towns and cities you travel through in North India, and also the most serious menace to civilized life in them, is noise. It accompanies you everywhere – in your hotel room, in the lobby, in the elevator, in the streets, in temples, mosques, gurdwaras, shops, restaurants, parks – chipping away at your nerves to the point where you feel breakdown to be imminent. It isn’t just the ceaseless traffic, the pointless blaring of horns, the steady background roar that one finds in big cities. It is much worse: the electronics boom in India has made cassette players available to anyone with even moderate spending power. Cassettes too are cheap, especially if you buy pirated ones.

Okay,” I finally said. “Can we all agree that this is maybe the most screwed-up situation we’ve ever found ourselves in?” “Agreed,” they said in unison. “Awesome.” I gave a little nod. “And do either of you have any idea what we should do about it?” “Well, we can’t use magic,” Archer said. “And if we try to leave, we get eaten by Monster Fog,” Jenna added. “Right. So no plans at all, then?” Jenna frowned. “Other than rocking in the fetal position for a while?” “Yeah, I was thinking about taking one of those showers where you huddle in the corner fully clothed and cry,” Archer offered. I couldn’t help but snort with laughter. “Great. So we’ll all go have our mental breakdowns, and then we’ll somehow get ourselves out of this mess.” “I think our best bet is to lie low for a while,” Archer said. “Let Mrs. Casnoff think we’re all too shocked and awed to do anything. Maybe this assembly tonight will give us some answers.” “Answers,” I practically sighed. “About freaking time.” Jenna gave me a funny look. “Soph, are you…grinning?” I could feel my cheeks aching, so I knew that I was. “Look, you two have to admit: if we want to figure out just what the Casnoffs are plotting, this is pretty much the perfect place.” “My girl has a point,” Archer said, smiling at me. Now my cheeks didn’t just ache, they burned. Clearing her throat, Jenna said, “Okay, so we all go up to our rooms, then after the assembly tonight we can regroup and decide what to do next.” “Deal,” I said as Archer nodded. “Are we all going to high-five now?” Jenna asked after a pause. “No, but I can make up some kind of secret handshake if you want,” Archer said, and for a second, they smiled at each other. But just as quickly, the smile disappeared from Jenna’s face, and she said to me, “Let’s go. I want to see if our room is as freakified as the rest of this place.” “Good idea,” I said. Archer reached out and brushed his fingers over mine. “See you later, then?” he asked. His voice was casual, but my skin was hot where he touched me. “Definitely,” I answered, figuring that even a girl who has to stop evil witches from taking over the world could make time for kissage in there somewhere. He turned and walked away. As I watched him go, I could feel Jenna starting at me. “Fine,” she acknowledged with a dramatic roll of her eyes. “He’s a little dreamy.” I elbowed her gently in the side. “Thanks.” Jenna started to walk to the stairs. “You coming?” “Yeah,” I said. “I’ll be right up. I just want to take a quick look around down here.” “Why, so you can be even more depressed?” Actually, I wanted to stay downstairs just a little longer to see if anyone else showed up. So far, I’d seen nearly everyone I remembered from last year at Hex Hall. Had Cal been dragged here, too? Technically he hadn’t been a student, but Mrs. Casnoff had used his powers a lot last year. Would she still want him here? To Jenna, I just said, “Yeah, you know me. I like poking bruises.” “Okay. Get your Nancy Drew on.

But whatever my reasons, whatever my baggage, I take responsibility. I still made choices—many wrong choices. Can I blame Callum or anyone else for seeing only my past? I could try to tell Callum how I’ve changed—about my breakdown, my therapy, the changes I’ve made in the past two years. I haven’t just turned over a new leaf. I uprooted the whole plant before starting from a new seed. He wouldn’t believe it though. Callum is going to believe what he wants. Which serves my purposes just fine. He believes I’m still a rogue and I’ll force him to face his feelings about Serafina. She’ll get her happily-ever-after, and I’ll … well. I don’t know. I would disappear to my duchy, but if I don’t perform for Uncle, I won’t have that for long. He’ll find a way to turn the conservatorship into ownership.

Marra begin to feel embarrassed, not just for having dragged the others with her on this absurd mission, but also for having had the poor taste to have a breakdown in the middle of the road. “I’m sorry,” she said. Fenris helped her to her feet. His hand against her back was warm and strong. Bonedog lashed her shins with his tail. “Oh, my dear,” said Agnes, sliding her arm through Marra’s. “It’s all right. It’s all just a little overwhelming, isn’t it?” She found a slightly crumpled handkerchief and passed it over to Marra. “You’ve done so much and here we are and now it feels like there’s so much left to do, doesn’t it?” Marra accepted the handkerchief. If she’d had more energy, she’d be alarmed at how well the woman had read her. Yes. It did feel exactly like that. She had done so much and she was so tired and how could it only be the beginning?

are worthy of being met, you’ll have trouble attracting help and certainly trouble receiving it when it shows up. So how do you break the cycle and start feeling worthy of support so you can call it in and embrace it when it shows up? I’d start with having a dialogue with yourself in a journal or meditation, or simply on a walk, about what makes you feel like you’re not worthy of support. How did your mother express her needs? Was it directly, passive-aggressively, or not at all? How did you witness her getting her needs met? Through direct, kind communication, through having breakdowns, through manipulation, or some other way? What happened in your family growing up when you asked for a need to be met or you asked for help? What kind of response did you get? Answering these kinds of questions will start to shed some light on your blueprint around receiving

In the wake of his breakdown, Oswaldo had become hyperattuned to the way he, and people like him, were perceived. For his first three years at Yale, he'd been frustrated by these perceptions, feeling that they were inescapable, allowing that caged feeling to overwhelm him. The perspective granted him by two weeks of near total isolation had led him to believe that he––and in a much bigger way, Rob––had only propagated the ignorance of their peers. Because they did get stoned all the time, they did get angry, they did dress like thugs, they did talk shit about a college education that might set them up for fulfilling lives, they did set themselves apart. For Oswaldo, the issue had ceased to be a philosophical and historical one, and instead had come to revolve around a simple goal: to graduate from Yale without making that task harder than it needed to be. After all, that was the point of college––not freedom, not alcohol, not relationships, but to obtain a degree.

Many people are being dragged toward wholeness in their daily lives, but because they do not understand initiation rites, they cannot make sense of what is happening to them. They are being presented with the possibility of rebirth into a different life. Through failures, symptoms, inferiority feelings and overwhelming problems, they are being prodded to renounce life attachments that have become redundant. The possibility of rebirth constellates with the breakdown of what has gone before. But because they do not understand, people cling to the familiar, refuse to make the necessary sacrifices, resist their own growth. Unable to give up their habitual lives, they are unable to receive new life. Unless cultural rituals support the leap from one level of consciousness to another, there are no containing walls within which the process can happen. Without an understanding of myth or religion, without an understanding of the relationship between destruction and creation, death and rebirth, the individual suffers the mysteries of life as meaningless mayhem—alone.

The same rain the ghost is dancing in falls on me as I watch her carefree movements. I lift my own face toward the sky, and the cool rain mingles with the tears I am powerless to hold back. I close my eyes and let the rain wash the tears from my face as I breathe deeply, the scent of the summer rain like aromatherapy for my bruised and broken heart. I should call the ghost back, I think. I should get going; Aunt Edie is expecting me. But I don't move; I stand still, let the raindrops mingle with my tears, and allow myself to let go, to weep deeply, to feel the anguish I've held in so tightly for too long, the grief to which I've been afraid to surrender. I grieve for the deaths of Mom and Dad, for the pain of not having them in my life, the worry I feel at having had them so briefly. I grieve for the death of my dreams, the breakdown of my marriage, the emptiness I feel inside, the mantle of responsibility to heavy on my shoulders. I grieve for my children, the mistakes I've made, and the mistakes I see them making. I grieve for the loss of my birth mother. And I grieve for myself.

How to explain my heroic courtesy? I feel that my body was inflated by a mischievous boy. Once I was the size of a falcon, the size of a lion, once I was not the elephant I find I am. My pelt sags, and my master scolds me for a botched trick. I practiced it all night in my tent, so I was somewhat sleepy. People connect me with sadness and, often, rationality. Randall Jarrell compared me to Wallace Stevens, the American poet. I can see it in the lumbering tercets, but in my mind I am more like Eliot, a man of Europe, a man of cultivation. Anyone so ceremonious suffers breakdowns. I do not like the spectacular experiments with balance, the high-wire act and cones. We elephants are images of humility, as when we undertake our melancholy migrations to die. Did you know, though, that elephants were taught to write the Greek alphabet with their hooves? Worn out by suffering, we lie on our great backs, tossing grass up to heaven—as a distraction, not a prayer. That’s not humility you see on our long final journeys: it’s procrastination. It hurts my heavy body to lie down. —DAN CHIASSON, “The Elephant

It is the very impersonal quality of urban life, which is lived among strangers, that accounts for intensified religious feeling. For in the village of old, religion was a natural extension of the daily traditions and routine of life among the extended family; but migrations to the city brought Muslims into the anonymity of slum existence, and to keep the family together and the young from drifting into crime, religion has had to be reinvented in starker, more ideological form. In this way states weaken, or at least have to yield somewhat, to new and sometimes extreme kinds of nationalism and religiosity advanced by urbanization. Thus, new communities take hold that transcend traditional geography, even as they make for spatial patterns of their own. Great changes in history often happen obscurely.10 A Eurasia and North Africa of vast, urban concentrations, overlapping missile ranges, and sensational global media will be one of constantly enraged crowds, fed by rumors and half-truths transported at the speed of light by satellite channels across the rimlands and heartland expanse, from one Third World city to another. Conversely, the crowd, empowered by social media like Twitter and Facebook, will also be fed by the very truth that autocratic rulers have denied it. The crowd will be key in a new era where the relief map will be darkened by densely packed megacities—the crowd being a large group of people who abandon their individuality in favor of an intoxicating collective symbol. Elias Canetti, the Bulgarian-born Spanish Jew and Nobel laureate in literature, became so transfixed and terrified at the mob violence over inflation that seized Frankfurt and Vienna between the two world wars that he devoted much of his life to studying the human herd in all its manifestations. The signal insight of his book Crowds and Power, published in 1960, was that we all yearn to be inside some sort of crowd, for in a crowd—or a mob, for that matter—there is shelter from danger and, by inference, from loneliness. Nationalism, extremism, the yearning for democracy are all the products of crowd formations and thus manifestations of seeking to escape from loneliness. It is loneliness, alleviated by Twitter and Facebook, that ultimately leads to the breakdown of traditional authority and the erection of new kinds.

Hey,” I began, looking into his eyes. “I’m sorry I’ve been so…so pathetic since, like, the day we got married.” He smiled and took a swig of Dr Pepper. “You haven’t been pathetic,” he said. He was a terrible liar. “I haven’t?” I asked, incredulous, savoring the scrumptious red meat. “No,” he answered, taking another bite of steak and looking me squarely in the eye. “You haven’t.” I was feeling argumentative. “Have you forgotten about my inner ear disturbance, which caused me to vomit all across Australia?” He paused, then countered, “Have you forgotten about the car I rented us?” I laughed, then struck back. “Have you forgotten about the poisonous lobster I ordered us?” Then he pulled out all the stops. “Have you forgotten all the money we lost?” I refused to be thwarted. “Have you forgotten that I found out I was pregnant after we got back from our honeymoon and I called my parents to tell them and I didn’t get a chance because my mom left my dad and I went on to have a nervous breakdown and had morning sickness for six weeks and now my jeans don’t fit?” I was the clear winner here. “Have you forgotten that I got you pregnant?” he said, grinning. I smiled and took the last bite of my steak.

And don’t tell me again that you were ten years old. Your age has nothing to do with what I’m talking about. There are no big changes between ten and twenty—or ten and eighty, for that matter. You still can’t love a Jesus as much as you’d like to who did and said a couple of things he was at least reported to have said or done—and you know it. You’re constitutionally unable to love or understand any son of God who throws tables around. And you’re constitutionally unable to love or understand any son of God who says a human being, any human being—even a Professor Tupper—is more valuable to God than any soft, helpless Easter chick.” Franny was now facing directly into the sound of Zooey’s voice, sitting bolt upright, a wad of Kleenex clenched in one hand. Bloomberg was no longer in her lap. “I suppose you can,” she said, shrilling. “It’s beside the point whether I can or not. But, yes, as a matter of fact, I can. I don’t feel like going into it, but at least I’ve never tried, consciously or otherwise, to turn Jesus into St. Francis of Assisi to make him more ‘lovable’—which is exactly what ninety-eight per cent of the Christian world has always insisted on doing. Not that it’s to my credit. I don’t happen to be attracted to the St. Francis of Assisi type. But you are. And, in my opinion, that’s one of the reasons why you’re having this little nervous breakdown.

To speak of a communication failure implies a breakdown of some sort. Yet this does not accurately portray what occurs. In truth, communication difficulties arise not from breakdown but from the characteristics of the system itself. Despite promising beginnings in our intimate relationships, we tend over time to evolve a system of communication that suppresses rather than reveals information. Life is complicated, and confirming or disconfirming the well-being of a relationship takes effort. Once we are comfortably coupled, the intense, energy-consuming monitoring of courtship days is replaced by a simpler, more efficient method. Unable to witness our partners’ every activity or verify every nuance of meaning, we evolve a communication system based on trust. We gradually cease our attentive probing, relying instead on familiar cues and signals to stand as testament to the strength of the bond: the words “I love you,” holidays with the family, good sex, special times with shared friends, the routine exchange, “How was your day?” We take these signals as representative of the relationship and turn our monitoring energies elsewhere. ... Not only do the initiator’s negative signals tend to become incorporated into the existing routine, but, paradoxically, the initiator actively contributes to the impression that life goes on as usual. Even as they express their unhappiness, initiators work at emphasizing and maintaining the routine aspects of life with the other person, simultaneously giving signals that all is well. Unwilling to leave the relationship yet, they need to privately explore and evaluate the situation. The initiator thus contrives an appearance of participation,7 creating a protective cover that allows them to “return” if their alternative resources do not work out. Our ability to do this—to perform a role we are no longer enthusiastically committed to—is one of our acquired talents. In all our encounters, we present ourselves to others in much the same way as actors do, tailoring our performance to the role we are assigned in a particular setting.8 Thus, communication is always distorted. We only give up fragments of what really occurs within us during that specific moment of communication.9 Such fragments are always selected and arranged so that there is seldom a faithful presentation of our inner reality. It is transformed, reduced, redirected, recomposed.10 Once we get the role perfected, we are able to play it whether we are in the mood to go on stage or not, simply by reproducing the signals. What is true of all our encounters is, of course, true of intimate relationships. The nature of the intimate bond is especially hard to confirm or disconfirm.11 The signals produced by each partner, while acting out the partner role, tend to be interpreted by the other as the relationship.12 Because the costs of constantly checking out what the other person is feeling and doing are high, each partner is in a position to be duped and misled by the other.13 Thus, the initiator is able to keep up appearances that all is well by falsifying, tailoring, and manipulating signals to that effect. The normal routine can be used to attest to the presence of something that is not there. For example, initiators can continue the habit of saying, “I love you,” though the passion is gone. They can say, “I love you” and cover the fact that they feel disappointment or anger, or that they feel nothing at all. Or, they can say, “I love you” and mean, “I like you,” or, “We have been through a lot together,” or even “Today was a good day.

It’s so weird that it’s Christmas Eve,” I said, clinking my glass to his. It was the first time I’d spent the occasion apart from my parents. “I know,” he said. “I was just thinking that.” We both dug into our steaks. I wished I’d made myself two. The meat was tender and flavorful, and perfectly medium-rare. I felt like Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby, when she barely seared a steak in the middle of the afternoon and devoured it like a wolf. Except I didn’t have a pixie cut. And I wasn’t harboring Satan’s spawn. “Hey,” I began, looking into his eyes. “I’m sorry I’ve been so…so pathetic since, like, the day we got married.” He smiled and took a swig of Dr Pepper. “You haven’t been pathetic,” he said. He was a terrible liar. “I haven’t?” I asked, incredulous, savoring the scrumptious red meat. “No,” he answered, taking another bite of steak and looking me squarely in the eye. “You haven’t.” I was feeling argumentative. “Have you forgotten about my inner ear disturbance, which caused me to vomit all across Australia?” He paused, then countered, “Have you forgotten about the car I rented us?” I laughed, then struck back. “Have you forgotten about the poisonous lobster I ordered us?” Then he pulled out all the stops. “Have you forgotten all the money we lost?” I refused to be thwarted. “Have you forgotten that I found out I was pregnant after we got back from our honeymoon and I called my parents to tell them and I didn’t get a chance because my mom left my dad and I went on to have a nervous breakdown and had morning sickness for six weeks and now my jeans don’t fit?” I was the clear winner here. “Have you forgotten that I got you pregnant?” he said, grinning. I smiled and took the last bite of my steak. Marlboro Man looked down at my plate. “Want some of mine?” he asked. He’d only eaten half of his. “Sure,” I said, ravenously and unabashedly sticking my fork into a big chuck of his rib eye. I was so grateful for so many things: Marlboro Man, his outward displays of love, the new life we shared together, the child growing inside my body. But at that moment, at that meal, I was so grateful to be a carnivore again.

When I had the third breakdown, the mini-breakdown, I was in the late stages of writing this book. Since I could not cope with communication of any kind during that period, I put an auto-response message on my E-mail that said I was temporarily unreachable, and a similar message on my answering machine. Acquaintances who had suffered depression knew what to make of these outgoing messages. They wasted no time. I had dozens and dozens of calls from people offering whatever they could offer and doing it glowingly. “I will come to stay the minute you call,” wrote Laura Anderson, who also sent a wild profusion of orchids, “and I’ll stay as long as it takes you to get better. If you’d prefer, you are of course always welcome here; if you need to move in for a year, I’ll be here for you. I hope you know that I will always be here for you.” Claudia Weaver wrote with questions: “Is it better for you to have someone check in with you every day or are the messages too much of a burden? If they are a burden, you needn’t answer this one, but whatever you need—just call me, anytime, day or night.” Angel Starkey called often from the pay phone at her hospital to see if I was okay. “I don’t know what you need,” she said, “but I’m worrying about you all the time. Please take care of yourself. Come and see me if you’re feeling really bad, anytime. I’d really like to see you. If you need anything, I’ll try to get it for you. Promise me you won’t hurt yourself.” Frank Rusakoff wrote me a remarkable letter and reminded me about the precious quality of hope. “I long for news that you are well and off on another adventure,” he wrote, and signed the letter, “Your friend, Frank.” I had felt committed in many ways to all these people, but the spontaneous outpouring astounded me. Tina Sonego said she’d call in sick for work if I needed her—or that she’d buy me a ticket and take me to someplace relaxing. “I’m a good cook too,” she told me. Janet Benshoof dropped by the house with daffodils and optimistic lines from favorite poems written in her clear hand and a bag so she could come sleep on my sofa, just so I wouldn’t be alone. It was an astonishing responsiveness.

Unconditional blame is the tendency to explain all difficulties exclusively as the consequence of forces beyond your influence, to see yourself as an absolute victim of external circumstances. Every person suffers the impact of factors beyond his control, so we are all, in a sense, victims. We are not, however, absolute victims. We have the ability to respond to our circumstances and influence how they affect us. In contrast, the unconditional blamer defines his victim-identity by his helplessness, disowning any power to manage his life and assigning causality only to that which is beyond his control. Unconditional blamers believe that their problems are always someone else’s fault, and that there’s nothing they could have done to prevent them. Consequently, they believe that there’s nothing they should do to address them. Unconditional blamers feel innocent, unfairly burdened by others who do things they “shouldn’t” do because of maliciousness or stupidity. According to the unconditional blamer, these others “ought” to fix the problems they created. Blamers live in a state of self-righteous indignation, trying to control people around them with their accusations and angry demands. What the unconditional blamer does not see is that in order to claim innocence, he has to relinquish his power. If he is not part of the problem, he cannot be part of the solution. In fact, rather than being the main character of his life, the blamer is a spectator. Watching his own suffering from the sidelines, he feels “safe” because his misery is always somebody else’s fault. Blame is a tranquilizer. It soothes the blamer, sheltering him from accountability for his life. But like any drug, its soothing effect quickly turns sour, miring him in resignation and resentment. In order to avoid anxiety and guilt, the blamer must disown his freedom and power and see himself as a plaything of others. The blamer feels victimized at work. His job is fraught with letdowns, betrayals, disappointments, and resentments. He feels that he is expected to fix problems he didn’t create, yet his efforts are never recognized. So he shields himself with justifications. Breakdowns are never his fault, nor are solutions his responsibility. He is not accountable because it is always other people who failed to do what they should have done. Managers don’t give him direction as they should, employees don’t support him as they should, colleagues don’t cooperate with him as they should, customers demand much more than they should, suppliers don’t respond as they should, senior executives don’t lead the organization as they should, administration systems don’t work as they should—the whole company is a mess. In addition, the economy is weak, the job market tough, the taxes confiscatory, the regulations crippling, the interest rates exorbitant, and the competition fierce (especially because of those evil foreigners who pay unfairly low wages). And if it weren’t difficult enough to survive in this environment, everybody demands extraordinary results. The blamer never tires of reciting his tune, “Life is not fair!

(Summer of 2010) Chiaz Natherth- It was just going to be a typical summer day. I am at the local watering hole with my bud Melvin Shezor; we were just there to gaze at the girl gaze, sitting on lawn chairs. I had warm lemonade in my right hand at the time. I am looking around at all the bodies that are bobbing in the water; they all just seem to blend. The lifeguard is blowing her whistle while screaming at the little kids that are running around. Some stunning bodies are smacking the cold blue water with great speed, from the high dive. But- there is no more perfect figure there than hers. Everyone else seems to fade away out of my vision, along with all the ear-shattering noises. Bryan Adams ‘Heaven’ is playing in the background, and it seemed to be pronounced to my senses. When I am looking at her, it is like she is moving in slow motion, swimming across the pool. She climbed up the ladder and out of the pool. Her body dripping with water… what a moment, there is even water dripping down her chest. She looks amazing in that petite pink bikini. I was thinking to myself, that is a very cute looking camel-toe you got showing there Nevaeh! I never knew that she had a heart-shaped belly button piercing, when did that happen? Also, I could tell that her swimsuit was made by her, just like most of the sun-dresses she wears in the summertime too. Because it was not like any others I have ever seen around, it is cute, somewhat skimpy, and tailored to her perfect body. The fabric was not meant to get wet, it was somewhat see-through, yet she did not know, though it looks very good what can I say. She is walking towards me while running her fingers through her long brown hair. ‘I was thinking this is too good to be for real.’ She walked by and said ‘hi!’ and I was at loss for words. She was already gone, but I still babbled something like ‘Ahh-he-oll-o.’ At that point, into the changing room, she went, and I just sat there trying to fathom what had just happened. Melvin Shezor- ‘Chiaz! Ah, Chiaz! Hello, earth to Chiaz, snap out of its dude.’ Chiaz Naztherth- ‘She is so fine! I would not mind having her on my arm.’ Melvin Shezor- ‘Yah, the man she is not bad. But- isn’t she into girls though. So, do you like Nevaeh?’ Chiaz Naztherth- ‘I do not think that she is, and well… Yes, did you see her in that swimsuit? She is adorable in every way.’ Melvin Shezor- ‘Really is that so? Go talk to her!’ Chiaz Naztherth- ‘No way!’ Melvin Shezor- ‘Why not, you pussy!’ Chiaz Naztherth- ‘If Alissa finds out that I like her, or even looked at her I am going to die.’ Melvin Shezor- ‘Ha, it sucks to be you man.’ Chiaz Natherth- ‘Hey, I will see you later, I got to go.’ (Text messages are going off… like crazy) Melvin Shezor- ‘Pu-ss-y!’ (Shouting as Chiaz Natherth is walking out the exit gate.) (Chiaz- He just waved it off, with the finger that is not supposed to be used in public, and does not think any more about it from that point on.) Chiaz Naztherth- Summer is over! Yet she is with him… he is so unconfident in himself that he has to follow me around. He gives me vain advice on what to do, and how to do it, yet I would have to say I need to stand up for myself more than what I do, yet I do not because of her. He attempts to belittle me, with his words of temperament to her. These results lead to her having breakdowns, where she is feeling miserable because she is stuck in the middle. She does not know what to do! She doesn't know how to feel! She does not want to hurt anyone's feelings, yet she is the one that is left to choke on her tears. Yes, I will save you long before you drowned!

diligеnсе. Diligеnсе is the соѕt оf frееdоm from thе ассumulаtiоn оf ѕtrеѕѕ. Begin and end уоur day in a rеlаxеd аnd dеtасhеd wау. Lеt the little dingѕ аnd рrеѕѕurеѕ of thе dау flоw away frоm уоu, likе wаtеr оff a duck's back. Yоu саnnot lеt уоur house go but уоu саn lеt thе duѕt go. Likеwiѕе, you cannot lеt lifе gо, but уоu саn lеt unрrоduсtivе оr nеgаtivе thоughtѕ and feelings go. Clеаn one rооm аt a time, оnе thought or fееling аt a timе, оnе mоmеnt at a time. Enter thе mоmеnt in a ѕtаtе оf саlm ассерtаnсе of еvеrуоnе аnd everything without thinking аnуthing оf it. If уоu can сhаngе it, dо ѕо; if not, drop it. Thiѕ is thе dеfinitiоn оf love, wiѕdоm аnd mеditаtiоn. Bе a lover, not a loser. Dо not lеt thе wоrld ѕuсk уоu in. Kеер a rеѕресtаblе distance frоm it. Thе external wоrld аlѕо consists оf your thoughts and

Historical influences contributing to the protean self can be traced back to the Enlightenment and even the Renaissance in the West, and to at least the Meiji Restoration of the nineteenth century in Japan. These influences include the dislocations of rapid historical change, the mass media revolution, and the threat of human extinction. All have undergone an extraordinary acceleration during the last half of the twentieth century, causing a radical breakdown of prior communities and sources of authority. At the same time, ways of reconstituting the self in the midst of radical uncertainty have also evolved. So much so that the protean self in our time has become a modus vivendi, a “mode of living.” This is especially true in our own country. The same historical forces can, however, produce an apparently opposite reaction: the closing off of the person and the constriction of self-process. It can take the form of widespread psychic numbing—diminished capacity or inclination to feel—and a general sense of stasis and meaninglessness. Or it can lead to an expression of totalism, of demand for absolute dogma and a monolithic self. A prominent form of totalism in our day is fundamentalism. Broadly understood, fundamentalism includes a literalized doctrine, religious or political, enclosed upon itself by the immutable words of the holy books. The doctrine is rendered both sacred in the name of a past of perfect harmony that never was, and central to a quest for collective revitalization. But the totalistic or fundamentalist response is a reaction to proteanism and to the fear of chaos. While proteanism is able to function in a world of uncertainty and ambiguity, fundamentalism wants to wipe out that world in favor of a claim to definitive truth and unalterable moral certainty.

Delve into the unconscious, to learn the codes inside the unconscious, to discover what are its views of reality. No amount of conscious desire for something can overcome an unconscious belief that if you had that thing, it would destroy you. Think of your father who implied that he would not accept a son who earned more money than he did. You might remember the time you had a nervous breakdown when your first love broke up with you. Or was it when you got into a schoolyard brawl and realized at some level that you wanted that kid dead, perhaps as you pummeled him into unconsciousness? Or perhaps what occurred was much more subtle during the early years of your adolescences, as you very deeply inside began to have sexual feelings for your sister and became disgusted with your body and sex in general. Gradually de-layer the unconscious beliefs that reside silently, but deadly, in your unconscious. In trying to help you to survive, the unconscious could be in fact destroying you. Recall again the diagram of the iceberg in this book; how meditating on it reveals that the world is, in reality, made up of almost seven billion unconscious minds interacting with one another.

Negative emotions can actually be helpful. Sometimes, you need to touch rock-bottom before you can reach the top. Even the toughest people on earth become depressed. Elon Musk never imagined he would have a mental breakdown, but he did and he bounced back. After losing his fiancée, Abraham Lincoln was depressed for months. This tragic event didn’t prevent him from becoming president

This is the most common form and generally has a gradual onset. Sufferers generally feel muscle weakness and deterioration, breakdown in cartilage, and possible bone spurs. This form comes with pain that can also progress but can also be relieved with rest. Osteoarthritis is a problem in feet when people are overweight due to the amount of pressure on the many joints in the foot.

While the inducement of emotional collapse can be used by political and religious leaders for the purpose of brainwashing individuals or attaining converts, emotional breakdowns had potential therapeutic value. As a psychiatrist, Sargant championed the technique of purposely stimulating feelings of anger and anxiety in neurotic patients until an emotional collapse erased from their nervous system the neurotic thoughts and behaviors which had previously plagued them.

Meditation can generate several different kinds of altered states like strong emotional swings. Some of these states may be fun, but they are not the aim of exploring the whole universe of phenomena — seeing, listening, feeling, eating, touching, and thought — and of seeking our liberation amid the storm rather than demanding that the phenomenon match our desires. Practices of contemplation are powerful. When you work alone, and feel you're not free, please protect yourself. This dangerous feeling could include extreme fear, stress, uncertainty or even signs of the physical. Stay to speak with an instructor, a psychologist or a professional who can educate you about the procedure if something like this happens. Without wonder meditation is not a panacea. In fact when asked the spiritual leader Jiddu Krishnamurti, "What good is all this contemplation doing?" It's no use at all," he responded. "Meditation isn't guaranteed to make you wealthy, gorgeous or famous. That's a mystery. You do want to achieve your goal, but you need to let go of the target-oriented, overachieving, task-centered way of doing and remain in the state of being that helps to incorporate your mind and body in your meditation. It is the paradox of the Zen instruction “Try not to try.” What to Do in an Emergency A professional teacher's guide is often required. A group called the Spiritual Emergence Network advises people suffering from a spiritual emergency and lets qualified psychologists and physicians discern between a psychological emergency and a mental breakdown. Another way to tell the difference is that the person who sees visions in a spiritual disaster realizes they are delusions, whereas in a psychotic breakdown the person believes the dreams are real. If you have feelings that are extremely unpleasant and no trainer is present, immediately stop the practice and concentrate on simple earthy stuff to get yourself focused. Dig into the yard, go out walking or jogging, get a workout, take a bath or a shower and eat heavy stuff. Slow down your spiritual awakening when you feel threatened by it.

Feeling sick again, I close my eyes. “I had a mental breakdown.” “A single, isolated episode of catatonic psychosis,” he replies in a soothing tone. Like it’s really not so bad since it only happened once. “You’ve been with us for some time now.” “How long?” “Three months.” Since the start of summer. I never took a trip to Paris. That trip was all inside my head.

The schizoid repression of feeling, and retreat from emotional relationships, may, however, go much further and produce a serious breakdown of constructive effort. Then the unhappy sufferer from incapacitating conflicts will succumb to real futility: nothing seems worth doing, interest dies, the world seems unreal, the ego feels depersonalized. Suicide may be attempted in a cold, calculated way to the accompaniment of such thoughts as 'I am useless, bad for everybody, I'll be best out of the way.' One patient who had never reached that point, said: 'I feel I love people in an impersonal way; it seems a false position, hypocritical. Perhaps I don't do any loving. I'm terrified when I see young people go off and being successful and I'm at a dead bottom, absolute dereliction, excommunicate.

THE LESSON OF THE HOURGLASS Dr. James Gordon Gilkey preached a sermon in 1944 called “Gaining Emotional Poise,” which was reprinted in Reader’s Digest and became a classic almost overnight. He had found, through many years of counseling, that one of the main causes of breakdown, worry, and all sorts of other personal problems, was this bad mental habit of feeling that you should be doing many things now. Looking at the hourglass on his desk, he had an inspiration. Just as only one grain of sand could pass through the hourglass, so could we only do one thing, at a time. It is not the job, but the way we insist on thinking of the job that causes the trouble. Most of us feel hurried and harried, said Dr. Gilkey, because we form a false mental picture of our duties, obligations, and responsibilities. There seem to be a dozen different things pressing in on us at any given moment; a dozen different things to do; a dozen different problems to solve; a dozen different strains to endure. No matter how hurried or harried our existence may be, said Dr. Gilkey, this mental picture is entirely false. Even on the busiest day the crowded hours come to us one moment at a time; no matter how many problems, tasks, or strains we face, they always come to us in single file, which is the only way they can come. To get a true mental picture, he suggested visualizing an hourglass, with the many grains of sand dropping one by one. This mental picture will bring emotional poise, just as the false mental picture will bring emotional unrest.

As much as it burned me inside to miss my sister’s big day, I had to put my mental health first, and there was no way I was about to undo my hard work for anything. And that is exactly what I did from that point forward. My mental health was the most important thing to me. If I wasn’t feeling how something was making me feel, I let it go, whether it was people, jobs, places. I stopped entertaining things that were draining me.

I had thought that being spat into the world of adulthood, no longer with a home and a bed that I could call my own, thanks to the breakdown of my family, was as lost as I would ever feel, but I was wrong. Nothing had been more disorientating and shattering than losing my way internally as I battled with poor mental health.

Black people suffer poor mental health as a result of the grind of surviving in a space that seems to act against you, undermining you, pushing you aside, sometimes unconsciously, making you feel as if you’re living in a different reality. Rather than listen to what Black people have to say, they are shouted down, their experience is denied, and it becomes too exhausting to address the ignorance. This may be the most ‘open and tolerant’ country, but tolerance isn’t enough when it comes to racism. People need to call it out or at the very least acknowledge its existence or we will be speaking with a completely separate set of facts. Being challenged on the existence of racism is tiresome, psychologically debilitating, and deeply depressing. I’m not surprised that so many of us break down living here in the UK.

Ditching straws has recently become an environmental cause—but did you know that sucking on straws causes wrinkles? The movement your mouth makes when it grasps the straw encourages the breakdown of collagen and elasticity more quickly, both of which your skin requires for support. As a result, you get unnecessary wrinkles and lines that make you look like you’ve been smoking, even if you haven’t! If you only use a straw once in a while, it’s no big deal. But if you’re sucking your cold brew coffee or

I’ve managed to get some work done nearly every day of my adult life, without impressive financial success. Yet I would do it all over again in a hot second, mistakes and doldrums and breakdowns and all. Sometimes I could not tell you exactly why, especially when it feels pointless and pitiful, like Sisyphus with cash-flow problems.

Even the worst news story isn't as emotionally formidable as a real feeling related to your actual experiences