“
I make it through the first two weeks of school without a nuclear meltdown.
”
”
Laurie Halse Anderson (Speak)
“
It is better to stay single and wait for the one that makes sense then to marry someone that makes absolutely no sense. The moment you settle is when the one person that makes all the sense in the world shows up and Satan sits back and enjoys your spiritual meltdown.
”
”
Shannon L. Alder
“
...the only thing that had tethered her to the earth had been him and it was strange, but she felt welded to him on some core level now. He had seen her at her absolute worst, at her weakest and most insane, and he hadn't looked away. He hadn't judged and he hadn't been burned.
It was as if in the heat of her meltdown they had melted together.
This was more than emotion. It was a matter of soul.
”
”
J.R. Ward (Lover Mine (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #8))
“
I need some beef and broccoli before I face any more Mr. Darcy. It's a truth universally acknowledged that if you watch too much television on am empty stomach, your head falls off."
"If your head fall off, " Tessa said, "the hairdressing industry would go into an economic meltdown
”
”
Cassandra Clare (The Last Stand of the New York Institute (The Bane Chronicles, #9))
“
Meltdown when we get home. Mom keeps chocolate for meltdowns. Daddy always has them when Uncle Jonas visits."
-David Lyons from Tanner's Scheme-
”
”
Lora Leigh (Tanner's Scheme (Breeds, #8))
“
No!" Jimmy protested.
”
”
Ben Elton (Meltdown)
“
Isobel moved farther into the kitchen, not knowing whether to be relieved that her mother hadn't had an atomic meltdown, or mortified that she'd taken it upon herself to play head chef with the nearest thing Trenton High had to a Dark Lord.
”
”
Kelly Creagh (Nevermore (Nevermore, #1))
“
Will you marry me, Olivia? You are the only woman I know how to love. The only woman I want to love.” He doesn’t lower himself to his knee and he doesn’t need to. I am rocking on the edge of an emotional meltdown as is
”
”
Tarryn Fisher (The Opportunist (Love Me with Lies, #1))
“
Gideon cupped my face in his hands and kissed me, our flavors mingling. “Thank you.”
“What are you thanking me for? You did all the work.”
“There’s no work involved in fucking you, angel.” His slow smile was pure satiated male. “I’m grateful for the privilege.”
I sank back onto my heels. “You’re killing me. You can’t be that gorgeous and sexy and say stuff like that. It’s overload. It fries my brain. Sends me into a meltdown.”
His smile widened and he kissed me again. “I know the feeling.
”
”
Sylvia Day (Entwined with You (Crossfire, #3))
“
Life gives us a flair of awareness in the breeze of our daily journey and offers a free reign to explore what we are, to experience what we are not and to find out what we may become: a free ride until everything melts down into the indistinct and indefinite, while walking up to the ultimate gate of non-existence. ("Living on probation")
”
”
Erik Pevernagie
“
Sometimes it takes a meltdown to cool down.
”
”
Evinda Lepins
“
Status: Naked. On bed. With boy. Systems overheating. Sudden doubts multiplying. Meltdown imminent.
”
”
J.C. Lillis (How to Repair a Mechanical Heart (Mechanical Hearts, #1))
“
in moments of crisis, people are willing to hand over a great deal of power to anyone who claims to have a magic cure—whether the crisis is a financial meltdown or, as the Bush administration would later show, a terrorist attack.
”
”
Naomi Klein (The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism)
“
But the economic meltdown should have undone, once and for all, the idea of poverty as a personal shortcoming or dysfunctional state of mind. The lines at unemployment offices and churches offering free food includes strivers as well as slackers, habitual optimists as well as the chronically depressed. When and if the economy recovers we can never allow ourselves to forget how widespread our vulnerability is, how easy it is to spiral down toward destitution.
”
”
Barbara Ehrenreich (Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America)
“
Your blessings are very important to melt down the stony hearts.
”
”
Amit Ray (Nonviolence: The Transforming Power)
“
You'll feel better after a new pair of jeans and a triple fudge meltdown. And if that doesn't work, we'll watch Magic Mike."
Cara laughed as tears welled in her eyes. "Let's hope it doesn't come to that.
”
”
Melissa Landers (Invaded (Alienated, #2))
“
One: He's Michael. Two: he's scheduled for a meltdown. Three: Lia had been miss Rosy Sunshine since she got downstairs, and Lia doesn't do roses or sunshine unless she's screwing with someone or deeply upset.
-Dean Redding
”
”
Jennifer Lynn Barnes (Bad Blood (The Naturals, #4))
“
I'm talking to myself in two different personas now. I'm reaching for a full-throttle meltdown and why not? Why stop halfway? Why not just go for it, jump on and ride the wave?
”
”
C.K. Kelly Martin (My Beating Teenage Heart)
“
We have to keep other people at arm's length, because letting them see our hyperfixations, meltdowns, obsessions, and outbursts could mean losing their respect. But locking ourselves away means we can't ever be fully loved.
”
”
Devon Price (Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity)
“
Finally," Magnus said, grabbing a ten-dollar bill from a table near the door, and he buzzed the delivery man in. "I need some beef and broccoli before I face any more Mr. Darcy. It's a truth universally acknowledged that if you watch too much television on an empty stomach, your head falls off."
"If your head fell off," Tessa said, "the hairdressing industry would go into an economic meltdown.
”
”
Cassandra Clare (The Bane Chronicles)
“
The idea that meltdowns are manipulative is absurd and a cause of gross misunderstanding between autistics and the rest of the world.
”
”
Fern Brady (Strong Female Character)
“
I’m sure Keefe won’t mind letting you join our skill lessons, though,” she suggested.
Fits snorted. “Great.”
“Aw, it’s not so bad. I know, it sounds like it’d be a disaster. But... the lessons have actually been pretty awesome. I think I might’ve had a meltdown without them- but don’t ever yell him I said that, okay. He’ll start wearing tunics that say Fosters Hero or something.”
“Sounds about right,” Fitz mumbled.
His eyes drifted to her hands and she realized she was fidgeting with the pins Keefe had given her.
“Well... I’m glad he’s been there for you,” he said quietly.
“Me too.
”
”
Shannon Messenger (Flashback (Keeper of the Lost Cities, #7))
“
You think I look like a teletubby?
”
”
Ben Elton (Meltdown)
“
Considering some of the things I’ve done, touching another man’s dick is not exactly going to send me into a moral meltdown.
”
”
Santino Hassell (After Midnight)
“
I think everyone has one day like this, and some people have more than one. It's the day of the accident, the midlife crisis, the breakdown, the meltdown, the walkout, the sellout, the giving up, giving away, or giving in. The day you stop drinking, or the day you start. The day you know things will never be the same again.
”
”
Heather Sellers (You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know: A True Story of Family, Face Blindness, and Forgiveness)
“
No one can make you 'better' emotionally, mentally, spiritually or physically. You have to find this for yourself. You have to taste that brutal moment when you're crying in a corner of the room, curled up on the floor and you think this is your end. You have to fight to stand up, literally. And you have to walk over to your reflection and scream, scream it all out. Then you have pick up your sword and fight and never quit. This is your life. Don't let those bastards win.
”
”
Crystal Woods (Write like no one is reading)
“
Why were children the only ones who ever got to melt down?
”
”
Yūko Tsushima (Territory of Light)
“
Sometimes I swear adulthood is staring at your phone and wondering which of your friends has enough time to deal with your latest emotional meltdown, then realizing none of them do.
”
”
Jessica Joyce (The Ex Vows)
“
Picture yourself when you were five. in fact, dig out a photo of little you at that time and tape it to your mirror. How would you treat her, love her, feed her? How would you nurture her if you were the mother of little you? I bet you would protect her fiercely while giving her space to spread her itty-bitty wings. she’d get naps, healthy food, imagination time, and adventures into the wild. If playground bullies hurt her feelings, you’d hug her tears away and give her perspective. When tantrums or meltdowns turned her into a poltergeist, you’d demand a loving time-out in the naughty chair. From this day forward I want you to extend that same compassion to your adult self.
”
”
Kris Carr
“
It’s not simply that these “cool dudes” deny climate science because it threatens to upend their dominance-based worldview. It is that their dominance-based worldview provides them with the intellectual tools to write off huge swaths of humanity, and indeed, to rationalize profiting from the meltdown.
”
”
Naomi Klein (This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate)
“
Maybe she exhausted herself mid-meltdown. Like when toddlers fall asleep in the height of their tantrum.
”
”
L.J. Shen (The Hunter (Boston Belles, #1))
“
It is good to have many personae, to make collections, sew up several, collect them as we go along in life. As we become older, with such a collection at our behest, we find we can portray any aspect of self most anytime we wish. However, at some point, most particularly as one grows into past mid-life and on into old age, one's personas shift and meld in mysterious ways. Eventually, there is a kind of 'meltdown', a loss of personae complete, thereby revealing what would, in its greatest light, be called 'the true self.
”
”
Clarissa Pinkola Estés (Women Who Run With the Wolves)
“
People in that crowd want to make poverty history, but NOT if they have to pay for it themselves
”
”
Ben Elton (Meltdown)
“
Her body went into meltdown, overwhelmed and unsure whether to heat up in arousal or panic under his scrutiny. Bloody hell. Nobody should be that sinful. A rich, talented, bad boy all rolled up into a package of I-don't-give-a-shit, I-know-how-good-I-look.
”
”
Eden Summers (Passionate Addiction (Reckless Beat, #2))
“
There is a kind of bravery to our condition, I reckon: brought into being without an explanation, in a potentially infinite and apparently dead universe, and expected to just get on with it as though nothing strange is going on. Well it fucking is. And it's all right to have a meltdown about the whole affair from time to time, faced with the pressures of modern existence, trying to be a good human and a good worker and a good son/daughter/parent, trying to be a good citizen, trying to be wise without condescension but uninhibited without recklessness, trying to just muddle through without making any silly decisions, trying to align with the correct political opinions, trying to stay thin, trying to be attractive, trying to be smart, trying to find the ideal partner, trying to stay financially secure, trying to just find some modest corner of meaning and belonging and sanity to go and sit in, and all the while living on the edge of dying forever.
”
”
Exurb1a (The Prince of Milk)
“
We won’t always be strong. Sometimes we’ll blow it. Sometimes we’ll have a meltdown that makes even the dog worry. Sometimes we’ll do the exact opposite of what’s best.
”
”
Holley Gerth (You're Going to Be Okay: Encouraging Truth Your Heart Needs to Hear, Especially on the Hard Days)
“
Patient opportunism, buttressed by a contrarian attitude and a strong balance sheet, can yield amazing profits during meltdowns.
”
”
Howard Marks (The Most Important Thing: Uncommon Sense for The Thoughtful Investor)
“
I’m sure Keefe won’t mind letting you join our skill lessons, though,” she suggested.
Fits snorted. “Great.”
“Aw, it’s not so bad. I know, it sounds like it’d be a disaster. But... the lessons have actually been pretty awesome. I think I might’ve had a meltdown without them- but don’t ever tell him I said that, okay. He’ll start wearing tunics that say Fosters Hero or something.”
“Sounds about right,” Fitz mumbled.
His eyes drifted to her hands and she realized she was fidgeting with the pins Keefe had given her.
“Well... I’m glad he’s been there for you,” he said quietly.
“Me too..
”
”
Shannon Messenger (Flashback (Keeper of the Lost Cities, #7))
“
Life-transforming ideas have always come to me through books.”
- Bell Hooks
”
”
Win Quier (Jeremiah's Journey: Gaining Our Autistic Son by Losing Him to the System)
“
As we actually taste the flavor of what he's teaching, we begin to see that it's not proverbs for daily living, or ways of being virtuous. He's proposing a total meltdown and recasting of human consciousness, bursting through the tiny acorn-selfhood that we arrived on the planet with into the oak tree of our fully realized personhood. He pushes us toward it, teases us, taunts us, encourages us, and ultimately walks us there.
”
”
Cynthia Bourgeault (The Wisdom Jesus: Transforming Heart and Mind)
“
The political triumph of Donald Trump is a symbol and symptom—not cause or origin—of our imperial meltdown. Trump is neither alien nor extraneous to American culture and history. In fact, he is as American as apple pie. Yet he is a sign of our spiritual bankruptcy—all spectacle and no substance, all narcissism and no empathy, all appetite and greed and no wisdom and maturity.
”
”
Cornel West (Race Matters: With a New Introduction)
“
One day I waited for her to go to work, and the instant I was alone with Perla, I snapped.
“My fucking life is ruled by more protocols than a Jane Austen character!”
It might have been the nerdiest meltdown in history.
”
”
Romina Garber (Lobizona (Wolves of No World, #1))
“
Ryke says I need to let it out.
To scream.
But I just saw Rose's meltdown, and all it really did was worry her husband, guilt Lo and cause Lily's eyes to bug out of her head.
Why scream if it just hurts everyone around you?
”
”
Becca Ritchie (Hothouse Flower (Calloway Sisters #2))
“
There was an extraordinary amount to process, and my brain was now functioning normally, or at least int the manner that I was accustomed to. The meltdown was perhaps the psychological equivalent of a reboot following an overload.
”
”
Graeme Simsion (The Rosie Effect (Don Tillman, #2))
“
After a quick meltdown in the bathroom, I went downstairs. When I turned the corner at the bottom of the basement steps, Jonah lept at me, waving a plastic bag in my face.
I'd never been so happy to see a Country Market bag in my life.
”
”
Carrie Harris (Bad Taste in Boys (Kate Grable, #1))
“
But I had to admit that maybe the reason I'd had a meltdown wasn't just about the shower. I think the shower door was, like, a metaphor. It represented everything that was bad.
”
”
Sarra Manning (Adorkable)
“
Hanks grin almost sent me into meltdown. The kind where I killed him, but first I would stick my tongue down his throat and ride him till he was blind.
”
”
Robyn Peterman (Ready to Were (Shift Happens, #1))
“
When emotional parents disintegrate, they take their children with them into their personal meltdown. Their children experience their despair, rage, or hatred in all its intensity.
”
”
Lindsay C. Gibson (Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents)
“
It’s okay to have a meltdown. Just don’t unpack and live there.
”
”
Hoda Kotb (I Really Needed This Today: Words to Live By)
“
Nothing touches your skin of sweat
(meltdown of oceanic kisses)
when the purple light
whispers to the moon
in silent moonlit clarity
”
”
Bear Step
“
It's painfully obvious to both of us that you're dangerously close to a sexless-related meltdown. And I went to Alibi last girls' night and there were plenty of straight people there, too, you know, but um. I mean, there were also lots of—"
"People!" Jon shouts, "Plenty of people. With, uh, orifices.
”
”
seventhswan (Drunk Text)
“
Gratitude lifted my baseline mood up from being constantly seared by the pain of existence to living a largely satisfying life. Joy returned for the first time in a long time. I laughed easily, enjoyed the company of friends, hated myself less. I felt mostly like I had before my recent meltdown…effective, happyish.
”
”
Stephanie Foo (What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma)
“
Starting in 1792 with George Washington, there were financial crises every ten to fifteen years. Panics, bank runs, credit freezes, crashes, depressions. People lost their farms, families were wiped out. This went on for more than a hundred years, until the Great Depression, when Oklahoma turned to dust. "We can do better than this." Americans said. "We don't need to go back to the boom-and-bust cycle." The Great Depression produced three regulations:
The FDIC-your bank deposits were safe.
Glass-Steagall-banks couldn't go crazy with your money.
The SEC-stock markets would be tightly controlled.
For fifty years, these rules kept America from having another financial crisis. Not one panic or meltdown or freeze. They gave Americans security and prosperity. Banking was dull. The country produced the greatest middle class the world had ever seen.
”
”
Elizabeth Warren
“
Kip nervously cleared his throat and said, "I didn't get into detail about our relationship, although the whole world knows we're a couple because of the on-ice meltdown I had when you were injured.
”
”
Stephani Hecht (Cup Check (Blue Line Hockey, #3))
“
But you haven't tried. You haven't tried once. First you refused to admit that there was a menace at all! Then you reposed an absolutely blind faith in the Emperor! Now you've shifted it to Hari Seldon. Throughout you have invariably relied on authority or on the past—never on yourselves."
His fists balled spasmodically. "It amounts to a diseased attitude—a conditioned reflex that shunts aside the independence of your minds whenever it is a question of opposing authority. There seems no doubt ever in your minds that the Emperor is more powerful than you are, or Hari Seldon Wiser. And that's wrong don't you see?"
For some reason, no one cared to answer him.
Hardin continued: "It isn't just you. It's the whole Galaxy. Pirenne heard Lord Dorwin's idea of scientific research. Lord Dorwin thought the way to be a good archaeologist was to read all the books on the subject—written by men who were dead for centuries. He thought that the way to solve archaeological puzzles was to weight the opposing authorities. And Pirenne listened and made no objections. Don't you see that there's something wrong with that?"
Again the note of near-pleading in his voice.
Again no answer. He went on: "And you men and half of Terminus as well are just as bad.. We sit here, considering the Encyclopedia the all-in-all. We consider the greatest end of science is the classification of past data. It is important, but is there no further work to be done? We're receding and forgetting, don't you see? Here in the Periphery they've lost nuclear power. In Gamma Andromeda, a power plant has undergone meltdown because of poor repairs, and the Chancellor of the Empire complains that nuclear technicians are scarce. And the solution? To train new ones? Never! Instead they're to restrict nuclear power."
And for the third time: "Don't you see? It's galaxy-wide. It's a worship of the past. It's a deterioration—a stagnation!
”
”
Isaac Asimov (Foundation (Foundation, #1))
“
But Empire building also bears the seeds of its own destruction. The closer a state comes to the ultimate goal of world domination and one-world government, the less reason is there to maintain its internal liberalism and do instead what all states are inclined to do anyway, i.e., to crack down and increase their exploitation of whatever productive people are still left. Consequently, with no additional tributaries available and domestic productivity stagnating or falling, the Empire’s internal policies of bread and circuses can no longer be maintained. Economic crisis hits, and an impending economic meltdown will stimulate decentralizing tendencies, separatist and secessionist movements, and lead to the break-up of Empire. We have seen this happen with Great Britain, and we are seeing it now, with the US and its Empire apparently on its last leg.
”
”
Hans-Hermann Hoppe
“
You're mugging old ladies every bit as much if you pinch their pension fund
”
”
Ben Elton (Meltdown)
“
The lye clinging in the exact shape of Tyler's kiss is a bonfire or a branding iron or an atomic pile meltdown on my hand at the end of a long, long road I picture miles away from me. Tyler tells me to come back and be with him. My hand is leaving, tiny and on the horizon at the end of the road.
”
”
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
“
I'm not making sense, and I'm so tired of having to make sense. I've even more tired of talking about how OK or not OK I am. I'm not. I've failed. That's it. People should stop going on about it.
”
”
Corinne Duyvis (On the Edge of Gone)
“
A victim act is a form of passive aggression. It seeks to achieve gratification not by honest work or a contribution made out of one's experience or insight or love, but by the manipulation of others through silent (and not-so-silent) threat. The victim compels others to come to his rescue or to behave as he wishes by holding them hostage to the prospect of his own further illness/meltdown/mental dissolution, or simply by threatening to make their lives so miserable that they do what he wants.
”
”
Steven Pressfield (The War of Art)
“
The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government - lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.” -Patrick Henry
”
”
Mark Goodwin (American Meltdown (The Economic Collapse, #2))
“
Some 8,000 nonviolent Occupy protesters were arrested across the nation. Not one banker or investor went to jail for causing the 2008 financial meltdown.
”
”
Chris Hedges (Wages of Rebellion)
“
When a man wants to have an alehouse meltdown, the worst thing you can do is stand in his way
”
”
Luke Haines (Post Everything: Outsider Rock and Roll)
“
Partying at this time of ecological meltdown is not affirming of reality, but an abdication from it. It is a place of false refuge especially so when there is no evidence of an acknowledgement of affirming life as it is, for this would require of these people a heartbrokeness.
”
”
Stephen Jenkinson
“
But, if ADHD has made me an expert in anything, it’s avoidance, and I am pretending not to see my problems like a champ. Sure, the problems nag and gnaw at the back of my mind, slowly devouring me until I’m nothing but a flesh bag of subconscious anxiety, but it’s better than actively sending myself into a meltdown by imagining literally every single rancid potential outcome.
”
”
Mazey Eddings (Tilly in Technicolor)
“
Immediately after the 2008 financial meltdown, it wouldn’t surprise me if 85% of American families would have had zero or negative net worth. But you can bet they have 650 cable channels streaming into their five flat-screen HDTVs.
”
”
M.J. DeMarco (The Millionaire Fastlane)
“
My world melts, when you are next to me
And I don't care who is next to me.
”
”
Luffina Lourduraj
“
Mental illness is now the number one reason for disability filings for children, representing half of all claims filed in 2012, compared to just 5 to 6 percent of claims twenty years prior.4
”
”
Victoria L. Dunckley (Reset Your Child's Brain: A Four-Week Plan to End Meltdowns, Raise Grades, and Boost Social Skills by Reversing the Effects of Electronic Screen-Time)
“
Accident - A statistical inevitability. Some nuclear power plants are built on fault lines, but ever mine, dam, oil rig, and waste dump is founded upon a tacit acceptance of the worst-case scenario. One a long enough timeline, everything that can go wrong will, however small the likelihood is from one day to the next. The responsible parties may wring their hands about the Fukushima meltdown - and the Gult of Mexico oil spill, and the Exxon Valdez, and Hurricane Katrina, and Chernobyl, and Haiti - but accident is no accident.
”
”
CrimethInc.
“
Can you tell me how a meltdown feels?”
She tilted her head to stare at the ceiling. “Itchy. And bad. You get so mad at yourself, because you know the thing that set you off isn’t worth the reaction you’re having, but you can’t control it. It’s like . . . knocking over a cup of tea. It goes everywhere, staining as it spreads, but you can’t take it back. You just have to get over yourself and mop up the mess.
”
”
Julia Day
“
We continue our game of thrusting and kissing and fumbling until I can’t take it any longer. The need to hear her call out my name overtakes everything else.
“I need you,” I say on a groan. “Come here.”
I sit up, pulling her up from the couch. Her mouth opens but she doesn’t say anything, which is good. If she refuses me right now, if she tries to bring rationality to this situation, I might have a fucking meltdown like a two-year-old.
”
”
Kendall Ryan (The Fix Up (Imperfect Love, #4))
“
That’s what integration does: it coordinates and balances the separate regions of the brain that it links together. It’s easy to see when our kids aren’t integrated—they become overwhelmed by their emotions, confused and chaotic. They can’t respond calmly and capably to the situation at hand. Tantrums, meltdowns, aggression, and most of the other challenging experiences of parenting—and life—are a result of a loss of integration, also known as dis-integration.
”
”
Daniel J. Siegel (The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind)
“
We all would do well to be more aware of dads’ worth.
”
”
Victoria L. Dunckley (Reset Your Child's Brain: A Four-Week Plan to End Meltdowns, Raise Grades, and Boost Social Skills by Reversing the Effects of Electronic Screen-Time)
“
Every unmeasured system is assumed to be critical. It is the same as finding a pistol sitting on a table. Assume that it is cocked and loaded.
”
”
James Mahaffey (Atomic Accidents: A History of Nuclear Meltdowns and Disasters: From the Ozark Mountains to Fukushima)
“
And though I may react to the trauma emotionally, shed private tears, have a meltdown away from people, or enjoy a complete “one flew over the cuckoo’s nest” episode, when I’m finished expressing emotion I keep on keeping on. When I finish my rant, tantrum, or moment of grief, I move into the instinctive survival mode that has empowered humans to endure plights and pleasures of all kinds. Change is often as painful for me to endure as it is for anyone else, but I have learned to take the bitter with the sweet and keep on moving forward.
”
”
T.D. Jakes (Instinct: The Power to Unleash Your Inborn Drive)
“
The SET-UP system evolved as a structured framework of communication with the borderline in crisis. During such times, communication with the borderline is hindered by his impenetrable, chaotic internal force field, characterized by three major feeling states: terrifying aloneness, feeling misunderstood, and overwhelming helplessness. As a result, concerned individuals are often unable to reason calmly with the borderline and instead are forced to confront outbursts of rage, impulsive destructiveness, self-harming threats or gestures, and unreasonable demands for caretaking. SET-UP responses can serve to address the underlying fears, dilute the borderline conflagration, and prevent a “meltdown” into greater conflict.
”
”
Jerold J. Kreisman (I Hate You--Don't Leave Me: Understanding the Borderline Personality)
“
It's fun to think that one day our great, great grandchildren may get that much closer to understanding what the hell creation is doing here in the first place, and glimpsing the underlying structure and nature of matter itself. Hopefully they won't live with the same existential horrors we all quietly face today in our own lives.
There is a kind of bravery to our condition, I reckon: brought into being without an explanation, in a potentially infinite and apparently dead universe, and expected to just get on with it as though nothing strange is going on. Well it fucking is. And it's all right to have a meltdown about the whole affair from time to time, faced with the pressures of modern existence, trying to be a good human and a good worker and a good son/daughter/parent, trying to be a good citizen, trying to be wise without condescension but uninhibited without recklessness, trying to just muddle through without making any silly decisions, trying to align with the correct political opinions, trying to stay thin, trying to be attractive, trying to be smart, trying to find the ideal partner, trying to stay financially secure, trying to just find some modest corner of meaning and belonging and sanity to go and sit in, and all the while living on the edge of dying forever.
We're all in the same strange boat, grappling with the same strange condition. But it isn't quite so scary if we all do it together. So let's do it together.
”
”
Exurb1a (The Prince of Milk)
“
It is essential that a child's life not be ruled by the adult's need for efficiency. Efficiency is the enemy of infancy. It is too costly in terms of the child's emotional economy. It drains the child's resources, prevents growth, stifles interests, and may lead to emotional meltdowns. Children need opportunities to experiment, struggle, and learn without being rushed or insulted. Anxiety
”
”
Haim G. Ginott (Between Parent and Child: Revised and Updated)
“
Is now a good time to tell you my dad’s fluent in four languages?” I went perfectly still, my hand tight around the oral wand and my face so hot I thought my head would split and spill lava. “Is…ah, Spanish…one of them?” I croaked. “Sí,” Mr. Moore answered. Once more the vent alarms blared in nuclear-meltdown mode. It took all I had not to kick Brody in the ribs when he fell to the floor in hysterics.
”
”
Cecy Robson (Once Loved (Shattered Past, #2))
“
It was a generation growing in its disillusionment about the deepening recession and the backroom handshakes and greedy deals for private little pots of gold that created the largest financial meltdown since the Great Depression. As heirs to the throne, we all knew, of course, how bad the economy was, and our dreams, the ones we were told were all right to dream, were teetering gradually toward disintegration. However, on that night, everyone seemed physically at ease and exempt from life’s worries with final exams over and bar class a distant dream with a week before the first lecture, and as I looked around at the jubilant faces and loud voices, if you listened carefully enough you could almost hear the culmination of three years in the breath of the night gasp in an exultant sigh as if to say, “Law school was over at last!
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Daniel Amory (Minor Snobs)
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You ever listen to that heavy metal music?” He painted such a vivid thumbnail that I was momentarily lost in it, groundless. “What? Oh, yeah, some. You know.” “I never liked it,” said Jorgensen. Pause for me to construct a mental image of Jorgensen sitting down all cozy with a Black Sabbath greatest hits disc. A taste of Mudhoney thrash. Perhaps a jot of some Norwegian speed-metal band’s idea of meltdown. “Know why? It sounds like combat, that’s why.
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Stephen King (Flight or Fright)
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Then the manipulator will tell you that he can’t deal with this anymore, that he’s becoming tired of your drama and your overreaction. At this point (if you haven’t done so already) you’ll have an emotional meltdown and then collapse into frustrated sobs. Then the manipulator will announce that you’re unstable or crazy or abusive or that you have an anger management problem, and says that he will leave you if you can’t get your yourself under control.
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Adelyn Birch (30 Covert Emotional Manipulation Tactics: How Manipulators Take Control In Personal Relationships)
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It appears - because it has been the case for twenty years - that every problem is solvable...that no matter how badly the world economy slumps there is a pain-free way out of it. Once the realization dawns that there is not, and that the pain will be severe, the question is posed that has not really been posed for twenty years: who should feel it?
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Paul Mason (Meltdown: The End of the Age of Greed)
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Corporations do not automatically obey laws. They weigh the size of the penalty relative to the gain from law breaking. In the age of oligarchy, laws are window dressing when penalties aren’t high enough and the people responsible for the lawbreaking are not held accountable. Unless the government prosecutes individuals or at least claws back their pay, the law is not of particular concern to the inhabitants of C-suites. Eleven years after Wall Street’s near meltdown, not a single major financial executive had been convicted or even indicted for crimes that wiped out the savings of countless Americans. Contrast this with a teenager who is imprisoned for years for selling an ounce of marijuana.
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Robert B. Reich (The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It)
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If you believe that astronauts have been to the moon and that the world is not flat, then you probably believe the satellite photos showing the Greenland ice sheet in full-on meltdown. Much of Manhattan and the Eastern Shore of Maryland may join the Atlantic Ocean in our lifetimes. Entire Pacific island nations will disappear. Hurricanes will bring untold destruction. Rising sea levels and crippling droughts will decimate crops and cause widespread famine. People will go hungry, and people will die.
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Bill McKibben (The Global Warming Reader: A Century of Writing About Climate Change)
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The final neoliberal fallback is geoengineering, which derives from the core neoliberal doctrine that entrepreneurs, unleashed to exploit acts of creative destruction, will eventually innovate market solutions to address dire economic problems. This is the whiz-bang futuristic science fiction side of neoliberalism, which appeals to male adolescents and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs almost as much as do the novels of Ayn Rand.
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Philip Mirowski (Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown)
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In the nineteenth century, Emile Durkheim, the founder of sociology and an early pioneer of the social sciences, ran a thought experiment in one of his books: What if there were no crime? What if there emerged a society where everyone was perfectly respectful and nonviolent and everyone was equal? What if no one lied or hurt each other? What if corruption did not exist? What would happen? Would conflict cease? Would stress evaporate? Would everyone frolic in fields picking daises and singing the "Hallelujah" chorus from Handel's Messiah?
Durkheim said no, that in fact the opposite would happen. He suggested that the more comfortable and ethical a society became, the more that small indiscretions would become magnified in our minds. If everyone stopped killing each other, we wouldn't necessarily feel good about it. We'd just get equally upset about the more minor stuff.
Developmental psychology has long argued something similar: that protecting people from problems or adversity doesn't make them happier or more secure; it makes them more easily insecure. A young person who has been sheltered form dealing with any challenges or injustices growing up will come to find the slightest inconveniences of adult life intolerable, and will have the childish public meltdown to prove it.
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Mark Manson (Everything Is F*cked: A Book About Hope)
“
reaches a cell wall, it disintegrates into hundreds of individual virus particles, and the broodlings push through the cell wall like hair and float away in the bloodstream of the host. The hatched Ebola particles cling to cells everywhere in the body, and get inside them, and continue to multiply. It keeps on multiplying until areas of tissue all through the body are filled with crystalloids, which hatch, and more Ebola particles drift into the bloodstream, and the amplification continues inexorably until a droplet of the host’s blood can contain a hundred million individual virus particles. After death, the cadaver suddenly deteriorates: the internal organs, having been dead or partially dead for days, have already begun to dissolve, and a sort of shock-related meltdown occurs. The corpse’s connective tissue, skin, and organs, already peppered with dead spots, heated by fever, and damaged by shock, begin to liquefy, and the fluids that leak from the cadaver are saturated with Ebola-virus
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Richard Preston (The Hot Zone)
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Clive convinced himself that it wouldn’t be long before we’d be able to predict all their [the moths] equations of cause and effect, then perhaps even map out each and every cell, and configure them in their entirety as robots, in terms of molecules, chemicals and electrical signals. And what fed this particular obsession was Pupal Soup.
If you cut through a cocoon in mid-winter, a thick creamy liquid will spill out and nothing more. What goes into that cocoon in autumn is a caterpillar and what comes out in spring is entirely different—a moth, complete with papery wings, hair like legs and antennae. Yet this same creature spends winter as a gray-green liquid, a primordial soup. The miraculous meltdown of an animal into a case of fluid chemicals and its exquisite re-generation into a different animal, like a stupendous jigsaw, was a feat that, far from putting off, fed Clive’s obsession. He believed it made his lifetime ambition easier because, however complex it might be, it was, after all, only a jigsaw, and to Clive, that meant it was possible. For all the chemicals required to make a moth were right there in front of his eyes, in the pupal soup.
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Poppy Adams (The Sister)
“
His fists balled spasmodically. “It amounts to a diseased attitude—a conditioned reflex that shunts aside the independence of your minds whenever it is a question of opposing authority. There seems no doubt ever in your minds that the Emperor is more powerful than you are, or Hari Seldon wiser. And that’s wrong, don’t you see?” For some reason, no one cared to answer him. Hardin continued: “It isn’t just you. It’s the whole Galaxy. Pirenne heard Lord Dorwin’s idea of scientific research. Lord Dorwin thought the way to be a good archaeologist was to read all the books on the subject—written by men who were dead for centuries. He thought that the way to solve archaeological puzzles was to weigh the opposing authorities. And Pirenne listened and made no objections. Don’t you see that there’s something wrong with that?” Again the note of near-pleading in his voice. Again no answer. He went on: “And you men and half of Terminus as well are just as bad. We sit here, considering the Encyclopedia the all-in-all. We consider the greatest end of science is the classification of past data. It is important, but is there no further work to be done? We’re receding and forgetting, don’t you see? Here in the Periphery they’ve lost nuclear power. In Gamma Andromeda, a power plant has undergone meltdown because of poor repairs, and the Chancellor of the Empire complains that nuclear technicians are scarce. And the solution? To train new ones? Never! Instead they’re to restrict nuclear power.” And for the third time: “Don’t you see? It’s Galaxy-wide. It’s a worship of the past. It’s a deterioration—a stagnation!
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Isaac Asimov (Foundation (Foundation, #1))
“
Sleep hygiene is a set of practices sleep experts recommend to obtain quality rest on a daily basis. Recommendations include low levels of stimulation in the evening, exercise and exposure to lots of natural light during the day, banning electronics from the bedroom, and sticking to a regular sleep-wake schedule. Children and teens who are stressed tend to have poor sleep hygiene if left to their own devices.
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Victoria L. Dunckley (Reset Your Child's Brain: A Four-Week Plan to End Meltdowns, Raise Grades, and Boost Social Skills by Reversing the Effects of Electronic Screen-Time)
“
The pity is that many Americans outside the elite bubbles know exactly what’s wrong, but our leaders seem determined to do nothing about it. Any attempt to cut the government chains and anchors off businesses so they can get back to growing, innovating, and creating jobs is demagogued as “tax breaks for the rich” or “favors for the one-percenters.” Never mind that many of those who would benefit are small-business owners who’ve been decimated over the past few years, first by the economic meltdown, then by government policies put in place to “fix” it. The money printed by the Fed to keep the economy pumped up flows to Wall Street, not Main Street, so small businesses aren’t borrowing it to pay for expansion. Even if they wanted to expand, about a third of all U.S. workers are employed by businesses with fifty or fewer employees, and Obamacare insures that if they hire a fifty-first, they’ll face crippling new costs for mandated health care.
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Mike Huckabee (God, Guns, Grits, and Gravy: and the Dad-Gummed Gummint That Wants to Take Them Away)
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The real nemesis of the modern economy is ecological collapse. Both scientific progress and economic growth take place within a brittle biosphere, and as they gather steam, so the shock waves destabilise the ecology. In order to provide every person in the world with the same standard of living as affluent Americans, we would need a few more planets – but we only have this one. If progress and growth do end up destroying the ecosystem, the cost will be dear not merely to vampires, foxes and rabbits, but also to Sapiens. An ecological meltdown will cause economic ruin, political turmoil, a fall in human standards of living, and it might threaten the very existence of human civilisation. We could lessen the danger by slowing down the pace of progress and growth. If this year investors expect to get a 6 per cent return on their portfolios, in ten years they will be satisfied with a 3 per cent return, in twenty years only 1 per cent, and in thirty years the economy will stop growing and we’ll be happy with what we’ve already got. Yet the creed of growth firmly objects to such a heretical idea. Instead, it suggests we should run even faster. If our discoveries destabilise the ecosystem and threaten humanity, then we should discover something to protect ourselves. If the ozone layer dwindles and exposes us to skin cancer, we should invent better sunscreen and better cancer treatments, thereby also promoting the growth of new sunscreen factories and cancer centres. If all the new industries pollute the atmosphere and the oceans, causing global warming and mass extinctions, then we should build for ourselves virtual worlds and hi-tech sanctuaries that will provide us with all the good things in life even if the planet is as hot, dreary and polluted as hell.
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Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow)
“
As he surveyed the world being remade by Silicon Valley, and especially what was once called the sharing economy, he began to see through the fantasy-speak. Here were a handful of companies thriving by serving as middlemen between people who wanted rides and people who offered them, people who wanted their Ikea furniture assembled and people who came over to install it, people who defrayed their costs by renting out a room and people who stayed there. It was no accident, Scholz believed, that these services had taken off at the historical moment that they had. An epic meltdown of the world financial system had cost millions of people their homes, jobs, and health insurance. And as the fallout from the crash spread, many of those cut loose had been drafted into joining a new American servant class. The precariousness at the bottom, which had shown few signs of improving several years after the meltdown, had become the fodder for a bounty of services for the affluent—and, Scholz noted, for the “channeling of wealth in fewer and fewer hands.” Somehow, the technologies celebrated by the Valley as leveling playing fields and emancipating people had fostered a slick new digitally enabled upstairs-downstairs line in American social life.
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Anand Giridharadas (Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World)
“
The godfather’s name is Saul Alinsky. His most famous students are Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Hardly anyone recognizes this, but Alinsky and the Alinsky method is the hidden force behind the 2008 economic meltdown. The meltdown was the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression; it was the main cause of median wealth in the United States in the subsequent three years declining nearly 40 percent. While the meltdown is routinely attributed to Wall Street “greed,” its real cause was government and activist pressure on banks and banking agencies—like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—to change their lending and loan guarantee practices. Yes, the 2008 crash was actually the result of an Alinskyite scam—actually a series of Alinskyite scams, carried out over many years. Basically the Alinskyites were trying to steal money from the banks and, in the process, force the banks to make loans to people that they had no intention of making loans to. The banks acquiesced, and eventually the whole scheme came crashing down. It was toppled not by greed but by the sober reality that when you loan money to millions of people who cannot afford to pay, those people are very likely to default on those loans. That’s how Alinskyites almost destroyed the U.S. economy a few years ago. If Alinsky had never lived, none of this would have happened.
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Dinesh D'Souza (Stealing America: What My Experience with Criminal Gangs Taught Me about Obama, Hillary, and the Democratic Party)
“
In the wake of my broken dreams
In the dirt and the dust and the days that felt like weeks.
I found the person that I’m meant to be
‘Cause when I felt like giving up
When death was closing in
I shut my eyes
And black out the darkness with light from inside
I’ve given more
Than what I’ve got
I’ve given all
Of what I’m not
I’ve watched this war consume all that we could become
Facing my fears in the dark
But if I die
Before it’s done
Please take these words
My final thoughts
The only way to shine your light is in the dark.
Never let life kill your spark
This is the fallout
Yeah it’s the end of the world
We’ll spread the noise to everyone and let them all know you heard
A system meltdown
It’s time we expose
The 'cause of chaos is our own
I’ve given more
Than what I’ve got
I’ve given all
Of what I’m not
I’ve watched this war consume all that we could become
Facing my fears in the dark
But if I die
Before it’s done
Please take these words
My final thoughts
The only way to shine your light is in the dark.
Never let life kill your spark
Never let life kill your spark
Never let life kill your spark
Facing my fears in the dark
I’ve given more
Than what I’ve got
I’ve given all
Of what I’m not
I’ve watched this war consume all that we could become
If I die
Before it’s done
Please take these words
My final thoughts
The only way to shine your light is in the dark.
Never let life kill your spark..
”
”
Crown The Empire
“
na kept her head down and pulled Lockie out into the street. She hoped he would manage to avoid standing on anything. His bare feet were already filthy but the streets of the Cross held the worst bits of human detritus. Tina didn’t want to have to deal with a piece of glass in Lockie’s foot, or worse. He was walking on tiptoe and more than one adult stopped to look at them. Tina moved quickly, getting Lockie out of sight before the questions had time to form. People tended to ask a lot more questions in the daytime. They saw things more clearly. Tina preferred the dark, where it was easy to hide.She had no idea what she was going to do with the kid after the new clothes and a shower. Maybe if he was warm and fed he would agree to walk into the police station and tell his story. Maybe he just needed a little time. He looked like a thinker. It was possible that she was really fucking up by keeping him. She had no idea what his body had been through. He could drop dead right now or have some kind of psycho meltdown.He looked at the ground as he walked. He held her hand and she guided him around the obstacles. He would not look up.He was locked up inside himself. His body was doing what it needed to do and maybe somewhere in his mind he was trying to find a key. If she got him to go to the police they would bring in a counsellor. Someone with a box of dolls and a soft voice. She had seen a movie about it. Lockie would be able to point to the doll and tell everyone exactly how his childhood had been taken. But would that help? Tina hoped he would be ready to talk to the police soon. If he wasn’t she was really screwed.
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”
Nicole Trope (The Boy Under the Table)
“
I have spent my life clinging to my own shores for safety. Flying like a bird above the storm waters of my own body, too scared to land. I guess that is why the sea floods in to visit me. I have been too frightened to venture out into her depths alone. The central core of me is dark and churning, I can only sense it vaguely. It scares me with its power. As a late-diagnosed autistic woman, I realise that this experience is partly neurological…my sensory abilities are all hyper-aroused on the surface, and my nervous system melts down when it becomes overwhelmed in everyday places. But my ability to know what is going on within is flawed. Instead of an accurate information readout, there is a big, dark, unknowable mass within. I am sailing blind without map or lighthouse within my own skin. It feels a very scary place to have a life sentence. This is why I write: to attempt to find words for what this big scariness is, to try and find images to give form and name to the wild churning expanse.
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Lucy H. Pearce (She of the Sea)
“
I have spent my life clinging to my own shores for safety. Flying like a bird above the storm waters of my own body, too scared to land. I guess that is why the sea floods in to visit me. I have been too frightened to venture out into her depths alone. The central core of me is dark and churning, I can only sense it vaguely. It scares me with its power. As a late-diagnosed autistic woman, I realise that this experience is partly neurological…my sensory abilities are all hyper-aroused on the surface, and my nervous system melts down when it becomes overwhelmed in everyday places. But my ability to know what is going on within is flawed. Instead of an accurate information readout, there is a big, dark, unknowable mass within. I am sailing blind without map or lighthouse within my own skin. It feels a very scary place to have a life sentence. This is why I write: to attempt to find words for what this big scariness is, to try and find images to give form and name to the wild churning expanse.
Pearce, Lucy H.. She of the Sea
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”
Lucy H. Pearce (She of the Sea)
“
The attachment voids experienced by immigrant children are profound. The hardworking parents are focused on supporting their families economically and, unfamiliar with the language and customs of their new society, they are not able to orient their children with authority or confidence. Peers are often the only people available for such children to latch on to. Thrust into a peer-oriented culture, immigrant families may quickly disintegrate. The gulf between child and parent can widen to the point that becomes unbridgeable. Parents of these children lose their dignity, their power, and their lead.
Peers ultimately replace parents and gangs increasingly replace families. Again, immigration or the necessary relocation of people displaced by war or economic misery is not the problem. Transplanted to peer-driven North American society, traditional cultures succumb. We fail our immigrants because
of our own societal failure to preserve the child-parent relationship. In some parts of the country one still sees families, often from Asia, join together in multigenerational groups for outings. Parents, grandparents, and even frail great-grandparents mingle, laugh, and socialize with their children and their
children's offspring. Sadly, one sees this only among relatively recent immigrants.
As youth become incorporated into North American society, their connections with their elders fade. They distance themselves from their families. Their icons become the artificially created and hypersexualized figures mass-marketed by Hollywood and the U.S. music industry. They rapidly become alienated from the cultures that have sustained their ancestors for generation after generation. As we observe the rapid dissolution of immigrant families under the influence of the peer-oriented society, we witness, as if on fast-forward video, the cultural meltdown we ourselves have suffered in the past half century. It would be encouraging to believe that other parts of the world will successfully resist the trend toward peer orientation. The opposite is likely to be the case as the global economy exerts its corrosive influences on traditional cultures on other continents.
Problems of teenage alienation are now widely encountered in countries that have most closely followed upon the American model — Britain, Australia, and Japan. We may predict similar patterns elsewhere to result from economic changes and massive population shifts. For example, stress-related disorders are proliferating among Russian children. According to a report in the New York Times, since the collapse of the Soviet Union a little over a decade ago, nearly a third of Russia's estimated 143 million people — about 45 million — have changed residences. Peer orientation threatens to become one of the least welcome of all American cultural exports.
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”
Gabor Maté (Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers)