How to prevent a meltdown
A ‘nervous breakdown’ comes after prolonged anxiety
by verbalizing it with your trusted friend or family member or go for therapy sessions. Psychotherapy may, in extreme cases, be combined with psychopharmacotherapy with anxiolytics and or anti- depressants.
Remember to take good care of your
physical health, too. Force yourself to eat food with the right nutrients like protein and vegetables. Exercise is also beneficial. Take brisk walks even around your garden if you still lack the self-confidence in going out of the house. Go to a place where there are a lot of trees because the sight of green trees can be relaxing. Keep in mind that sunlight is
a source of Vitamin D, which is needed by the body. To restore your appetite for food, take appetite stimulants with vitamin and mineral supplements.
Another way of diminishing the pressure on oneself is lowering the expectations that you placed upon yourself. Make realistic and achievable revisions to your life goals. Learn to rest and to relax. Reward yourself with a vacation to break from your tedious work. Environmental manipulation is helpful. If you can’t afford an out- of-town vacation, try gardening at home. Pamper yourself with a relaxing spa and body massage or a manicure and pedicure. Get a new look, a new hairstyle, a new hair color or a new outfit. Listen to relaxing music in your favorite sofa. Watch a funny movie with your family or best friend.
You cannot handle several problems in one stroke because problems bundled together will appear too enormous to solve. List these problems according to urgency and possible solutions and face them one at a time. Learn to accept negat ive crit icisms to make
yourself a better person. Don’t allow your bashers to put you down. If you know what you are doing is right, go ahead and continue to pursue your life goal. Remember, you cannot please everyone in this pursuit. What is essential is your gratification, physical and mental well- being and happiness.
Unfor tunately, sometimes, overwhelming stress ends up in a psychotic breakdown. Here, the individual becomes out of touch with reality, developing cognitive misperceptions like hallucinations ( hearing voices conversing about one’s misdeeds or ordering one to act violently); delusions of persecution or grandeur (feeling that people are spreading degrading rumors about him, or there is a local community/international movement planning to hurt him or the persistent false belief that he is more powerful than Hitler, Bin Laden or even the Greek god, Zeus or Jesus Christ); alien control (feeling that his actions are under the control of aliens); thought broadcasting (thoughts are being broadcast over the radio or television); thought insertion (thoughts are being inserted into one’s mind by an outside force); or thought blocking (an outside force has rendered his mind blank).
In the event of a psychotic breakdown, there is an urgency for psychiatric consultation and intervention because this individual may need hospitalization to abate his psychotic symptoms without hurting himself or others.
Let me reiterate that consulting with a professional will help the individual at the brink of a nervous breakdown or even a psychotic breakdown. Definitely there are professionals near you. Government facilities and universities with medical schools/psychology departments have psychiatric/ psychology staff to assist the public in distress. You may look for a psychiatrist in your region by going to the website of the Philippine Psychiatric Association, Inc. ( www.philpsych.
ph) or you may download from Google Play or the Apple Store, its mobile application to your smart phone.