AES05 Recovering From a Mental Breakdown

For those who don’t know what is a mental breakdown, well a mental breakdown is just extreme mental or emotional stress. The stress is so great that the person is unable to perform normal day-to-day activities. I used to have weekly mental breakdowns, there’s always a top point of stress that leads to mental breakdowns. Having a mental breakdown for me is not just about feeling sad, it’s a good mixture of feeling stress, anxious, sad, angry, and sometimes just numb. I think feeling numb is the worst, all you know is that you’re crying and you can’t breathe. It’s like you lost the ability to identify your emotions. 

It usually lasts for 3-4 hours for me, I would just be sitting on the floor and just staring at the wall and not knowing what’s next. The first 1-2 hours are filled with crying, but after that, you kinda ran out of tears so you just stare at the wall. But there’s like still some drops of tears. 

Post the mental breakdown, it usually affects me for the next 1-2 days. It makes me feel like I have no energy, even getting up from bed feels so hard. What always helped me to recover is to take a shower with hot water, and cook a meal and eat it. It’s like taking baby steps to come back to reality so that Im ready to do day-to-day activities again. 

But Thank God it doesn’t happen that often now, Im definitely in a better mental state compared to when I was in 9th grade. Im very happy, grateful, and above all proud of myself for keeping myself together during the hard times.