Reflection on Nervous Breakdowns

“One of the symptoms of approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.” -Bertrand Russell

I randomly found this quote today. And it left me a little speechless. I sat for a bit…thinking about it…and I went back to a really dark period in my life. I had just lost the Presidential election for a group I was very active in, back in college. I was so distraught and shocked at my loss that I wrote a paper for myself called “A New Crisis in My Mental History.” (Side note, A Crisis in my Mental History was originally an excerpt from John Stuart Mill’s autobiography). And I wrote this paper because I had never felt such sadness, grief, for losing that election. I showed the paper to my best friend, even read it to another. For what?

To show that I was sad? To wallow in my sadness? I look at the quote today…, If I’m approaching nervous breakdown, then it must be from taking my work terribly important. And that’s true. I was twenty years old at the time, I was working, going to school, very active in my Fraternity. But I had a warped sense of reality. My dedication to my friends and Fraternity had superseded school and all other priorities in my life. Sitting here five years later, and I have no idea how I could have let my grief from that ‘nervous breakdown’ change who I was, and lead me down a path that set me back a few years.

See, after I wrote that paper, I consumed myself in the affliction of losing that election. I told myself the story that I wasn’t good enough, that I had lost because I did A, B, or C. I wasn’t content with biting the bullet, and doing the good work after. I had to relive it and keep feeling sorry for myself. It led to pushing off school even more, even withdrawing at one point, failing to finish for a few more years, even engaging in substance abuse (alcoholism).

I write this today because nervous breakdowns happen to a lot of us. And to be honest, as a social media generation, who is spreading everything going on with us, we tend to make nervous breakdowns commonplace.

But what I want folks to know is that while I encourage failing, to build up resiliency and skill by learning what didn’t work, I don’t think we should condone nervous breakdowns on the reg. The emotions we feel are real, and the stories we tell us ourselves dictate our subconscious and implicit actions. The same way I sit here five years later, astonished and amused that I let losing a political election in college faze me for two years, we should all remember that in the grand scheme of things, the things we have nervous breakdowns about every week, 2 weeks, or even every month, usually don’t affect our ability to eat, sleep, live, enjoy time with our friends and family.

It’s cliche to say life is too short, and blah, blah, blah. The point is, our generation makes having mental breakdowns more commonplace than they should be. And all it means is that we are taking ourselves too seriously (taking our work “terribly important”). As things go wrong, let’s reject sadness, and instead look for new inspiration: open a new book, take a walk outside, take a course on Coursera/edX, listen to a new podcast, give our friend from a few years ago a call. We don’t need to worry about mental breakdowns, we just need to follow our goals, and get back up when we fall.