A meltdown is a reaction to feeling overwhelmed. It's usually not something people can control. Lots of situations can trigger meltdowns, depending on the person. For example, pain, fear, or unexpected changes to routines or life situations like a divorce or job loss.
What exactly is an emotional meltdown? An emotional meltdown is the result of severe, overwhelming emotional distress. Symptoms can range from uncontrollable crying and weeping, or uncontrollable rage. It can also be more prolonged and lead to depression, severe anxiety, and can cause your moods to swing wildly.
Meltdowns occur when people feel overloaded. When the stimulus causing the meltdown goes away, people feel drained but return to balance rather quickly. A nervous breakdown, on the other hand, is a mental breakdown. It's more often the result of long-term psychological stress.
Secondly, the term emotional breakdown can be used to describe a personal meltdown of an individual who just doesn't know how to cope with present circumstances. This can include episodes of uncontrollable weeping, withdrawal from loved ones and an inability to connect with everyday life.
An extreme sense of doom. Low energy and fatigue. Feelings of intense sadness, worry, anxiety, fear, or nervousness. Feelings of guilt, worthlessness, powerlessness, or shame.
Some major life events can cause a person to feel this way, including chronic medical conditions, poor sleep, a traumatic event, a loss in the family, stress at work or financial issues.
The model includes six phases: Calm, Triggers, Agitation, Meltdowns, Re-Grouping, and Starting Over.
Tantrums, rage and meltdowns can mean different things for different individuals but they usually occur in three stages which are rumble, rage and recovery (diagram below).
If you're headed towards a mental breakdown, you may experience episodes of feeling helpless or uncontrollable crying. You may also have emotional outbursts or feelings of uncontrollable anger.
feel overwhelmed — unable to concentrate or make decisions. be moody — feeling low or depression; feeling burnt out; emotional outbursts of uncontrollable anger, fear, helplessness or crying. feel depersonalised — not feeling like themselves or feeling detached from situations.
If we scream or threaten punishment while a child is in the midst of a meltdown, their brains continue to perceive this as a threat and their amygdala goes into high gear and begins to take charge. Even telling a child to “calm down” in these moments only adds to their stress.
Meltdowns can last from minutes to hours. Meltdowns are not your child's way of manipulating you: Meltdowns are emotional explosions.
For some people, a meltdown may look like crying uncontrollably. For others it may look like snapping at others or lashing out angrily. And for others it may involve panicking or running away from a stressful situation.
People who experience meltdowns tend to describe them as a complete loss of control which, once they're able to reflect, was found to be triggered by a relatively minor stimulus. Some people become uncontrollably angry and may scream, shout, and harm themselves. Some may have crying fits. Others completely shut down.
It also makes it hard to imagine a calmer time and to think that our emotional state will eventually settle down." Altman says one way to break this response is to take deep, slow, rhythmic breaths to calm the body and trigger the relaxation response — the opposite of the fight-or-flight response.
Try to stay calm and speak in a kind, even tone. Avoid raising your voice or making fast body movements, which could further aggravate the situation.
Two types of reaction are typical of autism meltdowns – an explosive reaction or a withdrawal. Explosive reactions may involve screaming, shouting, aggressive behaviour or crying. On the other hand, less explosive reactions may include refusing to communicate or interact, withdrawing themselves or shutting down.
Many individuals find it helpful to pause in moments of emotional overwhelm and ask themselves the question “Is this person truly the enemy or am I just overwhelmed and want to take that out on someone?” It can take up to 20 minutes for those stress hormones released in a meltdown to get metabolized in the body.
ADHD meltdowns are sudden outbursts of frustration and anger that seem to come out of nowhere. If your child is struggling to control their emotions, there are ways to help them. For children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), impulsivity can present in many ways.
Speaking of recovery, this can vary depending on how big (or small) a meltdown is. Sometimes, it can take a few minutes, whereas others can take hours or even days to return to their pre-meltdown state.
Anxiety is often the reason for the meltdowns. Anxiety meltdowns are often a result of panic attacks, social and separation anxiety, and frankly, most kinds of anxiety.
According to Helpline, the most common symptoms of such a breakdown are depressive symptoms, such as loss of hope and thoughts of suicide or self-harm, anxiety with high blood pressure, tense muscles, clammy hands, dizziness, upset stomach, trembling, insomnia, hallucinations, extreme mood swings or unexplained ...
Call your healthcare provider. If you feel you're in a crisis, call your healthcare provider right away. If you have thoughts of harming yourself, call 911 or call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1.800. 273.
Anxiety disorder.
Someone with this condition feels anxious, often to the extreme and for extended periods of time. These negative feelings interfere with normal daily activities. Untreated and combined with a lot of stress, this can trigger a nervous breakdown.