When disruptive external conflicts and internal struggles become too overwhelming to manage, the distress you experience can be devastating. What are the warning signs that you’re reaching a mental health crisis point? Can you learn how to know if you’re having a nervous breakdown?
The Valor Behavioral Health team provides personalized, evidence-based care to help adults heal from the mental health concerns that can lead to a nervous breakdown. For additional details or to schedule a free assessment, contact us today.
Learn more about mental health treatment in Atlanta or verify your insurance now.
What Is a Nervous Breakdown?
The first thing you need to know about nervous breakdowns is that this term isn’t used very often by mental health professionals. Additionally, it doesn’t appear in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), which is the standard reference used by most clinicians in the U.S.
Since it’s not a clinical term, there’s no established set of criteria to define exactly what occurs during a nervous breakdown. However, generally speaking, a nervous breakdown is an episode of overwhelming emotional distress, with symptoms so severe that they prevent you from functioning.
The experience that people commonly refer to as having a nervous breakdown may be more accurately described as a panic attack, anxiety attack, major depressive episode, or other type of mental health crisis. Ultimately, if it’s related to overwork, it may also be related to burnout.
How to Know if You’re Having a Nervous Breakdown
Learning how to know if you’re having a nervous breakdown also involves understanding the factors that can put you in danger and being able to identify warning signs.
Risk Factors
Nervous breakdowns can appear to be triggered by a single event. However, they usually result from a buildup of influences and experiences.
Factors that can increase your risk of a nervous breakdown include:
- Family history of mental illness
- History of abuse, assault, neglect, or other traumas
- Anxiety, depression, and other mental illnesses
- Inadequate support from friends and family
- Death of a loved one or end of a relationship
- Job loss and extended unemployment
- Other significant life changes
- Intense stress or pressure
- Financial problems
Warning Signs
Sometimes, nervous breakdowns occur with little to no warning. In other cases, people exhibit warning signs in the days or even weeks leading up to the event. If you’re able to recognize potential warning signs, you may be able to get help before you reach a crisis point.
Signs that you may be heading for a nervous breakdown or other type of mental health crisis:
- Uncharacteristic mood swings
- Difficulty focusing or concentrating
- Changes in appetite and sleep habits
- Becoming more easily annoyed or agitated
- Having a harder time summoning the motivation to go to work, interact with other people, or even get out of bed in the morning
- Losing interest in topics and activities that used to be important to you
- Downturn in your performance at work or in school
- Falling behind with laundry, doing the dishes, and other household tasks
- Feeling like you never have enough time or energy to do everything you need to do
- Frequently being physically and mentally exhausted at the end of the day
- Beginning to resent others for adding to your workload or not helping you
- Finding it increasingly difficult to experience even small moments of happiness or joy
The key feature of most nervous breakdown warning signs is that they are changes from how you usually feel or act.
If you don’t notice or fail to address the warning signs listed above, your struggles may intensify until they reach a crisis point. Depending on your specific circumstances, this can lead to highly disruptive physical and psychological symptoms.
Physical Symptoms
Physical symptoms of a nervous breakdown can include:
- Dizziness or vertigo
- Headache
- Excessive perspiration
- Hot flashes and/or chills
- Racing heart rate
- Chest pain
- Difficulty catching your breath
- Feeling like you’re being choked or smothered
- Tingling in your hands and feet
- Trembling or shaking
- Slowed physical responsiveness
- Sudden drop in energy
- Nausea
Usually, these only last for a few minutes at a time. Yet, while you’re experiencing them, it can seem like they’ll never stop. And the likelihood that they can recur at any time can be a source of ongoing emotional distress.
Psychological Symptoms
From a cognitive or mental health perspective, a nervous breakdown can include:
- Overwhelming fear, frustration, and/or sadness
- Outbursts of excessive anger or uncontrolled crying
- Emotional numbness or emptiness
- Feeling like you’ve become detached from your body and mind, or that you’re viewing yourself from above or across the room
- Sense of unreality, as though the world had been drained of color or you’re looking at your surroundings through a pane of glass
- Having a flashback, or feeling like you are re-experiencing a traumatic moment from your past
- Being unable to think clearly or recall memories, which is often described as a mental freeze or having your mind go blank
- Hypersensitivity to light, sound, and other stimuli
- Thinking that you’re “going crazy” or “losing your mind”
- Fearing that you may be about to die
How to Recover From a Nervous Breakdown
Recovering from a nervous breakdown can involve:
- Understanding the circumstances or external influences that triggered the event
- Identifying mental health concerns or other underlying issues that put you at risk
- Making the changes that will reduce your risk and increase your resilience
For many people, outpatient treatment can be a vital step on the path to improved health in the aftermath of a nervous breakdown.
Depending on your unique history and needs, effective outpatient care after a nervous breakdown may include:
- Medication management services
- Individual sessions with a psychiatrist
- Group therapy
- Family therapy
- Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)
- Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT)
- Trauma therapy
- Holistic therapy
- Somatic therapy
Fortunately, there are an array of options to help you regain your health after going through a nervous breakdown. However, not every service or approach works for every person. For this reason, it is important to find a provider who will take the time to understand your specific circumstances so they can develop a truly customized plan for you.
Find Mental Health Treatment in Atlanta
Valor Behavioral Health offers personalized outpatient care for adults who have gone through a nervous breakdown or developed other mental health concerns. Additionally, we offer dual diagnosis programming for those whose mental health needs are accompanied by co-occurring addictions to alcohol and other drugs.
Treatment options at our center in Atlanta, GA, include a partial hospitalization program (PHP), intensive outpatient program (IOP), evening IOP, virtual (online) IOP, and outpatient program (OP).
Call 866-859-3442 today to learn more, or verify your insurance now.
