“It's used in popular discourse to describe when we are overcome emotionally, when we hit a breaking point,” says Robin Stern, PhD, licensed psychoanalyst and cofounder and director for the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence in New Haven, Connecticut. For some people, a meltdown may look like crying uncontrollably.
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.
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.
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.
Meltdowns can last from minutes to hours.
This book describes a model of positive behavior supports for preventing and responding to the cycle of meltdown behavior for students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The model includes six phases: Calm, Triggers, Agitation, Meltdowns, Re-Grouping, and Starting Over.
Tantrums, rage, and meltdowns (these terms will be used interchangeably) typically occur in three stages that can be of variable length. These stages are (a) the rumbling stage, (b) the rage stage, and (c) the recovery stage (Albert, 1989; Beck, 1987; Myles & Southwick, 2005).
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.
During a tantrum, when the amygdala and limbic system take over, it is almost impossible for logic to penetrate your child's brain. Our capacity for calm in the midst of a kid's emotional storm offers hope, because it signals that calm is possible in the midst of chaos.
The most common signs someone is having a mental breakdown are: Hopelessness. Thoughts of suicide. Sense of worthlessness.
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 ...
You may have difficulty concentrating, remembering things or feel unable to make decisions if you're having a mental breakdown. Your cognitive symptoms may impair your ability to deal with the stress that you're experiencing.
Shifting your thinking and practicing deep breathing can help when you're stuck in an intense emotional moment. At some point, we've all gotten stuck in a "meltdown" moment — an overwhelming feeling of anger or stress that was difficult to shake off.
They often felt extreme emotions, such as anger, sadness, and fear, and had trouble with thinking and memory during the meltdown. Participants described trying to stay in control of themselves, often feeling like they were not themselves during meltdowns.
Anything that leads to excessive stress can trigger it. In general, feeling stress and being unable to cope with it may lead to feeling so overwhelmed that you can't perform your normal daily functions. Some things that might trigger a nervous breakdown include: A sudden tragedy.
Emotional outbursts appear as a rapid shift from a state of calm to one of uncontrollable, intense emotion. You might suddenly become enraged, burst into tears, or start yelling, for example.
It won't rid you of PTSD and your fears, but let your tears flow and you'll maybe feel a little better afterwards. 'Crying for long periods of time releases oxytocin and endogenous opioids, otherwise known as endorphins. These feel-good chemicals can help ease both physical and emotional pain.
This loss of control can be expressed verbally (eg shouting, screaming, crying), physically (eg kicking, lashing out, biting) or in both ways. A meltdown is not the same as a temper tantrum. It is not bad or naughty behaviour.
Shutdowns. Meltdowns do not always present as aggressive and violent actions. "Shutdowns" are when an autistic person becomes extremely quiet, silent and withdrawn. A shutdown is a form of meltdown where a person becomes extremely still rather than outwardly aggressive.
“Adult temper tantrums are the result of uncontrolled emotions.” Adult temper tantrums are often tolerated despite them having a negative impact on those around them. Usually these outbursts are labelled “blowing off a little steam”, “being over stressed” or even “being pushed too far”.
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.
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.
Meltdowns are not behavioral responses and generally aren't used to attain a specific outcome. The reaction is involuntary and cannot be controlled as intense emotions take over, and tension build-up is released via stimming, repetitive movements, zoning out, screaming, crying, stomping, etc.