According to BBC Health, a nervous breakdown is an old term dating back to the 19th century, when many mental disorders were attributed to failure of the nervous system. It reflects a rather mechanical view of how humans function...[See www.bbc.co.uk/health] The term is not typically used anymore by mental health professionals of the 21st century - or at least not by those with whom I have been treated. In fact, it carries a rather negative connotation among many doctors, therapists, and patients.
Nervous Breakdown is, however, still used today by the general population to describe a condition that erupts when a person’s mental shores have been breached by stress and life's woes - when the person has reached a mental tipping point and can no longer function - when the person has limply melted into a massive lump of blubber and tears. {Can you tell where I'm going with this?}
Based on this 19th century interpretation of major depression and anxiety disorder, it could be argued that I suffered a “nervous breakdown”; but mental system crash induced by too much stress for poor widdle me to handle, does not accurately describe the disorder - nor does it explain why it didn't happen at other over-stressed times in my adult life.
As I mentioned briefly in another post, I have felt "different" than my peers since early grade school. {No funny comments here, siblings of mine!} As I look back on my childhood with the clarity of treatment in adulthood, I can see now that I was hyper-vigilant and hyper-socially-aware for as long as I can remember - always scanning the horizon for dragons, always analyzing myself {and not with the kindest lens}, looking to the responses of others for validation, and always finding myself in the last analysis to be..."less than."
The major depression and severe anxiety that I suffered last August / September may have been triggered by a tipping point of sorts, but it was decades in the making. I now believe the ultimate cause is chemical and / or wiring {more in a future blog about that and how my acceptance of that was a long time coming as well}.
The bottom line is: I am not a "hysterical woman", and I did NOT suffer a nervous breakdown! People like me - with biological depression {as opposed to being temporarily depressed, e.g., death of a loved one} suffer from a physical as well as psychological disease. We are souls born into brains that aren't functioning up to par; however, we are not weak or wussy blobs. If anything, we are strong and resilient for enduring and thriving in spite of our illness!
And now, I won't get any more hysterical about this topic...at least not for the rest of the day!
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