What to do in a Nervous Breakdown?

Playing Dead always works in a nervous breakdown 🙂

When kids have a nervous breakdown, there isn’t much you can do but not react emotionally and witness the crisis. Your child’s nervous breakdown feeds on your emotional reactions.

Nervous breakdowns can be extremely dramatic. Do not get carried away by them and do not take them too seriously. If the nervous breakdown gets into the act because a request is not answered, do not try to bow down by answering that request. If you do so, the child develops this idea; “The more unhappy I get, the more chance I get in having my will.” This is the main reason for the dysfunction of the child during his/her remaining years. The nervous breakdown is disappointed with your inaction and may bother you by becoming more vigorous before completely calming down. Luckily, the nervous breakdown episodes in children last shorter compared to the adults.

You can talk to your child shortly after the nervous berakdown calms down or maybe the next day and ask him/her what happened. You should definitely not be the one who tells what happened.

Ask questions instead. For example; “What did happen to you that you could not contain yourself for storming like that yesterday? Do you remember that? What were you feeling at that time? Was what you felt a good emotion? Is there a name for the thing that happened to you? Is there not? What would you name it if you were to define it? What do you think it would look like if you were able to see it? Can you draw me a picture of it? What did happen to it after leaving here? Did it start to sleep? Do you think it may come back?”

Playing Dead always works 🙂 Do not react to the person in the pain-body; do not fill the pain-body with more thoughts and emotions; just let them live through the things happening to them at that moment. The power of letting is implicit in not intervening and not doing anything. Living the moment may require words and actions from time to time, however, it is always more influential than everything that can be said or done.

When you react to the person in nervous breakdown, that is, the shape your life takes in the Moment; and observe the Moment as a tool, obstacle or enemy, you also strengthen your own formal identity, namely your ego. Because the ego is reactive.

Being reactive means being addicted to responsiveness.

The more reactive you are, the more you lose yourself in form. When you do not resist the flow around you, your true essence beyond form emerges as a silent force, Presence, that is far greater and pervasive than your ephemeral formal identity. This state is more “you” than anything else in the world of forms.

Your life changes when you don’t let your formal identity, the Ego, control you by using your reactions.

The key to the greatest power in the universe is not to resist.

Consciousness is freed from being a prisoner of form thanks to it. Not showing an internal resistance to the form (that is, to what is and what is happening) means to deny the absolute reality of the form. On the other hand, being in a resistance does nothing but reinforce the idea that your formal identity, that is, all things in the world, including your ego, are more real, more solid and more permanent than they are.

We can manage to remain unresponsive to the nervous breakdowns of children or others. How about your own nervous breakdowns? After evaluating whether to be reactive towards others; what is your attitude towards yourself and your experiences?

If the life is not what happens to us but our reactions to it; even just being aware of this, actually gives us a great power of change. Being able to see that everything that happens in the world of form, good or bad, is temporary; prevents your bond with them from turning into addiction. If you do not react in every situation that you describe as bad and that causes nervous berakdown, and if you do not allow it to penetrate deep into you, you can prevent the nervous berakdowns that you will encounter in the future. But if you say that you are someone who experiences nervous breakdowns often, you can start by admitting your pain first.

Rumi says about this:

“The wound is the place where the life enters you. Everything that hurts you, also blesses you. Darkness is your lighting candle. Where there is destruction, there is treasure. Don’t run away from your wounds! Wounds are where the light will penetrate…”

Non-resistance, avoidance of judgment, and non-dependence are the three fundamental principles of true freedom and enlightened living.

If you understand and accept that everything is temporary and the inevitability of change, you can enjoy all the beauty of the world as long as it goes on without worrying about the future or fear of losing it. If you don’t become addicted to what’s going on in your life, you can’t get stuck in them and watch them from a higher position. Thus, you become like an astronaut who looks down on planet Earth, surrounded by the vastness of space, and sees the contradictory truth: Earth is very precious but also very insignificant…