“I JUST CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE!!”
by Mira and Charles on June 1st, 2010“Nervous breakdown, meet the emotional energy factor”
We love it when we turn out to be able to see into the future. Well, that’s what happened when we wrote our widely praised book The Emotional Energy Factor: we knew that millions of people were running on empty. The stresses and difficulties of life were getting to them. Their emotional energy was all going out, with nothing coming in.
And then what happens? Well, you know as well as I do. We’ve all felt we’re getting close to the point where we just can’t take it anymore. And, sadly, many of us get past that point. We get to where something’s gotta give and it does.
And then what? We used to have a good expression for what happens next. We used to call it a nervous breakdown. Literally, our nerves were so over-taxed, so worn out, that they just broke down. We just couldn’t cope any more. And then…well, anything could happen. Some people just go to bed and won’t, or can’t, get up. Some start acting crazy. It can take any form. An insane spending spree. Getting into a fight with a cop. Crashing the car. Walking out on your family. Taking drugs. Something to let everyone in our lives know that we feel, “Stop the world; I want to get off.” A nervous breakdown is a way of stopping our world so we can get off.
But it’s been decades since the average person used the phrase “nervous breakdown.” Now we just freak out, except that we also talk about freaking out if we find a hair in our soup. Now in today’s New York Times there is an article about nervous breakdowns coming back to life. Except that now they are calling it burnout syndrome.
Whatever.
The criticism of “nervous breakdown,” the reason it fell out of favor, was that it was too vague and, besides, nerves don’t actually break down. But then again, people don’t actually burn out, you know, like a light bulb.
Fine. But we need to have some term for what happens after you run out of emotional energy. When your car runs out of gas, you say it broke down. So why can’t we say we had an emotional energy breakdown? Like what happens to a helium-filled balloon when it runs out of helium. Or when you blow up a balloon and let it go and it flies all around the room for a few seconds before dropping limp to the floor.
That’s sure what a lot of us feel like these days when we’re in a state bordering an emotional energy breakdown.
It happens. It’s real. And it’s scary. But we’re not helpless.
The reason The Emotional Energy Factor was nominated for a National Books for a Better Life Award was that we tried to figure out what the difference was between totally stressed out people who managed to maintain a good level of emotional energy and totally stressed out people who were running on empty and on the verge of an emotional energy breakdown. And that difference was things people did to keep up their emotional energy. The book is full of the things they did that anyone can do to maintain good emotional energy in the face of the same stressors that everyone else faced.
If you’re feeling under the gun, if it’s easy for you to imagine having an emotional energy breakdown, please check out The Emotional Energy Factor. But remember: our emotional energy is always at risk of dwindling. We always need to be keeping it built up. The Emotional Energy Factor will show you how.
