Breaking Point

"I am a man," I kept telling myself.  "I am a good man. Aren't I?" It was a mantra that I had to keep saying to myself for many years, and which I keep saying to this day. Not because I want to, but because I must. Unfortunately, and always, there is that question: "Aren't I?" And I hear it in my mind like a child seeking permission and crying for help, afraid that what he hopes for has never been true.

In 2010 I experienced a complete, and highly debilitating, nervous breakdown. 'Nervous breakdown', as I soon discovered, is not an accepted medical term. The professionals use many other terms depending on the symptoms and how the patient presents. I'm not going to run through those here or at this time. I discovered them, like you can, on the Internet and by talking to professionals - many of whom were so-called mental health 'experts' who did more to confuse me and to make me feel bad about myself than they did to help. Suffice it to say that what I found only made me more depressed, more 'labelled', more unable to recover. 

I am going to find this tough to write. I shouldn't, of course, because I'm a professional writer. But I'll find it tough because by revisiting these darker memories it will stir feelings within me of trauma, fear, loneliness, guilt, shame, anguish - a gamut of negative emotions that can still at times be overwhelming. Even as I write this, I can feel the tsunami applying pressure to my psyche, resulting in a dizziness and sense of the surreal that makes it difficult to type, much less compose. And yet I choose to for a number of reasons.

The Mission of this Blog

Mental health issues are very often misunderstood not only by the vast public (including me) but by the professionals. Many are afraid of mental health problems for good reason: symptoms often result in hurtful behaviour. Symptoms and behaviour of a nervous breakdown can also be confused with a wide variety of other mental health disorders including alcoholism, schizophrenia, bi-polar, depression, and many, many others. Often, and when confronted by someone suffering from a nervous breakdown, friends, relatives, and loved ones will misinterpret what is happening to that sufferer. They will 'blame' the sufferer for behaviour that is quite beyond his or her control. The result? The sufferer is often stigmatised and/or ostracised, which in turn makes the illness even worse.

Consequently, the continuing misunderstandings about mental health and nervous breakdowns in particular, can result in catastrophe for the sufferer as well as their families and friends. Mental health professionals, hoping to help the sufferer, diagnose too quickly which sometimes, and in my case, can lead to an incorrect result. The general public, afraid of the issue, collectively buries their head in the sand. And the sufferer watches as friends and relatives retreat, leaving them isolated and with little support. At its worst, the sufferer feels that they have disappeared without trace, their screams for help ignored or misconstrued as only selfish cries for attention.

When I had my mental breakdown, I sought help from a variety of sources. One of them was the Internet. In particular, I searched for people who had journeyed along a similar path as me. I guess I was looking for stories: real examples of what they had gone through; what they had felt; what tools they had used to heal; what they had experienced from relatives and friends; and any hope that they could give me for continuing recovery.

Unfortunately, I found little. To whit: I decided some time ago that I should write a blog knowing that by honestly sharing my experience it might not only help me along my journey of recovery, but also perhaps help others. That, I can only pray, is what I hope to achieve.

Only Me

As a start I should explain that I am only a man. I am not a mental health expert or related professional. To help readers perhaps better identify with me: I am 58. I had my nervous breakdown when I was 55. Until then I considered myself 'normal'. I had a wife and children. I owned a business. I was, and still am, a writer. Yes, I had issues like all normal people, but those issues never precluded me from leading a fulfilling life.

And then one day the world shattered. And for a long, long time I felt not only like a fool, but also that I had become 'a bad man'. Bad, because I had experienced an event - no, a series of events - that were not only profound, but which I could not understand or fathom. And due to the reaction to my sometimes truly bizarre behaviour by so many, I also came to be ashamed of myself: of who I was, of what I had done, and of my inability to prevent it. After all, I had always thought myself to be strong. I was always the 'fixer' who had helped wife, children, friends, and family to overcome obstacles. And yet I could not help myself.

This is my story, warts and all. I have chosen to remain anonymous at this point simply because I have absolutely no desire to cause hurt or pain to those that I love. I have done enough of that. I ask you, reader, to respect this decision.

I will not be publicizing this blog on any site. Instead, I will only use keywords. I will answer questions, but only insofar as my experience might provide me with non-professional views that could help. As I say, I am no professional, only a sufferer. If you are experiencing what I experienced, or are a relative or friend of someone who is going through a nervous breakdown, I urge you to contact a professional.

But despite what I have been told over the past few years by those who do not understand this condition, or by those who are too frightened to confront it; Despite being told that I should remain strong, or man-up, or simply get lost; Despite my older view of myself, and my belief that I was able to cope with almost anything thrown at me, this I now know:

We all have our breaking point and no one is immune. I know that now. I found mine. I hope that the posts that follow provide fellow sufferers with some sort of comfort not only by acknowledging what happened to me but by urging them to realize that they are in no way alone. I hope that it provides friends and relatives with some understanding and insight into this mental health problem. And, to be frank, I hope that these written words help me to exorcise the ghosts of my past so that I might soon heal fully.