How to Help Someone Recover from Nervous Breakdown

Having suffered a breakdown, I have been asked how friends and relatives can constructively support those that have gone through a similar event. The answer is, With love and comfort.  But remember that recovery is a long process. Those having suffered from a breakdown can often slip backwards due to a number of factors. To help, you must understand why this occurs, provide constructive support, and practice the patience of many saints.


"Triggers". That's the word that mental health experts (including my therapist) use to describe events that can push a person into nervous breakdown. Triggers can also cause those trying desperately to recover from nervous breakdown to re-experience the emotional tsunami that they incurred during the height of illness.

Triggers can cause a person trying to heal to slip back into the dark cave of fear, loneliness, and trauma. They can also cause a person suffering from mental illness to suffer yet again from breakdown. For that reason alone, I do everything that I can to avoid triggers. Unfortunately, life is full of them.

Take this week. It's not a good week. Every now and then, it seems that I'm confronted by a vortex of stressful, emotionally charged situations. These are not good for my mental health and I know it. But somehow, I have to deal with them.

Over the past week: I learned that my father, whom I love dearly, has pancreatic cancer. A business deal that I stupidly became involved in during the height of my breakdown 3 years ago has gone pear-shaped and is causing a great deal of stress, anger, and fear. My core business as a writer continues to suffer. I begin to worry that in only a few months I won't be able to pay for the basics. For the first time in my life I'm experiencing a nagging physical problem. My GP is so concerned that she has ordered an MRI. I am also confronting other issues - other triggers. Smaller issues that grow larger in my mind. When I can look at these smaller challenges rationally, I realize that they are not worth worrying about. But during high-stress days or weeks, these smaller issues flood my being with additional fear. And the internal critic starts again: "It's been 3 years since the breakdown. For God's sake grow up and get a grip!"

The carefully constructed cocoon of healthy behaviors that I've constructed begins to erode. As the darkness falls, I'll begin to forget what I've learned. Sleep becomes difficult. Nightmares re-occur. Hands begin to shake. I'll stop eating correctly. I'll stop exercising. I'll forget to practice the tools that I've been taught. My world is once again a place of hopelessness. What I really want is for it to all stop. For someone, something, to intervene and to take the nightmare that I've experienced, and re-experienced, away once and for all.

But as I've stated in other Posts, recovering from mental breakdown is my responsibility. No one else, really, is going to help me to recover. Except me.

But, and a big BUT: if you are the friend or relative of someone suffering from breakdown, you can help by encouraging positive action. To understand how to do so, you must realize that if your loved one has gone through a breakdown, they are inclined to engage in some very crazy, very illogical, very scary thinking....

Dealing with the Darkness

Fortunately, I've also learned that during these times of darkness I hit some sort of bottom. I know that things will - must - get better. My training seems to finally kick in. This morning, for instance, I realized that I needed to do some Yoga. I'd promised to work at this at least 5 days a week, but I hadn't bothered in over 4 days. I made myself practice this for 30 minutes. I made myself take a shower, get dressed, start working despite the fact that my brain is so over-loaded that what I might write could very well make little sense. I'll make myself go down and get something to eat. I'll make myself focus on something in my life that is filled with hope and joy - my grandchildren, perhaps. Or the beauty of the far hills that I can see from my windows. 

I'll plan out my day so that I know it will be as full as I can make it. I set myself a simple goal: get through this day in one piece without going crazy. That's all I have to do. Just make it through this one day. Tomorrow, I know, will take care of itself. It sounds so simple. Yet it's a great deal of work.

I could use some help, but my healthy thinking is replaced with fear and self-loathing. In short, my thinking is 'crazy' (see below). If you want to help someone you know recover from breakdown, realize that there will be times of darkness during the recovery process, and that the person suffering is afraid to call out for help.

A Note to Those Who Want to Help

If you are a friend or relative of someone suffering from nervous breakdown or similar mental illness, I plead with you to begin to understand the debilitating nature of this area. By understanding, you will be able to better help.

Mental illness is just like any other illness. It is often curable. But to achieve that, sufferers simply need your loving support. Unfortunately, many of those trying to recover often will not - or are unable to - reach out for help from friends or family. Here is my own example, nutty as it is: Rarely do I share what I'm going through with my friends or family. I don't do that for a number of absolutely silly reasons: I worry that they will judge me. I worry that they will worry excessively about me. I worry that they will run from me because they might be unable to cope with these occasional slips that I am experiencing. I worry that they will become angry at me for taking too long to recover. I also worry that they will come to believe that I might never fully recover: that the Dad, friend, grandpa that they have come to know and love has disappeared forever. 

So if they ask me how I'm feeling, I will lie. I'll tell them that I'm fine. Even if I feel like hell, which is how I feel today. In short, I'm ashamed of how I feel. I don't want to share that.

These are disastrous patterns of thinking that, I know, only stifle my recovery. But that's the lousy thinking that goes on in my head during these periods of darkness.

If you, as a friend or relative, want to help, in my book it's fairly simple: let your loved one know that you are there. Let them know that you are willing to listen. Let them know that they are safe. Encourage healthy thinking and behavior by understanding the tools that they are learning, and remind them to use those tools. Encourage them to share because during dark periods, many are too embarrassed and too ashamed to do just that. 

Recovering from mental breakdown is a lonely, difficult process. By knowing that you love them unconditionally, sufferers of mental illness will be able to hold tightly onto that love and derive the strength and courage from you to carry on.