The Importance of a Breakdown

As human beings, we're very good at keeping going. We live up to our demands and carry out demands others place on us. We keep on showing up and can do this for decades at a time.

Then, one day, much to everyone's surprise, and our own, we break. We can no longer get out of bed. We fall into depression. We don't feel like eating. We refuse to play by the normal rules we've lived by.

But breakdowns are very inconvenient to others, so there's a rush to medicalise the problem so that it can be business as usual. To do this is to misunderstand what's going on.

A breakdown is an attempt of one part of our minds to force the other part into growth, self-understanding and self-development that we refuse to undertake. In essence, it's an attempt to jumpstart a process of getting well.

There is then a danger to merely medicalising the breakdown and attempting to push it out the way.

We break down because, over the years, there were messages we needed to hear but didn't pay attention to; emotional learning and communicating we didn't do until the emotional self became desperate to make itself heard.