What Causes A Nervous Breakdown?

Life can offer us lots of challenges that have to do with loss. When we're confronted with relationship loss, loss of health, financial loss, loss of limb, loss of regard, or loss of love, we could feel overwhelmingly anxious, depressed and stressed. When the anxiety, depression and stress increase, we may experience a nervous breakdown – at this point is when we become unable to function in our lifestyle and not capable of coping with our daily challenges.

What causes an individual to have a nervous breakdown while another, with equally hard or even more difficult challenges is able to stay functioning and still optimistic? 

Imagine a seven year old child trying to deal with a big loss in his or her life, such as the loss of a parent.  What allows the seven year old to handle this loss?  A child this young can handle the loss only when there is a loving adult helping him or her with the loss.  When there is no loving adult assisting with the loss, the child might handle the loss negatively by shutting down.  The shutting down may lead to a loss of functioning, such as doing poorly in school. 

However, when the child does not feel alone with the loss and there is love sustaining the child from an adult source, this child will be able to cope with the feelings of loss.  The same applies for us as adults.  We all have a really hard time with a loss when we feel alone with it, but we can manage it better when we are accompanied by someone who is supporting us. 

Nevertheless, we can't always rely on others to be here for us in times of loss, stress and overwhelm.  Those individuals who have family and friends to always turn to for emotional and financial help during times of loss are fortunate for sure.  But there are many people in life who aren't so lucky.  Without others to turn to, we need to be capable of turning to a reliable inner source of love to make it through and not feel alone.  This reliable source needs to be our own inner spiritually connected loving Adult self.  Those people who are able to manage loss without losing functioning are those people who don't feel alone inside since they have built a strong caring Adult self. 

What I mean by caring Adult is the part of us that is open to learning from and connected with a spiritual source of love, wisdom and guidance.  It is the part of us that takes loving action in our own behalf, nurtures us when we feel fear and grief, and functions from the truth from Spirit instead of from the lies of our wounded self, which is our ego.  As children can manage loss when there is a caring adult to help them, the child in us could manage loss when we have a strong, spiritually connected loving Adult self to assist us.  As a loving Adult we recognize that we are never alone.  We know we're always being loved, sustained and guided by a spiritual Source. 

It is regularly not enough to have a strong religious or spiritual connection.  If you have not been using that connection to grow your loving Adult self, then there is no part of you that will bring love and comfort to yourself when you need it the most, and no part of you that could take caring action for yourself, especially when things become overwhelming. 

People who experience nervous breakdowns are people who are not functioning from a loving Adult in their daily lives.  They're capable of operating provided that things go well, but when things fall apart, as they frequently do in life, these individuals could also collapse.  Without a caring Adult to bring the love and fact of Spirit to them, they end up feeling too alone to manage loss.