Common mental symptoms of a nervous breakdown

What is a mental breakdown?

Searching for the symptoms of a mental breakdown because you’re feeling completely overwhelmed at the moment?

Possibly you’re suffering from all kinds of symptoms you just can’t place and you’re worried you are ‘going round the bend’.

I understand how scary that can be!

Chances are you haven’t been feeling right for some time, but you’ve kept going – chances are you had no choice.

Now, you’ve hit a wall or feel you’re on the verge of a mental breakdown and want to know what the symptoms are.

As a professional therapist, I’ve seen so many clients that just couldn’t function anymore, they had completely reached the end of their tether. They may never ever have considered getting counselling before if it wasn’t for their mental breakdown.

So, what you need right now is the right information and a medical checkup.

With the information in this article and related articles, you’re ready to have a helpful and effective conversation with your healthcare provider.

First of all, though, let me reassure you right away – yes, you may well suffer from a mental breakdown, but you will get better!

Before we get to the symptoms of a mental breakdown, it’s helpful to understand the following…

What is a mental breakdown?

The term mental breakdown (sometimes called nervous breakdown) wouldn’t normally be used in a professional setting.

Instead, medical and mental health professionals use terms such as ‘mental illness’. They would be much more specific and diagnose an anxiety disorder, stress disorder, panic disorder or post-traumatic stress disorder.

Let’s now see if you recognise any of the following symptoms of a mental breakdown.

Even before your breakdown

It’s highly likely that before you eventually broke down, you were for some time experiencing the following signs of being on the verge of a breakdown:

• highly strung – everything just got on your nerves
• easily angered – suffering from mood swings
• guilty about becoming angry, particularly with your children and your partner or spouse
• niggling fears – worries about the future, money, work, security in general
• somewhat panicky
• signs of depression (see also: Symptoms of depression in men)
• low in self-esteem
• quickly overwhelmed
• over-thinking stuff
• not sleeping so well
• unable to concentrate
• keen to avoid stress-inducing activities
• focused on- or obsessed about things you could control, e.g food intake, exercise, cleanliness, rules at work and/or at home.

Common Mental breakdown symptoms

Your body is likely to be awash with a number of stress hormones. These include adrenaline (the fight and flight hormone), norepinephrine and cortisol.

The former two ensure you’re super-alert and ready to fight the lions! Not great when you’re sitting behind a desk or attempt to patiently wait for your kids to finish their dinner.

Cortisol is a life-saver when you’re confronted with that lion – it makes sure you won’t feel the need for sex or a snack at the same time. It shuts down bodily functions not critical to your survival.

However, you’ve probably been feeling stressed (link opens in a new tab) for longer than you care to mention. Therefore, your cortisol levels have been too high for too long.

Now your body/mind have called it a day – you’re experiencing a major breakdown with the accompanying symptoms.

12 mental breakdown symptoms

1. You’ve developed anxiety about things that would never have bothered you before (see also: 19 reasons you’re suffering from anxiety ‘for no reason’
2. You feel panic at the thought of going to work, shopping, picking the children up from school, travel or anything else (see: How to stop anxiety attacks quickly)
3. You feel unable to cope with even the simplest of tasks
4. You’re rejecting your partner’s physical advances – you feel numb and just not up to a physical relationship (see my article on the causes of low libido in women).
   If you’re a man, you may well find yourself impotent – perhaps, sadly and unnecessary – to your shame (see: How to improve low libido in men)
5. You’re likely to suffer from insomnia – finding it difficult to fall asleep or stay asleep – unable to rest
6. Your sleep may also be disturbed by the wildest of dreams (Discover how dreaming is linked to mental health)
7. You wake up feeling depressed and worried about the day ahead – that black cloud hanging constantly above your head (see: Natural ways to deal with depression)
8. You’re shutting yourself off from your partner, your children, your friends and your family (in case you’re here to look at information for your spouse or partner: How to help your spouse heal from PTSD and How to help your spouse recover from a mental breakdown )
9. You’ve developed a temper or your temper has worsened – you’re irritated by just about anything and everything (see my article Effective anger management tips)
10. You may think that people ‘have it in’ for you – you’re becoming somewhat paranoid
11. You can’t concentrate on anything – you may get the headlines, but you can’t get to grips with the details through your inability to concentrate
12. You keep forgetting things you would have normally know off by heart.

Now you know a little more about the symptoms of a mental breakdown, particularly if you’ve also read my article on the physical symptoms of a nervous breakdown.

What about your emotional state?

5 Emotional signs of a mental breakdown

1. You cry at the drop of a hat even if you previously had considered yourself the most ‘together’ person and may even have periods of crying uncontrollably
2. Things you used to enjoy doing bring no pleasure at all now
3. You can feel guilty for being a ‘burden’, for ‘letting the side down’, ‘not pulling your weight’ and not attending to the needs of your loved ones like you’d normally do
4. You think that no one will understand what you’re going through and you may well be worried that you’re going mad and that the symptoms are irreversible
5. You’re feeling ‘no good’ to anyone and are perhaps even contemplating ending your life.

Know that you will recover – however long it may take, you will come out of that tunnel!

WHAT ELSE HAPPENS DURING A BREAKDOWN?

Don’t be alarmed if you…

… are terrified of the doorbell
… don’t want to open the post anymore
… can’t get out of the front door
… can’t stand in a queue
… can’t even get anywhere near to your place of work
… suddenly have found yourself somewhere, without a clue why you’re there or what you were meant to do – and feeling terrified

I know all of the above is scary, but it is all part of this condition.

Could it be a temporary emotional breakdown?

You (or someone else) could be suffering from an emotional breakdown – ‘just’ a temporary feeling of sadness, overwhelmed or an anxious overload.

what are the signs of a purely emotional breakdown?

If you’re having an emotional breakdown you’re likely to cry bucket loads, feel shaky, sick and completely exhausted immediately after it.

You’re reacting to some really bad news – someone has had an accident, you’ve lost something or someone very important to you.

You can also have a bit of a breakdown following a huge achievement – perhaps you’ve got something you’ve wanted for a long time. In that case, an emotional breakdown is in response to tension, worries and stress finally being released.

A mental and emotional breakdown could also run alongside each other.

If you’re here to find information because you want to know how to help someone who’s crying uncontrollably, read my article How to help someone having an emotional breakdown.

Finally

I suspect you’ve landed here because you’re scared you’re suffering a major mental health crisis in the form of a mental breakdown.

I hope the list of symptoms in this article is reassuring in the way that you now understand that your condition has nothing to do with going ‘crazy’. And that you’re definitely not the only person going through this!

You likely suffer from what is a recognised condition, just like so many other souls, particularly in the western world.

I know you will recover, these mental breakdown symptoms will disappear over time. You may not feel your ‘old self’ again for some time, but you might consider that not to be such a bad thing if your life was so stressful!

I wish you well on your journey, take good care of yourself, know that I’m rooting for you!