An emotional meltdown isn’t something people experience every day. But when it happens, the results can be devastating. Witnessing your friend or close colleague go through one can be unnerving. What can or should you do to help them cope?
Emotional Meltdown: How to Help Your Friend Cope Afterwards
While an emotional meltdown may be rare, they are enormously significant. Yet, emotions can sometimes veer toward an extreme and unhealthy state. These are painful to watch happen. Knowing how to help someone experiencing an emotional meltdown is also a challenge.
What Is an Emotional Meltdown?
Emotions are uniquely human. They form the core of our humanity. Emotion helps us make sense of the world and adds context and richness to those we interact with and objects we surround ourselves with.
What is an emotional meltdown? Experts say that emotional meltdown is due to overwhelming, severe emotional distress. This isn’t just being extremely impatient, rude, and lashing out with angry remarks, although these expressed behaviors may be part of it.
When someone is so emotionally overwhelmed and suffering extreme distress, they’re incapable of making rational decisions. The meltdown could be quick, and the person returns to a normal emotional state relatively quickly. But the meltdown may also last for a prolonged time. The individual may develop severe depression or anxiety and experience wild mood swings.
Signs of a Meltdown
Many signs indicate a person is emotionally melting down. However, some signs can be confused with symptoms of a severe mental health disorder.
- Uncontrollable crying.
- Angrily lashing out at others.
- Feeling panic, running away.
Is an Emotional Meltdown a Psychotic Episode?
An emotional meltdown may also be referred to as a nervous breakdown. It is not, however, a psychotic episode. In psychosis, the individual has a break from reality. With an emotional meltdown, the individual knows what reality is – they can’t cope with what’s happening to them.
What Causes Someone to Experience Emotional Meltdown?
Most people have experiences in life that can be fraught with emotional pain, stress, loneliness, and the potential to alter their existence irrevocably. When someone is unable to cope with their situation or finds it extremely challenging to recover from traumatic experiences, they may go through an emotional meltdown.
According to experts, here are some of the causes leading to an emotional meltdown:
- A loved one dies.
- Trauma occurs (physical, emotional, psychological, abuse, etc.).
- There are relationship issues, including breakup, separation, divorce, escalating arguments, physical conflict).
- Suffering from a severe illness or injury.
- Going through a personal setback or tragedy.
- Being the target of a hate crime, racism, or discrimination.
- Having severe financial difficulties.
- Turmoil in the family.
- Losing your job or business.
- Witnessing or experiencing violence.
- Severe stress at work, home, or school.
What Triggers Emotions to Melt Down?
Do you know what the common triggers are for an emotional meltdown? Many people experience one or more of the following triggers, yet not everyone will develop an emotional meltdown:
- Mental or emotional exhaustion.
- Being overfatigued and finding it challenging to rest.
- Difficulty sleeping.
- Anxiety attacks occur more frequently.
- You’re unable to address relationship issues.
- Trivial situations bother you.
- You’re going through a momentous life transition.
- There’s too much responsibility at work, home, or school.
- You’re shaky from hunger, and blood sugar levels drop precipitously.
- Constantly feeling nauseous and dizzy.
- Everything and anything irritates you.
- You have little or no motivation to do anything.
Emotional Meltdown Coping Mechanisms
It is not within our power to stop upsetting or difficult situations from happening. Life goes on regardless. How we respond to these, however, is something that we can change. The best way to begin to cope with an emotional meltdown is to recognize the signs it’s occurring and act immediately.
Whether you are the one feeling the signs of an emotional meltdown or trying to help a friend cope, try these tips.
Use Grounding Techniques
The crucial thing to do is to pause and do your best to restore calm. Use breathing techniques or other sensory awareness approaches. When you slow your breathing, your body feels less discomfort. You can respond better when you’re not mired in emotional turmoil.
Create a Plan to Manage Emotions When You’re Stressed
Anger, raising your voice, slamming objects, and acting uncharacteristically are signs of an emotional meltdown in progress. When you know this is how you react, develop a plan to help manage these intense emotions the next time they occur.
It may be a challenge for you to arrive at this plan independently. You may wish to enlist the help of a professional therapist.
Learn Healthier Ways to Relieve Stress
Many people bottle up their emotions. Over time, these erupt in unexpected ways. A better way to cope with stress is to find healthy ways to relieve it.
- Learn to express strong emotions before they cascade into an emotional meltdown.
- Another technique is learning to manage time better.
- Develop the courage to say no to others more often.
- Get physical exercise to release stress. Enjoy the benefits of a workout’s natural dopamine rush.
Create Boundaries
Work burnout can lead to emotional exhaustion. Before things get that far, or after an emotional meltdown occurs, institute boundaries to help balance work and personal life. No matter how passionate you are about your career, taking on too much is overwhelming.
Insist on Self-Care
Who knows you better than you? If you consistently ignore taking care of yourself, your emotions can get out of whack quickly. Create daily rituals to pamper yourself. These include eating healthy and delicious meals, enjoying your favorite music, reading a good book, or other restful self-care.
- Did you know that research shows that 64 percent of Americans say self-care enhances their self-confidence?
- Productivity (67 percent) and happiness (71 percent) also increase.
