How do you feel after a meltdown?

Post Reply New Topic

Yes.

You never worked in the corporate world or in government professional positions, have you? In those situations (and I have lost my cool in those environments), management doesn't care if you have a grievance. Lose your temper (justified or not), and you're out the door.

Meistersinger

I am an early-retired corporate attorney, who, after working in a major Wall Street law firm, then spent eighteen years as in-house counsel at two different large multinationals. I had meltdowns at all three places. Perhaps it is because I am female, but the meltdowns were less of an issue for my career success than my blunt truth-telling.

^^^

So, our friend, the old double-standard raises it head once again. It's ok for women to be overwhelmed, but men are supposed to grin and bear it.

After a meltdown, I feel much more relaxed, but also very tired and drained. After a shutdown (which are more common for me), I also feel exhausted mentally and physically, but not relaxed.

Luckily mine are rare, especially big ones, and more shutdowns than meltdowns, though crying is usually involved. I feel a lot of physical effects (emotions tend to affect me physically - fear/anxiety makes be feel sick, talking about personal things makes my whole body shake) so after a bad episode I feel absolutely exhausted. After my worst one (and the only one I've ever had in a work environment) it took me at least 3 days to recover, and two of those were the weekend so not at work. Immediately afterwards I tend to feel sick, shaky, weepy and very vulnerable and want to be alone or have physical touch from someone I trust. I usually can't talk or look at people for a while afterwards though. Over the rest of the day or next days my digestion may still be affected, I will need to sleep a lot and do low mental and physical energy things.

I feel frustrated and angry, usually because it's due to a disagreement between my mother and I.

I shutdown when exposed to too much external sensory stimuli, and that can leave me feeling in shock and more sensitive to everything for a while.

I meltdown when under extreme stress, anger, frustration, sadness, etc. It's violent. I scream, stomp, throw things, rip things, and bite myself. After that I hate myself and feel like a monster. I just want to sleep/die.

It's interesting to me that you should mention seizures because I've had epilepsy for most of my life; personally, I hate the word "fit" because it comes from the old days when seizures were considered to be caused by evil forces and people who had them were deemed insane, dumb, incompetent, and inferior in so many other ways.

I think that any time someone in our society loses control, that person is saddled with shame....unless the person was drunk, and in that case, it may be considered funny or cool, so long as no one was hurt. But since you brought it up, I can tell you that although someone with a seizure disorder isn't considered by many these days to be someone who's not fit to be human/alive we're often still looked upon with pity at best; the stigma is still very real. I understand the feeling behind Jo_B1's "not fit to be human" expression. I'm defective, in a big way.

For so many reasons, I'm thankful that I've had relatively few public seizures: I was lucky enough to be "in remission" for a few wonderful years and otherwise, my neurologists and I have been tweaking my medications over and over and over again as my body has changed. I try to do whatever I can to conceal the fact that I have seizures, including trying so hard to take my medications discretely and privately--not so easy to do three times a day--because it's still so embarrassing. I had a seizure suddenly at work last September and, though I am very impressed with my ability to walk back through the doors the next day (some people don't know what it was, and others are "looking the other way"), I still have to remind myself that, no, it's NOT something to be ashamed of, but I don't retain that sense of confidence for long. I think it's a struggle that will stay with me, to one degree or another, for the rest of my life.