What in Hell’s name is a “nervous breakdown?”

For a month, people have been asking me, “What happened?” And I’ve always answered the same way, “Although I neither like nor understand the term, I’ve had what used to be called a nervous breakdown.”

My dislike for the term is deep and unfortunate. It’s deep because one aspect of my condition is a profound obsession with precision with my vocabulary. It’s unfortunate because it’s a term people have heard and they think they know what it means but do they?

I desperately needed an answer so that I could explain my stutter, why I was declining their invitation or why I was proposing that we regularize our walks. So with the help of Wiki, the articles provided by my psychiatrist, Dr. Shoja, and the website of The Stuttering Foundation, I have an answer.

I’m experiencing an acute, time-limited psychiatric illness. I won't use the word “nervous;” I think “emotional” breakdown is a more meaningful and accurate term. And it’s a “breakdown” because the symptoms prevent me from performing the day-to-day tasks of life.

The literature about nervous breakdowns is constantly referencing depression, I don’t feel depressed. However, anxiety — another dominant characteristic of a breakdown — overwhelms me. Watch me exit an elevator or turn a corner on the sidewalk. Almost everything “out there” scares me; I only feel myself alone at home or in the company of, truthfully, three people.

What causes breakdowns? The one-word answer is stress. A clinical level of stress creates chaos in the neurotransmitters of the brain — hence my stutter and life in a state of constant hyper-vigilance. 

What causes the stress? Trauma. It’s always trauma, either from the past or in the present. In my case, it’s my past (as all my friends know). And because my abuse was both physical and emotional, came from caregivers (the church, teachers, birth parent and both adoptive parents) and was ongoing, I'm considered to have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Treatment for me is three-fold: Psychoanalysis to prevent further breakdowns, physiotherapy to deal with the somatic effects of stuttering and speech therapy.  

How long does it last? That is a tricky question.

"Repairing" what has broken down, it seems to me, involves coming to terms with a new understanding of myself — re-writing the story of my past with new insights gained through my work with Dr. Shoja, and it will take a long time for that new way of thinking to become ingrained.

For sixty-eight years I have felt responsible for all that happened to me; I have felt I deserved all the injustice. It will take quite a while for me to shift the blame from me to my abusers; to be angry with them and not myself. I feel myself becoming someone new but the change will be invisible to acquaintances, noticeable to friends and significant to my few intimate friends.

Another thing about the question of the tenure of my condition is this: Sometimes, I sense that the questioner is asking about it because they are frustrated with my speech and, frankly, that pisses me off. 

I have one last (and very good) answer to the question, “How long will it last?” It’s this: “Until I stop stuttering.”