Ask HN: How do you manage or avoid meltdowns?

One thing that has worked quite well for me is meditation. I use the Headspace app, and I like it.

Meditation is not a silver bullet, but for me it has been a net positive. It has definitely helped me to be a calmer person.

Seeing a therapist can also help sometimes. But it can be hard to find the right type of help. Is there any trustworthy medical center in your region? If you have the means to get help from them then you might want to try that. As 'Ensorceled pointed out, there could be an underlying psychiatric condition that affects you. But that is very hard to tell without further details and without the right competence, that’s why seeking care can be helpful. But the specifics of those possibilities will probably vary a lot depending on where you live.

Things like exercise, sleep, eating well etc. could go some way to coping better with the underlying issue, but by themselves are unlikely to address what’s actually going on.

The situation described suggests that feelings are not being managed very well. There could be lots of reasons why, but given the severity any quick fixes from random people on the internet are unlikely to result in sustained improvement.

We each have an optimal bandwidth of sensory stimulus in which we function. For some, it's pretty broad. For others, it's very narrow and complex. But the large majority, those who come across as perfectly normal and well-functioning, never even pause to think about this - and most people's bandwidth isn't that broad.

So the first thing I'd do is read about your sensory system and think hard about what throws you off in terms of sensory input. There are sure to be questionnaires online on this. It may be that what will help you far more than drugs or sitting still is installing a swing in your backyard.

Adults tend to sacrifice self care at the drop of a hat.

Here are a few ideas which my clients find useful:

- who you are, and what you are capable of, changes, and is influenced by many things, on both short and long timescales.

- you on 2 hours of sleep and no food is different from a well-rested well-fed “you”

- it is beneficial to look at yourself less as “good” or “bad” and more as “well-resourced”, or “under-resourced”

- divide your resources into a few different aspects which you can clearly identify/sense. You can visualize them like the health, energy, mana, ammunition etc. bars in a video game.

- I recommend rest/nourishment, belonging/connection, solitude/stillness/reflection, contribution/competency, play/fun, self expression. Yours may vary A bit but these are some of the most common basic human needs.

- when these get depleted, your cognitive resources diminish. Your stress increases. Your organism has a breaking point and a meltdown is a signal of your reaching it.

- a meltdown in a child is the result of the brain getting flooded with stress hormones and restoring itself to balance. (Cortisol gets excreted in tears for example). Similar to you - it’s a rebalancing process. But, it has impact on others and it’s better to not reach a point of losing control.

Resource-wise, you will need to fight to resource yourself - against your old habits, the time crunch etc. Prioritizing your self-care is now vitally important.