Ask HN: How do you manage or avoid meltdowns?

This hits close to home. I've had a few really intense meltdowns including twice where I ended up in the hospital for trying to kill myself. Apart from my meltdowns I'm a pretty chill guy.

When a meltdown hits, the first thing I do is breathe. I've survived the last ones, I'll survive this one. I acknowledge that I'm having a meltdown and that I need to deal with it before anything else.

Then, the hard part is trying to seperate yourself from your emotions. A meltdown isn't quite you. It's your body telling yourself something is wrong and that you need to do something about it. So take a breather (you're not going to get anything else done anyway) and let your bodily functions happen. If you need to cry, go ahead, if you can get some fresh air that often pretty good.

To finish calming down I try to bring some humor and lightheartedness to my emotions, althought its not easy to do.

On the medium term what helped me the most was getting a healthier life style. I tried meditating a bit but it asked a lot of effort to take the time to do it so regularly. On the other hand, exercise helped me a lot.

On the long term, even if you seem to be against it, the best solution seems to be therapy. I understand that you may be against it, however finding a good therapist can really help.

If you all the answers here haven't convinced you to go the psychotherapy way, I'd suggest finding the next best thing. Talk about your issues to some friends or people you trust. This is not easy either. It requires being really open and transparent about extremely complex issues that you keep bottled up even to yourself.

What helped me most was not judging myself for being emotional. Which is absolutely easier said then done. However small issues could spiral out of control because I didn't handle them well, and then I'd hate myself more for not handling them well, and then I'd hate myself for being so negative about myself and being just a liability to myself and the people around me which was just a vicious circle which ended up in huge meltdowns.

For context, a bunch of this advice I got from another answer on HN and really worked wonders. Not everything is better but I'm in a much better place than several years ago. As I said, mental issues need a lot of time to solve, and accepting that is one of the hard things to do.

I can only offer "becoming Zen". People constantly praise me for being Zen about things that upset everyone else; it apparently grants me much "leadership points" among my peers and direct reports.

It's mostly because at some level I just don't care enough to INVEST the energy required to get upset let alone meltdown. I pick carefully what I CHOOSE to invest emotional in and it's a very short list.

Related to this: what are you willing to "walk away from", and if you aren't, why not?

I have also experienced most of the "stress/crisis events" a man can, and survived them well enough or often enough to not be phased by them anymore.

https://paindoctor.com/top-10-stressful-life-events-holmes-r...

If you refuse to seek therapy, I would recommend reading about Mindfulness and practicing it.

fwiw +1 good advice.

You need to trust without any reservations that therapy or counseling is going to help.

You might not gel well with a specific therapist, and there is a choice to get a different therapist or therapy until one works for you.

Also, this takes time

honestly people on here are not spending enough time telling you that if your job is shitty and your career feels dead that you will be angry, depressed, anxious. not that having a job and a career is everything, but speaking from the experience of having done that once or twice before, 8+ hours of terrible job will get to you and start to fray anyone's patience and sap their life force. for the love of yourself and your own family, go find something to do all day that you don't hate.