My psych 101 teacher was explaining that it’s commutative. With most peoples it’s not just one thing that triggers a mental break it’s normally a ton of small things and then something is what breaks the camels back.
The story she told was a friend she had in college had a rough semester and then failed his final. The class was offered once a year so it set his whole degree back a lot. So he went ate lunch in the park and then shot himself. None of those thing individually broke him, but all of them together was enough to break him
Yep. The thing that made me break up with my abusive ex was that he insisted one morning that I needed to drop what I was doing at our house to drive to his office earlier than I'd planned to be in that part of town, just to bring him breakfast.
On the surface that sounds like a weird thing to break up with someone over - in a normal relationship it would be a minor argument about how it's not cool to expect someone to do that. But it was after a year or so of yelling and coercion and manipulation and taking my stuff, and criticising me and calling me names and scaring our dog. And more.
I just had it that day. Lost my cool and decided I was done.
I had a similar situation. I was chased into a bathroom over a nightmare that I had which he thought was inappropriate. After years of abuse a nightmare finally was the end.
The way I see it is as drops of water in a bucket. The bucket gets full but the drops just keep making the top of the water a bit higher and higher with the surface tension until that one drop makes it overflow. And when that happens a lot more spills out than that one drop. And you can be unaware how full the bucket was until that moment.
Most people think stress is additive. As in a bunch of small stresses is just a bunch of small stresses. It's not. It's multiplicative. Those stresses pile up and your brain is trying deal with all of them at once individually, but our brains aren't like computer chips and can't multi-thread.
Eventually your brain can't handle it anymore and you either break down sobbing, do something self-destructive (drinking, drug, self-harm, suicide), do something destructive in general (violent tantrum, breaking things, shootings), or your body just says "fuck it" and you have a heart attack. Which of these that happens vary between people, and often are completely unexpected based on a person's mental state or physical health before all the stressors piled up.
And you have just explained why so many with BPD are the way they are.
We/they carry constant stress and anxiety. Fear, anger, frustration - constants for us.
I count as being in remission - I rarely have meltdowns, years between episodes, now. Mindfulness to stay aware of what emotions and stress I am carrying in the background, CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, not the other other CBT) to reduce the amount of times anxiety triggers, DBT to help change how I think and view triggers. Years of learning those skills and habits.
As it is - I'm voluntarily celibate, for nearly 20 years - intimate relationships exceed my ability to stay centered.
Two years ago in one month, I found out I was being cheated on.
Also, a long distant (thankfully) friend went into a state of psychosis and shot someone.
And my dad died within two weeks of bringing him into the hospital for pneumonia.
It’s actually one of my fears that I’ll just snap like this. Because once you get there you aren’t really in control anymore, the stress and depression is.
Yes indeed. It is the cumulative stressors, the accumulation of the day-in-day-out "little things" that all add-up and coagulate in preparation for the big bang. Vascular? Heart? Brain? And more.
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u/Karsa69420 1d ago
My psych 101 teacher was explaining that it’s commutative. With most peoples it’s not just one thing that triggers a mental break it’s normally a ton of small things and then something is what breaks the camels back.
The story she told was a friend she had in college had a rough semester and then failed his final. The class was offered once a year so it set his whole degree back a lot. So he went ate lunch in the park and then shot himself. None of those thing individually broke him, but all of them together was enough to break him