OnTheBeach: 14 Lessons From Ye Meltdowne

Oh joy! Rapture! I am no longer cuddling rock bottom! Phew. It’s been an interesting time, lemme tell ya. Ok, I’ll be honest, it frigging sucked! Meltdowns do suck. I wouldn’t wish them on my worst enemy. But, once they’re over, and the goldfish memory starts to kick in and erase the pain and awfulness of it, they leave in their wake some genuinely interesting lessons and thoughts. (and some really obvious, palm-against-forehead realisations!)

Here’s my top 14 lessons from Ye Goode Olde Meltdowne…

1. When you feel jealous of other people taking time off, it’s a big red sign to TAKE TIME OFF!

I know, I know, you are very busy and important, and you can’t take the time off…but let me ask you, would you rather just take a day or two off voluntarily and have a lovely time or be forced to through mad meltdown and spend 5 days lying face down on the floor in despair and exhaustion? #justsayin I had thought quite a few times pre-meltdown ‘oh I wish I could take 3 weeks off/go away for a long weekend/have a DVD day’, but I kept telling myself ‘I’ll be off at Christmas’…with a month to go before I was off at Christmas, this was too long to wait – et voila! MELTDOWN.

2. You are allowed to say no to things and clear the decks

Pre-meltdown, I had a big list of stuff to do by the end of the year that I ‘had’ to get done. Post-meltdown, I’ve jettisoned half that stuff. I can’t do it all (I have 12 working days before Christmas!), so I’ve said no to some stuff and ditched the things I need to ditch. My sanity is more important than doing 1000 things perfectly. Yours is too.

3. Know what you need in your meltdown time

Sometimes you need to retreat into your cave and lick your wounds. Sometimes you need a hug. Sometimes you need a kick up the arse. Sometimes you need to be heard. Sometimes you need to scream your head off, and cry and lie down and sleep. Sometimes you need to sit with a sad face on staring at the wall until you feel like doing something else. You may need to do all of them at different points in the meltdown (I did!) Know what you need and give yourself that. Tip; what you need is what you want to do, so if you want to sit and stare at the wall with a glum face…do it!

4. NOTHING is more important than that you feel good.

Meltdowns aren’t so much fun that I’d recommend them as a regular pastime…and can often be avoided (or the impact reduced) by making sure you feel good. I know that some of you will think ‘oh that’s selfish’, but who are the people who get the brunt of you feeling bad? Trust me, your family, friends, colleagues and clients would rather have a happy, healthy, well taken care of you than a bat-crap-crazy you!

5. Meltdowns often have particular triggers – fix them

What precipitated your last 3 meltdowns? (and maybe you don’t call them a ‘meltdown’, maybe it’s a little ‘down’ moment or a little ‘blip’…whatever, what set you off?) Was it money, exhaustion, stress, lack of fun time, burning the candle at both ends, ignoring your body and mind’s many requests for rest? If you can fix the triggers that set off the meltdowns, you can avoid future meltdowns. For example, if it’s money, sort out your savings. If it’s exhaustion, learn to say no and have pyjama days.

6. Love and accept yourself anyway

At the height of my meltdown I was a bitch from hell. While I was cuddling rock bottom, I was so down that fish at the bottom of the sea would have struggled to reach my depths. I love and accept myself anyway. Emotions happen. They are part of who we are. My experience of meltdown doesn’t make me a bad person, it makes me HUMAN. Love and accept yourself, even if you’re a bitch from hell, or have a face like a spanked arse. Love and accept yourself always.

7. Get the support you need from wherever you can

I’ll be brutally honest here. Most of the ‘support’ I received was well-meaning, but ultimately not that helpful. I realised within hours that what I actually needed was to retreat into my cave and lick my wounds for a bit…but I also needed some encouragement and someone to tell me it would be ok. So, Jared Leto came to the rescue. Most of the time, real people react to what you say, which when you’re in meltdown, is not necessarily how you feel (because you’re in knee-jerk, panic, aaaaaaaaargh mode – you may tell your friends and family that the world is ending, but it’s probably not). So the people in your life are doing their best to help…but maybe you’re not able to articulate that you just need them to say ‘you’ll be fine’, not accept that it’s time for you to go off and live as a Vietnamese fisherman. So, it’s fine to go to Auntie Google and find fit rock stars who tell you it’ll all be ok!

8. Meltdown confession is empowering

I have lost count of the number of people over the last week who’ve said ‘me too’ or ‘I know how you feel’ or ‘oh my god, you have meltdowns too? you mean I’m not a psycho nutter who needs the men in white coats!??!?’ or something along those lines. Everyone has meltdowns (even if they call them something else). Everyone has dark days. Everyone has a blip now and again. And if we all stopped pretending we don’t, the world would be a more relaxed, compassionate place and no one would have to think ‘is it just me?’.

9. Don’t try to force your way out of meltdown

No one wants to be in meltdown. No one wants to stay feeling bad. We all want to be feeling good and happy-clappy, joyful, wonderful. Sometimes you can ‘jolly’ yourself out of a slump…but sometimes you just need to be with what’s going on. You need to cocoon, to rest, to chill out, to mope a bit and to recover. Trying to force yourself to feel GREAT when you feel sucky is counter-productive. No point sticking a happy face sticker on an empty fuel guage right?! Let what needs to release, release. Let yourself come back up naturally.

10. Take the recovery time you need

Closely related to number 9. As well as not forcing yourself back up to feeling good, allow yourself the time you need to recover. Meltdowns are personal earthquakes, and you need to take the time to recover your equilibrium, to make sure you can stand without falling down, to go again without falling down again. Don’t ignore your feelings of not feeling ‘quite right’.

11. Clear the energy

When I got back into my office this week, I felt very fragile again. There was a lingering icky energy in the room (it took me about 7 hours to realise this however, I thought I was still in number 10 mode – taking more recovery time). Today, I used my singing bowl, I sprayed Bergamot room spray and I burned some sage to clear the energy. It worked. The icky energy has lifted. It might sound woo-woo, but just try it – it’s like changing your bedsheets after you’ve been poorly, it does make a difference!

12. Don’t tie your self-esteem to the results of stuff you do

Do you know what? You are awesome. You are beautiful. You are gifted. You are wonderful. You are a fabulous slice of deliciousness. That’s who you are. It is not related to what you do in any way. You just are gorgeous, and loving, and funny, and bright, and witty. I know this because you are reading my words…but even if you didn’t read them, you’d still be gorgeous and loving and funny and bright and witty and fabulous. Because that’s who you are. It doesn’t matter what your bank balance is, how your business is going, how many sales you make, what job title you have, how much you weigh, what qualifications you have or how many years you’ve been married. Who you are is still wonderful. Who you are is still beautiful. Remember that when the circumstances of your life make you feel bad about you…you are not your achievements. You are the unique and fabulous and amazing and gorgeous you.

13. The sun will come out tomorrow

I apologise for putting a song from Annie in your head. But it will. The sun will come out. It will get better. You just need to wait for the rain to stop. I know it doesn’t feel like it when you’re in the depths, it feels like the sun will never come out. But it will, I promise you, it will get better. Be patient. And have a song, and maybe even a dance! (go to the musicals – they have a song and a dance for everything!)

14. It’s all part of the process

I can’t take credit for this realisation to be honest – it was my lovely coach who pointed out that it’s all part of it. Part of the process is to soar and fly and joyfully dance forward. Part of it is to lose the plot! Sometimes you need to lose it, you need to feel your desire so strongly that you can scream it from the deepest part of your being, you need to go into your gut and bring out that creative power. Rock bottom can be a very powerful place as a catalyst for change. No, you don’t have to go there…but sometimes you need to. (Ever seen someone stay in a sucky situation for years? Yeah, if they were a meltdown-er, that’d be less likely! :-D)

So there you have it, 14 lessons from Ye Meltdowne (somehow referring to it in olde Englishe makes it less crap, and more amusing!). I hope you can take some (or all) of these and apply them to either avoid meltdown altogether, or deal with it more easily if it hits!

Let me know what you’ve learned from your meltdowns, OR what you might do differently now to avoid meltdown in the comments!

Love

Donna.x

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