A Meltdown Might Be a Sign of Growth

The beginning of the school year, despite the fact that my own children are older, it still manages to get the best of me each year. 

I’m way past the days of buying boxes of Kleenex, ziplock baggies, dry erase markers and notebooks for the kids. They buy their own supplies, get their school ids and check out their schedules. And yet, with one in college and one a senior in high school, the stakes feel higher and the price tags are bigger.

School starting doesn’t mean the rest of life stops. It’s also a transition. Transitions inherently can be tricky, even when we really look forward to them. A new job, moving, a new baby, summer to fall, single to married, no bangs to a heavy bang and lots of layers…transitions can throw us off. 

We forget this though. Instead of being a bit more gentle with ourselves, we tend to plunge into transitions with vigor and enthusiasm or denial and dread, but we rarely pause, take a deep breath and invite in a sense of compassion for the minor or major upheaval ahead of us. 

This year, as the school year rolled around, I found myself in the midst of several minor growing pains that were popping up at the same time. I found myself leaning into discomfort on many levels: volunteering a bit more in the community, saying yes to a future speaking engagement, training for a trail race in the mountains, and launching a new workshop at work. While it is all great and completely aligned to my values, I could feel the vulnerability mounting. 

Cue “The Meltdown”. We all have versions of what a meltdown looks like. You may call it a release of tension, a temper tantrum, venting…What my own meltdown looks like is usually my husband and I talking in the kitchen, he listens as I rant and verbalize all the fears, vulnerabilities, worries and “I’m not sure that this will work” fears. Sometimes there’s tears, sometimes there’s anger.  

There is nothing wrong with a meltdown. There is nothing wrong with big frustrations. Actually, it might mean you are on the right track. It might mean you are growing. It could also mean that you need to scale back or something is out of alignment.

How do you know the difference?

You know yourself. You check in. You notice. You think about when you felt this way in the past. I know that when I do hard things. When I do things that matter to me very deeply, like getting people together, being creative, pushing myself to do hard physical feats, these things also scare me a little bit. They scare me not because they are wrong for me, but because they are so aligned that it feels scary is they don’t work out. 

Once you start to listen to yourself, you start to learn your own patterns. This helps you hold on when the hard stuff comes up. I know that when I do something new that’s sort of hard, I will hit a big bump. I’ll get mad at myself for thinking I could do___________ (fill in the blank). I will want to quit and trash whatever progress I’ve made. 

“Growth Meltdowns” come and go. You can release the tension, notice what you feel, and then move forward. They often help you make minor adjustments. For example, after my meltdown, I noticed I needed more sleep with this training plan, that I need to adjust my expectations of my son’s senior year and remind myself to focus on the process over the outcome with creative endeavors. 

Meltdowns can offer up great opportunities for a tune up. They can be a part of the growth process. It’s okay to be ticked off or really frustrated for a bit. Get it out in a safe way with a safe person or write it out, get curious about what you need and move forward. 

You Got This.