How To Have A Meltdown
If you're going to turn to mush, you're going to want to do it right.
By Izzy Snow
Published
Tips To Save Your Life is a monthly column that offers fearless, silly, and delicious advice for how to survive the mosh pit we call life.
Whenever I’m in the thick of a bad day, I think of Jason Segel. Segel is great at being depressed in movies. He really lets himself go. He orders pizza and Chinese food and never throws away his takeout boxes! His meltdown is confined to the length of the movie’s sad boi montage, so he saturates in self-aggrandizing melancholy to make it clear how bummed he is in the span of a 2010’s pop ballad. My most “main character” moments are when I’m on the verge of a proper, Segel-esque meltdown.
When you’re a kid and have a bad day, you get ice cream. You quietly sob in your room over a carefully curated emo playlist on your iPod. When you’re an adult, you get a montage. We spin sucky moments into a sequence of mournful pitfalls, convincing ourselves we’re living out a sad folktale to get us through the day. The universe loves to make you the punchline of your life’s joke.
This happened to me in high school. I was picking up my first prescription of antidepressants at Walgreens. Their broken speaker played “Bad Day” by Daniel Powter on a loop. It was February 15th, and the shelves were lined with half-price, oversized, sulking stuffed bears in heart bowties. I bought one, for a neglected soul like me and took my crinkly paper bag of mental illness Skittles home. It’s somewhat soothing to think of these surreal meta-moments as entertainment for an omnipresent fate-maker. If our bad day has a theme or moral lesson, then maybe it was worth something—a core turning point in the narrative arc of our lives.
I’ve spent much of my life making bad days worse to validate the anguish I feel as I move through them. I hope that if I let panic take over completely, it’ll bring me some post-nut clarity. After years of experience, I humbly admit I am quite the expert at having meltdowns. I was embarrassing as a kid at birthday parties, concerts, and on Halloween. With no language to explain that I was neurodivergent and overstimulated, I looked like a brat.
So I morphed into something more digestible: a manic pixie whose emotions were unpredictably alluring. I quietly endured activities I was supposed to find easy but didn’t: holding conversations, crowded rooms, loud noises, and implied meanings. I tried every therapy (except psychedelic) and became astonishingly self-reflective but not self-aware. I knew how to capture my pain poetically, but I never learned how to absolve it. My meltdowns were destructive and cleft from the hero’s journey Segel promised.
If I were to “heal” in the way TikTok wants us all to, I had to stop canonizing my suffering as a stepping stone, an attractive personality trait, or a coming-of-age narrative. I had to re-teach myself how to process, acknowledge, and experience the mutable emotions I thought were fixed. In a movie, Segel feels sad; his diverse friends comfort him; and then he feels happy because he’s met Mila Kunis. Life doesn’t have the same three-act structure, and neither do meltdowns. Here is how to do it like a professional:
1. Headphones go a long way.
Earbuds work too. Headphones help everything around you feel distant and blurry, like watching humans from the other side of a fish tank. You don’t have to listen to music, but my recommendations are ocean sounds or the Renaissance album (those song transitions are butter).
2. Soft destruction is okay.
Tear up your bills, throw something hard onto something soft, and break a plate you don’t care about (away from feet). Go on a huffy-puffy walk and slam the door (with consent) on your way out. Write it down and draw it out. Sometimes I draw my feelings as freaky lil monsters. Film the nastiest hate TikTok and leave it in drafts; say whatever rude thing you think will change them forever in a voice memo. But remember, melting down is a tightrope walk between self-indulgence and validation—as you affirm yourself, try not to bring anyone else down.
3. Starfish.
Lay on your back and reach your arms and legs into the biggest starfish pose in the center of your bed. Imagine all that built-up rage stretching out of your fingers and toes from the center of your chest. Feel the light from your ceiling or window touch your cheeks, arms, hands, and chest. You’re a starfish!
4. Prep a really cute goodie basket for tough days.
Draw what you need or assemble one. Stock it with all your favorite creature comforts, a watch list, or a gift card for a little shopping spree. Mine has an episode list of my favorite sitcoms and sour candy. Why do goody bags have to be for fun things? It’s so much more necessary when you’re mentally ill!
5. Know your network.
Although talking to people when you feel like this is terrifying, the people closest to you may better understand you than you do now. You don’t even have to mention that you’re upset. Talk about something silly! Like, what are we wearing to the Barbie movie???
There is no right or wrong way to melt it all down. Your goal is to feel like your soul has been swaddled, your wounds appropriately licked, and your mind rested. We’re all hurt kids with adult responsibilities and pocket money, babies in longer aspect ratios. Having a meltdown is your body’s way of telling you it needs a time out, so listen to its needs. Segel was right about one thing: the meltdown montage ends, and you feel better.