The human brain is the most amazing untapped part of our bodies. Most of us sail through life not even giving our brains any credit for how it processes everything our bodies do every second of the day.

It is at a time when we overstretched our bodies by filling it with stressful situations that the brain triggers ‘enough is enough’ and has a meltdown.

I witnessed a scary meltdown with my youngest daughter recently and it was the most difficult thing I have had to endure. Through mother’s instinct, I felt that something was wrong with my daughter and phoned her.

Immediately on speaking with her I knew something wasn’t right to the point of dropping the phone and driving over to her place running up her stairs and instantly grabbed her and asked “what is wrong” she replied “I want my mummy” “I am your mummy and I am going to take you to hospital”. She burst into tears and I knew that the prognosis wasn’t good.

The ten-minute drive to the emergency section of the hospital seemed to take hours. Thank goodness the assessment by the triage nurse was almost immediate, her blood pressure was extremely high, she wasn’t speaking or concentrating adequately. The doctors and nurses’ actioned blood, urine samples, brain scan, lumbar tap and MRI, drips and heart monitor. This was overwhelming for my daughter and myself, things like meningitis, epilepsy was mentioned without actually definitive result. Two days in the emergency, then two days in the medical assessment unit and finally transferred to the well-being unit where she was finally diagnosed as having had hypomania episode.

All of this hypomania came out of the blue, with no previous episodes experienced by my daughter, all right she may have been anxious from time to time, but this was more than anxiousness. Due to her working two different high-level technical jobs it was inevitable eventually her body would show signs that she is overstressed and stop coping. Her brain finally said “enough is enough we are stopping” and that is what happened.

My knowledge of such an illness was limited to knowing that people suffer mania episodes, however, after reading heaps of information on suitable websites referred to me it was too complex and there were many unanswered questions from my perspective. My daughter now as an inpatient is learning how to be good to yourself, not to allow any part of your work life gets overbalanced, which obviously her work life was totally out of balance. She hadn’t had any ME time for her nor a holiday for more than eight years.

During the psychiatrist review he mentioned to my daughter; her older sister and myself that she had suffered a mild hypomania episode and left unattended it would have had a devastating effect on her. She listened politely to the psychiatrist explain her situation, a psychiatrist who happened to be wearing woolen socks underneath a pair of leather thongs shoes, how very odd! Could you actually take him serious was our immediate thinking as we looked at one another!

My daughter responded with “so I am not normal” his immediate response was “what is normal?” This prompted all our minds to go into overdrive, as who and what is actually normal, especially when we put too much stress on our bodies and expect our brains can just keep taking large amounts of pressure without some type of consequences.

Some lessons learnt for all of us, treat the diagnosed condition with the correct medication, education and most importantly well being, something that both of my daughters need to adhere too especially the well being, giving yourself some special ME time and not to let any part of your life get out of balance – work, family, personal relationships, and friends.