roadkill

You hear about a 'breaking point' all the time in movies, books, games, and on the news every day. But what is it? I'm not talking about the point where you DON'T want to do shit, but the point where you CAN'T do shit? Why does this happen do you think its all mental or is it physical? Perhaps a realation ship bewteen desire and faith?

play ball

Slavakion

Well, I think that the point is different for everyone. Everybody responds to situations differently. Something that would cause a person to "break" may cause someone else to simply faint.

I think it's mental. Obviously you can't do anything physical (if that's what you're talking about), but your brain is what's keeping you back. You still have the muscles, the blood vessels and the nerves. The brain just couldn't handle it and shut down.

losthellhound

You can either reach your breaking point physically, mentally, emotionally. etc.

It's going to be different for everyone, and different in every situation. What I consider my physical breaking point, the point where breath burns in my lungs, my muscles are on fire, and I can't take another step.. some one else may consider that a warm up

__________________
"Life is possible only with illusions. And so, the question for the science of mental health must become an absolutely new and revolutionary one, yet one that reflects the essence of the human condition: On what level of illusion does one live?"
-- Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death

Key

my nutrition professor was an IronMan nut. had every IronMan Challenge on dvd or vhs, watched it like football. eventually compiled a film for class that showed the end of the races, it's fricking SCARY.

shows what happens when the human body runs out of fuel, completely. you run a couple miles at the fastest pace you can, and you burn and can't breath, and just collapse. these guys take it beyond that. most can't control their own bodily functions, puking and pissing all over themselves as they're walking, and don't even realize it. it's just what happens when the body burns ALL fuel and there's nothing left.

i don't know what that breaking point would be like mentally though. i don't know if you could strain yourself on such a problem that you'd pass out or something. hmm, wonder what would happen. i'm sure there've been some extremes before, but i would think you'd just pass out from fatigue since your brain would outlast your body.

MSD

The final breaking point is the point at which your brain refuses to carry out any more voluntary motions and, based on either the need for rest or a strong emotion such as guilt, terror, hopelessness, or any of many emotions, induces psychosomatic paralysis of a sense.

some examples:

A mother who sees her child chase the ball she just bought him into the road and be hit by a car is overcome by guilt and horror and goes blind so that she can't see her child bleeding to death because of something she feels responsible for.

Back in Victorian times, one of Freud's patients was a woman who suffered paralysis and numbness from the waist down because she felt so guilty about enjoying sex with her husband. Her husband was a decent man who wouldn't ask a paralyzed wife to have sex with him, so her "problem" was "solved."

analog

Yup. That's exactly it. A breakign point can be temporary (a split-second to a few minutes), long-lasting (hours, days, weeks, months), or permanent. Most seriously long-term, and pretty much all permanent occurences of such a mental phenomena are caused by a lengthy build-up of disorder or chaos in the mind- not a single, qualitative event.

There are, however, times when a single event has enough impact on a person's mind as to immediately and permanently render them "broken"...

These are usually the types of events you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy...