Enlightened - Interview with Laura Dern

Have you ever had a nervous breakdown?
Not yet! But it could be coming.

Have you come close?
I think I've come close often probably, in my own way, and without girlfriends, I’m sure I would have had many. It's interesting that breakdown and breakthrough are such close terms because I feel like the moments in my life I've said that I feel like I’m going to have a nervous breakdown, where you’re in such grief or loss or despair about something, you know you have a cellular experience, you start shaking or you can’t stop crying or whatever, that thing where you feel like your body is literally falling apart, in fact those truly have been the moments that have been breakthroughs for me.
In general there is this very beautiful idea starting to shift culturally to the awareness that life is both things. People are both things and when we approach it like that rather than -- we must be good and life must have no pain. Man, that's a horrible set up, that’s like setting up life like maybe you can escape death.

Source: Full interview @ Huffington Post