come apart at the seams, to

To become disordered; to go to pieces. This graphic analogy to a garment becoming, as it were, unsewn, is Ameri- can and dates from the mid-twentieth century. “In a few instances when I thought that I would come apart at the seams . . . I managed to make the director listen” (Josef von Sternberg, Fun in a Chinese Laundry, 1965, an account of making a movie).