Hitting Rock Bottom

I can't tell you how many times I've hit a very low ebb in my life. To be honest, sometimes it seems like I've been going from one crisis to another since I was little, with intermittent periods of stability.

Not to brag, but this kind of makes me an expert in breakdowns and recovery.

For me, briefly, breakdown meant a loss hope for the future, high anxiety, and sleeplessness. I felt isolated and powerless.

But they were also a chance to rewrite the script. A clean slate, a reset button on life, to take stock of what matters and rebuild myself in a way that works better.

It's not easy. It's one of the hardest things a person ever goes through. Giving up would have been easy, but there is an undying curiosity in me that says "what will tomorrow bring?". I've been down and up, riding this rollercoaster and it is true - keep an open mind and you just never know what is waiting for you around the corner.

Once I stopped fighting the reality of where I was, I could begin asking different questions. What wasn't working? What was I holding onto that was making me unhappy? And what might a different life look like?

One of the biggest things I'm slowly learning is that I can trust myself to navigate whatever life brings, even when things don't go the way I'd hoped.

Recovery begins when you start to accept the reality of your situation. Drop the pretending, stop hiding the feelings and admit that the current way of living is no longer working. Learning to acknowledge and make room for difficult emotions, rather than constantly fighting or avoiding them, can be an important part of recovery. Talking to someone you trust can be very helpful.

I wouldn't wish these experiences on anyone, and I don't believe we need to suffer in order to grow. But when life falls apart, sometimes we discover that we have an opportunity to build something different.

If you're going through a difficult time, you don't need to have all the answers. You don't even need to know what comes next. Sometimes the first step is simply acknowledging where you are, and allowing yourself to wonder what might be possible.