The Gift of a Breakdown
What I’d like to share today is that a breakdown, as terrible and difficult and challenging as it is to manage and overcome, can, in the long run, be a great blessing and gift. I know this might seem like an a**hat sort thing to say, especially if you are currently in the midst of one (or in denial that you are having one), but coming from my own personal experience with this topic, it rings damn true.
(See minute eleven (11:00) for Brene Brown’s definition of a breakdown/ spiritual awakening. I love her frankness.)
To explain, a breakdown (physical/emotional/mental) is our body’s way of stopping us cold in our well-worn habits and self-defeating patterns. If your body could outwardly speak to you, it’d be saying, “HEY MOFO! This sh*it ain’t working, and you gotta fix it, ‘cause I’m done.” Our bodies are so wise, though if there is too much external noise and distraction we easily ignore the signs. And the consistent disregarding of the many, MANY clues our body sends us, eventually results in the crash. It’s like the body flips the emergency switch to shutdown to save us from ourselves. We feel broken, lost, and out of touch with ourselves and have no idea how to reactivate the system.
A breakdown FORCES us to look at our life with a new lens.
In my situation, in order to heal, I needed to have a big-ass look at my thoughts, beliefs, perspectives, habits, and behaviours in my life and figure out what wasn’t serving me anymore. And junk the junk. For me, the breakdown I experienced incapacitated me enough in my life that I couldn’t continue go forward as I was. My current way of living was destroying me, physically, emotionally, and mentally. I was stuck in this deep, dark hole of an existence in survival mode, and the last bits of resources had pretty much been exhausted. I felt like I was in a choke-hold, losing consciousness, and had to tap out.
This video by The School of Life PERFECTLY encapsulates what breakdown is and what it means for us, the breakdown-ee. It is an opportunity for review, reset, and rebuild in our lives in an authentic, compassionate, and meaningful way. We learn our life has great value and meaning and that we are effectively at the helm and control our journey.
Now here’s the flip side. Hitting the wall of my existence was, in retrospect, the greatest gift I gave myself--willingly or not. It forced me, or rather, I CHOSE to acknowledge and see my life for the crumbling mess it was, take full responsibility for the situation I faced, look deep within myself, and sit down and figure out how to put my life back together.
It felt akin to after an earthquake, when everything around you has been destroyed and broken, and the job at hand is to clean up the current mess, sort through the rubble to find anything that still works, and start putting the pieces back together. And for me this wasn’t a glue-everything-back-together-and-keep-going again sort of situation. The pieces were too sharp, indiscernible and fragmented. No standard rebuild here, my friend. My life needed an absolute redesign.
This new structure needed to be well-designed & resilient. I wanted it to be modular (flexible), and have the infrastructure and mechanics to allow for future changes, upgrades, modifications, additions, alterations, and adaptations. This new life design needed to be adaptable for change because I would continue to grow and develop for as long as I live on this planet. It also needed to be connected and authentic to my core self and my life purpose. Ignoring the self would just put me back in the same place again, and I wasn’t willing to rinse and repeat.
I think what scares people (and scared me too) was that the idea of looking within was effing scary. I avoided it because I didn’t want to have to look in the proverbial mirror, that it would be so awful to see what a shitty human I really was.
People tend to avoid the work unless they’re forced into it. And even then, there are so many ways today to avoid and numb. I get it. I was that person. The fear keeps us avoiding the thing that we need most. Some make a life habit of theirs to keep outrunning the ghosts of our past and the negative core beliefs that fuel the self-hatred.
But spoiler alert y’all…you can’t outrun yourself.
Your nemesis (a.k.a. your ego manifested) will find you eventually, whether it be in addictions, dysfunctional relationships, toxic behaviours, depression, autoimmune diseases, or relentless suffering. Your heart & body have innate wisdom that recognize the need for a reset. And if you ignore the signs, it’ll just keep getting louder and louder until something, in some way, crashes and burns. So yeah, you can’t outrun the beast. Or you can try, but you’ll permanently cripple yourself along the way in some format or expression.
Your choice.
Again, a return to the flip-side. The time I spent rebuilding myself and my life was probably some of the most valuable and meaningful time I’ve ever spent in my life. It was fucking hard, and I wouldn’t take away any of it for anything. The pain I worked through and released fortified me, and I love myself today more than I think I ever have in my life, thus far. The inner peace and self-love I continue to cultivate has been LIFE-CHANGING. All my relationships are stronger and more fulfilling, including the one I have with myself. I’m grateful my past self had the courage to dig deep and be ‘all in’ to do the work to heal. I learnt the value of the journey…and try every day to continue living in the journey, ‘cause life isn’t a destination. It never was.
