Why Hitting Rock Bottom is a Good Thing.
Hint: the only way to go from here is up!
We all get there at some point in our lives. You know, that period of your life where things go from bad to worse and then a little worse than that until you are left at the bottom. Rock bottom to be specific.
Once you hit this point, we tend to think “that’s it, I’m done” as let’s face it, nothing could possibly be worse or go more wrong that it has done to end up here. It feels like the worse possible feeling in the world, the pain and sadness can be unbearable and your path is left with this fog of uncertainty. I’ve hit this place a few times in my life so I’m very familiar with the process to rock bottom and the rise back up and I’ve noticed a pattern and maybe a few helpful thought processes about it that I thought might be helpful for someone else too!
So here it goes, my take on why hitting rock bottom can be a good thing. I mean after we go through the spark, spiral and the scary but safe phases of the process of course.
The “Spark”
When life hits you hard and you begin your spiral down the rock bottom road, have you ever stopped to notice what mental and emotional space you were just in? Probably not, because who has time to stop and make such observations when your life is falling apart right? Right. Ok so let me put it another way. As we begin the rock bottom phase, our life just before that tends to have a build up of stress, tension and maybe a few (or a lot of) negative situations or pieces of news that lead to a negative emotional warpath between your intentions and the reality of your life. That tends to be the “spark”.
When that spark happens, there’s an important bit where we have to try and recognise it in order to take back the control but like I said, who has time to do this when your life feels like it’s falling apart? So instead, we give into the sinking feeling and can’t process things individually anymore as the build-up has pretty much bunched everything together to create a crappy snowball of misery that keeps picking up as it goes along.
The “Spiral”
This is when we enter the “spiral” zone and we no longer feel we have control over ourselves and our situation and we just let it do its thing. This is where we go from bad to worse and eventually, boom! Welcome to rock bottom. What’s interesting here is, once we get there we enter the “scary but safe” space. This is where we’ve now reached the bottom of the never-ending well and although it’s scary down here because it’s unknown, it’s also kind of safe because there’s no responsibility, there’s no pressure, no stress, no work, no emails, no contracts, no people, no - well anything. Nothingness has arrived and that feels a little ok because we have nothing to lose anymore. The worst has happened.
The “Scary but Safe”
That time in the scary but safe space allows for us to process what happened and ourselves in a way we couldn’t and wouldn’t do if things didn’t start going south. Not to say anytime we need to check ourselves we should begin the rock bottom journey, but what I am saying is that sometimes it comes in the form of a nudge and an awareness we were not giving ourselves time to come to when in the momentum of our day-to-day lives and so life comes along and presents the opportunity to do so in another way. Granted, it’d be less emotionally taxing if it came in the form of a love note or flowers but hey, who are we to be picky eh?
I’ve realised my rock bottom journeys have happened when I’m trying to do too much, I’m not listening to myself, I’m ignoring myself and trying to power through anyway and then I completely lose control and life takes over for me. It’s when I’m not processing what I’m going through or dealing properly with the thing(s) at hand. It’s when I refuse to accept I need help or when I know I need a break. Those are all warning signs for me. Clearly, I’ve ignored them a few times otherwise I would not be here typing this out.
When we’re in the scary but safe space that we can finally recognise that it doesn’t get much worse than this and we are left with only one option, up. Yep, we can only move on up from here because we certainly can’t go any further down so begins the shift in our mind. The shift in mentality, the shift in an emotional state, the shift in focus and finally, the shift in reality. We’ve now had time to reflect, unpick and learn from what happened. If it was a result of ourselves, then we begin to see where the warning signs are in ourselves and our lives and if it seems to be the result of others, we still reflect on ourselves and what may have happened along the way to “spark” it. After all, we cannot be accountable for other people, we cannot think and process their thoughts and actions for them. We can only look within, focus on and grow ourselves.
People fear hitting rock bottom because we attach ourselves to everything we perceive as “good” and fear everything we perceive as “bad”
Rock bottom is not as bad of a place as it seems if you think of it as a growth space. You’ll never be the same when you leave the space and begin your journey upwards again. You’ll have learnt something you can apply to your life when you begin to get it back on track because you had to do some un-learning whilst down there. It means you come back stronger, wiser and a little more experienced in life. It means you can handle things better, know yourself more, understand the actions and implications of others clearer and see how to navigate yourself for the next foreseeable phase of your life in a more positive way.
This doesn’t mean you’ll never go back there, it doesn’t mean you have all the answers, it just means you’ve learned and grown. People fear hitting rock bottom because we attach ourselves to everything we perceive as “good” and fear everything we perceive as “bad” but life isn’t as black and white as that. It sometimes takes hit rock bottom to realise all of this because when we’re deep in our momentum of life, we do not give ourselves the time to think or reflect. Especially in today’s fast-moving world as we’re on autopilot most of the time! Therefore, rock bottom is where you have the potential to stop, to re-build and to grow and there is something so powerful about that.
Disclaimer: I do not advocate for people to hit rock bottom nor am I speaking for everyone’s individual circumstances as I know there are some horrific circumstances that lead people to rock bottom. I am simply trying to reach those that go through more of a self-spiral to rock bottom through their work or day-to-day stresses of life. Please do not throw your rocks at me. No pun intended.
