Breakdowns and Breakthroughs

I wonder if our biggest breakthroughs come with breakdowns?

The point where we say (or whisper or scream) “I can’t do this anymore” and actually, finally accept the truth of it and don’t pick ourselves up and force ourselves to keep doing what’s making us fucking miserable just because we “should” do it, “should” be able to cope, “should” be able to be like everyone else. That sort of breakdown.

It is at that point that we finally have to question those “shoulds”, isn’t it? Not at first, because at first we’re too focused on trying to navigate - or just survive - that rocky emotional terrain where a sense of failure and relief grind constantly against each other, creating both heart-stopping earthquakes and volcanos, and also a wild new landscape of soul-nourishing beauty.

But as the aftershocks ease, the shoulds start to seem different. It happens when we gather the courage to tell a friend what happened and they say “You shouldn’t have been treated like that”, or “How did you cope with all that for so long?”. Or when someone tells us their own story of “I can’t do this anymore” and we realise that our absolute conviction that it was valid and justified for them could just as easily apply to us too.

Somewhere in the uncharted territory after breakdown, we realise that we’re breathing a little more freely, sleeping a little more easily, feeling a little more ourselves. When we realise this, how can we not start to question the truth of all those shoulds about not giving up and about what no longer being able to cope says about us?

And it is then that the breakthrough comes. Whether it comes as a slow dawning realisation or a piercing insight doesn’t matter. What matters is the truth that breaks through: we don’t get to control every situation.

If we’re not thriving in spite of our best efforts; if we’ve dialled down all our expectations and they’re still not being met; if we’re giving everything we can and are still being made to feel it’s not enough, then maybe it’s about being in the wrong place rather than doing something wrong.

Of course, a single insight, however powerful, is not always enough to completely override decades of programming. Sometimes we have limited practical options for changing circumstances that are wrong for us, and, often, we go back into the fray strengthened by our breakthrough, only for old, well-embedded programming to override the new when the pressure builds unbearably.

Probably, we reach breaking point more quickly than we did before, but while this may feel like regression it’s actually progress, because it means we’re taking less time to break free of the shoulds.

Breakdown is painful and debilitating. And yet it can also help us break out of the cages we have built for ourselves from all the shoulds that stop us living our lives our way.


My breakdown breakthroughs:
✨I do not get to control everything.
✨I am allowed to rest.
✨I cannot keep giving without receiving.
✨My priorities do not have to be the same as other people’s.
✨I do not have to suffer to be worthy.
✨I am allowed to choose peace over productivity.