If You’ve Hit Rock Bottom, Don’t Stay There: Get On!
If you’ve hit rock bottom, don’t be scared. If you’ve reached your limit, if this latest setback or disappointment has affected you more than ever, don’t paralyze yourself. Do not be ashamed of it and do not settle into this personal and psychological abyss. Go back up. Take your momentum and make the choice to be courageous, to get your hands on your dignity so as not to fall back.
We have all come across that ready-made phrase: “hit rock bottom”. As curious as it may sound, this expression does not particularly appeal to the majority of healthcare professionals. Psychologists and psychiatrists deal with patients who have reached their limits every day. To people who are convinced that after hitting rock bottom there is only one option: change and improvement.
In reality, this rule of three doesn’t always work. Why? Because some people settle in this fund permanently. Or even discover that, under this background, there is another even more obscure and complex underground. So this idea that so many people share can sometimes, ironically and perversely, prevent a person from seeking help. While the problem is not yet so serious and it is possible to find simple ways to change or get better.
We’ve all hit rock bottom and it’s not easy to recover
We’ve all hit rock bottom at least once in our lives. We know it is painful. Much of the population descended into this stratum ruled by fear, despair or failure. Many have remained stuck, trapped in this amber resin that scrambles the balance and makes us drift into a mood disorder.
The idea that only absolute desperation will definitely lead us to light and improvement is not true. Just like the one that says we have to suffer to know what life really is. Because only pain illuminates us and teaches us. So, and even if we like the idea, there is no autopilot in our brain that would put us in “resilience mode” every time we reach the end of our strength.
The philosopher and psychologist William James spoke in his book The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) of the cave of melancholy. There are people who, without knowing why, are able to touch the bottom and glimpse, from there, this burst of light which guides them from the depths to the exit. Others, on the other hand, remain stuck in the cave of melancholy. It’s a place full of shame ( How did I get there? ) And a feeling of chronic despondency ( I can’t do anything to get better, all is lost ).
If you’ve hit rock bottom, don’t get used to this spot. Go back up!
To have hit rock bottom supposes to be plunged into discouragement. But you don’t want to dive even lower, do you? Do not allow yourself to reach the underground of despair. Hitting rock bottom also means finding yourself in deep loneliness. In a cave where the mind gets confused, where thoughts get tangled and become strange and / or obsessive. However, remember one thing: you have a return ticket and you only have to walk up a step to see that new opportunities are possible.
Getting back up involves something extremely difficult: overcoming your fear. One way to deal with it is to apply the downward arrow technique offered by therapists like David Burns. According to this point of view, many people live in these psychological depths because they are blocked, because they suffer and feel lost. Even though they are aware that a change is needed to overcome this impasse, they do not dare or do not know how to do it.
The central idea of this technique is to destroy irrational beliefs that often place us in these states of stillness and despair. For this, the therapist selects a negative thought maintained by the patient. He then challenges him with a question: “If this thought were true and come true, what would you do?”. The idea is to draw a series of questions that would act as downward arrows to reveal mistaken ideas, to bring down irrational perspectives and to provide new points of view. New changes.
Let’s take an example. Think of a person who has lost his job and has been unemployed for over a year. To face his fears, we could ask him the following questions: What would happen if you never found a job again? What would you do if your spouse also lost their job? What if you suddenly found yourself without resources?
This exercise may seem quite hard because it is always trying to hit a catastrophic limit. However, this involves motivating the person, inviting them to react and face their problems, making them think of possible strategies in the face of desperate situations that have not yet occurred (and which have no reason to take place).
It actually involves showing her that even though she has hit rock bottom, there are even more complex situations. She can therefore still react. Once she has faced all of these fears, there will be only one option left: to emerge. And this decision will change everything.
Our thoughts Fear has enormous power over us. We are going to give you some tips to submit to change and forget about fear.
