The First Post: Breakdowns & Breakthroughs

Let me start off by saying that I don’t want this to be some kitschy self-help program. I self-medicated with those for five years and they’re just a band-aid for what’s really going on. You spend so much time trying to overwrite your experiences with positivity that you don’t see the full extent of your experiences. Experiences are rarely all good. They’re also rarely all bad. In fact, there’s a throughline from the bad to the good that we often don’t see. Our negative experiences often lead us to the next good experience. Our biggest Breakdowns are what lead to our biggest Breakthroughs. 

This isn’t to say that all negative experiences can lead to positive ones. Like I said this isn’t some toxic happy “everything’s good” mantra. Sometimes bad shit is just bad shit. Like systemic racism. No one’s life gets better after suffering through that. So that’s not what I’m advocating for. What I’m talking about are the personal breakdowns that we all know too well. The rejection from that person you really liked. Losing out on your dream job. That piece you always wanted to write utterly failed. It’s these moments that can lead you to where you always wanted to go. 

What breakdowns signify are things we really care about not going how we wanted. That, or not going how we expected. This often leads to some sort of crisis because it makes us question who we are and what we’re capable of us. It’s the existential crisis we all know and loathe. The deep questioning of what’s the point of all of this  Whether it was how we grew up, our college experience, our dating life, or our career, our lives are a series of breakdowns after another. But each of those moments lead to something better than we had originally wanted. Some take longer than others, and sometimes we don’t always see it immediately but there’s always something better coming. 

That something better always stems out of the breakdown. We wouldn’t have all of those breakthroughs without the breakdowns. We wouldn’t have the highs without the lows. These moments exist in all of our lives. You can’t avoid the dark before dawn. It might look hopeless but then something comes out of the darkness you weren’t expecting. It looks different for all of us but I firmly believe that it’s a pattern that exists in all of our lives. What’s more, is that it’s a useful framework for looking at the trajectory of our lives and what it means to fail or succeed. 

So why does this happen? Why do we need to have a breakdown to have a breakthrough? I already got philosophical with the light and the dark before so we won’t go there. But think about it. If our lives were all good, how could anything be deemed a breakthrough? You can’t breakthrough if there’s nothing to break. The same goes for breakdowns. What we’re talking about is a state change. It’s getting from where you are now to where you’re going. It’s figuring shit out. The best way to learn is by failing and then figuring out what went wrong. We rarely want to know why things go right, but we do want to know why they went wrong. That’s why breakdowns are so helpful. They force you to look at your life and think about how you got to that point and what got you there in the first place. You want insight into the situation because you don’t want to end up there again. It forces you actually look at your actions and events that took place. When things go right we just move on. Things are good, why reflect on them? You just want to enjoy it. Again that’s where the power lies in breakdowns, it forces that self-reflection, it forces that action. 

How do we get to that action though? How do we get to our breakthrough? It starts with that reflection. I want to be careful here though, too much introspection can be harmful. We can’t just think our way through everything. I’ve made that mistake countless times, but you do need it to start. We have to evaluate why we’re breaking down in this moment. The important thing isn’t necessarily getting to the bottom of events that we might not have control over. What’s important is getting at why you feel the way you do. What was it that you wanted to have happen? What did you want to feel like? What did you need at that moment? What did you feel went wrong? It’s these types of questions that help you better know yourself and your response to the events in your life. We don’t control what happens to us, but we can control how we respond. So respond to your breakdown, and figure out what it is you’re feeling. 

Once you know what you’re feeling we use the same questions to figure out a plan. What do you want to have to happen? What do you want to feel like? What do you need for that to happen? Who do you want to be? What would things look like if they went right? With these types of questions, you can probe deeper into what a breakthrough looks like for you. It allows you to explicitly think about what would it look like for the situation to go right. It might not even involve the original subject of your breakdown. During your reflection, you might realize that what really want isn’t actually what you thought you did. This is why knowing yourself is important. Once you do you can move forward. You may fail again but that’s alright because you know you’re moving in the direction you want to. You have to have the breakdown so that you can know who you are. It’s why depressed and anxious people are often the most self-aware. People who don’t experience breakdowns either aren’t trying or are just on auto-pilot. While it’s probably a pleasant enough experience avoiding all of the lows, they’ll never experience true highs. 

This process doens’t have to be so formal. Laying it out is just meant to help avoid languishing in the breakdown. I also think it helps describe what we all do naturally when things like this occur. Our failures are what make us get up again. The only way we can feel accomplishment is by doing something we wanted but couldn’t do before. That’s why breakthroughs feel so good. We find what it is what we wanted. I may sound like a broken record but you couldn’t do that if your life was always good. 

What really makes Breakdowns and Breakthroughs powerful though is what they mean to us. They are the stories that make up our lives. They’re the moments that we identify most strongly with. It’s how we describe the arc of our lives, what went bad and what went right. By finding the link between the two we can have a more holistic view of our lives and our own personal story. Not just our story but the stories of others too. Those stories are more powerful than any framework. It’s how we know ourselves and know each other. Hearing each other’s Breakdowns and Breakthrough moments gives us insight into our own lives and the process. That’s what I want this to be, a platform for stories that aren’t about influence, they’re about inspiration.