“There is a profound stillness at rock bottom. It’s very quiet and there is no one around to distract you. It’s a place where you are completely alone with nothing but your thoughts for companionship.”
From the outside, my life looked pretty good. I was in my late 20’s, engaged to a gorgeous, intelligent man. We had just bought our own home. We had a cottage, a boat, 2 cars and both of us had good paying jobs. But all was not as it seemed.
Inside the home, I lived with a toxic man, who was always miserable. Day by day he sucked the life out of me, until there was almost no me left. I went to bed every night having panic attacks about my job, which I hated. I was barely existing and every day I died a little bit more.
I had things, but things do not make happiness. Things are just things and they can be taken away in an instant. I had a relationship, with a man, but I did not have love, kindness or respect.
I was conditioned, as a child, to adapt to toxic environments. I was very good at adapting, so good in fact, that in my relationship, I had every reason to leave, but never any intention to do so.
I had become dependent to the point where the very thought of being alone, without someone to take care of me, without a safety net, had me hyperventilating.
And then it happened…..
In an instant everything was gone – I had nothing and no one and I was paralyzed with fear.
I didn’t see it then, but what had happened to me, I’m convinced, was divine intervention. I was existing in a loveless relationship, in an unfulfilling job, living an inauthentic life, which I was never willingly going to leave and so the Universe did what a loving Universe does – it shoved me out of my uncomfortable comfort zone and it put me through a divine detox.
Welcome to Rock Bottom
I know a lot of people that live very charmed lives, where nothing ever seems to go wrong for them. There was a time when I envied those people. I don’t anymore. They never get to experience the storms of life, never had to face their fears. These storms make us better. They’re our chance for a do over. It’s our reset button, where everything is stripped from us and we are completely gutted.
“The beauty of rock bottom is that it’s a place of reflection, of where you can actually hear what your spirit has been trying to tell you, but you were too preoccupied with your life to listen. There is nowhere to go at rock bottom but up and it’s here where you create the path out. It’s here, when we get to map out the plan for the life we should have been living all along. It’s here, where we get to start again.”
Rock bottom is a magical place and if you’re lucky, you’ll have a chance to visit. Don’t get me wrong, it’s terrifying, but the most incredible things happen and you won’t be the same person going out that you were going in.
Here’s a list of what happens at Rock Bottom:
- You are forced to face everything that frightens you about yourself and your life and you get to figure out how to overcome it.
- You are forced to look inward and to discover who you are. When you have lived your whole life for other people and then suddenly find yourself with no one else to focus on, you learn for the first time how to be your own friend, what you like, what you want and what you need.
- You find your true self. Where you finally stop and reconnect to your spirit and start becoming your authentic self
- You stop living under someone else’s thumb and what it’s like to be in charge of your own life.
- You find your power and that which is indestructible in you. It’s where you stop being an ordinary person and become the warrior.
- You get to reprogram your mind and learn all that you should have been taught as a child.
- You learn how to depend on yourself, because there is no one else to take care of you and you get a taste of how sweet autonomy is.
- You learn how to deal with your emotions and your grief.
- You heal the wounded child.
- You learn how to create and maintain your own stability
- Freedom
- You start to look ahead and plan your future and goals.
- You choose who you let into your inner circle.
- You start again.
Rock Bottom is the ending and the beginning of the old life and the new. At Rock Bottom all of the choices are yours. It’s your opportunity to start over and to get it right. Resist the urge to give up on life, or to lose faith. It’s easy to do, I know. Rock Bottom is not for the faint of heart. If you get to go there it’s because you are strong enough to bear it and because the Universe has better things in store for you.
See what has happened from the proper perspective – that this was a divine cleanse, meant to make you healthier, meant to clear out all the baggage and cobwebs that cluttered your mind and put you on the right path. Afterward you will notice that you have new eyes to see with, a new appreciation for what really matters and you will have found you – the greatest gift of all.
Your Comments!!!!!!
I am here, at rock bottom. I recognise it and acknowledge it. I have never had the opportunity to make my own choices and major life decisions on my own, results of a controlling, over critical parent to a marriage and relationship much the same, if not worse. I have an “inner voice” that tells me that I am strong and capable but the voices of those who controlled me drown it out and cause doubt in me, in myself. I cannot seem to remove myself or stop myself from falling further. I feel like I’m waiting for instruction, for someone to tell me what to do and how to do it. Decisions I’ve made on my own have failed miserably and now I watch as everything falls and fails around me because I’m even more afraid of making the wrong decisions than ever before. I’m beginning to hate myself; all I’m doing is proving that they were right, that I’m nothing without them and I can’t bare that thought.
Thank you, Savannah, for being an answer to my prayers and my new-found mentor!
I have found direction in my life from your posts, the ability to see that the first steps I need to take are learning to love, respect and be kind to myself, and, most importantly, how to begin on that path.
I am in my 50’s, had a flaming narcissist for a mother and have continued in this pattern with all of my partner relationships. I am a sensitive, empathic and intuitive person and have always tried to stifle my sensitivities, as this was the only way to survive – to not care about me. However, thanks in a large part to your blogs, my eyes have been opened to the fact that these sensitivities are God’s gift to me – that it is my (and ONLY my) responsibility to cultivate and develop these wonderful gifts, not to stifle and suppress them! Here’s to the end of the old and the beginning of the new!
THANK YOU FOR WHAT YOU DO AND FOR THE HONESTY AND CLARITY WITH WHICH YOU DO IT!!
I found rock bottom one month and 8 days ago while lying on my own floor being assaulted by a man who wanted me to believe he loved me. I was bruised and scraped outside, but I saw my car keys 5 ft away on the floor and I found all my hope for change in that one brief moment. I saw the only chance to fix my life. I feel each day like I am in an addiction recovery, but I have a peace like none I’ve had before. I do know what matters and what I need to be healthy. It’s like a miracle, knowing I can’t know what might have happened if I hadn’t run for my life that night. Rock bottom actually saved my life. Thank you for this timely article. You have helped me get through another day with added strength.
“You stop living under someone else’s thumb…” Codependency can be such a hard thing to kick even when you’re single and free of your manipulative ex. Even after I was living on my own, my ex’s voice became my parent voice, (met him at a very young age.) While I was loading my dishwasher, choosing my clothes or allowing my dog on the bed, I could still hear his critical comments in my head. I have to keep bringing myself back to the present and be thankful that I no longer deal with that and that I can live my own life remorse free.
Yep. I had his voice AND my mother’s. It took a great deal of effort to expunge them, seems ridiculous to be such a slave to one’s own sub- consciousness but we know the reasons why. I was much supported by the blogs here. Time helped. Two years along they have receded. Living an ordinary life and being in control of it is truely liberating. Enjoy. your onward journey.
Savannah. Another good blog topic. I found your blog a few years ago after being dumped by a narcissist. Many failed relationships with wrong men. Not being loved the way I needed by my overly critical mom. I kept repeating the same mistakes until your blog. The past two years I have reinvented ME by soul searching, healing the inner child and now becoming the woman I am now. I love my life and make it my own. Thank you!!!
Savannah, this article was the perfect read at this time in my life. Within the last year, I have divorced after my wife had a 6 year affair and still continues, I had to sell a 5-bedroom house, move into an apartment, lost my job to downsizing and am currently dealing with my sister who is in the final stages of pancreatic cancer. Reading this today truly was a breath of fresh air on what can be ahead for me. Thank you for giving me the right medicine at the right time.
Yes, I am a different person now and I love it. My awakening didn’t happen till my early fifties. I often tell other people that if somebody would’ve told me years ago that in my fifties I will discard a lot of my beliefs, values and become a new me, I would not believe it, not in million years. Actually, I would laugh my head off. I did think I knew life and had everything figured out.
How skillful I did became at lying to myself! How crushed I was when my perfect little world started to crumble down! This rock bottom is not fun place for sure. It took me about two years to sit there, miserable, in pain, in denial, in false hope. I thought that I would never ever fully get out of that horrible hole. Two more years and I not only got out but I am thriving. No, not financially! Owning things, affording nice things, travelling to nice places became not my priority and I am not suffering, neither I crave those things anymore. I’ve got a totally different perspective on life, totally different priorities and I found so many things to enjoy and appreciate that my past life became just that: past life. That’s all! The peace, the freedom and self-acceptance and self-love is so rewarding that for the first time in my life I love life just the way it is. No panic attacks, no hypochondria, no disappointments in myself, or my loved ones.. Honestly, I think I felt lonelier when I was married than I am now. I brush off well wishers and tell them that, yeah, maybe one day I will start looking for someone, but right now I don’t feel like it. The truth is that actually I don’t even think that I will ever have a need to be paired up again. I stopped trying to explain this to other people because they just don’t understand! “What do you mean, you’re not lonely? You must be lonely, miserable and on the hunt! Is something wrong with you? Maybe you’re lesbian or asexual?” I do not explain myself particularly to married women because they just can’t see themselves on their own and they try to prove to me that life in pairs is the only way to happiness. Good for them! I know who I am and I know where I am going.
Steen and Jolanta,
I am 58 and I am hitting a kind of rock bottom, too. But it is a good one, just like Savannah says. My father died on April 5th and I went into therapy the end of July because I realized a huge transformation was taking place. He is the original narcissist/predator who did the damage that led me to abusive men and the carbon-copy narcissist (just like my father) who was my final wake-up call. I thought I hit bottom three years ago when I left my live-together boyfriend but the loss of my father is really”forcing me to face everything that frightens me about myself and to figure out how to overcome it.” I am “finding my true self.” I am just starting to “reprogram my mind and learn all that I should have been taught as a child.” Maybe for the very first time I am “dealing with my emotions and my grief” over all I lost, over the family I lost, the me that I lost. The last three years I read everything I could about narcissism, which was the final “aha” in a journey of many years through addictions and twelve-steps and incest groups. It was so validating to read that both of you — Jolanta in particular — have found your true self, your rebirth, in your 50’s because part of my grief is that it has taken me all my life to heal from my childhood and then I have had to heal from the adult I became and who chose so badly. It is a value judgment I know to say that I chose badly but the men in my life have been so difficult for me. Loving a man has been what I have wanted and needed but it wasn’t a healthy need and I didn’t choose healthy men. Finally, the Universe whupped me upside the head with a narcissist just like my father. The chemistry was amazing. It was what I call “the toxic kapow.” When it started going south after I moved in with him (pretty quickly) the crash from such high hopes to such cruel reality hurt so much I finally woke up. I started all over from scratch in a new town, new state, new job and was just getting on my feet when my father died and I began having dreams of such freedom. Such possibility! I went into grief therapy but it is really freedom therapy. I am starting all over and it just feels so good. I finally don’t care anymore how long it took to get here. I am just glad I am here and, like Jolanta, I am free of that crippling need for a man. I am happy in my own skin maybe for the first time in my life. Better late than never!
DIVINE TIMING!! Thank you!!
Rock Bottom doesn’t have to be so scary. Maybe it’s because I’ve been there so many times that I can say that now, and the list of what can be found in Rock Bottom is very accurate Savannah. Great post today; very positive for those who are in Rock Bottom and a chance for others to encourage them to dive in deep in order to come out a little patina-like, but ready to shine again.
Savannah,
Reading this today…each word you typed..that was my story. I could have written the same words. You are absolutely spot on. I’m not the person who leaves comments. Today however I felt compelled too. I have been reading your blog for the greater part of a year and a half. Many articles over and over, until I finally got it! LOL I was also seeing a therapist. However, I think your blog made a bigger impact on my recovery. I have sent various articles to friends dealing with their own issues, and they have absolutely embraced them and are grateful to me for sharing.
So thank you for all that you do, all that you share, and for touching my life.
so appreciate and thank God for you being born !!! Savannah you are such a beautiful blessing in my life. For years I’ve read your blog and today you expressed my path so artfully I’m 58 and feel as if I’ve led the lives of 4 different women. It takes practice to let go of old beliefs & patterns. When it got lonely for me I knew you would be there for me on Monday mornings with another miracle. You are a miracle worker – I am grateful to your light love and devotion.
Thank you. This posting is in itself a divine intervention. Well-timed.