Why I believe breakdowns are often breakthroughs.

Back in 2015 I was a dog walker building a photography business. It was a constant juggle of 90 hour weeks and I was always having to compromise on something, mostly my well being. I was also living with an addict and finding myself being slowly torn apart as I tried to hold together all the parts of my life.

I was suffering.

I was also stuck. Despite the stress I didn’t want to make any decisions that would change the situation because while yes I was suffering I was also comfortable in that suffering. It’s an issue many of us face and it often leads us into a state of victimhood where instead of making a change we suffer and blame everything else around us for our problems.

Then more often than not we break.

I suppose the process of me breaking started with my car breaking down in the Spring of 2015. I had a ford focus estate that was perfect for dog walking. I would spend all day picking up dogs around South East London, walk them and then then drop them off home. It was a nice enough job but it wasn’t my calling and it came with it’s fair share of stressors.

I was too scared though to make the leap into full time photography. Having a guaranteed income every week gave me comfort despite knowing that I could not grow the photography business further without leaving the dog walking. Inside I was miserable but I was comfortable in that misery.

And then one day in the middle of a busy residential road in Honor Oak and with about 4 dogs my car just broke. It was awful. I was blocking the road so chaos commenced with angry South Londoners until a nice man helped me push it into his drive. Then I had to wait for the AA desperately hoping it will be a quick fix only to be told that it was well fucked. I then had a miserable afternoon walking over 10miles to drop all the dogs off back at home while my car was towed off to the garage.

This was my shove moment, although I didn’t clock on to that for a few days.

I spent a great deal of time trying to get the car fixed. When I was told it couldn’t be fixed and it should be scrapped I then spent more time trying to find another suitable car for dog walking. Still desperately holding on to the comfort of my suffering.

And then it clicked. I didn’t need to choose this. I could take the scary path and do what I actually wanted to do. Go full time as a photographer.

And so I made a choice and I chose the scary path and what commenced was 5yrs of me evolving and growing while also having a couple of decent sized breakdowns or shall we say breakthroughs.

You see breakdowns only come when we are making the decision to stay in our suffering. Over a long period of time that builds and builds until we break and then we are forced to make a decision. Sometimes we make a good decision for ourselves and then the breakdown becomes a breakthrough or we will still find a way to desperately hold on to our suffering until we break again.

The reason we avoid making the good decision is because that will more often than not require us to make a change and change is terrifying and painful and TERRIFYING. Self esteem will also play into this, that voice in your head telling you that you don’t deserve better or that will be too hard or you are not good enough.

Change is painful. That pain though is generally short lived as we can grow through that pain until we get comfortable again and then it’s onto the next level.

Take running for example. When you start it’s hard, making the decision to go running is hard. Our brains will tell us not to over and over even though we know that it’s potentially good for us. At all costs we want to avoid that pain of starting because initially running hurts. Then we go, then after we feel good, so we go again and every time it gets easier to start, then we start to get comfortable so we push our distance and our speed and then all of a sudden we are doing something that we couldn’t do before.

I mean that is a really basic example. That theory applied to other parts of our lives is much easier said than done. Many of us live in toxic peace without even realising it until we hit a breakdown.

I had a major breakdown last year. I had left my ex a year before but I was still allowing him to have control. I was suffering but I didn’t know how to get out of that suffering without causing pain so I was avoiding taking action. Now this isn’t me advocating what was done to me BUT I am now more than capable of seeing my role in maintaining toxic peace. Yep I was scared, yep I didn’t have the tools to handle it and I also had 30plus years of conditioning that everyone else’s feelings came before my own so this simmered for months until eventually it came to a boil and I and my world broke.

The details of that are not important, what is important is the action I took after.

There was of course the inevitable grieving period. The end of all days as my sense of self splintered into a million pieces while I tried to work out what had happened to me.

The world had gone dark and pain was in everything.

Then I made a small decision. To go to therapy.

That changed everything. Would I have gone to therapy without having a breakdown? Nope.

I have so much to be grateful for from that moment. The pain I have worked through over the past 18months has made me more confident, more resilient, more self aware. I can now recognise when I am suffering and make better decisions before that can manifest into a breakdown.

Breakdowns are always a fork in the road. They are telling you that it’s no longer possible to travel the path you are on and you have to make a decision. In that moment there is so much choice, many different directions to turn but I can tell you now that you do have a choice. You are not powerless.

If you ask anyone who has been through a breakdown and then chose to take positive action for themselves they will describe it as their breakthrough. Whether that is the heart attack that made someone realise they need to look after themselves better or the person who was abused and then decided to do make sure they were never treated that way again or the car breaking down that pushed someone into doing the thing they love the most.

Our lives are constantly made up of these moments. Sometimes they are big, other times they might be small but they are always pivotable moments for us where we can decide to step out of suffering and into something better for ourselves.