There’s a period of my life I now refer to – with genuine affection, which still surprises some people – as my Eight Weeks of Hell.
Eight weeks doesn’t sound like very long, does it?
In the grand scheme of a life, it’s barely a blink.
And yet, in that small stretch of time, my uncle died, my father died, my parents’ home was broken into on the one night I went away for work, the financial safety net I’d been quietly relying on disappeared completely, and my wife Asha was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and then made redundant – two enormous blows landing almost simultaneously, each one hard enough on its own.
All of that. Eight weeks.
And underneath it all, buried memories from an abusive relationship I thought I’d long since dealt with came flooding back, reopening wounds I’d assumed were healed, dragging me down further than I’d ever been.
By the end of those eight weeks, I found myself hiding under my mother’s dining room table, hugging my knees to my chest, crying like I hadn’t cried in years, with absolutely no idea how I was going to get back up.
That was my breakDOWN.
It was also, though I couldn’t have known it then, my breakTHROUGH.
The part nobody tells you about rock bottom.
When you’re in the middle of it, rock bottom doesn’t feel like solid ground. It feels like the end. It feels like proof that everything you suspected about yourself – that you’re not strong enough, not good enough, not capable of holding it all together – was right all along.
What nobody tells you is that rock bottom is actually the most solid ground there is. There’s nothing left to fall through. And that means there’s something real to push back up from.
I spent four years before that moment hiding behind a high-flying corporate career, a new Audi, Armani suits and a salary that looked impressive on paper and felt completely hollow in practice. I was surviving on anti-depressants, walking on sticks while specialists debated whether my knees were beyond saving, promoted so far away from the work I actually loved that I’d stopped recognising myself.
On the outside, everything looked fine.
FINE, as I’ve been known to say, stands for something rather unprintable in polite company, but you can probably guess.
The breakdown didn’t happen because I was weak. It happened because I’d been strong for too long, in all the wrong ways, for all the wrong reasons, and something finally had to give.
What I know now that I wish I’d known then.
The pebbles come first. Little nudges, quiet signals, small discomforts that are easy to dismiss or push through. Then come the rocks – harder to ignore, but still manageable if you’re determined enough. And then the boulders arrive, and the boulders don’t ask permission.
Looking back, the signals had been there for years. I was just very, very good at not looking.
If you’re reading this and you’re somewhere in the middle of your own version of that – not necessarily at rock bottom, maybe just noticing the pebbles, or feeling the first of the rocks – I want you to know something important: you don’t have to wait for the boulders.
You’re allowed to stop, look around and make changes before everything falls apart. In fact, that’s exactly what I’d recommend, speaking as someone who very much did not do that.
The practical bit – because I always promise you something to take away
Grab a piece of paper, or open a notes app, and answer these honestly:
Where are you feeling the pebbles right now? The low-level dissatisfaction, the thing you keep meaning to address, the part of your life or work that’s quietly draining you?
What have you been telling yourself about why now isn’t the right time to look at it?
And – this is the one that tends to sting a little – what would need to happen before you took it seriously?
You don’t have to have the answers. Just asking the questions is enough to start with.
The bit I need you to hear.
My breakdown was the best thing that ever happened to me. Not because it was easy – it was the hardest thing I’ve ever lived through – but because it was the thing that finally broke open enough space for me to rebuild myself into someone I actually recognised and liked.
I trained in NLP, coaching, conflict management and spent a decade learning from shamans and medicine people. I chose to do the work – all of it, the messy, uncomfortable, non-Instagram-worthy work – because I wanted a different life badly enough to go looking for one. And then I spent the next decade helping other people do the same, without necessarily having to hit rock bottom first.
That’s the part that lights me up. You don’t have to do it the hard way. You don’t have to wait for the boulders.
I did that bit for you.
#UnleashYourAwesome
Taz
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