Are Mental Breakdowns Part of the Journey to Breakthroughs?

Mine definitely was, and plenty of other people have said theirs were too

Photo by David Matos on Unsplash

I share the story of my mental health breakdown and the life-changing consequences of it widely these days. I was so depressed that I seriously considered suicide for more than a year. I researched various ways to end my life and how effective each method was. I had no desire to live, but I also knew how devastated my husband and others who love me would be if I killed myself. I was also terrified my attempt would be unsuccessful and I’d have to deal with the aftermath, including huge medical bills.

So I didn’t attempt suicide and eventually crawled out of that pit of despair. It took a long time and a lot of trial and error to find mental health professionals and medications that helped me feel better and want to live.

It was pure hell, but it was also a necessary step on the way to understanding and trusting myself. It made me desperate enough to try anything that might help me get from the life I had to the life I wanted. It gave me the courage to do what I knew was best for me even when others disagreed.

I was tired of seeking others’ approval and trying to live up to their expectations. I had done the things I was told I must do to be successful, like get a college degree and have a traditional full-time job. I did those things, and did them very well, for years.

But I wasn’t satisfied with my achievements. I thought there was something wrong with me - I must be lazy, irresponsible, or unreasonable - because I wasn’t willing to “go along to get along.” I challenged workplace policies and demands I thought were unfair or unrealistic. I refused to do things like lie to customers or ignore unethical or illegal business practices.

My breakdown helped me see that I couldn’t just pick up the pieces of my former life and rebuild it. Nor did I want to. And I’ve met or heard from so many others with similar stories. They had to completely break down before they could break through to the life they wanted.

Alain de Botton (as quoted here) describes the important role mental breakdowns play in our quest to understand ourselves and create lives that honor our deepest desires beautifully:

A breakdown is not merely a random piece of madness or malfunction; it is a very real — albeit very inarticulate — bid for health and self-knowledge. It is an attempt by one part of our mind to force the other into a process of growth, self-understanding and self-development that it has hitherto refused to undertake. If we can put it paradoxically, it is an attempt to jump-start a process of getting well — properly well — through a stage of falling very ill.

… In the midst of a breakdown, we often wonder whether we have gone mad. We have not. We’re behaving oddly, no doubt, but beneath the agitation we are on a hidden yet logical search for health. We haven’t become ill; we were ill already. Our crisis, if we can get through it, is an attempt to dislodge us from a toxic status quo and constitutes an insistent call to rebuild our lives on a more authentic and sincere basis. It belongs, in the most acute and panicked way, to the search for self-knowledge.

What do you think? Have you ever experienced a mental breakdown? If so, did it lead to a breakthrough?