Ask HN: How did you rebuild yourself after having hit rock bottom?

I’ve hit rock bottom a few times in my life. Once I was food insecure and another I was on short term disability for burnout. My latest period of strife is due to a traumatic death and a couple of near deaths of loved ones. I’ve done a ton of therapy, read self-help books, had executive coaching. What’s helped the most was deciding what I want my life to be, understanding the gap between here and there, then making incremental changes.

Regularly, throughout the day I remind myself that I am strong in my body. I am confident. I am a successful entrepreneur. Anytime a thought enters my brain stating otherwise, I pause and switch back to focusing on what I want.

What you focus on magnifies. You don’t have to believe every thought that enters your mind. You may feel empty in many moments, but I’m sure if you look hard you will find small moments throughout the day where you feel fulfilled like when you’re exercising. You also made it into a PhD program despite your dysfunctional upbringing. States of being are not binary so you don’t need to attach yourself to a state of emptiness and self-doubt. They can co-exist with other states of being.

It’s normal to feel stressed in a PhD program, especially toward the end. It’s also common for relationships to be impacted as graduate school is a transformative and demanding experience.

Keep going, keep your head up, and be kind to yourself. Replace self-doubt with self-compassion. There’s a new and exciting life waiting for you. By this time next year, this will all be behind you.

All of them. They couldn't establish themselves enough to leave any important traces in history and are effectively erased. Sexual liberation is not a new idea, the reason why it's not traditional is because it is unsustainable and can never grow to a tradition

We can only control our actions and reactions, we don’t have much control over the outcomes of those ..

So taking away the burden of specific outcomes and just keep doing whatever may be our actions as matter of duty is way to free up ourselves from stress and anxiety that comes when outcomes don’t meet our expectations..

It’s perfectly alright to expect the things to turn out in certain ways but it’s another thing to be attached to expectations of those outcomes ..

We are tiny creatures in grand scheme of world around us… accepting it and finding something to be grateful for in our everyday life is way to go IMO..

New partners will be found, new relationships will be developed, things can be studied/ researched for whole life .. what matters most in this moment to be able to acknowledge that we have very little control over things around us and being grateful for whatever we have in our life..

I found Bhagavad Gita to be very empowering.. May be you will as well ..

Good luck !

You do realize people can have sex, procreate and raise families without marriage, right? "Sexual liberation" doesn't negate sex, it only negates the proscription of involuntary sex and gender roles through patriarchy.

Also:

>All of them.

All of whom? Surely you can give us specific examples. Your certainty must based on solid archaeological and anthropological evidence, right?

I was in a similar position in the past. My ex (5 y togheter) broke up with me in a very sudden to me manner. Details aside, my whole life did a backflip and fall on a neck. I was super depressed, crying and lost af.

First thing I did was to reach out to my friends. It is really hard to have any kind of constructive perspective in such situations. That’s were the most trusted people are needed. If you don’t have too many close friends, and it may sound a bit desperate but stay with me, find anyone who seems friendly and is willing to listen. You can also do something creative. Trust your common sense what feels refreshing to you. What makes you lighter. Just find a way to share your feelings and emotions. If you want to feel better you can’t seethe in resentment. You can’t carry past this way. You have to learn what it is and how to put it aside.

The next big step for me was to realise that there are other women that I could like as much as my ex. It was very surprising to me that someone else could be as lovely as she. That I could like someone else. Or maybe even love. But to do that I needed to meet a lot of people and put myself out there. I reached out to my friends to spent time togheter, I went to festivals and try to shift from very closed social circle to meeting a lot of new ppl.

The last step (this is a big generalisation) was to realise that I want to be happy. That I want to make myself into a person that’s happy. I don’t want people or things to make me happy. I want to be able to do it on my own. I explored isha yoga, wim hof practices, read many books (I searched HN and Reddit for “books that changed your life” and read a few). I had set my priority to “I need to feel better before I will decide what to do next”. And it is nothing nice. I learnt a lot about my mistakes. I asked my friends to tell me all the brutal truths they can manage about myself. It was crashing. Crash after crash I disillusioned myself from what I thought was working pretty well in me. But every time, after a few days I felt… better? Like more honest about who I am right now and who I would like to be. And that there’s a difference I need to accept and start to work on.

It is a very brief summary. I hope it will be at least a little bit helpful to you or anyone. Let me know if I could help anyhow or answer any questions.