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

“Rock bottom” is whatever negative experience is sufficient to get you to volubtarily rethink and commit to changing the life choices that produced that experience. It's where you personally decide to draw the line, not some objective maximum acheivable misery.

OP may also want to explore mindfulness/meditation, which has been a huge QoL improvement for me.

Some resources I’ve found helpful: - Book: Adult children of emotionally immature parents - Book: How to meditate by Pema Chodron - Website on DBT: https://dbtselfhelp.com/ - Book: The Antidote: Happiness for people who can’t stand positive thinking - Meditation Apps: Waking Up, Headspace, Ten Percent. Also, if you don’t like one, try another. They all have distinct styles.

Seriously though, do therapy and hop therapists until one clicks. I read on here once “you can’t read the label from inside the bottle.” This type of work significantly benefits from a good outside perspective.

Also, OP, be kind to yourself and, as another poster said, allow yourself to just exist for a bit

However, I disagree and would agree that rock bottom in essence is where where the maximum achievable misery has been met. If life is a ladder, your still on that ladder, you can still progress. All you've done is fallen and experienced life in reality; you can grow from and continue.

If your not attached to the bottom peg, your at the bottom of the ladder with nothing but yourself, you've reached rock bottom. Being homeless is rock bottom.

My advice is, watch the episode of Seinfeld where George Costanza does the opposite. If every instinct he has is wrong, then the opposite must be right.

As others have mentioned, you are arguably not as close to rock bottom as one can be. I hit rock bottom when I lost my home, my job, my ability to walk, was on assistance and bought my groceries with food stamps. How I got to rock bottom is a story for a meeting.

I found solace in recovery. Recovery is different for everyone as is rock bottom. Therefore if you feel you've lost more than you were willing to and you're at a precipice of a major life change that will bring you up out from the bottom, or you'll find rock bottom can even be lower than your realize. Again, what that means is going to be different for everyone, but if you have a need that you must change something in order to be better, then you already know what to do. Obviously if you're addicted to heroin, that change would be sobriety and recovery.

I'm not trying to give you answers as those are things you're going to have to figure out for yourself.

You've been around for three decades and been adulting for less than one. You've got at least 4 more decades to define yourself and your life. The best part is, you are the director, producer and actor in how that future pans out.