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

I lost both my parents and sister in a car accident, about 20 years ago. I was raised in a close family with good parents, so losing those people was hard for me.

Afterwards got in a depression. I'd guess my depression lasted about 7 years.

One of the main reasons that made this loss so hard for me, was that my goal in life was to make my parents proud. In a way, this was my focus. And with my parents gone, I lost my focus. I needed to find new goals in life.

During my depression, work meant little to me. I didn't try to improve my skills. I preferred losing myself in World of Warcraft. It was a nice way to distract myself from my feelings.

At some point the depression got worse and my brothers & sister intervened. They helped motivate me to visit a psychiatrist. I visited the psychiatrist every week and I agreed to commit myself on a few small tasks each week. Like cleaning the house, exercise, etc... Each week I'd visit him and the tasks would become a bit more time consuming. The psychiatrist also wanted to prescribe me some medicine, but I didn't want to take medicine, so he let that pass.

After a couple of months I felt quite ok again and at some point could manage again to find some work. However, I still kinda missed some long term goal in life.

I don't exactly know how, but at some point I decided I wanted to emigrate. I got sick of the cold, dark winters in The Netherlands. And I was kinda contemplating moving to Chile at some point. Seemed nice enough (low cost of living, decent healthcare, reasonable IT infrastructure, Spanish is supposedly easy to learn, nice weather in the central part of the country, etc...). However, this was just something running through my mind, nothing concrete. Not really sure how to make this big step.

Later on I worked at a start-up of a friend of mine. The start-up didn't perform as well as hoped. After several years I decided to throw in the towel. A headhunter offered me a freelance opportunity at a major Dutch company, so I decided to just go for it. The company decided to take a chance on me and this is how I got into freelancing. With the freelance job, my monthly income tripled and now emigration seemed possible if I saved some money for some years.

To relax a bit (and likely because of my migraines), I would occasionally start visiting a Thai massage parlour. After returning from the parlour I would feel extremely relaxed. I would always visit the same lady and after some time we connected and she would start telling me about her family in Thailand, showing photos and such. And now I got interested in visiting Thailand sometime.

So at some point I decided to go on a holiday to Thailand, just for 2 weeks to see what it's like. At first it was way too hot when I visited Bangkok. But after a few days I could cope better with the weather and would check out Ayuthaya and later Pattaya. There I met my (now) girlfriend, in the last few days of my holiday.

My girlfriend gave me these kinds of vibes that she would be a good mother. So I kinda wanted to visit her again ASAP. I believe I worked just one month from The Netherlands and afterwards made an agreement with the company that I would work remotely from Thailand for a couple of months. The company was ok with this, they gave me a task that I could do in isolation, so the rest of the team would not be impacted. This made it easier to deal with the time difference.

In the meanwhile I also started again on a hobby project of mine while making use of a nice co-working space in Pattaya. I would visit the co-working space every day, meet some people there and work many hours. Would also swim everyday, as the condo I rented had a nice olympic sized swimming pool. I would feel really happy during this time. Perhaps the happiest period of my life.

I do have to admit I didn't do a great job with my freelance work at the time. I believe I should have devoted more time to the freelance job, but I guess it felt more fun to me to work on my own projects. Still, I guess it planted a seed. I could live in some other country and earn my money working remotely as freelancer.

After 6 months or so, we decided we should stay together. So my girlfriend got pregnant. 2 months later I moved back to The Netherlands. I worked a couple more months at my freelance job, but in the meanwhile looked for a permanent remote job. I found a company in New York that wanted to hire me as a freelancer. So with a new freelance job, I quit my current freelance job and moved back to Thailand.

However, now all was not great. It seemed to owner of the NY company and me were not a great match. He kinda needed a developer who could also be a good designer and I am just not a great designer. So pretty soon we decided to separate our ways. Now I was out of a job and in Thailand. At least I still had many savings from freelancing. So I decided to try to find some work on Upwork. Not a great success. After a couple of months trying Upwork, I moved back to The Netherlands and started freelancing again, this time for a fintech company in Amsterdam.

I worked 1.5 years for this company as freelancer. This ensured we could buy a house in Thailand, buy a car. I believe in this 1.5 years I went 2 times on a long holiday to Thailand to visit girlfriend and daughter. I would also call every day from the office (due to time difference).

Then, at some point I decided to try another remote work platform, Codementor. I passed the tests and the interviews and quickly found another US company here to work for. With another freelance job secured, now was the right time to move to Thailand. And basically I've been in Thailand ever since, working from home, but now at a 2nd company (Australian based). I've become much better in remote working then when I first started out. I believe I am much more focused now than I was at the beginning. Perhaps kinda failing the first 2 times was required to teach me how to do better.

But now I also have real goals that I want to strive for:

- I want to make some games.

- I want my daughter to have a happy childhood.

- I don't want to spend 40 hours a week working for some client, if possible (find a good work/life balance).

- Ideally at some point I make some game or app that allows me to full-time work on my own projects.

- In the future I would like to have permanent residency in Thailand (to feel more secure at old age).

- I would like to learn the Thai language, to be able to better communicate with locals.

- I want to save up a good amount of retirement money.

- Would like to have a nice condominium near the beach (we currently live upcountry).

I think it's important to have some long term goals to work towards. Those long term goals make life worth living.

If you don't have any long term goals, perhaps consider doing a sabbatical of sorts - stay a long time in a completely different environment as you are used to. My older brother went to a kibbutz in Israel for half a year when he was depressed. And I guess I went to Thailand to figure myself out. (A kibbutz can be really affordable, since you get a small weekly wage and you get a room for free, but you have to work a bit in return).

Also, it never hurts to try to train a stoic mindset. The book "A Guide to the Good Life - The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy" [0] might help here. It might help you deal better with adverse events happening in your life.

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[0]: https://www.amazon.com/Guide-Good-Life-Ancient-Stoic-ebook/d...

Regarding your feelings about your PhD, is it correct to assume you have an advisor? Have you spoken to them about both your stress and your recent break up?

It is rock bottom for the glowing persona you constructed to match your parents’ expectations. You learned to do this before you can remember, and the tendency to do so will be something you’ll need to learn to manage.

It is not rock bottom for the actual you, and this you is only beginning to realize they even exist. Learn how to name your emotions. Force yourself to not care what others think through engaging in something permanently humbling and repeatedly making mistakes that others can see until it doesn’t bother you.

Learn how to engage with the idea of what other people think of you with mild scientific interest and amusement. The way they react to you usually says more about them than it does you.

Learn to not do the shiny thing that is so easy for you, and instead find every opportunity to relax the increasingly impossible level of control required to maintain the self-image you’ve constructed.

Learn to listen to your heart, and act on what it says.

I can provide some generic advice about what helped me:

1. Determining who my actual support network was. I invested in my repairing and strengthening my bonds with my friends and family who had been there for me - and while not cutting ties with fair weather friends, deemphasized spending time with them.

2. Repeatable daily habits are important. I forced myself to take multiple walks a day, set daily completion goals for my work, attend therapy/group sessions. It’s hard but I firmly think beyond the benefit of developing a good routine, it’s imperative to fill your time when depressed. The more you can lounge in your infinite sadness, the easier it is for said feelings to permeate deeper into your psyche and persist.

3. Consistency with sleep and diet are huge. I’m a short sleeper - which I’ve been lead to believe is advantageous but made it easy to convince myself I could run on essentially no rest. A tired mind is, in my experience, more likely to make the kind of mistakes that exacerbate a career and/or personal slump.

4. I made a concerted effort to read a new article or attend a talk on a topic I knew little about daily. This was extremely important in helping me find motivation to explore new career/intellectual pursuits as well as, I believe, improve my mental flexibility.

5. I gained quite a bit from attending church. This isn’t me advocating for you to do the same but I would try to find some sort of group setting (at least once a week) where you are not at all focusing on career-related items. I think even a gaming group (such as D&D) or a book club could fulfill this purpose.

I’m also happy to talk any time if it is at helpful. My email is in my profile. Good luck.

As far as the lost relationship goes, maybe it’s for the better now than later. Try to improve yourself first before you enter another one.

Improving yourself is most work: physically through phisical exercise and exercising your will. These will carry over some energy into improving yourself in other areas which you should not ignore. Then let life take its course. I’ve hit rock bottom at some point in my 30s and survived. Now looking back at my old self and the relationship I was in 15 years ago and can’t stop laughing, with hindsight Im glad things turned out as they did. But at the same time I feel for you because I remember the dark pit I was in. If you can cry go for it, don’t be ashamed to be vulnerable, it really helps.