When you’ve hit rock bottom you can only go up

Even at the lowest point it is possible to see the light. Here are some techniques to rise from your ashes stronger than ever.

Sometimes our lives descend at full speed down a cliff that seems insurmountable. We have hit rock bottom emotionally, physically, socially and professionally and we remain crouched there, with a fear and sadness that becomes resistant and becomes premorbid to the appearance of different mood disorders.

Everyone has serious problems, has had dramas or even tragedies in their life, but these qualifiers have more to do with how the person digests them than the event itself. Everyone is strong and has a plan until they experience pain. You haven’t run out of a plan, but you need to redo it. When you’ve hit rock bottom you can feel lost.

Following Beck, in his explanation of depression, to question some irrational thoughts he refers to the concept of the downward arrow and other resources, such as the technique of paradoxical magnification. Taking these two techniques and your own experience as an example You will realize that having hit rock bottom, you can only go up.

“True pain, which makes us suffer deeply, sometimes makes even the thoughtless man serious and constant; Even the poor in spirit become more intelligent after great pain.”

-Fyodor Dostoyevsky-

Realize that your mistake is fear

Everyone is afraid of the adverse events they may experience, but when you have already experienced great pain and feel like you have hit rock bottom, it is time to be aware that There are two options: continue in that almost vegetative and painful state or recover. This is your decision.

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The downward arrow is a cognitive therapy technique. Teaches you how to select a negative thought and answer the question: “sIf this thought were true, what would it mean to you?” The answer would be a new negative thought. It would be necessary to ask successive questions (drawing descending arrows) with which they would come to light counterproductive beliefs (perfectionism, need for approval or fears).

How the downward arrow technique works

If you are immersed in a thought of pain and you think you have hit rock bottom and nothing has a solution, you must explain what it means for you, and another negative thought will usually appear. An example: someone who has lost one of her children and who has the thought of no longer being able to take care of the others, should be asked: what would the illness of another child mean to you?

Surely another feeling of pain would appear and so on, until reaching the most catastrophic vision of his life. Even so, despite the harshness of the exercise and what he has experienced, this person would realize that he could endure it and stay alive.. It is the thought of him that amplifies the pain, much more than what actually happens.

Once at that point, one can realize that even having suffered one devastating event, one can still suffer others, since nothing is certain in this life. Even your defeatist thought dynamics could encourage them: It can cause a loss of employment, the rest of your children ending up moving away. In short, losing everything that matters to you.

At that moment the person is aware that they are at the bottom of discouragement, but they do not want to descend to the basement. He can only come back and he will do it easier than he thought. He already has few things to lose, only fear.

When we have hit rock bottom, let us magnify the sorrows and see the absurdity of our attitude

Paradoxical magnification is a cognitive technique in which the client is instructed to exaggerate negative thoughts., instead of trying to stop or control them. Paradoxically, such thoughts can seem absurd and meaningless.

Evidently, This technique should be used for negative thoughts associated with relatively serious events. Following the previous example, addressing thoughts of fear about the future after the loss of a child would not be plausible with this technique.

With the paradoxical magnification the possibility is raised to the patient that he is not in the worst state in the aspect in which he feels affected. You may feel alone because she has just broken up with your partner, but you are far from being in the worst possible state of loneliness, in which you could not count on your family or friends either.

Let us take our pain to the terror of tragicomedy and laugh at the absurdity of our catastrophism.

Suffering makes us wise and resilience makes us strong

There is nothing in a person’s life that can bring them down if they really don’t allow it. We establish the limits, the times and an attentive ear to the harmful comments of those types of people who give their opinion without having encountered anything similar in their path.

Everyone has their own thing”. There are people who live through bitter moments and end up bitter and making others bitter. There are others who transform their bitterness into the antithesis they want for their life: they know what it is and they do not want it for themselves or for others.

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When we cross the limits of ridicule, pain, humiliation, of feeling judged, and see that we have already suffered too much, we reach the true meaning of our existence. Well Only when you have hit rock bottom and have understood the process, do you realize that the only possible option is to go up.

We come face to face with the certainty that We will no longer act out of ego, but out of authentic personal well-beingwe will withdraw from the competition with others to simply fight for our own dreams.

From so much bad past and suffered, the best, by mere inertia, is yet to come. Take the step, get out of the regret, start living and simply let it arrive. As low as you have fallen, you can only go up.