How did you rebuild yourself after having hit rock bottom?

This actually reads almost normal for a last year of a phd. But you’re in a phd program and probably much closer to complete than you think.

I’d reach out to your professors about your misgivings about your research. Make it clear that you’re looking to complete the thing asap and need guidance.

Forget the outside stuff. Relationships can wait until you’re done. Feeling like a failure or success is almost a worthless concern as you’re clearly nearly done with a huge life goal. A life goal that will change the context of your life ever after. Much more than any marriage could even. Marriages are fundamentally just a societal complication of a relationship - complete with dubious legal consequences and a not a sure thing that can end. (Plus if someone is bailing on you when you’re finishing a degree they definitely weren’t going to be there for you in actually troubling times - like an illness or your house burning down.) But a degree is a hurdle you surpass once and get to wave the success of forever after. (Just don’t be a jerk about it, side point.)

Know that on the other side of your phd is a huge weight off your shoulders regardless of failure or successful defense. This time of strife will end when the phd. Freedom is soon.

You’re looking at a time where the job market remains strongly favorable. I graduated into the Great Recession and would have benefited greatly from this market, high interest rates and other things be damned. The future is still bright - just got to get past this last bit.

Hello internet friend,

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.

I'd agree with some other comments here that you are pretty far away from rock bottom.

Rock bottom is a complete dismantling of your life. Failed relationships (romantic, friendly, professional, etc), lost job, bills piling up, apartment a disaster, inability to build a mental model that can cope with your current situation.

It looks more like you're in a relative minimum. From what I understand about psychology a healthy balanced life generally follows a pattern of building yourself up to a relative maximum, getting something completely wrong that challenges the framework you've built to orient yourself in the world, hitting a relative minimum, and learning to build yourself back up to a new relative maximum.

Consider the alternative, where there are no relative minimums. That would imply you either know everything, in which case your trajectory would be completely flat or ascending indefinitely. Well, that certainly can't be the case because not even the most brilliant people in history knew everything.

There is no advice or shortcut we can give that your therapist hasn't given you. These things take time. There is something about life that you've gotten wrong. This is your opportunity to learn what it is, fix it, build a new mental model, and prepare yourself to not make the same mistakes again.

You're in the fortunate position to have a lot of opportunity. More people are in the dysfunctional family history boat than you think. Sounds like you've done well, despite that.

Keep going.

> I've also started therapy 2 months ago, but it's going slow and it hasn't been very useful yet.

My #1 piece of advice is, find a new therapist.

Therapy isn't one size fits all. You need to not only find the right type of "modality" for you (e.g. CBT and IFS* are worlds apart, generally you want somebody "integrative/eclectic" who will combine the right modalities for you), but you also simply need to find somebody to click with. It really does depend on trust and chemistry to a shockingly large degree.

I know multiple people who did years of therapy that was next to useless, then found a new therapist that just 2-4 sessions made a huge difference.

It's entirely normal and expected to "shop around" with therapists. Try an initial 1-2 sessions with 3-4 different therapists, and be upfront with them about what you're doing as well. They won't take it personally -- they're therapists -- and they're even more aware than you that therapeutic outcomes are super dependent on just finding the right personal match.

When you find the right therapist who is really in tune with you, you can go from having a "breakthrough" every couple of years, to every couple of sessions. It's crazy how different the outcomes can be, and how few people are even aware that the outcomes can be so different.

(Note that this is less applicable to CBT which is very recipe-oriented, paint-by-numbers, surface-level treatment. CBT can be great as a short-term fix for distorted thinking patterns, but it's not designed to address anything deeper, so a good match with a therapist matters less.)

* CBT = cognitive behavioral therapy, IFS = internal family systems

Getting dumped by your partner can really crush your ego as a man. Don't worry, it will get better.

The hardest thing for me was that I still loved her, but of course rationally didn't want to (mother of my 3 kids). One trick I used was to disconnect the real person with the person I loved. This allowed me to still love the person in my head, but not the real one (sounds stupid but it really worked). Basically "the person that I love is in my head and doesn't exist. The real person just looks like her".

Rock bottom means you have nothing left to lose, or at least you feel like it. For me it felt kind of liberating. Because if you have nothing left to lose, there are only things to gain. You can take stupid risks and it won't matter anyway.

Your breakup is still fresh, so try to talk to some friends who went through a similar thing.

Hang in there, it will get better.

Most people of strong personas and characters have ended up there by hitting rock bottom several times and bouncing back several times with more and more resilience each time.

It’s really in these moments that you can define yourself, that you reach out for philosophy and literature and ways to cope and face life.

As they say: life is made of failures, and it’s always about how you bounce back (not how you avoid failing)

The second thing is that life is made of multiple sub lives. Your life as a toddler was nothing like your teenage years, which was nothing like your adult life, which will look nothing like your life as an old person.

Transitioning is always hard, but growing as a person is also about accepting that we are not meant to live the same little cushy and stable life that we got accustomed to for too many years.

Breaking up is one thing, at some point close people to you will die, you will lose some of your physical abilities, etc.

The best thing you can do is find a strong philosophy of life, and not worry too much about what your life was or what your life will be. Just enjoy the moment.

Enjoy your experience as a human being. All of it.

>I feel like I've lost any passion for anything

This is one of the hardest aspects of depression, one which I'm struggling with right now again, actually.

Having been in this place many times in my life, my best advice is:

Do things first. If you do enough things, passion will flow from that. (wouldn't hurt if those things were plausibly interesting or valuable to someone).

The natural alternate philosophy is much less likely to work, which is: wait or or look for things you are passionate in, before investing effort. This is more likely to support a catch-22 cycle of depression.

But, the mind doesn't actually work this way. Nothing is objectively worthy of passion. Successful movie stars get bored of fame. I've listened to researchers passionately fulfilled by studying literal garbage.

Our brain learns to find meaning in things as we invest and explore them.

Our feelings and values change over time.

When depressed, you predict you will never feel better, or care more about things. That sort of prediction is empirically very unreliable for depressed people.

I can only tell you what I would want myself to do in your situation.

I would want to hit the road. I would pause the PhD and go on a long road trip. Alternatively, I would set about hiking one of the longer trails in the U.S.

Clichéd? Maybe. But I have found the most peace and serenity in my life when on the road, broken out of my constant circles.

A rather extreme measure? Yeah, bailing on the PhD seems rather extreme but, future me, looking back on this phase of my life would absolutely agree it was the right thing to do at the time. (And here I should emphasize, this is me talking to me — your mileage may vary.)

There was only one similar period in my life and, while I didn't know about the long trails in the U.S. and didn't otherwise really have the financial means, I did cut all the cords I could at that time: work, place I was living, toxic friends, etc. My long-distance girlfriend had not "dumped" me, instead she was, again, off in college rooming with someone else. I decided at that moment to write a letter telling her I am leaving her.

So very much a clean break in my life.

It was strange to be standing there at the bottom of that well in my life but in hindsight I see that it was the point where everything started just slowly getting better. I think emotionally, and self-esteem-wise I had finally begun to feel like I had "agency" (to use a popular term these days).

Oh, I started listening to very different music then, took up the guitar and started playing... Whole new set of friends as well. I may have started smoking then as well — don't ever do that.

King, I dropped out of my PhD (probably shouldn't have, but I don't regret it because the build back is going really well, I moved back from America, was unemployed for a few months).

I know this will sound wildly out of order, but do start working out. It's been crazy how much of my self esteem and idea about myself changed. Like transforming your body will legit give you confidence about other stuff.

Next is try to move into research that's very 'employable', employable likely means that the research holds a huge amount of value to society, internalizing that will prevent you from questioning how meaningful it all is (academia often isn't but by building skills, you derive meaning in a sort of preparatory way)

Lastly get off twitter and stuff. Even HN if you can.

All the best! Keep in mind rooting for strangers is a common human impulse and a bunch of ppl are doing it for you.

A breakup two weeks ago is massive. So soon after I wouldn’t expect you to feel better than this, it’s good you don’t feel worse! Many people would.

And when you’re ready I’d suggest thinking again on what your therapist is saying because they have a point. After a breakup you have an opportunity to do things 100% for you with no one else to please. As basic as choosing dinner and Netflix/streaming/torrent title or as elaborate as major world travel (visit some of those international friends - and before you mention cost remember traveling young and alone is the cheapest, you have flexibility in dates and accommodation you won’t have later with kids, spouse, tired bones that need soft mattress).

I know it’s hard to see the opportunities in your situation but they exist. Small indulgences and bigger ways (eventually when you’re ready) of leveraging the advantages of being alone are the route to eventually becoming happier and stronger and healthier than you were even before the breakup. And from that strength comes better answers about your future.

Hi. Feel free to ignore all of this. I hope this helps (selfishly, it helped me a bit to type). I see comments that are giving good advice. Some are suggesting that what you are feeling isn't rock bottom. In my opinion, whether or not that is true doesn't matter. Reality filters through the lens of your mind. If you feel that this is the case, it is. To you. I have been, and still go through, the same things. Because of my past, I have issues trusting people, and knowing that it is true doesn't help. I no longer have many friends, few meaningful relationships, and many people could care less if I exist. I review the history of my life and sometime wonder if my existence was a net positive for those with which I have collided. Only a core set of people who helped raise me know me and love me for who I am. There are fewer of these as time passes. Finding someone you trust that you can confide in without judgement helps. For me, being able to express how I feel to another person who cares about what I am thinking has helped immensely. By nature, I am solution-oriented and get stuck in a kind of mental fix loop when I encounter a situation I can't control or resolve. I am working on trying to focus on the situations I can control, and ceding the rest to "what is". I Recommend that you approach your therapy as a way to unburdon yourself without the expectation of a fix. The fix will come. This seems like everything that matters. If you can, try to zoom out. Try to do something new. Try to see that this is a tiny situation in the fabric of reality and choose to change it. Again, I am just a random friendless internet dude talking out of my ass. I am not qualified to offer advice, but I just wanted you to know that you aren't alone.

You just got dumped by your life partner. You are experiencing immense mental pain, and maybe even physical pain. That is normal. In fact, if you had no reaction to being dumped by your life partner, you may have deeper problems.

It's possible that the breakup is making you more pessimistic about your PhD. How were you feeling about your PhD before the breakup?

Here are some optional suggestions. Try Tinder. Try psilocybin. Try standup comedy. Try going to another country (and live cheap if needed). Try being an Uber driver. Try a crazy hairstyle. Be creative.

Don't rebuild: that version of yourself is forever gone [1]. Build another you: rebase mercilessly. Of course, one path to wisdom is to discover there was never an you to begin with: each morning we re-instantiate the memories and take on the goals of a past tyrant.

[1] Recent HN: The overfitted brain: Dreams evolved to assist generalization https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35009509 In book form, check Jeff Hawkins' A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence for a hint towards a new metaphysics of whatever being a person is.

I went from selling three businesses to being homeless on the street. I don’t think, unfortunately, there’s a magic solution.

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.

I’ll give it a shot:

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.

If you grew up in a toxic family of the type you're describing it could be that the hardest thing is to realise that as an adult you can do whatever you want. Sounds obvious and easy but can be really hard to internalise and act on. And it's the thing that matters most, because once you do have the feeling that you can do whatever you want, you can figure out what you want and do it and live a happy life. It will probably not happen overnight but rather over a long period of constant work, so find what you need to help you on this journey (therapy sounds like a good idea, just make sure that you are working with the right therapist).

I would ignore anyone telling you that your experience doesn't qualify as "rock bottom". You know best. What it really means is that you feel you've suffered enough and you're ready to do the work and move away from suffering and towards happiness and self actualisation. Even if it doesn't feel like that right now, this is a very good place to be.

Been exacly there when I was 25. Breakup after 5 years of first serious relationship, nearing the end of a phd. It sucked. I'm now 15 years past that and my life couldn't be better.

This is what I did: 1. I got a new hobby involving regular workouts and which was somewhat social with new people. Never really did sports before that, but this really helped me from getting isolated from society. I found new friends and got in shape. There is many of those, kayaking, rowing, soccer, ultimate, ... pick any one. Even running groups could work. Many evenings I came home tired after training, sometimes crying from heartburn, but that eventually passed. And 2. I finished the phd and then got a job in a different country, awesome place, new surroundings, own apartment, new colleagues, new life. This is rather easy with a phd. I didn't really click with my field either, but the decision to power through the last 1-2 years and just wrap it up and then move on was gold. That's what a phd signifies to a new employerand also yourself: You can finish something and power through, even if in tough moments. Every phd has those. Finally, after moving and new job and gotten in shape, got friends and a new relationship and it's great. I didn't have to fight for the latter, it just came autotomatically with new self confidence and casting a wide net. (I'm not really the social type.)

So, let your future self in 15 years tell you: this will all pass, you have a great future ahead!

P.S.: I also read self-help stuff and relationship advice and psychology. The moment I stopped, I started to feel so much better. It just reminded me how crappy I felt. Constantly. Once I threw this out I could embrace my new hobby and new beginnings. There will be throwbacks and evenings where you don't do anything but cry and eat chips. That's ok. Just don't let it consume you and steadily move on.

You gotta move. Walk. Every day. 15K steps. You have to get outside your bubble. There’s more going on than what you see and feel, and there’s something beyond what you’re experiencing right now.

Part of the problem is you have to burn the time, but the more you wallow the more this time will swallow you up. It may take a year or two to get over this breakup, but if you move and stay productive, this time will not have been wasted and you’ll come out a bit better. If you wallow, you’ll waste this time. If you mellow the wallow, it’ll be a victory in and of itself and a driver for healing.

I’ve never gone on a long walk and felt worse. And it’s something you can do every single day.

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.

I'm not going to tell you that other people have it way worse than you because its not relevant. for you this is awful and devastating and I respect that.

Uncomplicate your life. Choose 2 or 3 things that are core and spend a year or so focused just on those.

Fitness, your phd and maybe 1 other thing. You have to find yourself again before thinking of starting another relationship. Go do crazy random things. Have one night stands.

"do things you like". I feel like maybe you dont have many of those right now. Thats not a big deal.

Find odd events that are happening around you and just go to them. Go to a restaurant in the morning and have breakfast alone outside. Take your time and just enjoy it.

You are already fit, take on a harder physical test, run a marathon, do an iron man, sign up for a power lifting competition. Do it, when you lose, laugh about it and do it again. Get embarrassed. Embrace the suck. Eventually it wont suck so much but by experiencing new things you are allowing yourself to change.

"due to Covid and my own passiveness and weak sense of self" Again on the physical side but maybe try boxing or Brazilian Ju-Jitsu, something that will make you feel powerful. Join a Rugby club, get hit. Come back the next day.

Go volunteer, I really mean that. Go help someone else it will clarify your position in the world.

Close the door on what was. Who do you want to be?

There is truly no magical answer friend, you just have to get up every morning and try. I think you are going to surprise yourself.

Exist.

That’s what I did for a good chunk of my twenties. My life has changed dramatically since then.

It’s hard to set a direction for yourself with that mode of living, so I pivoted from art school and joined the Air Force to focus on serving.

I’m sure the work you do can positively impact the world. Find a mission and focus on staying busy with that. Finish your PhD towards that end and continue take care of your physical health. Help people.

As a society we tend to focus on joy and pleasure as the keys to happiness (do things you like), but there’s something deeper I think you can find once you’re okay with simply existing as you feel today.

For me it was a life-altering traumatic injury in my early 20's followed by the common pitfalls associated with such an event. What turned things around for me was taking ownership of my situation. Understanding that while it certainly sucks, whether I continued to spiral downward or crawled my way back up was entirely up to me. It was absolutely within my power to turn it around and I chose to do so. I actually remember the exact moment the decision hit me. It took several years, and more than one attempt to get back to "functional" and feeling "normal". And 20+ years later, I still live with the consequences of that injury, that's part of me but doesn't define me. I've accomplished a lot, have a good family, career and still have a lot left to contribute.

ymmv, but the tough-love mindset worked best for me:

- Nobody's coming to save you. You have to save yourself.

- People with extraordinary good or bad luck tend to make it themselves.

- Failure is an event, not a person.

You're getting a lot of excellent advice here. I feel similarly to you and have been through my own troubles that have seemed quite immense to me.

In the end, the best thing for me has been Buddhist meditation and practice. I know it's a weird thing to say, and that it will probably therefore have no effect for me to say it. But I've been there, and am doing much better now, and my Buddhist meditation/practice is the main reason. So I recommend it. Feel free to ask about it in a reply if you'd like more specifics.

Sounds like youve described my life as well so as much of a cold comfort it is; you arent alone in this experience.

Some suggestions.

1. Theres usually a big gap between understanding and belief. You can “know” something is true but not have it feel true, or let that knowledge have any positive affect on your outlook or physiology. This simply takes time. Be patient and kind with yourself.

2. Self help books are good. Therapy is better. But you’ll also find there are tons of different types of therapy. What works for you will take time to figure out and will also depend on your background, level of resistence, your comfort with vulnerability, the vocabulary you have to describe your experience, etc. Again, stick with it. Dont overdo it. Rememeber that 9 women can’t have a baby in a month.

3. Relationships and endings can be especially difficult for people who were potentially raised by narcissists or any cluster b personality style. Youve most likely learned behaviour that worked for you in childhood but wont help you now that youre an adult. This is now being understood as maladaptive patters from CPTSD. It’s worth digging into. Id recommend “the body keeps the score” and “complex ptsd: from surviving to thriving”.

4. Your body and your mind operate more like one unit than we all care to admit. Its important to exercise for at least 30 minutes a day. Not a walk. More like sweating. Nobody ever wants to do this. I still never want to do it. Id suggest doing everything possible to lower the activation cost of getting some exercise.

5. This tension requires an outlet. You probably spend a lot of time in front of a computer reading, writing, etc. I find writing with a pen and paper helpful. Theres absolutely no need to ever read what you wrote ever again. The mind is wild but it does seem to offer some relief.

Lastly - and I apologize for being trite - when youre going through hell, keep going.

Sounds like you are a sensitive, thoughtful and feeling individual. And you are reaching out to more people, strangers, presenting yourself as a massive pile of broken glass - a poetical description suggesting you'd like to talk about yourself in the context of a Feeling <> Thinking self-ideation. (ADVICE: you might want to naturally add more of that to your life, e.g. a regular poetry class, or write a daily Haiku, so EXPRESSING YOURSELF BECOMES YOUR LIFE.)

ADVICE: it's going to continue to require mindfulness, ongoing for the rest of your life in order to maintain the kind of mood-state that you desire.

Sounds like you label yourself as week and unhealthy thinking. Soooooo ADVICE ... challenge that as being "correct for the moment" and "maladaptive". It's still adaptation. And you've got a long life ahead of you to update your Stimulus > Response chain brain.

ADVICE: Look for healthy activities which support your mood - for me it's simple daily exercise - and look for thought-patterns that help "tank" you, with the aim of recognizing them when they pop up again. Counselor can help you recognize, "Oh that was a boost for me, I'll think about how to incorporate more of that into my routine."

ADVICE: Give therapy SIX MONTHS to show signs. AND tell the counselor the Criticism that you tell us, here, EVERY SESSION in some little or big way, for that six months, until it changes. The counselors can be there to guide YOUR thinking and action, not to do the living FOR YOU.

STORY A reason they could be saying "do things you like", is because you don't appear to do things you Truly like, from their perspective. Typically with children of Narcissists, the child's emotional needs are neglected. Sooooooooo you might be underdeveloped in a few ways around self-fulfillment. Google "CEN neglect narcissist". Accomplishments aside, what makes you happy, and what do you want?

I'll echo other commenters here on the PhD side, if that helps you out.

Nearly all PhDs are having the 'work' troubles you are, I sure did, all of my friends sure did, I don't know of a single person that hasn't had issues like you are having with finishing their PhD. Really, what you are experiencing is so common that I would be surprised at anything else.

If you can, talk with your advisor or committee and explain what is going on. I know most PhDs can't really do that, but it's worth a shot. Try to figure out the bare minimum, and just do that. Remember, your degree doesn't come with an asterisk that says you just barely got it, or that your advisor had to wrangle the committee to pass you, or that it took you 8 years to get. You just get a diploma like everyone else and a little hat just like everyone else.

I can relate to this.

I just broke up with my boyfriend of 6 years, and it feels like your world has ended. After experiencing painful breakups with the same person, I understood that the only thing that will ease the pain is time. It is hard to leave it to time to heal when your every minute is painful. But you will grow out of it. If you think that you can do something to get back with her, try it now, not later. But if you also think that it is over, then wait with patience. KEEP YOURSELF BUSY. Focus more on your PhD. It is harder than ever for you to do that now but just think how cool and great it would make you feel like if you could take this negative situation and use as a source of motivation and determination.

The things will get better. You will look past and be happy with what you achieved so far.

Your girlfriend broke up with you and you don't like the subject of your PhD. Those are quite common experiences and very far from rock bottom. So just keep going with your life and things will be fine, because they're kind of fine already.

I'm so sorry to hear about the difficult time you're going through, but please know that you're not alone. Many people have experienced the same sense of emptiness, doubt, and uncertainty that you're feeling right now. It's understandable that you're struggling given the breakup, the stress of your PhD, and your challenging family background.

It's important to give yourself time to process your emotions and work through your struggles, but please don't lose hope. You're taking positive steps by seeking therapy and trying to make sense of your experiences. Remember that progress isn't always linear, and it's okay to take things one day at a time.

Lastly, please don't forget to be kind to yourself. You're doing the best you can in a challenging situation, and that's something to be proud of. Remember that setbacks and struggles are a natural part of life, and they can often lead to growth and resilience in the long run. Keep your chin up, stay optimistic, and know that things will get better. One way to cultivate a more positive outlook is to keep a gratitude journal. Each day, write down a few things you're grateful for. This can help shift your focus from what's going wrong to what's going right, and it can help you cultivate a sense of gratitude and appreciation for the good things in your life.

Hi friend. This mirrors my experience closely over the last three months. Top grad school, close to finishing with a job lined up. She got a job far away after struggling for 6 months to get one. Since then I’ve been broken. No passion for grad school, or anything anymore. I quit therapy since it was so unproductive and expensive.

Though I’m probably not the best person to get advice from, here’s what has helped me.

First of all exercise. I’d suggest swimming. I picked up running after several years of not doing it and hurt myself pretty badly since I’m no longer the young person I once was.

The second thing that I am finding helpful is bumble. I’m in no way ready to have a relationship but the lack of confidence I had after losing my life partner was/is so profound. By going to drinks with people I’m able to feel desired again. It feels great to feel wanted again after being dumped by the person who knew me the best. Try to not compare people you see to her, it’s going to be impossible though. Be in the moment as much as possible. Do one date a week. This isn’t about being social or whatever, it’s about prioritizing your mental health. Go on dates with people you’d never consider talking normally (I’m a nerd). For me, seeing finance people, actors, etc in places that I’d never normally go to like a karaoke bar has been the best exercise to forgetting I’ve come up with.

So far that’s it. My goal is to develop as a person, by finding new hobbies and getting passionate about something again. I’m afraid that I will have to wait until after graduation.

I am not saying this to be cruel, but you have not reached rock bottom yet.

A person you loved, who was important /everything to you has left. You are desperately sad. This impacts your life and your work /studies.

Most people will experience this in some way during their lives. The lucky few who dont. That does not make it any easier and nothing anyone can say can make it go away.

This is a process. It will take time. Nobody can make it just go away.

The statistics are in your favor my friend. People usually recover :)

When you do, you will still have an open wound and it will make your next relationship a bit more difficult bur you will also be better prepared.

However, you still have a place to live, you sound reasonably healthy, dont have any serious drug issues, you can feed yourself, you can shower. Dont trivialize this. This is more than a lot of people ever have.

You have hit a most difficult time of grief.

Ancient wisdom for such patches is to get drunk and f..k wh..- This is misogynistic, wrong and does not do anything to help anyone.

Ancient wisdom from a different place would be to hang out with a shaman and eat mushrooms or similar. (The shaman part if vital)

Now we have therapy, self-help books and even pills.

If you have the funds, possibility, ability and time, something I have tried to go somewhere strange / different. It can either help you, you get distracted by strange things and ways. Or it just make you feel even more lonely and isolated.

I'd accept that you are going to pursue getting over the line of the PhD even if it wasn't an ideal fit or your other misgivings about it. It's really just a piece of paper when it is all said and done, and it sounds like it will be a very useful piece of paper since you were in a prestigious group.

Once you've accepted that will happen, you just need to set a simple plan of how to get there in one piece. Make sure you are indeed carving out a little bit of time for things you love doing. When you are depressed that can be very difficult but just think of what you really loved and enjoyed two or five years ago and put it on the calendar, all the better if it is a cheap plane ticket or some other reservation required so you obligate future you to do it. I'd also suggest sending a message to all of those scattered friends to reconnect, easy to do and will help ground yourself.

Finally, do you have any sort of exercise habit? If not seriously consider doing something 3-4x a week for half an hour that gets you sweaty. You don't have to love the activity but it helps if it's fun or just fits into your routine effortlessly.

You are so goddamn young mate. you are going to make it.

As others have pointed out, finishing your PhD can be brutal. It can absorb all of your time, effort, and energy leaving you isolated in an existence devoid of joy. I am not certain what your area of study was, but you might take a look at a book called "The Ph.D. Grind" by Phillip J. Guo. He shares his experiences working toward his PhD in comp sci and how he had been isolated and worn down from his efforts. I found it reassuring to know that I was not dealing with things unique simply to me, and it enabled me to reassess my trajectory.

Breaking up with partners is a terrible feeling, and it has compounded your issue since you've likely lost your closest emotional support at a time when you might rely on them the most. Time will help you with this problem. Meeting new people can be incredible because you find that you experience life in a completely unique and exciting way depending who you share your time with. When you are ready for that again, those opportunities will be there waiting for you.

Concerning your issues from home, Myself and many of my friends included had not realized how much our childhood and family life had affected us until we were well into our 30's. This is true despite having been aware of dysfunctional family issues from a young age. I've also had a number of therapists from my youth and many of them were useless. However, therapy is still the solution for this and I'd like to be clear why this is important to you:

Any close exposure, especially developmental, to narcissists or those with borderline traits can be devastating. The average person is highly ill-equipped to rationalize their experiences with someone of this nature.

I'd recommend you find a specialist in this area. Not all therapists are the same, find one that can work on you, with you. You will need help to disentangle the reality of your youth and you should not have to do it alone. However, you don't have you do this right now. You should focus on counseling for your immediate issues, however you assess them, in order to maintain forward momentum in your life.

Lastly, I am a realist: You can probably do this. All of it. Recover from this emotional deficit, finish your PhD, develop meaningful social relationships, and improve your well being through self discovery. What you are capable of is simply a matter perspective, and remember this is limited when you are so close to the bottom.

I’ve heard this idea from a few different sources: after the breakup of a longtime partnership, give yourself at least a month per year of the relationship to recover emotionally. It’s certainly not widow(er)hood, but you’ve lost a big part of your life.

Four years, four months. Aside from treading water on your PhD, do as your therapist suggests and focus on “do[ing] things you like” these next three or four months. If you don’t know how already, learn how to cook a few of your favorite meals. You don’t sound like you have the #1 problem/cause of “rock bottoming” (alcohol use disorders), but you might want to avoid alcohol-focused interests right now.

On the flip side, at least she bailed before the marriage, mortgage, and kids. She’s broken your heart, but she's hasn’t ruined your financial future. That sounds a bit cold, but might be a non-negative thing to remind yourself of when you start dwelling on her.

(Edited to add) My husband met me when he was 32, about a year after he’d finished his PhD, taken a couple of months to find a job, and moved across Germany for said job. It doesn’t feel that way right now, but you’ve got time.

A SSRI, a bit of walk, eating vegetables and fruits, friendship, and thinking about what you wanted to do when you were 15? Love, it come and go, come, go, come softer, go softer, over time :) At 28 it is sometimes hard to accept, but it's a network of neurons that needs to adjust it's weight over time, even if it's thru (a lot) of pain. And what about tomorrow, you'll rarely can tell for sure!

Don't worry about it. Imagine some variation of what you are going through, only at 45, 55, or 65 and then realize that you are young, educated, and have the whole world ahead of you. Figure out what you want and go get it.

Therapy is a good idea, but be sure to get the right therapist. Trust your instincts: if you don't think this person is right, now is the time to change.

I felt similarly awful in my late 20s, I think this is a particularly difficult time for a lot of people. I don't have any particular advice there was nothing anyone could have said or done to make me happy at the time, I just white knuckled through it, obsessed myself with working and pursuing my goals monomaniacally, and eventually came out the other side feeling content.

Four years is a long time. Maybe this was your first significant partner. Those breakups can be hard.

Open yourself up to people around you. Friends. Colleagues you trust or admire. Have and make dinner with them. Be social. Be vulnerable to people who seem receptive.

Keep a good routine. Don't let it get out of whack but don't overwork yourself into isolation.

You'll be okay in time. HN is rooting for you.

The passions will come back in different shapes and forms, it feels like a loss not to have them but they’ll resurface when there isn’t a ton of pressure on your shoulders. Think they’ll come back after you finish your PHd or after you quit it if you decide to do so.

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.

Listen to "Pink Floyd: Coming Back to Life" -- especially the live Pulse version, with an older Gilmour singing.

The words "where were you, when I was burnt and broken?" never rang closer.

It allowed me to pull myself together slowly.

EDIT: here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYh1O3NIU7Q

It was a long way. I was 34 years old when I broke with my partner. She worked witn me at the same place (Spanish university). I have to work with she 3 more years until I have to go out of that place, because it was very hard to work with she (and her new boyfriend, he worked at the same place too).

It was very hard. I had to return to my mother's home, and tried to search first another job, then another place to be, and last another couple. A process of 10 years.

Things I learned from then:

. Patience and keep calm. After some years things will be ok again, but it needs time (and work). It's a long hard way, but keep calm, don't want to solve everything in days or weeks.

. Family is important. I really thank my mother for his support in a very difficult time.

. I think I had to go out from that work the day after, not three years after.

. Only few people at work would be real friends.

Sorry for my poor English and good luck.

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 !

28 is super young. You really will have no trouble rebuilding yourself sentimentaly, don’t worry about that (you’ll never find the exact same love, just another one, because everybody is unique).

I haven’t done a phd but it’s pretty famous for being super hard emotionally, so this is probably « normal ». You’ll manage, just like everybody else do.

About feeling « empty » : find yourself a hobby. Since you’re the phd type, i would recommend something that makes your other parts of your brain work : artistic, and manual. Could be working with plants, joining a band, join a woodworking group, anything. It’ll give you instant gratification and draing you physically enough to make you enjoy the simple things in life : a fresh cup of water and a good night of sleep. Plus, it’ll help you rebuild a social network around a shared interest.

I "love" the toxic parent relationship, because that is the kind relationship that you are most used to and for you (and me) it makes it feel normal. You get used to it and when other people treat you the same way, you don't even realize that you should set boundaries or put a stop to it.

It feels like the world is ending when you break up with someone so significant. Everything seems worse.

I've heard many stories where the grind of a PHD breaks people.That stress must make this harder.

You're probably doing way better than it feels. You're in a PHD program to start. Academically that puts you in a very small percentage of the population. Just to make it that far shows you're smart and hardworking.

You're only 28. I know it feels scary when you're 20s are near the end but you are so young. I didn't get married until I was 34. You have lots of time to develop relationships. Many haven't even had one serious relationship at 28.

I know this must feel terrible but your current rock bottom is higher up than many people will ever get to. You are doing great and your future looks very bright.

You didn’t mention this possible aspect of hitting bottom. I’m reading this possibility because it is part of my own history, and so many things are in common, toxic family, overachiever, living by default, girlfriend dumping me. It may not even apply to your situation but if does, this could be huge.

That thing is addiction. If you suffer from addiction and aren’t willing to do something about it, then the reality is, even if you can’t see it yet, the reality is you haven’t hit bottom yet. And by addiction I mean doing anything in a self-destructive way. Drugs, alcohol, sex, spending, gambling, emotional outbursts, even good ole pot, anything for which there is a *A 12 step organization for.

Until addiction is arrested, the downward spiral continues.

If this does not apply, please disregard.

If your parents were narcissistic with you since you were little, you likely suffered from childhood emotional neglect.

I am reading an excellent book on this topic called "Running on Empty: Overcome your Childhood Emotional Neglect " by Jonnice Webb.

To determine if you might be suffering from it, an excerpt from the book:

“Emotional Neglect Questionnaire

Do You:

1. Sometimes feel like you don’t belong when with your family or friends

2. Pride yourself on not relying upon others

3. Have difficulty asking for help

4. Have friends or family who complain that you are aloof or distant

5. Feel you have not met your potential in life

6. Often just want to be left alone

7. Secretly feel that you may be a fraud

8. Tend to feel uncomfortable in social situations

9. Often feel disappointed with, or angry at, yourself

10. Judge yourself more harshly than you judge others

11. Compare yourself to others and often find yourself sadly lacking

12. Find it easier to love animals than people

13. Often feel irritable or unhappy for no apparent reason

14. Have trouble knowing what you’re feeling

15. Have trouble identifying your strengths and weaknesses

16. Sometimes feel like you’re on the outside looking in

17. Believe you’re one of those people who could easily live as a hermit

18. Have trouble calming yourself

19. Feel there’s something holding you back from being present in the moment

20. At times feel empty inside

21. Secretly feel there’s something wrong with you

22. Struggle with self-discipline

Look back over your circled (YES) answers. These answers give you a window into the areas in which you may have experienced Emotional Neglect as a child.”

I overcame a weak sense of self by learning to draw boundaries. I can't stress how important this is. When you have weak boundaries, you let others control your life. Learn to draw clear boundaries that must never be crossed. I recommend googling the problem.

You didn’t say anything about your financial and substance [ab]use. Seems like you don’t know if what you’re doing is what you want and your GF broke up with you. The latter is nothing. You’re 28; I’m 30. You got decades ahead of you.

You’re lucky this happened to you right now and not after marriage and with kids.

If you don’t have your own self, there’s no point in holding on to relationships. They will eventually decay. Go to the gym, walk, run, play, meditate. Get your own house in order before worrying about relationships. Get a therapist.

Btw this ain’t nothing from rock bottom. I’m assuming you aren’t a burn out. I’m assuming your SO didn’t try to have you thrown off the stairs and kill you.

Tell yourself that you are lucky this happened now and you survived

Everyone’s rock bottom is relative. And however low you are now, it can get lower. Break up with your therapist and get a new one if it’s not helping, but you need to want it to work. Stop drinking alcohol for now, it’ll just make everything feel worse.

90% of life is about standing up in the morning.

And there is no trick.

Life is an arse for everyone, and don’t assume golden boys who are always laughing aren’t hiding absolute misery. I’ve seen one of them dying alone of cancer. I know, I was the one there.

After a break-up, spend time just making friends repeatedly and relentlessly if you want to bounce back. CouchSurfing, Yap’n’go, nothing too much job-oriented, games nights or game bars... What people like is people who entertain them with light subjects. Make yourself apolitical, refuse that topic.

The girlfriend and the career aren’t for everyone, and it’s ok not to succeed. Try to give, from time to time, that’s what makes men happy, and the inability to give is often what makes them unhappy.

Don’t want to be rude or dismissive. You’re obviously going through some tough times. But you’re pretty far from rock bottom. I’ve been a lot lower and there was no bottom there either.

I hope all goes well: You finish your PhD and put this breakup behind you. Therapy helps and you feel better about yourself.

But if it does take a turn for the worse here is my short advice: First of all, get good sleep. Second, limit or cut ties with people who want to see you fall, or talk to / about you as if you already have, regardless of who they are (even parents). Also remember that healing / rebuilding yourself takes time, but as soon as the derivative is positive time is on your side.

1. If you feel like you need to panic (or cry), feel free to do it. You must allow yourself to feel (and express) like you're the biggest loser ever walked the earth.

2. You seem to have an analytical mind given what you wrote. Let that guide you. For example: maybe you recognize that the PhD will be a big multiplier commercially in your career. The right question could be: how do I finish this quickly, effectively and efficiently so that I can reap the benefits over a lifetime. Hint: maybe ChatGPT can help.

3. You've been in love. You will be again.

4. Screw self-help. Your _actions_ are the only thing that will get you forward. Let actions shape your thoughts.

Good luck.

Surround yourself with positivity and gratitude.

A neighbour might need help with groceries or meds. Look around, see how you can help others. Don't expect anything back. Know that you made super tiny winy dent in the world. It's powerful energy. If early waking up is your thing, go out and look at dawn sun.

Simple things.

See anything negative? Toxic gossipers? switch off, skip. Period.

You are making choice to see and accentuate the positive around you. This is hard time for you - and it is finite.

Sounds like you have good thing going (your PhD). It's supposed to be hard. Get positive energy, buckle up and just run that course with support system in the research group.

> I'm also in the last year of my PhD in a sub-field I have never envisioned myself in

I can only help in a tiny little way, but I hope it helps.

My go to intro question for profs when I was in school, was asking the topic of their PHD thesis. They spent years working on it, and I always thought it odd no one else ever asked them.

It seems like almost no one I've ever met ended up working in their PHD field. This includes liberal arts, not just STEM.

So if you don't envision yourself being in your subfield, well, that's good because it seems almost no one stays in the same subfield. Maybe you'll be the outlier, but what are the odds?

If it helps this isn’t too different to almost every PhD I knew during their final year. My wife was in bits during that year. Just keep pushing on till it’s over, and if you need a holiday to help alleviate burnout do so.

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.

Could be worse, also 28 and I just got laid off after my first year of being a technical product manager. I have a somewhat scattered three years of dev experience prior, although around 2yrs was my longest stint.

Been applying to jobs for about five weeks and other than a few interviews nothing has kicked back. Either no response or flat out denied, contemplating just re-learning a bunch of leetcode stuff I hate. All of my friends make north of $200k and I've just been floundering.

Future does not seem bright - clearly my track record is a black mark of some kind.

Hope things get better for you my friend.

> I also don't have a large social circle, and some of my friends are scattered internationally.

I bet you have a larger social circle than you think. I recently got invited to the wedding of a friend I hadn't heard from in years. We all have these friend-seeds, people whose name we know but whose bio is somewhat unknown, apart from whatever gave you their name. People who've been in the same boat as you at some stage in your life, but you didn't find the time to talk for whatever reason.

Like plant seeds, they can last for years and still be viable.

What are you going through is a normal reaction when going through a breakup. You just need perspective and that will only come with time. In the meantime focus on your physical health - diet, working out, sleep etc. Don't repeat my mistake - these things may seem completely pointless now and future may seem bleak etc. But please, just do it, you will thank yourself in the future. Watch some movies, I recommend "Swingers" (1996) and "A Serious Man". And remember, there are plenty of fish in the sea.

The great news is you are still very young, you can fumble around for another two years trying to pick yourself up and will still only be thirty.

More practically, it’s simple, just not easy, take one step at a time and then have patience, as long as you are making progress you just need to keep going.

Worth reading:

https://www.oliverburkeman.com/freshstart

https://ckarchive.com/b/xmuph6hrzxwrd

You have to keep yourself busy. Focus on your phd, travel, do new hobbies, hit the gym, try to reconnect with old friends, etc. Anything to feel occupied and meet people. If you also feel you don’t do progress with your therapist, find someone else who clicks for you.

You feel bad for the break up, everyone has been there. You are stll young, you have your whole life in front of you. You will meet someone else, you will finish your phd, you will get a job, things will get better and you will laugh of those past times and all these things you cried for.

Take care.

Like some other commenters have alluded to, one problem at a time, put your other problems onto a shelf for now. Try to give yourself buffers in any and all areas of your life that you can manage. Don't beat yourself up, self-forgiveness and self-acceptance are key. One mental model I've been using for burnout/depression is that my primary goal is to maximize the derivative of energy. That is, I don't care or think about how much energy I actually have, only the rate of increase of energy over some time.

Get through the PhD as long as there is no imminent risk to your health. After that, just take a year to decompress. Travel, cleanse yourself of the relationship, and once you have space, meditate, think, reflect on what you want to do next. If you have some minor savings then just use that and then come back and re-enter the world. If you don't, work a simple job for a few months to save some cash (like a simple analyst type job) and then take off and then re-enter the world.

I would wipe your partner from your mind. Forget about tracing any problems to your parents too. It's worse than unhelpful. If you can't stand your parents, keep them out your mind. Focus on yourself. Be consistent with your gym. Finish the PhD in in least stressful way possible. Take up some hobbies; something manly, like Judo or BJJ two or three times a week, and something social that has girls, like swing dancing or salsa.

> I also grew up in a dysfunctional family environment (toxic parent relationship, some narcissistic/borderline traits in them) and have been struggling with the consequences of that on my development and mental health.

I know what you mean here. Victims of narcissistic abuse often become vulnerable narcissists and codependents, deferring their own needs for those of others until the damage becomes too great to ignore.

You didn't mention what psych books you read so I will suggest Games People Play by Eric Berne.

I will try not to judge your situation, even if I may disagree with your assessment of it.

When I was in rehab for drug addiction, after I hit my bottom (or what I hope was my rock bottom), something I learned was to try and approach something in the smallest increments possible and to acknowledge / celebrate wins (no matter how small).

Maybe this doesn’t apply to your situation, as my primary goal was to stop my substance abuse but if you can try to tackle your problem(s) in small increments, it might feel more manageable.

Best of luck!

You are probably eating a lot of food with zero nutritional value and many of your problems might magically seem to disappear if you are naturally relaxed and eating properly.

If you are like me, I spent decades in your state. And then I magically noticed that when I eat food that actually has vitamins and minerals and take mineral supplements all these crazy anxieties become manageable.

If you are taking on all these problems and your health is off, you are garaunteed not to solve them no matter how you think about it.

Consider activities that broaden your perspective, e.g. reading a biography or travel somewhere.

Consider journaling deeply about areas that trouble you, whether recent or distant past. Also consider journaling in detail about the best possible outcome for yourself. Forcing yourself to organize thoughts in writing can help understand confusing situations.

If therapist isn't working, find another one. It's totally normal to try several.

Best of luck and good on you asking for help.

You're not homeless, in prison, $400,000 in debt, or fighting a $400/day heroin addiction so I'd say you haven't hit rock bottom yet.

You are standing in front of a massive pile of broken glass. It hurts like no one ever told you it would. To lose a women that you thought you would spend the rest of your life with hurts. It's hard. But you reached out. You know it's going to be hard and you asked the world for help. There are people all over that will be there for you. It's funny how many you find when you need them.

If you’re not poopin your pants, you’re not at rock bottom yet.

But… I have some experience. Divorced, remarried, work was shit. Couldn’t focus or concentrate and felt burnt out. Finally I go into the doc for help with dealing with the ex (omg stressful) and discovered I had a pile of health issues, including a tumor (not cancer) that decided to flood my system with a stress hormone. That’s been removed, but things aren’t back to 100%.

I was on TRT, but that was stopped recently cuz it turned my blood into gear oil (hematocrit levels in the mid 50s). It helped to a point, at least where I got the habit of going to the gym and being active again.

I suspect I’m low on growth hormone due to symptoms matching up, but I’m not the endo - that appointment is in June.

I’ve had to completely restrict distractions at work. The only IMs I let in are from fam or a few close friends. Non work slacks are turned off, etc.

Get yourself a good work up, check all your hormone levels. And get active. Walk, run, ride a bike, lift heavy things, whatever works for you. Just do it.

Don’t wait until you’re middle aged to find out your body is a wreck and try to fix it.

Reads like my last year of phd studies.

Try not to isolate voluntarily and work a bit less. Put down a strong regimen of time to work and time to relax.

Interview for jobs, for me I learned a lot for interviews when prepping, and it helped me out of the endless feeling of “there’s light at the end of the tunnel but it isn’t getting brighter”… it’s also a lot easier to say to your adviser “i have a job lined up and leaving”

I’ve thought I hit rock bottom a few times, turns out that as long as you’re still kicking the bottom can always fall out from under you. Like really hard. Took a global pandemic to get my life back on track due to all the money they were throwing around letting me escape the situation I’d gotten myself in.

No real advice to give other than keep on keeping on.

I believe everybody has answers to find… and happiness is elusive.

But seriously this is almost too selfish.

It is almost making me sick and angry simultaneously, and I didn't know that was possible. The downvotes will only represent my ability to swim up stream or as my friends Bad Religion might say “against the grain”.

Here is my recommendation since you are asking:

1. Volunteer at a homeless shelter or soup kitchen 2. Go tutor, some undereducated children with your advanced Ph.D. 3. Sit in on a big AA meeting (you don't even have to be an alcoholic) 4. Put your loose change in a parking meeting as you walk down the street 5. Walk along the streets and pick up trash, to make the world a better place 6. Go to the gym 7. Give someone you don't know a nice compliment 8. Play sports 9. Become a big brother or sister at big brother organization 10. Suck it up 11. Remove yourself from social media

Therapy is great, but there are other parts to the equation.

* You are not alone * It gets better * Being self aware and making posts like this, reaching out, is a HUGE positive step and positive indicator for your own self love and care. Keep doing it * YOU ARE NOT ALONE :-] I can share my personal experience and listen to yours in more depth. Contact in my profile.

Journaling, meditation and exercise. Those have always helped to center me and reinvigorate my inner alignment.

I use journaling to analyze my thoughts, feelings and behaviors. It’s a tool for putting myself under a microscope. Often tough questions can become much easier to answer.

Meditation is powerful. I can’t fully articulate what it does for me but it improves my self worth and allows me to interrupt negative thought loops (which is what I call your situation).

The journaling pairs nicely with meditation as I discover earlier and earlier triggers of bad thoughts via journaling. Then I preempt them via mindfulness - the skill cultivated while meditating.

Finally, exercise is key for healthy body chemistry. It contributes to healthier mind, leading to better progress.

I don’t do these things as often as I should but when I do I feel great about everything and I feel more myself at the same time.

>But most of the time in my life I've felt empty, doubting myself and struggling with a weak sense of self and unhealthy thought/behavioural patterns that are hard to shed off. I feel like I've lost any passion for anything, and don't know what I want or need.

You've got to look inward and figure yourself out - that could fix a lot of the other things you brought up.

If you know yourself and your ethics very well and you work hard to live them out, you're probably happy no matter your circumstances. Meditation or long boring walks can kind of open up your subconscious so you can start doing that; you can just wait until a random thought pops in your head and start pulling that thread, ask why you thought that, where's that coming from.

Also taking psych/life advice from strangers on the internet is pretty dangerous.

I am 47M and can relate to what you are feeling. U might be hitting Mid Life Crisis a little early. ( A few of my younger friends experienced it too)

There could be imposter syndrome where you feel like you do not deserve the good things which you have.

1) Take very good care of your health as you might start to disregard your body signals. 2) Weather this out using meditation. ( I used Breathing techniques called Pranayama ) Find if you might like a Vipassana retreat in Bangalore or perhaps Isha Foundation or whatever technique suites you. 3) Keep connection with School friends alive 4) If you did not get Married consider yourself lucky. It is fast loosing its appeal for long run and laws have simply not kept up with feminists in full swing. (Hormonal imbalance makes us think in wierd ways about opposit sex)

Hope this helps. S

Therapy, meds, support groups on Reddit, and exercise are the best thing you can do to deal with childhood trauma. It actually seems to get worse if you don’t manage it, I probably only really started attacking my trauma at 28/29. Made a big difference in personal and professional success.

I would ignore the comments that tell you it's not rock bottom. They won't be satisfied unless you are near-death at the bottom of the ocean.

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.

running, lifting, climbing, biking

the world is bullshit only physical exertion makes it good

if those are to challenging try walking far like 10 miles in a day, or if in shape 20.

live!!

This might not be popular on HN, but:

1. Just sit on your knees and cry out to God. Tell Him everything you feel, from the bottom of your heart.

2. Tomorrow is Sunday. Find a church near you, go there, and if you can, talk to a pastor.

If your therapy isn’t going well, find a new therapist.

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?

I rebuilt myself after hitting rock bottom with this course: Dhamma.org

Changed my life.

Wow, did not expect that many responses. Thanks a lot for all the encouraging words and pieces of advice! I will respond to some specific comments in their comment threads.

By self re-evaluation for a few years with very minimal interactions with others. I wouldn't recommend it but it worked for me, given I had to detach completely from my religion in the way how my society was functioning in regard to it. But I cannot stress how well it shaped me from a morality perspective and pretty thankful for that. Im very morally straight, I've never hurt anyone or any entity no matter its size(beside mosquitoes and cockroaches)

“This too, shall pass”

I went through a similar experience early in my college career. I wish I could tell you about one simple trick that changed everything and saved me years of pain and struggle.

The truth is that I dug in, finished my work, and eventually over time … everything worked out.

It taught me that in life sometimes you will find yourself in a season of immense struggle. Ride the waves, do what you can to improve your situation, but above all have faith that this too, will pass.

You seem like well reflected. Personally what stands out from your therapy is that you get some advice on what to do.

I would not like such an approach and would change the therapist. It should be you who is advising yourself with the help of a therapist but not the therapist him/herself.

There are too many people out there who call themselves a „coach“. I would try to find somebody who studied behavioral therapy

Stop wining and looking for external approval (be it your shrink, your GF or HN community)! The only thing you need is your own approval of yourself.

It’s not as eas as to say about it. But totally doable if youre honest with yourself and set up such an intention.

I know what Im talking about. Iv been in the shoes similar to yours. Including phd thing.

About the therapy, use it to identify black spots, traces of vicious circle(s) in your life. About love, everything has been said by everybody.

I credit the book "No More Mr Nice Guy" by Robert Glover as creating the foundation I needed to get out of my valley after my breakup (engaged, 8yr total).

Other self-help books and an ADHD diagnosis built on top of that, but that was the one that changed things and got the ball rolling.

It's not a breakup book or anything, it just covers it incidentally. Going through entire book is what rebuilt me.

I have only one suggestion: change therapist! And do it soon. Too many therapists are trained to keep you on that chair because that's how they get paid. You need a therapist that will agree to make you feel better in a month and start getting to an achievable goal in a reasonable time frame. Talk to your therapist about setting goals and see the reaction.

I’m sorry that you’re having a hard time. Calling this rock bottom, or even YOUR rock bottom, is…incredibly ‘Hacker News privileged’, or at the very least needlessly hyperbolic. I don’t think I’m reading too far between the lines to glean that you aren’t aware of the fine fine line between yourself and someone that’s far far far “worse off” than you.

I've had a failed marriage and hit rock bottom all at once (including 5 years in prison, kids not talking to me, etc). For the relationship part, if you had a tight friends group, they would just keep you busy until the pain turned numb. We don't have that community always and have to keep ourselves busy.

It sucks waking up to an empty home. I went from making my kids breakfast/packing lunches every morning, getting daily hugs and 'I love you dads' to this huge soul crushing void. It sucks.

Before sentenced to prison so still out in the world, but after losing wife/family/career/home I kept busy with podcasts, audiobooks, comedy records always going to fill the 'friends keeping you busy' part. Now's not the best time to spend a lot of one on one time with your inner voice, he's a smart dude but not always our personal biggest champion/hype man :)

I forced myself to maintain normal sleep patterns. If I wanted to sleep by 10 and couldn't, I either exercised more or went to bed earlier and earlier. Forced myself to maintain a healthy diet. Forced myself to exercise regularly and consistently. Those are a must. Get up the same time every day, go to sleep the same time. Plan and eat healthy meals. Have easy emergency healthy meals for when you are too depressed to cook. Have an exercise routine and if you can't sleep, up it. If you go to a gym, swim, it's such a different modality. For me I mountain biked. I mountain biked a lot. When I felt like I was going to crumble (divorce lawyer dates, court dates, realtor selling the house date, hyping myself to make my weekly phone call to each of my kids knowing that they weren't going to answer but that I still needed to keep calling) I got on that bike and road until I didn't have the energy to be anxious. But I didn't ride risky, didn't seek adrenalin because the last thing you need is to get hurt. Hmmm, looking back I also did a lot of white water rafting. Again your brain has to break it's unhealthy constant negative focuses and just focus on getting past the current rocks in front of you.

So routine, intentional (and proactive) self care, with healthy distractions to break the unhealthy focus on your current situation and giving yourself space.

You'll get through this I promise. You will be surprised in life to find out just what you can and cannot get through. Keep your head up! It's not just you, what you are going through while unique and incredibly painful to you and worth being given the weight it deserves as one of the hardest things you will go through is also something you share with the rest of us afflicted with 'the human condition'.

I recommend whatever you do you must: * ensure good nutrition * ensure good sleep patterns * exercise 3-5 days a week

Vacation, No Internet, even for 2 weeks, no phone, the longer the better. Somewhere where activity is easy i.e.: the seaside.

Yoga, lots of it.

Therapie, some of it.

There's probably a lot of people out there who wouldn't consider what you just described as "rock bottom".

I made the decision to not allow things to bring me down. I invested in new hobbies to push back the pain and in turn that eventually led me into getting a decent job. I focused on the things I could focus on - myself, my work, my friends, and I kept trying to expand my social circles.

You are the only thing holding you back.

I’m 5 years out from a tough last year of a PhD program. Married with kids now.

It gets better. Power through the final stretch.

> I also don't have a large social circle

Can you find a singles group to grow your network. They have tons of them at local orgs (churches or town clubs). Join one of these. I have a hunch that getting into a new crew may be what you are looking for since therapy is going a bit slow.

My rock bottom was becoming homeless in Toronto. I created a YouTube channel that I’m trying to build up to hopefully monetize and get me out of homelessness.

https://www.youtube.com/@homelessintoronto

My secret is I didn't. Savings has been saving me as my CV has been consistently rejected for over 3 years now. Absolutely no perspective for a new female partner. I don't see myself owning any real estate in foreseeable future.

I was in a situation many years back that was similar in feeling but varied in circumstance. The sense of loss, worthlessness, lack of control, lack of agency, stress and isolation is an incredibly potent mix. I'm sorry you're dealing with all of them at once. It is overwhelming.

My own emotional lows are cyclical and I've had to bounce back several times. At different stages in life my approach to doing so has varied wildly. The approach you need will depend on your history and what you believe about yourself. Right now it's the narrative about yourself that your mind has constructed which you need to address.

Do you believe that you are weak and passive? That life is happening to you, rather than you manifesting it? Then prove to yourself that you are bold, capable and effective. Maybe you aren't yet and need to become so. Don't listen to people telling you that you are already what you feel is lacking. They are comfort words which deny that growth is possible. Prove it to yourself and you will know it forever after.

Choose something that scares you immensely and do it. For me it was heights, mortality and risk: so I began skydiving. For you perhaps rock climbing is more fitting. If you've hit rock bottom, learn to climb the rocks. It will require patience, fortitude, mindfulness, awareness of your body and movement, coping with fear, and deliberate action.

You won't feel passionate about this and may avoid it. You may not even like it. Forget what you like and earn it. Passion will develop alongside progress, and progress will be slow. From your point of view the ascent will look like your PhD. You'll end up taking paths you didn't intend, as if the rock is guiding you. Are you being passive? Will you second guess yourself? Your choice is to use your position to advance yourself or give up.

Look back at your progress and see how far you've come. You'll have a new perspective on what felt boring and gradual up-close. Which is more terrifying: the slow climb ahead or the descent? If you give up, will you do it slowly with shame or allow yourself to fall? What does rock bottom look like when you see how far beneath you it truly is?

As your passion and competence grows you may have daydreams of setting aside your PhD. You'll want to take a sabbatical to climb. I encourage you to do this if it feels right and necessary. I encourage not to if it feels like an excuse, and to focus on the metaphor.

You will develop the confidence and fortitude you currently lack. You will regain your lust for life when it hangs in the balance. You will make friends you never knew you wanted. You will forever know what you are capable of.

I was you once in the same place you are now. I can tell you that it gets better. The tldr is that you have to change your perspective. Sounds so easy right? Fortunately it is the only thing you have any control over.

So what you need to do is work on and develop your sense of self and self esteem.

The rest of life is about accepting uncertainty of everything else. For example, when you get older you realize that you can't even make your kids like you, you certainly can't control them.

So whatever you do, choosing or not choosing is your choice.

Some things that have helped me:

Listen to the audiobook "I don't want to talk about it" by Terrence Real. Keep doing the therapy and maybe find another therapist if the one you have isn't helping. It sounds like you are cerebral so you may need to read a lot of self-help books and understand the theory behind psychotherapy to get some relief. You might even be smarter than your therapist. Ask your therapist what books they recommend. Here you are using them as a professional resource.

You might not be able to think yourself out of depression. Thinking your way out is what CBT is all about. You might need to retrain your body and nervous system too. This is what breath work, meditation, cold exposure, exercise, volunteering and sports are all about.

Give your body a break and stop drinking alcohol and doing any drugs. Get good sleep and most importantly eat well.

Learn breath work, meditation and cold water exposure (this is an ongoing thing, not necessarily a cure all but part of the process). It helps you regulate anxiety.

Journal your thoughts, write in the 3rd person about yourself, ask a friend what they like about you. Write about your accomplishments.

Take a vacation, go visit some of your international friends. Remember that it is ok to take a break. Sometimes you need that break to harness the vast meta-cognitive properties our brain has to reason about things. People always say they had great insight in the shower, or on the beach. Give yourself the space to disconnect.

Help others volunteering, join a men's group, play a sport, exercise. It helps to get outside of your head. Maybe your school has group therapy for PhDs, see what your therapist says.

As you do all of these things your perspective will shift.

Went to therapy, family, and psychiatrist. There is no alternative.

Talk to a psychologist please. Anyone who has decades of experience in this problem domain. You can start to work with them, and eventually figure out what works for you quickly.

Hey man, don't worry, it will be all right!

About ~10 years ago in 2012-2013, within a ~6 month period (i) my startup [1] which I've been doing for 4 years failed / we shut it down (ii) my wife left me (we've been together for 7 years), and a few months later told me that she'd been cheating on me.

There was a ~6 month period when I was very depressed, sometimes I wasn't able to sleep for multiple nights in a row, and even when I got sleep, it was a few hours at best. It was a terrible period, I felt humiliated and reduced to nothing. I looked at my friends with stable boring jobs and families and thought that I messed up big time. I was so depressed, I even went to church a couple of times Sunday morning, because I couldn't sleep and I felt so sorry for myself, even though I'm an agnostic physicist.

Then something really unexpected happened: I got a job at a successful startup [2], which had great culture and lots of young people, and suddenly I was partying 2x a week with my new friends from work. While I was doing my own startup I stopped doing sports, so I picked up a +15 kg. The depression helped me lose most of it, and since I suddenly had a lot of free-time (no startup, no wife), I started doing sports again [3]. Even more unexpected, being divorced turned out to be appealing to ladies (I jokingly call it the "wounded deer pity phenomenon"), and I noticed ladies sending me signals, which helped my self-confidence get back on track.

Overall, in another ~6 months, to my huge surprise, there was a huge turn-around in my life, and in the end 2013 became one of the best years of my life! It was super-surprising, because it started on such a downer (Jan-6 was when my wife told me it's over, next day she moved out), but by Q3 I was hooked up with my girlfriend [4], feeling super happy at work and I even did another Ironman that year and beat my previous best by 2 hours!

So... it's completely normal to feel depressed in such situations. Just give it some time, build yourself up, and find a good social situation. I personally also started a Phd, which I didn't finish because of the aforementioned startup, but I don't want to tell you to do that. You can create positive vibes around you even by going to a co-working place 2x a week, doing some team sports, etc. Another thing that helps is going to therapy. It's completely normal to go, these days I do couple's therapy semi-regularly with my (current/2nd) wife.

-

[1] https://github.com/scalien/scaliendb

[2] Prezi

[3] triathlons

[4] later/currently wife, we have a beautiful 4 year old boy

Whatever you do, don't take SSRIs, there is good chance that you won't be able to come for the rest of your life.

Being a victim is a mindset, sure you can come from a shitty place but that doesn't determine where you go next.

Thinking you are a victim is also highly addictive because it shifts responsibilities from you to something that is not-you (parents, boss, partner, society, your gender, racists, ...)

While not all circumstances are your choice, at a fundamental level remaining a victim is a choice.

There's always somebody worse off than you.

Early on, I noticed:

(1) There is actual reality.

(2) There is how you feel, your emotions.

While (1) and (2) can affect each other, the connections are weak and indirect, and, mostly, first cut, (1) and (2) are independent.

So, for things like doing well in some school work, getting a car repaired, having a good romantic relationship, getting the bank balance up, having money enough to buy a house, losing weight, ..., nearly all that is (1) and not (2).

Good news: If you get all the bugs out of some computer program, then the program will run the same whether you are feeling good or bad. That is, no matter how bad you feel, the program doesn't care and will run the same anyway. Sooo, that situation is a way to make progress in (1) even if are not doing well with (2), and that progress might help you do better with (2).

As an experienced programmer, you really CAN get the bugs out of that code and have the code run, no matter how bad you feel -- progress in (1) is right there, available to you, and it is sufficient for you just to get the bugs out of that code!!!

Uh, that you are able to write this query and post it here on Hacker News puts you way, Way, WAY ahead of maybe 80+% of the people alive today and 99.9+% of the people who have ever lived. A lot of those people were really happy, had good lives -- it's possible and has happened for many millions with much less in advantages than you have.

Uh, for romantic relationships, I tried to understand what worked, what didn't, and why. I settled on -- interruption, not everyone will agree -- one that works is driven heavily just by Darwin, and he wants (i) emotions, (ii) sex, (iii) pregnancy, all QUICKLY, and then return to (i) and do it all over again several times. If Darwin is disappointed, the relationship is on thin ice. In particular, please Darwin or don't be surprised to have the relationship fail. Sorry 'bout that.

A lot of things -- plans, activities, efforts, etc. -- are necessarily chancy. When trying such a thing, insist that it work, fairly well fairly quickly, or abandon the effort and try something else. That is, it's too easy to have lots of reasons why the effort really SHOULD work and, thus, continuing, for weeks, ..., years, decades trying to make the effort work. Fact of life: We don't know everything that is important; we don't understand all the details; we are really NOT in actual control. So, we give a good shot; if it works, terrific; if it doesn't, drop it and try something else. And by "give a good shot", don't bet too much; don't bet the farm; hopefully don't bet more than you can afford to lose.

Have you heard about our Lord?

From everything I’ve read that’s probably something you should explore.

The red-pill was extremely helpful for me.

This is a long story and I am not sure if it will be useful to you (or anyone else for that matter), but I'll post it here anyways.

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.

---

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

That’s not rock bottom. Shooting up drugs in the street is rock bottom.

When I hit my own rock bottom a couple of years ago I stumbled upon Jordan Peterson's lectures about meaning and the bible. It helped my rational mind understand and accept that the rational mind isn't the be-all and end-all and there is something transcendent outside of it. Whatever that is, you can aim at getting better at "dancing" with it and the better the dance the greater the sense of meaning. YMMV but it worked for me.

(the lectures were "2017 Maps of Meaning" and "The Psychological Significance of the Biblical Stories")

I can only imagine the weight on your shoulders right now, and I'm so sorry you're going through this.

You might have felt like giving up on your career goals/social life/life in general at some point. People tell you it gets better, and when you've hit rock bottom it's impossible to believe it, but it does get better when you start taking better care of yourself. As with most skills in life, it is not immediate, however, and requires hard work and commitment. The good news is that it feels great once you decide to commit to yourself, which is the person you forgot about at some point, which allowed you to hit rock bottom.

What worked for me: understand and accept that it is *ok for you to be selfish and focus on yourself*, whatever that means to you. To me, it meant going to the gym every morning and having somebody else take care of the many responsibilities I took upon myself during lockdown, and which allowed me to slip up in my PhD during the last couple of years. It also meant accepting that I won't finish my PhD on my original timeline, and that's ok. The job market is not that great right now anyway, so it is ok if you need take more time. Be gentle with yourself :) The career path that is supposed to be for you will find you, but you need to give it a proper chance by spending some time working on yourself and getting to know your strengths a little better. You might have forgotten them: you wouldn't be a PhD student at a prestigious research group right now if you didn't have them.

Some specific tips that worked for me when I hit rock bottom (though mine was different, we share the PhD aspect of it):

- gym every day, once a day (morning for me, but some friends prefer evenings)

- show up to your lab every day (the energy in your lab is better than at home right now, and if it's not, make your lab better; avoid being by yourself at home)

- decluttering (home, lab, research, commitments, etc: delegate as much as possible, so that you can focus on you what is truly important to you)

- meditation + prayer (specifically, asking for guidance and help to take better care of yourself, and to find the path that is meant for you)

- helping others: there are other folks that are struggling too, they're just not telling you about it. if you noticed someone could use some quick 5min help (listening, coffee, decluttering), help out.

- once you're a little stronger: make an effort to connect more with others everywhere you go (commute, coffee shop, library, gym, lab, uni outside your lab, etc); people usually respond well to communication that is honest, non-judgmental, and that comes from a good place. listen more than you speak. you'll make a lot more friends locally in no time.

Wishing you all the best in your recovery.

I have hit rock bottom about three times in life. One was losing my dad when I was 11-12 years old. I couldn't do much to get out of the slump because I was too young. It was my mom who led the family and took on the role of breadwinner+emotional support for her three kids. I genuinely owe her a lot for her resilience in such a different time for our family.

Second time was when my first girlfriend whom, like in your case, I thought was the love of my life and would marry. Back then, I was young; a bit arrogant (tend to think my thoughts/beliefs are the correct way to do things); thought honesty==saying things the way I see them without filter (not censoring things before I say with empathy) and worse, thought my then gf will put up with it. I was wrong. After a couple of years of putting up with my stubborn ways, she told me she's breaking up with me. It came as an absolute surprise to me and despite my pleas to her that I'd try to change my ways, she didn't buy them (she believes that people can never change). Since the apartment we lived was under my gf's name, I had to find a room in a city (San Francisco), which I just moved 4-5 months ago to follow my gf (she got a job in SF before I found mine). I knew no one in that city and didn't have a car. Because I graduated from college recently, I was relatively poor as well. My gf gave me 2 weeks to move out. I remember walking in the rainy, cold/misty weather of SF after work every day to look for relatively cheap apartments in SF, Daly City and Oakland (saw a couple of shady apartments). I even got flu and lingering cough in that period. Eventually, I found a room in SF and moved my stuff using Cal train (only took 3 trips total because I didn't have much). After moving into my new apartment, it took me six months to recover from the heartbreak. It took me a couple of years to completely get rid of her from my mind. It helps a little that during the break-up period, I was preparing for grad school applications (GRE prep, for example) and work, so I was able to divert my attention and energy to there.

The third time was when my second gf, the one I met in grad school, cheated on me in my fourth year of PhD. She took a job in PA; our relationship became long-distance for about a year; and she found a boyfriend at her new job, but didn't have the guts to tell me for (I think) about three months until I slowly figured it out. That happened in November and I had a terrible Christmas and New Year. I asked for a break from my PhD supervisor and he let me (because he knows that I am not going into academia and thus, I could graduate with just 3 papers to my name as the first author. This means, I just need to finish 2 chapters in my thesis summarizing previous research and can defend that). I was also financially supporting my two siblings for their college and I literally had ~$2000 in my bank account left. So I promised my PhD advisor that I'll come back and defend my thesis. Then I left the University town and took an internship in NYC, which turns into a full-time job. Because my ex-gf cheated on me, it was easy to get over her. I think it took maybe 3 months after starting my internship to get back to normal. I was afraid to get back to the dating scene for a year or a year and a half.

All of this to say that time will heal you. Hang in there. It's not the end of the world. In fact, nothing in life is until maybe we are in our dying bed or an asteroid is about to hit the earth. Take the lessons from your previous experiences and try to become a better person (e.g., don't repeat the mistakes you made in your previous relationships). There are more than one person in the world who can be your soulmate (since break-up with my first gf, I met at least 6 girls--I am not the kind of person who actively date/go on hook-ups--who I was able to connect emotionally (I only ended up dating two of them and the last of them has been my wife of four years). Relationship aside, I'd say that PhD is not that of a big deal. In the end though, we have to make money. It's nice to have a PhD at the tail of your name (I never use it to be honest because I dislike formalities/showing-off), but in the worst case scenario that you don't have it, it's totally fine. You got quite a bit of experience from doing research in grad school and you take the knowledge with you in your life, which can become quite handy in your career.

Know what is in your control and what is not. Focus on what you can control and try to achieve better outcome in what you can. Try to stay connected friends/family consistently if you have good relationship with them (if not, it's still okay; I didn't have any, but I survived, so can you). That will keep you from feeling too lonely sometimes. Also, feel free to do some exercise/establish workout routines for self improvement. I was able to do 100+ push-ups after the first break-up with my gf because I exercised and also took long walks in SF (around Golden Gate bridge park) while listening to music; these really helped. Most of all, please remember that this is not the end of the world. New (some good, some not-so-good) experiences await you and you just need to take whatever positive you can from this experience, and use it as a base to do better in the future. Stay strong and try to do the best in what you can control.

TDCS, EMS, Ketamine

First, comments saying you haven't hit rock bottom because it could be far worse are missing the point, and I don't think they're helpful. Rock bottom is relative to your experience up to this point. You could reach lower lows, and that would give you a new perspective from which to judge what is truly "bottom", but that's not your perspective now. If this feels like rock bottom, it's rock bottom.

I'm mid-rebuild, and I can confidently say that beyond finding a good therapist, I believe the #1 and #2 most important habits I added to my life are meditation/mindfulness (look up "Vipassana"), and Yoga (I'm just using the Yoga with Adriene YouTube channel [0] - she's got some great stuff).

There are lots of other things you can/probably should do, but when I made meditation a cornerstone habit, it made me realize I was frequently not feeling like part of my body. Adding Yoga started to really integrate my mind/body connection (a concept I couldn't even imagine before I started the practice), and these two habits make everything else I'm doing feel easier.

The bottom line is that you see things more clearly and stop identifying so directly with thoughts, and this in turn makes it far easier to modify other aspects of your life that need addressing. Those could be external factors (I was doing a bad job of keeping my apartment clean) or internal factors (I was also frequently telling myself stories about my experience that upon examination were untrue, or at least not the whole truth).

Everything else I'm doing stems from a cascade of events that started long ago:

- Abusive childhood

- Led to overly pouring myself into external things, anything but myself, mostly work (with great success)

- Led to problems in my relationship and lost a partner of 15 years

- Shortly after this, lost two family members, a dog, got in a car accident, someone broke into my apartment, etc. etc.

- Burned out, quit my job, went on sabbatical to figure things out.

Obviously everyone's story is different, and not everything I've described will be relevant to you, but my broader recovery path has involved:

1) Finding a good therapist. As others have said, if you feel stuck, look for someone new. But don't expect therapy to be a quick fix, depending on the nature of what you're dealing with.

2) Physical activity. Getting my body moving (beyond just Yoga) has had a hugely positive impact. I convinced myself that I can go for a 10 minute walk no matter what, and eventually that turned into 3-4 mile walks every day or two. If you can do cardio, great, but don't feel like you have to go join a gym and sweat every day to get the benefits of moving your legs.

3) Getting out in nature. I never saw myself as an outdoors person. Then I went on a road trip, and visited various national parks. There's a certain kind of perspective you gain if you take in the grandeur of nature mindfully. I ended up extending my road trip and roving for over a month.

4) Realized I had to stop assuming any one thing is "the cure". Getting out in nature was healing and wonderful. For a short time, I thought "this is what I need to do with my life", before I later realized that this would be just as unbalanced as the no-nature version of existence. Mindfulness is what helped me move beyond all-or-nothing thinking. It's not that I believed this kind of thinking was a good way to be, but I just wouldn't realize I was even thinking that way.

5) Realizing that I need to fundamentally change my relationship with myself. I realized that I had lived my life as if I was orbiting around it with work and relationships at the core. Building a strong morning routine that is for no one but me, and rebuilding my life around that, has given me the feeling for the first time in my life that it is me at the center. I didn't realize how stark the difference was until work and my relationship with my ex were no longer the dominant factors in my life.

I had kind of shrugged off the importance of core habits and routine as something for other people. But I've learned that there is pleasure in the path of improvement itself, and when I started to embrace that, things started to truly change for the first time.

Some books / apps / resources that have been really helpful for me:

- Sam Harris: Waking Up [1] (book) sent me on a consciousness rabbit hole, and this turned into a really beneficial exploration and now I use the Waking Up app to practice the mindfulness techniques described in the book. There are other books/apps, but seek out mindfulness, not just some form of concentration meditation.

- Robert Wright: Why Buddhism is True [2] (book) is first and foremost not a religious book, but a book that explores evolutionary psychology and how our growing understanding of the human brain maps cleanly onto some aspects of Buddhist philosophy. If you're curious about meditation, but don't know what you'll get, this book tries to give you a glimpse of that. The 2nd half of the book honestly kind of peters out a bit, but

Resources:

- [0] https://www.youtube.com/@yogawithadriene

- [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waking_Up:_A_Guide_to_Spiritua...

- [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Buddhism_Is_True

If it's a person/relationship issue-- distract yourself by dating a new person

In general-- go on a trip

"(toxic parent relationship, some narcissistic/borderline traits in them)"

Could it be contagious/inherited? Sorry to be a jerk but you are not at rock bottom, only at "Bwawawa I look/feel like a loser!".