Why is Rock Bottom So Damn Common?

The overwhelming majority of us will not change until we hit rock bottom. Until shit really starts to hit the fan. Why? There’s a multitude of reasons; but, shame, fear, complacency, conditioning, and pressure are major contributing factors in my opinion.

Personally, I was emotionally shut off and numb to pretty much everything for a significant portion of my life. To be honest when I reflect back on that, I think I was somewhat aware it, and knew my life and relationship was in a relatively gentle, but downward trend. Ambulance, fire, and policing taught me to be an expert at stuffing down anything that would take me out of my comfort zone, and I wouldn’t change a behaviour until I absolutely had no other option but to do so. I could see the writing on the wall, but I refused to acknowledge it was there and just kept coasting downhill.

It wasn’t until my wife had enough of me having nearly zero ups (with even less downs), and had the courage to call me out on that bullshit by spelling it out clearly enough for even an emotionally shut off person like myself could understand. I remember those words as if she had just said them while we sat in the car: “you don’t know how to feel”, and with that our marriage, like so many others often find theirs, was at a legit fork in the road. A rock bottom per say.

That wasn’t my only rock bottom, and who knows, it might not even be my last, but damn did it ever change me, and I’ll be eternally grateful for her patience with me while I got there.

One reason first responders (cops especially) often find ourselves at that rock bottom is that we are trained from day 1 to “suck it up”, to move on to the next file, and to suppress our emotions regardless of good or bad. I’m not saying it isn’t a valuable skill that we all have; hell, it’s probably the reason most of us can do this job when others can’t even fathom it, but that skill needs to be treated as a tool, not a way of life. There is no strength in suppression. For men, sucking it up has been the popular narrative for a century, but if we’re not careful it can seep into every part of our lives, not just a tool to navigate tough files and hard workouts.

Shame is a tricky one. You might not want to change because the shame of whatever the behaviour is you’re wanting to change from is just too much to face and admit, let alone speak aloud. If you just ignore that behaviour/act and stuff it down, you’ll never actually have to face it. What do you think the odds of that shame ever going away are? Yeah, I wouldn’t bet on that either. It takes a tremendous amount of guts to step up to the plate and own that shame, to accept it, and to use it as fuel. In my experience men and women that own that shame are welcomed and accepted by their peers and partners, while the ones who continue to keep it holstered are slowly broken down by it until rock bottom inevitably comes.

Above all the other reasons listed, fear is the one that I resonate with the most. We all have that voice that nobody else hears, the one that describes the worst outcome possible. It’s the one that tells us if we change, our life will be so drastically altered that it will pretty much be over. That we will be kicked out of the tribe. That you will lose everything you’ve worked so hard to acquire. The fear that if we actually speak truth to our partner, that he/she will leave. It is SO EASY to give into that fear. Meanwhile that voice is just trying to protect you from leaving your comfort zone, even if in reality that comfort zone is a miserable one. 

Finally, there’s the obvious saying that at rock bottom there is just “nowhere to go but up”. What a stupid saying that is, you could easily just camp out there for a while, or even worse, end there. The pressure that having no other option brings is valuable though, and it is what generally sparks the change. It motivates us to be better, because we don’t have a choice.

With all that being said, are rock bottoms just a way of life? I don’t believe they are. I believe that pressure can be manufactured. It can be created by holding ourselves accountable. That can be done on our own by diving head first into challenge instead of avoiding, by becoming more aware, by identifying what we want to change, and what we want to become. It can also be done from others knowing what those things are and committing to holding us accountable. That can lead to some very harsh feedback at times, from either ourselves, or those that we’ve chosen to receive it from.

After A LOT of work, through self awareness and reflecting I can now recognize and call myself out when needed most of the time. Sometimes I'm not able to though, so I’ve also been thrown in the flames numerous times by men I consider to be great allies with some very difficult questions when I’m not showing up like I should be.  At the time it sucks to hear, but in the end it lights a fire and it changes my trajectory well before finding the bottom.

If you want some help with accountability the Nine8 might just be the perfect place.  If you want to talk about this topic some more, or just need someone to shut up and listen, let’s chat. I’ll gladly jump on a call and we can dive into it further.

K.