The usual barriers to change are lack of: money, time, self-confidence, opportunity, energy, trust in the flow of life and in the power of the Universe.

When ‘positive’ writers harp on how you can take certain steps and everything will work out for you sounds great, but try it when you feel like your life has gone as bad as possible and you’re at rock bottom. .

Or as I said to someone who tried to knock a peg or two out of me: “If you’re going to do that, you’re going to need a shovel to dig me up first because this so-called self-confidence you see is currently below the rock.” down and you’re looking at a person trying to move on.”

The stubbornness to keep going almost came to an end a few weeks later, when my normally happy mind flirted with the idea that a bottle of painkillers could actually kill the pain once and for all. sign immediatelyTravel to doctors for support and guidance, but no tablets! She had seen what Valium could do and the additional problems it caused and she wasn’t going there.

Once I was faced with the truth that there was nothing in my life that was right, I was completely intimidated by the magnitude of the disaster.

I was in a low-paying, dead-end job because my parents had terminated my education before I took meaningful “she’s got a brain” exams. This was in the mid 1980’s in the UK and believe me when I tell you that if you didn’t have money you didn’t have squat at the time, or the opportunity to develop squat!

I was in the marriage of hell with a man I shouldn’t have dated for over 6 weeks and yet I went the whole white wedding trip down the aisle while thinking “what the hell am I doing?”

I lived in a house owned by him and his mother that I had contributed my fair share of money to for improvements etc. but was advised by a lawyer that the most I could claim would be 1/4 of the value of the house and that and more would go in attorney’s fees. So, in the 1980s, I would have committed 17 years of my life to a meaningless relationship; my hard earned pennies to a house that wasn’t mine; my entire career to an undervalued, underpaid, dead-end job; and my self-confidence for a person who turned out to be more than a little screwed up.

My parents were totally focused on my brother and hated my husband’s wife, my husband thought least of my parents’ daughter, my in-laws weren’t impressed by any of those people and wanted something different, and my colleagues weren’t I liked any of those 3. My brother didn’t like me and his then wife made our lives a misery. My friends were wondering who I was and what I had done with Debbie (yes, they called me Debbie those days), and they didn’t really like the resemblance to me. And I hated all those mes with a vengeance. It was not a healthy situation.

Speaking of health, years and years of stress and anxiety were starting to take their toll and I never felt good mentally or physically. I finally found myself in the hospital for a condition below the waist that had never really bothered me, with the problem that had bothered me getting worse due to stress, and totally scared to be out of control and ignored.

I got a lot of support from a branch of my family, but that really meant I complained about them a lot and no one asked me “what are you going to do about it?”

What would have been the point though? No money to pay a mortgage, no self-confidence to believe I could accomplish more than comb my hair every morning, a low-paying job with no future, feeling unhealthy all the time, and no energy to do more than lie down. the couch watching TV and trying not to get into any more trouble with anyone, like thatever went to work, was always bad for everyone As soon as I wanted one person, three disgruntled people took their place.

Added to that, the career I was in was so unique and ‘weird’ in the words of one interviewer that companies said they couldn’t understand what I was talking about so they couldn’t hire me.

You can probably see why I thought there was no way out for me and that there was nothing I could do to save myself. However, that was not true.

One day I was talking to my doctor and after I told him that I would like to borrow my husband to find out if another patient really was on the brink of a nervous breakdown because if someone could push someone over the edge he could, she gave me the that she saw as my three options in life… and it may surprise you a little, but remember that she knew me very well.

1. Commit suicide (but you won’t because you’re too strong).

2. Stay away from your husband and family (but you can’t because you’re too weak).

3. Stay put, build your strength, learn not to let any of them get to you, and then walk away (and you will walk away for what you are).

I left and thought it through, realizing that deep inside of me was an enraged spiritual being who knew I didn’t deserve what had happened and definitely didn’t deserve what was happening. I found out for the first time that my rock bottom was a fucking springboard!

I apologize for the allusion to bad words but that’s what happens. I get closer to the bottom and then I think “That’s it, nobody treats me like that!” And I hit that trampoline and I start to bounce up. I’m sure if you look inside yourself that deeply, you’ll find your outraged younger self ready to pull your ass out of the quagmire.

So, having discovered that there was a stubborn part of me that wasn’t going to give up – no one was going to ruin my life for me because no one else was worth that – I began to think about what I could do, and here are the steps I took:

1. I had regular hypnotherapy to help me calm down, think clearly, and discover my inner truth. Admitting that I didn’t love my husband and that he never had was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. The thought of quitting terrified me but I knew that one day I had to and hypnosis helped me cope and build on the idea.

2. I knocked on the doors of employment agencies until I found one willing to help me and, through it, an employer willing to give me a chance. I knew my husband could afford a mortgage, so I knew he had to beat him. I did it in 2 years.

3. I worked on myself. I learned to isolate my own image from that of others, and to decide for myself if I was wrong or not. It wasn’t easy to recognize the person I had become because I wasn’t impressed, but I found that I wasn’t always wrong and to blame, and was actually a pretty decent person living among people no better than her very human self.

4. I embraced spirituality and spiritual thinking, and realized that as a spiritual being, I could create the person I wanted to be and raise them myself. I saw myself as a little kid and ‘raised’ her the way I would have wanted to be raised into the person I would have wanted my child to be, and it worked. I liked.

It took me 6 years, which may seem like an eternity to you, but it was 6 years well spent because they laid the foundation for my future. Even though I was still in the marriage, it was a great place to start discerning about what I believed and what I didn’t.

I made the most of that difficult marriage and from that bad space I built my future. I used every relationship and experience, every job and hobby, every difficult conversation and situation to rebuild myself, and every day it got easier and easier.

Finally, in 1991 I walked out taking my two cats and dumping my clothes and jewelry in a charity shop along the way. Then the really bad thing started.

I met my current husband and soul mate 22 years and counting and everything should have been perfect. Except after 17 years of telling me I was a jerk for staying with him, my entire family and all but 2 of my friends completely sided with him and left me adrift. I was made redundant when my company closed the London office, I couldn’t get a mortgage because I was jobless and homeless and had 2 cats.

The only good thing was that my first husband had taken care of me financially, which was an amazing thing until he screwed it up by telling me it was hush money. The problem is that he had confided in my family and they of course told him everything.

Although my husband and I are soul mates, we had a very lonely and difficult start to our relationship with no support during the difficult times, he was 13,000 miles from his family by his own choice, a very difficult choice, and had no support at all part. . He had left his home country hurt and desperate to escape the life he led, I was distraught that he had lost my entire life, not just an unhappy marriage, and neither of us could cope.

I got to another doctor who didn’t give me tablets, was supportive, and it took me 6 months to work out that last load of stress. However, he told me something that I have never forgotten, and this is what I want to share with you for three reasons, firstly to show you that when you see me saying something candone, you will know that I have done it; secondly, to show you that someone who has been as low as you could fight back; but the most important thing to share this message:

If you’re as low as it gets and yet you’re still struggling, you’re notyou weak you are strong. WThe people of eack burst into tears when a nail is broken and someone immediately comes to their rescue. Whereas anyone who hits rock bottom does so because it’s so strong it took too long for too long before it finally broke.

A person this strong can go back and create the life of their dreams with time and determination, and you clearly have both.

Do not give up!