The Breakdown Isn’t the Problem
A few days ago I had a feeling that I needed to reach out to one of my clients. The work we had done together had cracked things wide open, and it was getting a little bit crazy. I was concerned. I ended the call by telling her she mattered, and that the work she is doing is intense enough that it does get crazy. Not entirely by coincidence, that is the subject of my current podcast episode too. Let me explain.
We constantly ask, pray, or beg for our lives to improve. That the love is reciprocated. That the promotion is granted. That the good stuff finally comes in. We do the work. The therapy. We work through the illness, the health scare, a death, a layoff. We ask ourselves what all of it means. We allow the breakdown, kicking and screaming sometimes, and it hurts. Then the breakdown is not even done, and the house burns to the ground. The office does too. So does the car. Then I get sick, away from home, five days in the hospital. Then my godmother dies. We find out there has been sexual abuse, beatings, and straight-up torture — the deepest, darkest family secrets finally surfacing. You ask yourself when this is going to end. Because even in a catastrophe, life still does what it does. People come and go. Things happen. It is not personal, but it certainly feels like it.
The pressure got so intense that I caught myself taking deep breaths between moments, mid-sentence, for no reason anyone watching could see. I am finishing an insurance inventory right now of everything we owned in the house that burned. Item by item. Retraumatizing myself over and over. Do not have this anymore. Do not have that anymore. Burned, burned, burned. I wrote recently about how exhausted I am from even saying all of this out loud, how ready I am to be done with it, how badly I want to write about it in the past tense. It is not happening anytime soon. I am deep in it, and it is, strangely, perfectly aligned with the energy in the world right now. The Ring of Fire keeps rattling and blowing off steam. I live in Los Angeles. I recently bought a lot of canned tuna. World politics feels genuinely unstable, and I do not care where you stand on any of it, but the pendulum swinging between two extremes is not a comfortable place for anyone to stand. It is crazy out there. The breakdown is not the problem. It never was. It is the part everyone tries to skip.
Crazy Good, Crazy Aware, Crazy Nevertheless
In my most recent episode, I sat down with Steve Barton, and we talked about crazy. Literally. What I love about that conversation is the idea that once you have had enough of the unhappiness, the uncertainty, the underlying dissatisfaction, and you finally allow the breakdown to start, it gets crazy. Crazy good. Crazy aware. Crazy nevertheless. That is the title of the episode for a reason.
When you allow that breakdown to happen and the energy starts flowing, it does not move in a straight line. It moves like a river of consciousness, but more like a wild toddler than a calm current. Uncoordinated. Screaming one minute, rolling on the floor laughing the next. Curious and uncontrollable, because the emotions underneath it are running that wild and that intense. You genuinely do not know what to do with it. Steve designed his coaching framework, the Game of Ten, to walk people through exactly this, all the way to full awareness. The conclusion at the end of it is almost embarrassingly simple: you are enough. That is it. All the years you spent wondering, the image you absorbed, the persona you built because it looked good from the outside, one day it just stops meaning anything. You feel like an imposter, because you have been imposing yourself onto an idea that was never actually yours to carry.
The First Wave Was Giving
I know a lot of my writing lately has been heavy and intense. It got intense again here, and I genuinely do not have the energy left to tone it down. I am exhausted and not exhausted at the same time. I feel one part of this ending, or at least rolling out, and the next part has not fully arrived yet. But I know in my heart that I have to learn to receive. Not just from you, though that is part of it too. The crazy, insane, wonderful people who carried me through the last eighteen months of this, and it has been dark, gave to me when I did not think I was worthy of it. I believed my role was to give, and that at some point enough giving would finally make me feel worthy. It did not. Not even a little. What actually happened was a full boomerang, with enough force behind it to say one thing clearly: sit down. And there it was. That was the first wave.
The Second Wave Is Receiving
The second wave is not material. It is not breakfasts, or lunches, or a bag someone hands you to make you feel better. It is the energy of love, success, money, and happiness that is already coming toward me, for me to receive. Not to fight for. Not to earn first. Just to let in. Maybe in a few weeks, maybe in a few months, I will tell you what Steve told me: that I am drunk and high on the sheer amount of energy screaming at me that I am enough. And you already know exactly what I will do when that happens. I will turn around and say it to you. Funny you should ask, this is what just happened.
Closing Reflection
So here is my question for you, founder to founder. What have you decided you have to earn before you are allowed to receive it? Where in your business, or your health, or your relationships, are you still fighting for something that has already been trying to reach you? I cannot tell you when your breakdown ends, mine has not. But I can tell you this with certainty. If this slightly crazy energy finds you while you are reading this, you are already enough.
Let’s grow,
Beate