ME - Collapse

This episode, it’s just ME.

No guest, no back and forth, no distraction. Just me sitting inside the question that was left and actually answering it instead of dodging it.

When have I felt completely helpless and it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me.

I go back about eight years. On paper, everything was sorted. House, money, business, toys, family. The life most people are chasing. The top of the mountain I thought was going to fix everything.

And nothing changed, because I hadn’t changed.

That’s where it started to crack. I hit a point where everything I had built didn’t match how I felt. So I did what most people do. I started looking around for the problem. I changed locations, changed direction, tried to move my life around hoping something would shift.

It didn’t. It got worse.

I ended up back at my mum’s place in my early forties with my daughter. Everything I owned was tied up in court. COVID hit at the same time. No control, no direction, no idea what the fuck I was doing.

That was the collapse.

Not the one at 22 when I got sober. This was different. This was internal. Everything I thought I was fell apart.

And I didn’t want to hear any of the shit people were saying at the time. That there was a lesson in it. That I should stay with it. That I shouldn’t rush out of the suffering. I wanted it to stop.

But that was the turning point.

Because when everything else dropped away, I had nowhere left to look except at myself. Not the version I liked, not the story I told, but the actual patterns. The way I showed up in relationships, as a partner, as a father, as a boss, and even as someone trying to help others while still avoiding parts of myself.

This episode sits inside that shift. What happens when the life you built doesn’t save you. What happens when the story stops working. What happens when you run out of people to blame and the only place left to look is inward.

It also moves into what’s happening now. The world feels unstable, people are under pressure, and there’s a lot of fear around what’s coming next. Most people are looking for answers somewhere outside of themselves, hoping something out there will settle it.

What I’ve seen is the opposite.

Sometimes things have to collapse. Sometimes you have to feel helpless. Because that’s the only point where something real can actually change, not the surface version, not the image, but the foundation underneath it.

I don’t fix it.

I sit inside what that collapse actually did, what it showed me, and what it cost to stop running from it.

The question I leave for the next guest is this.

What is something you wish you were better at in relationships?

It’s You. Oh Fuck. It’s ME. In Session with a Psychotherapist
Hosted by Chad Taylor. Author of It’s You. Oh Fuck. It’s ME

No tips.
No fixing.
Just real conversations.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

I'm Chad Taylor, psychotherapist, author of It's You, Oh Fuck, It's Me. No tips, no fixing, just real conversations. Today I'm on my own. So unfortunately, whoever's listening to this, probably all three of you, has to listen to me ramble on for the next ten minutes. Last week I had David and he really honed in on that it's only when we're hopeless and helpless that things can change. And I guess we're all seeing that in the world at the moment. So much is changing and it's all happening so quickly that I think a lot of people are scared and I think a lot of people are looking for answers. And the question that he left the next week's guest, which turned out to be me, was When have you felt completely helpless? And it ended up being the best thing that ever happened to you. And I'm probably going to talk about what happened to me around eight years ago now, which was that I'd set my whole adult life towards climbing this mountain I think that we're all taught will make us happy. That mountain of buying a house, getting the toys, getting the things we see and hear that everybody else tells us is going to make us happy. And the crazy thing was when I got sober, I got sober at 22, and I'm sure anybody that's listened to this podcast or knows me knows that part of my story, so I'm not going to go into it. But what happened for me was I had so much energy, that energy that I used to get a drink, and that that alcoholic energy I'd call it, it manifested in other ways and it transferred onto things like working and drag racing and building houses and flipping houses and getting ahead. And I think I set these goals for myself that were I wanted to move back to the coast by the time I was 40, back away from a city. I wanted to have my house paid off. I wanted to have a passive income. I wanted to have all these things that I thought were going to bring me happiness. And what happened was I achieved those things. I achieved them at 39. I moved back to the coast, I had a beautiful house, I had a pool, I had a partner, I had kids, I had the toys in the garage. I was working part-time in drug and alcohol. I had the toys, I had the Harley, I had everything I could possibly need. And I think what happened was that I didn't realise was I'd sort of reached the top of this mountain and things hadn't changed. And what hadn't changed was I hadn't changed. So then I started looking around to see what the problem could be because it couldn't be me and it couldn't be everything that I'd achieved because everybody had told me the top of the mountain was where I wanted to be, and from the outside, I think everybody around me was looking, thinking they've got it made or he's got it made, and not understanding how I was feeling on the inside. But what came out of that for me was probably the biggest rock bottom and the biggest emotional collapse I've had, way bigger than the one that I had when I got physically sober at 22, and here I was at 40. So I guess what happened from there was that I ended up through a series of events, moving house and moving house and moving house, and obviously chasing happiness. I went from the coast and I went back to Canberra, and I thought I'd go back to plumbing because I own the company still, I own my business plumbing, and it was one of those things that the day I got there I realised fuck this is not where I want to be. I've made the wrong decision and I'd taken my daughter with me, so I sort of had to roll with it for the next couple of months, and I remember at the time my therapist was saying sometimes we need to make the wrong choice to then realise what we need to do to make the right choice, and I'd probably describe that as if we're in the middle of the road and the traffic's going past either way, we've got to choose a side, we've got to get off the road to get safe, and then if we've chosen the wrong side, then hopefully we can cross over consciously rather than staying in that middle of the road hoping we'll make the right choice. So for me, I in a series of events I ended up back in my mother's bedroom, right? I'm 41 or 42 years old, and I'm back in my mother's bedroom, and she's living in an over 55 village, so it's pretty much a cabin, and I'm in this bedroom, and thankfully I had somewhere to go because I had my daughter with me, and everything that I owned was tied up in a in a property settlement and in the court system which was shut down because of COVID. So it was a real time of collapse for me. There was so much questioning of what the fuck have I done to my life? How the fuck have I got here? What is this all about? But luckily, I had people around me saying, There's a lesson in this, there's a lesson in this, there's a lesson in this. And my therapist, my mentor, Ted kept saying to me, You just got to hang in there, don't wish away the suffering too soon. Don't the suffering serves a purpose, and I didn't want to hear that at all. I didn't want to hear the suffering serving a purpose, I wanted it to fucking stop. And I think what came out of that was then COVID was happening and lockdowns happened, and it was a very crazy time for a lot of people, and thankfully I had somewhere to live because there was people who relationships were falling apart, and people had different views on safety and what was safe and what wasn't, and so I think there was a big shift right there in the world, and I think since then there's been a series of collapses, and I think what the collapse really is is it's a collapse of the way we see the world, it's a collapse of a paradigm of how we actually see the world and how we experience the world because for most of us, everything we've been taught has turned out to almost be a lie, and I think that can be a strange place to live, and it really made me reflect back onto things and see where where had I been shit at relationships, and I don't just mean relationships, I mean work relationships as a boss, relationships sponsoring other people in Alcoholics Anonymous and things like that, volunteering, relationships towards my kids. Where could I be a better father? What was this about? For me, it was pr about protecting the kids, it was about and I again I'm not for or against the medical system, I don't know enough about it the same way I'm not for or against politics, I don't know enough about it. I wasn't there, I'm not in those rooms, I'm not in the White House, I don't know, so I try not to make a comment because I'm really just making a comment on what the TV tells me or what somebody else has told me more more so for me because I don't watch the news. So where I'm going with this is that it was really looking at where can I be a better human being and and what can I do that's better. And I suppose that's what I want to leave everybody with. We're in a crazy time in the world right now with wars and I know it's only petrol prices, but it's not petrol prices, right? It's about inflation, it's about the cost of living, it's about there's a lot of fear in the world right now, probably more than there's ever been, about are we going to be okay? And I think leading back to that, only when we see that we're helpless can we actually have some sort of enlightenment. I don't if the caterpillar knew what it was was in for when it crawled into the cocoon or made the cocoon, it wouldn't go in there, I don't think. And I think that's what I want to leave everybody else with. And the question I'm gonna leave the next person is what's something you wish you were better at in relationships? So, what's something you wish you were better at in relationships? And I'm gonna leave it there.