What Do You Do When Life Falls Apart?

Source: Alexis Jones / Used with Permission

Alexis Jones grew up with divorced parents on the other side of the tracks in an affluent neighborhood in Austin, Texas. Feeling like an outsider, she sought approval through accomplishment, and she racked up amazing accomplishments. As a speaker, author, and entrepreneur, she received numerous awards and appeared on Survivor, Fast Company’s “Female Trailblazers," and Oprah’s SuperSoul 100. She traveled 250 days a year for her successful speaking career. But deep inside, she was out of touch with herself. She told me, “I wasn't having a lot of conversations about the interior of my heart, and how I was feeling about myself.”

Then suddenly her successful world fell apart. After years of fertility struggles, she and her husband, Brad, were expecting their first child when she had a devastating miscarriage. The Covid pandemic canceled all her travel plans, upending her career. She rented an RV with Brad and their best friend Luke, who was getting divorced, and set out on a journey across the United States—three broken-hearted people on a journey of discovery, leaving behind all they knew with no idea where they were going.

Their journey echoes what Joseph Campbell (1973) described as “the Hero’s Journey,” as they left their familiar world behind to enter the great unknown, learning vital lessons. Alexis tells how she discovered her authentic self in her book, Joy Hunter (2023b).

Source: Alexis Jones / Used With Permission

Her journey of discovery involved these five factors.

1. Detaching from dysfunctional patterns. Externally, detachment for Alexis was the RV journey. But internally, it meant rejecting decades of striving to meet others’ expectations. One day on the journey, she asked herself: When had I become such a people pleaser? When did I start living for everyone else? When did I stop having fun? (Jones, 2023b, p. 134). Then she thought back to her childhood, recalling how embarrassed she’d been in grade school trying out for the school play, and how she’d felt when her best friends shunned her for a day. Back then, she had told herself, “I don’t ever want to be embarrassed like that again.” She became a people-pleaser.

Dysfunctional patterns like this are what Buddhists call samskaras, limiting beliefs that become part of our identity. Cognitive behavioral therapy can help us recognize these beliefs, identifying our automatic negative thoughts and behaviors (Burns, 1980). The journey helped Alexis begin to recognize and release her people-pleasing pattern.

2. Supportive Relationships. We need positive relationships. Life is not a journey to be traveled alone (Fredrickson, 2013; Murthy, 2023). Alexis says, “There’s no way I could have moved forward with changing the entire pattern of my life if I didn't feel I had Ride or Die people that were going to love and support me no matter what. Brad and Luke, and my family were a safe container. I had the luxury of knowing that if I fell apart, they were going to help me pick up all the pieces.” To help us through our healing journeys, we need compassionate support from our loved ones and often the unconditional positive regard of a therapist.

3. Slowing Down to Get Back in Touch with Nature. One day on the journey, Alexis was hiking with her brother, Zeke, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, when he asked why she was rushing. She stopped to look up at the green aspen trees and bright blue sky, feeling a sense of awe which can be quite healing (Keltner, 2023), then realized how she’d been rushing through life for years, striving to accomplish one goal after another. Since then, she’s made it a point to slow down and recognize her connection with the natural world. She now enjoys walking through the aspen grove near her house that she calls “God’s Cathedral.”

4. Reflection and Choice. Alexis knows her old limiting patterns still exist inside, but now she’s aware of them, realizing “for the first time in my life, I have an option, whether or not continue the pattern or to do something different.”

Becoming aware of our patterns gives us a choice. When we're not aware, we simply react, and these patterns control us. When we're aware of our habitual patterns, we can say, “There's that pattern again. How do I choose to respond?” We can be reactive or creative, words with the same letters but opposite meanings. By using our power to choose, we can create a new reality. Alexis says that “empowerment is the recognition that choice exists. And to truly empower someone is to allow them to see that there is a choice.”

5. The Final Lesson: Loving Ourselves.

On her journey of transformation, she says, “The real work began when I was courageous enough to slow down and be still. That was the most terrifying thing in the entire world for me because then it meant that my shadow would catch up to me. I had to do the real work that I had been avoiding my entire life, which was the deeply internal, invisible, lonely work, of learning how to love myself unconditionally and radically, without needing any validation from anyone—that became the ultimate journey for me.”

This journey led her to share her deepest needs with Brad, to move to a new home together, and begin a beautiful new chapter of her life. They now live in Bozeman, Montana, with their infant son, Bridger, named for the nearby Bridger Mountains.

That’s the lesson and the journey—to love ourselves, to embrace our uniqueness, to honestly recognize our feelings, fears, and aspirations, and use our power of choice to create new possibilities for our lives.

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This post is for informational purposes and should not substitute for psychotherapy with a qualified professional.

© 2023 Diane Dreher, All Rights Reserved.