How My Breakdown Became My Breakthrough: Burning Out, Then Burning Clean
A personal account of burnout, depression, and discovering purification through lived experience.
For a long time, I thought depression and anxiety were signs that something had gone terribly wrong in my life.
Now I see them as something else:
a purification process,
a ruthless but honest teacher,
a doorway toward unconditional happiness.
This insight didn’t come from reading spiritual books. It came from living through a period of moderate depression and anxiety, applying the teachings in real time, and discovering that the purification model is not just an idea. It works.
Only after experiencing darkness and walking through it did I understand what David Hawkins and Michael Singer meant by surrender and letting go. Their message is simple to understand but difficult to practice:
Whatever feels unpleasant or unbearable is not proof that something is wrong with you. It is old emotional energy asking to be released. When you allow it to complete itself, unconditional joy rises naturally, and you begin to see that nothing was ever wrong with you. Your true nature is already whole and complete.
Behind the storm clouds, the sun was there the whole time.
The only way out is through.
Burnout, Status, and a Life That Looked “Successful”
For six years, I worked as an architect in China. From the outside, my life looked accomplished. I had studied in top schools in the US and Japan, and I worked at a well-known firm designing large projects like sports centers and high-rises. When people asked what I did, I could answer with pride.
Inside, I was fading.
Architecture in China can be as intense as finance in New York. Late-night meetings were routine. If I skipped a 10 p.m. call, I would be criticized the next day. My boss often changed designs repeatedly, which left us with too little time before deadlines. Holidays became workdays because delays were “normal.”
To make matters harder, the job was in another city away from my wife and son in our hometown. I could only see them on weekends and holidays.
My wife loves to travel, so we still went on family trips. But every trip included my laptop. My family relaxed while I worried about deadlines and client expectations. I couldn’t fully be present. My mind was always half at work.
Over time, I developed a trauma response to my phone. Any notification could mean more work. When it rang, fear and anger shot through my chest.
There were extreme periods.
Once, the workaholic boss held a meeting from afternoon until 7 a.m. the next day. I slept for a few hours and then returned to the office.
Another time, during a seven-day family holiday trip, I was called away midway to another city for a presentation. My wife spent the entire day carrying our three-year-old son alone.
I felt helpless and guilty.
Externally, I looked like a respectable professional. Internally, I was burned out and resentful.
I stayed in the job because of status. Culturally, it felt impressive to say I was an architect with international training and large projects under my name. My identity was built on pride, but my inner world was collapsing.
Three Ways I Tried to Avoid My Feelings
Looking back, I used three avoidance strategies to cope: suppression, distraction, and overcompensation.
1. Suppression
I learned suppression early in childhood. If I cried, my father threatened to beat me. I remember crying under the blanket, behind a closed door, hoping he wouldn’t hear. He always did.
My nervous system learned that feeling was dangerous, so emotion had to be pushed down.
Decades later, during a coaching training, we were asked to feel emotions in the body. Suddenly I noticed a painful, solid sensation in my throat, like an iron ball. It was the same pre-crying feeling from childhood, but frozen and compacted.
That is what long-term suppression does. You become numb to the feelings in your own body.
2. Distraction
When suppression wasn’t enough, I distracted myself. I scrolled social media, watched shows, played games. Once, I drank Chinese liquor alone and played games until I vomited. It was ridiculous, but at that time, it felt like the only escape available.
3. Overcompensation
My third strategy was overcompensation.
Unconsciously, I believed:
“I feel bad because I am bad. If I achieve more, I won’t feel bad anymore.”
So I over-worked, tolerated unreasonable schedules, sacrificed family time, and tried to impress my boss. Externally, I looked ambitious. Internally, it was self-rejection disguised as achievement.
When the Work Slowed Down but the Pain Stayed
In 2023, the real estate market in China crashed and our workload dropped. For the first time in years, I often had nothing urgent after 5 p.m.
No Wechat messages.
No late meetings.
No pressure.
But the pain stayed.
I spent every evening scrolling, watching videos, playing games, drinking. Many nights I didn’t sleep until 2 or 3 a.m. The exhaustion wasn’t only physical. It was emotional and spiritual.
That was when I realized the truth: The problem was no longer the job. The problem was inside me. So I went to the hospital to do some checks.
At the hospital, the doctor told me I was experiencing moderate symptoms of depression and anxiety. She was hesitant to formally diagnose it as “clinical depression” on my first visit, but the signs were undeniable: a constant fear that something would go wrong, thoughts like “no one would care if I disappeared,” and a persistent gloom that seemed to color everything.
I wasn’t suicidal, but I wasn’t living either.
Medication helped a little, but not enough. Something deeper had to change.
From Knowing the Theory to Living the Practice
Since 2015, I had been reading David Hawkins and listening to his talks. I understood the theory of surrender and letting go, what you might call the purification model, on an intellectual level.
But understanding is not the same as doing.
In my actual life, I was still suppressing, distracting, and overcompensating. The knowledge of my diagnosis, combined with the suffering that accumulated day after day, finally pushed me to a turning point. Something inside me snapped and declared:
“Enough. You must finally practice what you’ve learned.”
So I sat down in half-lotus and told myself:
“I will feel this fully, for as long as it takes. I will not run.”
The Two-Hour Sit That Changed Everything
I closed my eyes and focused on the most emotionally painful area in my body, my throat. The iron-ball sensation was there, solid and uncomfortable.
Negative thoughts arose:
“I’m worthless.”
“I’m a failure.”
“I’m garbage.”
I didn’t fight them. I didn’t argue with them. I ignored them and kept my attention on the feeling. Breath by breath, moment by moment, I stayed with it.
It was difficult, but also strangely empowering. For the first time, I wasn’t escaping. I felt a sense of dignity just by facing myself honestly.
After about two hours, something shifted. The heaviness began to lift. The hard edges of the sensation softened.
A small crack of light appeared within, and I felt as if a weight I’d carried for years had been lifted from my shoulders.
There was hope. And I knew immediately:
“This works. Facing the feeling works.”
From that day on, life became lighter. I used medication 2 months and several months of therapy, and gradually recovered.
The sensation in my throat still arises, but now its intensity is a one to three out of ten, rather than an eight or nine. Sometimes, the sensation feels like energy spreading into my chest and face. It even feels meaningful, like part of a releasing process. Uncomfortable, yet significant.
I had dipped my toe in the hellfire, but I made it out.
When the Inner World Shifts, the Outer World Follows
After this internal shift, something else changed.
I found a new job in my hometown and could see my family every day. The work became far less stressful. My new boss is unusually kind. Ironically, she had the same last name as my old mean boss.
It felt like life saying, “You are safe now.”
As I stopped fighting my inner world, the outer world stopped fighting me.
It wasn’t magic. It was alignment.
How Hawkins, Singer, and Shinzen Overlap on Purification
After my breakthrough, I rediscovered Unified Mindfulness (Shinzen Young). I had heard his teachings years before but never applied them seriously. This time, I implemented them.
Around the same time, I also found Michael Singer’s teachings. Everything clicked into place.
These three teachers all point to the same purification model:
Hawkins: You are not upset because of the world. You are upset because old emotional energy stored in you is being triggered.
Singer: Stop trying to control life. Relax around your inner disturbance.
Shinzen: Develop concentration, clarity, and equanimity so you can actually do this moment by moment.
Hawkins gave me the map. Singer gave me a lifestyle. Unified Mindfulness gave me the tools.
Together, they formed a complete purification path for me.
The Purification Model Sees All Suffering as Gifts
Here is the essence of purification: You don’t feel bad because of what happened.
You feel bad because old emotional energy has been activated and is ready to be released.
The trigger is not the cause. The trigger is the pointer.
I use the metaphor of a man carrying one hundred invisible garbage bags tied to his body. Each bag contains old emotional residue, not only from this life but possibly many lifetimes. Each bag gives off a distinct foul smell.
As he walks through life, he smells something unpleasant from time to time. Maybe smell number three, maybe smell number forty-nine.
If he ignores it, the smell does not disappear. The suffering continues.
If he stops and follows the smell, finds the invisible bag, and unties it, the weight and the smell disappear forever. He still has other bags, but now he is lighter and freer. And each time he smells something unpleasant, he has another opportunity to untie another bag.
This is purification.
Daily life triggers us not to punish us but to reveal the next knot that is ready to be released. Each emotion shows where the next layer of pain is stored.
In this model, when someone says something mean and you feel anger, you don’t say, “He made me angry.” Instead you recognize, “The anger was already inside me. His words only revealed it.”
Words have no inherent power. It is the inner residue that reacts.
This is why true forgiveness feels so powerful. When the emotional charge is released, your mind literally cannot generate negative feelings toward the person anymore.
In this way, suffering becomes a gift. It shows you the next cloud that is blocking your sun. With each cloud removed, you become lighter and happier for no reason, and the old negative thoughts simply fade away because the emotional energy that once fueled them is gone.
Thus, suffering transforms into the ultimate gift: a happiness that no longer depends on conditions.
A Practical Way to Apply the Purification Model
Here is a practical method for working with difficult emotions like anger or fear.
1. Untangle “See, Hear, Feel”
When triggered, your experience feels overwhelming. Separate it into three components:
See: mental images, memories, imagined scenarios.
Hear: inner talk, self-judgment, imagined conversations.
Feel: body sensations such as tightness, heat, or pressure.
Just separating these reduces overwhelm.
2. Focus on the Feelings as Body Sensations
Place most of your attention on the body sensations, not the narrative.
Instead of thinking “He is wrong” or “I’m weak,” say something objective like “tightness in the chest.”
Stay with the sensation. Do nothing to fix it. Do nothing to resist it.
This is equanimity/ surrender/ letting go. Staying with the feeling is how the old emotional energy releases.
3. Use Background Attention if Needed
If the feeling is too intense, focus mostly on something neutral like the breath or ambient sounds while keeping some awareness on the emotional body sensations in the background.
When it softens, bring it to the foreground.
4. Work with All Entry Points
Feelings can arise from fresh triggers, old memories, future worries, or seemingly random waves. The method is the same: allow the feeling and keep your attention grounded in the body until the energy completes releasing itself.
Every release makes you lighter.
Your Life Is Your Temple
You do not need a monastery to purify your heart.
Your job, family, conflicts, success, failure, stress, disappointments, cravings, and frustration all reveal the next layer of emotional residue. Each one is an opportunity to release something old and uncover more of your inherent joy.
You become lighter not because life becomes perfect, but because you removed one more cloud blocking the sun.
When you see life through the purification model, you are never a victim again.
Daily life becomes your spiritual path.
The chaotic world becomes your temple.
Now I’d Love to Hear from You
Have you gone through depression or anxiety that later revealed something important?
How do you usually cope: suppression, distraction, achievement, or something else?
Does the purification model resonate with your experience?
Feel free to share. I read and reply to every comment.
🙏🙏
I respect and honor your wisdom Muse Miao, thank you for caring and writing, I have been depressed as of late, what you say, “the only way out is through”is exactly what I needed to hear at this moment! I am experienced at putting on a happy face. Geraldine