I'm mid 30s and recently quit my job due to burnout and a sort-of-MLC I guess. A lifetime of insecurity, bad habits, and self-deception caught up with me in a big way. But I'm grateful for it, because part of what you said:

> The tricky part is that I don't believe any of this would work for someone else if they just tried to go through the motions of it.

...I find to be very true. I rarely see people capable of making change in their life without hitting some sort of breaking point or critical mass of dysfunction. Stuff blowing up in my life (to my credit, it was at my choice, rather than being forced) is the only reason I've been able to do much of what you're describing.

It really all starts with awareness, as you describe. Having the mental and emotional bandwidth to sit with your feelings instead of trying to distract yourself from them. Unlearning a lifetime of bad habits that were built to distract and soothe - constantly checking phone, wasting time browsing online, subjecting yourself to material online that only harms or frustrates you, dealing with codependency by jumping between relationships, the list goes on.

Awareness leads to an ability to analyze, which leads to an ability to change. It's unfortunate the growth I've had in the past several months is the same growth I saw some kids in high school already go through, but they had the benefit of either better mental health or (more likely) the right home environment that fostered that growth from a very young age. I had a home environment that punished this style of growth.

I hope your daughter is doing better. I was also hospitalized around the same age for the same reason (a few years older). I didn't realize it at the time, but the hospitalization was very traumatic (and massively fucked up looking back on it as an adult, some of those adults working there should be in prison), and that trauma shaped my life pretty strongly for decades.