Men come to me restless and unsettled, unable to name what’s happening.

“Am I burned out? Depressed? Just getting old? Is it my marriage, my job, my body?”

Underneath it all, what they’re really saying is: Something must be wrong with me.

“I’m supposed to be upbeat, grateful, testosterone-filled, happy, always hustling, always climbing, always winning.”

Because descent feels like defeat. We’ve been trained to think life is an endless ascent — prove yourself, climb higher, show strength, build identities. So when the descent comes — and it always comes — we panic. We label it burnout, depression, stagnation, failure.

And in a culture that worships youth and polish, descent looks like death. Instagram feeds us endless smiles, sculpted bodies, curated vacations. Facebook reminds us of younger faces and thinner waistlines. LinkedIn shoves constant promotions in our faces. Up, up, up — never down.

So we hide our struggles, cover the gray, filter out the vulnerability, pretending decline and descent are the same thing. We scramble to reclaim the ethos of our twenties, chasing thrills, buying toys, running from the darkness.

And that’s when we need to call BULLSHIT.

They’re not the same. Decline is decay. Descent is initiation. And what this culture mocks as weakness, ancient wisdom has always known as the only way forward.

And descent has a name…

Katabasis: The Descent Before the Ascent

Katabasis is a Greek word that literally means a going down. Every culture that ever understood men, rites of passage, or transformation has known this: descent comes before ascent. You cannot climb higher until you’ve first gone lower.

The great myths and scriptures are unanimous on this point:

• Odysseus had to descend into the underworld before he could make it home.
• Joseph had to descend into a pit and then prison before he could ascend to power in Pharaoh’s court.
• Jonah had to descend into the belly of the whale before he could rise to his mission.
• Moses had to descend into exile in Midian before he could return as a liberator.
• Even Christ, in the Christian telling, descended into death and hell before resurrection.

Every man who ever rose had to first go down. That is not accident. That is not weakness. That is necessary — just like it was for Mark.

Mark’s Descent

I’ll never forget a man I’ll call Mark who came to see me. On paper, he had it all: successful career, wife, kids, the house, the cars, the vacations. From the outside, he looked like a man who’d only ever gone up.

But inside? He was crumbling.

He told me he felt hollow, like he was sleepwalking through a life he’d worked so hard to build. He’d lie awake at night asking himself, “Is this all?” He wasn’t clinically depressed, he wasn’t falling apart in any way the world would notice — but he was restless, unsettled, and ashamed of it. Because the script he’d been handed said he should be grateful, happy, powered by drive, climbing higher, smiling wider. And he wasn’t.

So he thought something must be wrong with him.

It reminded me of that line from American Beauty, when Lester Burnham confesses:

“Both my wife and daughter think I’m this gigantic loser and they’re right, I have lost something. I’m not exactly sure what it is but I know I didn’t always feel this… sedated. But you know what? It’s never too late to get it back.”

That’s the feeling. Sedated. Numb. Not broken, but disconnected. Not ruined, but restless.

And like so many men, Mark first tried to fight it the way our culture tells us to: by “upping” his game. He hit the gym harder, added more reps, tried testosterone injections to feel young again. He booked more adventurous vacations—heli-skiing in Canada, thrill-seeking escapes to remind himself he was still alive. On the surface, it worked for a moment. He looked sharper, pushed harder, climbed higher.

But the numbness returned. Because no matter how much you pile on the adrenaline, the trophies, or the toys, you can’t medicate the soul. You can’t hack your way out of the descent.

And the truth is, nothing is “wrong” with you when you feel that way. What’s happening is the descent.

And here’s the key: It’s never too late to get it back. The way to get it back isn’t by clawing your way higher. It’s by learning to descend up.

Aliyah: Going Down to Go Up

The Jewish tradition has a word for ascent: aliyah. Literally, “going up.” To move to Israel is called making aliyah. To be called up to the Torah is called an aliyah.

But here’s the paradox: Israel sits at the lowest geographic point on earth. Moving there is literally a descent in altitude. Yet for thousands of years it’s been called an ascent — because physically, yes, you go down, but spiritually, you rise.

That’s the paradox of katabasis. Down is not the opposite of up. Down is the doorway to up. What looks like loss becomes the path to gain. What feels like failure becomes the threshold of transformation.

Aliyah is the practice of descending up — choosing to see that every physical descent can become a spiritual ascent, every emotional setback can become a deeper step forward, every season of loss can be the soil for a greater rising. To descend up is to stop fighting gravity and start using it, to stop denying age and start apprenticing to its wisdom, to stop running from pain and start mining it for meaning.

The Second Half of Life

Here’s the truth: in the second half of life, descent is unavoidable. Sex-drive drops — but maybe that’s the gift, forcing us to stop thinking with one head and start using another. Gravity pulls our bodies down — but that’s the chance to lean on something deeper than looks. Tragedy shows up at our door — but in the words of the katabasis king, Viktor Frankl, we can transform outward tragedy into inward triumph.

This is the secret of descending up. The body may weaken, but the mind can cut sharper. The ego may fade, but the soul can blaze hotter. The roles may fall away, but the man beneath them can finally rise.

Climbing when you’re young, fueled by desire and adrenaline? That’s ordinary. The real power is in descending up — walking into the shadows, stripping away what no longer serves, letting descent forge wisdom instead of fear.

The paradox is clear: when men descend courageously, they rise ferociously.
That is descending up.

About Dr. B

I’m Dr. Baruch HaLevi — coach, logotherapist, rabbi, author, and co-founder of Men’s Peer Groups. For 20+ years, I’ve guided men through crisis, loss, and transformation. My work is about helping men stop hiding from the descent and start discovering how to descend up — turning breakdowns into breakthroughs, wounds into wisdom, and midlife into the most powerful chapter of life.