Have you heard of this expression?
To heal deep wounds held within us, often we have to breakdown in order to heal them. If we are able to have the courage do this then the reward is freedom and healing from the limitations those wounds once had on us!
Dark night of the soul is an emotional healing crisis. Just like when you do a liver detox and you feel headachy and sick, an emotional healing crisis is exactly the same. It's a period of time when your life literally feels like it's falling apart due to emotional reasons.
Many people who have been on a powerful healing journey have experienced a time in their life when everything disintegrates. For some a midlife crisis may be a dark night of the soul experience, for others it may happen much earlier.
For me my first one happened at age 28 when a significant relationship ended. I literally felt broken into little pieces, going to work and eating was almost impossible. However, it was the catalyst for starting my deep healing journey which transformed my life into what it is today!
During this emotional healing crises I was forced to feel much of the sorrow and pain caused by my childhood wounding.
Sounds terrible doesn't it!?
The truth is that when you are in the midst of something like this it is terrible, as it's like all of who you know yourself to be is melting away. This can be very scary, as if we don't have our identity who are we? For example, one day during my experience I woke up and didn't really know who I was anymore, I didn't even know what colours I liked, what foods I enjoyed or what gave me pleasure in life as everything had been stripped away.
A note on maintaining our identity:
Resisting change is normal for humans as we are programmed to maintain a sense of safety. The ego helps do this. I underlined sense because that's all it really is.
Part of our egos job is to prevent dangerous situations, if we can't see the outcome of a scenario our ego interprets it as danger. This is why even good change is often scary.
The ego does a really good job of keeping us in the "familiar", as what we know and we consider normal to us (even if it sucks), is regarded as safe to the ego. It's this that maintains the "sense of safety". In truth it's often a false sense of safety.
Coming Out The Other Side:
A dark night of the soul experience is also one of the most amazing things that can happen to a human, as often when this happens it's a sign that you are about to have a big breakthrough and come out the other side healed and renewed.
Note: a dark night of the soul experience can last days, months, to even years in some cases. For me it took 7 months. It all depends on how much healing there is to do.
Naturally we hate to feel this level of pain, and tend to do anything not to feel it. When we do feel pain like this our brain automatically shouts at us there's something wrong with you, you're unwell, you're sick and broken!
The truth in this is: yes you are broken but you are not unwell nor sick.
Our society still believes emotional breakdown is a sicknesses, however the truth in many cases is these breakdowns are healing crises or emotional detoxes.
The way to get through this and to heal is by spending time with the pain, expressing it, and truely feeling it. When all the emotions are fully acknowledged, seen and felt it is then, for the first time in your life that you can, and will finally heal.
Some people will have more than one of these experiences in their life, others will have none. It just depends on the purpose of the souls journey while here on earth this time round.
Conclusion:
In summary a dark night of the soul experience is best described as an emotional healing crisis or detox.
Emotional breakdown is not a sickness, it is often the beginning of a deep healing process.
Our ego creates resistance to change this is why it's so hard.
Are you in the mids of a dark night of the soul experience? If so please know to navigate a period of time like this alone is very hard, and I don't recommend you try. I personally needed weekly healing sessions to get me through. Therefore, this is where therapists and healers are absolutely required. So please feel welcome to reach out to me if you feel drawn to do so. XX
Hannah