What Causes A Dark Night of the Soul?
Call it what you want: dark night of the soul, tailspin, shit pit, dumpster fire, downward spiral…
The name doesn’t matter as much as how it feels being crushed by tidal waves of negative thoughts, drenched in heavy emotions— frustration, desperation, exhaustion, etc—and insulted by the fact that you are alone in this because you look outside and see people smiling and seeming to enjoy life, while you are stuck re-living the same pattern you’ve been trying to break for years now.
You’re there. And you can know for sure because you don’t like you.
HOW DID IT COME TO THIS?
There are several “causes” and contributing factors to examine. Sometimes when you can identify the cause, it is easier to begin a corrective course of action to get you into a head + heart space that can change your situation.
Physical/Environmental Imbalance: the basics
It is easy to over-look the basics when we are swirling down the toilet bowl. Deficiencies or excesses of the following can lead to a disturbance in our physiology that either creates inflammation, lowers our immunity, or fatigues our system in a way that lowers our guard and allows negative thinking to root more easily. Before you think or believe another negative thought about yourself or your life, check these:
Sleep (do you get enough? is it interrupted? is it restful/getting into the brainwave states for repair?)
Diet (quantity, quality, timing, hygeine—who are you with? what are doing while you are eating? Are you mindful and chewing enough?)
Water intake (quantity + quality)
Movement (too much/strenuous or too little)
Company (who are you spending time and attention on?)
Self-abandonment: when we give up the realness of our own reality for someone else's
It’s common, and for those of us with a troubled childhood, it’s actually habitual to give up and give over to another person or thing. Being in the statistical minority, having adverse conditions to your plans, or simply being with someone who is more out-going or persistent (maybe narcissistic or maybe just enthusiastic) are enough to leave your ideas, dreams, and desires behind.
Self-abandonment comes in many ways and forms and is often disguised as being adaptive, easy-going, or having high-standards; so you…
Give up your desires if someone else presents theirs more strongly.
Get annoyed at or hurt by people for not understanding you; and proceed to either shut down or over-communicate in order to “feel” heard because you are not acknowledging the validity of what you are thinking, feeling, or saying or acknowledging the awareness that your present company may not have the capacity, interest, or level of consciousness to see your point of view.
Or, you may have actually become an abusive person in your life and put overly demanding expectations and unrealistic timelines in place—that have more to do with proving something rather than an adventurous curiosity and creative drive.
Regardless of the root or the expression, when we leave ourselves the world becomes a dark and desolate place. This habit has to be challenged if happiness is something we seek to add to our lives.
Not Choosing Anything: the fastest way to feel stuck
The stuck-ness you feel may be a result of not moving at all; not making a move. Perhaps you are holding on to an expectation that things would or should be different than they are…or you may be waiting for some external force to give you a directive—the clock, the planets, God…
Though you may not be aware this is going on or admit to it if you did, when you are not choosing anything, there is no movement from you…But the world around you continues to move—so you end up feeling like you’re sitting in a train that isn’t moving but looks like it’s going backwards when the one next to it begins to move forward.
When you’ve done “the work,” but don’t feel or see anything different, it may be because you have not yet BEEN the new you yet. The current challenge that is in your face may be the opportunity for you to do just that. This sh*t can’t all be done in your head. You can only know and experience the change, release, whatever by moving forward AS the new.
Uplevel Reaction: the paradox of improvement
This is a very common experience for seekers to experience things as worse when they are actually improving. There are 3 reasons for this:
1. It’s paradoxical in that when you feel empowered and make a new choice that is in harmony with your priority and direction of your future, a lot of times the first thing to come up is resurgence of negative thoughts and limiting beliefs.
…The old stuff that is not congruent anymore, and as you continue to move forward and expand your awareness, what was buried in the subconscious surfaces and comes to light— you become consciously aware of those limiting beliefs and negative thoughts. Remember: IT IS COMING UP TO GO!
(Get this tattooed backward on your forehead so you can read this in the mirror everyday).
You do not need to fix anything. The “work” here is non-reactivity and letting it pass (it WILL pass).
2. You hit an “upper limit” and the happiness or calm (or whatever pleasant emotion) can actually be threatening—according to your subconscious—if it is too far beyond the “normal” conditioned biochemistry. The subconscious will take this as unsafe and will bring about a “snap-back” survival reaction—we will end up doing something like picking a fight, picking up an extra whippy latte, picking a timeline that’s too tight—something that will weigh us down and get us back to our “normal” feelings.
Because this is a subconscious survival drive, all the reasons and internal dialogue will “make sense,” so it is important to ask questions to see if this is, in fact, what is taking place so that you can break the pattern.
3. You are actually being the new you. Again, paradoxical in that when you are actually being the new you, congruent and in harmony with that which you are trying to be or achieve, you will feel like something is missing; or you won’t feel anything and then assume something is wrong.
When you set out, you are aware of your desire AND the not having it. You can feel the distance, the separation. However, as you move closer and into this space, the separation dissipates…and so does the feelings that went with it. This again is often harder to see because you’ve been making steps the whole time and if you were not careful to acknowledge them (which few of us were trained or encouraged to do), then we miss all the movement and progress that we’ve made and feel lost when we are in fact, arrived.
Ask if this is what is happening before you go make a mess trying to fix something that isn’t broken.
HOW DO YOU GET OUT OF A DOWNWARD SPIRAL?
Nothing lasts for ever, so you can rest assured that this, too, shall pass.
But if you would like that passing to happen sooner than later and to ensure that things change in the direction that you’d like, let’s talk about how to get you from stuck to happyAF…ASAP.
You can also watch the replay of How To Get Out of a Downward Spiral here. Or read it here.
