The Dark Night Of The Soul can be described as a state of being where we experience a lot of negative and heavy feelings and emotions. Even though everything may seem to be perfect and great in our life yet there is that feeling of everything is right but nothing’s right.
You still feel that heaviness and emotional pain even though you might be grateful for what you have. Basically dark night of the soul is a scream of our soul to let us know that we are doing something wrong, taking a wrong turn, we are falling out of alignment with our authenticity and sense of purpose.
How do we know if we going through the dark night of the soul? It is very similar experience when we have depression yet it is no a depression. There is a very fine line between these two.
Whenever you experience depression please don’t hesitate to see a professional, sometimes a simple treatment can do a big deal.
Symptoms of the dark night of the soul
- dissatisfaction with life; a lot of futility, inability to see value in life
- feel down, depressed, lots of negative emotions
- lack of will
- lack of desires
- you still might be very social and seam happy, live an active lifestyle, everything in life may seem totally fine (on a contrary with actual depression)
The difference between dark night of the soul and depression is that depression can be treated medically when dark night of the soul can’t be; during dark night of the soul you might still be active and social and may even feel gratitude when during depression it’s on a contrary.
What can you do to break the cycle?
- admit, acknowledge, accept your feelings (the more you reject or deny your feelings, the more you resist the more it persists, it doesn’t work on a long run)
- write your personal values, see where it doesn’t align with the value system you’re trying to live vs your personal, or where you don’t live out of your personal integrity
- ask yourself what exactly do you really want to have in life, what are your heart desires (here you need to be 100% honestly with yourself). Are you living your heart’s desires or someone else’s? How would you like to live your life? Who would you like to become?
Often we are just a few questions away from have a joyful experience in life, all we need is complete honesty and courage to live from the heart.