A dark night is more than a depressing and confusing time in our lives; it is an catalyst for growth.
Most of us experience at least one time when everything they’ve worked toward feels like it is crashing down around them, leaving them feeling disillusioned, desolate and unable to see a light anywhere in their view. In the clinical world, people would receive a diagnosis of major depressive disorder but in the soul-healing world, these experiences are viewed as what St. John of the Cross first called “A Dark Night of the Soul”.
St. John wrote from his own experience. His father died when he was just three years old, followed shortly by the passing of his brother. With the provider of the family gone, his family was thrust into deep poverty and all remaining struggled to simply survive. He later became a Carmelite friar and at age 26 created a community to reform the way in which the Catholic tradition served. However, because of his efforts he was imprisoned as a rebellious member of the church. It was during his detention that he pondered life deeply, both for himself and others. His first essay explored “how God purifies the soul” through suffering and “spiritual dryness”, a time when you feel distant from a godly connection, alone and afraid.
As a psychologist who has witnessed many people experience these dark nights as well as a human who has experienced it more than once myself, these times are nothing less than wrenching. However, they can also provide intense psychological and spiritual transformation if you surrender to the struggle and allow yourself to explore the meaning behind your fate.
Various authors describe the stages of a dark night, but the main sequence is as follows:
The Catalyst or Initiating Experience—the event that initiates your next cycle of growth.
Desolation of Innocence and Belief—feeling like everything that once had meaning and value is under question.
Identity Reorganization—the identity “crisis” that causes a person to examine who they are and what they are about—sometimes with dramatic changes.
Shadow Exploration and Repair—diving deep within to explore, understand and heal the wounds created by the catalytic event.
Acceptance and Resolve—a period of time when you stop resisting the turmoil and come to terms with the fact that life has changed—often for the better!
Finding The Light—the time in which you start to see beyond the darkness andrealize it is only life as you knew it that has ended, not life itself.
Integration and Evolution—this phase brings relief and new light as you start to understand how the challenges you experienced may have sent you in a new direction, but one that is filled with opportunity and growth. During this phase, you embrace what you’ve been through enough to take charge of life in a new and often more enriched way.
While these stages describe the spiritual process an individual undergoes when experiencing turmoil, these steps in healing also mirror what happens in therapy. The difference lies in the depth in which a person explores their healing. Although a person may unknowingly evolve as a soul when healing from psychological wounds, the more conscious a person becomes about navigating the many challenges of the human condition, the more they experience life lessons as sacred events. This means the more easily they cope and the more quickly they move through the process.
The psyche and the soul are not the same. The psyche is the aspect of us that holds all thought, action and belief. The soul, however, is the very essence of who we ARE—the energetic part of us that transcends all things emotional and physical. It is our deepest self and truest nature. While the psyche can become wounded from our experiences so much that we want to shut down and disappear, it is our soul that drives us to heal, survive and thrive. It is our innermost essence that gives us just enough light to see our struggles through to the end—which is actually the path to a beautiful new beginning.
For more information, check out the corresponding video here.
Katherine T. Kelly Ph.D., M.S.P.H.
With 35+ years of direct clinical experience, Dr. Kelly doesn’t just believe in helping others to heal; instead, her mission is to help them to evolve. Using her own integrative and trademarked framework—the Soul Health Model—Dr. Kelly approaches her work with clients from a “whole person” or “whole organization” perspective. She provides a uniquely progressive, yet down-to-earth approach and is well-known in therapeutic, medical and corporate communities. She thrives as she helps clients and organizations to reach what she calls “conscious evolution” through a variety of self-designed strategies. Her dedication to healing has been widely recognized as she was the recipient of the Provider of the Year Award by the regional Mental Health Association and was nominated as an Incredible Woman for a local community television network, which spotlights role models to inspire young women to pursue their own passions.