To the darkness and back or how to not kill yourself - Part 1
For the artist, musician, poet, creative, entrepreneur, dreamer, creator and all who get lost in the depths of darkness. To everybody who feels they cannot share the experience with anyone. I feel you. This is for you.
The yearning for death, a very misunderstood phenomena that might seem hopeless and heavy at first. And by all means, it sure is. And there is a way out of the darkness. A life beyond it. Always. Accessible. To. Everyone. But first we must dive into it.
”Sometimes when I wake up, I feel like being trapped in a life that doesn’t belong to me. I feel a heaviness that makes me question why I should get up at all. So I sleep a little more. Just to avoid feeling the dread of being alive. I have a part-time job that seems easy-breezy and luxurious to the world but in reality makes me slowly perish. Every day a little more. My days are filled with nightmares that keep playing in my mind even when I’m not asleep. I panic about ending up on the streets, alone and cold and hungry. The non-stop trauma from my childhood has made my mind’s creativity work in the wrong direction. I can hardly imagine beautiful things. It’s so much easier for my mind to go to all the terrible places. Worst case scenarios. The default in my head is: horror. I’m aware of it. When the death eaters come over me, suck the life out of me, if there ever was any, I don’t see a point in living anymore. They have stolen my joy and I can barely remember how joy felt. There were not many joyful moments in my life and the memory of the few that I did have are fading. Or like Oasis said: 'The fire in my heart is out.' All that is left is a continuous sense of dread.”It is a common belief in countless people that our inner experience is too heavy, too dark, too much and we very much prefer to hide our genuine feelings from each other. This is part of the problem. The dark aspects of our psyche are only ever too much when we don’t address and shed light on them. Often we actually do lack people in our circle who would be a safe haven for us to express our deepest and darkest feelings.
As if our pain wasn’t already challenging enough, it is that exact lack of meaningful human connection and empathy that makes the suffering in silence even worse.
Although we are highly individual and unique beings, we are also all the same with the very same human pain and suffering and everybody who would have had our experience would feel the same that we feel. And yet we hide these things from each other (as if anything could ever really be hidden energetically) because we don’t want to be seen as broken and damaged, unaware of the fact that in the midst of our brokenness we find wholeness and unaware that sharing these parts with each other, conversely, could bring great relief and healing. We are not only good for each other, we need each other.
How many of us were born to parents who never had the ability to be parents in the first place? Parents so deeply traumatised and relationally undeveloped themselves that all they could do was perpetuating their own traumas onto their offspring. And somehow, miraculously, the offspring survived. The trauma that these kids were exposed to is seldom processed because as kids they would have needed continuous support with it. Support that traumatised parents cannot provide. Instead, the trauma is buried, frozen and stored away for later. The shut-down mechanism, the only one available to a young child, ensures their survival. Fast forward to a few decades later, when that very child has become an adult and is suffering and feeling the heaviness of life and perhaps even questioning the point of being alive, it is in that crisis that the buried pain from a time long gone, though still alive, knocks on our door and wants to be met. The crisis is the childhood-trauma-awakening.
Some of us have had life experiences that other people cannot even imagine. For some, the wish to die is a consequence of the agony they feel after a decade of abuse. For others the desire to end everything arises out of inauthentic life expressions and a fear to live a life aligned to their inner truth, while others wish to die because they suffer from illnesses and unbearable physical pain. Most importantly though, the majority of people don’t want to be dead but for their pain to end. So my question is, if we can help people understand the deeper, invisible forces of suicidal thoughts and introduce them to a skill that can help transmute their pain, how many would still be wishing to kick the bucket?
It is the unprocessed emotional pain that lives inside of us that keeps producing inner states of utter hopelessness and despair and often a wish to end one’s own life.
The mental creations of dread are infinite and a by-product of the emotional trauma that is trapped in the body. These traumas have nowhere to go until we learn how to release them (more on that later). Just like food, every experience that enters our system is processed, nutrients (wisdom) extracted and then released. But we usually and involuntarily block the “processing” because processing means feeling the agony of what we have experienced and that seems unbearable. It is as though we as humans are willing to do anything just to avoid feeling what we carry inside. So the mind goes on to produce beliefs such as: “I’m messed up beyond repair, I’d rather kill myself than suffer, no one cares anyway, there is no point in being here, life is a shitshow, there is no way out of this” etc. All negative beliefs are produced by the pain that is alive in us. The negative beliefs and emotions reliably tell us about the story of the individual and what they carry from their families of origin.
The more pain someone has experienced, without any emotional support from close family members and caregivers, the darker their mental landscape will look like.
We can look at painful emotions as emotional wounds and negative beliefs as mental wounds. Together originating from traumatic events. You cannot have a painful emotion without also having an accompanying negative belief that comes with it. Trauma affects the entire human being, as it is all connected of course. As long as the pain remains unprocessed, it will continue to produce mental nightmares. The deeper the emotional wound, the darker the beliefs in the mind.
The wonderful news is that when we start to release the pain, even the tiniest of layers, it creates space for us to recognise a belief as a negative belief without losing ourselves in it. By processing the pain, little by little, presence grows in us. And the more presence there is in us, the less easily we get pulled into believing every negative thought that pops up. No matter how dark and dreadful our emotional/mental state is, the problem is only ever when we identify with it, mistake it for the truth and believe that this is who we are.
Ultimately, healing is nothing but a purification of the pollution that entered our system. Healing also means that our entire system needs to learn that the terrors are over. Even if the terrors still arise in us in the form of emotions and thoughts, we learn to recognise that they are remnants of the past. And they can come and go and be painful all the while we remain at the centre. We can be present and watch it all without getting lost in it. It is by lifting the heavy veil of trauma that we come to find that underneath, all is well.
Suicidal people are like you and me, sensitive human beings, but with a heavy load of pain to carry. These people might have suffered greater adversities and received less support on a human level than others but are pure and untouched in their essence, like everyone else. They need our guidance and presence, not medication and tranquillisers. The latter is not going to make them feel better nor help their system to release the traumatic stress that is held in their systems, but will only lead to more suppression. Suppression leads to more suffering. If we aim for liberation, we need expression.
On those days when the hell inside takes over, when there is no joy left, when nothing makes sense anymore, will you agree with me that on those days, the sole purpose is to stay alive? To eat a little. To rest. To breathe. To stay alert to the presence that we are beneath the chaos of emotions and thoughts, the presence that can observe it all. The best advice that I can give to you is to get yourself a cup of tea and make yourself as comfortable as you possibly can. That doesn’t mean that we wallow in the darkness longer than we need to but it does mean that we allow for it to be here, that we become the space where the inner spectacle can unfold. Stay alert and present, remember that it is a dark heavy storm rampaging inside but that it too shall pass. Whenever you get pulled into the storm, try to breathe, if you can, go outside, move your body, meet a friend, make your bed, have a bath, buy yourself your favourite latte, watch the ocean. Pick one little thing that seems manageable, that you could do and do that.
Equally honour those moments when there is absolutely nothing you can do but be dragged away into the darkness. The more we can allow the darkness to be here, the easier it will feel.
It is the resistance to it that causes additional suffering. Learning to live from the dimension of presence is in my view one way to overcome severe trauma. When we are deeply rooted in our own presence, which is not affected by the human chaos, remain connected to our breath, we can hold the space for whatever storms sweep over without losing ourselves in them. At first, the presence in us might seem weak but it will strengthen over time. Our very own sweet presence. From that place you can watch everything that arises in you; the emotions, the sensations in the body, the thoughts, beliefs, how the body can and will process and transmute energy when you simply are with it and no longer fight against it.
You become an expert of your inner world. You let higher intelligence present its mysteries to you just to be infinitely awed every time the transmuted inner energy reflects in your outer world as well. It might reflect as new, better people coming into your life, new opportunities, encounters, more beauty, more respect and appreciation, more joy, ideas, creativity, fancier living spaces, if that is something you fancy. Our entire world changes when we change the energy inside of us. For this reason I will keep telling you that presence is the dimension for us to live from and the muscle that we must train if we wish to come back to life and survive the human chaos and pain we’ve lived through.
In my early thirties I used to get trapped in my own inner dark states for months on end. For a while, it seemed to be the only thing accessible to me. Living from that place was my default and it lasted several years in which I could hardly leave my house.
Even though the traumatic events on the outside had long gone, they were still alive and kicking inside my system.
I was filled mostly with fear, panic and despair. I had brief moments every now and then when I would snap out of it. I would have glimpses of presence and light just to be dragged back into the dark. Over time these periods of darkness became shorter while the moments of light grew longer and stronger.
So if you’re going through long periods of darkness, hang in there and keep going. Depending on the severity of the pain, this process will require more time to re-regulate your system before returning to a state of peace.
Love always,
Lana
Stick around for next week’s “To the darkness and back or how to not kill yourself - Part 2”.
What a wild impala can teach us about trauma release and a variety of practical tips we can use on our healing journey.