I am familiar with this but it is a long time since I have been in the depths of it.
To anyone who does feel this way however I would just say: This too shall pass. It represents a time of grieving and that needs to be honoured.
In this superficial and ‘quick-fix’ age, such experiences are labelled depression and people are advised to remove the symptoms as quickly as possible with pills, attitude, or some kind of treatment. But this just disguises and denies the experience itself and drives it deeper.
Although I would add that if we suddenly find ourselves in such a place, some people, not all, might find a prescribed drug can be useful and necessary in the short-term. It can get us over the hump for three to six months, but that is all. It merely allows us to gather our strength and muster our reserves to do the work which must be done.
When we deny and ‘hide’ the experience, we end up in a ‘no- wo/man’s’ land where we are neither one thing or the other – not who we once were and not who we are called to be. That truly is the path to madness.
These times are akin to the snake shedding its skin, or the crab, its shell – who we are, or who we have been, no longer fits and that Self must be discarded so a new one can ‘grow.’ It is during the time between Selves, when we are vulnerable, without our ‘skin’ or our ‘shell’ that we feel this way – but it is temporary and it is necessary.
I likened it to jelly melting, and the liquid time is the hardest of all, when you feel as if all that you are has been reduced to something insubstantial, uncontrollable (as it has) and that you are ‘sloshing’ dangerously around in your life (as you are.) But slowly the jelly begins to ‘set’ and in time, long or short but always hard, you can feel and know the substance of yourself.
Much of this work must be done alone, for that is the nature of true growth as all of the ancient mystery schools knew.
But we can find help along the way in someone to talk to – preferably someone with whom we do not have baggage; homeopathic remedies, which will act on physiological, psychological, spiritual levels and help us to re-balance as we make our way; herbal remedies which can sooth our physical pain; Reiki and acupuncture which can ease our energetic imbalance and creativity, which can help us express that which needs to be expressed – through painting, writing, craft, cooking, gardening, music, meditating.
Remembering always the words of Hildegard of Bingen: All is well and all is well and all manner of things are well.
