Ever felt like you just wanted to run and run?

Like you just needed to get out?

To just get get away?

Start again?

Be someone else?

And it feels like no-one else could possibly understand?

That suffocating sense that we’re trapped inside and that the walls that we’re trapped by, and that keep us there, can never be dismantled?

We’re in a blind panic, feeling utterly alone, without help.

Without joy. Without hope.

We just want it to end. And it’s never ever going to end.

There really is no way out, because to get out we’re beginning to realize that only we can free ourselves, and that in order to do that we’d have to take the walls down.

So, what is this crisis that’s happening to us?  What is it that’s making us swing from panic to depression and back again? What is happening when we reach a point of breaking down?

What I’m going to offer you arises out of my own training, experience, reading of research and spiritual growth. I make no claim to have a definitive answer, and it is totally fine for you to disagree with what I am going to say. However, it may help, so I’d like to at least offer it.

So, here goes.

Let’s come at it from a slightly different angle, if that’s okay?

Ever come across the term “Dark Night of the Soul?”

It refers to an experience not unlike that of a breakdown. It‘s an experience not dissimilar to terror. It’s a place of feeling profoundly lost and cut off, but not knowing why.

Most frightening of all, we don’t know who we are. All sense of ourselves is gone. Who we were is no more, yet we don’t know who we are now, or who we’ll become.

It is existentially terrifying.

I came at it from that angle because, when we go deeply into the experience of emotional breakdown, this is what we find:

We don’t know who we are.

We question everything.

We’re looking for meaning and purpose.

We feel enormous loss but don’t know why.

We feel like we’ve failed.

We hate parts of ourselves and feel others will hate them too.

We’re angry and feel trapped with no way out.

We are fed up with pretending and long to break out.

We’re exhausted by the effort to be what everyone needs us to be.

We therapists talk a lot about the “Real Self” and the “False Self.” The “False Self” is who we have learned to believe the world requires us to be; the “Real Self” is who we actually are.

So, maybe we’re not looking at a “breakdown” at all, but rather a “breakthrough.”

Maybe this is the liberating process in which we gradually let go of the “False Self” and learn to dare to be our “Real Self” in the world.

The self we incarnated to be. The self we came intending to share with the world.

Maybe this panic and wanting to run is actually highlighting how inauthentic we have learned to become, because we’ve learned to believe that simply being ourselves is either not enough, or will mean that others will not love us.

Maybe it’s showing us how we’ve learned to compromise who we really are, and who we came here to be. And how we are denying the world the precious gift of ourselves as we really are.

And in that, we have our way out! In that we have the gift! That is our Breakthrough!

Let’s not pretend it’s going to be easy, and it’s certainly going to be a challenge. Some people won’t like the new us, because they were really invested in the old one.

But hey, that’s okay.

They’re on their journey, just as you are on yours. They are stronger than you think, and they will survive.

And we will survive too!

So, here’s how we do it.

Instead of running away, we start running towards.

Instead of trying to work out how we ought to be, we start working on who we really are.

Instead of trying to work out what we ought to feel, we start noticing what we are feeling.

Instead of wearing a mask and putting on an act, we start daring to be who we really are.

And in this new way of being, our new energy is going to gradually attract others who share that energy, who want to be authentic too, and I promise, the experience is going to be glorious!

Conversations will take on a new purpose—to share rather than hide—and it will feel so incredibly freeing and satisfying.

Once we start to taste how it feels to be real, to simply be us, we won’t be willing to be any other way. Being real will have become a way of living rather than being what others want us to be.

We feel powerful rather than fearful because we feel real.

There’s nowhere to fall. There’s no longer a way to fail.

Can you taste the possibility? The freedom?

Maybe it feels pretty scary too? It’s hard to believe it might be possible when we’ve learned to feel fearful of being who we really are, isn’t it?

Stay with it. This is your moment. This is your path. Your own spiritual journey back to who you came here to be. And we are all rooting for you!

You’ve been so close to this moment for some time now. Asking, questioning, knowing there’s more, feeling the call of your higher self, your source, the greater part of who you really are.

You have had a sense of something about to happen, you just didn’t know what or how.

Well here it is!

This is what meeting your destiny feels like. Savour the moment. You are coming into your own. Feel the depth and breadth of this.

Take it in. Feel the power of it, the freedom of it, the responsibility and sacred trust of it. The fun of it and the daring, the playful adventure in it.

You’re going to touch a lot of lives. You are awakening, my friend, and you are about to taste your full power.

Settle into that!

Then relax, let go and enjoy the ride!

 

Relephant:

Wake Up Your Authentic Self.

Author: Janny Juddly

Apprentice Editor: Brandie Smith/Editor: Travis May

Photo: jill111/pixabay