My dark night of the soul in the spring 1997 came as a result of prioritizing my relationships over my highest purpose which weakened me to the point of depletion of my life force and left me carrying a lot of emotional pain.
I suffered from depression, fatigue, and anxiety, and lived with a tremendous amount of fear which immobilized me to the point where I limited my worldly experiences to only what felt safe and yet I was constantly living my life from a place of utter survival which triggered a passion for finding a new way of living and being within the world, one that did not include pain and fear.
I spent most of my life up until the dark night of the soul living my life believing it could be fulfilled through my intimate relationships with friends, family members, through my work and work relationships. I believed that these relationships would provide me with the love, nurturance and sustenance to deepen my life experiences and bring me joy and happiness. I also believed very deeply that one of my missions in life was to find the perfect love relationship, so I would feel complete and that my presence in the world would feel strengthened through these relationships.
However the my story took another turn and what triggered the dark night for me was my close friends were all starting to have children, and for them it was a new beginning; however this signaled to me a transition in our relationships, as I realized that I was not making the same choices as them. I soon realized that I unconsciously made an investment that was not going to pay me dividends. I knew that there would be very little time for me with children in the picture.
Unconscious to me this scenario triggered an early childhood trauma around my role in the co- parenting of my siblings at the age of nine through my teen years, I willing took on the responsibility in the hopes of receiving love from my family members. It was through therapy and healing that I was able to dissolve the emotions around my childhood experience as a surrogate parent, and I came to realize that I had made an emotional contract with my family that was never spoken. The contract was I would take care of them in exchange for love and affection, but I found out in my adult years it just was not enough to sustain me through the course of my life.
I had made unspoken emotional contracts with my family, my friends, and employers, I will give myself away in exchange for the love and affection I so longed for in the hopes that I would receive my love quotient . However my dark night of the soul made me realize that I was looking for love in all the wrong places.
Well that never happened I never got the love I was seeking. The dark night of the soul I experienced while crawled up on my living room floor sobbing in tear was like I had died inside. I realized how I had given myself away to every important relationship and my “I am loved bank account” was empty!
The dark night of the soul represented a turning point in my life. I knew I was either going to work on ways to learn to love myself, set healthy boundaries which I did not even know existed or I was going to self medicate to numb the pain I was feeling!
Being a highly sensitive person I was always absorbing other peoples energy, I was like a sponge everyone enjoyed being around me, the only problem was after being with them I always felt shitty and drained and needed to sleep while they felt great! So for me isolation was a way that I took care of myself it was a great coping mechanism but it no longer worked for me.
The pattern of go out into the world absorb all this negative energy go home to recoup got to a tipping point because I had absorbed so much negative energy stored in my body that it caused me to be emotionally imbalanced and in constant reaction to my life and work. The end result of carrying all this negative energy in me feeling depleted and unloved was the catalyst that triggered the dark night of the soul.
My soul self basically said Kerrace I can’t handle all this toxic energy your carrying. Kerrace it needs to be released and so I went into crisis and it resulted in an emotional wake -up call that my life was not on the right track remembering that Dark Night of the Soul.
