Spiritually & Creatively Dark Period - Related To Traumatic Memory?

[marylouise]

I've always had a strong sense of a spiritual connection with the universe. I also have always felt the need to express myself creatively. When I was a teenager and things were at their worst, I felt I wrote "in a vacuum", but I still wrote. I was driven to connect with something larger than myself - creatively with other people, spiritually with a Higher Power.

I can't feel that now. Though I feel its absence. I'm 42 years old, and suddenly that feeling of meaning and connectedness is gone. It scares me. Was it all just a defense mechanism against the horrors of my life? Not that I'm depressed. I'm going through my life, and things are basically fine. Except that the strong sense of meaning and connectedness it always had is gone.

I have been getting in touch with and processing a particularly horrific event for the past few years. Once I started, the ability to write and create went away. As I've continued, my sense of a Higher Power has gone away. The event was bad enough that I remember a feeling of giving up afterwards. I stopped trying to make my life better and walked through it like a zombie. Am I experiencing what I was feeling then? Or, is this how normal people feel (who tell me they don't "feel" God? Is this recovery?

I've also gone through a difficult physical illness over the past four years. Could that have contributed? But I'm better now (mostly).

I'd appreciate any ideas anyone has. I've been grateful to discover this forum. I feel that I could only bring this up seriously with people who have been through and overcome and struggle with similarly difficult experiences.

 

[Hashi]

I've been experiencing something similar. Creativity comes and goes for me, but the sense of spiritual connection is pretty much gone. I say pretty much, because I can't deny experiences of connection that I had before.

In my case, I feel it's partly about having to go through a shift in my perception of higher power. I was brought up in a Christian tradition (non-mystical) where I was taught duality - that there is a God that is separate from us. I've since learnt about ideas of connectedness and oneness, and those ideas explain the kinds of things I've experienced for myself when I have experienced something.

What I think is harder for me is that I've reached a point where I'm no longer seeing a higher power in terms of an entity and I have no image of it or name for it. I can't conceptualise it, and I can't let go of wanting/needing to conceptualise it. So I've left one thing behind without being able to reach another. Which leaves me with nothing.

Where trauma comes into this for me is complex. It both brought me to believing in a higher power because of things I've experienced energetically and spiritually, and feeling unable to believe in a higher power - because of other things I've felt energetically and spiritually. Often I feel there's a higher power and it's not at all compassionate towards me, or vengeful, only indifferent.

I'm not helped by the fact that I had a bad near death experience, actually dying and coming back. I've come to an acceptance of that through working on it with a transpersonal (metaphysical) therapist, but it still undermines my ability to trust in a higher power.

At times, I find it helpful to think of it in terms of the long dark night of the soul. At times.

I think there is something else, to do with what I need to focus on in healing. For the past couple of years I've needed to focus on very practical and physical things. I still do. I'm struck that from what you say this seems to be the case for you too, in terms of dealing with physical illness.

In my case, I feel that it might almost be meant to be like this, to direct my focus outward rather than inward. Another trauma complication for me is how much like to dissociate (I've always been able to do this deliberately) and I see a risk of me taking spiritual experiences inward and not also outward, as another kind of escape from physical life. I'm not sure I'd see that as a defence mechanism, or even a protective one, but as directive.

Personally, while I believe that the sense of connection can be lost, I can't believe that means there wasn't - and isn't - really anything to connect to. I also can't see a loss of feeling connected as recovery.

All this might be quite different for you, of course.

 

[Deleted member 12723]

For three years I lost the sense of my higher power. I was in a very dark and strange place without a lot of support. Care giving for my husband who had severe dementia and died of it last year.

The sense of the presence of my higher power has returned on a more mature and realistic nature. I do not know if you will get that sense back or not.

I just wanted to share my experience and to say that lack of support and validation made me very depressed and was the dark night of my soul like Hashi said.

Everyones experiences are different. I hope you find peace of mind about this for yourself.

 

[xena21]

I've had a feeling of a higher power since I was a kid. The problem I had was it was wrapped up in religion. when I got older I freed myself of the mainstream religious aspect and just focused on the higher power, who for me was Jesus. A lot of focus for me had to do with my OCD. I was very diligent about my daily prayers and making sure I said them correctly and Jesus knew what I said.

As my adult years went on, I still believed Jesus was the Higher power that would protect me and I needed to make sure He was pleased with me, but I knew that it was important to stay close to Him just because my life was so screwed up with OCD and PTSD. I knew He could help me. Overall He has. I pray repeatedly in an OCD fashion, but in a PTSD way, he has given me hope that life will be better in the future.

I was put into a state hospital where I thought it was the end of my life. I vowed suicide, and hated ALL mankind. I was going to kill myself no matter what. WHen I escaped the state hospital I did try try kill myself but failed. I vowed to try again. Without faith in God I would have kept trying over and over until I succeeded. It was the worst thing that ever happened to me. Worst than being raped by two different family members as a child. Yet I'm still here because Jesus works miracles.