If your life has been falling apart and you can’t see a way out, what you’re going through has a name. Carl Jung called it the nigredo: the “blackening”, the first stage of alchemy, when the old has to break down completely before anything new can grow.
It isn’t the end of something. It could be the start. Jung saw the same thing happen in people… and he went through it himself.
Watch on YouTube. I filmed this one in my car at 5am before work.
What rock bottom actually feels like
You’re tired, and it’s not normal tired. It’s the kind sleep doesn’t fix. You’ve been in bed for hours and you still can’t move.
You used to have things that excited you: interests, friends, plans. Now there’s nothing. Little things push you over the edge. You snap at people, because you can’t control the big things in your life.
I saw a comment online where someone said, “Nothing’s satisfying me anymore.” Another said they stay in bed and watch the same films over and over… and the worst part is the guilt. They must think I’m lazy. I wasn’t always like this.
If any of that sounds like you, you’re not the only one. Not even close.
The way I’d put it: rock bottom is a place where you can’t see the love in anything anymore.
If that’s where you are right now, please talk to someone. A friend, your doctor, a helpline. Getting help is important. What I want to do here is show you what might be happening underneath it all, because you’re not crazy, you’re not broken, and you’re not lazy.
What Jung called it: the nigredo
Carl Jung was one of the fathers of modern psychology. He fell out with Freud, who’d been his mentor, his friend, almost a father figure. Almost overnight, Jung lost his whole professional world.
What came next was years of what he called his confrontation with the unconscious. The founder of analytical psychology had his own rock bottom.
He found a way to understand it through alchemy, which is all about transformation: turning lead into gold. The very first stage of that process was called the nigredo, Latin for “the blackening”.
Before anything new can grow, the old has to break down completely.
Autumn, winter, spring
Think about the seasons. In autumn the leaves fall. Over winter they rot down into the earth. That’s what feeds everything that grows in spring.
We go through seasons too. Jung saw the same cycle in people. The old version of you, the one everyone needed you to be, has to fall away. When it does, it feels like you’re falling apart.
You’re not falling apart. You’re feeding whatever grows next.
What’s really breaking: the mask
If it isn’t you that’s breaking, then what is?
Here’s a word you use every single day with a hidden meaning inside it: person. It comes from the Latin persona, the mask actors wore on stage in ancient Rome. It was said to mean “to sound through”, because the actor’s voice sounded through the mask.
So your persona is what you speak through. It’s not who you are. Shakespeare said it too: all the world’s a stage, and we’re all players.
When someone says “I’m not the same person any more”, they’re more right than they know. The mask is slipping.
Jim Carrey and the most successful mask in Hollywood
Nobody shows this better than Jim Carrey. He’s been one of my idols since I was a kid. My first ever date, I was thirteen and living in Brazil, and we went to see Bruce Almighty. I was trying so hard to play it cool, but I couldn’t stop laughing.
Look at what his films are actually about. The Mask: a man puts on a mask and becomes a louder, showier version of himself. Me, Myself and Irene: one man, two personalities. The Truman Show: a whole life that’s a stage, and everyone knows it’s a show except him.
In 1999 he played Andy Kaufman in Man on the Moon and stayed in character for the whole shoot, on camera and off. (There’s a documentary on Netflix about it called Jim & Andy. Definitely watch it.) When he came out the other side, he said he didn’t know who he was any more. Jim Carrey felt like just another character he’d built.
You don’t need to be rich and famous for this, though. My mum’s Brazilian, and when I was a kid at school here in the UK, I stopped speaking Portuguese to her because I didn’t want to be different. I didn’t know it then, but that was my first mask. Years later, when it stopped working, I hit my own rock bottom.
I saw another comment from a 74-year-old woman: “I’m only now realising that all these years I was wearing a mask.”
What’s breaking isn’t you. It’s the character you were playing.
The dark night of the soul, and what comes after
The nigredo is often compared to the dark night of the soul, and you can see why. The difference is what the alchemists knew comes next. They didn’t stop at black. After the blackening comes the whitening, and then the gold.
The dark is always the first stage. It isn’t the whole thing… but you do have to go through it.
Remember that comment about watching the same films over and over? It’s not always a bad sign. Think about a song that moves you after a breakup. You play it on repeat and feel it all again. That’s emotion, energy in motion, moving through you. You go through it as many times as you need to, and then one day you just don’t need it any more. What you don’t need falls away.
When does it end?
Here’s the honest answer. It ends when you choose.
The trees don’t decide to grow back in spring. They just follow nature. We’re part of nature too, never forget that. We’ve got something trees don’t have, though: choice. Nobody can make that choice for you.
When I started coming out of my own dark place, it wasn’t just my mask that came off. I started seeing that the world was wearing a mask too, and I wanted to wake everyone up. It was 2007, and I’d sit my whole family on the sofa to watch videos I’d found on YouTube. I was that guy!
The real way out for me wasn’t some big spiritual answer, though. It was going back to the people who loved me. My friends in Brazil. Those were the best years of my life, and it’s where I met my wife.
Two places to start
If you’re in it right now, here’s where I’d begin:
- Go back to what you used to love. The interests and hobbies you had as a kid, before you learnt to put on a mask. That’s a truer version of you. Those things point you back to who you really are.
- Do something for someone else. At rock bottom, everything is about you: your pain, your problems. The moment you do something for someone else, the focus comes off you. You start sharing yourself again.
The people you’ve shared your life with hold a part of you. When you’ve lost yourself, that’s sometimes where you find yourself again… in them.
Rock bottom is where you can’t see the love in anything. The other side is when you start seeing it again: in your friends, your family, the most ordinary day. Some people get there in a single moment, which is what I mean by a spiritual awakening. Some of us have to hit rock bottom first.
The one place you can’t wear a mask
There’s one place you can’t hide behind a mask, and that’s your dreams.
Every night you build a stage made completely out of you. Every character, every place, every symbol. Different masks, different forms, all showing you parts of yourself. How you feel about them is how you relate to those parts of you.
That’s you, guiding yourself.
Questions people ask about the nigredo
What is nigredo in Jungian psychology?
It’s the first stage of the alchemical process, “the blackening”, which Jung used as a picture of psychological breakdown before transformation. The old identity dissolves so that something new can form.
Is nigredo the same as the dark night of the soul?
They describe a similar experience and are often used together. The nigredo comes with a map, though: after the blackening come the whitening and the gold.
What comes after nigredo?
In alchemy, the albedo (whitening) and then the rubedo (reddening), the gold. Psychologically, it’s clarity and then a more authentic version of you.
How long does the nigredo last?
There’s no fixed time. It tends to shift when you choose to grow again, often by returning to what you loved and reconnecting with people. If it’s been going on for a long time, please reach out for support.
See your dreams at work
I’ve made a free video where I take a real dream apart, symbol by symbol. If any of this hits home, it’s a good place to start listening to yourself.