When it all Goes to Shit
There are moments in life when everything seems to collapse at once.
A relationship ends. Work dries up. You feel lost, uncertain, or disconnected from who you thought you were.
In Jungian terms, this is what happens when we’re forced into contact with the shadow — the parts of life (and ourselves) that we’d rather not see. In DBT, it’s known as being outside your window of tolerance — when emotions are so strong that logic and coping fade into the background.
It’s tempting to panic, to search for a quick fix, or to believe you’ve failed. But what if “falling apart” is not an ending, but an invitation? A call to return to what is real, simple, and human.
1. The Collapse Before the Renewal
Carl Jung wrote, “There is no coming to consciousness without pain.”
When life unravels, the psyche is often trying to reorganise itself into a deeper, more authentic form.
This collapse can feel terrifying — but it’s also a form of honesty. The defences, personas, and distractions that once held us together stop working. Something inside us insists: You can’t keep living this way.
From a psychological standpoint, what’s happening is both emotional and biological. The nervous system has entered overwhelm. The prefrontal cortex — the rational, problem-solving part of the brain — goes offline. The amygdala, the brain’s alarm centre, sounds the siren. Your body thinks you’re under threat, even if the “danger” is existential rather than physical.
In these moments, the goal is not to analyse the collapse but to survive it — gently, patiently, and with compassion.
2. Back to Basics: The Ground Beneath You
When everything feels chaotic, the mind often spins higher and higher — searching for meaning, replaying conversations, catastrophising the future. But the way back is rarely upward. It’s downward — into the body, the breath, the earth.
In Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT), this is where we return to the basics of self-regulation:
Eat something nourishing. When you’re falling apart, blood sugar dips, cortisol spikes, and perspective disappears. Food literally steadies your nervous system.
Drink water. Hydration influences mood more than most people realise.
Rest. Your body can’t heal if it’s running on emergency energy.
Go outside. Light regulates serotonin and melatonin — the chemicals that govern your sense of stability.
Breathe. Long, slow exhales signal safety to the vagus nerve, helping the body leave fight-or-flight.
Jung might have said: return to the body, for it carries the wisdom of the unconscious.
Your body is not the enemy. It’s the doorway back to yourself.
3. Radical Acceptance: Stop Fighting Reality
When life breaks down, one of the hardest DBT skills to practise is radical acceptance — the art of acknowledging reality as it is, not as we wish it were.
This doesn’t mean liking what’s happened or giving up on change. It means letting go of the internal war: the constant “this shouldn’t be happening” that keeps us trapped in suffering.
From a clinical perspective, resistance activates the same stress circuits as physical danger. Accepting what is doesn’t erase pain — but it removes the secondary suffering of denial and self-blame.
From a Jungian view, this is the moment the ego bows to the Self — the deeper organising force that knows what must dissolve for growth to emerge.
Sometimes, we’re not meant to hold everything together. Sometimes, the collapse is the healing.
4. The Inner Fire: Meaning in the Darkness
Even when everything seems meaningless, something ancient inside you still burns — a spark of vitality that wants to keep going. Jung called this the Self: the totality of who we are, conscious and unconscious, light and dark.
When we fall apart, this inner Self often speaks through symbols — dreams, synchronicities, sudden emotional surges. It may whisper, “Rest.” Or it may push you to paint, to cry, to walk by the sea, to be alone.
Psychologically, these impulses are not random. They’re the nervous system’s way of discharging energy and reorganising emotion. Spiritually, they’re the psyche’s attempt to lead you home.
In DBT terms, this is wise mind — the integration of logic and emotion, reason and intuition. It’s the part of you that knows: I don’t need to understand everything right now. I just need to take the next right step.
5. Repairing from the Ground Up
When you feel like you’ve lost everything, healing begins with the smallest acts of care.
Try this slow rebuild:
Structure your day gently. Wake, eat, rest, and sleep around the same times. Rhythm calms the limbic system.
Move your body. Walk, stretch, dance. Physical motion releases emotional stagnation.
Connect with someone safe. Healing is relational. Share what’s happening with a friend, therapist, or community.
Rebuild mastery. In DBT, doing one small thing that gives a sense of achievement — cooking, cleaning, creating — helps rewire the brain’s reward system and rebuild confidence.
Find meaning in the mundane. Wash dishes, water plants, light a candle. Ritual brings stability.
In Jungian language, these are ways to integrate the fragments — to let the Self reassemble what has broken, not as it was, but as it’s meant to be.
When life collapses, it’s natural to look for purpose. But sometimes, purpose comes later. For now, your work is to build a sanctuary of small, grounded practices — to nourish body, mind, and spirit until meaning begins to reappear on its own.
7. The Rebirth
The truth is: we all fall apart, many times. Each collapse strips away a layer of who we were and offers us a chance to rebuild more consciously.
Psychologically, this is known as integration. Spiritually, it’s rebirth.
You do not have to be strong all the time. You only have to stay connected — to your breath, your body, your basic needs, and to the faint, steady pulse of life that continues beneath it all.
In Jung’s words:
“No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.”
When it all falls apart, the task is not to avoid the descent — it’s to trust that the roots you grow there will one day sustain your light.
