Spiritual crisis and the dark night of the soul

What is the dark night of the soul?

The dark night of the soul is a phrase for a season in which faith, prayer or a sense of meaning that used to sustain someone seems to disappear. People describe dryness, emptiness, a feeling that God is absent or silent, and a loss of the comfort their spiritual practices once gave. It can be deeply distressing, particularly for people whose faith has been central to their lives.

The phrase comes from a specific source, and in its original sense it did not mean depression. It meant a stage of spiritual growth that is painful to go through. Today the term is used much more loosely, for almost any spiritual or existential crisis. Both uses are worth understanding.

Where does the phrase come from?

John of the Cross, born Juan de Yepes in Castile in 1542, was a Carmelite friar and poet who worked with Teresa of Ávila to reform the Carmelite order. In December 1577 he was seized by friars of his own order who opposed the reform and imprisoned in a monastery in Toledo, where he was kept for about nine months before escaping in August 1578. He died in 1591.

The poem that opens with the line "In a dark night", in Spanish Noche oscura, is associated with that period. After his escape he wrote two prose commentaries on it, The Ascent of Mount Carmel and The Dark Night, which explain it as an account of the soul's path to union with God. In his description, God leads a person through a night in which familiar consolations are taken away, first in the senses and then more deeply in the spirit, so that faith rests on God rather than on feelings about God.

John himself distinguished this experience from other causes of dryness. In The Dark Night he notes that a loss of consolation in prayer can also come from carelessness, or from melancholy and other bodily causes, and he offers signs for telling them apart. In other words, the person who coined the term did not assume that every dark season was spiritual.

Is it a spiritual crisis or depression?

This is often the most important practical question, and it does not have to be either-or. A spiritual crisis can bring on depression, depression can drain faith of its warmth, and both can happen at once.

A 2010 study in the journal Transcultural Psychiatry, by Glòria Durà-Vilà and colleagues, followed a community of contemplative Augustinian nuns in Spain. Experiences that might have been recorded as symptoms of a depressive episode were understood by the nuns within the dark night narrative, as a process of reflection and spiritual growth. The authors concluded that clinicians should take such existential and religious frameworks seriously rather than pathologizing them automatically. That is a caution against dismissing faith, not a reason to overlook real depression.

How does the DSM treat spiritual problems?

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association, includes a category for religious and spiritual problems among other conditions that may be a focus of clinical attention. These are not mental disorders. The category exists so that a clinician can record that a person's faith struggle is the focus of care without labeling it an illness.

The category first appeared in DSM-IV in 1994, following a proposal by psychiatrists and psychologists including David Lukoff, Francis Lu and Robert Turner, and it carried the code V62.89 in earlier editions. In the current DSM-5-TR it is coded Z65.8. An update published in September 2025 renamed it Moral, Religious, or Spiritual Problem and describes examples such as distressing experiences involving the loss or questioning of faith, problems associated with conversion to a new faith, and questioning of spiritual values.

How therapy can help in a spiritual crisis

Therapy can offer steady company through a season that often feels unbearably solitary. A therapist can help you name what you are experiencing, look after sleep, relationships and daily life while it lasts, and notice if depression, anxiety or grief is adding to the weight. They can also help you think about what the crisis may be asking of you, in your own terms and your own tradition.

A faith-sensitive therapist will not tell you that your experience is only chemistry, and will not tell you that it is only spiritual. If you also want a companion focused specifically on your prayer life, spiritual direction vs. therapy explains how the two differ and how some people use both. Related pages cover doubt and changing beliefs and grief and faith.

If a dark season includes thoughts of suicide or harming yourself, please reach out today. In an emergency call 911, and for crisis support in the US call or text 988.

Working through it with Laura Bass

Laura Bass is a Charlotte psychotherapist working with adults and older teens in individual counseling. She studied Spiritual Direction at the Haden Institute and is an Ordained Minister through the Alliance of Divine Love, and her framing is broad rather than tied to one denomination. She keeps psychotherapy and her complementary work as separate pathways, and clients choose what to include.

If you would like to talk about a spiritual crisis in therapy, ask Laura how she would approach it, read about her psychotherapy practice, or return to the faith and therapy guide.

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