The Dark Night of the Soul Unwrapped

Anna’s dark night began in 2012. Facing a potential cancer diagnosis, her system – which had been in survival mode since childhood and her mother’s illness – crashed overnight. She experienced intense anxiety, terror and suffering, and thought she was going crazy – she “had no clue what was happening.” After six months, a friend lent her a book by Eckhart Tolle, and she started to understand that she was reconnecting with a deeper part of herself. Slowly, she realised that she was carrying intergenerational trauma, and that there was an intelligence to the process.
Amongst many other things, Anna and I talk about being unravelled and undone; the role of resistance; and learning how to stay with ourselves. We mention the uniqueness of each person’s journey, and how much we stumbled around; gradually moving towards greater wholeness; and touching into the deeper mystical level. We discuss meeting the shadow; wanting to be perfect; and the compassion that comes with seeing the actual nature of things. We also talk about our individual and collective madness, and how “we’re waking up from thousands of years of insanity.” Finally, we touch on love and power; becoming self-led; and knowing that – ultimately – the dark night is good news.

Anna Teggelaar guides people in self-healing and embodied inner work, helping them to make the process their own. Her work is rooted in the self-healing capacity of consciousness, and supports the integration of conditioning and stored emotional energy, so you can live more freely and from the heart. What began as her dark night of the soul in 2012 grew into a deep passion for the transformation of human consciousness. She offers online sessions, writes about healing, and has developed three practical guides to make inner work accessible and grounded in everyday life.
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Fiona Robertson is the author of The Dark Night of the Soul: A Journey from Absence to Presence, and Eve Was a Realist: Poems for the Untamed Heart. She works one to one with people who are going through a dark night or spiritual emergency, accompanying them in this challenging terrain as they rediscover and deepen into their real selves. She also offers a monthly dark night gathering group, and occasional workshops for therapists and counsellors.
Connect with Fiona

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Music by James Waring / Design by Adam McKillop / Artwork by Stefan Armoneit

A year on from our conversation in Episode 6, Hany and I explore the organic movement that comes after the dark night. Amongst other things, we talk about moving beyond the shoulds to flesh, blood and bone; the difference between presence and being present; and telling and untelling the story. We discuss the ebb and flow of the space of unconditionality, and how it eventually anchors itself within us; the shattering of identities – “you’re losing the masks that you have put on to survive life”; and how we come face to face with our “inner architecture”.
We touch on discovering a sense of resolve or steadfastness rather than effort or force; our bodies saying stop; and living in sensations rather than in concepts. We share our experience of self-betrayal, and how it’s abated now that we’re for ourselves; how depression and anxiety resulted from losing ourselves; and the self being fully itself. We mention thresholds; becoming raw and human for the first time; and the trustworthiness of the somatic superintelligence. Finally, we describe how there’s now place for hatred as well as love; how the dark night is about integration, not elimination; and how humankind needs to come out of fragmentation into humaneness.

Hany Ezzat has walked through the dark night of the soul and come out writing. A storyteller at his core, he crafts narratives that connect, challenge, and endure. With twenty-six years in branding and creative strategy, he builds with meaning - whether in business or in life. Reinvention isn’t a phase for him; it’s the way forward. R.A.W. is the work shaped from his own process — a way of witnessing people return to themselves without theatrics. The rest is still unfolding.
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Fiona Robertson is the author of The Dark Night of the Soul: A Journey from Absence to Presence, and Eve Was a Realist: Poems for the Untamed Heart. She works one to one with people who are going through a dark night or spiritual emergency, accompanying them in this challenging terrain as they rediscover and deepen into their real selves. She also offers a monthly dark night gathering group, and occasional workshops for therapists and counsellors.
Connect with Fiona

Mentions
Fiona quotes John Keats’s 1817 letter to his friend Benjamin Bailey: “O for a life of Sensations rather than of Thoughts!”
Hany quotes Kahlil Gibran’s line from The River Cannot Go Back: “It is said that before entering the sea a river trembles with fear.”

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You’re welcome to contact The Dark Night of the Soul Unwrapped via email: [email protected]
Music by James Waring / Design by Adam McKillop / Artwork by Stefan Armoneit

Fiona’s dark night began during Covid. After a sudden break up, she went to Mexico, and something started shifting – her “soul wanted solitude.” She felt like she was losing her mind as her whole way of being was slowly unearthed. After a while, she moved to Montreal, and then to an island; there was a pull towards “the soil in which I could dismantle and decompose.” During this time, she encountered her deepest attachment and existential woundings, and gradually found solace in not knowing.
Amongst many other things, we talk about what happens when the ‘should’ structure falls apart; starting to navigate by our bodies and hearts; and the dethroning of the mind that happens in the process. We discuss how layered the dark night is; the immense anger, grief and shame that came in; and how nothing worked “as a means to run away from it.” We touch into no longer being able to mask ourselves; becoming the wise older women that we needed; and the shock of actually being here, rather than being dissociated in some way. We also describe the gift of living it, whatever it is in the moment; and discovering simple, organic resources along the way.

Fiona Matalon is a somatic psychotherapist. She offers a holistic approach to those who are looking to deepen their relationship to themselves and to live a life that is led by their heart, soul and inner knowing. In sessions, together with her clients, she uses the intelligence of the body to allow a deeper exploraton that goes beyond the everyday mind. She brings her own deep lived experience and continuous learnings into her practice.
Connect with Fiona
Fiona Robertson is the author of The Dark Night of the Soul: A Journey from Absence to Presence, and Eve Was a Realist: Poems for the Untamed Heart. She works one to one with people who are going through a dark night or spiritual emergency, accompanying them in this challenging terrain as they rediscover and deepen into their real selves. She also offers a monthly dark night gathering group, and occasional workshops for therapists and counsellors.
Connect with Fiona

Mentions
Fiona mentions Jeannie Zandie.

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You’re welcome to contact The Dark Night of the Soul Unwrapped via email: [email protected]
Music by James Waring / Design by Adam McKillop / Artwork by Stefan Armoneit

Andrew’s dark night began in the early days of the pandemic, when a moment of spiritual insight cracked him open, and his “world started to come apart.” The person he thought he was dissolved, and he started to touch into an inner knowing that he “couldn’t go back from.” For a while, he was scared, and no longer understood who he was. Gradually, he got “comfortable sitting in this void,” and the parts of him that had been buried when he was a child started to surface. After a few years, he found himself making videos about the dark night of the soul, and related topics.
Amongst many other things, we discuss the difference between the dark night and depression; realising the buried parts of us were trying to protect us; and how we discovered “a depth of love that we never thought was there.” We touch on the power that emerges from the dark night, increasing our bandwidth, and building “spiritual muscles”; radical allowing and radical responsibility; and being more than “these fragile meat-sacks.” We also talk about developing inner confidence; loving and embracing the parts we’ve been hiding; and how the dark night becomes an ongoing evolution or ascension.

Andrew Reid has spent more than 22 years in the real estate industry. Nearly a year into the global pandemic in 2020, he experienced what many spiritual traditions call a dark night of the soul, a period that led him to question long-held beliefs about success, identity, and purpose. That journey sparked a deep exploration into consciousness, personal transformation, and the human potential to unlock our innate powers of creation. Today, through his platform Open Heart Living, Andrew shares insights on navigating life’s darkest moments and using them as catalysts for awakening, coherence, and meaningful change.
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Fiona Robertson is the author of The Dark Night of the Soul: A Journey from Absence to Presence, and Eve Was a Realist: Poems for the Untamed Heart. She works one to one with people who are going through a dark night or spiritual emergency, accompanying them in this challenging terrain as they rediscover and deepen into their real selves. She also offers a monthly dark night gathering group, and occasional workshops for therapists and counsellors.
Connect with Fiona

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You’re welcome to contact The Dark Night of the Soul Unwrapped via email: [email protected]
Music by James Waring / Design by Adam McKillop / Artwork by Stefan Armoneit

Following on from our previous conversation in episode 16, Kristy and I explore the mirroring of individual and collective dark nights, and how we’re currently living in a moment in which “the public body is waking up to the control mechanisms.” We talk about the hierarchical structures – both within and around us – that are desperate to hold onto power; the power-over conditioning that teaches us to ignore our own natural intelligence; and the nature of empire, and how it requires us to be numb or deadened.
We touch on – amongst many other things – reconnecting with the ancient aliveness that lives within us; the depravity of empire and how it impacts our nervous systems; and what happens when “we get to see the way the state has become internalised.” We discuss clarity, and the trust that comes from jumping into the abyss; becoming our own prison guards, and our unintentional complicity in our own degradation; and beginning to see that a much better life is possible, both individually and collectively. We also wonder at following the thread of the natural intelligence; the importance of dismantling both inner and outer empires for future generations; and wanting to experience how good it could be.

Kristy Johnsson has spent over 20 years diving deep into the historical, cultural, and spiritual roots of our collective crisis, doing federally-funded research in Alaska and teaching college students in Arizona, before ending up practicing somatic ecotherapy as a licensed therapist. She has been facilitating somatic sessions for a decade and is now using a somatic approach to help people turn the emotions they feel about world issues into power, insight, and creativity.
Connect with Kristy
Fiona Robertson is the author of The Dark Night of the Soul: A Journey from Absence to Presence, and Eve Was a Realist: Poems for the Untamed Heart. She works one to one with people who are going through a dark night or spiritual emergency, accompanying them in this challenging terrain as they rediscover and deepen into their real selves. She also offers a monthly dark night gathering group, and occasional workshops for therapists and counsellors.
Connect with Fiona
Mentions
Kristy mentions US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s speech at the Munich Security Conference in February 2025.
She also mentions Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse by Luke Kemp.

If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and share.
You’re welcome to contact The Dark Night of the Soul Unwrapped via email: [email protected]
Music by James Waring / Design by Adam McKillop / Artwork by Stefan Armoneit