A recent email conversation got me thinking again about the immense value of allowing oneself to completely fall apart at least once in one’s life. When we examine the lives of people who have made a real contribution to society we often find that they cracked at some point — they broke, couldn’t hold it together, had a psychosomatic illness that conveniently put them to bed for a few months, or a period of crying uncontrollably, or had to get away from everything and decided to walk across the Sahara or similar.

These are the lives we know about because biographies and autobiographies have been written, the crack-up has been recorded — but I think in each life there is a time and place for a breaking up of old ways of thinking, and while sometimes this can happen gracefully and gradually, more often than not it has to happen with a certain amount of difficulty because, to paraphrase Leonard Cohen, we have to crack to let the light in.

It seems then that cracking up is an essential episode in most fully lived lives. You don’t get to cook as a person, to become interesting and authentic, without cracking up in some way, at some point. People who suppress this urge to break down, who hold it all together no matter what, often age quickly. Their psyche dulls, goes grey, and they lose their spark. It’s hard to relate to them and for them to relate fully and openly to others, because they have so much gunk and junk festering in their energy field.

If we can find a healthy way to break down and break all the crap up, a way in which we have just enough of the right kind of support, then we can be renewed and able to do things that stymied us before. We become ourselves in a deeper, more satisfying way. But cracking-up usually arises with deep fear, in the crackee and their loved ones, so that can mean hospitalisation and/or panic, which can be unnecessary and make matters worse. There is a distinction to be made between a healthy crack-up and a damaging one, but sometimes that distinction is not so easy to make.

I had a major crack-up when I was 33. I was confined to bed with a mystery illness that developed after travelling in Nepal and doing spiritual practice in the Himalaya. There’s a bigger story in that but for now I want to concentrate on the crack-up itself, not the apparent cause. I was deeply upset and utterly lost. I felt persecuted, completely uncertain, and cried all the time. I could not sleep but also was exhausted and had no physical energy at all. My nervous system collapsed and my body shook at the slightest provocation. I couldn’t watch television — it was too stimulating. I could read and I could write. That was it. So I wrote my way through it. (I have a dozen or so notebooks from that time, tucked away in a trunk. One day I’ll be ready to read them again.)

After this period, I was able to be creative in a way I had simply found impossible before. I had known since I was a small child that I wanted to write, but my excellent education and my own desire to be a good girl had paralysed my creativity. After the breakdown I was able to own the creative part of my nature and began to develop it consciously, going to art classes and writing workshops, and devoting myself to what I had previously considered to be an indulgence.

Perhaps if you grow up in an enlightened environment and have a really sensitive education you might be able to self-actualize without cracking up, but I had a lot of rigidity in my thinking from my schooling and social background. I also had a deep desire to live fully and to have an interesting and creative life, so all that rigidity just had to crack open first. In retrospect I feel deeply blessed by that experience, traumatic as it was at the time.

I was lucky. I had very good friends who trusted my process and supported me. No one ever suggested I was mentally ill, no one tried to get me into hospital. I was old enough and already had enough tools of introspection to be able to go crazy quietly and without damaging myself or anyone else.

I’ve been reading the biographies of 18th and 19th century women writers recently. There’s always a crack-up. And they went for it, smelling salts and tears and staying in bed for months. No anti-depressants and staving the whole thing off. No, they had the whole nine yards of emotional drama and release, and then afterwards always a new book, new poems — genuine creativity.

I don’t want to romanticise the Romantics, nor my own or anyone else’s crack-up, and I would wish the gentlest and kindest of falling-apart on my fellow beings. I am sure we can break down and crack up faster now, because we do everything faster, and with more awareness, because we have a century of psychology under our collective belt, but I do think that there are times in life when taking to one’s bed and letting go of functioning normally, even for a short while, is an urge stemming from a deep wisdom in the psyche, and that we do well to honour.