Q: Everything feels so bleak, I cry all the time. How can I tell if I'm in the process your book describes or if I just need therapy?

A: A: The real question behind your question is: “Am I breaking down or waking up?”

On the surface, you’re asking how to tell whether your current suffering means you’re entering the dismantling described in Jumpers, or if you’re just in need of psychological support. And beneath that, what you’re really asking is whether the collapse you’re experiencing has meaning, or if it’s simply pain. The false self tries to make the unknown safe again by labeling it.

In the Phases of Jumpers, what you describe, bleakness, frequent crying, loss of interest or connection, is characteristic of the Disruption Phase. The “trapdoor” terrain where the structures that once held your identity—beliefs, relationships, self-concept, begin to fail. This is the phase where the structure starts to buckle, where old beliefs fail to comfort and you’re no longer able to perform the dreamstate version of yourself, but not yet sure who or what remains. 

This phase often feels like depression or breakdown, and the false self will interpret it as such because that’s all it knows. Therapy, in that context, often becomes an attempt to repair what’s falling apart instead of letting it fall.

What’s being asked in dismantling is not to fix the pain, but to see what it exposes. The crying, the bleakness, the futility—these are not obstacles to awakening, they’re the evidence that the old scaffolding is no longer tenable.

And yes, the dream will offer you exits: therapy, spirituality, productivity, purpose, coping, healing, “self-care.” Those are not inherently bad things. They are stability systems. They keep dream characters functional. They keep families intact and bodies alive and the world turning.

If what you want is relief, get therapy. Nothing wrong with that. 

But if what you want is truth, crying and despair are not bugs, they are features. You are watching the scaffolding fall.

In dismantling you’re not going crazy. You’re losing illusions. Those two things can feel identical until you’ve been through it.

You’re asking the right question. Not “what’s happening to me?” but “which part of me is falling apart?”

If you can still function enough to care for your body, your commitments, and the basic shape of your life, you're likely in real dismantling.

If you cannot function at all, if your nervous system is flooded, if you feel unsafe inside your own mind, then support is not a detour; it’s scaffolding.

Human Adulthood isn’t white-knuckling reality until you ascend. It’s responsibility, it’s discernment, it’s knowing when to stand and when to stabilize.

Stabilizing the organism is not betrayal, it’s maintenance of the vehicle you're waking up inside of. There’s no prize for suffering more than necessary. This process isn’t martyrdom, t’s maturation.

The false self collapses in panic. The adult regains footing and continues.

Burn the lies, not the house.

So the real movement isn’t toward an answer, it’s toward honesty.

“What exactly is dying right now, a belief, or my stability?”

“What part of me still believes this should feel better than it does?”

That’s the doorway.