One of the most cross-culturally pervasive, time-enduring ideas around health and wellness is that illness and dis-ease arise from spiritual intrusion. Even before we had the germ-model, there was the notion of spirit possession.
Though this lens has fallen out of vogue in the West, it’s coming around again. Some of psychotherapy’s newest, evidenced-based treatment modalities, much to their chagrin, have encountered the spirit-intrusion phenomena as a feature of exploring the internal landscape. Internal Family Systems, a modality with its own lab at Harvard University, coined the term ‘Unattached Burden’ (UB) for the occurrence of these seemingly conscious, independent energy formations living in the system. The IFS model which looks at the interrelationship of ‘parts’ in the system also uses that model for addressing these UBs in a human energy field.
While IFS is expert at tending the parts which belong within the system, its psychological orientation limits its ability to engage with its findings around UBs. The world of spirit is complex. Without an animist framework, much of the intricacies and possibilities for action are not tangible and available.
A broad, animist lens that allies with multidimensional otherworldly beings, such as the Compassionate Depossession approach is the missing piece to accompany IFS’s human focused approach. This blend offers a gentle way to maximize healing to for both the human and the bound spirit.
The transition of a bound energy from one place to another is an opportunity to bring maximal healing and clarity to what may be a thousand years of suffering. If we don’t treat the experience as a sacred chance to offer healing to the animate whole of the universe we pass the burden of suffering to someone else. We need to accord sensitivity and respect to the unseen world to be in true harmony with our breathing world. Working with spiritual allies and with the full weight of the animate universe allows us to bring a type of healing not possible by using a purely psychological lens.
What an animist lens lets us do:
Invite the right allies and psychopomp beings
Petition for sovereignty
Renegotiate vows
Unravel curses
Offer closure!
Open the right thresholds
Bring in the blessing field
Untangle bound spirits
Work with multiple enmeshed entities
Clear negative projections
Make what wasn’t possible before, possible now.
Be a date with destiny
How common are UBs:
It is normal for a human being to have strands of foreign energetic consciousness living within their physical system. UBs function in energetic bodies similarly to how bacteria and viruses do in the physical system. Like how someone with dormant Epstein-Barr, chickenpox, or other herpes simplex viruses experiences an energetic drag and obscure symptoms, many intrusions create low-grade systemic unpleasantness while leaving a person mostly able to function. Likewise, as someone can become incapacitated from a viral or bacterial infection, so can someone with spirit intrusion.
Signs of spirit intrusion:
Addictive tendencies and binges
Suicidal tendencies
Depression, anxiety, obsessions
Intrusive, disturbing thoughts
Night terrors
Chronic misfortune
Feeling like the universe is targeting you
Verbal tics
Mood swings
Complex problem areas on the body
Whatever the severity, we use the same compassionate curiosity to offer help and blessing.
How do these energies get in?
Illnesses, surgeries, medicine ceremonies, early developmental trauma, sex (consensual or otherwise), boundary ruptures of any kind, ancestral binds, past lives, broken vows, childhood parts bargaining for power—basically, when we open ourselves up from not-enoughness and allow access to our systems, all sorts of energy comes rushing in.
For all the pain, there is the opportunity for healing.
As my teacher Betsy says, “It’s always a blessing and it always works”.
If you’d like to explore what IFS-Informed Compassionate Depossession could look like for you, I’m offering a free 15 minute consult to explore this possibility further.