I’M A SHAMANIC PRACTITIONER AND I MEET A LOT OF INTERESTING PEOPLE IN MY JOB. THE CLIENTS ARE A VARIED BUNCH AND I’M GRATEFUL AND HONOURED TO DO THE WORK.

However, it is specifically in one particular area of my work that I am most fortunate. I get to meet all sorts of possessing spirits that inhabit the bodies of my clients, when my clients come to have these beings removed. This has made for interesting insights into the nature of reality in the unseen realms, one that is confirmed time and again by my Helping Spirits (divine beings that guide me in my work).

The process for this work is a treatment called ‘Compassionate Depossession’ and it was taught to me over 20 years ago by a wonderful teacher named Betsy Bergstrom ( https://www.spirit-wise.com/ ). Betsy still teaches this work and she has taught many shamanic practitioners all over the world how to do this valuable treatment.

What Is Possession Illness?

Possession illness is where living beings that are not us are attached to, or are within, our energy field. We pick up all sorts of foreign energies as we go about our daily lives. The common cold is an example. But where ‘foreign energies’ generally and ‘possession illnesses’ differ, is that most foreign energies are not conscious beings in their own right. In possession illness, the attached energies are always spirits, or beings, in their own right, such as a person, an animal, a nature spirit, etc.

Possession Illness is Real

Aside from Hollywood depictions of exorcisms and the like, there hasn’t been much credence put into possession illness as a concept or a reality in the West, but spirit possession has been with humanity since time immemorial. For as long as there have been humans, there has been possession illness. For 100,000 years, possession illness has been known to be a reality in indigenous cultures, with some variation on ‘casting spirits out’ having been known as a “cure” as recently as biblical times, when Jesus was believed to have done exactly that. But in the West, mainstream psychology made a breakthrough in 2023, when IFS psychologist Robert Falconer brought out a book called ‘The Others Within Us’, promoting the reality of possession illness as a very real thing that, when treated with compassionate depossession, brought immediate and permanent results.

Let me tell you a story of a man who came to see me many years ago with a pain in his arm. Let’s say his name was Brian. Brian had been referred to me by a friend and colleague who taught Gyrotonics, but who had limited success with Brian and felt that a more energetic remedy was needed.

When he came to see me, Brian couldn’t lift his left elbow higher than his shoulder. I did some energy work on him and found a huge intrusion attached by a cord to his shoulder that transpired to be the spirit of a woman of middle age who stood upright but appeared to be in some kind of sleeping trance. I stopped working and we chatted for a while and he told me that his wife had recently passed away after a long struggle with alcoholism. I asked him to tell me how he felt about his wife and he told me of his deep love for her and how he missed her very much. The more he talked about her, the more the radiance of his love for her emanated from his heart and along this cord to the image of the sleeping woman hovering by his side. Once the energy of his love reached her, she woke up and opened her eyes and she saw that I could see her. I asked her if she knew where she was and if she knew this gentleman in my studio. She did know the man and felt his love for her very much and she knew that she was his wife. We discussed the possibilities of why she might not have her own body at this point and she came to understand and accept that she had died. We also worked out that she had died in her sleep, while in a drunken coma and had ‘remained’ that way, attaching herself to her husband’s energy because it felt ‘familiar’, safe and comfortable and had only woken from this ‘coma’ minutes before by the love she felt from her husband entering her energy field.

The rest of the session involved working with Brian, his wife and the angelic realm to have this woman brought into the upper world to have her after-death healing happen. In the discussion prior to this occurring, we agreed that if she wished, once her healing was complete, that she could come back and be a ‘spirit guide’ or helper of sorts for her husband if they both wished, and Brian and his wife both agreed that they were very keen for this to happen. After his wife left with the helping angels, the atmosphere in the room was very much lighter and brighter and clearer; less ‘fug’ in the room. Before Brian left the session, he was able to lift his elbow above his head. I saw Brian six months later for an unrelated issue and the issue with his arm had not returned and he confirmed being comforted, feeling his wife close by and watching over him.

I’m not here to convince anyone of the extraordinary things I’ve seen, witnessed first hand, in my work. But I can say with certainty that spirits are real and that possession illness does actually happen and that when someone with attachments has that energy removed, the effects are usually instant, permanent and can be life-changing.

How Do We Know if We Have Possession Illness?

Nearly everyone I have ever met has something foreign attached to them, mostly without ever knowing it. Most of us can get through our lives without having to know anything about these beings. However, a common tell-tale sign that we have a type of possession illness occurring, is that we can notice symptoms that are distinctly “not our nature”.

I remember cycling home in New York City one night when I noticed two larger ladies walking side by side on the footpath up ahead of me. Without a doubt, I was in the wrong, cycling on the footpath. But it was dark and even though the street lights were lit, I had no lights on my bike, so I didn’t want to take my chances getting hit by a car, so I took the footpath. Slowing down in order to navigate around the ladies, I heard a distinct, gruff, voice in my head rudely telling the women to ‘get out of the way’, followed by a derogatory remark about their size. As a long-term feminist with awareness about the oppression women face about body image and their appearance, I knew instantly that this voice speaking in my head was not me. I immediately stopped the bike and stood still, listening for the voice to speak again. And it did. It complained again about the women taking up the whole footpath, and I responded, “they’re entitled to do that. And it’s me in the wrong, here.” I noticed that the voice was a man’s voice, maybe in his 50’s. He dismissed my comment with a grunt, and while we had started up a conversation, of sorts, he said, in a demanding kind of tone, “and why don’t we go get a real drink?” In my mind’s eye, I saw a glass of whiskey. I smiled to myself. With mild relief, I knew exactly what was happening, even though I had no idea where I had picked this spirit up from (and I still don’t). I never drink whiskey, or any hard liquor, so I knew this surly spirit was annoyed at me for not satiating his desires. I called in the helping spirits to help this gentleman to be removed, and he was, and I never heard his voice again.

While this case of possession illness was random and easily detected, often the foreign, negative voice in the head sounds like our own voice and we can confuse it for us. The question to ask ourselves is if the character that we are encountering is in keeping with “our own nature”.

Aside from hearing voices, possession illness can be non-verbal and you might’t know the beings are there until they are removed by a professional. However, the feeling one has in the body, after compassionate depossession, is such a joy, such a bodily relief to your energy system, that the body invariably is glad the foreign energies have been removed.

What Type of Spirits Possess Humans?

The spectrum of spirits that possess humans is as broad as the range of humans themselves, and more so. The vast majority of possessing spirits are benign, usually family members, often not knowing they are dead or where they are, because sometimes they feel ‘hooked’ in some way to this realm because they’re ‘lost’, or because of unfinished business or some injustice that they perceive.

But there are many different types of possessing spirits that are not human; I’ve met animals of all sorts, prehistoric creatures, faeries, angels, aliens (beings from other planets or star systems), and more, all on a spectrum from totally benign (albeit parasitic) to more intentionally harmful. Of course, not all spirits possess humans.

Many spirits in this (earth) realm are either spirits that should have crossed over and are attached to a thing or a building (haunting), or are not ‘un-crossed over’ spirits at all, meaning instead that they are spirits that belong here, such as the spirit of a tree, or a living person’s guardian angel, etc.

Trauma and Possession Illness

It’s a curiosity for me that many clients of mine, with trauma, also have had possession illness that in some way was directly related to the trauma. Either they had a ‘negative self-talk’ voice in their head that they thought was their own mind talking, but it wasn’t, or something more sinister. There has been a correlation between some types of possessing spirits and some types of trauma and I will address these in the course of this series.

The purpose behind delving into possession illness in this series of blogs, is to help identify when and why possession illness might be occurring, but crucially, what we can do about it. And the good news is that, once we see it, we continue to see it wherever it occurs and we are rarely deceived by it again. The intention behind informing the reader about possession illness and about some of the realities in the unseen realms, is so that they are empowered and can hold their sovereignty sacred, and to be free from uninvited influence that is not theirs.