No exorcisms

Here is a little tidbit about me. I love all things supernatural. I believe in ghosts because my best friend in high school lived in a haunted house. I saw things that cannot be explained in any other way. Ask my real estate agent…. the only important thing I need to know before I look at a house I might buy is… is it haunted? I believe the home I currently live in is haunted. One night I was in bed and the closed bedroom door flung all the way open. My son and I looked at each other in disbelief. No explanation.

One day as I was working from home by myself, I walked out of the living room and back in and the christmas tree was blinking in different colors. The thing is, I had put the setting on non blinking white lights. I thought it was weird but didn’t think anything of it. I turned the tree off. When I walked back in the living room it was on again. I was scared, not going to lie. But I also knew that I needed to acknowledge the presence of something else. I spoke to the ghost, out loud. I said, “Listen, I know you are here, I don’t mind. We ARE going to have a problem though, if you keep showing me you are here. We can live here together in peace as long as you don’t let me know you are here. I will have to get someone to make you leave, I live here now, so lets live in peace together.” Never had another instance of door opening or tree light twinkling. I thought… maybe it just wanted to know I knew it was there.

Definitely.

If you think of it, often people go to mental health treatment trying to “solve” a problem. Maybe it’s a panic attack, maybe grieving a bad breakup, maybe processing trauma. At the end of the day, solving the problem is part of the work but most of it is learning how to live with it. When people come to me, I am not looking to exorcise their demons. I am hoping they can recognize and learn to live with them. I hope they can take out the struggles to look at, observe, and file away. An exorcism is not realistic nor effective. You can’t ever really get rid of your past. It isn’t who you are but what you’ve experienced.

I went on a ghost tour in New Orleans. One ghost story stuck with me. There was a restaurant in the city that had a table set up that was called the “ghost table.” You could sit there, but one chair was required to be left empty for the ghost that lived in the restaurant. The backstory was that there was a previous owner of the restaurant that experienced success followed by the restaurant’s demise. The owner killed himself because of the financial disaster it caused him. He couldn’t escape it, so he escaped his life. Except that he was still apparently there, in ghost form, when the new owner took over after his death. There were waitstaff being tripped and dropped their trays on top of patrons, there were dishes being mysteriously broken, and the restaurant once again was headed into financial ruin. The new owner was determined to get to the bottom of the issue and since the things happening were unexplainable, got a medium to come in and see what was going on. The medium connected to the old owner who had killed himself. She said that he felt angry that the business had been going well and because he hadn’t been successful with the restaurant, he didn’t want anyone else to be either. She suggested that she “make room” for the ghost of the old owner and invite him to sit at the restaurant table, complete with a glass of wine and a bread basket. The new owner set a place for him at the table, spoke to him, invited him to be part of the success of the restaurant, and to stay there. Guess what happened next? No more tripping waitstaff, delicious food, no breaking dishes or glasses, just amazing food and a cool dining experience to dine with a ghost. This restaurant still is up and running and has an overflow of reservations every night.

You know where I’m going with this, right?

Make room for your struggles and the ghosts of your past. Recognize them. See how they fit into your life and who you are or who you’ve become. You can hire someone, like a therapist, to help you make sense of these things and how they fit into your life. But you don’t need to exorcise them or cure them. In fact, that might be impossible. But you can learn to roll and live with them in a way that is comfortable for you. A therapist is like a cleaner for your brain. We help take things out, look at them, assess where they are helping and hurting, and how to organize them and file away.

This works for childhood trauma, defense mechanisms we developed but are no longer helping in the way that was intended, and regular everyday struggles.

Leave the ghosts for haunted houses, like mine. I’m used to working with them.

No exorcisms needed.