Demon Possession, What Are Your Experiences?

[deepblue]

I don't know if an experience I had would qualify as "demon possession", but here goes:

 

Four years ago I had a mental breakdown. For two weeks afterwards I would wake up drenched in sweat. The night sky went from a bright black to a dull black, and daytime scenes looked like a picture postcard. After the two weeks were ended I started going out of control. My movements were erratic and confused, however I could still function pretty normally. One night I switched on the bed lamp and started reading through Matthew 12. When I got to the bit about blasphemy of the Holy Spirit I felt a surge of evil go through me. Then something inside felt like it came out of my eyes, resisting every word on the printed page. It was automatic, something I had no control over. Then I looked at my hands and they looked deep red, almost purple in the half-light. A thick smell of sulphur clung to them, thick and deep. The next day I looked in the mirror. The skin of my face felt pasty and my mouth looked like it was fixed in a permanent snarl. I felt dirty inside, like a condemned man about to be hanged. I thought I was Judas incarnate. That whole day I felt totally evil (it's hard to explain exactly how that feels). In the weeks and months that followed all this gradually faded and my appearance returned to normal, but it would take years for the suicidal thoughts to disappear.

 

I know it sounds totally crazy, but all these things happened, and I don't know how to explain them, other than that they were some abnormal manifestation of something deep in the psyche. In medical terms, it was a "psychotic episode", followed by severe depression.

 

It all started with a break inside. Whether the religious explanation is really true I'm not sure. It could be nonsense but I am not ready to cast off a belief in some kind of God yet.

[Franko47]

Well, I'm certainly familiar with the whole anxiety "maze". I lived with it for quite some time before I even consulted a doctor. I would make up excuses; usually something about an acute "indigestion syndrome" so that I could pass on certain social events when my anxiety was running high.

 

Ironically, I'm pretty good in emergencies. I've performed as a musician (earlier in my life) in front of hundreds; for a while I was in bands doing regular club gigs. Anticipation anxiety is easier to handle when you know that as soon as you get rolling, you'll feel better. The worst anxiety is when it has no rhyme or reason, like driving along on a nice spring day and suddenly, "BAM". I used to have to pull over to the side of the road and walk around for a few minutes to recover my breathing, since at that time I suffered from panic attacks that caused that tightness in the chest. It's sort of a drowning feeling, or like a feeling that you might even be having a heart attack or something.

 

Here's a good one. I know an intern at our local hospital ER. He gets more people in after "Sunday Service" complaining of chest pains, and breathing problems than at any other time of the week. To say that many religious venues are not deliberately trying to make you feel anxiety would be a hopeless lie. Practically everything they go on about is to make you feel anxiety, hopeless, weak, guilty, and worthless. It's become such a casual system of conditioning that many pastors and ministers aren't even aware of the reactions they can bring about in their congregation.

 

Likely the worst part of fighting anxiety disorder is the distinct embarassment that I often got from it. I still in fact, suffer from occasional bouts, but now I only drop an Xanax or two when I need to. But even as someone who has suffered from just mild anxiety disorders for many years, I can figure how bad it must be for those who have it on even a worse scale.

 

It's always frustrating when "other people" don't understand it. Despite the fact that millions of folks in (North America) suffer from some kind of nervous or emotional disorder. Pyscho-therapy didn't work for me; the psychologist ended up telling me his problems. A little medication does the trick, but I still wish I didn't have to go there.

 

Whatever the case, don't let it eat at your self-esteem. Sometimes it's just a genetic nervous system deal. At least I don't fly off into bouts of rage like some of these "normal" people do. Then they get hammered. No, I guess there's no anxiety happening there.

[Deva]

No wonder Buddhist practices are demonized by these groups, as Buddhist practices are systematically deactivating the very mechanisms these groups so hungrily misuse.

 

That is exactly right. Mindfulness training is the antidote to this Christian indoctrination and brainwashing. It does take time, but if you do meditation everyday you can see your thought process more clearly. This is one major reason why I became attracted to it.

 

These Christian groups don't want you to really see things as they are. They don't want you to know yourself and the way your mind works. They only want their own programs running in your head all the time. Damaging programs that say "I am an unworthy sinner" "I am demon possessed" or "If I am not a believer something terrible will happen to me." When you see it for what it actually is - programming and nothing else - these programs may remain but they are disarmed.

[Guest HourglassStargazer]

Hello!

 

I do have a demon possession story!

 

Long ago, when I was seventeen years old, I began dating a young man. He wanted me to meet his mother. She was very nice to me, and seemed to enjoy my company. About the second time I met her (maybe third, it was a long time ago I can't remember so well) she layed her hands on me and started praying in tongues. She said I had a demon attatched to me, and continued to pray in tongues. heydiddlediddlethecatandthefiddlethecowjumpedoverthemoondemonbegoneinthenameofJAYSUS!!!!!

 

Of course, this is not how her prayer went verbatim, but I think you understand how it might as well have been said. I was embarassed. I didn't know what to do. Was there a demon on me? Why was she doing that? I had never seen anyone do that.... I had only dated her son a couple of times... was she trying to get rid of me?

 

So, a couple of days later, I came back to visit them. She said the demon left me and was now haunting their home. She said she didn't blame me, but it was a powerful demon. She said her 10 year old saw a shadow of it dragging chains in the livingroom (he nodded solemly as she told the story) She proceeded to take me to their basement and show me random water stains on the wall that she claimed had not been there before. She said most looked like screaming faces, and assured me they were not there before.

 

I never went back over there, and needless to say, things couldn't work out between her son and myself. I did believe in god at that time in my life, but I was not a church goer, and had NEVER experienced anything like that. I had only experienced Catholic and Baptist churches at that point in my life, I was very unsettled. I never quite understood what happened there.

[FiddlingAround]

Well, it's not exactly a story of demon possesion, but it is my family's demon story, so I'll offer it up as close to the version originally told to me that I can.

 

My grandmother's sister started to get into some bad stuff (they never told me what; maybe she was thinking for herself; I don't know. Anyway...) The family met to pray for her, then split up and went their separate ways. When she arrived home, my grandmother was seized with the conviction that her other sister, Dorothy, who had been at the meeting, needed prayer. Dorothy, meanwhile was still in the car, hearing something growling and watching the glass on the driver's side window bend inward.

 

Over the next few months, both households saw some strange things happening. At Dorothy's, the sliding glass door began to open by itself. At my grandmother's, the family began to hear footsteps in the night and saw a shadowy figure roaming the halls. Early on, my grandmother told the form she wasn't afraid of it and that was the end of the happenings there. At Dorothy's, supposedly, the events went on for years and they are afraid to speak of it to this day.

 

Writing this down was really very helpful for me. I haven't wanted to call my family delusional, so I've reserved judgement on the events while rejecting their explanation. But there is one member of the family who is delusional: my grandmother, who is a crazy, abusive narcissist. And this really reads like one of those "Lois is the hero" stories that we've all learned to disregard. Small wonder my aunt and mother, children at the time, were caught up in it, but most of this account can probably be traced to her incessant need to feel important. I never heard about it from an outside perspective because I was told Dorothy was too afraid to talk about it.

[Zyva]

 

Up until last week, I was having them nearly daily, for about 8 months. They had tapered off a bit the last month or two because I had adjusted my circumstances. I've been free of them for a week because I adjusted my thinking.

 

I'm waking up from a nightmare I've lived in my entire life. And life is good.

 

Phanta

Congratulations!!! I'm so happy for you!

Adjusting your thinking is so much more important than adjusting your circumstances, you can control your thinking, you can't control your circumstances. When you've been free for a while you should expose yourself to a trigger. Give yourself something to work on. If it doesn't work at first don't be discouraged. Conquer your triggers one at the time, keep asking yourself "What's the worst that can happen?"

You can do it, never doubt that. If I can do it, you can do it. I look forward to hearing about your progress.