Spirit Overshadowing
Most of the time, our difficulties arise from our own past life issues, current choices, and the people we interact with. However, difficulties do occasionally arise due to the actions of other beings in spirit. This tends to happen in two ways: the first is a loving, but confused, spirit who hangs around their loved ones long after they should have moved on. This often happens in traumatic or sudden deaths, or in any spirit that wasn’t quite ready to cross over, especially if they have heavy emotions about their passing, or are convinced that their family still needs them. Unfortunately, when these spirits stay close to their loved ones, they can overshadow the living with their own pain, intensifying the experience of grief and depression for those left behind. They often need to be counseled to see their effects on the living, and encouraged to peacefully pass on.
Second, there are sometimes folks who are particularly open to being directed or guided by their ancestors, but not always in beneficial ways. I’ve seen this show up in intergenerational trauma from Native folks and families of Holocaust survivors; ancestors want justice, or want their descendent to work for their people, sometimes pushing their descendant to over-extend themselves as they try to fulfill the ancestors’ agenda. In these cases, those ancestors need to be helped to release their own pain, and realize their descendant’s life is their own. Sometimes we have to set boundaries with these spirits, and assert the needs of the living. Usually, as someone does their own healing, it often heals the wounds back through the ancestral lines.