Haunted by His Sister's Ghost

     I have successfully used biofeedback in hypnosis sessions to help clients identify repressed emotions and to control relaxation and hypnosis. One such case involved a kind of haunting. George was a healthy young man in his late twenties who came to me for smoking cessation. He told me he had tried to quit many times but had always failed. During the interviewing process he and I talked about his job and family. I pieced together a history of my client and began the process of looking for clues to the difficulty he was having. I had connected a thermister to his finger to record skin temperatures and a GSR to his other finger to record electro-dermal resistance changes. When we are under stress or repressing emotions our bodies react in certain ways. Recording those changes during an interviewing process is similar to how a lie detector works. I didn’t think George was lying to me, but I suspected he really didn’t know what was causing him to have so much trouble quitting smoking.
     As we talked he mentioned his younger sister and I noticed a significant change in the readings. But as soon as we went on to other subjects the readings returned to the norm, the baseline. We chatted some more and once again there was a reference to his sister that seemed insignificant, but showed a reaction that was very strong. So I asked him to tell me a little about his sister.
     George and his younger sister, Kathleen, had been close while growing up. But where George had been successful, easily finding a good career, stability, and happiness in life, Kathleen struggled. Her life seemed like one long train wreck and she entered therapy and was diagnosed with clinical depression. The worse her problems became the more she leaned upon her big brother for support, both emotionally and financially. George did his best, but he had a family and a career that demanded most of his time and energy. One evening, Kathleen called him and began her usual litany of complaints and problems. George was tired and his own day hadn’t gone well. He cut her off and told her he would talk to her again when he had more time.
     Sometime during that night, Kathleen took her own life. George found out that he had been the last person to talk to her before she committed suicide. George felt guilty about Kathleen’s death. He told me that sometimes he felt that she was with him, hovering around him.
     “When do you feel that Kathleen is with you, George?” I asked.
     “Oh just when I am sitting quietly by myself, you know, taking a break or relaxing a little,” he replied.
     “And how do you handle it?” I asked.
     “I find something to do to keep me occupied,” was his reply.
     “Such as lighting up a cigarette?” I asked.
     “Yes, it seems to help push the memory down, to squash it, if that makes any sense.”
     It did make sense because I had heard other clients describe their habit as a way to push things away. I also realized that every time he relived that experience he was creating another polypeptide, a stored memory, that was reinforcing his habit and his method of dealing with it. One of the problems with repressed memories is that they reinforce themselves the more we repress them, though they will find an outlet of some kind, such as smoking, in George’s case. If we repress a memory too long it may also present as a physical problem because those polypeptides do have an effect upon our health.
     I explained that to George and during a particularly emotional hypnosis session I had him say goodbye to Kathleen and to ask her to let him go. We worked on confidence building and forgiveness and George successfully stopped smoking and learned to deal with his feelings in a more open and positive way. Thereafter, whenever George thought of his sister and her tragic death, he no longer had the negative perception that it was his fault. He realized that he had done his best and was only human and the suicide, as painful as it was, had been a part of his sister’s path. George’s perception changed, not the events, but it still had a major impact upon his health and future.
     If you will recall the case of Marianne, she could not speak about things that had happened to her in her relationship with her abusive father. The memories she carried with her were stored in her physical body and in her energy field. The throat chakra is where we store and experience shame. Every time she recalled those memories the energy blockage choked her and she could not speak. Each time that happened it reinforced the experience and it became worse. That is a graphic example of what happens to each of us to some degree as we live our lives.
     We experience our world by the continuous flow of energy to and from our energy field and body. As we have seen, quantum waves and particles of energy flow to and from our field and that is how we communicate with our universe as well as the parts of our self. If there is a blockage it must be cleared. Huna, Christianity, and many other religions speak of “the path“ or “the way”.                                                                        

Forgiveness and atonement are ways that we deal with the negative emotions of fear, anger, shame, or guilt. Each of us has a path that is always there. A light shines for each of us, but we must see the light and find the path. Turning to the Higher Self and then forgiving and releasing ourselves from the burden of regret or shame or guilt is how we open the way for communication. Other methods that may help us to find our soul’s mission in life are Integrated Energy Soulstar Clearing, fasting and meditating, automatic writing, etc. If the prodigal son had let his shame and guilt keep him from returning home he would have never experienced the joyous homecoming, the riches his father lavished upon him, or the joy he gave to his father who regained his son. When we clear the path we may go on with our lives and our life’s purpose.