Systemic Solutions for Melancholy & Sadness
Identification with a Dead Person � David J. Marsden 2003

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Are you or someone you love enmeshed in chronic melancholy or sadness?
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Preface by Martyn Carruthers
David Marsden can bring mystery and magic into lives made sterile by technology. Many people claim to heal the symptoms that David describes here. Some intuitive healers, priests and energy workers claim this as their specialty. At every psychic fair are sellers of crystals and symbols who claim to offer protection against these symptoms. Psychotherapists can be territorial about this, and physicians and psychiatrists who supply expensive drugs to manage these symptoms may criticize natural medicine and alternative therapies. I only ask, "Can you demonstrate your claims."

Chronic Sadness, Melancholy & Death

Depression and chronic sadness (dysthymia) tends to cross generations in families. Many people with chronic sadness experienced a major loss in childhood, such as the death of a close relative or friend.

People diagnosed with dysthymia are often medicated with SSRI drugs, including fluoxetine (Prozac), sertraline (Zoloft), paroxetine (Paxil) and citalopram (Celexa). So much for modern medicine. It is much more profitable to prescribe addictive drugs than to resolve relationship issues. We offer relationship solutions rather than drugs.

Between Life and Death

People of most cultures honor dead relatives. According to traditions from all over the world, a dishonored or ignored dead person may haunt the living, either as an external or internal ghost. An external ghost is the common ghost of creepy tales. You may refer to an internal ghost as imagination, possession, obsession, or identification with a dead person, depending on your background.

Exorcists may be an endangered species. Modern science declares demons and ghosts to be unreal, existing only in the imaginations of the naive and childish. As priests are replaced by therapists, their blessings are being replaced by medication.

Identification with a dead person (DPI) exorcises medieval ideas of spirit possession. It is well described by Martyn Carruthers, who offers a systemic model for its causation, symptoms and healing. Carruthers frequently demonstrates lasting solutions.

According to Martyn Carruthers, the symptoms of DPI follow systemic rules. Systemic identifications, he says, are expected when family members die in a way that creates so much guilt for the family that the deaths cannot be discussed, rationalized or assimilated. Martyn said that the most common events leading to this unconscious identification may be suicide, abortion and vanishing twins.

I tested Martyn' methods - and I confirm their validity. They work. I find that two challenges to helping people overcome this issue are the horror movies that they have seen as children, and ghost stories from childhood. Unresolved childish fears can grow into into a full bloom of terror.

One symptom of dead person identification (or spirit possession) is may appear to have psychic sensitivity. Although Martyn seems to dismiss this as sensitivity to body language, I have observed people with these symptoms accurately describe secret past events, current events elsewhere, and accurately predict future happenings to people they did not know.

Protection against Undead Spirits

Some people attempting to play games with ghosts or spirits of dead people later find themselves obsessed or disturbed in ways that psychotherapy does not recognize and cannot remedy. Magical stories are full of warnings about entities that expect some payment for their services. (A therapist or healer may be wise to refer clients with these symptoms to more experienced helping professionals.)

People who seem to attract these spirits or ghosts are often entangled with dead relatives, for example with a suicide ancestor or an aborted sibling. I find that most people can contact or communicate with dead spirits, but some people (by virtue of their enmeshment) provide a ready made conduit. Some people dislike their sensitivity and avoid spooky places, others seem to enjoy and even exploit it.

Where are the Happy Mediums?

Maybe go a psychic fair and talk to some self-proclaimed mediums. Many mediums seem to have exactly the symptoms and sensitivity that Carruthers describes as typical of identified people. This ghostly archetype seems common ... about 5-10% of people I meet appear to be entangled with dead persons.

Many mediums not only show symptoms of dead person identification - they may boast about spirits of dead people who aid or protect them. Perhaps it's wise to consider the consequences before consciously entangling with dead people. These consequences seem to include identification (possession), early death, chronic sadness, miscarriages and chaotic relationships.

My studies into "Can the dead communicate?" brought me to spiritualism, parapsychology and psychic research. Most people were well-meaning with good intentions. For some people, however, you are prey. Shamans of many cultures claim to use the spirits of the dead to harm the living, and solving such attacks can be wild rides. (If you have difficulty leaving an occult group see Exit Coaching.)

All over this planet, people use similar ways to honor and communicate with the quiet dead - and have similar unpleasant stories about the unquiet dead - the undead. Central European vampires, werewolves and Egyptian mummies may reflect Hollywood movies, but my talks with native Canadians and with immigrants from Cuba, Africa, Vietnam, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan included eerily similar ghost stories.

While Carruthers says that preoccupation with death and dying is a common symptom of identification with a dead person, there are other, less scientific explanations. What is the difference between a dead person's spirit and a ghost? Or between dead person identification and possession? Between dissociating a dead person and exorcism? Or between a systemic coach and an exorcist?

Here are a few of my experiences ...

Haunted House . Curses . Black Magic . Ghosts . Demon . Systemic Magic . Possession

As I investigated the lives and family histories of people who had symptoms of identification with dead people, a deep concern arose. These unpleasant symptoms provide doors between the world of the living and a world of the dead. Some of these doors can be easily opened - and not so easily closed.

The symptoms of dead person identification may predispose people towards chronic sadness and depression. I met people with these recognizable symptoms who tried psychiatry, spiritualism, psychotherapy and religion, but found lasting solutions in Martyn's Soulwork.

Since I retired, I collect and research ghost stories. I have many first-hand descriptions of ghosts - and my memories of the people who told the ghost stories. A ghost-story teller archetype might include wide-open staring eyes, dark skin under the eyes, slack facial skin, lowered shoulders and down-turned mouths. Strangely, these are all signs that Carruthers associates with dead-person identification.

To go beyond second-hand stories into first hand experience, I needed a bridge; and I found it in lucid dreaming. Martyn teaches ways to join people in their dreams that he learned from Hawaiian shamans while living in Hawaii (see Hawaiian Spirituality).

It seems that shared dreams can overlap onto objective reality! Changes made in the dreams seemed to cause, or at least be related to, rapid changes in the reality in which we live. My question became, "Where do dreams stop and reality begin?"

Our human world includes never-living entities that were once worshipped. Can something die that was never born? Would a dead god be different to a dead person? How can we recognize groups or organizations of people identified with dead people or undead entities?" Could Martyn's symptoms represent belief systems?

Do these rules only apply to the darker esoteric cults and occult societies? Can whole cultures be influenced by dead people?

My answers to these questions open some strange ghost stories ... how the dead influence families, organizations and cultures! A CEO who died of a heart attack in his office. An office above an abortion clinic. Religions based on dead person identification. The edge of death is a busy place.

Haunted House . Curses . Black Magic . Ghosts . Demon . Possession

Comment by Martyn Carruthers
Your willingness to walk across a cemetery at night may show how close you live to a world where not all dead people rest in peace. Trespass into other realities may be fun at first - but the consequences can be unpleasant and lasting. Enmeshment with visitors from other realities can upset your equilibrium and disturb your health - and that of your family. We can show you how to safely resolve the phenomena so well described by David Marsden.

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Plagiarism is theft. Copyright � Martyn Carruthers 1996-2012 All rights reserved. Soulwork Systemic Coaching was primarily developed by Martyn Carruthers
to help people dissolve emotional blocks and improve relationships to achieve their goals. These concepts and strategies are for general knowledge only. Consult a physician about medical conditions and before changing medical treatment. Don't steal intellectual property ... get permission to post, publish or teach Martyn's work.