Reader’s Question

I just made friends with a really great girl at school. After three days of knowing her, I spend the night at her house with another friend. Then she dumps this situation on me: there’s another, for lack of a better word, ‘spirit’ living inside of her. The spirit’s name is (confidential). At times when she’s really mad or stressed or upset, this other person comes out. She says that she locks it away most of the time, except for around her boyfriend, because, apparently, her boyfriend has the same thing. His ‘spirit’s’ name is (confidential). Apparently this is not the first body they’ve ridden and they have been around for a really long time, and in a past time, ??? and ??? were lovers, and they like to talk when he comes over. She says it’s getting harder to lock her in, but mostly the presence is fine. It doesn’t want her to like murder anyone or anything. She says she is prone to fainting spells, and when she faints, it’s really her presence taking over. Does this sound like anything to you, kinda familiar with exaggeration, or total fantasy? She doesn’t want to see a doctor.

Our Clinical Psychologist’s Reply

The feeling that a spirit or another identity is inhabiting our body can come from several sources. Folks with severe paranoid delusions often feel “possessed” by evil spirts/demons/aliens — and this is a highly uncomfortable situation. This is unlikely in your friends case. We also have folks who extend a cultural/religious belief into their psychiatric symptoms and have episodes of dissociation in which these spirits surface. In psychiatry, this is often given a diagnosis of Dissociative Disorder, Not Otherwise Specified. As a psychiatric disorder, the situation is typically restricted to one individual.

What your friend is describing is likely to be a religious belief. Several religions and/or new-age belief systems support the idea of a type of spiritual presence in one’s body. They then add a life story for these spirits and typically describe them as being ancient spirits, complete with a life history, geographic location, personality, etc. A couple that both believe in this way would easily arrive at the story offered by your friend — both with ancient spirits who have now found each other through time and through their mutual romance. This is not a psychiatric concern unless her belief system impairs her ability to function in the community. In rural America, handling deadly snakes is a practice in some church services. Only when they bring the snakes to college classes or to the mall does it become a possible psychiatric concern.