A Personal Account of Psychic Attack

Note: I would love to hear from other people who are experiencing a psychic attack. I may not be in a position to really help you -- yet -- but I think it’s very helpful if we can at least feel less alone in this. Please feel free to leave a comment or message me through the site. Thank you.

Okay. Let’s see if I can actually get this out without stirring up any of the usual activity.

It’s been two and a half years since I started getting psychically attacked … by the first person, with whom I had a messy but mutually avoidant connection.

It’s been a year and change since my foolish attempts to dialogue with the offending energy swung the attack into seemingly permanent high gear.

It’s been about a year since I realized I was concurrently being psychically attacked by a close friend – an attack vicious enough that it landed me in the ER with severe suicidal ideation, after an alcohol bender and three days of no sleep, followed by a two-month trip to rehab.

It’s been about six months since a completely innocent interaction with a stranger resulted in psychic attack number three – thankfully cut short when I had the good sense to explain what was happening and cut off further contact.

It’s been about five months since I tried this maneuver with my former friend, which in this case only made the persistent attack even worse.

It’s been a couple months since I began reaching out to my first attacker in an attempt to work through some of the drama that prompted the attack in the first place, with mixed but mostly disappointing results.

It’s been about a week since I turned to my spirit guides for help, through the process of automatic writing, which bypasses my troublesome conscious mind.

Pleased to meet you. I am an empath and a clairaudient -- or "psychotic," if you don't go for that kind of thing -- which means that not only do I experience psychic attacks, I can actually hear the energy behind them. And as you can imagine, it ... is ... brutal.

As of today, my spirit guides urged me to start journaling about my experiences, as it might prove helpful in my journey through this, but it might also prove helpful to others. Sometimes I get the notion – or the voices I hear tell me – that I will one day write a book about my experiences with psychic attack to open people’s eyes to the machinations of what is going on between us all in the astral realms, and to help those who are suffering with this affliction. As much as the thought gratifies my blocked writer ego, I’m kind of hoping it’s bullshit, because to write a compelling book about this, I assume I will have to go through some profound journey of healing to reach the light at the end of the tunnel … and that feels a very, very long way off. And the victim in me just wants someone to step forward, wave a magic wand, and MAKE THIS ALL GO THE FUCK AWAY. (And if the nearly one thousand dollars I’ve wasted is any indication, it ain’t gonna be a shaman.)

Anyone who really knows me would agree that mine has not been an easy life, and each trial has been more challenging than the last. (Turns out trauma opens you up to psychic attack. Thanks, universe ... kick us while we're down.) I barely even count the run-of-the-mill traumas: my parents getting divorced when I was younger, that sort of thing. I’ve survived 31 years of clinical depression and anxiety (and medication), starting before I even hit puberty. I’ve survived the death of my only sister by accidental overdose. I’ve survived a year of treatment for early-onset breast cancer. I’ve even survived six years of full-blown, non-stop psychosis (clairaudience) of the hearing voices variety, including multiple hospitalizations and intermittent suicidal impulses. But nothing, NOTHING has ever prepared me for the horror of being incessantly psychically attacked by multiple people, for YEARS, when I have the torturous misfortune of being clairaudiently connected to their unconscious minds.

I don’t want to get into specifics here, because the last time I made the mistake of trying to write a blog post detailing my attackers’ personalities and such, I was bludgeoned into submission. But I think I can safely tell you a little about what got me into this predicament, which was different in all three situations.

Spiritual teacher Teal Swann says that no one will psychically attack you unless they perceive that they were attacked in some way first. In the case of my first attack, this definitely holds true. I crossed this woman’s boundaries in a way that I could scarcely justify to most people. It was not with any malicious intent, but what happened hurt her (and is technically still happening). I now realize that the attack in its nascent form is in large part what motivated my sudden plunge into alcoholism over two years ago. What I didn’t realize at the time is that mind-altering substances compromise your energy field, leaving you wide open to attack. Thus what may have remained a largely benign psychic attachment between us basically exploded overnight. I’ve been hearing her constant verbal abuse in my mind ever since, along with experiencing all the requisite physical and mental symptoms of psychic attack. The really shitty part is, now that I finally have the guts to talk to her like an adult about what’s happened, she claims she isn’t really angry at me anymore. And I believe she consciously believes this. But somehow, the attack goes on, which tells me that her shadow is still harboring some pretty murderous rage.

The second attack by a close friend did not begin with me attacking her in any way. In fact, I went out of my way to be there for this person (though according to what she now shouts in my head, I was never a good enough friend for her). And here I make a distinction between a classic psychic attack, which is persistent negative energy directed at you out of anger and/or jealousy, and a psychic vampire: someone who just wants to steal your energy. This term gets thrown around a lot to mean someone who is draining to be around. Dear god, if only that were all I was dealing with… When this woman’s attacks ramp up, it doesn’t matter what I’m doing, I will suddenly lose all energy, motivation, and interest in anything, often accompanied by an abrupt sensation of dizziness, and the sensation of suction between my shoulder blades. I can be happily working, and out of nowhere, all I want to do is lie in bed. The worst part is that she BRAGS about stealing my energy in my mind, so not only do I have to experience it, I have to wallow in my own helplessness as she does it.

As I’ve made a distinction between psychic attack and psychic vampires, I should note that the two are not mutually exclusive. Both can be present. In the first case, the woman who initially psychically attacked me has more recently become a vicious energy vampire on top of it, although I get the impression that she largely does it out of spite and that the associated person may barely even benefit. As for the second woman, a voracious energy vampire of the highest order, what started off as just neutral energy drain (and a sudden uptick in her energy -- she's going to the gym! She's joining therapy groups! She's making friends!) soon morphed into psychic attack when I subsequently cut off the friendship. Guess how much good blocking someone on your phone does when you’re psychically connected to their unconscious mind? In this case, I did everything I could to be honest about what I was doing and why, explaining what I had been experiencing (and being very careful to only use non-accusatory “I” statements), saying I was very sorry that I could no longer be there for her, and genuinely wishing her the best. But as I have a front-row seat to her unconscious, I know exactly how that went over, and I’ve been abused for “abandoning” her ever since. The best part: she blames ME for all of this – “I was just minding my business when you became my friend and started giving me your energy!” Wow.

Word to the wise: never try to reason with anyone’s unconscious shadow. It’s like talking to an angry five-year-old. You are the worst person in the world for not giving them what they want, and they take responsibility for nothing, because clearly everything is your fault. (Yes, I’m sure my shadow is like this too.)

Coming back around to the third case – the psychic attack by this woman hit me completely out of the blue. We met ONCE, at a spiritual Meetup. She shared with the group very vulnerably, and I really felt for her suffering. My mistake was giving her my contact info before getting to know her better (so sue me, I thought I was doing the kind thing). She emailed me the very next day, and “reaching out for help” would be putting it mildly. This felt more like someone who’s drowning and almost pulls you down with them in their panic. I tried not to get sucked into her downward spiral and gave her the best advice I could based on my personal experiences, but when she then started texting me asking for rides and all this, I pulled back. That’s when attack number three started. Have you ever heard that archetypally speaking, the flip side of the victim is the tyrant? I became the focal point for all this woman’s buried rage for everything the world was not doing for her, in no uncertain terms. As with woman number two, she was super sweet to my face (if a bit self-absorbed), but deep down she was seething with anger at what the world has done to her, and her shadow would shout things like “SOMEBODY HAS TO LISTEN TO ME!” Well, I refused to be that person. In this case, I was afraid to even speak to her again, so I had my partner reach out to her and explain what was happening. She took it fairly well (though her response indicated, predictably, that she chalked the whole thing up to my psychosis), and I guess since our connection was so nascent, she didn’t have the same sense of entitlement as woman #2, so thankfully the attack resolved immediately.

Clearly I could go on and on about all this, so on the off chance that anyone actually reads this, if you are a fellow sufferer, I will wrap up with what’s probably of most interest to you: what helps and what doesn’t.

What Hasn’t Helped (or at least not for more than a few days tops)

• Antipsychotics (some actually made it worse)

• Shamans

• Crystals

• Flower essences

• Talismans

• Getting out in nature

• Praying to angels or deities

• Visualizations (closing my chakras, crystalizing my energy field, etc.)

• Dialoguing with the attacking energy

What Has Helped, but Only in Some Cases

• Telling the person about what I’m experiencing

• Cutting off contact

What Helps the Most

• Automatic writing

• Reading

• Socializing (when possible)

• Staying busy (when possible)

• Listening to music

• Putting on a podcast

• Benzos (in treatment)

• Drinking :(

• Adderall (helps me focus on something other than the attack and boosts my energy)

I wish I could offer more; I hope that I can in time, and I feel like I am closer to this than I have been before.

As far as drinking goes, it helps for two reasons. In the case of woman #2, her voice tells me that when I drink, it “taints” my energy, and she doesn’t want to steal it anymore. That doesn’t work with woman #1 (who as I said, mostly steals it out of spite or as a control mechanism rather than to use it herself). But in either case, drinking just makes me care less about what’s happening and makes my hyper-reactive mind calm down a bit. Of course, if I drink in excess, I often end up wallowing in hopelessness or even suicidality, so this is far from a good solution. But as I told the people in rehab, I don’t drink because I enjoy it anymore; I drink because it’s my fucking fire extinguisher, in a way that no antipsychotic yet has ever proven to be.

I hope to continue writing about my experiences, to help myself sort through them, but also because I genuinely want to help other people who are suffering with this, even if it just helps you feel less alone. I know exactly how isolating it feels when you are scouring the web for something, ANYthing that might help you, and all you’re getting are the same ten “COULD YOU BE UNDER PSYCHIC ATTACK?” articles from sources that treat it like a novelty when it feels like your life is being pulled out from under you. Or worse yet, interviews with shamans waxing poetic about best practices in dealing with psychic attacks, and then you find out on their website that they charge over $1,000/hour. (No, I’m not joking. I felt like commenting, “Woman, just because $1,234 is an angel number does not make you a saint, it makes you a fucking shameless thief.” And for the record, I did once shell out $500 for one shaman who specializes in extraction, and not only could she not even help me, the shit she did tell me scared me so bad that it was part of the panic that landed me in the ER. Thanks for nothing.)

If you made it this far, you’re probably just as desperate for answers as me, so please leave a comment and let me know your experience, or message me if you prefer to talk privately.

To end on a hopeful note, my spirit guides keep reassuring me that not only will this experience not last forever, it’s actually a journey of empowerment for me. That’s hard for me to see in a lot of ways, but if it’s true for me, there’s a good chance it’s true for you too.