u/imtireddofthisgrampa

Over the last few weeks, I've been wrestling with a concept I've started calling "spiritual scapegoating." I'm curious if anyone else here has experienced this, because it has completely changed how I view my own practice.

I've been involved in tarot, astrology, and energy work for the last 4 to 5 years. But my life took a really heavy turn recently. Last year, I lost my grandmother, and one of my oldest friends passed away from cancer within two months of each other. Earlier this year, I went through a devastating breakup. All that grief completely changed my perspective. I found myself becoming less dependent on consulting the cards or the planets, and instead started diving deeper into therapy.

The event that really forced me to confront this shift happened with my best friend of 23 years. She was experiencing severe sleep paralysis and frightening, heavy experiences in her home. Twice, in front of other people, she accused me of bringing the negative entity into her house because I had been grieving and heartbroken.

I don’t want to invalidate her experience, because she was clearly dealing with something genuinely scary. What bothered me was the total lack of spiritual discernment in making me the culprit. Her house is literally 85% full of uncleansed antiques from estate sales, including massive old mirrors that she hadn't even blessed until I physically brought over Florida water. When I consulted other practitioners about this, they pointed out while heavy personal grief can absolutely amplify or disturb an energy that is already present in a space, a person cant just manifest a demon out of thin air that coincidentally attacks other people instead of myself.

I'm sorry but that's fucking lame. And that's what I mean by spiritual scapegoating.When something scary, painful, or confusing happens, it can be incredibly easy to place responsibility on someone or something else because it can't really be tested or disproven and completely removes any personal accountability.

This situation made me look inward and ask how often I’ve done the exact same thing in my own life.

Yeah, my breakup was really shitty, but I'm 5 months out now and I'm realizing it's not because Jupiter was in Cancer, I just chose the wrong person. To be clear, the relationship wasn't violent. He was a liar, which sucked, but ultimately he was just incredibly stagnant and as we broke up, my life actually started getting a lot better.

I never once experienced sleep paralysis, nightmares, or heavy energy in my own space. If I was supposedly carrying a demon around with me, it makes no sense that it would just randomly start attacking her and stay in her house.

The saddest part is that this entire situation may permanently change a 23-year friendship. I actually sent her a voice note today in response. I told her that I’m incredibly sorry she’s going through something so scary, and I took accountability for bringing heavy energy into her space. I told her that if this is her way of setting a boundary where we don't discuss my heavy stuff anymore, I completely respect that. But I refuse to set a precedent where every time something bad or scary happens in her life, it’s somehow going to be my fault. I am not going to be viewed as a spiritual pariah just because I went through a really hard year, especially when she chooses not to cleanse her antiques.

​She hasn't opened the message yet, and honestly, I'm terrified of her response. If she was so open and nonchalant about accusing me, expecting me to just take it how is she going to react to me actually fighting against it? I really don't know. I still respect her and I want to have an open conversation, but I had to put my foot down against being the permanent scapegoat.

I'm curious to hear your thoughts. Have you ever felt like spirituality became less about personal growth and more about explaining away reality or assigning blame? Where do you personally draw the line between spiritual meaning and mundane accountability?

Hey everyone, looking for some insight or experienced perspectives on energy dynamics, attachments, and spiritual hygiene.

Last year was an incredibly heavy, grief-stricken season of life for me. I lost my grandmother, a close friend passed away from cancer, and I went through a painful breakup. During that time, I leaned heavily on a friend for emotional support.

Recently, this friend told me twice that thegrief from my breakup brought a negative entity into her home. She has been experiencing terrifying episodes of sleep paralysis where she feels as though she is being dragged through her house, and she is blaming my emotional state for it.

I rarely spend time at her house. We live about two and a half hours apart, and between my full-time job and school, I've been way too busy to visit often. Since the breakup four months ago, my life has completely opened up with positive shifts. I’ve been doing a lot of healing, and my own energy feels clear and forward-moving.

I want to point out that she's an avid thrifter, antique collector, and estate-sale shopper. Her home has a very heavy dark academia/Victorian aesthetic, and roughly 85% of her furniture and décor are older, secondhand vintage pieces. To my knowledge, only a tiny fraction of these items have ever been spiritually cleansed. In fact, the last time I visited, I actually brought sage and Florida water to help her cleanse multiple antique mirrors she had bought from an estate sale.

I spoke with a practitioner at a local crystal shop who shared that attachments are almost always anchored to physical objects or places, rather than being created out of thin air by a person's emotional state.

While Im more than willing to take accountability for any human emotional weight I carried while I was grieving in her space, I am really struggling to wrap my head around the mechanics here. Can normal human grief actually manifest a malicious entity or transfer an attachment into someone else's home? Or is it more likely that her environment of uncleansed antiques is the actual anchor, and human emotions are just amplifying what was already there?

I'm not looking for anyone to tell me I'm right or that she's wrong, I'm just trying to understand the spiritual mechanics of this from people experienced in energy work. Thank you!

Hey everyone, looking for some insight or experienced perspectives on energy dynamics, attachments, and spiritual hygiene.

Last year was an incredibly heavy, grief-stricken season of life for me. I lost my grandmother, a close friend passed away from cancer, and I went through a painful breakup. During that time, I leaned heavily on a friend for emotional support.

Recently, this friend told me twice that thegrief from my breakup brought a negative entity into her home. She has been experiencing terrifying episodes of sleep paralysis where she feels as though she is being dragged through her house, and she is blaming my emotional state for it.

I rarely spend time at her house. We live about two and a half hours apart, and between my full-time job and school, I've been way too busy to visit often. Since the breakup four months ago, my life has completely opened up with positive shifts. I’ve been doing a lot of healing, and my own energy feels clear and forward-moving.

I want to point out that she's an avid thrifter, antique collector, and estate-sale shopper. Her home has a very heavy dark academia/Victorian aesthetic, and roughly 85% of her furniture and décor are older, secondhand vintage pieces. To my knowledge, only a tiny fraction of these items have ever been spiritually cleansed. In fact, the last time I visited, I actually brought sage and Florida water to help her cleanse multiple antique mirrors she had bought from an estate sale.

I spoke with a practitioner at a local crystal shop who shared that attachments are almost always anchored to physical objects or places, rather than being created out of thin air by a person's emotional state.

While Im more than willing to take accountability for any human emotional weight I carried while I was grieving in her space, I am really struggling to wrap my head around the mechanics here. Can normal human grief actually manifest a malicious entity or transfer an attachment into someone else's home? Or is it more likely that her environment of uncleansed antiques is the actual anchor, and human emotions are just amplifying what was already there?

I'm not looking for anyone to tell me I'm right or that she's wrong, I'm just trying to understand the spiritual mechanics of this from people experienced in energy work. Thank you!

I'd be interested in hearing perspectives from people who actually practice rather than from a purely skeptical viewpoint.

A few months ago, I went through a difficult breakup with someone I thought I was going to marry. It was painful, but it wasn't abusive, violent, or connected to any kind of occult practice. If anything, the energy felt stagnant, sad, and emotionally heavy in the way most major breakups do. I'm okay now if anything, better.

Around the same time, my best friend began having intense sleep paralysis experiences. She described feeling like she was being dragged across the floor and sensing a presence in the room. My friend's house is filled with antiques, probably 75% of the decor. She collects antique mirrors, antique picture frames, and other items from estate sales and thrift stores. She has several large antique mirrors throughout the house.

After these experiences started, she suggested that either the antiques were responsible or that I had somehow brought the energy into her home. We eventually cleansed the mirrors, frames, and doorways with Florida Water, and she says the experiences stopped.

What has been bothering me is that she has brought up more than once that it was because of me. I'm willing to acknowledge that I was grieving and carrying emotional baggage after the breakup. What I'm struggling with is the leap from "someone is emotionally hurting" to "that person brought a negative attachment or presence into someone else's home."

To add another detail, she has mentioned having similar sleep paralysis experiences in a previous house as well, before this situation. So my question for those who work with spirits, energy, baneful workings, protection, ancestral practices, or related paths:

How much responsibility do you place on ordinary emotional states like grief, heartbreak, or depression when it comes to attachments or negative spiritual phenomena? Does it make sense to attribute something like this to a visitor who isn't experiencing any unusual activity themselves, or would that generally be considered speculation without stronger evidence?

I'm genuinely interested in hearing how experienced practitioners would evaluate a situation like this.

Did anyone else grow up feeling like the family helper and the scapegoat at the same time?

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I'm preparing to move out of state for a new opportunity. The closer I get to leaving, the more I'm realizing how strange my role in my family has always been.

​

I have a younger sister who has struggled with addiction, legal issues, instability, and a long series of crises. I'm not trying to demonize her because I know she's genuinely struggled. But for most of my life, the emotional energy in the family revolved around her. What I'm struggling with is that it feels like she was always allowed to be complicated, while I was reduced to a character.

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When she made mistakes, people talked about her trauma, her struggles, her growth, and how people can change. When I made mistakes, it felt like they became permanent parts of my identity.

I went through a cringey militant-atheist phase when I was around 19. Nothing dangerous, I was a young adult trying to figure herself out. More than 15 years later, I still have relatives who bring it up. Meanwhile, my sister has had a DUI, addiction issues, jail time, and other serious problems, yet the message is always that people deserve grace and second chances.

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Sometimes it feels like my family froze me in time while allowing everyone else to evolve. The other confusing part is that I'm also the person everyone depends on. When my mom needed help after surgery, I was there. When things need to be organized or handled, I'm usually expected to step up. I've worked since I was a teenager, put myself through school, and I'm finishing my bachelor's degree while working full-time. Yet somehow I still feel like I'm treated as less capable than the people who depend on me.

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A lot of interactions with my mom leave me feeling this way. She'll offer to help, but then back out at the last minute. Plans I've been looking forward to get changed because she'd rather do something else. If I express disappointment, Im made to feel like I'm the problem. It's hard to explain, but the message I've internalized is that my wants, goals, and feelings are optional while everyone else's are important.

Like I'm the person people call when they need something, but not the person they take seriously.

​

For the first time in my life, I'm finishing my degree, planning a future, considering graduate school, and preparing to move somewhere I've wanted to live for years. Instead of feeling excited, part of me feels guilty because I'm no longer organizing my life around everyone else's needs. Has anyone else experienced this combination of being the dependable one, the helper, and somehow still feeling like the family scapegoat? Is there a name for this dynamic?

I’m (35F) the oldest daughter in my family. I recently finished my bachelor’s degree while working full-time at the same company I’ve been with since 2019, and I’ve finally been offered a well-paying opportunity out of state in the place I’ve wanted to move to for years.

The problem is… I haven’t actually told my family yet. I’ve already interviewed, flown out to look at apartments, and started quietly preparing to leave within the next month. My family has no idea, and I know that probably sounds shady, which is why I’m posting here.

For context, most of the emotional energy in my family has revolved around my younger sister’s (32f) crises for years. I want to be very clear that I’m not trying to demonize her. Addiction is horrible, recovery is complicated, and I know she has genuinely struggled. I don’t think she’s evil and I don’t hate her, but after years of therapy myself, I’ve realized our family dynamic is deeply unhealthy.

She has a long history of addiction, legal issues, instability, and chaotic relationships. Her longest stint in jail was about a year and a half. Growing up, there was always this underlying expectation that because I was the older sister, I should somehow intervene, rescue, smooth things over, or help manage fallout from her decisions. There was always another crisis, relapse, relationship issue, or situation where everyone was emotionally exhausted again.

When she got out of jail in 2023, within about 3 weeks she met her current boyfriend and started using drugs again. My family honestly doesn’t even really like him that much, but eventually everyone stopped trying to intervene because she's always done what she wants regardless. To be fair, he does make an effort in some ways, and recently he had a cancer scare (he’s going to be okay), which has now created another huge emotional orbit around their relationship.

At the same time, my relationship with her completely deteriorated over the last year because I finally confronted her about manipulating narratives and playing the victim whenever she got confronted. When I called it out, she accused me of betraying her, and since then we’ve mostly stopped speaking outside of family events.

And honestly, my life has gotten better since we stopped talking. Like I feel guilty admitting that, but it’s true.Even years ago when she was in jail, after the initial guilt and grief wore off, I remember feeling this strange sense of peace. I lost weight, my stress levels dropped, and for the first time in years I didn’t feel like I was constantly bracing for the next crisis. And now, since we’ve barely spoken since around October of last year, I’ve noticed the same thing happening again. I finished my degree and i’m considering graduate school eventually. For the first time in my life, I feel like I’m becoming my own person instead of just “the help.”

There are also physical health reasons for wanting to leave. I’ve had heat stroke before, multiple precancerous moles removed, and my body genuinely struggles with the climate where I currently live. I’ve wanted out for years.

At the same time, earlier this year I also ended a serious relationship with someone I thought I was going to marry. That breakup completely devastated me emotionally and forced me to reevaluate my entire life.

Part of why I haven’t told my family yet is because I know how these dynamics work. My mom, especially, tends to become extremely emotionally involved in major decisions I make. It starts with wanting to “help,” but eventually the entire situation becomes centered around her stress, fears, anxieties, or reasons why I shouldn’t do the thing at all.

There have honestly been times in my life where I backed out of opportunities because I couldn’t emotionally handle managing both my own stress and hers at the same time. Sometimes it turns into catastrophizing, panic, weird “dreams” she’s had about something happening to me, or emotional spiraling that eventually makes me feel guilty for even wanting something independent from the family.

There’s also another complication:

My company provides free telemedicine benefits for the employees immediate family. That includes urgent care, therapy and dermatology. *Edit IT IS NOT INSURANCE *

MY sister has been using the therapy benefit part of it through my employment. Since I’m leaving the company, she’ll lose access to those benefits and potentially lose continuity with a therapist she’s been seeing for years. I genuinely DO feel conflicted because yes, I absolutely think she needs help. I know she’s struggled with destructive behavior for years, and from what I can tell, this therapist genuinely HAS helped her.

But she’s also now in her early 30s with a well-paying job and her own apartment. At some point, it’s not unreasonable to believe she needs to start building support systems through her own employment instead of continuing to depend on benefits tied to mine.

Part of me feels guilty because I know this announcement is going to completely blindside everyone. But another part of me feels like handling everything quietly is the only way I’d actually follow through and finally choose myself for once.

WIBTA if I wait until everything is finalized and then tell them I’m leaving?

I was with someone for about 9 months, and honestly for the majority of the relationship, things felt really healthy. He introduced me to his family, friends, coworkers, talked about a future together, all of it. I genuinely believed we were building something stable.

He had an ex he described as extremely emotionally volatile. According to him and texts, she would threaten self-harm, spiral, and create chaos whenever he tried to fully separate from her. But ultimately she broke up with him and then moved on like immediately before he even moved out. They had been separated for quite some time before we got together. He had his own place etc.

For the first 6 months or so, she apparently didn’t know he had moved on. Then his sister saw us together and told her, and that’s when everything escalated. Suddenly there were constant demands and emotional emergencies. Things like threatening to off herself if she didn't get their cats. For example.

At first I genuinely thought this was just a difficult situation that would calm down once boundaries were established. I wasn’t expecting him to be cold or cruel toward someone he clearly had history with, but I did expect him to protect our relationship emotionally. Instead, it slowly started feeling like there were three people inside the relationship.

The more chaotic things became, the more emotionally scrambled I started feeling. And what really messed with my head was that anytime I tried to express discomfort with the situation, somehow the focus shifted onto MY reaction instead of the actual instability happening.

Eventually I got to a point where I basically said:

“I’m not doing this. I’m not competing with unresolved attachment and emotional chaos.”

And just emotionally pulled away because my nervous system was telling me this entire dynamic was becoming unhealthy for me.

But by the end, somehow I became the “crazy” one too. That’s honestly the part I’m still trying to unpack psychologically. How quickly people can go from:

“You’re the healthiest relationship I’ve ever had”

to

“You’re threatening me”

the second i stopped tolerating dysfunction and held him accountable.

I haven’t spoken to him in months, but on Saturday a friend told me she saw him back together with the ex. Apparently they were screaming at each other in a parking lot while people stared.

I feel grief and relief at the same time. Grief because I really did love him and then relief because I finally realize I wasn’t witnessing a temporary situation but a cycle that existed before me and will probably continue long after me too. I feel bad for him.

I think part of me kept wondering whether I gave up too soon. But now I’m starting to think my nervous system recognized something my heart didn’t want to accept yet.

I was with someone for about 9 months, and honestly for the majority of the relationship, things felt really healthy. He introduced me to his family, friends, coworkers, talked about a future together, all of it. I genuinely believed we were building something stable.

He had an ex he described as extremely emotionally volatile. According to him and texts, she would threaten self-harm, spiral, and create chaos whenever he tried to fully separate from her. But ultimately she broke up with him and then moved on like immediately before he even moved out. They had been separated for quite some time before we got together. He had his own place etc.

For the first 6 months or so, she apparently didn’t know he had moved on. Then his sister saw us together and told her, and that’s when everything escalated. Suddenly there were constant demands and emotional emergencies. Things like:

“I need the cat or I’m going to kill myself.”

“I need to talk to you.”

“I need closure.”

Etc.

At first I genuinely thought this was just a difficult situation that would calm down once boundaries were established. I wasn’t expecting him to be cold or cruel toward someone he clearly had history with, but I did expect him to protect our relationship emotionally. Instead, it slowly started feeling like there were three people inside the relationship.

The more chaotic things became, the more emotionally scrambled I started feeling. And what really messed with my head was that anytime I tried to express discomfort with the situation, somehow the focus shifted onto MY reaction instead of the actual instability happening.

Eventually I got to a point where I basically said:

“I’m not doing this. I’m not competing with unresolved attachment and emotional chaos.”

And just emotionally pulled away because my nervous system was telling me this entire dynamic was becoming unhealthy for me.

But by the end, somehow I became the “crazy” one too. That’s honestly the part I’m still trying to unpack psychologically. How quickly people can go from:

“You’re the healthiest relationship I’ve ever had”

to

“You’re threatening me”

the second you stop tolerating dysfunction and hold them accountable.

I haven’t spoken to him in months, but on Saturday a friend told me she saw him back together with the ex. Apparently they were screaming at each other in a parking lot while people stared.

I mostly feel grief and relief at the same time. Grief because I really did love him and relief because I finally realize I wasn’t witnessing a temporary situation but a cycle that existed long before me and will probably continue long after me too.

I think part of me kept wondering whether I gave up too soon. But now I’m starting to think my nervous system recognized something my heart didn’t want to accept yet.

I’m three months out from my breakup and this morning after I took my finals and finished my degree, I realized I'm going to be okay.

When I last saw him in February, I was devastated. I loved him very deeply and at one point I genuinely thought I was going to marry him. I wasn’t just grieving him, but like the projection that my life was going. So I’ve spent the last three months retraining my brain out of an imagined future. For the first month, I was crying while working from home and muting my calls because I couldn’t get myself together. I cried in my car a lot and my rock bottom was in a Chili’s bathroom because Wrecking Ball came on lol I kept trying to act like I was handling it well, but honestly the hardest part was waking up every day and having to remind myself, “No, actually, this is not where my life is going anymore. This person is not my ending.”

He wasn’t a bad person, and I actually think that’s why it hurt so much. It would’ve been easier if he was obviously terrible. But some people are just deeply stuck and will always choose what feels emotionally easier in the moment, even if it keeps them stagnant long term. He wanted change, but he was terrified of what change required from him, and eventually I had to accept that I can’t save somebody from a life they are actively choosing for themselves. More importantly, I can’t build a future with someone I can’t fully depend on when things get hard.

And this is where I’m probably going to sound a little woo-woo, but oh well. I really think we can block our own blessings by holding onto things that are no longer aligned with us. Looking back now, I can see how much energy I spent trying to understand him. I became so focused on emotionally managing the relationship that I didn’t even realize how depleted I had become.

That realization wrecked me because I loved him enough that part of me wanted to keep trying anyway, but another part of me was like, bitch, you need to go. I’ve already lived through what happens when you stay too long and like slowly abandon yourself. I can’t do that again.

And weirdly enough, once I finally let go, things started moving again. Opportunities showed up and motivation came back. My best friend told me she thought I had been blocking my own blessings, and honestly, I hated hearing that at first because it felt like it invalidated how much I loved him. But now I think maybe there’s truth to it. Maybe it’s just psychology and nervous system regulation and finally having emotional bandwidth again. Or maybe the universe really will keep removing what is misaligned no matter how tightly you try to hold onto it. Maybe this is the wrong subreddit lol.

Either way, I know my life feels bigger now than it did when I was contemplating trying to force something to work. I think losing myself trying to keep him probably would have been worse.

I guess all of this rambling is just to say thank you to everyone in this subreddit. There were nights where reading posts from strangers was the only thing making me feel less insane and less alone. Heartbreak is such a weird, isolating thing because even when you know logically that millions of people survive it, it still feels uniquely catastrophic when it’s happening to you.

I don’t even think I’m looking for advice at this point, I just need to get this out somewhere because I keep going in circles in my own head.

Has anyone ever been in something that felt completely real while you were in it, and then after it ended you start questioning whether any of it was actually real at all?

That’s where I’m at right now. Some days I feel okay and I can focus on my life and accept that it ended, but then other days it hits me all over again and I feel completely thrown off by it.

I met his family when he took me to his sister’s wedding, and at that wedding he was telling his sister, that we were probably just going to elope. He was even looking at rings at one point. We had conversations about a future that felt grounded and real, not hypothetical or one-sided.

So now I’m trying to make sense of how that version of things exists alongside how everything ended and what I’ve found out since. I keep replaying it in my head because I genuinely dont understand how someone can involve you in their life to that extent, make those kinds of plans with you, and then turn around and act like it either didn’t mean anything or like you were the problem for taking it seriously.

I think that’s the part that’s getting to me the most. Its not just missing him but the confusion and feeling like my reality got flipped on me. I keep asking myself if I misread everything or if I just believed in something that wasn’t actually there, and its a really unsettling place to sit in.

I feel gobsmacked when I really think about it. Some days are easier than others, but I keep coming back to the same question and I don’t really have an answer for it.

Was any of it actually real?

Hey everyone!

Since starting Wegovy on the 16th, I’ve taken two doses and have already noticed some unexpected changes, especially with my sleep. My dreams have become incredibly vivid and detailed, so much so that I can smell and taste things, and I even experienced a “dream within a dream,” which surreal. At the same time, my sleep schedule has shifted dramatically. I used to stay up until around 2am, but now I’m naturally falling asleep closer to 9 or 10pm. I’m curious if anyone else has noticed similar effects early on.