Spending Your Life, Battling Invisible Demons

“It’s all on you. Some people develop. Others do not.”

I wrote that on my last post, How Can I Raise My Vibration? I got me thinking about people who never do develop or raise their vibration. I wouldn’t say, I figured this out in five minutes, but it got me thinking of people who spend their whole lives battling something that isn’t even there.

I’m talking about the grown woman, stuck in rage over what her mother did, thirty years ago.  Or the person who can’t let go of some old lover, cut their losses and move on.  Someone wronged you and that’s it. You can no longer function. You’re impaired.

I’m not saying that anything in life is easy. But if it’s that miserable, that’s all the more reason to strive to be free.

We get attached to our stories, whether we’re victims or victors in them.  This costs us!  I’ve done it myself.

I was horrifically abused when I was a kid. I was homeless at one time. But this was decades ago.

When is the last time I missed a meal?  Fifteen years old? Sixteen?  That’s in the ancient past, now. It’s done and it has no bearing on my life today, really.

Same with the times I was on top, riding high. Who cares? I used to be someone? Like I’m some kind of faded child star now, or what?

The older I get, the more I realize, what matters is what you do, today. What will you do today?

Hurt someone? Do some kind of good deed? Whine? Act? Improve? Degrade?

Will you try something new? Try harder? Will you forgive? Will you hold your grudge?  Will you do better or allow yourself to do worse? Will you check yourself?  Pick up the trash in your house or your life and get rid of it?

Or will it be another rehash?

If it’s going to be another rehash, here’s a song for you. At least you can smile while you suffer – yes?

I like to get into my suffering. I’m all for writhing around in pain, and/or lying still like a corpse, in dark clothing.

But jeez. This can’t go on forever.  At some point, you’ve got to get up, leave your troubles behind and head off to slay a new dragon.

Are you fighting an invisible demon? How many years, now?

43 thoughts on “Spending Your Life, Battling Invisible Demons”

  1. Avatar
    ScottishFoldSoul

    What if you find the strength to execute the motions of moving forward with your life but the pain and sadness remain unmanageably severe despite extreme effort? The more I learn about the impact of trauma on cognitive processes, the more I believe anyone can improve, but some far less than others no matter how damn hard they try.

    1. You’re probably right. We discussed this years ago on the this blog.
      https://elsaelsa.com/astrology/can-a-person-learn-to-be-happy/

      Jupiter people can’t stay down to save their life. Others have to really work, daily, against downward pressure.

      Some people really like the familiar. But others…well, let’s just say you’re prone to anxiety. I feel a tiny dose of anti-anxiety medication is entirely appropriate.

      I am suggesting something like this is for everyone. But sometimes, something really is physiologically off. Something small can alter it, enough where the person can utterly change their life.

      You really have to look at what’s in your way. Stubbornness? Fear? Control?

      And another song comes to mind, “Looking for Love In All The Wrong Places..”

      This is true of love, but also of other things. If you constantly fail, might you have a blind spot?

      You might want to get an outside opinion, because this is another reason people fail. They think, if they don’t know the answer, no one else could possibly have it. They’re generally wrong about that.

      I like Elvis Costello for that one…”the person you meet, might have the piece you lack.”

      1. That’s been my biggest revelation lately: that others might know what they’re talking about. I had to do some inner work first though, to break down those inner barriers that were preventing me from being open to suggestion. I’ve found that compassion for myself is the quickest way to overcome psychological barriers. Like miraculously quick.

      2. I used to refuse to take advise or really learn from from others because I thought no one else has ever experienced what I was dealing with. I thought I loved more than anyone. That almost no one in this world could feel love as deeply as me therefore I thought they could not help me. I suffered so greatly all alone for this. One day I decided “so what I love deeply, what am I doing to myself, what’s important?” certainly love is important, but giving it out is more important. I couldn’t hold on to it inside anymore. I thought, I have to do something with it. I just realized this is a picture of my nodal story. SN on Neptune in H5 square Sun/Moon H8. Moving on to the NN H11. It’s not about me, it’s about what I can do for others. That was an epiphany moment. But I had to come to it myself. I had to find the way- no one could find it for me. We can learn from others but no one can fix our problems…it’s all on ourselves, you’re right.

  2. Avatar
    ScottishFoldSoul

    Not everyone is cut out to be a CEO, even of their own lives. But that shouldn’t be a black mark against anyone’s character. It’s all relative. The person who hasn’t been able to fully conquer their demons but somehow survives may be dealing with things that would have crushed someone else who appears to have more efficiently handled their business. The former may actually be stronger than the latter but just took what, for them, were more constitutionally damaging hits.

    1. I think I know where you’re coming from Scottish. I agree it’s not about character. Like I said in my post down there, people do their best with the tools that they have. Even the perseverance to find better tools is not something one can manufacture within themselves. But hope coupled with humility is powerful and these are attitudes, not qualities, so they can absolutely be shifted. At least I’ve seen it work in my life.

  3. This is so wise! I have worked on this, years ago and I am gratefull I did. And it still helpful today! Indeed this was not easy! But worth it.

  4. I think people do the best they can with what they know at the time. I think if most people realized they had a choice in how they feel they’d choose happiness, but don’t necessarily have the skills. I think it’s better to look at healing as a blessing from God. It’s not something you can just do without divine guidance and intervention. When you know better you do better. (I don’t know who to credit that last quip to? I think it’s one of Oprahs people).

    Am I personally fighting some invisible demon? I’m sure I am. I’m always dealing with my ego. Which is demonic sometimes.

  5. Avatar
    ScottishFoldSoul

    Agree with you about hidden physiological factors interfering with the ability to overcome obstacles. Have personally experienced profound emotional improvement after finally detecting probably lifelong food allergies eliminating whatever substances (gluten, soy) were inflaming my system. I am better than I was but nowhere near where I should be.

  6. This was a very empowering post Elsa. I’ve had a gigantic demon for most of my life but recently realised how much of my life I wasted away with it, and at the point, I realised that I had to get up and fight, life is too short. I realized I’m blessed behind what I could see. Once I started to count my blessings, I was freed.

  7. This is my sister. She will literally talk about something in 1972 like it happened yesterday. The whole family jokes about it because we all have had a million other things happen in our lives since even 2 years ago. C’mon. Bitter feminist who sadly fed me a lot of crap as a kid, lots of bad advice (I’m 6 years younger).

  8. I love that old Jerry Jeff Walker album, and especially the wonderfully lilting song Jaded Lover, which is sort of another take on what you wrote about:

    …And I can see you are an angel
    With wings that won’t unfold
    Tune up your harp, polish your old halo
    The only kind of man that you ever wanted
    Was the one that you knew
    You’d never hold very long
    Sittin’ there cryin’, like I’m the first one to go

    You may have thirty lovers behind you
    I can feel you but I just can’t find you
    Seems like you would have found
    Your own self by now
    But late at night those lover’s tears come back
    Faces in your dreams, fingers in your back
    Voices of the memories for cryin’ out loud…

        1. I really didn’t expect I’d be hearing the music of my youth for my whole life, though! That didn’t happen to our parents — I was no Guy Lombardo fan!

  9. Self awareness is the key.
    To take a step back and reflect on your own behaviour can help you to free yourself from past ties.

    Meditation can help. Studying astrology can help.
    Purification such as sea salt baths or certain gems can help.

  10. I was thinking of “Looking For Love” on the drive to campus this morning. More specifically, and for no particular reason, I was thinking of John Travolta as Bud telling Sissy how sorry he was for hitting her and telling her that he loved her then becoming enraged when he saw that Wes had hit Sissy. And…Johnny Lee, the singer of “Looking For Love,” had issues of his own with domestic violence. It’s just funny/weird to me that for years Bud and Sissy were the gold standard of romantic love. I used to watch “Urban Cowboy” with my brother and we would laugh our asses off. It really is a ridiculous love story. The writing is terrible. But I first saw it when I was in second grade and it stuck. Struck a deep chord.

    We are all works in progress. No one is Mother Theresa or Gandhi. I was telling myself that today (I talk to myself as I drive because I don’t have a therapist). It’s common knowledge. There are terrible men who beat women, rape women, bully children, basically treat everyone around them like shit. And yet they always have a partner. My alcoholic great-uncle was married six or seven times. He was a good lucking man and a first decan Aquarian extrovert. Life of every party. He had no problem attracting women. I don’t think he did much spiritual work on himself. None at all that I could discern, not that we were every particularly close. He was just a good time blue collar guy. And my dad. He dropped out of high school in tenth grade, was called into the ministry, played around with it for a few years…now karaoke bars are his churches. And he’s on wife number five. He’s not a shining beacon of integrity by any means. And not to be sexist, of course there are also horrible women. Toxic chicks who never have trouble finding a partner to dump on. I’ve been giving this all tons of thought since late 2014 when I first came here. I’m looking hard at myself, always, assessing what needs to go. Venus trines Saturn. I have major work cut out for me. But I have a general idea of what I need to do and who I want to be. I don’t want to get involved with another man until I’m somewhere close to solid. Solid self-esteem. I have three exes from last year alone. I don’t like who I was in any of those relationships. I’m beginning to really grapple with the pattern so that it can just STOP, already.

    1. Even Mother Teresa berated herself and questioned her faith daily. Gandhi could be frustrating to those close to him (a little egoic about his self-imposed poverty). They were also works in progress while doing what their hearts called them to do. This helps keep my struggles in perspective. Service to others always helps.

  11. This is such a simple yet complex topic. I could write a book about this yet still not have said anything meaningful.

    So much of it comes from attitude change. The two moments that stand out for me are:
    – from believing that other people were responsible for my happiness to realising I could take action and responsibility to make myself happy;
    – pretending I didn’t have needs so people couldn’t harm me by withholding to realising that if you’re vulnerable and ask for what you want, you get to find out whether people are on your side and can help you.

    Someone else mentioned moving from never listening to anyone, to listening to advice others gave them.

    These changes take a leap of faith or an epiphany to realise.

  12. Battling demons is useless because the more we fight, the stronger they get. We can only defeat them by giving up the fight and clearing the addiction. As with alcohol or drugs.

  13. Avatar
    IWasInADeepSleep

    Rainer Maria Rilke wrote: “Everything is gestation and bringing forth. Most happenings are beyond expression; they exist where a word has never intruded. Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses waiting for us to act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us, in its deepest essence, is something helpless that wants our love. Believe in a love that is being stored up for you, like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside of it.”

    1. Hello IWasInADeepSleep, thank you for bringing up these wonderful quotes, I read Rainer Maria Rilke long time ago in German, his writings are a well of wisdom, or as he puts it, of “beauty and courage”. Danke! 🙂

  14. Avatar
    IWasInADeepSleep

    I believe everyone processes things in their own time…even if its many years I feel it shouldn’t be forced. We know more than anyone else when we’re done gestating and ready for birth. Rainer Maria Rilke, again: “Perhaps somewhere, someplace deep inside your being, you have undergone important changes while you were sad.”

  15. Elsa: I was horrifically abused when I was a kid. I was homeless at one time. But this was decades ago.

    Sure. Same for me. But the darkness clings to you*, doesn’t it? This is not a problem … until it’s a problem for someone else. (And it’s always a problem for someone else, isn’t it?)

    Hurt someone? Do some kind of good deed? Whine? Act? Improve? Degrade?

    Always trying to improve. Never does seem to be enough.

    max
    [‘Ah, well.’]

    * You can be Mother Teresa and that stuff sticks.

  16. I’m in hospital with my five year ok son who’s fighting leukemia. For the months we are in isolation I’ve had the chance to think through all that’s toxic in my life and get rid of it or transform it. I’m doing this now. . .no repeat acceptance of people using me. Death looming has the power to do this. In the midst of this trauma I’ve discovered who and what really matters. The time is NOW to make those changes that we all linger over. Transiting Pluto conjunct natal merc in 8 house square moon and Saturn in Aries 12 house. Pluto is literally throttling me to be free and independent of all that’s unnecessary. I’m doing it. ✅

  17. This is timely for me and I thank you for posting it Elsa. I needed to hear this because I need to move on from some things that are bogging me down.

  18. Avatar
    Warped by Wuthering Heights

    Good song, like even better Sinatra’s “Set ’em up, Joe” and other earlier torch songs, I used to call them “pounding on the floor songs.” But I’ve always raged far more at myself or “fate” than at inadequate parenting or unrequited lovers, a tug-of-war of self-pity and self-blame, pondering even decades later what I shoulda/coulda/woulda or at least might have done differently and what might have resulted. Mental myopia.

  19. I find this so interesting…particularly as this is an astrology forum. So many see the chart as a rigid set of descriptors.

    Can people really change? Choice or fate? I know so many that do a LOT of spiritual work, self analysis etc and I see growth, and…. I also see the same basic patterns repeat(as a Scorpio rising I am an observer) And when I look at thier charts I see those patterns right there.

    I think Elsa you may be saying that playing the victim or taking responsibility is another thing. Choosing to thrive despite our karma/patterns.

    1. I just read the previous post about Raising ones Vibration. That really is the answer… we may have a particular set of challenges set out in our chart yet we can express the lower and higher vibration of that. As elsa said.. facing it (owning it) is the first step, then finding a way out/through/around is the next.

      I do think trauma can fix a person in a pattern that is hard to shift but even that will show up in a chart and there are also always solutions in a chart as well. Thats what astrology is all about IMHO

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