Did You Lose Something?

Don't follow in the footsteps of the ancients.

Rather, seek what they sought while following your own path.

 -- Dr. D. --

SOUL LOSS

Soul retrieval is based on the concept that events, especially traumatic ones, cause pieces of our soul to become lost. Soul loss is a natural coping response to a trauma. A part of us may leave to wait in non-ordinary reality when we are traumatized and it is too painful for us to be present and aware. Psychologists often refer to this as dissociation.

Hank Wesselman and his wife, Jill Kuykendall, identified the following symptoms of soul loss in their 2004 book, Spirit Medicine:

• A failure to thrive
• A lack of initiative, enthusiasm, or joy
• A sudden onset of apathy or listlessness
• Addictions
• An inability to make decisions or discriminate
• Being unable to feel love or receive love from another
• Blocked memory—an inability to remember parts of one’s life
• Chronic depression
• Chronic negativity
• Emotional remoteness
• Feelings of being fragmented, of not being all here
• Melancholy or despair
• Suicidal tendencies

The feeling that something is missing, not your keys silly, but part of you, may be an indication that you have experienced soul loss. Soul loss is identifiable through apathy, an absence of joy, an inability to feel love or receive it, suicidal thoughts, addictions, chronic despair and depression. Some people who have experienced soul loss try to fill the hole through addictions, compulsive behavior, or by being energy vampires. You can look and act competent on the outside, but still feel inadequate or disquieted on the inside.

Soul loss may occur when a person goes through a serious illness or accidents, through depression or strong emotional events, or even through being the victim of an attack. Some people are "soul-thieves" do not know that they are stealing soul parts from others. These soul thieves may be people close to us, people like our parents, grandparents, siblings, lovers and even teachers. While no one can make use of our missing soul essence but us when it is with another person we feel unnaturally connected to them or they may weigh on our thoughts more often and more intensely than is warranted.

It is sometimes helpful to review our lives and try to identify the times and places where we may have lost or given away part of our soul. Often you can recover the lost part by calling it back and lovingly accepting it back into your life. For example, I lost part of my soul and became an adult when I was six years old. My father, a graduate student at the time, was away working in another state and I was the oldest of three boys at he time (6, 5 and 4 years old). We were too much for my mother and she had a nervous breakdown. I had to care for her and my two brothers for a couple of days while my mother laid in the fetal position crying. A neighbor final stopped by to see why no one had been outside, called the hospital, and my mother was carted away. I had suppressed the pain and memory of that experience my entire life until about five years ago when, while meditating, I asked myself why I had never played as a child. The memory came back, I cried a lot, and I asked the child part of my soul to come back. It did and now at times I feel like a six year old, and probably act like one too.

If you feel like you have experienced soul loss and like some help then you might want to talk to a shamanic practitioner who does soul retrieval or to a hypnotherapist who does parts (soul) integration. I'll write about my approach to soul retrieval in my next blog.

Peace . . .