When I first became aware of spiritual attack as a new Christian, I believed that everything bad that I was experiencing was because of it. The more I learned about the spiritual realm and the inner workings of Satan’s kingdom the more I believed I was a victim of spiritual attack daily. To a point, it was true, but the more I have come through inner healing I have learned some important things about what I have perceived about spiritual attack.
As a survivor of Satanic ritual abuse, I live with several trauma-related mental health disorders, such as Dissociative Identity Disorder. Living with these disorders can bring up a whole host of problems daily, such as depression, anxiety, emotional distress, trauma triggers, paranoia, detachment, insomnia, irritability, brain fog, or just generally feeling overwhelmed by everything. I used to associate many of these symptoms with spiritual attacks, but I have come to realize that while spiritual attack is a very real problem, my biggest problem is myself.
Having dissociative alters means I have a whole lot of things going on inside of me at all times. I have an innumerable amount of alters within me and each one of them has their own agenda that was set up through mind control programming. Many of my alters are still loyal to the occult, which means they are driven to keep me connected to the occult in whatever ways they can. That can mean keeping me programmed, luring me into activities that will trigger me back into trauma, taking over my body and taking me to Satanic rituals, just to name a few things.
For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.
2 Timothy 1:7
Alters are only doing they best they can with the information they have. They often only hold a small part of the bigger picture of my life, and are usually stuck in the place of trauma they were created. So if I was a four year old and had extreme trauma create an alter through a particular kind of abuse, then that alter would always be four years old until I found her and brought her to Jesus.
However, this same four year old alter could have been programmed to take over my body to sabotage any progress I am making in my inner healing or my walk of faith with Jesus. So for example, this little girl might bring up strong feelings of condemnation whenever I hear a sermon about sin. Those feelings will feel very real to me and while I am hearing the sermon I will feel so condemned I may start to cry like a little girl.
All the alter knows is that it is her job to keep me feeling condemned by Christianity because if she does not she truly believes she is going to die. The reason for this is because when the programming was put in for her to do this job, she was told by the programmer if she didn’t do it she would be punished or die. The threat was proven to be true by acts of violence perpetrated against me, so that as a little girl I would have had proof I was in real danger.
But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.”
Lamentation 3:21-24
Because the alter is still stuck in this place of being four years under and believing she’s in danger, she will continue to run the program and influence my conscious self in this negative way. She will not understand that I am an adult who is no longer being abused and is perfectly safe, until I find her and lead her to understand my current reality. So if you can imagine that I have a myriad of other alters like this, all running their particular programming, believing it is in their best interest to do so, and basically wreaking havoc with how I think, feel, and understand the world around me.
So you might ask, how does this relate to spiritual attack? The answer lies in the understanding of the greater picture of how these alters affect my life. For the first few years of inner healing it was very hard for me to connect with other people because I believed everyone I talked to was doing witchcraft on me. I thought that they were all a part of a greater agenda against me, and while there is a partial truth to that, the bigger truth is that my alters were also doing witchcraft.
My alters were doing the best they could to keep me connected to the occult and isolated from anything that could bring me hope. If I connected with a person, sermon, or book that brought truth and hope, it was their job to make me believe that author, preacher, or friend was actually dangerous and therefore evil. I had to completely isolate myself and shut out most of the world before I came to the understanding that I have just been living in fear because my alters were sabotaging me.
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.
John 10:10
My alters have not only used my emotions, but they have also used physical means to keep me in bondage to the occult. This form of self sabotage has affected things such as my mental clarity, ability to find reason but instead always be confused, or to feel very overwhelmed by things going on around me; i.e. sounds, lights, people talking, etc. They also use physical illness to bring me to a point of suffering in which I believe God is against me and even hates me.
Because my past abuse includes people and spirits claiming to be Jesus but abusing me, it is easy for my alters to convince me in the midst of my suffering that God is doing it, or has turned His back on me and no longer cares. I cannot tell you how many countless hours I have spent as a Christian believing these lies. I harbored so much anger and resentment towards God because I couldn’t see my suffering as a blessing instead of a curse.
I always believed that my suffering was from an outside source, coming to attack me and bring me down, but the truth is, the devil no longer needs to send outside sources to harass me because he laid claim to my life in the womb. Before I was even born, my parents dedicated me in a Satanic ritual to Lucifer and the occult for their purposes. Then through continued rituals over the course of my life he continued to lay claim to my soul until I was completely against myself.
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Romans 12:21
The devil no longer needed to send harassing spirits against me, because I was now my own worst enemy. Every problem I have had in my life has a root in the programming of self sabotage set up inside me. This is not to say I am never harassed. I absolutely experience spiritual attack from human spirits and the demonic, but the reason that it affects me so badly is because I have dissociative alters set up to connect with and agree with these attacks.
As I have been healing alters and bringing them to Christ I am experiencing less frustration and overwhelm by the spiritual attacks against me. When the enemy loses ground inside of me, his attack is rendered useless. It has only been through my willingness to see that I have dissociative alters that want to keep me bound and how I have agreed with it consciously that I have gained freedom from sin.
I understand that not everyone has dissociative alters as I do, but that does not make you exempt from self-sabotage. The devil can and use your conscious agreements and past experiences to create you to become your own worst enemy. We can have many false beliefs that empower the devil to lay claim to our lives and give him a foothold into our soul. We all need to be aware of the tactics of the enemy because he will always be on the prowl looking for a way in.
Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
James 4:7
When we lay down our lives in humility and submission to God, He will show us areas where we have strongholds we need to repent from. Do not give the devil a foothold to use you against yourself, but instead understand that living a life of daily repentance and worship for our Creator are the only path to true freedom.
It has taken me years to get to this point, but I am so thankful I have. I finally feel free of a huge level of oppression I have been living in because I allowed my alters to control my perception of reality. We need to wash ourselves in the Word and renew our way of thinking so that the strongholds of man fall away from us. It is through Christ alone that we find the strength to keep walking this path, and I know He has enough strength to continue to preserve each of our lives as we humbly walk through the process.
Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress. He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death, and burst their bonds apart. Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of man! For he shatters the doors of bronze and cuts in two the bars of iron.
Psalm 107:13-16