Dear Julia:

I have been diagnosed bipolar type I. I'm stable right now and not on medication, but I do hear voices that sound like a TV is on in another room when it's not. Most of the time, I struggle with depression, and I've been hospitalized for suicide attempts in the past. When I'm trying to go to sleep, I see lots of faces of people I've never met before. I try not to be afraid, but it's hard because some of the faces are demonic and scary. Once I even saw a body in a state of decay. In 1994, I had what my psychiatrist called severe psychosis: I couldn't tell what was real from what was not. During this four-month period, I thought I was either in hell or that everyone wanted me to go there. I had many scary hallucinations. Years later, after treatment, I began to hear scratching noises in the wall behind me, and then the alarm clock began banging up and down on the table beside the bed. My husband awoke - he had heard something banging! What is going on? If he could hear it, it obviously wasn't just in my head. How do I determine what's real and what's not?
-Jennifer

Dear Jennifer:

I believe that on some level, everything is real. If most other people can't perceive something, it's because you're tuning into another dimension. Further, being naturally psychic/sensitive can lead to depression. For more on that subject, please see this former column.

What you're struggling with here is pretty tricky for anyone who is newly conscious of their extrasensory perceptions. Since the modern world is so hung up on reason and physical evidence, whenever we perceive something others can not, it may be taken as a sign of insanity. I'm sure there are lots of people who would consider my views and experiences evidence that I am totally crazy. For that reason, I am very selective about who I share this area of my life with.

When my own psychic doors first blew open, I was convinced that I was losing my mind. For this reason, I kept most of what I perceived and experienced to myself. It was only when I began to have my experiences verified or validated in some way (as you did when your husband heard that banging alarm clock) that it occurred to me that maybe I was perceiving something real that is beyond the scope of normal conscious awareness. This led me to do some research and discover that mystics and psychics throughout the ages had described experiences similar or identical to my own. Over time, I learned how to better control my psychic experiences and put them to good use.

In my experience, nothing is more deeply unsettling than believing that you're crazy or losing your mind. To know that you can trust that what you perceive is real on some level is really comforting and empowering, even if what you perceive feels negative or somehow threatening. Once you realize that you can trust your perceptions, you can begin to work on controlling them, sorting out what's real in this dimension, and manifesting what you want to experience in this area of your life instead of feeling like you're at the mercy of a malfunctioning brain.

Many people who struggle with things like severe depression, manic depression, psychotic breaks, schizophrenia, panic attacks, addictions, etc., are in the awkward stage where they have become sensitive to psychic energies but are not consciously aware of that yet, so they don't understand what's happening and haven't developed the knowledge and skills to control their experiences. Further, people who are psychically sensitive but unconscious of this fact are easy for spirits to influence, so they're prime targets for spirit attachment.

The fact that people who hear voices or experience other common symptoms of psychosis are perceiving something real in some dimension doesn't necessarily make them sane, of course. I believe to be sane, we must be able to make some sense of our experiences, and be able to use our skills, knowledge, talents and will power to take decent care of our minds, bodies and spirits. When sensitive people can't understand what is happening and they can't stay grounded in this reality in order to function, they are labeled psychotic. When they hear voices and see spirits and can focus their perceptions in a useful or constructive way, we call them psychic.

We are surrounded by invisible entities, energies and forces, for other dimensions interpenetrate and overlap ours. You ask how your alarm clock could bounce so your husband could hear it; most likely, that was happening in this dimension. There is no hard boundary between this world and other worlds; the boundaries are soft and fuzzy, and there are portals. The stronger a foothold a spirit has in this dimension, the more that spirit can affect physical reality, such making your alarm clock jump.

This and everything else you wrote about your experiences strongly suggest that you have spirit entities attached to your aura. This is very common and easy to remedy, so please don't let it freak you out.

Just like we are surrounded by microscopic germs that can make us feel sick when our immune system is weakened, we are surrounded by all sorts of entities and energies that can make us feel depressed, anxious, and even crazy when our spirits are vulnerable. Like parasites, if they get a foothold on our energy system, we can be plagued with symptoms for years and may frequently not feel like ourselves. (Isn't that an interesting saying?)

For the sorts of problems you're struggling with, I recommend hypnotherapy with a caring, skilled and compassionate healer who is good at spirit releasement therapy and past life regression, for these are two processes that often lead to instant healing with psychological problems like those you describe. You don't have to believe that there are actually spirits attached to people that drain them of energy (causing depression), or that there are spirits that talk to them or other attached entities in their minds (causing what we label schizophrenia or psychosis), or that there are spirits that distort people's sense of reality by opening their awareness of metaphysical dimensions (causing so-called hallucinations). The important thing is that these therapies work. Often in a few hours, people can release psychological and even physical problems that have plagued them for years and resisted all other attempts at treatment.

To begin to take back your personal power over your own experience, I encourage you to study this subject further. You might begin with one of these books: Remarkable Healings by Shakuntala Modi, M.D., Spirit Releasement Therapy by William Baldwin or Freeing the Captives: The Emerging Therapy of Treating Spirit Attachment by William Baldwin and Louise-Ireland Frey.

Also, exercise your divine right to dominion over your own body, mind and spirit. If you stand up for what is rightfully yours, any squatters on your spiritual turf must leave. There are prayers in Modi's book that can help you do this, though I still strongly recommend you find a hypnotherapist or spiritual healer to help and guide you.

May you learn to trust your own perceptions and grow into your spiritual gifts so you can manifest new health, peace and faith in your own judgment.

- Julia