On demons and vanquishing them

I’m sure we have all watched an exorcism movie or two…yes? no? Hold that thought.

I have always believed that if you can name your demons, you can fight them. Whatever they may be, be it something as simple as procrastination or something as complex as anxiety or depression. Few things are as challenging as suffering from something unnamed be it physical or mental. It’s why we go to the doctor for a diagnosis. After the diagnosis comes the treatment.

Perhaps it’s the catholic in me that has always inherently known this. Back to the exorcism movies, it is believed that until the demon identifies itself by name, it will not leave the possessed. The priest needs to know “who” exactly it is so he can then summon the power of God to vanquish it. It has to be vanquished by name.

Same applies to our personal struggles I believe. If ever I feel restless or anxious or down or whatever feelings I feel that creep up on me like ghosts, unnamed, and unknown, i try to take a step back to figure out where they are coming from. Living with emotions whose origins are unknown feels to me like living in a haunted house.

There’s this beautiful quote I read once;

“One need not be chamber, to be haunted”

It stayed with me because this is what the human mind feels like to me. It is a house that can easily be haunted by unwanted thoughts and feelings and if we don’t sit with them and call them by their names, we may never be able to get rid of them.

The Netflix documentary Stutz, which is really like a therapy session touches on this. Leading Psychiatrist Phil Stutz talks about the three aspects of life that every human being needs to get comfortable with. That is “Pain, Uncertainty, Constant Work”. He says:

“You have to learn to love the process of dealing with those three things. And that is where the tools come in, when it appears, you identify it and then use the tools to nullify it”

From the Netflix documentary Stutz

What we need in life really is the tools to help us fight our demons.