Broken Heart and Broken Soul: Patterns of toxic relationships from a Shamanic Perspective.

Hello friends!  I am about to go on a written journey with you about a subject very dear to my heart. I have been training in Core Shamanism for over 20 years and in full blown Shamanic Practice for about 10 years. I must add that I am not a traditional indigenous shaman and I will never claim to be one, despite having some training on Cultural Shamanism. I add this disclaimer because I know that in our curent spiritual climate people are very concerned with cultural appropriation and closed practices. Core Shamanism (What I practice ) is a Cross-Cultural form of Shamanism and it is not a closed practice.

With all of that now said. Let’s get started.!

I never expected my practice of Shamanic Healing to grow into a way to help people feel empowered to break patterns of Toxic Relatioships. However, members of my own family growing up lived with those patterns so I should have seen it coming! Over the last 10 years I have seen a lot of clients from all over the world come to me to feel empowered to break the chains of Toxic Relationships and Abuse.

I must also clarify that I do not claim that I will shake a rattle or bang my drum and all of the sudden your relationships will be perfect! That is not what I do! People come to me because they have realized that in the process of living with Toxic Relationships, something about them has fundamentally been broken. Something is missing. My role as a Shamanic Healer is to help my clients feel whole and empowered on a spiritual level. That leaves them in a far better state of mind to take the actions that they need to take in order to reclaim control of their own lives.

How does all of this ever happen? It is not like people wake up one day and say, "you know what I want in my life?? A toxic relationship!" No, that is not the way it works! Nobody choses the suffering these patterns create. Shamanically speaking it all boils down to Shamanic Illness. That is an illness that plagues not the body but the soul. I am now going to write about things I have seen in my professional practice, without going through actual cases. If you are a former client of mine and you see yourself in this writing be reassured this is about my professional experience in general and not about specific clients.

In the case of  Toxic Relationships, it begins like most forms of Shamanic Illness with trauma. Trauma looks different for everyone, what is normal for one person, could be life shattering for another. However trauma rarely stops at the end of the life event that created it. We live with the aftermath of our trauma, for a long time. Many of us for the rest of our lives. 

In the case of Shamanic Illness one of the first things that happens in trauma is Power Loss. In the case of Toxic and Abusive Relationsip Patterns, it happens with the original Toxic Relationship. Power loss in Shamanism is the loss of your Power Animal. Your Power Animal is a part of your Soul. It is the living embodiment of all your good traits. For my Christian and Catholic readers, it is a lot like your guardian angel but in animal form. It is your teacher, friend, guide and, it is your protector. When we go to the trauma of Toxic Relationships or Abuse, we often feel powerless to stop the situation from happening.

That is our Power Animal doing its very best to shield us from harm, very often taking a huge spiritual hit while proctecting us and then running away due its own trauma. The big problem then, is the fact that with our power animal gone, we are powerless for the long run. When we lose our power animal to the trauma of Toxic Relationships or Abuse, it leaves us in a place of feeling powerless to stop future toxicity.

When that happens many of us carry the energetic wound of our trauma. That energy is like blood in the water to sharks. People who have their own wounding and let it manifest through their own toxic behavior, are attracted to us. They are looking  for an outlet to their abuse, many of them out of their own illness. When they find someone with Power Loss it is a perfect match, this pattern of connection becomes embedded in our energy and we repeat it throughout our lives.

That is the beginning! As things go along we also tend to have a second form of illness that cements the pattern: Soul Loss. This is a very severe form of Shamanic Illness. When we go through trauma, many times part of ourselves cannot handle the situation. We then fragment and go live in our happy place in spirit. That is Soul Loss. The worst of it comes when in the process of fragmentation, our soul pieces stay stuck in time and space. The soul pieces then relieve the moment of trauma over and over again. From a purely Shamanic perspective, that cycle is the spiritual equivalent of PTSD. It is why many people in a Toxic Relationship Pattern can’t break it on their own. They are suffering from Power Loss and Soul Loss, and to top it off part of themselves that fragmented in the moment of trauma is still reliving is suffering in spirit. Due to that, due to their soul pieces being stuck in the moment of trauma, their unconscious mind keeps recreating their trauma with new people. It is doing its best to fix old trauma with new people in their place.

Then there is a part of all of this rarely spoken about in Shamanic Circles. Soul Theft! With Soul Loss due to trauma, our abusers if controlling enough can take posession of the soul fragments that have broken away from us. In the case of Toxic Family dynamics this can happen after death.  Which also means that our ourginal abusers many times tend to continue to create drama even after death by not crossing over into the afterlife.

So, if you see any part of yourself in this narrative. How do you proceed to fix these issues? It is a multi layer approach. First, do not underestimate the power of a qualified Mental Health Team. I myself have spent lenghty amount of time in therapy for my own trauma, and it was the best thing I have ever done for myself. Do not allow the mental health stigma of western culture take away your choice to get the help you deserve. Number 2, get spiritual help.  Find a spiritual healer that can help with the issues I have described. Someone who can clean the infected spiritual wounds that you carry from your life long pattern of Toxic Relationships. Someone who can return your Power Animal and your Soul to you. Someone who can set you free from the grips of your abusers, and if needed cross them over into the afterlife.

Be aware if you chose to find a Traditional Indigenous Shaman to work with, not all indigenous cultures do all these types of work. As a practitioner of Core Shamanism I had clients of mine from Native Hertage got very offended at me because I did Power Animal Retrieval, it has happened multiple times. 

However everything I have written about here can be easily cared for by a practitioner of Core Shamanism with the right training and experience. This kind of work has been at the core of my professional Shamanic Healing practice from the beginning. Be aware, healing your mind and soul is only the beginning. When we are living in the aftermath of trauma. Our entire lives reflect it. Everything we do, and who we are. All of it is a reflection of our past. Part of recovering from trauma is reclaiming our lives from our past. We must take the necessary steps to change our actions, both internal and external. To make the lifestyle changes that are needed in order to reclaim our lives from trauma. If you continue to live your life after healing from trauma the way you did before your healing journey, you will only manifest more trauma.

There is light at the end of the tunnel! There is hope for you! Yes I admit the process is not easy. However neither is living in the aftermath of trauma. You have a choice to make my reader. You can do the hard work to just stay afloat in the ocean of toxicity you are living in, or you can do the hard work to get out of it. Let this blog post be the first step towards your relclaiming your Power and your Life. Either way the path is challenging, why not choose the challenge that will take you to happiness!

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You can connect with Mictlan for Shamanic Healing through his website: which you can find here on his SPA Member Profile!