interesting, you assume it's sz, or posession, but her explanation is off the table? because i am much like her, and what she said made alot of sense. only one problem, simple beginner-shaman mistake, she wants to control others. wants to control YOU. madness ought to groom itself. stay inside itself, stop trying to change others, that's not her mission, she's easily misled.
yeah, i'm a "shell", plus more. by default i would agree, many humans are the shells of the spirits who own them, the condensation at the center of a cloud of spirits which the christians call the "cloud of witnesses". one percent of us are called to be a bridge between the worlds. many refuse the request, and suffer forever. i accepted my role.
once i made your first interpretation. went to the pdoc, tried the drugs. very nice, but had nothing to do with my "spiritual problem", which by the way, is a valid category in the DSM-IV.
i also tried your second theory, posession, or i should say my friends and relatives did. i usually said ok to being exorsized, but would freak out at the last minute and refuse to go through with it. but once, with the extra push of a girlfriend's encouragement, i went through with a catholic exorcism. interesting experience. comforting, at the end. saw a twisty grotesque cat come out fo my left shoulder, fly up into the church ceiling.
that night, i went to the demon world, looked around, out of curiosity. it was like walking around nagasaki after the bomb. buildings and infrastructure, but desolate, abandoned. no more demons to be seen! i searched the demon city, and found just one, looking disillusioned, dejected, sitting in a basement at a desk, writing. we got right to work together on calling down more demons. and within six months, just like new orleans after hurricane katrina, we REPOPULATED...
I'm a demon eater. a shaman. I listen to demon language. she's right, nothing to be afraid of, just infinite knowledge. we are like fish to them, they aren't planning fish-kills all the time, they have their own lives, though they would kill a fish for fun or without thinking about it, if the opportunity arose, and some do track down and kill fish for sport, others "protect" and help save "fish" -
i am half human and half demon. demons placed a demon soul inside me at age 5. it matured when i was 35. the demons showed me my magic. i live with them in the demon world, and also maintain a human body in the human world. dual citizenship. i propose peace, a sobornost between the worlds. but you know how it is for world leaders. we still end up fighting huge wars from time to time.
my advice (and from the above post you can tell the mindset of the person this is coming from): she sounds like a leader for the spirit world. she may need training, it's a jungle out there. see a professional shaman.
-onderdonk