When I first trained as a professional intuitive and healer around 18 years ago, one of the auric ‘blocks and restrictions’ I was taught that clients can sometimes have going on (i.e. a situation that blocks them from manifesting their best life) is ‘negative Spirit Guides’, who need to be fired.

What are negative spirit guides?

Such Spirit Guides, rather than guiding us towards our highest good, are supposedly not in alignment with our soul’s path and purpose for this lifetime, and therefore need to be replaced.

This information (like much of my training back then) never did resonate with me. From time to time, I am asked about this concept, since many professional intuitives did the same training as me and have disseminated this teaching that one can hire and fire new Spirit Guides at will.

This is my take on this…

When we incarnate, we get a team of Spirit Guides for the life path and plan we choose. Those Spirit Guides are wanting us to align with our highest path – there is no Spirit Guide out there who tries to bring us down or take us off that path.

I’ve interacted with many hundreds of Spirit Guide teams (probably more than that since I began working as an intuitive in 2007) and never once have I come across a case where I’ve had the sense someone’s Spirit Guide team member was holding them back or feeding them low-vibrational guidance.

However, there are many possible scenarios that could account for the situation whereby an inexperienced intuitive is perceiving that someone has a negative Spirit Guide. Here are 4 possible ones:

1. Ordinary and enmeshed earthbound spirit attachments
2. Low-vibrational deceased loved ones
3. Ancestors who are not ‘well’ in Spirit
4. Unintegrated past life sub-characters

Let’s look at each scenario one by one, to see how each of these could potentially be mistaken for a Spirit Guide.

Ordinary earthbound spirit attachments could easily be mistaken for a Spirit Guide

Earthbound spirits are the souls of those who did not cross over fully to the other side after death — they are humans who have left pieces of their mental or emotional body (or both) on the Earth plane after death. They are what we commonly refer to as ghosts. They can attach to places and to the outside of peoples’ auric fields.

Some people are more likely than others to attract these spirit attachments. For example, people who use ouija boards or cannabis and those who do psychic development without any kind of spiritual discernment are more likely to draw in these spirits.

Ordinary earthbound spirits can be mistaken for Spirit Guides because they are also human souls and they may look and sound like Spirit Guides. But the difference between the two is that earthbound spirits are dead and stuck, whereas Spirit Guides are chosen by God to accompany us on our path through life.

They give very different types of “guidance”. For example:

• Earthbound spirits will commiserate with you and throw you a pity party if things aren’t going well.
• But Spirit Guides would on the other hand give you guidance to raise your vibration and improve the situation.

Another example:

• Earthbound spirits don’t know your soul’s path or plan and they’re too absorbed in their own pain or fear to care.
• Spirit Guides on the other hand know what you’re here to do – they know your soul’s past, path and purpose. They are guiding you from that larger perspective, and they are ‘you focused’, not self focused.

There is also another type of earthbound spirit that could be mistaken for a Spirit Guide, and that’s the enmeshed earthbound spirit. Enmeshed earthbound spirits are ordinary earthbound spirits who became much more attached to their host and now live on the inside of the person’s auric field. They are harder to release (the process to do so is much more involved). They are also much quieter than ordinary earthbound spirits — they tend to go unnoticed, although if they are noticed they could be mistaken for a Spirit Guide.

Let’s have a look at another type of spirit that could be mistaken for a Spirit Guide:

Ancestors who are not ‘well’ in spirit

When a person dies, there are several levels of ‘wellness’ and ‘deadness’ that they can reach on the other side. I’ve just spoken about earthbound spirits in general, and this state can also apply here — sometimes our deceased loved ones and ancestors die without crossing over fully and obviously in such a scenario they are not particularly ‘well’ on the other side. In other cases, they did cross over but they died with unresolved issues, and again they aren’t totally ‘well’ on the other side. Ancestors in particular who are unwell spiritually can affect us and our family line with their issues (unless we do ancestral healing to help them to resolve whatever it is that is ailing them.)

These kinds of ancestral spirits can be around us and their issues live inside our bodies as epigenetic influences (example here.)

Because they are human souls, they too could be mistaken for Spirit Guides. Essentially they can be rooting for us but they are bogged down spiritually in old issues that seek resolution through us. So, they’re not in a position to offer us guidance that aligns with our highest good.

Deceased loved ones

Many spiritual people believe that our deceased loved ones in spirit can become our Spirit Guides after death. This is not strictly correct. It is true that they can be around and root for us from the other side, but they have not received training as a Spirit Guide and this is not a formal role they will occupy in our lives.

On top of that, deceased loved ones can die with issues that lower their vibrational state and they may not give the best of advice if we channel them. Just as you might not take advice from a dysfunctional relative or family member, so you might not want to if they’re dead.

Let’s have a look at another common scenario (in terms of someone mistaking a spirit for a Spirit Guide):

Unintegrated past life sub-characters

Past life sub-characters are fragments of our former selves from previous incarnations who never fully healed after traumatic past life deaths or events. Unlike integrated past life memories that simply inform our current experience, these unhealed aspects remain active and vocal – essentially trying to prevent us from repeating their painful experiences.

Here’s how this works: Imagine a past life where you experienced devastating betrayal – perhaps your partner left you for someone else while you were away. That version of you died carrying wounds around trust and worthiness. Instead of resolving these issues on the other side and integrating into your soul’s wisdom, this wounded self remains separate and unintegrated.

In your current life, this unintegrated aspect operates like an overprotective guardian, whispering warnings and planting doubts. You might hear thoughts like ‘people always leave’ or ‘don’t get too close – you’ll only get hurt’ even when your current relationship shows no red flags. This could manifest as an inability to be vulnerable with partners, chronic suspicion without evidence, or sabotaging perfectly good connections.

What makes this confusing is that this past life aspect isn’t malicious. Instead it genuinely believes it’s helping by keeping you safe from repeating its trauma. These wounded aspects resist healing the karmic pattern because from their perspective, staying stuck feels safer than risking the pain they experienced.

Because these past life fragments communicate like voices in our head offering guidance (albeit fear-based guidance), inexperienced intuitives can easily mistake them for external Spirit Guides – especially ‘negative’ ones trying to hold someone back. But they’re not separate spirits. They’re unhealed pieces of your own soul from previous lifetimes.

In conclusion…

In my experience, Spirit doesn’t make mistakes when we are assigned our guides. We get the right guides for us, for our path and purpose here on Earth. If that path and purpose shifts, our guides get the memo and adjust. We don’t need to fire them.

If we do encounter what we think is a negative Spirit Guide and find ourselves firing them, it is highly likely that we’re not firing our Spirit Guides — instead, we’re most likely looking at one of the scenarios above.

For unintegrated past life selves, we should be looking at identifying and healing a karmic complex.

For ancestors and deceased loved ones that are not ‘well’ in spirit, we could look at ancestral healing.

For earthbound spirits, it’s important to release them properly. In my Intuitive Awakening course, I teach people how to channel Spirit Guides while avoiding and releasing earthbound spirits, and in my Intuitive Healing Program, I also teach students to release both types of spirit attachment for themselves and others. And I have a process for releasing ordinary earthbound spirits in my book ‘The Empath’s Toolkit’.

The problem with the ‘firing guides’ approach…

…Is that it likely doesn’t address the actual issue(s). If you have an earthbound spirit, ‘firing’ it like a Spirit Guide won’t properly release it. If you have an unintegrated past life self, it needs healing, not firing.

The ‘firing’ ritual is most likely going to create the illusion of addressing an energetic problem without actually resolving it.