Dear Judy:

I am sorry to hear about your daughter. I know how you are feeling as I too have daughters who have been in a lot of trouble at times in their lives and especially spiritually. It is truly difficult for any parent to see their child in suffering and worse, in behavior that is self-destructive to themselves and to others. 

We need to always presume a natural explanation for things unless there is some evidence to suggest a spiritual element. The alcoholism, personality disorders, and lack of faith of your daughter can easily explain problems with anger without suspecting any spiritual interference.

With that said demons tend to enjoy exploiting people's problems. In fact, demons exploit problems that already exist more than they cause new problems. Thus, it is possible that demons notice the suffering that your daughter is undergoing and decide to intrude upon that to make it worse than it has to be.

While it may be true that demons are exploiting problems please be careful about making the diagnosis that you're not qualified to make. You may suspect the demonic element, but be very careful in diagnosing one. I would have to examine her personally to make any diagnosis to that effect. But, as mentioned above it is a common practice of demons to exploit the vulnerabilities and problems of people, and thus us your suspicions may be accurate.

The essential truth in dealing with any adult is that they cannot be helped if they do not wish to be helped. All you can do is to gently encourage, but not nag, that she see a counselor about her anger problem and other problems. Since she is an alcoholic in recovery, I presume that she has a sponsor to help her with problems of drinking. If she has personality disorders or other psychiatric problems, I presume she's under the care of a psychiatrist to deal with those issues. It is the spiritual issues that are of concern to specially if she lost her faith.

What you can do as her mother is to take authority in prayer. Even though she is an adult with her own child she is still under your household from spiritual point-of-view. Our children and our children's children are all under our household according to God's economy. Thus, we can use that authority in prayer on behalf of our children.

In that regard, I suggest that you look in our Spiritual Warfare Prayer Catalog, linked below, for those prayers that would be appropriate to pray for your daughter. Some of the prayers that I would specifically recommend include Prayer for our Children, Hedge Prayer for Return of Wayward Catholics, Hedge Prayer for Return of those who are Wayward from Us, Hedge Prayer for Protection of Others, Proxy Deliverance Prayer for a Friend or Relative, and Rebuking Particular Spirits-Proxy.

These last prayers are "proxy" prayers. These are used when the people themselves are not willing to pray for themselves and thus we say deliverance prayers on their behalf. It is not as effective as when the person prays  deliverance prayers for themselves, but especially as your daughter's mother you have a level of spiritual authority in prayer that I do not have if I were to pray the prayers for your daughter. By the way your daughter will be put onto our prayer list for specially trained Spiritual Warfare prayer team.

The last prayer, Rebuking Particular Spirits, is a prayer in which you can specifically rebuke a particular demon. The Church does not allow us to ask a demon its name, but we can refer to that evil spirit by its "attribute." For example, you could rebuke the spirit of anger. The prayer also appeals to the opposite spirit. For example, the opposite of anger could be calm or peace. The point is that after rebuking the demon we always want to ask for the spirit of the opposite attribute, for we do not only want to get rid of that evil spirit but we want the spirit of the positive attribute that comes from God to come to that person.

In addition to the prayer list that we have, be sure to place your daughter on other prayer lists at your parish or elsewhere. You can also have your prayer intention placed at the Grotto in Lourdes France. Go to the Grotto of Lourdes website. In doing this your intention will be brought before our Lady of Lourdes.

We will also be praying for you and for your whole family as you struggle with these issues.

God Bless,
Bro. Ignatius Mary