Psychedelics, Integration & Spiritual Bypass
(If you have come here for integration work around your experiences, please contact me directly. I work with integration of these experiences through exploring themes, encounters, dreamwork, or nature based psyche work—I do not administer psychedelics themselves)
I took a 4 day training this past weekend on Psychedelics Assisted Psychotherapy with the sharp minds of Gabor Mate and Bessel Vanderkolk because of how many clients I have that come to me wanting ‘integration’ of their experiences ‘so they will stick’ OR the few that ask in first session ‘I don’t want to go to my trauma, isn’t there another way to just heal it without talking about it?”
Over the years I’ve talked to so many who have discovered glimpses of the depths of themselves with these medicines or drugs (depending on what camp you come from) and those who seem stuck with the integration or action part–where you actually implement and live from the transcendent experience you’ve gained. And I see people stuck here or moving very slowly forward or bypassing the work it takes to live it out. I also see the medicine as a beautiful teacher when wisely invited as a companion.
Let me start by saying, I have never taken into my body a ‘psychedelic’ substance. I say that as disclosure and transparency that I have not had or chosen the experience, not as some sort of badge. I’ve felt the pull at times, but in my own life I’ve found altered states through drumming, journeying, sex, eye gazing, deep musical harmony, contact dance, and near death experiences. And I am open to the real hands on things. For now I speak from a companion transcendent experience I have experienced. Death.
When I lost my twin girls years ago, my heart opened up so widely I remember that every time a human lashed out, or flipped me off in traffic, or was rude in line I immediately felt this immense sense of love and thought ‘I wonder what happened to that person today or in their lives that made them so unhappy or hurt today’ and I would have deep compassion toward them instead of anger. It was fascinating to me at the time–I felt so much love and no ‘reaction or defensiveness’. A counselor at that time drew me a picture of a circle within a circle. She pointed to the outer edge and said, ‘here you are’ and then to the inner orb and said, ‘and here is your experience of loving it all with the death of your girls’ and then she drew a bridge across the void from the outer to inner orb and she said, ‘and here is the bridge, the transcendent experience, that this incredible loss has opened you up to see. But, you do not get to live there without doing the outer work in your 3D life to stay there!’ And I believe, this is where the real living and work begins. This has been my experience.
This woman/therapist was a student and friend of Thich Nhat Hanh for 20 years before I met her. And I have held this knowledge ever since, as it has been confirmed with my experience in the past 15 years since my girls deaths, I have cultivated this learning in my day to day. Has it been easy? HELL NO!
When I wanted to close, numb, or occupy the state of ‘non-feeling’ in life, in love, in sexuality, in hurt from violence, I practiced slowly keeping it open–and now, I almost completely live in that state. But in the inbetween there was a lot of deep heartache, a lot of therapy of talking to my little people and protectors inside to ask them to please let me widen the space for love to always endure, a lot of awareness and dedication to living and practicing what I had glimpsed in those 8 months following my transcendent experience. It was hard to pry open that place with the prongs of trust and reassurance and experience so the little ones could see differently, and tell a different story about open heartedness, about intimacy, about presence.
So, I went to the ‘experts' to be curious about my thoughts around using psychedelics to heal trauma without any further interventions. I did this for my clients and friends questions around this. And for the medicines themselves. And I learned that my experience is accurate to most transcendent experiences. You get a glimpse of an inner world and outer world where all your managers and protectors step back and you see the heart of yourself and all of life–you see we are all connected and often feel this immense ‘knowing’. And over time, if you do not do the work, it fades and you must go back again and again to re- realize. OR, you can use the tools of awareness (meditation, awareness) to anchor and as they suggested, find a counselor or therapist to help those protector parts feel safe enough to step back over time ‘for real’ and trust your full SELF to take the reigns, and let your real self emerge. Those two pieces as noted by these experts as well are crucial to moving beyond the realization to anchoring it in your soul, in your life, and in your relationships. You have to practice it in the real world, you cannot just hole up, meditate and bypass all the work in between.
Not many clients come to me and say, ‘let’s look at the pain and the trauma and the shadow sides of myself!’ But that is where we lovingly go. And we come back holding those small children in our arms, loving every part of our humanness, and if we are coupled, loving the other’s wounded and exiled ones just as much as our own. We do the real work involved of showing up for ourselves, for others, for humanity. And we do this together.
I open this conversation for your experiences here as well. Please feel free to share as I am always learning and interested in staying IN the conversation with one another more than anything else.
Spiritual Bypassing
A colleague recently said to me, ‘you don’t need MDMA in your work. You ARE MDMA because your presence and the safe container you create takes people to the same place. And that’s true too. There are ways of human presence and unconditional love that allow that opening over time.
And, I acknowledge these medicines, when used with integrative work on a daily basis, are a way into those depths that sometimes take years to form in therapy. That’s a beautiful gift. AND, doing the work of not spiritual bypassing but integrating what you saw and bringing those wounded ones forward to the present time into real human interactions is necessary to heal. And I feel what your reciprocity is to these plants, medicines when you take their medicines–that you give back by implementing what they teach, just as you would someone who opened you to love–you would give back in thanks, in kindness, in time.
What I was surprised by is the only non-psychedelic presenter they had there was Dick Schwartz, the founder of the work I do and believe so deeply in (IFS-Internal Family Systems) or the same ‘parts work’ offered in my soul craft training years ago.
You get a glimpse into your own ‘internal family’. The archetypes, the protectors, the managers that formed from your own particular traumatic experience whether that was sexual trespass, or being neglected or abandoned, or being abused emotionally. And, through therapy and a witnessing other, you build a relationship with these parts where they trust YOU, the SELF, at the center of the things always. You know when you are acting from the wounded ones and you choose differently. Instead of lashing out from the child to the one you love, you are able to calm that one and step into the adult self, holding all of the ones who have so much fear in your arms.
