Nothing beats lived experience
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Only by learning on the job can guides figure out how to deliver ethical psychedelic therapy
From ས་གཞི་སྔོན་པོ་འགྱུར། (The Earth Turned Green) by Shen Xin at the Swiss Institute in New York until August 28
There’s no substitute for first-hand learning with psychedelic therapy says its number one ethics coach Kylea Taylor.
Like sparring in combat sports, you can hit as many punchbags as you like but nothing beats the real thing.
“Transference and intensity are triggers. What we’re trying to use emotionally, and what we connect to, can stir up our own sensations,” says Taylor.
Only the act itself can provide the level of intensity and pressure to identify the areas where we need to improve, and do better. Yes, that’s Maria Sabina’s lilt you can hear fading into the background music to this article, as we ponder for a moment how psychedelic therapy evokes the indigenous lifestyle where there is no school and the only knowledge is directly acquired.
Back to minding your Ps and Qs at the ketamine clinic. “We will get even more familiar with our own unknown material,” says Taylor of the necessity to walk the walk.
“Be conscious of feelings in your body, energy… an opening of the trauma capsule within you”
Because noticing when you’re off on your hamster wheel is hard. “We can’t focus back on the plan cos we don’ even know that we aren’t focussed on the plan,” says Taylor.
To give one example, in complex post-traumatic stress disorder blockbuster From Surviving to Thriving Pete Walker describes the inner critic as ‘sneaky’. Just when you think you’ve got tabs on it, the utter bastard finds a way to express itself that even one’s Vital-trained, shadow-integrated self doesn’t put into the ‘twattish behaviour’ category – yet. Other ingrained patterns can be equally polymorphous.
“Trigger management is the most noticeable area of sitting,” says Taylor who first began working with the Grof Foundation in 1984, “When we are sitting in a psychedelic session we are much more likely to have deep brain responses than in a regular talk therapy session. The older parts of our brain react much faster. If we are deeply triggered the reptile brain won’t consult the neocortex for what we learned in the ethics class.” For example: the amygdala fear response deep inside the oldest part of the human brain still has complete control over the senses of touch, smell and taste, only deigning to consult the past 200 million years of evolution on sights and sounds.
“The more self work you do, the more you’ll recognise… and extend self-compassion”
Stanislav Grof calls our internal mini-narratives ‘systems of condensed experience’ or COEX. “We must choose to come out of the COEX capsule and refocus on the client,” says Taylor, using the phrase “in process” to describe a therapist essentially acting out with the best of intentions.
Compulsive behaviour of all levels is notoriously gruelling to identify and heal. Lack of awareness is intrinsic, and complete: like a dream, anger, or a PTSD flashback. So is humanity under pressure – the compulsion to succeed with a patient who reminds the therapist of the son they ‘failed’ to ‘save’, or the instinct to share a positive ideology.
“Try to be conscious of feelings in your body, an energy; the opening of the trauma capsule within you,” says Taylor. As ever, “The more self work you do, the more you’ll recognise… and extend self-compassion.”