EP 184: The Theradelic Approach: Enhancing Psychedelic Healing | Sunny Strasburg LMFT

Welcome to Radical Responsibility, the podcast dedicated to ridding the world of blame and shame, where we explore the issues you care about from a unique perspective. 100% ownership for each and every circumstance we face in life, day in and day out. I'm really thrilled to be here today with Sunny Strasberg. Welcome, Sunny.

Thank you. I'm so excited to be here with you again.

Well, really glad to have you. We've done one other summit interview like this and was very able to participate in a retreat with you and Dick Swartz. It was fabulous. So really appreciate that we're getting to know each other and can be professional colleagues and really happy to include you in this summit. So I'm going to share a bit of your bio and then we'll jump right into the conversation. Sound good?

Sounds great.

Yeah. Okay, so Sunny Strasberg, lmfd, licensed marriage and family therapist, is a psychedelic entrepreneur, licensed psychotherapist, author, consultant and educator specializing in internal family systems, or ifs, and archetypal psychology. A certified practitioner in EMDR and psychedelic assisted therapies, she holds a graduate certification in psychedelic assisted therapy and research from the California Institute of integral studies, or CIIs. With expertise in ketamine, MDMA, and psilocybin assisted psychotherapy, she has utilized her robust skill set to train hundreds of clinicians. Strasberg, with Dr. Richard Schwartz, the founder of IFS, hosts transformative retreats employing novel principles and methodologies that blend therapeutic practices with psychedelics. Strasberg has authored the insightful book the theradelic Approach, Psychedelic Perspective Preparation and Practice, encapsulating her extensive experience as an entrepreneur, psychotherapist and educator. A prolific speaker, Jasper's graced stages at numerous esteemed conferences such as the Psychedelic Science 2023 Conference, SXW 2023, and the 2023 Expanded States of Consciousness Worldwide Summit, the 2021 MDRIA EMDRIA Worldwide Virtual Conference Journey, Clinical and Body Training, MDRIA UK and the Boston Trauma Conference, sharing her innovative perspectives and experiences in a therapeutic field. Thank you. Okay, so, Sunny, your book, the the Approach Psychedelic Therapy Perspective Preparation Practice, is a comprehensive guide to psychedelic therapy. So I wonder if you could describe for us the theradelic approach and how this approach differs from other methods and how this kind of evolved out of your own experience.

Thank you so much. Yeah, I'm really excited. I just released the book in June, so it feels really good. It felt like. Like birthing a rectangle baby. It was a big process and just all the thought that went into it, you know, I'VE worked for several years as a trainer in psychedelic therapy. And I really came to understand that, that this field is pretty revolutionary. This is a whole different paradigm than any other therapy. It's not like just training someone in a simple therapeutic modality. It's very different than anything. And so I started thinking about what does it really mean to be an attuned, skilled, empathic therapist, to hold space for psychedelic experiences? You know, not only do you have to be skilled as a therapist, you also have to be trauma informed. That's very important. You also have to do your own work. You have to understand what it means to hold space for another person that's in an expanded state of consciousness.

This is also such a different paradigm because some of the old ways of doing therapy, like if you look at cognitive behavioral therapy, for example, it's like the therapist is an expert and they're bestowing wisdom on a hapless client. And this is very different where we're all in this healing container together. The theradelic approach goes beyond instructing all the trainings that I've had before, it was basically conversations around what does preparation for the journey look like, what does trip sitting look like, what does it look like to facilitate a session, what does it look like to help integrate? And those are all very important to the process. But going deeper than that, I wanted to really explore what psychedelics are right now in the larger landscape of what we're facing. Epidemic of mental illness right now, epidemic of the loneliness of isolation. So what does it look like to couch this into a larger system of what we're dealing with right now? And then how to add dimension to preparation, trip sitting and integration using tools like internal family systems, like emdr, like archetypal psychology, how can you weave those in? At what point do you use emdr? At what points do you use ifs? And so I really wanted people, when they get the training, the full training, when they read the book, to understand that there are.

It's almost like a creative template for people to create treatment protocols. But then how can you leverage these tools to really make it impactful? Another thing that's important about the theradelic approach is the focus on how we are story making creatures. We are so hardwired to create stories and make sense of our experiences. And so how do we as facilitators, help people integrate what they experience into a. That creates resiliency and positive explanatory style? You know, internalizing that locus of control. These ideas of making ourselves the hero and heroine of our own journey through life. And that feels really important. So that's another dimension to the theradelic approach that I incorporated into it.

I wonder if you could talk about, you know, one thing I've. I've really been amazed by and I've really appreciated by everything I've been learning from this emerging movement of psychedelic assisted psychotherapy, at least for me. And I know this is not universally true, but in general, it felt like the field of psychotherapy and in many ways become very conservative and risk averse. Since the 60s and 70s, the human potential movement, things like assault therapy, psychodrama, different kinds of things. And you know, as part of being in a very litigant society. And, you know, I've been involved in the world of Buddhist meditation and mindfulness for a long time. There's a lot of. Most of your major mindfulness and Buddhist teachers in this country are also psychotherapists. So this is in this overlaying and, and it's moved both in a direction of, of real really being risk averse and like not wanting to ruffle anybody's feathers. Right. And, you know, there's good reasons for that. And. But what I've noticed about this movement, it seems like courage has come back to the field of psychotherapy, like really willing to work with people and, and enter into relationships with people where really deep transformation can happen. So it just feels like it's re infused the world of psychotherapy with courage. And yet, of course, safety is very important. So I wonder in terms of your therapy approach, if you could talk about the therapeutic alliance, how that's created and how you create qualities of embodied safety. And.

You know, I like One expression from Dr. Dan Siegel. You know, he talks about, you know, the importance for any of us of being seen, but also of feeling felt. And one of the roles of the therapist is to give that. Give the client or that person the experience of not only being seen, but being felt in a very empathic way. So I'm curious about what's unique about psychedelic assisted therapy in terms of creating that therapeutic alliance, that quality of embodied safety that does empower the client to go deeper.

You articulated that so beautifully. And there are so many directions I could go with that question. Thank you. It's beautiful.

Yes, the risk averse, your point. I mean, I really want to separate out that no matter what client safety in terms of their psychological, physical safety is paramount and more important than anything else. So I really want to anchor this conversation around that because the theradelic approach is really focused on what does it mean to be safe? What does consent mean in all of its forms? Not only sexual consent, but, but physical touch consent, psychological, emotional consent. Right. And really being cognizant of that. But the way I see it as you're talking, and I love how you articulated that, that all of this creativity, I mean you said courage, but I think also another one of the eight Cs in IFS internal family systems. When we talk about self energy, we talk about being in the 8Cs and that's being calm, being curious, being clear, compassionate, confident, courageous, creative and connected. Right. So when we're in that self energy, we can do all kinds of amazing things. Right. And, and I love courage and creativity as it applies to psychedelic medicine. We're exploring new frontiers. Again, this, you know, these expanded states of consciousness are different than anything else. Right. When I was first being trained in, in psychedelics early on, you know, years ago, the, the practitioner that was training me said, you know, this, you don't have to take psychedelics to understand them. It's like you don't. If you're prescribing heart medicine, you don't have to take the heart medicine to understand it. And immediately I thought, you know, you just don't get it. This you have as a practitioner, you have to experience these medicines before you're serving them because these medicines are like a co therapist. You have to know your co therapist that you're working with, right? You have to understand the landscape and the signature of the medic that you're serving. So in a way that kind of experimentation is very, very different. That's a different paradigm than other therapeutic modalities. You know, the fact that MAPS is putting MDMA through FDA for rescheduling and partnering a molecule with therapy, this is revolutionary. We haven't done this before, you know, so. So to your point, I think that creating safety is really important and being creative. When I in the theradelic approach, there's this focus on being extremely creative as a practitioner and being adept and agile to meet your client where they are. Like in the example of story making, you know, it takes a lot of skill and self awareness to be able to meet clients where they are and help them unpack the symbols that their various parts produce for them during a psychedelic journey. There's a lot of creativity in that and courage. It takes a lot of courage to show up as your entire self and all your parts as a facilitator and hold space for someone else being willing to be in that container with another person. This Is this is really new. This is really exciting. I hope I answered your question.

No, you did. I want to go a little further with it. So it seems to me like part of, you know, one of the reasons, I think at least to a degree, the field of psychotherapy become kind of risk averse. And not only that, but the whole training world and you know, it's a danger of, you know, having we have much greater awareness about trauma, which is a really great thing. And then of course there's a fear around re traumatization and you know, and that's in the training worlds, in the psychotherapy world, even some of the spiritual community worlds. And it seems that psychedelic medicines and when, you know, with proper sentence setting and good guidance that the participant, the client, accesses part of their mind, their being, from which they can witness their experience and allow traumas to surface, allow some even maybe suppressed memories to surface, go through some fairly rough journeys, but not be retraumatized by it. Because there's a context that's being held. And I would suspect that may be co created ideally by the medicine, you know, in some ways that we all have that potential within us. But in terms of that being activated for a client, it may be somewhat of a co creation of well, they're in a capacity, but the medicine and then the therapist holding that space. And so I'm curious about the role of the that capacity. Well, in ifs you call it the self with a capital S. And that capacity to witness that is a protection against re traumatization.

Yes. Oh, wow. Okay. This is so juicy. And I want to spend a little minute with this because there are a couple of dimensions of this I want to talk about. So when we're in self energy as facilitators, right. That ifs idea of being calm and curious and connected, this energy is contagious to the client. So what happens is we're modeling, if you think about attachment theory as facilitators, we're modeling secure attachment. When we have, when we are in self energy, we're securely attached to our internal ecosystem and that in turn emanates secure attachment externally, if that makes sense. Right. We're calm, we're connected, we're confident. And so then the person who's receiving that self energy is able to access their own self energy and then direct that inward to their internal ecosystem and create secure attachment internally. This isn't an IFS concept per se. This is kind of how I imagine what it's like to model self energy in terms of secure attachment. Okay, so that said, that creates safety within the therapeutic container, right? Then there's this other dimension of creating safety. You know, you said re traumatization. There's a concern for retraumatization, a way that we can avoid that. I have a caveat that psychedelic therapy is somewhat unpredictable. We can't control all the variables of this, just like any kind of therapy.

But we can reduce re traumatization by slowing down the process.

There's this narrative in psychedelic, that psychedelic scene, I guess you'd say, because it's underground and above ground, that you want to go for ego dissolution. You want to go, you know, go big or go home. You want a heroic dose, you know, you want to take so much you can't remember who you are. And, you know, I really see that as a problem because what happens through the IFS lens is we develop throughout our lives protectors, you know, parts of us that protect the more vulnerable parts of us. And they're there for a reason. You know, Dick's book, no Bad Parts, you know, he talks about this. None of our parts are evil or bad. Once we understand what their desire is, we can always bring it back to their desires to protect us, even if they get extreme in the ways that they deal with that. Right? Like an extreme alcoholic part is actually trying to numb the system so we don't feel the pain that the exiles feel, for example. So if you take that and put it in the context of psychedelic therapy, if you as a facilitator, are rushing in or implicitly or explicitly telling your clients that they need to take a lot of medicine before they're ready, what happens is you're knocking out that protector system that's almost like an immune system for the exiles. Too soon you're not obtaining consent, right? And so, and you know, I've seen this, this narrative in trainings that I've been part of and in the underground scene, and it's all over. Like, go big or go home. Take a lot of medicine. And there's nothing wrong with having a huge psychedelic journey. That's wonderful. When you're ready, right? When your system is ready. So part of reducing re traumatization in my mind is slowing down the process on the front end during the preparation phase, doing things like in the theradelic approach, we talk about how to do trauma mapping through the EMDR lens, or obtaining consent from the protectors, doing a meditation where you actually take them through the IFS process and say, how do you all feel about going to sleep for a while? You'll come back online, we'll update you with what happened. But do you have any questions or concerns about going into the psychedelic experience and really taking time to address those concerns? So that reduces traumatization because you're titrating into the experience. And sometimes the best treatment approach is to go low dose. Like with ketamine, for example, you can do a low dose where the protectors are kind of able to hold on and have some say in what's happening and they're kind of conscious. And then you can do some work with the exiles while the protectors are able to kind of titrate into the experience.

Then you're doing practices where you're very respectful during the trip, sitting, really addressing trauma as it comes up during the trip sitting. And then at the end of the session or in subsequent sessions during integration, you're updating all the protector system about what happened. Bessel, van der Kolk and I have had several conversations about.

When people go too deep, too soon, they can have a rubber band effect where all of their exiles, their most vulnerable parts are laid bare, maybe showing the system some repressed trauma. And then when those protectors come back online, when they're in normal conscious mind, back when they're totally fully aware, those protectors get turn into punishers. And they say, how dare you expose us like that? Right? And then you have this rubber band effect where then. Where then they're re traumatized. So it's so important to keep the protectors apprised about what happened during the session and just make sure that they're okay with that. Right? So that's a big part of the theradelic approach is really tracking that. Because, you know, in ifs we say go slow to go fast, like slow down the process and you'll get more work done. And that really applies to psychedelic therapy.

So you mentioned consent several times as part of the protocols of safety and obviously is essential to good therapy. And.

Ifs kind of takes consent to a whole new level, right? Because the kind of myth of the singular eye that we all assume I'm just one eye, and so I can give consent. Well, who am I really speaking for from an ifs? I'm assuming I can speak for all these various parts. Now, people that aren't familiar with ifs, many psychotherapy therapeutic models from Freud onward have some notion of parts. IFS takes it to a pretty expansive level with these bad Huber and referencing exiles and protectors and, and. And so.

What brings up for me without having to explore ifs deeply, but it's just much greater nuance in terms of the therapist awareness and the ability to really meet the client where they are and where all their parts are and get that kind of consent and have that be an ongoing dialogue. In a sense, it just. It just seems like a much deeper, more nuanced approach to the therapy and to the therapeutic relationship.

Thanks. I love how you said that. And you're right, it is. You know, I'm thinking, as you're talking about how often I have clients come to me and say, I saw the Netflix special, you know, how to change your mind. And I, this is my last chance, and I have to do ketamine and can I sign up tomorrow? Do you have any openings this week for me to do ketamine? So it seems on the outset, oh, they're really excited in all their parts of giving consent. But that's always a red flag for me, that there's some kind of internal polarity. Right. I get curious immediately. Wow. So. So they have parts that are very eager. But what's. What is there another part of them because of that eagerness that's a countervailance to that eagerness that's saying, I'm not sure if I'm ready. And I do consultations for therapists all the time where they. The story goes, they seem like they were so wanting to go big, and they wanted to have a big medicine, so I gave that to them. And then they had this horrible experience. You know, they were so enthusiastic at first, and now they never want to do it again. And that makes me think, you know, did you really slow down to say and go through that ifs process of asking, okay, you have this really enthusiastic part, and I hear you, and I validate that. It's really exciting. Let's feel around in your body to see if there's any other parts that maybe are a little bit reticent about going deep, you know, scan and see and just slowing that down and inviting. That is really amazing. And because, you know, often there is another part that says, I'm really scared. Depression has kept me, you know, it's kept me safe because I haven't engaged with other people, and I don't have to take risks, and I. I don't want to give that up. That's helped me, you know, things like that. You get answers like that that become very interesting.

Well, you also said.

You know, the importance of the therapist to do their own personal work, their own therapeutic, psychological work, to be evolving spiritually, be having access to their own self. The ifs term self with a capital S. Self energy that has the qualities of these eight Cs that you reference and that that is contagious. But it's also what really holds space for the client and in the case of psychiatric medicine to have familiar familiarity with that as well. But just the importance of the therapist having access to that self energy and having access even when what's going on with the client might start triggering things in myself as a therapist that are going to cause me to maybe get pulled out of that self energy. My own parts are getting activated and pulled out. So that requires a lot of experience for a therapist to know how to navigate that effectively and, and have that, you know.

Not get in the way of therapy. But maybe the fact that you actually are navigating that and have familiarity with that in a transparent way could even infuse the therapy with greater empowerment, humanness and transparency. In a way.

I love that. Yes, I, you know, transparency, being willing to show up with all of yourself in the therapeutic container. And you know, it's not about being perfect. It's not like you, you know, attain enlightenment and only then can you, you know, host someone in a psychedelic journey. This is a collaborative process. You're, you're midwifing something that wants to be born and in real time tracking your own parts. And I have parts that get triggered all the time. You know, if someone is reacting against me because I remind them of their mother and, and you know, they have, there's this transference and then I have this part that wants to have this counter transference, right, that wants to push away or defend. And so tracking that in real time and saying, okay, you know, I see you part that wants to defend, that is understandable. You know, can, can you step out and let me be more in self energy for this person? You know, it's a, it's a very interesting dance and you know, I'm so immensely grateful for how much healing I've received from doing this work. I want to add though, to always remember that this is for the client and not for us.

There is that we're doing this work to midwife something. It's not about us, it's not for our own healing, but we do have this side effect, this positive side effect of really getting to do our own work while we're in the therapeutic process. This circles back to our earlier point. Do your own work in therapy. Be aware of your internal ecosystem and what happens for you when you get triggered and do your Own medicine work. If you are afraid of the medicine because you haven't had very many experiences, or you've had your own bad experience and you haven't like bad trip and you haven't fully integrated that you need to do more work before you're serving that medicine, right? So that you know the complexity of what can come up, you know, the duration of the medicine, how to hold space, what feels good to hold, you know, like how I learned from doing my own medicine work, it's better not to talk to someone and pull them out of their experience unless they really need you. Right? If you don't, if you don't understand psychedelics and you haven't done your own work, you don't get that you see someone riding around on the ground and you automatically think something's wrong, I need to intervene. And that's not necessarily the case. If they're, if they're writhing around on their floor mat or on their couch, that might mean that they're in blissful ecstasy in the psychedelic space. And it's important to allow space for that and trust the medicine. And you only learn how to trust the medicine by doing the work yourself.

And so what I hear you saying, as long as we're clear that this is the client's time, it's about the client and we need to go do our work in other contexts. But at the same time, there's something about if we're kind of in the work appropriately as we're doing that work, there's something of our humanity that shines through it. We're genuine. We're not hiding behind a white clinical coat of something like they're there with a genuine human being and they can feel that.

Yes, hopefully, yes. I think that that is exactly when we're doing good work. You know, someone at the. I did the psychedelic science that we were both at a workshop and someone asked us, you know, how do you deal with the long hours of doing psychedelic therapy? Someone asked Dick and me about, you know, how do you, how do you do it? How the long hours of sitting for people in psychedelics. And I found that it's very regenerative, you know, compared to when I was seeing back to back clients doing trauma therapy because the psychedelic medicine is so powerful and amplifies the healing potential so much. And, and there is just something really.

Energizing about being with such a potent medicine and watching this beautiful work unfold. And when I can get out of my parts and into self energy fleet, it feels like something is moving through Me and I'm able to get out of the way. It's not about me, it's about facilitating something that's in the divine service of healing for this other being that I'm with. And there's something really beautiful and, and fruitful about that for all of us.

So I, I think in some way right there you're referencing, I know you express in your work of training therapists and I think in your book as well, that you're really training therapists in both the art and science of good therapy and psychedelic assisted therapy. So and we've explored safety a bit and obviously as you've made very clear, that's job one. And then, you know, facilitating depth. And by depth, I don't, not necessarily a heroic dose with psychedelics, but I mean even with low dose experiences, people can go very deep or the therapy could go deep. I mean you can have deep therapy without psychedelics. So what I mean by depth in a larger context, not just of going in heroic dose psychedelic experiences. So I wonder if you could talk a bit about the art. You've been talking about this already a little bit, but talk more about the art and science of facilitating depth because I think what clients, you know, some clients may be coming to a therapist just wanting the pain to stop, but I'd say probably on some inner level they have parts that really long for depth, for transformation, for joy, for to be evolving, right? And you know, if the defensive structures can either go away, they're probably that most genuine part of themselves does long for that depth. And so what if you could talk about that both in your own work and how you train therapists in both the art and science of facilitating depth for the client.

I love that question. As you were speaking, I was thinking about, we were both at psychedelic science and wow, what a broad spectrum of folks in attendance. So you had everyone from the whole polar end of psychedelics for fun underground work. There were indigenous people there, there were venture capitalists, there were, there were hardcore scientists and researchers and everything in between. And so it really, for me, and I heard a lot of discussion and conflict between art and science of psychedelics, right? And I don't see that as an either or conversation. I see it as an and how do we hold that polarity of those opposites and how do we, how do we go back and forth between the two and be inclusive, right? And this is why this is such an exciting, for me why this is such an exciting revolution because it's not super dry science where you know that the scientist is outside of the. Of what's being studied and observing it. You're in it, you get to be creative. But you also need to understand how do these molecules work in the brain? What receptor sites do they. Do they come in contact with, how exactly do they work to help anxiety, depression and ptsd? What's the longevity of a ketamine experience? How much do you space them apart? So that's all the science part of it that's very valuable. But also what's valuable is being able to be creative, being able to meet clients where they are being able. This is something that isn't talked enough about in the whole. What's happening in the United States with psychedelics? What does it mean to put someone in a deeply spiritual space with depth? And how do we talk about that as therapists? Right? How do we, how do. How are we best to meet the client where they are and not impose our own religious or spiritual beliefs onto them, but hold an open container for that conversation to happen? That's a very artful, nuanced process. Right, that. That requires an extra dimension to our skill set.

Well, let's explore a little more the integration of IFS and psychedelic assisted therapy. You've been talking about that a bit. And if people aren't familiar with the IFS model.

I think this is something that arose for its founder, Dick Swartz. And just doing therapy with people, the PARTS started speaking and he started seeing, going into that landscape quite courageously to deepen his understanding of that internal psychodynamic landscape that's part of all of us. And I know, I've heard him say that he's been told by people just even sitting or doing therapy with people having psychotics experiences that, that they spontaneously start doing parts work even when they're not being facilitated in that. So I wonder, I think if I'm not mistaken, there's. There's four or five major classes of parts. If you could just very briefly cover that, but then talk about mostly about the integration of those with the psychedelic experience and how you find that that can facilitate healing of trauma and evolution and so forth.

Certainly. So let's talk about the different kind of a very general overview. I go in more detail in the book over the parts and how they work. But the idea in IFS is that we all have a self, those eight Cs that I talked about earlier. And that's kind of the substrate of everything that we are. That's just our natural way of being. You don't have to work to become self, all you have to do is uncover self energy that's there available to you all the time. And then as soon as we're born, as soon as we come into this world, we start developing parts. And these parts tend toward different categories. So we have parts that are what are termed exiles, which are very young, vulnerable parts that are disconnected from self energy and they're usually terrified and scared. Then, in order to seal these exiles off from the conscious mind, we develop managers and protectors. Managers. Protectors are actually a subcategory of managers, but managers are parts that keep the show on the road, that make us seem normal to other people, that help us function in the world, that takes care of our physical body. Then we develop protectors which protect the exiles. The more extreme the exiles, the more extreme the protectors get. They're a countervailance to one another. Very extreme. Protectors become firefighters. Those parts are suicidal parts, addicted parts. They're extreme parts that'll shut down everything in order to not feel pain. So that's kind of an overview and it's a lot more. You can read a lot more about it in Dick's book or in theradelic approach.

The way that I've interwoven it into psychedelic therapy is I was originally trained as a Jungian and archetypal psychology is. Is my heart. I love it so much. And I was seeing that psychedelic journeys were so much like when I was doing dream analysis with my clients that, that, you know, this incredible content, the symbolic archetypal content comes into the psychedelic journey and creating a story around that felt really important for people. They would come back and want to talk about it and want to make sense of it. And so that was my original orientation. And then when I became familiar with ifs, it was like it took archetypal psychology and simplified it into this way. Dick did this amazing job of taking this very complex idea that's very qualitative and turn it into something that's teachable.

The way that I work with it is an amalgamation of archetypal psychology and ifs to apply it to psychedelic medicine. Where I get really curious about in your journey, why do you, you know, let's talk about the part that showed you that symbol and what does it mean? Because it seems like our, our parts don't actually literally tell us, okay, this is how you need to deal with your mom and your issues with her. And this is exactly what you need to say to her. And, you know, next Wednesday at 9 o', clock, you can have this call with her. It's not that literal and direct. It's more couched into symbolic content. And so really learning how to interpret that. And I'm not interpreting it for my clients, I'm having them interpret it and kind of helping guide them in that process, asking, okay, this protector part, you know, showed you this like I'll give you an example of a client. She, we were doing a low dose ketamine experience and we were, you know, we're doing this great work and psycholytic experiences, talking about back and forth. So you're not having a deeper journey where you can't talk, you're on a low dose of ketamine and you're interacting with the therapist. So she's having this experience and she's relaying to me, she's getting, you know, I'm going to go work with my, you know, this vulnerable part. I want to figure out this stuff about my childhood. And then she came to a wall, this wall, and she was scaling this wall and she couldn't get past this wall. And so a bunch of the journey, you know, for, for a few minutes was her stuck on this wall. Now if you didn't have the context of how to understand that, that might be what's termed a bad trip. Right? I'm stuck against this wall. This is terrifying. But we started getting curious about it, getting in self energy and asking her, what do you think? Where do you feel that wall in your body? Okay, so we understand that this is a part the wall is apart. It's showing her itself in this very interesting way. So what is this? So we, as we dove down into the content it was, this wall is a protector. It doesn't want me to see something. Okay, so as we're having respect for this wall and asking it to separate and working with it using ifs language, all of a sudden her trip shifted and she came to this beautiful window in the wall. And through the window she could see way far away was a little girl in a courtyard. Okay, so now we're starting to unburden a little bit, this wall, starting to negotiate with it. And now we're seeing the exile. Right. And so as we're exploring this, this becomes obvious that this is a very young part of her that's an exile. So, so that's an example of how to use the symbolic content in through the language of ifs parts. Right. I hope that illustrated that that how to use ifs. And then of course, like as they're coming back to normal mind, we're Doing integration using straight IFS process of, you know, the six Fs, like going through the steps, doing the healing steps, all of that. But that's how I use it in psychedelic.

That beautifully illustrates it. And I love this image of the window, finding the window in the wall. It's really beautiful. So I've experienced you and Dick Swartz doing, doing Iops and, and working with, helping someone begin to sort of separate the parts out so you can begin to get clarity about what's going on and actually do the reintegration process, the healing process. But Bert, there often needs to be because parts get conflated and so I'm curious if there's an ideal integration here with psychedelic assisted therapy. One of the things that can really keep us stuck as human beings is that sense of the singularity of I and beyond that the force of identity and our need for identity. And identity can be the glue that keeps us stuck. Like that's just who I am. I've always been that way. That's the way I'm going to be. That's just the way the world is. Life isn't going to get any better than this. That's who I am. I can't change that kind of fixed mindset because we all have that need for identity that starts from birth. And you know, we, and the less maybe access to that natural self energy and maybe the more hurt we've been, the more we hang on to identity. So it does seem that psychedelics, at least one effect of psychedelic medicines is they loosen up that identity structure a little bit. So I'm curious if that maybe makes it easier for you to work with clients in helping them get that separation from the parts so that you can facilitate that healing work.

You totally get it. You know, what's up. That's exactly what happens. You know, psychedelics especially, I've, I've, I understand the signature of ketamine does this really well because it works on the NMDA receptors and so.

Changes our, our sense of time. And I think how that results in our psyche is we are able to observe our parts with more distance. We're not so, as Dick would call, blended with our parts. Right. They're not just right here.

That's the word I was looking for. Blended, right?

Yeah, we're blended. So yes, we're able to, to, to pull out of that and unblend and observe. And that's, that's the function of the facilitator is to help clients be able to do that. Right. Because a bad Trip is really getting blended with the monster or the terrified part or whatever. And so it's, it's about unblending from that and, and making sense of that, being able to see that landscape and, and see that you are not only your parts. Right.

Another story that's, that's related to the retreat that you came to Fleet, because the, the idea of these retreats that Dick and I are doing are. This one particular retreat is to work with leaders that are in positions of influence. Because if someone thinks that they're a whole integrated person, but they're really acting from a traumatized place or a fearful place that's apart, they may be leading with less than ideal energy. Right. So Dick and I really started talking about, wow, a form of activism for us would be to help people that are able to influence others lead from self energy, from self led energy. Right. So an example of that is that I think kind of illustrates your point about being blended with parts and how psychedelics can help. I was working with a man who has really created a lot of content in popular media. And.

All of the products that he had created, all of his creations, a lot of them were, had this kind of ongoing narrative of fear and powerlessness and, and a lot of these, these productions were really violent, right. And so as we were working and doing some ketamine work together, he, you know, he'd done a lot of work with having being a really young exile with this rageful, abusive father. And he realized through our work together that he had been producing this content from that terrified little boy that was writing all of these different things that all these viewers were consuming and understanding. And when you think about movies and tv, that's our myth system right now. This is what's creating the myth of our collective culture. And if those products are being made from people who are coming from a traumatized place, as I said earlier, exile energy is contagious. Protector energy is contagious. Self energy is contagious. So what kinds of products does he create once he's in self energy and can emanate confidence, calm, connectedness, curiosity, creativity from that place? And we're very interested in facilitating that.

I'd like to explore with you a little bit group work altogether, the experience you've had in doing these ifs and ketamine retreats with Dick Swartz. And I know you do other types of, of group work and at least the one I was very privileged to attend, it was an amazing experience, a very healing and.

Wonderful experience.

These weren't with therapy Clients per se. These are well people, or ostensibly well people, you know, dare to evolve, do some personal work. But there is the whole issue of how we're going to scale psychedelic assisted psychotherapy because it can be incredibly expensive. And, and so, you know, a lot of people are talking about group therapy as a possible model. And I recently interviewed Thorsten Passi from Germany talking about some different group therapy models evolving in Switzerland and other places in Europe and some work being done in Argentina. And you know, there are models where they, they have people doing individual sessions with a sitter in individual rooms, and then they come together with their sitters to do group work. Following the sessions in the retreat that I was with with you and Dick, there were 20 of us. And the first session there was an inner circle of 10 doing the ketamine journey. And the rest of us were a witness circle kind of holding space, which I thought was really wonderful. And then, and then we changed places one day. We all did it. You all, the staff, you all, and Dick and the other staff were holding space for all of us. But.

That sounds similar to a model that's being done in Argentina. There's also the possibility of maybe doing active group therapy with low dose psycholytic doses, whether it's in a pathogen like MDMA or whether it's something like ketamine. So I'm just wondering, what are you learning and what are the possibilities of doing group work and with psychedelic assisted psychotherapy?

This is my heart. I've come after working with so many people to understand that group work is the most powerful way to work. And it's kind of funny because the indigenous people have been doing this for thousands of years. They, they take ayahuasca and the maloka altogether. The tribe gets together and does this, right? It's kind of weird that we separate it out and do it in, you know, in a clinic with one person. There's so much potential with doing group work because.

You know, the hero or heroine's journey, we've all, we're all walking the same path with different specific content. So when we, when we are sitting in a group together and someone's processing something, you know, with a part of them that's traumatized or fearful, that does, that helps us, that reflects, that mirrors something within us that can be healed within us. So it really potentiates the work that can be done. The group experience is amazing. And.

In our IFS retreat that you attended, this idea of having a center group that's experiencing psycholytic dose ketamine and doing the processing and then the outer witnessing. And what does that containment do to potentiate the healing? It's huge. It's potentiated from having just individual sessions. So yeah, I think humans have been doing this for a long, long time, hundreds of thousands of years that we, we process and tell stories together and help each other in groups. And I, I really think it's the way to do it. It's, it's a powerful method and, and more becoming more and more my favorite as I do this work.

So in the retreat we did, we, we had a session with ketamine and as we're kind of coming out of that, then you and Dick would work with us, you know, as people were voicing things or wanted to. And it was kind of in the, after kind of coming down from the peak of the ketamine experience. I'm curious about, you know, traditional group psychotherapy where there can be a lot of interaction and that kind of group work, it tends to surface all the shadow dynamics. You put a group of people together, you're going to get scapegoating, you're going to get all, you're going to get all these different shadow dynamics and it can be quite active and quite dicey. But it's been proven to be a really powerful container for healing and for people developing greater understanding of themselves, psychological flexibility, psychological sophistication and so forth. If the therapist can hold a safe space. But sometimes you have to kind of let things go. People get into conflict with each other and stuff. And so I'm wondering if anybody's doing experimentation with that kind of more active style group therapy with something like low dose MDMA or low dose ketamine that would get people in perhaps a more empathic space, but not suppress the kind of group energy that might go on that could facilitate things coming up. I mean, I think it would require very agile therapists and facilitators to facilitate. I've done, I do some pretty wild work like that without psychedelic substances. And so I, you know, I'm just imagining the combination of the two and you know, very low dose but just really to facilitate openness because sometimes part of the, the tough sledding work in that work is just getting through the defense systems. Right. And, and so, yeah, yeah, I mean.

You name something at the end there that's important, which is that same, you know, thing that we talked about with the therapist. Being in self energy and that being contagious is part of that group experience too. And luckily these heart opening medicines can help us be more in self energy for each other. There's, there's this incredible empathy and compassion that comes from watching other people doing their process. I mean, you know, in the retreat you were in, it's not uncommon for the whole group to be crying together. When one person is processing. It can be extremely moving. And so the beauty of these medicines is that it does soften our protector systems and so we're able to access self energy and able to be more present for one another and loving for with one another. So when you're talking about that group dynamic and kind of getting into it, you know, that's what that's really about is how other people's parts trigger our parts. You know, to use Jungian or Freudian language, it's the transference and counter transference that happens right in these dynamics and being willing to be self aware enough to realize, oh, this isn't about this other person, this is really about me. Right. And here's the healing is, is, is in me. So I think there's so much potential in that. The other thing I want to add to what you said is there's something really amazing that happens at these multiple day retreats where we're spending time together. You know, the retreat that I do in Costa Rica, we're taking all of our meals together, we're having a lot of group processes together. We're together for seven to nine days. And so that, so you're able to get into those crunchy spots with one another because you have this intimacy that's developing and you're able to go to those vulnerable places because you have the time and space to explore that together. That doesn't happen if you go to a ketamine clinic that's in a strip mall somewhere where you just show up and they give you a huge dose of ketamine and then wheel you out to the Uber two hours later. Right. So it really potentiates our ability to address some of these parts of us that get kind of crunchy around relationships. Right. And you know, I'll say that from my Costa Rica retreats, people get so intimate by the end of it. I have groups that are still on WhatsApp that meet every week together that are the cohorts that have gone through. I mean, it's, it creates a tribe feeling of tribe and connectedness in this way of having a group experience that's so deep, deep in the witnessing and the empathy that comes with the psychedelic medicines.

Yeah, absolutely. And from my experience with the retreat you and Dick led, even Though we weren't interacting therapeutically with each other so much, we were having experience, you know, in a circle, supporting each other, holding space for each other. And, and then you and Dick were doing most of the interacting with people, but we were witnessing that and it created a tremendous sense of safety. I mean, I really felt like I could just completely go into the experience and felt completely held and completely safe and to do so. But also at the same time, over those four days we were there together as a group, we got very bonded, you know, and I'm still connected to a number of those people and we've tried to keep some connection in circles going and, but it was a very, very bonding experience just holding space for each other. And it's also, I think, a really wonderful learning. Even being in that outer circle, when the inner circle is actually having the experience with the psychedelic medicine of learning to sit in self energy and sort of radiate that and hold space for people is a very, I mean, in a sense that's what therapists learn to do. But, but conventionally for human beings, I think that's a very high level human skill and one of the most beautiful things we can learn to do as human beings.

I love that you articulated that and I totally agree. And, and you know, in that, for that retreat in particular, working with leaders, my hope was that people were able to say, wow, this is what it feels like to be in self energy and to hold a space. So what does that look like when you go back to the, you know, your, your meetings at your company and saying, wow, what does this mean to hold space in this manner for, for each other, you know, to do deep witnessing? What does it mean to give and receive and you know, translating that into real world dynamics, which is something that's so important, right? Like you can have these amazing experiences, these expanded states, but what does that mean when you come back to your day to day life? Can you be in self energy? Can you be a more compassionate human in your day to day life? Can, can you create a sense of belonging and community in your life? That's very interesting to me and feels very important.

Well, this has been a wonderful journey. I've really enjoyed our conversation and I'm just, you know, I know we have, in our audience here we have a lot of.

Practicing clinicians who are already practicing psychedelic assisted therapy in various forms. We have a lot of researchers, but I'm sure we have a lot of clinicians who are thinking about integrating.

Some kind of psychedelic medicine into their practice as well. As we have people in the general public who may be interested in possibly availing themselves of psychedelic assisted psychotherapy. So I'm curious if you have any just kind of, you know, in a nutshell kind of advice for someone who's wanting to explore this further as a clinician or a client just you know, kind of how to basically approach this.

Yeah, I mean I think it's, you know, as I said earlier, it's really important to be a skilled psychotherapist and also get really in depth training. Right. It's not a weekend course that you take online to get, become a psychedelic assisted psychotherapist. It's a skill set to develop. And so I would say really, you know, vetting training programs. We don't have a standard training that's you know, certified nationwide in the US right now yet we might have that in the future. Talk to Rick Doblin a little bit about, about seeking that as a standardized TR training. You know, get. I would suggest to you know, read the book the theradelic Approach. I'm in the process of developing a certification course. It's really going to be multi, multi month and in depth and experiential in the theradelic approach. So you know, get good training, I would say. And there are a few really great training programs out there. And, and if you're, if you're a person that's not a facilitator but you're an interested in psychedelics or finding a great psychedelic therapist, I really want to encourage you to do your research, really vet the person that you're looking at. If they're underground, if they're above ground and they're doing legal work, really look at what their credentials are, what their training is, have a couple of appointments with them to really get a sense of who they are. And if you like their approach and if you like their energy, if you feel safe with them, you know, it's, it's, it's really important that you are careful about who you open your psyche to, who you're open yourself to. So, so really doing your homework before engaging with one of these experiences and you know, spend some time getting to know who's going to be sitting with you.

Well, thank you. Wonderful advice. So thank you so much for being part of our summit, Sunny, and thank you for your great work and really encourage people to, to, to check out your book. I think it's probably a great manual for clinicians who are already doing the work and who want to or want to explore doing this kind of work. So just thank you so much. And thank you so much for the opportunity to be in this work with you. It was a very healing and profound experience for me, so a lot of.

Gratitude, and it was healing for me to be in your presence as well. As always.

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