EP 186: Beyond Boundaries: A Quest for Authentic Connection | Deran Young, LCSW

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. Welcome. Daron. Hello.

Thank you.

Well, it's great to have you be part of our summit again. We really enjoyed your participation last year and looking forward to a great conversation today. So I'm going to share a bit of your bio, so to familiarize the audience with your background and then we'll jump right into the conversation. Sound good?

Sounds great.

Okay, so Duran Young is a licensed therapist specializing in racial trauma and legacy burdens and co author of the New York Times bestseller, you are your Best Vulnerability, Shame, Resilience and the Black Experience. A retired military officer and founder of Black Therapist Rock, a nonprofit organization with a network of over 30,000 mental health professionals committed to reducing the psychological impact of systemic oppression and intergenerational trauma. Duran obtained her social work degree from the University of Texas. Duran also studied abroad in Ghana, West Africa, creating a high school counseling center for under resourced students. She has visited over 37 different countries and her clinical experience spans across four different continents. Her passion for culture and people has led her to become a highly sought after diversity and inclusion consultant, working with companies like BE, Burg, Facebook, LinkedIn and YWCA. Really look forward to sharing your depth of experience with us today. So, Duran, your passion for culture and diversity has led you to explore issues of social justice, social psychology, and includes international social work, gender issues, trauma and anxiety disorders, and more. So, given the scope of your work, what would you say are some of the most critical social and mental health issues that we're facing globally today?

I guess I would start this conversation by saying that I firmly believe that systemic oppression is the number one barrier to great mental health. Many people don't think of systemic oppression in terms of the psychological impact that it has on people, people for generations upon generations. And that's kind of how I got excited about the topic of legacy burdens and how I've been able to really establish this platform of understanding not just racial trauma, but the trauma of homophobia and patriarchy, the trauma of white supremacy, culture overall, the fact that most of the resources on our planet are managed and owned by predominantly white people, that in itself is a barrier to all health, especially mental health. In my expert opinion. I would say that systemic oppression in all forms, whether it be poverty, whether it be, like I said, patriarchy, these are the things that keep people from being Mentally.

Well, could you maybe define for us this term legacy burdens? I know we know today that the impact of trauma, whether single incident trauma, childhood trauma, or trauma growing up under systemic oppression of all kinds, can be passed on, obviously from parent to child through direct interactions. But it's also, we know it's passed on epigenetically today. I wonder if you could talk about this idea of legacy burdens.

Yes. The idea of legacy burdens comes from the IFS model, which stands for internal family systems. Many people have seen videos with myself and the founder of ifs, Dick Shorts, talking about legacy burdens. You can find several of those free videos on YouTube. But the whole idea around legacy burdens are that these are things that we carry within us. Limiting beliefs, stereotypes, generalizations, things that we find we learn about the world from our parents or from the culture around us. And we take these things in and then we pass them down to our children or the children around us. But we also pass them around, we project them onto other people throughout our daily experiences. So legacy burdens is. The way that I define it, is that they're the parts of us, the things that we take on from our culture or from our parents or from our heritage and from the collective, and that they're parts of us that we can pass down and around to others.

And these are. And generally, the idea of burdens is that they're getting in the way of our life in one way or another. They're getting a way of thriving in the way we could otherwise.

Well, they. More importantly, they get in the way of us being our most authentic selves, and they get in the way of us connecting. Connecting with other people at that authentic, deep and relational level.

So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how your interest in trauma and anxiety and legacy burdens and the impact of systemic oppression, these things, the focus of your work, how that intersected with psychedelics, how you became interested in psychedelics and became a voice within the psychedelic assisted therapy movement.

Yes. Well, I would attribute a lot of my military experience to that. Looking at things from a collective as a whole in the military. In my time in the Air Force, I was a social worker in the Air Force, and I was in charge of many units, what we called a squadron or a flight of people. So it was always looking at the whole base in general, and then breaking it into communities or cultures is kind of the way I would look at it. Cultures based on our profession, sometimes people who.

Our aircraft maintainers, people who fix planes, military aircraft, for a Living. There's a culture that goes with that. The pilots that keep the planes in the sky, there's a certain culture that goes with that. Then, even in the medical setting, I realized that we had our own organizational culture. There were these subcultures within the military that I quickly began to pick up on. Each subculture had their own different challenges when it came to mental health. I started to see that certain subcultures were more correlated with, you know, what we would say in our own general society as the working class, such as our aircraft maintainers, people who are more hands on versus those in the medical field who are. Education is really encouraged and promoted and it's more highly skilled and expertise is really valued there. And so these subcultures help me see the collective environment in our country as another subculture, so that we have people in our culture that we look down on that are carrying most of the burden of shame, such as those living in poverty, those who might be houseless, people who are marginalized based on race or gender or sexual orientation. These are the folks that. This is the subculture that's carrying most of the shame in our collective. And so being able to see that and tie that also to intergenerational trauma, if you're Familiar with the ACEs studies, the adverse Childhood Experiences studies, those cohorts that they've had for years and years and years, they've noticed that in intergenerational trauma overlaps with systemic oppression. So if you have people that are racially marginalized, they're more likely to experience intergenerational trauma. If you have people who are growing up in poverty, poverty tends to breed more poverty. And so these are things, these are patterns that I noticed not just in the military from being in direct practice, but when I came out into Black Therapist Rock, I noticed that other therapists were seeing these patterns as well. So I noticed these patterns and I said, what's being done about these patterns? And. And the answer was nothing, really. And so I started to get more curious and ask more questions. And I stumbled upon psychedelics just as I was working and learning about Legacy Burdens and working with ifs.

And so was that through personal experience or some retreats you did, or how did that play out, that you deepened your interest or saw possibilities within it, Therapeutic possibilities?

Well, I will say my initial interest was sparked at a Legacy Burden workshop with Dick Schwartz. He does an annual Legacy Burton workshop that I was lucky enough to go to and attend. And he always mentions psychedelics in these Legacy Burden workshops because I think his belief is that legacy burdens are so ingrained in us that they're usually the most invisible to us. They're deep down in our shadow and our psyche. And it would take something like psychedelics in order to bring those things up and make it visible to our conscious mind. And so I. He played a video, it's a very infamous video of an MDMA study with a veteran who experienced a lot of combat trauma and also had childhood trauma, alcoholic father, who he took on a lot of burdens around rage and depression. And so these burdens around anger and rage and depression were deep down in his kind of the deepest part of his psyche. And it was through an MDMA session that we were able to see him befriend those parts of him that took that on as a little boy. And so seeing that, when you see a video like this, it's very memorable. It stands out in your mind and you get curious. And so I got curious about the MDMA studies. I reached out to some people that were actually working on those studies. I started asking questions about how a therapist would get involved in psychedelics. And I personally stumbled also upon ketamine, which Dick Schwartz has. He's very vocal about having personal experience with ketamine. So my first entry, actually my first entry into psychedelics was with Compass, which is a pharmaceutical company that does studies and trainings for therapists on mushroom therapy, which is psilocybin assisted therapy, in the pharmaceutical world and in the research world. That's what it's known as. I was trained in mushroom therapy, and then I was subsequently trained in ketamine assisted therapy, since it is the only currently legal.

Psychedelic assisted therapy that's available to the general public. I got trained in ketamine assisted therapy, started working with Field Trip very closely, which Field Trip was a chain of psychedelic assisted therapy clinics around the world, and got to do a lot of great, amazing personal work, mainly in group settings, which I'm a big proponent of, group work, which we'll talk about here, in a bit, I think. But I did. I had a lot of my own personal healing experiences and the patterns that I was noticing within myself that I'd been noticing in the world for many years as a professional and intellectual. I was able to then see them in myself and work with them in a very tangible and real way. It just made the inner child work that I was doing come alive and gave it more support, more compassion for myself, more gentleness in my approach with how I do the work with myself, and. And it gave me more love and understanding to work with others as well.

Well, I suspect that what you just articulated in terms of shifting that internal landscape of befriending yourself and having that level of self compassion and so forth, it probably mirrors the answer to the question I'm going to ask right now. So I do want to talk today about the systemic issues and your work in terms of the emerging psychedelic assisted therapy field, of having that be part of changing the landscape of systemic oppression and the work around diversity, equity, and inclusion and so forth. But first, I wonder if you could talk about.

You know, and there's all the work to try to, you know, change the world and have many, many fewer people experience that kind of trauma and oppression. But for those who've already experienced it and for those who are that historical and systemic oppression is impacting their lives. What has been the therapeutic approach that you found helpful in your own clinical work of supporting individuals and helping them heal? How have you approached that? What has been your approach?

Yeah, well, as you mentioned, I was the author in the book you are your Best Thing, and that's edited by Brene Brown and Tarana Burke. Tarana is the founder of the MeToo movement, so very heavily involved in helping women understand sexual trauma. And Brene, as most people know, is kind of the main researcher when it comes to shame and vulnerability. I've been working with Brene and learning her model, which is mainly focused on shame resilience, building a tolerance to shame, understanding shame in our bodies, how it shows up in our relationships and in our behaviors. And so I've been teaching as a facilitator of her model for a few years now, I would say about five or six years now. And it's really helped me understand, again, how shame shows up for us, especially if you're in a marginalized body, how you've been carrying shame and how shame has been deeply projected upon you for most of your existence. And so I write in my chapter, and you are your best thing, I write about how my son actually took on that shame. And because he felt he had a great secure connection with me as a mom, we were able to talk about it, and we were able to hold that shame together versus him, internalizing it. And so that's the work that I've been doing with a lot of marginalized people, whether it be people who are part of the LGBTQ+IA community, people who are, you know, like I said, living in poverty or have lived in poverty and are trying to relish the shame. And what I tell people is that shame usually stands for should have already mastered everything. So there tends to be a lot of perfectionism, you know, that they've taken on and a lot of hustling for your worth, as Brene calls it. And these are some of the things that I've gotten really good at identifying. And they do come up in the psychedelic sessions. Of course, you know, if this is something you've been carrying all of your life and your ancestors carried us as well, these legacy burdens and that shame that that's been carried for generations, it comes up and we work on it together as a, hopefully as a community, if you're in a group setting or as a partnership between myself and the client.

Well. And I want to explore in just a moment how then psychedelics, whether it's psilocybin assisted therapy, MDMA or ketamine, can facilitate exactly that therapeutic approach that you use in your work. I want to explore shame for just a moment because it is such a powerful human emotion. And personally, I feel a very destructive one and ultimately very toxic one. And from my understanding of shame, it's basically what we experience when we're getting the message of unworthiness. We don't belong, we're not wanted, we're not worthy, or the threat of being sort of kicked out, kicked out of the family, the clan, the tribe, society. And unfortunately, we all get some dose of that growing up. And it's probably part of the human condition and much more tragically, many people get way too much of it for all the reasons you described. But when we're forming our self structure in early childhood, we form it out of whatever's around. And of course, the more stable and loving upbringing, the more we have a, you know, well integrated self structure. We're probably higher functioning in life. And the less loving, the less stable our upbringing, the more our cell structure is not so stable. And we may end up and need a lot of therapy or we're struggling in life and. But the thing about shame is that it's such a powerful emotion that. And I think this is the case in some addictive patterns and even in some kind of predatory behaviors and sexual addiction behaviors, people act out in some way unconsciously to get that hit of shame. Because when you feel that, it's like, it's like home ground. It's so familiar. It's an identifier for your sense of self. It's like, okay, I'm home. That's me, that's me. And so it can become a.

A deeply embedded structure that can just be very Hard for, for us to escape. And so I'm wondering in terms of, of your work, I, I love what you said about sharing, carrying that with your son so he didn't have to carry it on his own and internalize that. So I'm wondering how you help patients kind of unwind that shame that maybe is deeply embedded in their sense of this is, this is me. I feel that. Oh, yeah, okay, I know that I'm home. And maybe how psychedelics can facilitate that.

Yeah, well, in ifs we call it a corrective experience. I think that's just a psychological term that ifs has actually just taken on. But corrective experience is important. When you've had layers upon layers of trauma. You need a lot of corrective experiences to help you see the world in a different way and to help you see yourself and experience yourself in a different way. So what you said is really, really spot on that a lot of people believe I am unlovable, I am to not. I will never be accepted. I will never be able to live a life and not have tons of fear that I have to navigate every day. Especially when you're in a black and brown body and you're still living in a marginalized system. When you're marginalized systemically and you have to navigate those systems every day to survive, it can feel like this is it, this is me, this is what I deserve. This is how it's going to be for me. There is no hope. People can feel very hopeless in those situations. What I love about psychedelic assisted therapy is if you're. Most people who are watching, this may be familiar with the defense network mode, that psychedelics kind of relaxes our defense network mode and allows our amygdala that may have been in flight or flight most of our lives, that allows that to just take a break for a little while so that the person can actually have a new experience. And the guide or the sitter that they're there with is the person who's going to facilitate that experience. They're going to be that loving parent or that, that loving guide and that hopeful pathway, that hope merchant, if you will, that allows the person to see deeper, to see more. Because the thing about systemic oppression and all trauma is that it restricts our capacity for perspective. It really restricts what we think is possible. And so especially in a group setting, it's really beautiful because you have more guys, you have sitters that are trained to hold space for people in a very beautiful way, and they have that more one on one connection or Intimate connection. And then that is kind of contagious. It moves around the room, if you will. That energy is just flowing in that space. So it's been really beautiful to see predominantly black spaces where people have never been able to play or never been able to relax or never felt good enough for affection. A lot of people are touch deprived. They didn't have affectionate parents that felt like it was safe enough for them to show and express love and care and nurture. And so when people are able to come into an environment where their brain is relaxed, in a relaxed state, and their body is in a relaxed state, and they're able to bring in all these corrective and new experiences, it changes the way they navigate and it changes the way they see themselves. To not only do this with marginalized people, but therapists, healers and professionals, healthcare professionals that are caring for other people, it just extends that healing in waves throughout the community, in my opinion.

Wow. Beautifully expressed. And my sense of. And different psychedelic medicines work in different ways, but they're. I mean, one of the things that seems to keep us really stuck in our lives is, you know, we all have a deep need for identity. There's nothing wrong with that. But often our identity becomes one that's, you know, not so functional. It can be negative. And we just said, well, that's just the way I am. That's just the way life is. It's not going to change, you know, what we might call a fixed mindset. And then that can really keep us stuck. Even you can get in lots and lots of therapy, but it's too threatening to change. Because if I, if, if I'm not that, who would I be? Right? And so it seems like psychedelics create an environment and maybe, as you're saying, the group work would really facilitate this of a sense of safety where there's a kind of loosening of the self structure a little bit in a safe way that it opens up the landscape enough that people could have these corrective experiences and it could almost be a reparenting process where you begin to weave a more functional, more affirming, more empowered sense of self than the one that you were hanging on to before. Because it's the only one we had.

Right. And I've also seen that be really powerful. We have a MLK weekend retreat that we do, and we, it's bipoc plus allies and LGBTQ folks. So it's, it's a really great way to bring folks that are, you know, very invested in being advocates and allies against anti Oppression or anti oppressive leaders if you will, people from different communities and backgrounds that come together and have these conversations about anti oppression. And during that weekend, like I said, we have about four or five bipoc folks, we have four or five allies and we have four or five queer people there and we talk about how we can hold space for each other. And just because I've always been considered a cisgendered person who was not previously aware of my own privileges and the power that I hold within that identity now I can be more, I can be more for myself and for others. I can carry this identity in a way that's actually helpful to the planet. Instead of carrying guilt or shame around this identity that I have privileges someone else doesn't have, I can use the power behind those privileges to help create a more just and equitable world.

Well, that's a really powerful statement you just made because I think in terms of the broader societal understanding because the initial awareness of privilege and.

Some kind of self education be educated with others, by others around the reality privilege can be quite painful thing for people to look at and experience a lot of resistance.

And sometimes I think maybe people assume that well they're just going to have to feel, that's something they're just going to have to perpetually feel bad about. But if there is a journey through that to deal with those emotions and, and feeling the burden of that and feeling the impact privilege has on others, but then some way to a more transformative place where you can, you can hold your identity in the way you just described so beautifully in a way that's more conscious and isn't negatively impacting others so much. But it doesn't mean you have to sit and stew and shame either. So you described a beautiful journey there.

Yeah, it's been a beautiful journey for me for sure.

Well that sounds like, I mean it's such a wonderful introduction into the work of diversity, equity and inclusion. And you know, we're in kind of, I mean the psychedelic have been around forever, plant medicine's around for millennia and we've had various waves of the psychedelic kind of movement but this latest psychedelic renaissance and very importantly the psychedelic assisted therapy field which is arising within it and were very near the rescheduling of mda likely for therapeutic use and maybe psilocybin not long behind that. I think both have already been rescheduled in Australia.

You know, there really is a whole new field emerging and we're talking about, you know, I've heard anywhere from that we need to train 10,000 therapists to where we need to train 100,000 therapists to make this medicine available at scale for people and find ways to do that that are accessible and equitable and so forth. So, I mean, this is the time to have this movement embrace these principles of diversity, equity and inclusion, because otherwise, you know, the social structures being what they still are with the. With the level of white European dominance and the scientific community and therapeutic communities reflecting that even unintentionally not, the individual may not want that, but it'll just. The momentum will carry it forward in that way if the work is not done. So, and it seems like now is a wonderful opportunity to have this field emerge in a different way. And I assume that's really at the heart of your work and the founding of Black Therapist Rock and so forth. So I wonder if you could talk about the importance of that and how you envision we could evolve this movement or this field of psychic assisted therapy and have it be different and have it be transformative in terms of the larger culture.

Yeah, I think because of the war on Drugs, a lot of marginalized people have been very mistrustful about psychedelics in general over the years that it's being studied and that it's been.

Many people have had experiences recreationally in college. And for some of us, that was just a big threat. And for some of us, I'm including myself when I say some of us, that was a big threat for someone like me, whose father was incarcerated for selling, you know, for selling drugs for many years. And my mother struggled with a crack addiction during the 80s and 90s, and for most of my life, you know, has had to try to put her life back together after struggling with addiction. So. So for so many black therapists and therapists of color and people of color in general, drugs has been, you know, something that you were to stay far, far away from if you ever want to be successful in life, if you want to, you know, have this American dream. It didn't coincide with the something like, you know, recreational use of drugs. And so myself, being a former military member, you know, I had never tried anything until after I was retiring from the military, close to 40 years old. I had never even used cannabis before. And so it was a very. It was a journey of trust and courage, which Brene talks about a lot. And thankfully, I had all the resources behind me, supporting me to embark on these new opportunities, you know, and so.

I believe that when we get. We give. Maya Angelou said that. That when we receive something, it is our responsibility and our duty to look out for the other people who don't have it or don't have access to it. And as a black woman and a therapist, I think that it was very, just a very unique opportunity that I had in order to experience ketamine, experience psilocybin. I've experienced MDMA and all these experiences that I've had. I've always wanted to open the door wider for other people to come and experience them well. And so when I had my ketamine experiences, we follow that with three ketamine retreats where we had hundreds of therapists who were able to experience that as well. Black therapists who would have been really, really cautious or probably been rejecting of this without having that sense of community and support and education and preparation which we talk so much about in psychedelic assisted therapy. We talk a lot about preparation, we talk a lot about integration, but we don't really talk about what looks like for each different community or how that may be unique for different people. And so I realized that there were certain unique challenges and barriers that we needed to overcome for people to have access to this. And I've been, I've made it a full time job basically creating those, those avenues and pathways for more therapists to be trained and informed and to be able to go out and inform their community as well.

I'd like in a moment to talk about the infrastructure for.

Bringing psychedelic medicine to scale in our society and what that needs to look like to really, to genuinely honor diversity, equity, inclusion. But I wonder if you could talk just a little bit about black therapist rock. I mean, I think you were already talking about, I assume those retreats were hosted or organized by black therapist rock. But I wonder if you could talk about just the world of a black therapist, if you will, because they carry all the same burdens that people of color carry for all the reasons you've spoken about. They, they've gotten a lot of education, they've probably done a certain amount of personal work and therapeutic work and they're training as therapists and, and, you know, and, and yet. And they're working and, and maybe primarily working with people of color. Not, not always the case, but they're working in worlds where there's a lot of trauma and a lot of. So.

What is the world in the life of a black therapist like or a therapist of color that is maybe very different from your average white clinician? And I'm just curious if you could share with us a little bit what that's like and how you train therapists of color to take care of themselves and to continue their own journey and to not get burned out, not become overwhelmed or not sort of retrigger their own traumas in ways that are not helpful to them or clients. So I wonder if you could talk a bit about that world and your work through Black Therapist Rock.

Yeah, the thing about legacy burdens is they're so invisible and they're everywhere. So the legacy burden of white supremacy culture, I like to say one of the breeding grounds is our healthcare industry. Because we are a profit based healthcare industry, we do tend to see a lot of legacy burdens around materialism and white supremacy culture and patriarchy. And so the typical black therapist is dealing with a great amount of racism, usually even with their own, within their own workspaces. That's actually what inspired me to create Black Therapist Rock. I was a black therapist in the military, in the Air Force, and I just so happen to also be a high ranking officer within that, within the organization. And there was a lot of racial tension as Trump was being elected as commander in chief.

I could see these dividing factors, if you will, even in the military, where people were starting to split amongst ourselves within organizations and you could tell who was someone that you would go to and talk to and someone that would be supportive and someone that wouldn't and you had to work together. And so I knew that if I felt isolated, if I felt under resourced, if I felt under supported, there are probably other therapists out there like me that felt that same way. On top of also having to be a voice for their community, being really passionate about taking the healing that they've gained, taking it back to their community in some way. And so a lot of our therapists are working in community mental health. A lot of our therapists are making on average a third of what white therapist that has their same credentials as making. It's all about, you know, resources. People just don't have access to the same resources within our system. And so advocating and making sure that that is known has been really the thing that I've been passionate about.

It's interesting your, your experience arose within your military career to begin with. And.

I'm going to say maybe you're going to dispel a myth here or maybe bring more nuance to something. And sadly, our country has become so polarized in recent years and it's probably, I mean, we're right in the midst of this crazy situation we're in right now. There's a polarizing thing. I watch People being interviewed who, you know, are supporting the former president and it just seems they're in this bubble of self reinforcing ideas that are so out of touch with reality. But that's my vibe. Maybe they think the same of me, but at any rate, you know, it seems hard to believe almost sometimes, but it is very polarizing. I'm sure that's affected in the military as well. But I had always heard, and not in any way that it's perfect, but that, but that the military was, you know, maybe a decade or two ahead of the rest of society in, you know, integration and developing a more, more of a meritocracy that, that wasn't so driven by race. And I don't know whether maybe that's a myth, but it does seem that, that I had heard that a lot about the military and maybe some of those gains have been lost. I don't know. But I just. Chris, a little bit of a digression here, but I'm just curious on your thoughts, on your experience with that.

Yeah, I think the military does a really good job of recruiting diverse populations of people because it offers, you know, a sense of security and stability that a lot of financially marginalized people have maybe never had in their life, like for example, myself. But when I joined the military at 18, I was actually homeless. So it was a really attractive option for me for somebody to come right out of high school and be paid to go, you know, learn a skill. My skill was healthcare administration, which was a very valuable skill for me. Working in hospitals for 18 years, I was able to develop that expertise, you know, in a really beautiful way. But also they paid for two master's degree and I had no student loans. You know, student loans were completely covered as well. They're going to cover my Ph.D. when I, when I move on to getting my doctorate degree in social work. So the financial stability is what really appeals to marginalized people, I believe. And there's a need, you know, there's a need for bodies regardless of what they look like. What I will say the military was really great at. And I'm now learning that this is something that has become a legacy gift for me to carry on professionally. But they're really good at collectivism, whereas in, in the United States of America, it's a very individualistic culture. It's doggy dog, you know, every man for themselves, quote unquote, you know, pull yourselves up by your bootstraps. And in the military, it's more, we're responsible for each other. You know, when you can't leave a man behind on the battlefield. If we're digging a foxhole and we both got to get in to save our lives, that's the point where survival becomes more important than anything else. So I will say that we are, we tend to be better at communal understandings and teamwork, principles that are more about people coming together and working together. That's really the skill that I gained heavily from the military. However, again, it's a system within the system and the military is designed to kill people.

Sometimes I realized that I was kind of in a fog for most of my career, especially being in the hospital, and even more so as a social worker thinking that my role was to do great things within this, this organization that did, you know, some really violent things in the world and how did I make peace with that and come to my own understanding of that? And so I do think that there, you know, within everything, there's pluses and minus, there's perks and disadvantages, and looking at all the parts, you know, that's what ifs really gave me is that there's patterns. And if you look at all the parts of the pattern, you'll notice some possible solutions. So there are people. You know, diversity is a thing and it's, it's been a thing in the military for many, many years. However, there also was not very much diversity at the top until recently. African Americans and people of color have been, and women have been able to rise to the ranks of, you know, higher ranking officers or important positions within our government. Overall, I think those are really important things. When we talk about equity and inclusivity, it's one thing to have a diverse group of people, but if that all the people don't have the same amount of power, you're going to see the same patterns play out that we see in society.

Well, maybe there's some real lessons to be learned there from the military in terms of how this psychotic assisted therapy movement emerges and evolves. And so I wonder if you could talk about that because, you know, I understand one of the big conundrums that a lot of people are talking about is how do you bring this to scale? Now, you mentioned group work. That may be part of the solution. But the clinical trials that have been going on to replicate those would be very expensive. You have highly compensated clinicians, many of them doing one on one work. And the length of time like psilocybin sessions could be six to eight hours. All this on an individual level could be incredibly expensive. And if we don't find some way to ship that it's going to be available to the privileged few, obviously. And so I wonder if you have ideas or you've envisioned some ways in which the infrastructure could be created to bring psychedelic assisted therapy and medicines out at a larger scale in an equitable way across the lines of socioeconomic status and racial ethnicity and so forth. And so I wonder what your vision for that is and how it. How it might. How we might begin that work or how it. Maybe it already is beginning.

Yeah, I think in Oregon there, there has been some work around creating pathways for non medical practitioners. That is something that I'm really curious and excited to see more about. You know, like you said before, psychedelics isn't new. The plant medicine has been here, you know, for our. For our ancestors, you know, many, many, many, many thousands, almost estimated thousands of years ago. So people like Maria Sabina, I feel like they paved the way and showed us the roadmap. We have to pick up that roadmap and use it again. And so Maria Sabina, one thing that she was very much known for is the idea that we are the medicine, that who we are and how we live in harmony with each other, with nature and with ourselves, those are the things that are really going to heal our collective. And so this idea that you have to have a master's degree or you have to. The medical model says you have to have these papers on the wall in order to be a healer. I think the medicine is going to challenge that as it always has, because that's not how any of this started in the first place. The traditional healing people, the traditional medicine folks, were just regular lay people who learned from their family or from their village or from their community and had been appointed by the people. And so I'm curious to see what that will look like in conjunction with the medical model. Some people say that they don't think it's possible. I really am optimistic that we can work together.

So among people of color, African Americans and Latinos, particularly, probably in less resource areas of our major urban centers and cities, as well as some rural areas.

Like, how do they access mental health services? Now, I know, sadly, and a lot of my work is in the criminal justice field and public safety field, our prison systems have become the major mental health provider in this country. But apart from ending up in jail or prison receiving some kind of treatment there, how do people with less resources and people of color access mental health services? Are there local.

Community clinics or county level clinics or state or cities or what does the infrastructure look like in the less resource parts of our society in terms of mental health care?

Yeah, I would say that our community mental health centers, which is what you're describing, in every large area, there's usually some system that's set up for mental health. And in those community mental health centers, you usually see people that are what we call severely mentally ill. So that's your psychosis or schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, et cetera. And typically people don't get help until it's really, really bad. You know, when things are. When they're in crisis or they're, you know, they can no longer function either academically or at work or in their family, whatever the situation may be. And so there's not a lot of prevention based programming at those community mental health centers because they're trying to put out as many fires as they can. Also, our community mental health systems aren't really resourced well, they're usually given, you know, very. They're paid the least. They have, you know, the largest caseloads. You might have a therapist that, you know, has 50 or 60 people on their caseload. So they're not really set up to succeed, in my opinion, the way that our system is set up, based on hyper capitalism. And so when people aren't set up to succeed, they start to look for other ways. And I think that's largely why we have what we call, quote, unquote, the underground world of psychedelic practitioners that are going out. They know that this medicine is helpful. They know that it actually can help people navigate life in a much more operational way. And so they might be going out and working with people one on one or just in group settings. And also people are discovering psychedelics on their own. People are trying these medicines just within the comfort of their own home, their own space, and they're getting a lot of relief from that. So I know that there's been a lot of talk about decriminalization of medicine, and some people think that that's opposed to the medical model of psychedelic assisted therapy. But I think they're both very important that people deserve to have access to psilocybin. This is something that grows in nature. I don't consider mushrooms a drug personally, but I know, as I always say, we were taught that mushrooms were drugs and McDonald's is. So our system and the war on drugs and these holes, the stigmas and the culture of how we view these medicines has to change as well.

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, tragically, the. The way that so many people struggling with mental health Issues ended up in our jails and prisons is that back in the 70s they, they move people out of the state mental health care, say the state hospital, say, which were terrible places, and established community mental health centers, which is a great vision. But then they defunded them or didn't fund them. And so people end up on the streets and homeless and then end up in the jail in the criminal justice system.

And that's probably the last place where psychedelic assisted therapy is going to arrive, is inside our correctional facilities. Although who knows, there was research going on back in the 60s with prisoners. So maybe psychedelic assisted therapy will come.

If I can add to that. One other thing I would say that I always try to promote is our 12 step model. I am a big, big fan of 12 step programs. I'm a member of many 12 step programs myself. There is one for intergenerational trauma that many people don't know about. ACA Adult Child Anonymous. So just people who feel like they didn't receive the nurture or the guidance or the love that they needed as children. Oftentimes I will refer them to an ACA meeting either before a psychedelic journey or after because those parts of them will show up in the journey and oftentimes they don't know what to do with them. They don't have the skills to continue to work with that material. And so ACA is another big thing that I like to really promote. And any 12 step program is a great start. If you're looking at how do I integrate the things that I've been working on, just get into any type of program that will help you look at your connection to yourself and any higher power that you might need to have supporting you on this journey I think is great. But the other thing that many people don't know is that Bill W. Himself was inspired to create a 12 step model AA the first 12 step model after an LSD trip. You know, so people, some people think addiction and psychedelics don't go together, which the research has definitely challenged. But I say that we all just need to get informed and try the different opportunities and programs that are available to us. And as healers and folks who are informed, it's important for us to know what's out there and what's available for folks on a various spectrum of resources available.

Well, I couldn't agree with you more. And 12 step work was a huge part of my own transformational journey during my own period of incarceration. And, and you're right, you know, I heard and read Bill Bill W. Story for years. And, you know, it was always said he had this spiritual awakening and spiritual illumination. And it was many years later that I read about he actually had an LSG experience. He may have had other spiritual experiences as well, but that certainly played a role and it's not talked about that much. So, you know, you know, in terms of you mentioned in the military, the necessary not just to be diverse, but have people of color moving into positions of leadership and influence and so forth, all the way up to the top. And so in the world of therapy, clinical work, medicine, science and so forth, there's a process of not just getting degrees, but sort of being connected, being mentored, you know, and, you know, senior experience, people bring other people along. And.

Because the upper parts of that infrastructure in many cases have been white dominant, I wonder how you're working to move people of color in the therapeutic, clinical, medicine world and science world to move them upstream and so start to have more influence. And we can really change that landscape so that. So that the process of mentoring and moving people up based on their own work and their merit becomes more equitable and more inclusive.

Yeah, I would say again, I feel like I was really, really blessed in my mentorship and development as a professional. Being in the military.

The military is really big on leadership. And I have. My first degree is in public administration with a focus on organizational behavior. So leadership is a big part of my first master's degree, really looking at workplace morale, organizational culture. These are all things that I've been learning about and experiencing and working with for many, many years, almost three decades now. And so for me, this is like a second nature. Developing leadership is just ingrained in me at a very deep level. And thankfully, I've been able to be one of the facilitators for Brene Brown's Dare to Le program, which is very resonates and it's very relative for therapists and mental health professionals. So now at Black Therapist Rock, we do four cohorts of Dare to Lead trainings every year where I mentor a group of therapists around how to show up, how to be courageous, how to challenge yourself when you feel vulnerable, and also how to receive support and taking that shame resilience aspect that we all need as leaders in order to show up and be brave and courageous. And you're going to, you're going to have some times where you fall and you're unsure or you're not uncertain. And you need to remember that you're never going to master everything, although that shame comes up. You are who you are and you belong wherever you are. And so again, we do four cohorts of dairy lead a year. We are now having one cohort specifically for those that are interested in psychedelic assisted therapy and psychedelic practitioners. And then we often have lots of opportunities that I have access to. And we try to always encourage them to take, you know, get involved in the leadership level, whether it be through MAPS or any other company or organization that's offering programs and services.

Well, you know, you've partnered with both Brene Brown and Dick Swartz, the founder of Internal Family Systems. And you know, I think there are two wonderful examples of people who through their own work have achieved a lot of influence and positional power in their fields. And both acclaimed authors.

And they're both very committed to this work. And so I think that they present a real model for how all of us can embrace the responsibility and the ownership to co create this much more diverse, equitable, inclusive world that we all long for and that we need desperately.

I mean, in a white supremacy culture, it's going to be white people who have most of the access to everything when it comes to leadership and opportunities. So it will require white people to listen to marginalized people, to seek out marginalized people, and to also advocate for us to have those positions of power and respect and authority as well.

Absolutely. So I wonder if just anything, anything else you'd like to offer in terms of how you envision the future, like whether in terms of kind of the infrastructure of psychedelic assisted therapy or particular therapeutic modalities that could really address some of the core chronic mental health issues or just kind of, what do you envision? What are your hopes for the future?

Well, my hopes for myself personally and professionally. I'll share a little bit about that and how that expands the vision of black therapist Rock. I am hoping to start my own PhD at University of Houston with Brene Brown under the mentorship of Brene Brown here in the next one or two years. My dissertation, I'm hoping, will be about the ability to emphasize shame resilience and psychedelic assisted therapy for marginalized people. Specifically looking at studies, I think we need thousands of studies on just marginalized people because we have not had those. Just looking at how this medicine and the understanding of shame can help empower our communities in a very real and important way and how that will, you know, make a more balanced world for all of us, that all of us will be able to right, size ourselves as we say in 12 steps that me as a black woman will no longer have to feel like I need to bow down or be submissive to someone who's traditionally been in a role or a been put into a power position of superiority above me. And so we can all start to challenge each other and right size each other and be with each other in a very authentic and deep and relational way.

It's a beautiful vision. So and I'm excited about that possibility of you completing your doctoral work mentored by Brene Brown that I'm sure there's going to be a wonderful, possibly many books that will come out of that and really some really good work that'll support all of us in growing and evolving the kind of society that we want to co create. So thank you so much Jeron for the work, the incredible work you do and for being willing to be part of our summit and the contributions that you're making. So thank you so much.

Thank you.

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