Sunny Strasburg | The Future of Therapy: Psychedelic Practices and Self-Energy

I had a client that was working, he's a physician, and he was taking organs out of people that had donated their organs. And he told me this horrific story about something that happened at work one day, and I could feel myself getting upset about the story that he told me. And instead of in traditional therapy, I would just push that all down and act like nothing bothered me. That would make me weak as a therapist to act like that rattled me at all. But because I'm ifs informed, I told him, wow, something's happening within me where I feel really upset by this story. And I'm feeling like this part of me wants to cry and really feel this. And I'm just going to take a moment and ask this part to step aside and give me some space so I can come back to self energy. So I just disclosed this to my client.

Welcome to the Radical responsibility podcast. I'm Dr. Fleet Moll and I'm excited to guide you on a journey of authentic transformation. In each episode, I'll bring you insights from leading experts to expl explore trauma recovery, mindfulness practices, positive psychology, and innovative breakthroughs in health, wellness and life optimization. This is a space for real conversations that inspire meaningful change, helping you find alignment with the person you were always meant to be. Let's get started.

What if deeper healing could be found where modern psychology meets ancient archetypes and cutting edge psychedelic therapies. In this episode, I'm joined by Sunny Strasberg, a trailblazer in psychedelic assisted therapy and creator of the transformative theradelic approach. Sunny blends internal family systems, or ifs, emdr and archetypal psychology to revolutionize trauma healing. She's trained hundreds of clinicians, co hosts, retreats with IFS founder Dr. Dick Swartz, and has extensive experience with ketamine, MDMA, and psilocybin therapies. We'll explore how her theradelic approach helps therapists access their self energy and navigate ethical challenges and create trauma informed spaces. From preparation to integration, this episode is filled with practical insights to transform how we approach healing. Let's dive in.

And I'm really thrilled to be here today with Ben and colleague Sunny Strasberg. Welcome, Sunny.

So happy to be here with you, Fleet.

Thank you. Oh, I'm really looking forward to this conversation. We've had a number of them and they're just always so illuminating and enriching and a lot of fun at the same time. So we let's talk about your theradelic approach, which integrates internal family systems, or ifs, emdr Archetypal Psychology, Trauma Informed care, and your extensive experience as a therapist and with really the kind of cutting edge developments in psychedelic assisted psychotherapy. And I know it's. I'm sure this is kind of an evolving model for you. And now you put out the book, so it's kind of there, but I'm sure you'll do revisions over time. But I'm sure this is a living, evolving model that's based on your clinical experience. So I'm just. I wonder if you could describe the basics of it and then kind of how it's developing for you.

Absolutely. I'm really excited to talk about it. And you're right, it's such an interesting thing to, you know, work and develop this model and then test it out, see what's working, what to tweak. It's been very fun to see it evolve. Kind of like giving birth to a baby and watching them grow up. Right. So the inspiration for writing the book was I was working, training people with other training organizations in psychedelic therapy. You know, everybody's talking about preparation, trip, sitting and integration and the importance of all of those things, which is very important. But I was feeling like it's a nuanced thing to provide really great psychedelic therapy. It's not linear at all. It's very qualitative, not quantitative. And it felt like there was a lot of potential error that could happen where things could go wrong with such an open ended, nebulous way of training people. And so I really wanted to give people techniques and tools about what to do when that could be helpful as a template to develop a treatment protocol for someone going through a psychedelic therapy protocol. And so the ferodelic approach is, you know, incorporating things like EMDR and IFS and archetypal psychology, different methods and the pieces of them that I think fit within the structure. So within the theradelic approach is the acronym panther and PANTHER, the letters stand for different processes throughout the treatment protocol and the theradylic approach. So the P is preparation. So, so we talk about what to do in preparation, how to build rapport, A is attunement, how to be attuned. What does that look like when you're attuning to your therapy client? How do people feel safe with you really technical tools with how to create that. The N in PANTHER is needs of the protector. So here we're bringing in internal family systems approaches. How do you help people feel safe in treatment with psychedelics? You talk to their protector system, you invite them, you work with them. You slow down the whole process. So there's a internal family system technique. The T is trauma mapping. So you're doing all of these things in PANTHER even before you do the medicine session. So the T trauma mapping is incorporating tools and techniques from EMDR therapy that I learned called the float back method, where you're mapping out people's traumas and helping them understand what they can work on within the psychedelic protocol. And then the H is the medicine holding space. How do you hold space? What does it look like for you to be more of a midwife for what wants to move through your clients? How do you support them in a very safe and ethical way? E is empathy and engagement, and that is using techniques with ifs engaging with the parts, helping people talk about what they experienced in what I call the golden hours emerge out of the psychedelic experience. How can you remain engaged with them? How can you remain curious using those qualities of self energy that we talk about in ifs self energy with your engagement. And then the R. And PANTHER is resolution and integration. So how do you help clients metabolize all of the content that came into the psychedelic experience using techniques like EMDR and internal family systems and archetypal psychology like the Hero or Heroin's journey. So it's really using the bits and pieces from these different models to create a holistic approach to really help give clinicians a really great toolkit for them to use in their psychedelic therapy sessions.

Wonder if you could talk a little bit more about. Well, a couple things here. Maybe I'll build it into one question, but the importance of the therapist doing their own work have access to that self energy, the capital S self energy in the internal family systems model. And so, you know, that requires us to do our work, to be able to have access to that and then to be able to hold space. And then also from the internal family systems model, as you're building rapport, you're building rapport from that perspective with parts with protectors and maybe hopefully creating a therapeutic alliance with the self energy of the client to the extent that they have access to it. Right. And then you even mentioned, you know, working with the protectors, which in a more formal sense is kind of like the idea of informed consent. But here it's a much deeper view because you're not just getting maybe one manager part to agree, but you're really trying to get the protectors, but maybe an overall size. It kind of expands the whole notion of rapport, therapeutic alliance, informed consent, all these things.

Yeah. I mean, even in the Way that you structured that question includes so much of the vibe the Ferdelic approach wants to capture, right? Is we as therapists are not outside of the therapy that's happening. And psychedelic experiences really open that field. You know, I think old school ways of doing therapy like cognitive behavioral therapy is, you know, I'm the therapist and I'm this big expert and you're this poor hapless victim that I'm going to, you know, bestow some wisdom upon. And I'm outside of the therapy. I'm just giving you this important information. This is nothing like what we're doing in internal family systems, EMDR or psychedelic therapy, right? We understand, even in Jungian, you know, therapy, we are understanding that we are part of that whole system. So if you have that as a presupposition that the therapist is part of what's happening in the therapeutic container, then you see the importance of us having done our own work, right? Because if you're not aware of your own shortcomings, if you're not aware of your own countertransperences, that's a Jungian concept of having your own issues that then you're projecting another Freudian or Jungian concept onto the client. If you're not aware of that, then that's getting mixed into the therapy in our own naivete that then harms the client, right? So all of this is saying it's really important for us to do our own work, do our own therapy for one. So really going in and working through our own traumas, seeing where our own potentials for projection are, where we get triggered by our clients parts, our clients issues, right? So there's that piece of it. And then doing your own work also refers in psychedelic therapy specific, specifically in doing your own work with psychedelics. So understanding where your clients are going is extremely important, right? This isn't. You know, someone said to me once, well, you know, if I'm prescribing benzos for my client, I don't need to take benzos to understand what's happening for them. And even that statement, it conveys how little that person knew about psychedelics. Because psychedelics are very, very different than a drug that just treats this one little symptom. Psychedelics are complete world changing experiences. You know, it's a spiritual, mystical experience that you're giving someone and you really need to know where people are going in the experience. It's being a travel agent that's never left your hometown and you're telling people where to go when they visit China. And you live in Nebraska. It's like you need to know where people are going. So doing your own work includes that as well know where your clients are going. And you know, and you referred to self energy and the importance of self energy. We understand. I mean, I guess I should define self energy first because I don't think we really talk about that. But in ifs, the understanding is that behind all of the parts of our personalities that can take on all these different roles and issues and what we call an ifs burdens behind all that, the substrate of who we actually are is self with a capital S. And self energy has, is just really benevolent and open ended. It doesn't have an agenda. It's the epitome of compassion. In Buddhism, which you're so familiar with Plead, it's being compassionate. You know, that expansive love that we have for all beings and the universe and for humans, being creative, confident, being calm in our bodies, being feeling connected to other people, other beings, other sentient beings that we share this earth with. Being creative. I don't know if I mentioned creativity, but creativity is incredibly important. So this energy of self is really contagious, right? When we are able to be in that expansive place, it invites that self energy in other people. And so if we as therapists can exude self energy, that really helps clients anchor in that energy. And then they can have a more secure attachment with their own self energy, with their internal ecosystem. So that's how we understand that self energy. And by doing our own work, right? Unburdening our own parts, doing our own psychedelic work, we can then access our own self energy as therapists. And we can feel when those parts are coming in that are triggered by the client's parts. And we can say, I'm going to ask my parts to step aside and get back into self energy so I can be here for you to do your work.

Yeah. And you brought up countertransference. So it seems like having some understanding of transference and countertransference for therapist is really critical. And I'm not sure that not all therapists study this in an experiential way. You know, you were trained at CIIS and Pacifica Institute and I know you had very experiential training as a therapist. I had my clinical training at Naropa University back in the late 70s. I was very experiential. We were in some kind of therapy all the time for three years and doing a lot of deep work. So it's really important. But as I've gotten to Know, ifs it really illuminates the dynamics of transference and counter transference, more nuanced way in a more elaborate way. So one of the classic things that we all do is to the extent that we have trauma in our childhoods and extent that we have attachment issues where we're looking for that perfect parent, we're looking to replace the not perfect parent with the perfect parent. And we run around looking for that in all kinds of relationships. So very easy for the client to want to be projecting that perfect parent that's going to meet all their needs onto the therapist and vice versa. There can be things that therapist is doing. So the idea of this self energy and having done your work so you have access to that as a therapist would mean that not that you're not going to get any of your stuff triggered or you won't feel any of your parts coming into play, but you're less likely to be hijacked by those parts. Or even if you were hijacked in a kind of an unusual circumstance with the client, you would know it and you'd be able to take action and get yourself back. But in general, you're going to be more spacious and a little less triggerable. I would assume the more self energy you have. But then on the other side of that, how does that help the client? I would assume the extent that their therapist can be resting in that self energy, it's palpable. There's an energetic field that creates for the client to then do their work. I wonder if you could talk about that from the perspective of the client.

You're so brilliant fleetly. You always ask like 10 things. I'm always like, as you're talking, I'm tracking like, okay, I want to make sure I talk about every point the fleet just asks. I love this. So you bring up transference and countertransprence. And this concept is really incredible. And the thing that I love about archetypal psychology is these concepts are really powerful. Countertransprance is such a powerful thing to know about what comes up within us. The problem that I always had with archetypal psychology and Jung is that conceptually, it's a great conceptual model, but putting it into practice is really challenging. Right? And this is what I love about ifs. When I learned ifs, I thought, wow, this is the way to put into practice concepts that I learned in archetypal psychology. These beautiful, complex ideas that totally make sense, but I never had a practical way to implement them and utilize them. IFS is the perfect model for that. It's so great that way. So in terms of transference and countertransference, the way that translates into ifs and this elegant model that Dick Schwartz has created is that you're actually looking at that. You have this understanding that something that's coming up in your client is going to pull up a part of you that's reacting against that. And once you have that understanding, oh, this isn't all of me, when you think that it's all of you, it makes it more difficult to sense it, to pick up on it. Right. But if all of a sudden you have something that percolates up in you and you understand that's just a part that's reacting and hooking in, there's something about that that helps you have compassion for your own part that's getting activated by this other person. So I'll give you an example. I had a client that was working, he's a physician, and he was taking organs out of people that had donated their organs. And he told me this horrific story about his something that happened at work one day. And I could feel myself getting upset about the story that he told me. And instead of in traditional therapy, I would just push that all down and act like nothing bothered me. And I would. That would make me weak as a therapist to act like that rattled me at all. But because I'm ifs informed, I told him, wow, something's happening within me where I feel really upset by this story. And I'm feeling like this part of me wants to cry and really feel this. And I'm just gonna take a moment and ask this part to step aside and give me some space so I can come back to self energy. So I just disclosed this to my client, and it was really interesting because he had been telling me this story completely void of emotion when he was telling me this horrific story. Suddenly, by me saying that I was having compassion for this part of me that was upset by that story that then reflected to him how upsetting the story was, and he was able to detect a part in him that was really traumatized by this event. And he started crying because I admitted that I had a part of me that was very upset and wanted to cry. So this was a great example of really tracking my own countertransprint and asking that part, I see you, I care about you. It makes sense that you're upset by this story. And I'm just going to ask you to step back so I can be here with my client. Right? So that's kind of an example of how I took countertransprints and then put it into practice with ifs. Yeah.

If I could just ask. So you know that gets into disclosure, which is always a tricky area in therapy. Right. And it seems like the IFS model both gives you the. Often we just say disclosures off limits. Right. It's just so chicken difficult that a lot of therapists just don't go there. Right. And there are risks in going there. But it seems like ifs gives you both in terms of that you're doing your inner work and you develop that access to self. It gives you the discernment to maybe do it in a therapeutically helpful way. Like you just described the fundamental importance.

Of why to disclose what's your intention. Is your intention to have your own needs met by your client? Because you don't want to do that. You want to have your intention be. How can I be more available for my client? Because this is the relational agreement that we have. I'm here for my client, my client's not here for me. So that takes some self awareness to say, okay, I'm going to disclose this to the client. Or you might be blended with a part and that might not be helpful because that might make activate the client parts that feel ashamed in something that they're doing. So then you tell your parts inside and I've done this before. I hear you. It makes sense that you're upset. And we'll take this to our, you know, a colleague to process or consultation appointment later to process this so that we can work through this. And I just have an inside voice about that and working with my right. Because the intention is okay, I don't want to take my client out of his or her process. I want to make sure my parts are okay and be in self energy. But it's not the appropriate time. You use that word discernment. Discernment is queen in these sessions. Making sure that you're tracking that with discernment.

So there's so many things I want to go on to. And when we have our conversations, I'm so tempted to grind and try to hold. I am going to follow my temptation for a moment. So one is kind of maybe a bit of a funny question, but a real question actually is, so doing this parts work while you're doing therapy, you're able to kind of have a little bit of a conversation with yourself and one of your parts while you're doing therapy while still apparently being available to the client. That sounds like a pretty High level therapeutic skill.

It's like parkour.

Parallel processes. Yes. There's something that comes back to, you know, that 10,000 hours, you know, that we talk about, Malcolm Gladwell, say, 10,000 hours to become an expert at something. And, you know, I really think there is something to that, that, you know, when you're a therapist for a long time, you just. You're able to have, you know, that ability to track multiple things at once.

And what's really important about that, I think, is because our own stuff does come up. And I used to do a lot of hospice work, a lot of training of hospice caregivers, and a lot of stuff can come up in your own experience when you're dealing with people who are facing death and so forth. And so you don't want to make it about you. Obviously, you're not there to get your needs met. You're there for the needs of your friend, client, patient, whatever it is. That's gotta be absolutely clear. But how you can be with that person, can be informed by what's coming up for you, how you kind of harvest that information about what is coming up and have it benefit, how you're showing up without getting lost in that internal conversation, right? So you don't want to just shut it off because then you're shutting off some valuable information that could help you show up in a more therapeutically beneficial way. So it's really interesting that, you know, you develop the ability to do that over time.

It's an incredibly important skill. And, you know, when I was doing a lot of trauma therapy early in my career, I went from. And I think most therapists go through this trajectory in our careers, you know, and hopefully we keep learning. But, you know, the first few years, you're this hero. You're going to save everybody from their own trauma, and you're working harder than they are. And every appointment you're leaning forward and, you know, working so hard. And you want to rescue this person from their pain. And, you know, that's really like this naive way of being a beginning therapist. And then you get burned out. You see enough trauma, you've heard every gnarly story you can imagine, and then you have parts that want to protect you, and then you become kind of numb. So, you know, there's this kind of second phase where you're just trying to survive these really intense, horrible things that you're hearing, and you shut yourself off from the pain, right? And then you get to a point, hopefully, in your learning, where you're able to stay in compassion, but you're not in sympathy and you're not overly working too hard or trying to rescue the client. And you're not detached and traumatized yourself. You're riding that edge with that discernment of. I need to feel connected to this person, this other human who's suffering so that we can relate and I can be attuned and build rapport. So I'm here with this person, I'm tracking with this person. I think of it in a visual as I'm in the client's underworld, in their deep, dark underworld. And I'm holding a lantern for them and I'm not dragging them along and. And I'm not walking behind them. I'm at their side holding up a lantern and I'm with them. Right. And I'm always keeping a part of me or self energy up on above ground and I always have access to that. So no matter where we go, I always have access to the ground above. I don't get lost in the underworld with them. And I. That has been a really helpful image for me when I've been in really intense sessions. And I will say that doing my own psychedelic work has been the most profound way that I've worked through, holding all of the intensity that I've been with clients. That has really helped me see that I am in this divine partnership with working with people. I'm not rescuing anybody and they're not rescuing me. But we're in this together and we're metabolizing this crazy thing called human experience together.

I love that. And I think that's a really helpful analogy. Holding the flashlight. Yeah. And you kind of channeled my next question, so we'll just touch on it because I want to move on to some other stuff. But it was the other rabbit hole I was going down. You know, I. In my work, various settings, I use Carbon's drama triangle forever. And I really love it. And it's such a useful psychological distinction. And one of the poles is the rescuer, obviously. And those of us who end up in helping professions, we really need to look at how much, you know, of that is there. Inevitably it's there. We don't need to feel bad about that, but we do need to tease it apart because our helping is less helpful to the extent that it's conflated with the ego needs of the rescuer, obviously. And so we're clearly not getting our own emotional needs met there around specific things, but also having the awareness of just being in that, you know, getting our ego needs by just being in that rescuer, helper world. Now, it's fine that you were involved in an altruistic profession. We're going to feel good about helping people. It's not like being completely free of that. But it's a. There's another level of it and then there's another one that I'm sure you're familiar with from Jungian psychology. Psychology. It's more in male archetypal psycho, but I'm sure it has its version in the feminine models of the magician. And so that could be another tricky archetype for therapists to get hooked into. I would think, especially with psychedelic assisted therapy, is having that, you know, the idea of being the musician I'm going to do magic with, you know, healing these clients. So just, again, having awareness around all this stuff because. And I've always felt that it's most helpful to assume what's going on and then look for it rather than kind of hoping it's not there.

Yes, yes, absolutely. I mean, that rescuer, it's an interesting archetype. Right. So when we talk about archetypal psychology, it's a countertransference. Right. And it's a way. I mean, I have a ton of MDs, psychiatrists and therapists that are my therapy clients. They are so hard to work with in their vulnerable parts because they have incredible protectors that are the rescuer or the helper protectors. And it's a way of keeping their exiles safe in a way. Right. People that go into helping professions are wounded healers that have their own trauma. And they were the adult in the room in their own family. This was totally my story. I was like the therapist when I was like 5 years old in my family of origin. Right. And I had to really look at that like, this is. And I would notice that I would be the therapist to all my friends and in my personal life. And it's like, okay, I'm really attached to that protector. It's really blended with me because I'm really scared behind that that there aren't any adults in the room and that I'm the adult in the room. Right. So again, looking at doing our own work, watching for that, I love that you brought up the magician, because in the Theradelic Approach book, I talk about guru syndrome, which is really that it's again, that's a protector that keeps us separated, like we are above and beyond where these magicians or gurus that can, you know, bestow all this wisdom on this other person and, you know, deserving of worship. And that's a very dangerous place to go, particularly in psychedelic therapy, because you can so easily gain the, you know, adulation of your clients because you're doing this really powerful work with them. And you know, integrity goes out the window once you get into those crazy power dynamics with psychedelics. Right? So it's so important. Humility is incredibly important in this field as a therapist, as a psychedelic therapist.

Especially, which really needs points to the need for ongoing clinical supervision. So let's talk about trauma informed psychedelic psychotherapy. And that's part of your theradelic model to be trauma informed care. And of course there's a samhsa, you know, frameworks for trauma informed care. And there's a lot of helpful things in there about, you know, understanding that people who've been traumatized, especially early in their childhood, but later as well, there's a real disempowerment and a lack of options and feeling stuck and all kinds of things. So the importance of meeting people where they are and doing whatever you're doing, whether you're teaching meditation or offering therapy or whatever you're doing in a trauma informed way. Specifically with psychedelic assisted therapy, I would think one of the challenges might be that as a result of traumatic experiences, whether they're early childhood and have created really deep attachment wounds or whether they're later in life, but we create a protective system around that of protectors in the IFS language and then managers kind of managing it all and those deeply traumatized parts are exiled and buried way down. And we may be able to manage our lives relatively well, even though we've been through trauma. And you know, it's interesting, one of the discoveries from the ACEs studies and other studies of trauma and also the work with veterans is that many people have been through the same experience. Some are deeply traumatized in a debilitating way for life and others seem to have gotten through relatively unscathed. And I think I'm sure there's some truth to that in terms of how people experience it, how resilient they are going in. But also some of those that seem to have gotten through unscathed may just have it all, well, really well buried and really well managed as well. At any rate, with psychedelic therapy, that whole landscape can just be blown wide open. Somebody could come out of psychedelic experiences no longer able to manage that, and suddenly they find themselves not able to handle their lives very well or dealing with traumas that feel pretty unmanageable and feel really destabilized. So I wonder about the responsibility that we have to work with patients in psychiatric assisted therapy, knowing that it could be very destabilizing for some patients.

Absolutely. And yeah, it's so important to have ongoing therapy. I think we're really focusing so much on the psychedelic experience as, you know, oh, this is, you know, like, how to change your mind is like, really, you know, one psilocybin session and their trauma was cured. And, you know, I think this is like one piece of a whole landscape of support for people. Oftentimes people don't even realize how traumatizing are. Just to your point, right, like this, it can unearth trauma. And so it's so important to have a trauma informed therapist to help with preparation and then the journey itself and then the integration of what, you know, happened during the session and ongoing therapy support with your therapist. Right. But yes, I mean, all the time I see people come into psychedelic therapy, a psychedelic session, and have unearth some deep traumatic material. Right. The understanding of trauma is that you can loop in trauma. Right. And if you metabolize it appropriately, it'll move through. So this is kind of like a really big. In emdr, for example, there's this idea that trauma is encoded in this undigested way, an unmetabolized way. And if you can recall the trauma in an appropriate way and remember it with a beginning, middle, and end and process through, that'll break up the looping that's happening in the traumatic event and help metabolize that so then it becomes encoded as a normal memory. Right. Pagani did a lot of really interesting research with EMDR where, you know, on the first session, he did a brain scan of someone recalling a trauma, and their brain lit up exactly like how a brain will light up during a traumatic event. Even though the traumatic event was 10 years before the right amygdala lit up, the frontal lobes shut down. You know, just a typical trauma brain. And then after eight sessions of emdr, at the end of that, he scanned the brain again, and the brain looked just like when that. We're calling that traumatic memory. The brain lit up just like a normal memory. It didn't light up like trauma and made you look quiet. Frontal lobes activated. Right. So there's this idea that processing trauma helps metabolize the memories in a new way. And so the integration after a psychedelic experience is really important because that material comes up and then it's like making sense of all of that you experienced. Right. And to back up a little bit in that Panther method, the end needs of the Protectors, that idea before the psychedelic experience to slow down and really make sure that the protectors are all on board with going into a deep experience. Because those protectors are usually aware of, of what exiles are down there, even if the person isn't. So if you slow down and really invite the protectors to come forward and talk about how they feel and tell them you don't have to take the medicine, you can say no to the psychedelic medicine experience and we can take more time to really prepare you. That is usually a stitch in time saves nine. If you take the time on the front end to prepare clients before going into a deeper journey. That. How cool for what you asked?

Yeah, absolutely. So the IFS model is kind of a, at least in the way I understand it, is essentially psychological a model. And so I'm wondering about, in terms of trauma, informed psychotherapy, the Role of Body. Clearly, you know, Bessel's book, which is just incredible phenomena, right? The Body keeps the Score. But also Peter Levine's work around somatic experiencing, Pat Ogden's work with sensory motor psychotherapy and many others. I mean, some kind of body work has been considered pretty essential in healing trauma. So I wonder how that's brought in psychedelic systems in psychotherapy.

Yeah, I mean, I think IFS has some component of somatic feeling where these parts are in the body and found, you know, Dick Schwartz and I, when we do our retreats, we've really focused on the somatic component because that becomes really important in the psychedelic therapy session. And we really see what Peter Levine talks about with like kind of this like shaking and moving the body and really letting those parts kind of experience that shaking in the way that they need to release the trauma is very common in the psychedelic process. So I think IFS can really focus more on the somatic experience during the psychedelic process because we're, we don't have those protectors that keep us polite in normal society, but we're not shaking and moving around and doing the things that our body needs to do to release these traumas. It's funny because doing psychedelic therapy has really made me circle back on Peter Levine's work and that wonderful book Waking the Tiger and thinking about how our bodies really do hold the traumas that we carry, you know, and those can be access points for us to work through trauma with.

Well, it seems like as you were talking, I'm thinking there's a connection between psychedelic work. I mean, you take the medicine and you're having an experience, right? And sometimes it is very body centered. Experience, and sometimes it just goes completely out of the body.

Medicines are more somatic or less somatic. Right.

Well, also one that you're very experienced with and we'll talk about in a moment. It seems like at a certain part of the journey, it's very body centered, but then often at a higher dose, it goes completely beyond the somatic experience. So as you were talking, I was thinking of, you know, as a replacement, the work of Stan Groff of creating holotropic breath work and some of the other intense breath work models out there that are accessing a psychedelic like space through breath work. But the process of doing it is very somatic. Right. I mean, and you intentionally sort of shaking, getting the body, the breath moving almost in ways they seem completely out of control, but then catapult one into these expanded states of consciousness and so forth.

Absolutely. And, you know, I love that you brought that up because that's an example of, you know, being a therapist that's trained in different psychedelics and I've hosted holotropic breathwork retreats. And knowing what would be the best medicine for this person as you're developing a treatment protocol. You know, ketamine has this really interesting signature of being very relaxing to the body and the mind's activated and has a signature of movement. Right. And then coming back into the body is this very interesting experience often for people of, you know, and all kinds of content can come up around that. What is it? You know, people could, oh, this is what it's like to die. Because my psyche felt like it was completely separated from my body. And now I'm coming back into my body and there's this interesting contrast between that or people that have had a lot of trauma, physical trauma happen to them. They get this break from being in their body and then coming back and in that, oh, that's that body that carries all of that pain and that contrast for me. And then that can be a wonderful target to then move into that golden hour after of doing emdr, for example, helping process what that feels like to be in a physical body that carries that somatic experience of the trauma, for example. Right. So, you know, I think that there's this. Often there's this focus that the psychedelics are what cures the trauma. But sometimes it can be that the psychedelic brings up the trauma and then it's the process and the work of the person to then do the integration of that trauma, the metabolization of that trauma that came up in the psychedelic experience.

Yeah, I think that's really helpful because I think there's a tendency to want to see the psychedelics as cure all in a panacea or these one experiences that are going to transform you. And people do have amazingly transformative experiences and sometimes it shifts their whole worldview and can change their relationship to traumatic experiences. But I think it's more helpful to think of it as catalytic to ongoing work. Right. Ongoing personal work, ongoing therapeutic work of whatever kind. But let's talk a bit about your retreat work with Dr. Schwartz. I had the privilege of attending one of your retreats and participating in it that integrates ketamine assisted psychotherapy with internal family systems work. It was an amazing experience. I'm still sitting with, so I wonder if you could talk about that in the group work. I would assume EMDR would happen more in one on one therapy, but in the group work it seems like you're mostly focused on the ketamine and the IFS work.

Yeah, I really love this alchemy that happens in these retreats where we're taking the ketamine, we're taking ifs and then the group dynamic as part of the therapeutic experience and combining all of that, leveraging all that to potentiate the medicine that's happening is really a remarkable experience. There's some real magic that happens when you're witnessing other people processing with their parts and doing ifs in this very open way. Because the ketamine helps protectors soften and witnessing that and then what happens with our own internal ecosystem as we're witnessing the vulnerability and the processing of someone else and then being witnessed by others. Right. So this lovely dance of witnessing and then being witnessed, healing ourselves, helping support other people's healing, just really there's so much magic that can happen in that process. And you're right, EMDR is more of a one on one engagement, whereas ifs can be done in groups really beautifully and well. So, yeah, I have just really enjoyed these retreats and watching the magic that happens, you know, and in these retreats we're also using low dose cyclytic dose Ketamine where people are processing through their experience and then we're using higher dose Ketamine and having deeper journey experiences. So, you know, there's this lovely creativity that comes with the retreats and different experiences that happen there as well.

So I know both you and Dick Swartz are very interested in now bringing this work to ostensibly, well, people who are influencing the world leaders and movers and shakers in the AI world and the corporate world and the Digital universe. So people that are really influencing our lives. And, you know, you're bringing this kind of work of this ketamine and ifs work to help, hopefully help some of these individuals, you know, further these technologies in ways that'll be more beneficial and freer of some of the shadow stuff that's there.

Absolutely. I mean, in the ifs world. And this is very Jungian as well, we understand that as above, so below, what's inside the internal ecosystem is in the external ecosystem. And so you can look at our own internal parts and our protectors and our exiles and all of the weird stuff that happens inside of one individual. And you can also see this very much on display in our culture externally. Right. I mean, all you have to do is look at the political system right now and see that we have colorizations, we have extreme protectors, we have exiles. Right. It's, like, right there in front of us. And so, you know, Dick and I are both really passionate about how can we do the most good with the time that we have on this planet? And, you know, you said, ostensibly, well, people, and I would not necessarily agree, truly. I mean, I think people who have achieved a lot of success often have very burdened protectors, have achieved at all costs, have pushed everyone else to the side, have felt very inadequate, and have very fragile exiles. A lot of people that are, you know, some of the most prominent people culturally, when you look at them, you can almost see the trauma that they carry. You know, something I talked about in the theradelic approach that I think about a lot is how we're in this era of the Pu er syndrome, Right. The PUH syndrome in archetypal psychology is the Peter Pan syndrome. It's that we have people that have very young parts, often little boy parts, and they have compensating protectors that are these big bullies in the world that want to harm everyone else and tear everybody else down and want to win at all costs and have the most money and the most power and, you know, screw everybody else in the environment. So we've been very passionate about helping people. So it's this understanding that we're all in this together. We all have parts. No one's above anybody else. But how can we help walk each other home? How can we help soften those protectors that are impacting literally billions of people and our climate and our world? Right? How can we help people that have a lot of influence lead with more compassion, more creativity, more calm, more real confidence, genuine confidence. What would the world be like if we're all led by self energy, this is a world I think we all want to live in. And so as I've been doing this work, I'm more and more passionate about helping in this way because we're facing this incredible polyvalent crises that are, you know, coming from all sides and we really need this more than ever. So this is really like the second half of my life. I feel like I'm really passionate about trying to do as much of this work as I possibly can.

We're coming a little bit near the end of our time and I like to ask you to explore kind of best practices, ethical standards. You mentioned before how important your own psychedelic experience has been for you as a therapist. So that question is sometimes out there. Do you really need to, do you know, to be a psychedelic therapist, do you need to have had psychedelic experiences? And it's still an open question, debated out there, but also other elements of really understanding protocols and dosage. And then, you know, we've already been referencing some of the ethical standards and just understanding, you know, you're doing your own work and all these things. But I wonder if you could say a little bit more about your sense of the best practices that you would hope to see in this movement of psychedelic assisted therapy and how we can kind of establish that and reinforce that and then sort of addressing that. But then maybe as a follow up question, in light of the fact that this emerging movement of psychiatric psychotherapy, and we don't know if the others are going to come online, there's supposed to be an FDA decision about MDMA this month sometime, but it's happening in this overall environment of what's called the psychedelic renaissance, with both a lot of people out there pursuing psychedelics more for personal evolution, although some may also be in therapy or could benefit from therapy, but they may be essentially pursuing it as sort of a spiritual journey as self directed, maybe with the support of maybe going to, you know, South America and other places with genuine shamans, maybe working in the west with people who are in those shamanic lineages and maybe well trained and genuine, but haven't had the kind of therapeutic training that we've been talking about. And then there's the world of underground therapists who are wanting to do that work and they're really wanting to help people and trying to help people, but the legal system's just not allowing it. So it's kind of a big, you know, wild landscape that's out there. And of course, the only part that we can really begin to establish standards for is within the, you know, the more formal psychiatric psychotherapy. So I realize that's a big question, but I just wonder where you see all that going and what are some principles that you think are important for us to keep our eye on?

Yeah. Such an important question. And, you know, you really named it. It's just the Wild West. There's all kinds of things. So, you know, I've thought a lot about this because it's really difficult to control that. Right. And so then that comes back to the importance of educating the public about how to stay safe. Right. Because we can't. I hear about abuse all the time in the underground world. Clients coming to me with trauma that they receive from going to a, you know, a retreat were traumatized by the person who was bleeding it or whatever. So there's that. But there's also abuses that happen with licensed clinicians. We see that not even just with psychedelics, just with licensed clinicians. Right. So I really think it's important to educate the public about being informed consumers about informed consent, realizing that you're the person in charge when you go to interview someone who's going to be your therapist or is going to be your psychedelic practitioner, sitter, whatever, to be really informed about what to come to that session with and feel into who this person is. So I think, in a big way, what I really want to tell people and really drive this home, if you take nothing else out of this whole session with Fleet and me, is to really feel into how you feel around this person. And does it feel like they're trying to give your power back to you? That is imperative. So when you go and meet with anyone, if you're with a medical doctor for something that doesn't even, you know, relate to psychedelics, if you go to a therapist for your mental health, if you go to a psychedelic practitioner, when you're with this person, are they speaking in a language that says, you need me? I'm the expert. I'm the only one, and my way of doing things is the only way. And you're never going to heal without me. You need to pay me all this money to do this one thing that no one else can do or do they have the energy of. I'm here to empower you. I'm here to make you the best person that you are. I trust your own intelligence. This is your choice. You know, I'm here to support you. Do they have more of the energy of a midwife that's trying to help empower you? So I think that understanding that because culturally we've been programmed to give our power away to the authorities. You know, if someone has a white jacket, you know, white doctor's coat on, we're going to have no power. And it's really important for us to be informed and empowered and realize that this person is here to help us. So please, if you don't take anything else from this session, I think that is the most important thing is to really advocate for yourself and your well being. Don't give your power away.

I'm really grateful, Sonny, that you took your answer in that direction because you're right. We have been conditioned to give away our power and to be passive consumers of medical services and psychological services. And we need to do everything we can to train and train clinicians and have good standards. And there's not much we can do with the so called underground or semi underground, above ground, offshore world and all that. Not much we can do there. But certainly with licensed clinicians, we need to give them all the training standards possible. But I agree with, I think one of the most important things is educating the consumer to really educate themselves and not be naive about. And as you said, it's not just psychedelic assisted therapy, it's any kind of medical or psychological services that we're seeking. I think that's so important. It's often given short shrift in our society. And it's like you're a passive consumer. You either benefited or you were victimized, but you had no role in the process. Right. And it's not the somebody's fault they're victimized. But it's just the other side of the coin is we need to educate ourselves.

Yeah, I thought about this so much and I agree with you 100% that you know, we need a trained therapist. And you know, every therapist that gets licensed knows you do not have sex with your client. Everybody is trained that way. And still we see this happening. So it's not like you're not told that. So I'm going to assume that we all get the training that we're supposed to have when we're licensed. Right. That's a given. So then when I start thinking about this in a way that is like how can I reduce the harm for as many people as possible, it comes back to empowering people, empowering the consumer. Right. We need to flip this thing on its back and say you're not a passive person that this stuff is happening to. You're engaging with this and you have more power than you think. And something that feels so I'm really passionate about this because I work with so many trauma survivors. People have had their sovereignty taken away from them. This is part of what traumatizes us. And so there's this template for that. And then they go into these situations, having that template and lens of the world and then having that happen again and again. And so that's extra important for anybody who has trauma for them to really understand that they're in the power position and to choose carefully who you share your psyche with, who you have advised you medically, psychologically, psychedelically.

Wow. So thank you so much Sunny. Where can people find out more about your work?

You can go to sunnystrasberg.com super easy sunnystrassberg.com, you can sign up for my newsletter, find out about retreats that I have coming up, find out about my training in the theradelic Approach and my book the theradelic Approach is available on Amazon in paperback, Kindle and Audible.

Well, this has been incredibly in depth, illuminating and enriching. Thank you so much Sunny. I expected nothing less.

I always love talking to you. We have so much fun together. It's great to be together again. And thank you so much for having me. I love it.

It was really great. Be well.

Thank you for joining me on the Radical Responsibility podcast. Remember, real change happens be to when we commit to our growth, face our challenges with compassion, and stay open to transformation. If you found this episode helpful, I encourage you to subscribe and help us spread the message of healing and personal empowerment. Stay grounded, stay present and stay true to you. Take care.

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