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Psychedelic Psychotherapy

The subconscious mind, and the core programming it holds, emerges through naturally occurring altered states of consciousness such as dreaming, but perhaps most thoroughly in the psychedelic psychotherapy session.

PTSD Therapy

There are a variety of ways to explain how psychedelic medicines work and why they are so effective in mental health. There are biochemical explanations looking at receptors and neurotransmitters, brain imaging explanations looking at how the flow of information is changed in the brain, spiritual and meta-physical explanations and psychotherapeutic explanations. The fact is, as with many things in psychiatry, we don’t know exactly why or how these medicines work. There is likely truth in all of these different ways of understanding such a unique and mysterious process. What we can measure is effectiveness, safety, the subjective sense of how you feel and the conditions under which these medicines work best. The following understanding of the psychedelic process in mental health is our best explanation after years of working closely with participants in clinical trials as well as in private practice settings.

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Why Psychedelics Are So Effective

For Treating Mental Health

SURFACE-LEVEL & SUB-SURFACE EXPERIENCES

What you think of as you— your rational mind, your thoughts, beliefs, your story—is actually a very small part of who you are. It is the tip of the iceberg you can see floating above the surface of the water. Your subconscious mind— the part of you that is non-rational, non-verbal, non-cognitive, that is far older, more primal and shares the same nervous system as other mammals—plays a much larger role in your emotions, mood, symptoms, and reactivity. This is the much larger part of the iceberg below the surface of the water. This is where your core programing resides. We see glimpses of the subconscious mind through dreaming, meditation and naturally occurring altered states of consciousness but perhaps the most significant access we have to the subconscious mind is through psychedelic medicines. 

 

Most of modern psychotherapy has focused on the explicit, visible, conscious, thought based aspects of how we function for the simple reason that cognition and behavior are easy to measure and easier for clinicians to work with. Contrast that to forces that exist deep in your subconscious mind that are non-rational, difficult to see, difficult to measure and difficult to tame. In doing so, the field of psychotherapy has mostly missed the subconscious mind: the part of us where the core programing resides.

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Submerged beneath the surface of our awareness, it contains our autonomic nervous system responses to stress and trauma, as well as non-verbal, pre-verbal and dissociated memories that deeply shape who we are and what we think about our world. The subconscious holds our core beliefs– some of which we might recognize but many of which we would be surprised to learn are actually what we believe to be true. We tend to live in and identify with the tip of the iceberg. We think we are our thoughts, beliefs, values, our story about ourselves but it is the subconscious that runs the show. 

 

There is clear evidence that symptoms of anxiety, depression, PTSD, and other mental health conditions are actually autonomic nervous system responses. In other words, our mental health symptoms have more to do with our subconscious biological body responses than our thoughts. The fact that these emotional and mood phenomena are fundamentally non-verbal in nature is consistent with the experience most of us have that talk therapy is not very effective at resolving mental health disturbances. We may learn effective coping strategies and tools to manage anxiety, panic, depression and numbing states but we don’t resolve them by understanding them or with better insight. Have you ever known anyone to effectively talk their way out of a panic attack or a depressed state or addiction? Again, we might temporarily distract ourselves but the state returns because it is deeper than thought and language.

PTSD Therapy

ACCESSING WHAT LIES BELOW THE SURFACE

To access the hidden places in us where our symptoms have their roots, to work with this larger part of ourselves, we need to leave the limited, rational state of ordinary consciousness and enter non-ordinary states of consciousness. We are actually designed to enter non-ordinary states of consciousness. Medication, birth, death, music, sex, substances all generate non-ordinary states of consciousness but most notably, dreaming is perhaps the most common and routine non-ordinary state for us. In the dreaming state, your mind manifests you, your history, your emotional world (fears, joys and anxieties), your relationships as symbolic images. Dreams do not have a clear, linear narrative that would make sense to anyone one else but they make sense to you as the dreamer. Dreams have an internal logic that feels right to you because they are being generated by your mind. 

 

The idea is that you are processing psychological material while you are in this non-ordinary state. You are processing underlying stresses, desires, relationships, needs, impulses, and conflicts that might go unnoticed in the light of your ordinary consciousness. Every night we set aside control and let go of rational reality. The conscious mind releases control and you move into your own subconscious, internal psychedelic world. This is all to say that non-ordinary states of consciousness are healthy, necessary, natural and routine for us. Our minds are designed to go there and draw replenishment from that deep well. Things are revealed to us there and we can accomplish things there that we can’t get at through ordinary waking consciousness.

 

Psychedelic medicines operate in a very similar way. They give access to the subconscious mind but in a much more profound, lucid way. You can take an ally, a trained clinician, in to this space to help you navigate and work with the memories, images, feelings, sensations and programing that is housed there. 

HEALING

Fortunately, there are a few very positive factors working in our favor. The first is that along with core programing, we also encounter remarkable innate healing tendencies when we enter the subconscious. Just like your body knows how to mend a broken bone or heal a cut, there are psychological capacities that turn on when we work in the subconscious. People become capable of a level of movement and healing that we just don’t see in ordinary waking consciousness. Doors that your psyche may keep closed out of protection willingly open with the support of these medicines and a warm, caring and skilled therapist ally. We see the subconscious mind and it’s innate intelligence doing the heavy lifting. By all means, the process requires engagement, skill, acceptance and commitment from both client and therapist alike but it is a very supported experience.

 

Secondly, we have psychotherapies that purposefully target and support clients entering a non-ordinary state of consciousness for the purpose of healing. A modality and clinician who is trained to embrace non-rational , non-linear, non-verbal, non-ordinary states can support and guide the process in ways that ‘tip of the iceberg’, rationality affirming modalities will not. In other words, a non-ordinary state psychotherapy is required to harness and make best use of non-ordinary states of consciousness. Hypnosis, for example, attempts to work below the layer of the conscious mind. Art and music therapies aim to drop below rationality. Stanislov Grof’s Holotropic breathwork allows people to enter a non-ordinary state. The modality we use at Innate Path is a body-based approach that focuses on direct visceral experience and autonomic processing. We’ve chosen this because we feel the body is the greatest ally in processing subconscious material.

THE DATA

This is not hyperbole on our parts. The significant research data as well as our own experience with these medicines in psychotherapy are pointing to something far deeper and more profound taking place.

 

  • 67% of a treatment resistant population no longer qualify for the PTSD diagnosis after 3 MDMA assisted treatments

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  • 94% of cancer patients report a significant decrease in anxiety and depression symptoms after a single therapeutic psilocybin session

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  • Abstinence rates increase 270% (alcoholism) & 250% (heroin) addiction treatment with the use of ketamine assisted psychotherapy

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  • The National Institute of Mental Health found 79% of people with bipolar depression responded well to ketamine even after ECT and antidepressants failed

 

All of this is pointing to a new understanding of not only mental health but also of our nature and the innate healing intelligence and sanity to which we have access.

MDMA & MUSHROOM THERAPY

The use of medicines like cannabis, ketamine, MDMA, psilocybin or other yet to be tested NOSC medications combined with a non-ordinary state psychotherapy creates a synergistic effect that allows us access and alter subconscious core programming in ways that we are unable to touch in standard mental health treatment. Think of entering a recurring nightmare intentionally, lucidly, with an external ally who can show you new ways to work through those scary places.

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