Latest / Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing / #70| Can Micro-Dosing Mushrooms Cure Overwhelm and Anxiety?
Transcript
- 0:00Leslie Draffin: I took these medications that they were prescribing me - anti-anxiety medications, antidepressants that made me feel like crap.
- 0:06Leslie Draffin: I really just started to feel internally that something was missing, and so I started listening to podcasts, reading a bunch of books, and that's eventually how I heard about microdosing Psychedelics.
- 0:22Michelle Gauthier: You're listening to Overwhelmed Working Woman, the podcast that helps you be more calm and more productive by doing less.
- 0:29Michelle Gauthier: I'm your host, Michelle Gauthier, a former Overwhelmed Working Woman and current life coach.
- 0:34Michelle Gauthier: On this show, we unpack the stress and pressure that today's working woman experiences and in each episode, you'll get a strategy to bring more calm, ease, and relaxation to your life.
- 0:50Michelle Gauthier: Hey friend, thanks for joining today.
- 0:54Michelle Gauthier: You are in for a very interesting episode.
- 0:55Michelle Gauthier: You've probably heard of people using, micro-dosing of psilocybin, also known as magic mushrooms, to cure things like anxiety and or burnout.
- 1:03Michelle Gauthier: If you wonder how that works and how it's different than other types of medicine or other types of mindset work, this is a great episode for you.
- 1:12Michelle Gauthier: My guest, Leslie Draffin, shares the story that she went through, where she tried to cure her burnout, anxiety, and depression with regular therapy and regular medications, and when that didn't work for her, she turned to micro-dosing mushrooms and got amazing results.
- 1:30Michelle Gauthier: I am so curious and interested in this concept because, as you all know, I'm a life coach.
- 1:36Michelle Gauthier: I do mindset work, but I believe that using medication traditional medication and now, after learning this from Leslie's experience, maybe non-traditional or psychedelic medication - anything that we can do to try to help our mental health, I think is worthy of investigating.
- 1:54Michelle Gauthier: So enjoy this episode as you get to meet Leslie and hear her story and hear about what she is doing now.
- 2:02Michelle Gauthier: All right, thanks for joining Overwhelmed Working Women.
- 2:05Michelle Gauthier: I have a guest today, Leslie Draffin.
- 2:07Michelle Gauthier: She is going to teach us all kinds of things and I have not previously met her, so I'm going to be meeting her and asking her questions, as you guys are.
- 2:16Michelle Gauthier: I was very intrigued by her story.
- 2:18Michelle Gauthier: Now she is a certified somatic psychedelic integration guide, and we'll tell you exactly what that is.
- 2:25Michelle Gauthier: She is a podcast host who is really passionate about helping people embrace their bodies, their cycles, sex, and psychedelics.
- 2:33Michelle Gauthier: So she has had a really cool transformation and I would love, Leslie, if you would say hi and introduce yourself and just tell us your story.
- 2:44Leslie Draffin: Yeah! Well, thank you, first, so much for having me, Michelle.
- 2:46Leslie Draffin: I'm really excited to be here.
- 2:47Leslie Draffin: Like you said, my name is Leslie Draffin and I am actually a former TV news anchor, turned psychedelic coach, somatic psychedelic guide, and I really came to this after spending about 20 years numbing out and punishing myself through things like eating disorders and alcohol abuse.
- 3:04Leslie Draffin: When I was 18, I was diagnosed with herpes and I really sank into this shame spiral that just left me feeling worthless and dirty, and for me, what I did to combat that was get addicted to hustling and grinding and achieving and proving, and I tied so much of my self-worth into what I could achieve through this career that, honestly, I was really good at.
- 3:25Leslie Draffin: I was a news anchor.
- 3:27Leslie Draffin: I was making six figures and by society's standards I looked like I had it made.
- 3:31Leslie Draffin: I looked like I had it all and I had it all together.
- 3:34Leslie Draffin: But on the inside I was so stuck.
- 3:37Leslie Draffin: I felt so anxious and depressed and burnt out, and even though I spent years in therapy and took these prescriptions and spent thousands on these other types of healing modalities, nothing really clicked for me until I found psychedelic medicine through Magic Mushrooms.
- 3:52Leslie Draffin: And so, yeah, those sacred teachers, I feel, like really helped heal my mental health, connect me with my purpose, but then also really helped me heal my body image and get sober.
- 4:02Leslie Draffin: And here we are.
- 4:04Michelle Gauthier: Okay, oh, my gosh, that's amazing.
- 4:05Michelle Gauthier: Okay, I have to break that apart a little bit.
- 4:07Michelle Gauthier: So I think that your story, where you - something inside didn't feel good and so, in order to combat that, you just tried to achieve more, do more, hustle more.
- 4:19Michelle Gauthier: That is something that we talk about a lot on this podcast, so I feel like everybody was probably shaking their heads like, yes, we know how you feel.
- 4:26Michelle Gauthier: And something - the way that I describe it, and tell me if it was this for you too - but in theory, I have everything that I want in life, but there's something inside that doesn't feel good and so I'm just going to keep working harder and harder and harder until I don't know what, until that's fixed, but it doesn't actually fix it.
- 4:44Michelle Gauthier: So I just wanted to ask you if that's how it felt to you, like were you just going to keep hustling to try to fix this?
- 4:51Leslie Draffin: Probably! And you know, for me, I didn't actually uncover what the core wound was until working with psychedelics.
- 4:59Leslie Draffin: But what I realized is, I just felt unlovable and I thought that if I did and achieved and proved myself, of course you'd have to love me, because look at how successful I am, look at how much I can do.
- 5:10Leslie Draffin: And that just became so overwhelming and it just felt so icky to feel like I'm only worthy if I do *this*.
- 5:19Leslie Draffin: And so when I decided to leave news because I was struggling with my mental health so severely, I really had to grapple with who am I, and what am I worth if I'm not this identity, this person that I had been playing on TV for so long?
- 5:32Michelle Gauthier: Yes, oh my gosh.
- 5:33Michelle Gauthier: And especially since you were doing it so publicly, I'm sure people saw you every day.
- 5:38Michelle Gauthier: They felt like they were your friend and it seemed like everything was good.
- 5:42Michelle Gauthier: Up to that point, that's a totally relatable story that I think a lot of women feel, where there's something attached - like our enoughness is attached to who we are, what our value is in the world, what we're putting out into the world.
- 5:55Michelle Gauthier: So then tell us what happened from there.
- 5:58Leslie Draffin: So I did everything I thought I was supposed to do.
- 6:00Leslie Draffin: I went to therapy.
- 6:01Leslie Draffin: I took these medications that they were prescribing me - anti-anxiety medications, antidepressants that made me feel like crap, and I really just started to feel internally that something was missing.
- 6:14Leslie Draffin: In 2019, I found meditation and that worked pretty well, and then I really started to feel called to come off of birth control, because I felt like that was stifling something internally for me and my feminine energy.
- 6:27Leslie Draffin: And when I did finally quit the pill that I had been on for 16 years, I was diagnosed with PCOS.
- 6:33Leslie Draffin: I lost my libido.
- 6:34Leslie Draffin: The antidepressant meds were certainly not helping, and so I really just felt like, what am I going to do?
- 6:40Leslie Draffin: I've gone the route of Western medicine and I've dipped my toe into mindfulness.
- 6:46Leslie Draffin: I have to find something else, and so I started listening to podcasts, reading a bunch of books, and that's eventually how I heard about micro-dosing psychedelics.
- 6:55Michelle Gauthier: Interesting.
- 6:55Michelle Gauthier: Okay, and so had you ever considered that before, or did you know anything about it?
- 7:00Leslie Draffin: No, I was definitely like the D.
- 7:02Leslie Draffin: A.
- 7:02Leslie Draffin: R.
- 7:02Leslie Draffin: E.
- 7:02Leslie Draffin: kid.
- 7:02Leslie Draffin: The funny story is I won a t-shirt contest in third grade about D.
- 7:06Leslie Draffin: A.
- 7:06Leslie Draffin: R.
- 7:06Leslie Draffin: E.
- 7:06Leslie Draffin: and it was like two dummies, like you know, those like crash dummies.
- 7:10Leslie Draffin: I think I drew like two crash dummies and it was something that I correlated it between like, you're a dummy if you do drugs.
- 7:17Leslie Draffin: But now I'm like telling people about the benefits of psychedelics.
- 7:20Leslie Draffin: So I like wish my mom - she kept so much stuff.
- 7:23Leslie Draffin: But somehow that shirt is lost into the ether, but that would be so precious to find.
- 7:32Leslie Draffin: But no, I had to do a lot of soul- searching and deprogramming and fortunately, I had a long history of being an investigator, as a journalist, to really seek out, what are the true answers about how this is really helping people?
- 7:42Leslie Draffin: Yes, on the underground, but why is it really illegal and how could it help me?
- 7:48Leslie Draffin: And fortunately, we're seeing so many new studies being published, millions and millions of dollars being put into research in this, even in incredibly conservative states like Texas, where I live, and I do think we're going to see this shift in the next few years.
- 8:00Leslie Draffin: But I had to do so much unlearning and questioning because, no, it never occurred to me.
- 8:06Leslie Draffin: I never did drugs until I get into my 30s.
- 8:09Leslie Draffin: And then it's like, oh boom, these sacred medicines that have been used for millennia by people all over the globe, they have become this beautiful teacher to really help me know myself and to heal things that have deeply impacted me for my entire conscious life.
- 8:28Michelle Gauthier: That is so fascinating to go from the perfect D.
- 8:32Michelle Gauthier: A.
- 8:32Michelle Gauthier: R.
- 8:32Michelle Gauthier: E.
- 8:32Michelle Gauthier: girl news anchor to okay, I'm going to go ahead and try this.
- 8:36Michelle Gauthier: Okay, so then tell us what happened next.
- 8:39Leslie Draffin: So I first heard about it on a podcast, like I said, and immediately I contacted Bijou to be on my podcast.
- 8:46Leslie Draffin: And then the second our conversation was over, I was like I need to hire you, because her big thing was that psychedelics could really help you with sex and pleasure and, like I said, because I was diagnosed with herpes so young, my entire adult life was really clouded by this idea that I was dirty and unworthy, and so that trickled into my relationships.
- 9:05Leslie Draffin: I had a failed marriage in my 20s that ended in just like it was a catastrophe, and I have a super supportive relationship and marriage now, and so I really wanted to find a way to feel worthy of receiving pleasure, and so I hired her and I'm like, alright, I'm going to take these mushrooms and this is going to be so perfect, it's going to heal everything.
- 9:26Leslie Draffin: And let me tell you, the medicine does not often give you what you want.
- 9:29Leslie Draffin: It will give you what you need, and that year was a year of just dark night of the soul after dark night of the soul.
- 9:35Leslie Draffin: I think what they understood, and what I unconsciously knew, is I had to become open to receiving, period, and so for me, that looks like getting rid of things that weren't aligned anymore for me - aka my job - but also learning to surrender.
- 9:51Leslie Draffin: I had really built this wall around my heart.
- 9:53Leslie Draffin: I find that I'm a very sensitive person, but because I was in a career where I had to report on the worst of humanity day after day, I had to build a wall around my heart so I didn't have a breakdown every single moment I was at my job.
- 10:05Leslie Draffin: Yeah, and so the year that I really started to micro-dose and became really more conscious that I needed to surrender, two of my three dogs died back to back, I had to grieve their loss, and the loss of my job and other things that happened in our family, and so the becoming open to receiving pleasure did not happen quickly.
- 10:27Leslie Draffin: Eventually it did, about a year after I started that process, but what I found is I had to go through what I went through in order to get where I am now.
- 10:34Leslie Draffin: There's always such a message in the mess.
- 10:36Leslie Draffin: I think that for me, that's what really had to happen.
- 10:40Leslie Draffin: So I spent a few months working with a coach and really felt so beautifully supported and didn't think at all that I would become a psychedelic guide, until about six or eight months later, after a high- dose journey where I really felt told by this medicine that, okay, you have so much to help other people with because of what you've been through, this very unique perspective, look into it.
- 11:02Leslie Draffin: So I spent all of last year training with psychedelics, training with somatic trauma therapy.
- 11:07Leslie Draffin: That's kind of how we got to here.
- 11:09Michelle Gauthier: Okay, oh, that's so fascinating.
- 11:10Michelle Gauthier: I want to go back and just talk a little bit about something that you said that I don't think we've ever talked about on the podcast before.
- 11:16Michelle Gauthier: Maybe you could just give us a little overview.
- 11:19Michelle Gauthier: But the idea of being in the mode of receiving and in what's traditionally known as feminine energy.
- 11:27Michelle Gauthier: Can you just talk a little bit about masculine versus feminine energy.
- 11:31Leslie Draffin: Sure.
- 11:32Leslie Draffin: So the easiest way to explain masculine versus feminine is to think of masculine as the very outward doer type of mentality.
- 11:42Leslie Draffin: Our entire society is very masculine.
- 11:44Leslie Draffin: So just think of that.
- 11:44Leslie Draffin: The hustle culture, even boss babe energy, I think, is very masculine because it's about producing, it's about seeing how much you can do in order to get, and that's really the kicker, right, the doing.
- 11:56Leslie Draffin: When you look at the feminine energy, it's about receiving, or just relaxing in the being, and so we can look at Mother Nature to show us that, we can look at things like flowers.
- 12:06Leslie Draffin: Flowers don't chase the bee, the bee comes to the flower.
- 12:10Leslie Draffin: And so feminine energy for me was so hard to understand because I was so much in that hustle culture mode.
- 12:17Leslie Draffin: But really it's about learning to relax, learning to attract, versus going out and seeking, and that's kind of, yeah, like a very entry level.
- 12:31Michelle Gauthier: Yeah, but I think when you have been, and I don't want to say this for your story because I don't know, but I know for me, getting to where I was in my career took a lot of masculine energy, and what that turned me into was someone who felt the need to control, like every situation.
- 12:46Michelle Gauthier: And so learning to receive and accept the idea, for example, that you could not force yourself to feel better, you went to therapy, you took medicine, did all these things, and it was like, I'm going to keep going until I solve this problem, which is masculine energy and very helpful sometimes.
- 13:03Michelle Gauthier: But when you said, I just needed to be open to receive - like, what is the message I'm supposed to be getting?
- 13:09Michelle Gauthier: What do I need to allow?
- 13:10Michelle Gauthier: What kind of darkness do I need to allow in order to let the light eventually come in?
- 13:15Michelle Gauthier: I just think that's an important transformation for somebody who's going from that super- hustling, working so hard, and not that you don't work hard now, but it's just a different type of energy.
- 13:25Leslie Draffin: Yeah, and I think that's one misconception, right, that the feminine is just spending time in fields frolicking.
- 13:32Leslie Draffin: That's not necessarily true whatsoever, but I think and I know this isn't a video podcast, but you did this motion with your hand that is so beautifully representative of it as well.
- 13:41Leslie Draffin: Clenching onto things, holding on for dear life, is very often a masculine energy of taking, of grabbing, of getting, and if you can just open up your palm and let the universe or God or whoever you believe in - opening your palm, that's how you receive, that's how you get, right?
- 13:59Leslie Draffin: You don't have to go at it as this grabbing energy.
- 14:02Leslie Draffin: You can come at it with this very receptive, this very like, here I am energy, and when you open yourself to that, that's how you get the abundance.
- 14:12Leslie Draffin: That's the big lesson I think I learned in the year that I was going through all this, in 2022, I had been white knuckling life for so long that the second I released it and relaxed, things came to me so naturally and beautifully and it wasn't forced.
- 14:27Michelle Gauthier: Yes, and I bet most people listening have had at least a small moment like that, where you're just chasing, chasing, chasing something and when you decide like, maybe, I'm not going to date anymore, that's when you meet the perfect person.
- 14:39Michelle Gauthier: Yeah, it's crazy how often that happens.
- 14:41Michelle Gauthier: Okay, so tell us a little bit more about the micro-dosing.
- 14:46Michelle Gauthier: What did you micro-dose?
- 14:48Michelle Gauthier: What was the medicine?
- 14:50Michelle Gauthier: How did you feel?
- 14:51Michelle Gauthier: Give us the scoop on that.
- 14:53Leslie Draffin: Yeah, so I micro-dose psilocybin exclusively.
- 14:56Leslie Draffin: So that's magic mushrooms.
- 14:58Leslie Draffin: You'll probably have heard of that before.
- 14:59Leslie Draffin: But micro-dosing means that you're taking such a tiny amount that you're not hallucinating, you're not intoxicated.
- 15:07Leslie Draffin: They often refer to it as sub-perceptual, because it is such a tiny dose, it's working on a very subconscious level within you, but it's not making you feel drunk or high or incapacitated.
- 15:19Leslie Draffin: You can still, after you, figure out what your special dose is, you can still drive, you can still go to work - I still anchored the news - you can parent, you can do anything you need to do in your life.
- 15:29Leslie Draffin: And that's why micro=dosing is such a wonderful ally, because it does fit so seamlessly into your life, whereas if you take a higher level of mushrooms, that's when you're going to see weird things.
- 15:41Leslie Draffin: The walls might talk to you, you're going to be quote unquote tripping and you can't go about everyday life when you have a high dose journey.
- 15:49Leslie Draffin: And so when I first started working with the medicine, I felt a little bit more tuned in, I felt more focused, I felt more open.
- 15:58Leslie Draffin: But, like I mentioned, I had that experience for so long in my career of that wall being up around my heart, that one thing that I really started to notice is I was emotional.
- 16:08Leslie Draffin: I would cry more easily.
- 16:09Leslie Draffin: I would see a homeless person and just break down.
- 16:11Leslie Draffin: I would just feel so much more.
- 16:16Leslie Draffin: And because of the fact that these are consciousness expanders, they really do open us to feeling more, and one way that I like to describe it is it's just bringing us more towards ourself and who we're supposed to be and meant to be, that society has sort of like dampened over time, especially if you've been overworked and burnt out, right, and when you feel overwhelmed, it's like these layers of dirt that you have to wash off.
- 16:42Leslie Draffin: And that's what psychedelics help to do.
- 16:44Leslie Draffin: They help you to get to that inner self.
- 16:48Michelle Gauthier: Okay, all right, that's so interesting.
- 16:50Michelle Gauthier: I did not know anything about this.
- 16:52Michelle Gauthier: That is so fascinating.
- 16:53Michelle Gauthier: Okay, so then, was part of your healing journey doing some where you were hallucinating and feeling?
- 17:00Michelle Gauthier: Okay, tell us about that part.
- 17:02Leslie Draffin: Absolutely.
- 17:02Leslie Draffin: So the thing that I found really helpful is to pair taking tiny doses, micro doses, with a macro dose is often what the term is, or a full dose, and while I was working with my coach, I had micro dosed for a few weeks and did a full dose intentional journey.
- 17:20Leslie Draffin: I had experimented with mushrooms once before, but this is the first time I had taken a dose by myself.
- 17:25Leslie Draffin: I set up this really beautiful space in my guest bedroom and had an intention to connect with myself, to connect with the idea that I'm not a mother, and I had a lot of issues moving from maiden archetypal energy to mother energy if I wasn't going to actually have a human child, and so I really wanted to experience connection with that part of myself, and I had an incredibly healing journey that lasted a couple of hours.
- 17:54Leslie Draffin: It wasn't scary.
- 17:55Leslie Draffin: I think I took about two grams, which is a medium level high dose.
- 18:01Leslie Draffin: Some folks take five grams, some folks take seven, some folks take more, but for me it was so lovely to be able to, with a sleep mask on, quietly laying in my room room listening to some music, really go into my subconscious and see things, hear things, get these messages, cry, and really start to uncover parts that were within me that I had no idea were there.
- 18:23Leslie Draffin: It's hard and it's yeah, it's hard to explain to folks who haven't experienced it, but I just felt so wonderfully, beautifully held and safe, and that is not necessarily always the case.
- 18:33Leslie Draffin: It can be difficult, it can be challenging.
- 18:36Leslie Draffin: I had a challenging journey six months later that pretty much sucked, but for me that was just a lovely and supportive experience to help me continue to shift through some stuff that I was going through, because at this point I was still in my job.
- 18:51Michelle Gauthier: Okay, okay.
- 18:51Michelle Gauthier: And so when you say that eventually you felt completely healed, did this help you find the source of that, or did you just take off layer after layer until you felt better?
- 19:04Leslie Draffin: I think that we're always healing.
- 19:06Leslie Draffin: I don't know if we're ever going to get to this place where it's just like ta-da, I'm suddenly here, because that's life, maybe like the last day, yeah.
- 19:14Leslie Draffin: But the key part about any work with psychedelics or any work with therapy or any part of life in general is the integration.
- 19:21Leslie Draffin: And so that's when you look back at what came up for you and figure out, okay, what was this potentially trying to tell me or show me, and do I need to incorporate anything new into my life?
- 19:31Leslie Draffin: And so I did that journey at the end of April and in May very quickly realized I've got to take a break from my job.
- 19:40Leslie Draffin: And then in June of that year, I took a mental health leave and ended up not going back.
- 19:45Leslie Draffin: So it very quickly made me realize that my job was not aligned, that it was hurting me mentally, that, yeah, it was my dream job from the time I was in fifth grade, but it had become a nightmare, and I needed to release that and I was ready to release it and to step into something new.
- 20:00Leslie Draffin: But what was also interesting is I still was getting hits from that journey a year later, these a-ha moments of like, oh, that's what that meant.
- 20:09Leslie Draffin: But what was so interesting is, like I mentioned, I had had this feeling, you know, I was turning 35 that birthday - I actually tripped on my birthday.
- 20:17Leslie Draffin: It was my 35th birthday and I had this like just really difficult - I was having so much difficulty dealing with my mother wound and my like, am I even in mother energy?
- 20:28Leslie Draffin: Am I going to go straight from just maiden energy to crone energy?
- 20:34Leslie Draffin: Like I couldn't get into this next phase of life.
- 20:36Leslie Draffin: And I had three dogs at that point and in my trip my oldest dog, who is my soul dog, came to me in the journey as a human child, a little brown haired boy, and like guided me through it and he was there with me the whole time and I'm like, oh, I am - I can be in this energy of mother even though I'm not a mother, and I think that because I have more flexibility around my life in general but still have qualities that are very mothering.
- 21:02Leslie Draffin: It's why I can help clients so well as friends and family.
- 21:05Leslie Draffin: So I'm bringing out the nurturer, I guess is what it helps to do.
- 21:09Leslie Draffin: Yeah, just allowing that to come out.
- 21:13Michelle Gauthier: Okay, oh, that's wonderful.
- 21:19Michelle Gauthier: So tell me then, what is your job like now?
- 21:22Leslie Draffin: So I help people understand one, how to work safely with psychedelics, and how to integrate what the psychedelics show them and how they show up in their life.
- 21:31Leslie Draffin: And so I do that through a couple of different modalities.
- 21:33Leslie Draffin: I have been trained as a menstrual cycle coach, so I work exclusively with people with periods or people who have had them in the past.
- 21:40Leslie Draffin: So I feel like I help folks understand their natural cycles, to help them understand their hormones, help them understand their stress cycle and also how psychedelics, psilocybin specifically, may impact those things.
- 21:52Leslie Draffin: And then I also help them understand how to incorporate somatic practices like breathwork or grounding or meditation or any other host of somatic practices that don't really have very well-known names but are basically body movements that can help process trauma that's held in their bodies.
- 22:09Leslie Draffin: Because what psychedelics do really well is help to see and become aware of what might be hiding in the shadows of your subconscious.
- 22:18Leslie Draffin: It's like you go in there with a little flashlight and you're going to look in the shadows and see, okay, what is in there hiding that might need to come out and be healed.
- 22:26Leslie Draffin: Somatic work connecting to the cycle, especially as women, that part really helps to integrate the messages and help to implement habits that can help you move through any trauma that might be blocking you.
- 22:40Michelle Gauthier: Okay, that's so interesting.
- 22:42Michelle Gauthier: In my own experience, I did so much like thought work, non-body type thought work, to try to get over everything that I had been through and really heal myself and become the person who I am now.
- 22:56Michelle Gauthier: And I did find that there seemed to be trauma stuck in different places in my body.
- 23:03Michelle Gauthier: And I worked with someone who does body work, energy, and those kinds of things and I felt like she helped me get the part out of my body that - my brain felt clear but something was still stuck in there.
- 23:17Michelle Gauthier: So I guess I'm just sharing that to say it totally makes sense to me what you're saying that the trauma is in your body and until you can work through that, it still sticks around.
- 23:30Leslie Draffin: And I think it's interesting too, something that I talk about a lot is this idea that talk therapy and talking about your trauma only goes so far, and for women who are really intelligent and really self-aware and have been doing this work, we can actually get stuck being only in talk therapy because of exactly what you're saying.
- 23:46Leslie Draffin: Knowing all the issues, knowing your triggers, being aware isn't healing, it might be re-traumatizing you and it certainly isn't moving it out of your body.
- 23:56Leslie Draffin: And so when we look at how psilocybin actually impacts the brain, we can also understand how somatic psychedelic guidance can help to move trauma through the body.
- 24:07Leslie Draffin: So, very simply, the way that psilocybin impacts the brain, one of the ways, is it helps to tune down and kind of quiet this part of our brain called our default mode network.
- 24:19Leslie Draffin: Just think of it as your default mode.
- 24:20Leslie Draffin: This is where your deep beliefs are, your sense of self, your abstract thinking.
- 24:25Leslie Draffin: It's not where your sensory motor skills lie.
- 24:28Leslie Draffin: This is a higher level portion of your brain.
- 24:29Leslie Draffin: It's where a lot of the serotonin receptors are, and so psilocybin impacts those serotonin receptors and helps to make the default mode network less rigid over time, because when we're little and we're kids, we're learning so much, we're absorbing everything.
- 24:44Leslie Draffin: That default mode network is open and that's where our subconscious trauma can be stored, and as we age it, kind of like a lake, freezes over, and we can't get into it very easily.
- 24:56Leslie Draffin: So there's this idea that under psychedelics, there is a relaxed beliefs under psychedelics, it's also known as rebus, but what that does is it helps to thaw out that lake in your mind so that you can become more naturally open to new beliefs, become more receptive to new information, and it helps that rigid thinking to be more flexible, right, and so I think that's why, when we pair somatic work with psychedelics, it really helps to create more communication, more neuroplasticity in the brain and we start to listen to our body.
- 25:32Leslie Draffin: Because when you think about the fact that most of our sensations, about 80% of what's happening in our self, is in our body, but our brain is what makes the story, that's only about 20% of what's happening.
- 25:45Leslie Draffin: So if you're really only going with what you think and what you know, because you're thinking it in your brain, there's potentially 80% more going on within you and psychedelics can help open that up.
- 25:56Leslie Draffin: There's also that, and if you've been on the internet and are in this space, which I'm sure you are, if you're listening to this wonderful podcast, you maybe have seen the iceberg analogy where, like, the tip of the iceberg is your consciousness, that's that 20%.
- 26:10Leslie Draffin: Underneath the water is your subconscious mind, that you have no idea how big that is, how deep it goes, and so that's where psychedelics can really help you tap in.
- 26:19Leslie Draffin: And then another fascinating portion is all of the abyss below the iceberg.
- 26:23Leslie Draffin: That's again the mystical, that's these hints from the universe and from God that can come from psychedelics and really help you heal and create these magical experiences of connected oneness that consciously, above the surface, you would never have a clue about.
- 26:41Michelle Gauthier: That's such a good way to put it.
- 26:42Michelle Gauthier: I bet everybody's picturing that iceberg.
- 26:45Michelle Gauthier: I know exactly what you mean.
- 26:46Michelle Gauthier: So what would you say is the very best result that you've gotten from your journey?
- 26:53Leslie Draffin: For me, personally, or for a client?
- 26:54Leslie Draffin: For you personally.
- 26:55Leslie Draffin: I think it's being sober.
- 26:57Leslie Draffin: I was - at almost 38, I have been sober for over a year and I played around with sobriety since 2020.
- 27:06Leslie Draffin: But at most, I think I was sober for like three months and I would go back to drinking.
- 27:11Leslie Draffin: And what micro-dosing really helped me do is notice, okay, what is leading me to drink, why do I feel like I need to drink and how do I feel when I drink?
- 27:20Leslie Draffin: What am I chasing away, what am I trying to numb from, and what types of practices can we reach for instead that will help you feel even better?
- 27:30Leslie Draffin: So, for me, drinking made me so anxious.
- 27:32Leslie Draffin: Like one glass of wine, I was waking up at three o'clock in the morning, thinking about all the things that could, should, would happen, and having an hour of panic before I would finally go back to sleep.
- 27:44Leslie Draffin: Maybe I had to take a melatonin or something, and then I'd be groggy in the morning.
- 27:47Leslie Draffin: If you are a drinker, you maybe know exactly what I'm talking about, and I just got so sick of that during the pandemic that I started to experiment with sobriety.
- 27:55Leslie Draffin: But I always had this like countdown in my mind, okay, I'm going to do 100 days and I'm going to have a drink, and I would I'd go back to drinking.
- 28:02Leslie Draffin: So at the end of 2022, I was going through a really rough patch, again.
- 28:07Leslie Draffin: The whole year was pretty much a rough patch.
- 28:09Leslie Draffin: And I thought, okay, let's just stop drinking for a while and we'll see what happens, and I never put a date.
- 28:14Leslie Draffin: I wasn't going to do like three months or six months.
- 28:16Leslie Draffin: I'm like, I'll just see what happens.
- 28:18Leslie Draffin: Six months passed, I'm like, well, I guess we'll do a year.
- 28:21Leslie Draffin: A year passed and I went on a trip at the beginning of January, which was just over a year of sobriety, and I tried to drink.
- 28:29Leslie Draffin: I ordered a glass of wine.
- 28:30Leslie Draffin: I was like, okay, let's see how this goes.
- 28:32Leslie Draffin: I did not like the taste anymore, and immediately I could feel my liver just being like I hate you after two sips and it felt like such a self-betrayal.
- 28:47Leslie Draffin: And to have tried to tell 21, 22-year-old Leslie that, you're going to feel like drinking is a self-betrayal to you in 15 plus years, she would be so shocked.
- 28:52Leslie Draffin: So I think that that's really the thing that I would say is my most tangible benefit.
- 28:58Leslie Draffin: The most tangible transformation has been my sobriety, but I also think it's my patience.
- 29:02Leslie Draffin: I said this before.
- 29:04Leslie Draffin: I don't have kids, but our nieces and nephew moved a mile from us, so they're in our lives so much more now and my patience level with them is so much broader.
- 29:13Leslie Draffin: And then I think it's also just this ability to stop reacting and be more responsive, like I don't flip out nearly as much even if I'm PMSing, and it just feels like life is so much easier, even in the hard moments.
- 29:39Michelle Gauthier: What a gift that it, to live life from that place, instead of where you were, and how wonderful that you took your story and you started helping other people with it it, too.
- 29:39Michelle Gauthier: So if somebody listening is thinking, oh okay, I might need this, even if they've never heard of it before, they're thinking I might need this.
- 29:46Michelle Gauthier: Should they start with your podcast, or how should they find you?
- 29:51Leslie Draffin: The quickest and easiest thing is just going to be to book a call.
- 29:53Leslie Draffin: I have free consult calls.
- 29:55Leslie Draffin: We can chat about what's going on with your life.
- 30:03Leslie Draffin: We can talk about whether or not this is a practice that is right for you, because, while it is incredibly safe, there are some people that it is not recommended for, and we can sort that out.
- 30:07Leslie Draffin: We can also talk about what you feel is really holding you back and some things that you would really love to shift in your life, and then I can point you to any number of resources that I have.
- 30:18Leslie Draffin: I have a free beginner's guide to micro-dosing.
- 30:20Leslie Draffin: I have my podcast, like you mentioned.
- 30:22Leslie Draffin: I have an online community that's super low cost, and then again, I do work one-on-one with people, so booking a call is probably the easiest way.
- 30:30Leslie Draffin: Then we can chat and get to know each other, and then on Instagram, too, @ Leslie Draffin is where I share all of the goodness in little, bite-sized forms, if you like IG.
- 30:41Michelle Gauthier: Is your website, lesliedraffin.
- 30:42Michelle Gauthier: com.
- 30:43Michelle Gauthier: It sure is.
- 30:44Michelle Gauthier: Okay, l-e-s-l-i-e.
- 30:46Michelle Gauthier: I'll put it in the show notes, but you guys can go there.
- 30:49Michelle Gauthier: And then the podcast we didn't say the name is called The Light Within.
- 30:53Leslie Draffin: Yes, and then I can send you a link for booking a call as well.
- 30:56Leslie Draffin: Or, if you find me on Instagram, you can just DM me the word 'hope' and I will send you a link to book a call.
- 31:02Michelle Gauthier: Okay, perfect.
- 31:03Michelle Gauthier: Yes, send me the link and I'll put it in the show notes as well.
- 31:06Michelle Gauthier: Well, this has been so fascinating.
- 31:11Michelle Gauthier: When you reached out to me, I thought that is such an interesting topic and we've never had anything like that on the show and I just have a feeling that there's probably somebody out there listening that's thinking, I've always wondered about that.
- 31:20Michelle Gauthier: Maybe this is what I need and, like you said, I know there was recently a documentary about it.
- 31:26Michelle Gauthier: I know it's legal.
- 31:27Michelle Gauthier: I've had a few friends who have done that to cure depression, so I've heard a lot of good things about it.
- 31:33Michelle Gauthier: But it's nice to just hear someone's story from start to finish and hear how you help other people do the same thing.
- 31:39Michelle Gauthier: So, thank you so much.
- 31:40Michelle Gauthier: It was so nice to have you on.
- 31:42Leslie Draffin: Thank you so much for having me.
- 31:43Leslie Draffin: I feel like this is such an amazing podcast and I'm sure that folks are going to get so much value out of this conversation and all the others as well.
- 31:49Leslie Draffin: So just blessed to be here.
- 31:51Michelle Gauthier: Thanks so much.
- 31:52Michelle Gauthier: That's it for today.
- 31:54Michelle Gauthier: Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode and, as always, I would love, if you enjoyed this episode, if you would leave a review.
- 32:03Michelle Gauthier: It helps our podcast get shown to other women so that we can continue to help all the overwhelmed working women feel just a little bit better every Monday.
- 32:12Michelle Gauthier: Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast.
- 32:19Michelle Gauthier: If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at michellegauthier.
- 32:23Michelle Gauthier: com.
- 32:25Michelle Gauthier: See you next week.