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SMNTY Interviews: Hillary McBride · Stuff Mom Never Told You

0:05
Speaker 1: Hey, this is Anny and Samantha and welcome to Stuff
0:07
Speaker 1: I Never told you production, I hurtrat you. And welcome
0:20
Speaker 1: to registered psychologist, writer, researcher, and host of the podcast
0:24
Speaker 1: Other People's Problems, Doctor Hillary McBride. Thank you so much
0:28
Speaker 1: for joining us.
0:29
Speaker 2: Oh I'm so excited.
0:30
Speaker 3: I can tell already we're gonna have so much fun
0:32
Speaker 3: talking about some really hard stuff.
0:35
Speaker 2: That's our show. Pretty much.
0:39
Speaker 1: Before we get into that, though, could you introduce yourself
0:42
Speaker 1: to our audience.
0:43
Speaker 4: Oh?
0:44
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's always such a tricky question for me, like
0:46
Speaker 3: what side of myself do I show you? But as
0:50
Speaker 3: you mentioned, I'm a psychologist, so I'm really interested in people,
0:53
Speaker 3: in people's minds. And I think that's because I feel
0:55
Speaker 3: kind of like a little bit of a mystery to
0:57
Speaker 3: myself sometimes. And I'm also I really deeply believe in
1:01
Speaker 3: the experience of curiosity as a way of meeting the world.
1:05
Speaker 3: So I'm curious. I like people, I wonder what does
1:08
Speaker 3: it mean to be human? All of that filters through
1:11
Speaker 3: my work as a researcher, therapist, you know, podcast host, writer, psychologist.
1:15
Speaker 2: Yes, there you go.
1:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you have done quite a lot. Can you
1:20
Speaker 1: tell us how you've got into this field.
1:23
Speaker 3: Oh okay, So I laugh because it's not always what
1:29
Speaker 3: people expect to hear me say when I say I'm
1:31
Speaker 3: a psychologist, because I think it had some really therapy.
1:34
Speaker 3: I think I had some very poor mental health care.
1:38
Speaker 3: And also I have therapists parents, and like the language
1:43
Speaker 3: of mental health and the discourse around like our mysteries
1:47
Speaker 3: in our world was always a part of my growing up.
1:50
Speaker 3: And so I think the mix of feeling like I
1:53
Speaker 3: knew it could be better, like there's got to be
1:55
Speaker 3: better for people than the things that I got in
1:58
Speaker 3: mental health treatment, and also this like deep appreciation for
2:02
Speaker 3: the mystery of our yeah, the inner landscapes. So yeah,
2:06
Speaker 3: I think that there's like there's a mix of that.
2:08
Speaker 3: And it was really on the back of eating disorder
2:10
Speaker 3: treatment and recovery that I, you know, don't recommend always,
2:16
Speaker 3: but disagreed with my treatment team's recommendations to go back
2:19
Speaker 3: to treatment again and instead went to grad school, which
2:22
Speaker 3: is a plot twist, And yeah, really fell in love
2:30
Speaker 3: with the ability to change the actual quality of our
2:36
Speaker 3: lives through research through relationship. Like I have a colleague
2:39
Speaker 3: who says, don't get mad get data, which is I mean,
2:42
Speaker 3: also get mad, but I love the idea of, you know,
2:46
Speaker 3: getting research that really can change the way that it
2:49
Speaker 3: feels to be us and in our bodies. And so
2:51
Speaker 3: I'm really passionate about evidence based, you know, data shaping interventions,
2:57
Speaker 3: and that's that's really driven me into my introt around
3:00
Speaker 3: trauma work and embodyment and psychedelic psychotherapy and now kind
3:04
Speaker 3: of some of more of my emerging research around spiritual
3:07
Speaker 3: trauma and and the ways that we are hurting. Let
3:12
Speaker 3: me tell you there's a lot of hurt that's happening.
3:16
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm not gonna lie.
3:17
Speaker 5: My heart is racing because I'm so excited to talk
3:20
Speaker 5: with you. And it's one of those moments when you
3:23
Speaker 5: meet someone for the first time and then you're like,
3:25
Speaker 5: oh my god, you have so much we have so
3:27
Speaker 5: much in common.
3:27
Speaker 2: I want to talk to you about this. I want
3:29
Speaker 2: to talk to you about this, and this is gonna
3:30
Speaker 2: I'm going to overtalk you.
3:33
Speaker 5: So I'm trying to calm down because I'm so excited
3:36
Speaker 5: about this conversation.
3:37
Speaker 2: I think we do that.
3:38
Speaker 5: Definitely want to put this here about content warning, because
3:40
Speaker 5: we are going to talk about loss. We're going to
3:42
Speaker 5: talk about pregnancy, We're going to talk about so many
3:45
Speaker 5: things that when it comes like in conversation about therapy
3:49
Speaker 5: and trauma work especially, and we've I don't know if
3:52
Speaker 5: you know this yet, Hillary, but our show with Annie
3:55
Speaker 5: and I began because we wanted to come on here
3:58
Speaker 5: and talk about the me too movement, how it affected us,
4:02
Speaker 5: and how therapy and trigger warnings are still so important
4:05
Speaker 5: and why is relevant in conversations that it's not just
4:09
Speaker 5: a niche thing.
4:11
Speaker 2: Wow, So you are the legend story.
4:14
Speaker 5: Yes, I snuck in here because I was like, I
4:17
Speaker 5: want to talk about trauma. Look, I'm very excited to
4:23
Speaker 5: write a conversation.
4:23
Speaker 2: I'm so ready.
4:25
Speaker 5: But of course, because in all of this, among our
4:29
Speaker 5: commonalities is that you are a podcast host.
4:32
Speaker 2: So can you tell us about your podcast?
4:36
Speaker 3: I would love to. I would love nothing more than
4:38
Speaker 3: to tell you. So I'm imagining when you're thinking about
4:41
Speaker 3: is other people's problems?
4:43
Speaker 2: Is that correct? Yeah?
4:44
Speaker 3: So I was a innocent, naive. I think I made
4:49
Speaker 3: him in a doctoral student at that time, and I
4:52
Speaker 3: don't know how it happens. Someone gave my phone number
4:55
Speaker 3: to a Emmy winning journalist, Jodie Martinsen.
5:00
Speaker 2: So I don't know how we got connected.
5:02
Speaker 3: I actually should go back and ask her about it,
5:04
Speaker 3: but she reached out to me because she had had
5:06
Speaker 3: this idea as someone who's crafting stories and investigating the
5:10
Speaker 3: world through the lens of journalism, was like, wait a second,
5:13
Speaker 3: therapy in actuality is a lot different the way it's
5:16
Speaker 3: portrayed in media than the way that people talk about it.
5:18
Speaker 3: We have these tropes of the therapists who kind of
5:21
Speaker 3: sits back and is taking their notes and really like
5:24
Speaker 3: judgmentally looking over the top of their glasses at someone
5:27
Speaker 3: and then they dispense this you know, perfectly timed insight
5:32
Speaker 3: that also helps the plot of the show along, right.
5:35
Speaker 2: This is kind of the way that it is in
5:36
Speaker 2: TV and media.
5:37
Speaker 3: She was like, oh, this is this is really different
5:41
Speaker 3: in real life than it's being portrayed. And so the
5:44
Speaker 3: idea came about to put mikes in therapy sessions with
5:49
Speaker 3: clients consent and then you know, turn it into something
5:53
Speaker 3: that people who weren't in the room could then really
5:55
Speaker 3: benefit from. And the principle behind this, I think is
5:58
Speaker 3: vicarious learning and by care healing, Like we talk about
6:01
Speaker 3: vicarious trauma in the trauma world, that we can kind
6:04
Speaker 3: of like catch trauma in a way as we're you know,
6:07
Speaker 3: bumping up against people in their stories and bearing witness
6:10
Speaker 3: the pain that happens in the world around us. But
6:13
Speaker 3: we can also heal vicariously too. We can listen to
6:16
Speaker 3: people's learning and insights and journeys of transformation and get
6:20
Speaker 3: something ourselves feel us alone. So the idea is to
6:23
Speaker 3: turn therapy sessions into podcast episodes, and we've done that
6:28
Speaker 3: for four seasons. We've done that over the course of
6:30
Speaker 3: my doctoral degree and then beyond, you know, my work
6:33
Speaker 3: has really changed, does all of us do right? Like
6:36
Speaker 3: who we are five years ago, ten years ago is
6:38
Speaker 3: really different than who we are now. And one of
6:40
Speaker 3: the things that's become important for me in my clinical
6:43
Speaker 3: work and academic research is psychedelic psychotherapy. And when you're
6:47
Speaker 3: talking about things that people are talking about but are
6:49
Speaker 3: not hearing or like don't actually have well represented, that
6:53
Speaker 3: feels like a you know, there's like some some flashing
6:57
Speaker 3: lights that go off in my mind, Like this is
6:59
Speaker 3: another thing that we need to bring people into to
7:01
Speaker 3: kind of demystify. So the idea for season five was
7:05
Speaker 3: to put microphones in sessions of psychedelic psychotherapy with patients
7:09
Speaker 3: and then including a session of my own where I'm
7:12
Speaker 3: the patient and as a way of really showing people like, hey,
7:16
Speaker 3: it could look like this, or this is kind of
7:18
Speaker 3: what it sounds like or here's what it might feel like,
7:20
Speaker 3: both to give people some education and information about what's
7:24
Speaker 3: going on kind of behind the scenes and the mystery
7:26
Speaker 3: of it all. But then there's also this other kind
7:29
Speaker 3: of like there's this agenda that I have that I
7:31
Speaker 3: think there's a lot of maybe unskilled is a generous word,
7:36
Speaker 3: like an unskilled psychedelic psychotherapy that's happening where people don't
7:40
Speaker 3: actually know how to work with trauma but are getting
7:43
Speaker 3: into really deep water, both as the person who's sitting
7:47
Speaker 3: and the person who's experiencing the medicine work.
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Speaker 2: So my other aim was.
7:51
Speaker 3: Like, hey, guys, it could be like this, Like you
7:53
Speaker 3: could have somebody who kind of knows what they're doing,
7:55
Speaker 3: and here's something to look for. So maybe creating a
7:58
Speaker 3: benchmark or a standard in a way for the kind
7:59
Speaker 3: of quality of care that we get people. So Season
8:02
Speaker 3: five of other people's problems is people doing psychedelics, me
8:06
Speaker 3: doing therapy. You get to hear it into the wild, mysterious,
8:11
Speaker 3: beautiful world of people's minds as they interact with hallucinogenic
8:16
Speaker 3: substances and get to heal in the process.
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Speaker 1: It's great when someone gives us an answer that touches
8:22
Speaker 1: on so many other points we want to talk about later.
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Speaker 2: I just teeing you up really nice. Okay, you are
8:27
Speaker 2: for sure.
8:29
Speaker 1: One of the other ways we overlap is back when
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Speaker 1: we Samantha and I did start with our trauma mini series,
8:34
Speaker 1: we also did therapy and released a podcast of our
8:39
Speaker 1: therapy sessions.
8:40
Speaker 4: Each Oh my gosh, think so much overlap and right, yes,
8:45
Speaker 4: but it was the saying of that same desire of
8:48
Speaker 4: like wanting to destigmatize it, maybe make it less intimidating,
8:52
Speaker 4: because I think a lot of people don't really know what.
8:55
Speaker 1: To expect outside of those movie tropes or perhaps a
8:58
Speaker 1: bad experience. And I have to say, I'd never heard
9:02
Speaker 1: of using psychedelics in a therapeutic setting. This was new
9:06
Speaker 1: to me. So can you kind of explain how how
9:11
Speaker 1: that plays out? If I was somebody who was like
9:14
Speaker 1: I want to get this or I think this might
9:17
Speaker 1: help me, how would I how would it happen?
9:20
Speaker 3: Okay, So the answer to that question varies state to state,
9:24
Speaker 3: country to country, province to province, and so I can't
9:26
Speaker 3: actually give you a definitive answer or a pathway. But
9:29
Speaker 3: what I can tell you is that in BC, which
9:32
Speaker 3: is the province in Canada that I live in, there
9:34
Speaker 3: are certain pathways depending on what your presenting concerns are.
9:38
Speaker 3: So if you come to someone you say, hey, I've
9:40
Speaker 3: got you know, I've got cancer, I'm dying, I'm feeling
9:44
Speaker 3: really anxious about end of life, we would take one pathway.
9:47
Speaker 3: We would say, hey, we're going to put in an
9:49
Speaker 3: application to the Government of Canada. We're going to make
9:51
Speaker 3: sure that this is all about board. We've got a
9:53
Speaker 3: doctor who's ready to prescribe for you, We've got a
9:56
Speaker 3: therapist who's got a license.
9:57
Speaker 2: Here we go.
9:57
Speaker 3: We're going to like, we're going to take this, We're
9:59
Speaker 3: going to take this next step above ground legally to
10:04
Speaker 3: help you with this. And then there are other pathways
10:06
Speaker 3: that perhaps have less gate keeping to them, like treatment
10:09
Speaker 3: resistant oppression or eating disorders addiction complex PTSD. I mean,
10:15
Speaker 3: there's so many other presenting concerns. But you could go
10:18
Speaker 3: to your doctor, if your doctor's familiar with this work,
10:21
Speaker 3: or a doctor who does this work, and get an assessment.
10:24
Speaker 3: And maybe a psychological assessment an intake, and then we
10:27
Speaker 3: could get you into a clinic and you could get
10:29
Speaker 3: aketamine treatment or a cannabis treatment. In a clinical trial,
10:33
Speaker 3: maybe you'd get MDMA or LSD, or depending on if
10:36
Speaker 3: you were leaving the country, maybe you would have ayahuasca
10:40
Speaker 3: or a boga or I have a game. So there's
10:43
Speaker 3: like lots of different medicines that people can use depending
10:45
Speaker 3: on the pathway that they want to take. There's lots
10:48
Speaker 3: of underground pathways to take for people, which includes a
10:51
Speaker 3: lot of risk, but sometimes it includes access to treatment
10:55
Speaker 3: that otherwise people can't get. And then there's above ground.
10:58
Speaker 3: There's legal right there's things that are regulated and kind
11:02
Speaker 3: of under the purview of clinical and medical guidelines. So
11:07
Speaker 3: it really depends on where you are what you're getting
11:09
Speaker 3: treatment for. But usually there's somebody involved who ideally knows
11:14
Speaker 3: a lot about the kind of thing that you're wanting
11:17
Speaker 3: treatment for and a lot about the kind of medicine
11:19
Speaker 3: that you're using, and they have a really good set
11:23
Speaker 3: of skills around how to work with you should you
11:25
Speaker 3: re experience your trauma during the medicine, and they know
11:29
Speaker 3: how to support you after with the what can feel
11:32
Speaker 3: like the earth shakingness of getting access to stuff that
11:36
Speaker 3: has been buried for a long time. Because one of
11:39
Speaker 3: the things that's really powerful about psychedelic work is that
11:41
Speaker 3: I think if you do it really well, you go
11:44
Speaker 3: into the things that are hardest. Sometimes you get new
11:47
Speaker 3: insight and space from it, but actually your body is
11:51
Speaker 3: re entering the things that have been really difficult for
11:54
Speaker 3: you to enter in ordinary states of consciousness, and you
11:57
Speaker 3: can imagine understandably that would leave up and like maybe
12:01
Speaker 3: on the other side of it feeling really like they survived,
12:04
Speaker 3: like they're relieved it's over. They got through, but also like,
12:07
Speaker 3: holy moly, that was a lot, right that that thing
12:10
Speaker 3: that I buried for so long is here. Oh and
12:14
Speaker 3: I've integrated it, and oh wow, I faced it head
12:17
Speaker 3: on and I survived.
12:18
Speaker 2: But that's really big.
12:19
Speaker 3: Like integration on the other side and looking at it
12:21
Speaker 3: through the lens of attachment work is essential, and not
12:25
Speaker 3: a lot of people out there are doing that. So
12:27
Speaker 3: ideally you have someone who knows understands attachment, trauma, integration,
12:30
Speaker 3: somatic work working with the body, and you know is
12:35
Speaker 3: kind of on top of risks and benefits and has
12:37
Speaker 3: lots of skill in that area.
12:40
Speaker 5: Wow, there's a lot in that you just said, Like
12:42
Speaker 5: this conversation, we could talk about the demonizing of these
12:45
Speaker 5: types of psychedelics, and especially in the US, you know,
12:48
Speaker 5: we have a lot of things that we have to
12:50
Speaker 5: power through because of the whole level of you know,
12:54
Speaker 5: everything the war gets drug. You know, there's so much
12:58
Speaker 5: to be said, but also an understanding that yes, there's
13:00
Speaker 5: a responsibility in using these types of treatment and how
13:05
Speaker 5: beneficial it can be. But also it can be like
13:07
Speaker 5: if you have the bad players, You're like, you know,
13:10
Speaker 5: there's so much to this conversation, and obviously you're you're
13:13
Speaker 5: so good at like putting this in a professional conversation,
13:16
Speaker 5: because I want to be like, yeah, f them people
13:18
Speaker 5: who are not even listening to the benefit, you know,
13:20
Speaker 5: like I really want to be angry. I'm an angry person.
13:23
Speaker 5: But in general, that conversation about the layout of the
13:25
Speaker 5: benefits and how it can be helpful if people are
13:27
Speaker 5: willing to look at the depth of it, and again
13:30
Speaker 5: the along lines of like, yeah, you need to understand trauma,
13:32
Speaker 5: you need to understand attachment, which is something that's so
13:35
Speaker 5: kind of new and regular conversations, you know, and like
13:38
Speaker 5: everyday conversations people like attachment and I'm like, yeah, but
13:41
Speaker 5: do you know what you're do you know what you're
13:43
Speaker 5: talking about? Because there's this level of depth. And I
13:46
Speaker 5: say this as a you know, someone who worked with
13:48
Speaker 5: reactive attachment this, so are understanding that and trying to
13:51
Speaker 5: have that conversation with people. But again, because we only
13:55
Speaker 5: have a short amount of time going back, can you
13:59
Speaker 5: for today, right, can you talk about how you got
14:02
Speaker 5: into this specific branch of therapy and why you thought
14:05
Speaker 5: it was so useful.
14:07
Speaker 2: Yeah.
14:08
Speaker 3: So there's you know, there's the ways that our professional
14:12
Speaker 3: interests are always shaped by our lived realities. I'm sure
14:16
Speaker 3: you've heard the expression researches mesearch, And I can think
14:20
Speaker 3: about my interest in trauma as being like more felt
14:26
Speaker 3: at first than I understood why. Like when I think
14:29
Speaker 3: about psychedelic work for trauma in particular, and kind of
14:32
Speaker 3: that was really my gateway into the benefits of psychedelic psychotherapy.
14:36
Speaker 3: I think back to how drawn I was to trauma
14:40
Speaker 3: work before I ever had really unpacked my own trauma history.
14:43
Speaker 3: And it's amazing how our bodies kind of move us
14:45
Speaker 3: towards something in a way that maybe it doesn't really
14:48
Speaker 3: make sense to our conscious awareness or our mind or
14:50
Speaker 3: our narrative. But we're like, I feel like this is
14:52
Speaker 3: so I have to keep watching the data that's coming
14:55
Speaker 3: out around this. So I was drawn to trauma before
14:58
Speaker 3: I understood it a trauma history. Was drawn to psychedelics
15:01
Speaker 3: before I thought I ever would do psychedelics. And it
15:03
Speaker 3: was because, you know, as an academic, as somebody who's
15:06
Speaker 3: paying attention to the research literature in the field of traumatology,
15:09
Speaker 3: I am always scouring.
15:12
Speaker 2: The you know, the clinical literature.
15:14
Speaker 3: Like what is the best treatment, what do we do,
15:17
Speaker 3: what recommendations do I make when I'm giving someone a diagnosis?
15:20
Speaker 3: What are the ways that I can actually be at
15:24
Speaker 3: the forefront of what we know about how people can heal?
15:28
Speaker 3: And why why the treatments that were offering people aren't
15:31
Speaker 3: working very well? And so I was paying attention to
15:33
Speaker 3: the research literature and seeing, you know, all the clinical
15:36
Speaker 3: trials coming out related to psychedelic psychotherapy and PTSD, particularly
15:41
Speaker 3: from MAPS like the Maps Clinical Trials. And I had
15:44
Speaker 3: colleagues who were working in the MAPS clinical trials as
15:46
Speaker 3: psychiatrists or psychologists or therapists. And then it kind of
15:52
Speaker 3: became clear through an unfortunate series of events in my
15:55
Speaker 3: own life that sounds like, isn't that the name of
15:57
Speaker 3: a children's book? Just to apply named children's book, They're
16:03
Speaker 3: not about my own lived trauma, about some very different things.
16:08
Speaker 3: I had a life threatening experience in a car accident,
16:13
Speaker 3: and you know, it was February twenty nineteen, and I
16:20
Speaker 3: did not think I was going to walk away from that,
16:23
Speaker 3: and I did, and my rehab process started and my
16:29
Speaker 3: I was doing intensive trauma processing therapy and using all
16:33
Speaker 3: of the best treatments that I knew. And at this point,
16:35
Speaker 3: I think I was like a I was in my
16:37
Speaker 3: residency as a doctoral student, so I was most of
16:39
Speaker 3: the way through my doctoral training and had specialized in trauma,
16:42
Speaker 3: and so like I knew what to try, I knew
16:45
Speaker 3: who to go to. Compared to the average citizen, I
16:47
Speaker 3: was like hooked up right considering what's out there in
16:51
Speaker 3: terms of medications and treatment, and knew what to ask for,
16:54
Speaker 3: knew what was Evan's face, And it just like wasn't
16:57
Speaker 3: really moving the needle for me. Like I could get
16:59
Speaker 3: in a car, are I could drive, But really it
17:04
Speaker 3: was so bad at that point, like my trauma symptoms
17:07
Speaker 3: if my partner and I were going to watch a movie.
17:09
Speaker 3: He would watch the movie first to make sure there
17:12
Speaker 3: was no scenes involving cars, and then I would watch
17:15
Speaker 3: it right like it was so acute that I was just,
17:19
Speaker 3: you know, really stirred up and really terrified a lot
17:22
Speaker 3: of the time. And I saw the research literature of
17:25
Speaker 3: OT psychedelics and I thought, Okay, like, however scary that is,
17:31
Speaker 3: it has to be better than what it feels like
17:34
Speaker 3: to live right now. And because I knew people and
17:38
Speaker 3: I knew ways of getting access to safe treatment, I
17:42
Speaker 3: decided to take the risk. And what happened on the
17:46
Speaker 3: other side of that I couldn't have predicted. And I
17:48
Speaker 3: don't want to sell it, like I feel kind of
17:50
Speaker 3: like a snake oil salesman, and I'm like, and then
17:52
Speaker 3: my trauma symptoms were gone, poof, they disappeared. But the
17:55
Speaker 3: reality is like, that is what happened, and that isn't
17:58
Speaker 3: the case for everybody. Isn't something we could guarantee. Sometimes
18:02
Speaker 3: people actually get more access to their trauma symptoms on
18:05
Speaker 3: the other side of the work because they get connected
18:07
Speaker 3: to the place of the terror, or they have memories
18:09
Speaker 3: that they didn't have before. Right, So it's not always
18:11
Speaker 3: a guarantee that it's going to be like that. But
18:14
Speaker 3: I went from a PTSD diagnosis one day to having
18:17
Speaker 3: a medicine session and the next day and from that
18:20
Speaker 3: point on not meeting any diagnostic criteria, no flashbacks, safe,
18:28
Speaker 3: no hypervigilance driving, watching movies with car or accidents in them.
18:32
Speaker 2: Like it was.
18:33
Speaker 3: It was kind of miraculous. And I remember thinking, this
18:36
Speaker 3: is the thing, This is the thing that everybody's putting
18:40
Speaker 3: behind like closed doors, Like this is the thing that
18:44
Speaker 3: I've been told was going to make my brain fry
18:47
Speaker 3: like an egg in a pan, you know, like all
18:49
Speaker 3: of the you know, the anti drug propaganda, which, like
18:54
Speaker 3: I was that's why I waited so long, is because
18:57
Speaker 3: I really believed it. I was like, I am going
18:59
Speaker 3: to become psychotic. I'm going to have psychotics spectrum disorders
19:04
Speaker 3: on the other side of this, so of course I'm
19:05
Speaker 3: not going to do it. And then I did it,
19:06
Speaker 3: and I was like more connected to myself than I'd
19:09
Speaker 3: ever been and felt safer.
19:11
Speaker 2: So there was.
19:12
Speaker 3: That, and then, you know, it's been interesting doing this
19:15
Speaker 3: work with people over the last number of years, and
19:17
Speaker 3: now I'm a faculty member at the Psychedelics Somatic Institute,
19:20
Speaker 3: and I trained clinicians, and I have a training program
19:23
Speaker 3: that I run with a colleague of mind. We call
19:25
Speaker 3: it Catalyst, where we specialize in working with attachment and
19:28
Speaker 3: somatic work and ketymine in particular to train clinicians because
19:31
Speaker 3: we feel so strongly about giving people good, like good
19:34
Speaker 3: skills to do this work. And life keeps happening, right like,
19:38
Speaker 3: just because you're trauma specialist doesn't mean that everything feels
19:41
Speaker 3: safe in your body for the rest of your life.
19:43
Speaker 3: And so I had a series of medical events that
19:45
Speaker 3: happened a year and a half ago at this point
19:47
Speaker 3: and found that on the other side of them that
19:53
Speaker 3: processing the trauma, processing the charge through psychedelics was exactly what.
19:57
Speaker 2: I wanted to do.
19:58
Speaker 3: And that's what you hear in in my episode of
20:01
Speaker 3: season five of Other People's Problems, where you can hear
20:03
Speaker 3: me digging into my own kind of more recent work.
20:17
Speaker 1: This is a pretty at least for a lot of us,
20:22
Speaker 1: it feels like pretty new and seeing the research coming out,
20:25
Speaker 1: I know that there's a history that a lot of
20:27
Speaker 1: us don't know that you get into and podcasts, but
20:30
Speaker 1: uh yeah, you also talk about in the first episode
20:34
Speaker 1: about some of the big scientific and ethical questions that
20:38
Speaker 1: we still have because it's new. Yeah, can you share
20:41
Speaker 1: some of what those are?
20:43
Speaker 3: Well, one, we don't really understand how consciousness works, so
20:46
Speaker 3: it's pretty wild that we're kind of messing with it
20:48
Speaker 3: a little bit, Like where is your mind?
20:51
Speaker 2: Nobody?
20:52
Speaker 3: Sure, like probably in your body somewhere. And also like
20:54
Speaker 3: between us as people, like it's definitely interpersonal phenomena, but
20:59
Speaker 3: how does the mind work? And then how do we
21:01
Speaker 3: alter consciousness? Like we have some guesses we can talk
21:04
Speaker 3: about the serotonin, you know, receptors in the brain, but like, wow,
21:10
Speaker 3: there's a lot of mystery to being human. So there's that, right,
21:14
Speaker 3: And then there's also I think the access to treatment,
21:18
Speaker 3: like the legal versus ethical conundrum that we're in because
21:21
Speaker 3: we have good evidence that psychedelics for certain presenting concerns
21:25
Speaker 3: is like a frontline treatment and yet it may be
21:28
Speaker 3: that that's illegal still, so WHOA what do we do
21:31
Speaker 3: with this tension that our academic research is showing us
21:35
Speaker 3: this could change someone's life, but the government is saying no,
21:38
Speaker 3: you can't have it, Or what do we do about
21:42
Speaker 3: the fact that maybe there are some people who do
21:44
Speaker 3: get access to it, but we don't have good regulation
21:46
Speaker 3: around the skills for therapists. So there's kind of like
21:49
Speaker 3: the wild wild West out there where anybody in a
21:52
Speaker 3: context where it's legalized could do this work because there's
21:55
Speaker 3: no accreditation process, certification process like licensure. It's still like
22:01
Speaker 3: really really new in terms of creating treatment guidelines, ethical guidelines.
22:05
Speaker 3: So you could be doing it legally but unethically right
22:09
Speaker 3: or irresponsibly. You could be doing it illegally but very
22:13
Speaker 3: ethically and responsibly. So there's like all of the tension
22:16
Speaker 3: there to do with that. And then I think, you know,
22:19
Speaker 3: one of the interesting things that we kind of get
22:21
Speaker 3: into in this season too is what do we do
22:23
Speaker 3: with recovered memories? What do we do with when people
22:26
Speaker 3: access places inside of themselves that they don't have the
22:31
Speaker 3: ability to confirm with others, like fragments of memories, And
22:36
Speaker 3: how do we stay away from the you know, the
22:38
Speaker 3: false memory history and the fiasco that you know, therapists
22:43
Speaker 3: really have to recognize their's blood on their hands around
22:46
Speaker 3: that and make sure how do we make sure that
22:49
Speaker 3: people when they're asking the question was I abused? What
22:52
Speaker 3: was it abused? Did it happen? What do we do
22:54
Speaker 3: with the questions when we don't know?
22:56
Speaker 2: How do we like?
22:57
Speaker 3: And I really do believe that we can support people
22:59
Speaker 3: to treat the charge and the activation around trauma even
23:02
Speaker 3: if we don't have the narrative. And that's part of
23:04
Speaker 3: working with a bottom up somatic approach and an attachment
23:08
Speaker 3: based approach. But you know, like, what do we do
23:10
Speaker 3: with the material that we find when people on psychedelics
23:12
Speaker 3: have the question like, oh, I think this happened to me,
23:15
Speaker 3: but their parents are dead and they can't ask their
23:17
Speaker 3: parents or they can't confirm with someone. And then of
23:21
Speaker 3: course there's like, oh my gosh, this whole other facet
23:24
Speaker 3: of this, which is that psychedelic medicine really belongs to
23:27
Speaker 3: indigenous people, and here we are kind of moving it
23:31
Speaker 3: into political settings and creating treatment guidelines that are related
23:35
Speaker 3: to white Western allopathic forms of medicine that disqualify or
23:43
Speaker 3: kind of erase the way that psychedelics have been used
23:46
Speaker 3: for millennia in community with incredible wisdom, Like we're people
23:52
Speaker 3: who are getting and I include myself in this, like
23:55
Speaker 3: people who are getting into this field but don't have
23:58
Speaker 3: a long cultural.
23:59
Speaker 2: History of it.
24:01
Speaker 3: We have to be really careful about if we are
24:03
Speaker 3: appropriating medicines, if we what can we can learn from
24:08
Speaker 3: indigenous populations, what kind of the tensions between using plant
24:12
Speaker 3: medicines that have been used by indigenous populations for a
24:14
Speaker 3: long time versus like synthetic compounds that are relatively new
24:19
Speaker 3: in terms of the history of medicine. So there's, like,
24:21
Speaker 3: I think there's really important cultural pieces to look at
24:25
Speaker 3: there too, in terms of like ownership of medicine and
24:27
Speaker 3: wisdom and.
24:28
Speaker 2: How to use it now not to use it.
24:31
Speaker 5: Man, you just opened up a whole other topic that
24:33
Speaker 5: we're going to have to write down and bring you back. Look,
24:35
Speaker 5: would you to have a mini series with just you
24:38
Speaker 5: in these conversations?
24:39
Speaker 2: Okay, I feel like I'm not helping you in this
24:40
Speaker 2: conversation though. And then there are all.
24:42
Speaker 3: Of these things we have to think about too, and
24:44
Speaker 3: it's just each of them could be their own novel.
24:47
Speaker 5: And I love that you address them because that is
24:49
Speaker 5: one of the big dings when we talk about, especially
24:51
Speaker 5: when we talk about like psychedelics, when we talk about
24:53
Speaker 5: these drugs and how it had again been demonized and
24:56
Speaker 5: used against Indigenous people and people of color in general,
24:59
Speaker 5: and then coming back and be like, but they're not wrong,
25:01
Speaker 5: Like it's such a big conversation in.
25:04
Speaker 3: Those oh so big, or then how about this too,
25:07
Speaker 3: Like the paradox of that, like this work when it's
25:10
Speaker 3: legal is so expensive, it can be I think there
25:14
Speaker 3: are ways around that, and I think that that's the
25:16
Speaker 3: responsibility of us as care providers and people who are
25:18
Speaker 3: lobbying for changes in structures of care and health care
25:22
Speaker 3: contexts and insurance context like we have to use our
25:25
Speaker 3: voices to advocate for people who need this treatment but
25:27
Speaker 3: don't have a voice.
25:29
Speaker 2: That it is.
25:31
Speaker 3: Weirdly paradoxical that so many of the people whose cultural
25:34
Speaker 3: traditions would have given them access to psychedelic medicines now
25:39
Speaker 3: are disenfranchised in the healthcare context where they can't even
25:42
Speaker 3: access the thing legally that historically their ancestors would have
25:46
Speaker 3: been using. Because they can't, you know, they're not welcomed
25:50
Speaker 3: in the system. They're often disqualified for treatments they wouldn't
25:53
Speaker 3: have necessarily have the money or the financial resources to
25:55
Speaker 3: be able to pay for them. So there's like, man,
25:58
Speaker 3: there's all sorts of stuff that's wrong with this, and
26:01
Speaker 3: it can be profoundly dangerous, Like this could be the
26:05
Speaker 3: exact worst thing a person could do for their mental health, right,
26:09
Speaker 3: So we need to have people who are really, really
26:12
Speaker 3: skilled at assessment. And what I like to say in
26:15
Speaker 3: psychedelics psychotherapy is I will not say yes to psychedelics
26:19
Speaker 3: with you unless you can say no to me, right
26:24
Speaker 3: or unless I can also say no to you right,
26:26
Speaker 3: Like there is something about there needs to be an
26:31
Speaker 3: awareness of this not being a panacea and us being
26:34
Speaker 3: able to slow down, and can there be a better treatment?
26:38
Speaker 3: Can there be something that is more effective? Have you
26:40
Speaker 3: tried any other things? Like can you do you actually
26:43
Speaker 3: have the ability to say no to me? Because it's
26:45
Speaker 3: going to be really hard to say no to me
26:47
Speaker 3: on medicine if you can't say no to me in
26:49
Speaker 3: ordinary states of consciousness. And then all of a sudden
26:52
Speaker 3: something is coming up and it feels like, you know,
26:54
Speaker 3: I'm saying, hey, can I hold your hand through that?
26:58
Speaker 3: And if you don't know how to say no, does
27:00
Speaker 3: that feel like I'm taking advantage of your body or
27:03
Speaker 3: crossing a boundary? Like the negotiating of touch is another
27:08
Speaker 3: thing that we really have to be clear about in
27:10
Speaker 3: this work. When people often regress to younger developmental states
27:14
Speaker 3: and they just want to be held and they want contact,
27:16
Speaker 3: but maybe the adult part of them who walked into
27:19
Speaker 3: the room and signed up for the treatment is not
27:22
Speaker 3: into having their handheld or not having you know, their arm,
27:27
Speaker 3: like in contact with my arms. So wow, we have
27:30
Speaker 3: to be thoughtful about boundaries, ethics, like protectiveness of people.
27:35
Speaker 3: It's I mean, there's so much here that can be
27:38
Speaker 3: really muddy, and to go slow and to be thoughtful
27:42
Speaker 3: and to be judicious I think, and to consider history
27:46
Speaker 3: and culture and context and access to treatment is it's
27:49
Speaker 3: the only way. It's the only way we can do
27:52
Speaker 3: this and not have what happened in the sixties and
27:54
Speaker 3: seven how seventies happen again where people are really reckless
27:57
Speaker 3: and careless and they kind of like ruin it for
28:00
Speaker 3: everybody else.
28:01
Speaker 2: Right, I mean understanding that.
28:03
Speaker 5: I think one of the things that we talked about
28:04
Speaker 5: when we started the show is like, this is an
28:07
Speaker 5: individual experience and it has to be that way. We
28:11
Speaker 5: have to make sure we prescribe to that individual and
28:14
Speaker 5: what they are going through because these people have boundaries
28:17
Speaker 5: that are different from other people.
28:18
Speaker 2: These people have traumas that are other from different people.
28:20
Speaker 5: It might be the same trauma, but they reacted differently
28:23
Speaker 5: or the outcome was different. So all about like personalized
28:26
Speaker 5: care is so important in everything, yeah, but obviously specifically especially.
28:32
Speaker 3: In this Yeah, yeah, you're so right. Yeah, although that
28:37
Speaker 3: kind of makes me think, like it's an interesting counterpoint
28:40
Speaker 3: to that that psychedelics have been used in group contexts
28:45
Speaker 3: since time immemorial and indigenous populations, right, there was often
28:48
Speaker 3: either the shaman who would take the medicine and would
28:51
Speaker 3: speak to people in the group, or people who take
28:53
Speaker 3: medicine in a group context. And so there's that my
28:56
Speaker 3: colleague and I that I'd referenced earlier. Through Catalyst, we
29:00
Speaker 3: run group psychedelic psychotherapy because it's a powerful thing to
29:04
Speaker 3: return people to community. And let me tell you, people
29:07
Speaker 3: are lonely. There are people who are lonelier than they
29:11
Speaker 3: have ever been. And this like loneliness and sleep feel
29:14
Speaker 3: like the things that are going to drive us. I mean,
29:17
Speaker 3: maybe social media used to, but are going to Are
29:20
Speaker 3: theyre going to tank our mental health in the next
29:23
Speaker 3: ten to twenty years if they haven't already, because people
29:26
Speaker 3: are more disconnected from their bodies and from each other,
29:29
Speaker 3: and so how do we use how do we use
29:33
Speaker 3: medicines to actually bring people back into connection with each
29:35
Speaker 3: other and the earth. And I think that that question
29:38
Speaker 3: is a.
29:39
Speaker 2: Very important one.
29:40
Speaker 3: But we're again, we're like right on the forefront of
29:42
Speaker 3: asking questions like how do we do that ethically when
29:44
Speaker 3: we're giving people individualized care?
29:46
Speaker 5: Too? Girl, Why are you overlapping our episodes because we
29:49
Speaker 5: just talked about loneliness.
29:51
Speaker 2: Yes, I'm going, I'm going to come.
29:57
Speaker 5: I will never quitt lay internet.
30:02
Speaker 2: If anyway, if I go missing, everyone knows where to look.
30:04
Speaker 5: No, no, no, no, no, no no, We'll just.
30:09
Speaker 2: Be having a slumber party. Yes, yet that's what will happen.
30:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, Well, you, as we've alluded to, as you've mentioned,
30:19
Speaker 1: you did share your therapy session on the show, and
30:26
Speaker 1: it was well, a question we often wrestle with Samantha
30:30
Speaker 1: and I on this show is kind of where you
30:33
Speaker 1: where do you draw the line of what to share?
30:36
Speaker 1: What is healthy for you to share? So I'm just curious,
30:39
Speaker 1: what was that experience like for you, Why did you
30:43
Speaker 1: decide to do it, What were some of the factors
30:45
Speaker 1: that went into your decision.
30:47
Speaker 3: It's important to know the timescale when you think about
30:49
Speaker 3: me sharing. So I did, I had the hemorrhage, I
30:54
Speaker 3: saw I was pregnant with twins. I lost the twins
30:57
Speaker 3: and pregnancy. Ten days later, I had a very cute
31:00
Speaker 3: hemorrhage within which I, you know, I thought I was
31:04
Speaker 3: going to die for sure, and so all of that
31:07
Speaker 3: was mixed together, like there's this not of trauma. And
31:10
Speaker 3: then about six or six months later, five months later,
31:16
Speaker 3: I had the psychedelic session, which was recorded that you
31:19
Speaker 3: hear on this on the show, but it was about
31:22
Speaker 3: a year later that it actually came out, which meant
31:26
Speaker 3: I had a year without ever even thinking it was
31:29
Speaker 3: going to go on the show, to process that in therapy,
31:32
Speaker 3: to to make sense of it, to re listen, to
31:35
Speaker 3: feel what that did in my body, and to when
31:38
Speaker 3: you know, re listen and realize WHOA I can hear
31:41
Speaker 3: myself say some of those things and it doesn't feel
31:44
Speaker 3: as charged for me. Wow, it really does feel like, Okay,
31:47
Speaker 3: my body's moved to the other side of some big intensity,
31:50
Speaker 3: and I really know that I'm safe and I really
31:52
Speaker 3: know that I'm here. So I had a lot of
31:55
Speaker 3: time to discern if that was the right move. And
31:58
Speaker 3: I had a lot of people in my life who
32:01
Speaker 3: are protective of me, who care for me, who often
32:04
Speaker 3: help me sort through things related to media like listen
32:07
Speaker 3: and talk through like is this a good choice? Is
32:09
Speaker 3: it's not a good choice? And ultimately what it came
32:11
Speaker 3: down to for me is I think about three things,
32:15
Speaker 3: and the first one is I think that we construct
32:19
Speaker 3: the archetype of the healer or the guru in such
32:24
Speaker 3: a way that disconnects them from their own humanity. And
32:30
Speaker 3: we take people and we say, well, they're a therapist,
32:33
Speaker 3: like they might never struggle with that, or even like,
32:36
Speaker 3: you know, where it looks where I think maybe it's
32:39
Speaker 3: most obvious as you have parents who look at therapists
32:43
Speaker 3: who work with children and families and would never assume
32:47
Speaker 3: that those therapists also struggle with their own parenting. Sometimes right,
32:50
Speaker 3: like we assume something about the role of therapists or
32:53
Speaker 3: psychologists that means that we're impervious to our own you know,
32:57
Speaker 3: like psychological basement, and that we don't have things we
33:00
Speaker 3: have to look through or work through or struggle with.
33:02
Speaker 3: And in a way then I think that sets us
33:05
Speaker 3: up societally to think that if we just knew enough
33:08
Speaker 3: or had enough degrees or got enough insight, then we
33:11
Speaker 3: wouldn't also struggle with the pain of being human, and
33:14
Speaker 3: I just simply disagree. I just think that's not true, right.
33:17
Speaker 3: I think that it hurts to be human, whether you're
33:20
Speaker 3: a therapist or not, whether you're a healer or not,
33:22
Speaker 3: whether you're a pastor or a rabbi or a guru,
33:25
Speaker 3: or a yoga teacher or a meditation teacher. It just
33:28
Speaker 3: hurts to be human. And I want to make more
33:30
Speaker 3: spaces where we can allow the healers in our society
33:34
Speaker 3: to be welcomed into the conversation of being human instead
33:38
Speaker 3: of excluded and in a way pressure to transcend. So
33:42
Speaker 3: that's the first thing I think. The second thing is
33:47
Speaker 3: it's a really important particularly I mean you had mentioned
33:53
Speaker 3: this related to the Me Too movement. It's so important
33:57
Speaker 3: for women to have a path like out before them
34:02
Speaker 3: by other women that model what it is like to
34:05
Speaker 3: walk right into the heart of the experiences in our
34:08
Speaker 3: body which have left us feeling disempowered, objectified, sexualized, powerless,
34:14
Speaker 3: vulnerable at the hands of men in particular, and to
34:18
Speaker 3: feel the way that it is possible to walk through
34:21
Speaker 3: that to the other side, like what I wanted more
34:24
Speaker 3: than anything for women listening to that episode, or anyone
34:27
Speaker 3: who's experienced any kind of sexual trauma, genital trauma, medical trauma.
34:32
Speaker 3: To be able to listen to that and say it
34:35
Speaker 3: can go differently from me, like I don't have to
34:37
Speaker 3: feel scared to be in my body because my body
34:41
Speaker 3: actually knows how to get to the other side of
34:44
Speaker 3: the fear that lives stuck inside of me because of
34:47
Speaker 3: what happened to me that was never my fault. And
34:49
Speaker 3: for us to have audio media stories, however it is
34:56
Speaker 3: of people saying here's how much it hurt, is what
35:00
Speaker 3: it looks like to get to the other side, I
35:02
Speaker 3: think paves the way for us to create possibility inside
35:06
Speaker 3: of our own nervous system that healing could happen for
35:09
Speaker 3: us too. So I think there's that, And then I
35:13
Speaker 3: think it's also just really important for people to see
35:17
Speaker 3: that even though we might be leading that we are
35:23
Speaker 3: still responsible to tend to what's inside of ourselves. And
35:26
Speaker 3: so I may be a podcast host, I may be
35:27
Speaker 3: a psychologist, but here's my vulnerability, Like I'm doing this
35:31
Speaker 3: work too. I'm doing this work too, and I want
35:34
Speaker 3: for you to do this work too. And I'm not
35:36
Speaker 3: above this and you are not above this, and really
35:38
Speaker 3: nobody is above this. And I think it just humanizes
35:44
Speaker 3: the process of going towards our pain in a way
35:47
Speaker 3: that I think I really want people to know, like, hey,
35:50
Speaker 3: I'm doing it too, I'm doing it too.
36:03
Speaker 5: So I was in the social work field before I
36:05
Speaker 5: crashed into this podcasting field, and one of the things
36:08
Speaker 5: about my friend group would talk about was that most
36:11
Speaker 5: of us are here because of trauma, much like yourself,
36:15
Speaker 5: and feeling like we need to correct things or we
36:17
Speaker 5: need to help the system and things, as well as
36:19
Speaker 5: the fact we all often talk about Yeah, no therapists,
36:22
Speaker 5: social workers, people who are in this field, they need
36:24
Speaker 5: to be in therapy, they need to be in constant therapy,
36:26
Speaker 5: they need a therapist to like survive this work, which
36:31
Speaker 5: is exactly that level of understanding we are human, but
36:35
Speaker 5: with that that vulnerability, because sometimes people will talk about
36:38
Speaker 5: this that they expect their therapist to be perfect, or
36:42
Speaker 5: their person who is whoever that's in charge of whatever
36:46
Speaker 5: situation should be perfect. In the actualities, No, we're broken
36:50
Speaker 5: and that's why we're doing this work.
36:51
Speaker 3: Yeah, Or I could say like we are we are
36:56
Speaker 3: we broken? Are like are we actually brave enough to
37:01
Speaker 3: go to the places that are scary and we're modeling
37:04
Speaker 3: that for our patients, which like, I think that's the
37:06
Speaker 3: piece that you try, right, Like, that's the thing that
37:09
Speaker 3: I want. I feel most clear about myself whenever I
37:12
Speaker 3: do therapy and whenever I'm sitting across from someone doing therapy.
37:15
Speaker 2: Is there's a whole bunch of people.
37:17
Speaker 3: Out there in the world who are way too defended
37:22
Speaker 3: and way too scared, Like under the defense is the
37:24
Speaker 3: scared to look at, Like what does it feel like
37:26
Speaker 3: inside of me? And the people who walk in the
37:28
Speaker 3: door our culture might say that they're broken because that's
37:33
Speaker 3: the way, you know, the story I have to tell
37:34
Speaker 3: about why they need help and why other people don't.
37:37
Speaker 3: And I think, actually, it's like, these are the people
37:40
Speaker 3: who are the most powerful. These are the people who
37:42
Speaker 3: are the bravest. These are the people who are telling
37:44
Speaker 3: the truth about what doesn't work in our society.
37:47
Speaker 2: Now I feel like I'm preaching at you.
37:48
Speaker 3: I love it. I'm like this is like I really
37:50
Speaker 3: think like people who who go to mental health treatment,
37:54
Speaker 3: whether it's a group therapy setting, whether it's individual therapy,
37:58
Speaker 3: whether it's like people who are in commune unity having
38:00
Speaker 3: consciousness raising conversations, like I don't think individual psychotherapy has
38:05
Speaker 3: the market on what healing looks like.
38:07
Speaker 2: I think I can look like.
38:08
Speaker 3: So many different things. But these are the people who
38:10
Speaker 3: are often the bravest and brave enough to say it
38:13
Speaker 3: hurts to be human, and I can't do it alone,
38:16
Speaker 3: and I want to understand where the hurt comes from.
38:19
Speaker 3: If I can do something different so I can feel
38:21
Speaker 3: better and feel different, so that I can help other
38:23
Speaker 3: people feel better and different, it is like, it is
38:26
Speaker 3: the most admirable thing.
38:29
Speaker 2: I think.
38:30
Speaker 5: You start becoming self aware, you realize, oh, I need
38:32
Speaker 5: this help. But he's like, because doing this alone is
38:35
Speaker 5: not working really exactly, because when you were talking about
38:39
Speaker 5: your own work and listening to that episode was so
38:42
Speaker 5: raw and so marble. Yeah, but with that made me
38:46
Speaker 5: wonder because myself, who've gone through other types of trauma
38:48
Speaker 5: but understanding trying to like go through and relive the trauma,
38:52
Speaker 5: how do you deal with that post traumatic stress, like
38:57
Speaker 5: that level that's so constantly on red on an alert
39:01
Speaker 5: that it feels like trying to navigate that through therapy
39:05
Speaker 5: or trying to relive the trauma, it's so difficult to
39:08
Speaker 5: even get past that point. And I know you kept
39:11
Speaker 5: saying the phrase I'm here but not here to kind
39:14
Speaker 5: of bring awareness to what was happening in your consciousness
39:18
Speaker 5: and subconsciousness.
39:19
Speaker 2: How do you work through that.
39:21
Speaker 5: In this type of real deep trauma work.
39:25
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, one of the things that comes to mind,
39:29
Speaker 3: and there's a bunch, but the first thing that comes
39:32
Speaker 3: to mind is something called the homeostatic self correcting mechanism.
39:36
Speaker 3: And the homeostatic self correcting mechanism is just our way
39:39
Speaker 3: of saying, in light of the autonomic nervous system, there
39:43
Speaker 3: is an innate drive within us as a mammal to
39:48
Speaker 3: move us back towards homeostasis. And if you're listening to
39:51
Speaker 3: this or in this conversation, you're like, what what does
39:53
Speaker 3: that mean? Think about any time you were hot and
39:57
Speaker 3: then you sweat, Right, there is like an unconscious but
40:01
Speaker 3: conscious like there's like a consciousness to your body's wisdom
40:06
Speaker 3: that says, hey, something is getting just a little too
40:09
Speaker 3: hot here, I'm going to.
40:11
Speaker 2: Cool you down.
40:12
Speaker 3: Similarly, I didn't get enough food to eat, and then
40:16
Speaker 3: my body produces hunger. The sensation drives me towards eating food,
40:20
Speaker 3: which regulates my nervous system blood sugar. Right, I can
40:24
Speaker 3: get everything that I need protein, energy, and then away
40:28
Speaker 3: I go So we have these drives inside of us
40:32
Speaker 3: as bodies that know the way, and there's instinct to that,
40:37
Speaker 3: there is wisdom to that, and it is not something
40:40
Speaker 3: that we access through thought. It is something that totally
40:43
Speaker 3: comes from the from the autonomic nervous system in the body.
40:47
Speaker 3: And why I bring that up is because our bodies
40:49
Speaker 3: actually know how to resolve autonomic charge. And autonomic charge
40:54
Speaker 3: would be the thing that we would say, you know,
40:55
Speaker 3: for familiar folks who aren't familiar with that, it's like
40:57
Speaker 3: the energy that your body deuces, not by thought, but
41:02
Speaker 3: in a body based way to help you respond to
41:06
Speaker 3: threats by either shutting down, by fighting, by getting away,
41:11
Speaker 3: by connecting, by fawning. So there's all of this energy
41:14
Speaker 3: that your body supplies without you ever even having to
41:17
Speaker 3: make a conscious decision to help you respond to the
41:21
Speaker 3: threat in front of you. And that energy often gets
41:25
Speaker 3: baked into the memory of the trauma. And when trauma,
41:28
Speaker 3: the nature of trauma is that it's something that lives
41:31
Speaker 3: inside of us unfinished. It's like the light switch gets
41:34
Speaker 3: turned on of charge, like here's the charge, fight the beast.
41:38
Speaker 3: But then the light switch never gets turned off, so
41:41
Speaker 3: the body still thinks, hey, I need this charge and
41:43
Speaker 3: it's connected to this memory and it's not over and
41:46
Speaker 3: I'm in it. But maybe we have like enough awareness
41:49
Speaker 3: sort of to be like, wait, the car accident is over.
41:51
Speaker 3: I'm like sitting in my you know, on my couch
41:54
Speaker 3: at home, Like, but why does my body feel like
41:57
Speaker 3: the charge is still here? So it can sometimes be
41:58
Speaker 3: confusing because we're like, you know this thing, you said,
42:00
Speaker 3: I'm here, but I'm not here. I'm like, I'm scared,
42:03
Speaker 3: but I also somehow know that I'm safe for what
42:05
Speaker 3: like what do I do with all of this? So
42:08
Speaker 3: in this particular context of working, what we do is
42:12
Speaker 3: we start to connect to the charge that is left
42:19
Speaker 3: over from the traumatic memory, and by getting closer to it,
42:23
Speaker 3: what we do is we help a person's body start
42:27
Speaker 3: to kind of in a way, re experience the activation,
42:30
Speaker 3: and in re experiencing the activation, then we kind of
42:32
Speaker 3: clear out any of the obstacles along the way that
42:36
Speaker 3: might get in the way of interrupting that process and
42:38
Speaker 3: bodies like if you've ever seen the footage, I think
42:41
Speaker 3: Peter Levine often shows it in his trauma teachings, Like
42:44
Speaker 3: a gazelle in the wild has been attacked by a
42:47
Speaker 3: lion and then they freeze and they flop, and then
42:49
Speaker 3: the lion kind of lose interests, thinking that they're dead,
42:52
Speaker 3: and then the line goes away, and then the gazelle
42:54
Speaker 3: kind of like shakes all of that energy off. That
42:56
Speaker 3: there's charge in the body that is ready to, like
42:59
Speaker 3: to be burned off as long as we are safe
43:02
Speaker 3: enough to burn it off. So we're creating the conditions
43:04
Speaker 3: in psychotherapy where with the help of psychedelics and also
43:08
Speaker 3: the skill of the therapist, the person is getting to
43:11
Speaker 3: release all of that stuff that was stored in the
43:15
Speaker 3: memory at the time of the trauma, and in doing
43:17
Speaker 3: so that homeostatic self correcting mechanism takes over. It's not
43:22
Speaker 3: sweat because you were hot. It's like muscle activation because
43:27
Speaker 3: you thought you were going to die. And in doing
43:29
Speaker 3: so kind of like the releasing of it, then the body,
43:32
Speaker 3: the body gets to know, oh I got away. It's
43:34
Speaker 3: kind of like we get to say with our bodies,
43:37
Speaker 3: I used up all the energy, I got away from
43:40
Speaker 3: the threat.
43:40
Speaker 2: I'm here.
43:42
Speaker 3: And maybe another way of saying that is like we
43:43
Speaker 3: don't really need to regulate ourselves when our bodies actually
43:47
Speaker 3: know their safe bodies actually regulate themselves. We don't need
43:51
Speaker 3: to take a ton of deep breaths to remind ourselves
43:53
Speaker 3: are safe when our bodies know that they're safe. So
43:56
Speaker 3: what we're trying to do is teach our bodies and
43:58
Speaker 3: like that that we got through. The way we get
44:00
Speaker 3: through is that we complete the charge that's connected to
44:03
Speaker 3: the memory.
44:08
Speaker 5: There.
44:09
Speaker 1: Yes, you just you're gonna help it come back. I
44:12
Speaker 1: know you are, absolutely are. It's just difficult because we
44:15
Speaker 1: have a time limit.
44:16
Speaker 2: I'm like, h I know, there's so many things we
44:18
Speaker 2: want to ask and talk about.
44:20
Speaker 1: Yes, but one of the things, as we're getting close
44:26
Speaker 1: to wrapping up here, you have had there's just really
44:30
Speaker 1: raw and vulnerable moments in these episodes on the podcasts.
44:33
Speaker 1: What have been some of your takeaways or something that
44:37
Speaker 1: maybe you have learned doing during this whole process.
44:41
Speaker 2: Oh, I love that question.
44:44
Speaker 3: I think I think like right off the top is
44:48
Speaker 3: it's amazing what bodies can do in the right context, Like,
44:52
Speaker 3: it is amazing how much terror a person can have
44:56
Speaker 3: living under all of their defenses and their association. Like,
45:01
Speaker 3: holy crap, that's pretty powerful. The bodies can hold onto
45:05
Speaker 3: all that charge, and also that bodies know what to
45:07
Speaker 3: do with it. In the right context, like what I'm
45:11
Speaker 3: always like, what's happening? What's happening? Like why are we
45:14
Speaker 3: so afraid of our bodies when our bodies know the
45:17
Speaker 3: way to heal? Like how do they get so demonized?
45:20
Speaker 3: They're so so brilliant. So there's like a Holy Moly,
45:24
Speaker 3: there can be a lot under there for someone and
45:25
Speaker 3: also whoa like we can heal, Like we can really
45:29
Speaker 3: mend things and it's not too late.
45:31
Speaker 2: Like that's a big takeaway.
45:33
Speaker 3: I think another really big takeaway is that that there
45:37
Speaker 3: is something so important about having a person who really
45:41
Speaker 3: knows you and is not afraid of whatever is in
45:44
Speaker 3: your stuff, to walk right into your stuff with you
45:47
Speaker 3: in the most vulnerable moments, Like to have someone sit
45:50
Speaker 3: with you on psychedelics who says there's nothing inside of
45:54
Speaker 3: you that I'm afraid of changes everything, because that's so
45:57
Speaker 3: much of it for many of us, Like I can't
45:58
Speaker 3: go here because I'm going to lose connection, or like
46:00
Speaker 3: someone's gonna judge me. You're like I'm gonna.
46:02
Speaker 2: Get overwhelmed, and then they're gonna get overwhelmed and then
46:04
Speaker 2: they're gonna leave, and then what do I do it?
46:06
Speaker 5: Then?
46:06
Speaker 2: And it's a right to.
46:08
Speaker 3: Have someone who's like, hey, yeah, I know exactly what
46:11
Speaker 3: we're heading into, and I'm not afraid. I think can
46:15
Speaker 3: make us. It's the thing that can make us brave,
46:17
Speaker 3: whether we're on psychedelics, or it's you're taking your kid
46:19
Speaker 3: to school for the first day ever, or you're walking
46:22
Speaker 3: with your friend into a surgery, or you know they
46:25
Speaker 3: have to have a tough conversation like I'm right here,
46:27
Speaker 3: I got you, Like, let's do it. I'm with you
46:29
Speaker 3: all the way. Is that I think it's the thing
46:31
Speaker 3: that can make us brave. There's that, and then I
46:35
Speaker 3: mean like the power of telling our stories and showing
46:38
Speaker 3: what it looks like and sounds like to heal, Like
46:41
Speaker 3: vicarious healing is real. It's real, and in the age
46:47
Speaker 3: that we're in where people are more connected than ever,
46:49
Speaker 3: but not in an emotionally authentic, engaged way, to experience
46:54
Speaker 3: someone's emotional vulnerability and feel the benefit of that is like,
46:59
Speaker 3: it's kind of it's the media that I want to create.
47:02
Speaker 3: It's the thing that I think will actually stitch us
47:04
Speaker 3: back together inside of ourselves, in between each other.
47:09
Speaker 1: Absolutely that just knowing you're not alone, whether it is
47:11
Speaker 1: somebody to go face The thing with you arts just
47:16
Speaker 1: listening to a podcast and being like, oh, okay, I'm
47:19
Speaker 1: not alone. I have someone else is feeling this.
47:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know that because you've done that too.
47:24
Speaker 3: You've given people really generous gifts of your own work
47:27
Speaker 3: and these conversations which I think, yeah, I think it.
47:31
Speaker 2: It's what we need. So bravo you too.
47:34
Speaker 1: Yes, and to you as well, thank you so much
47:37
Speaker 1: for taking the time. We know you're so busy. Oh
47:41
Speaker 1: you will have to come back please.
47:43
Speaker 5: I be obligatory at this point is absolutely enough to
47:46
Speaker 5: make it happen.
47:47
Speaker 1: But in the meantime, where can the good listeners find you?
47:50
Speaker 5: Oh?
47:51
Speaker 3: And thanks so much for listening everybody. I'm just so
47:53
Speaker 3: touched that you're here all the way to the end.
47:55
Speaker 3: It means so much. You can find me on other
47:57
Speaker 3: people's problems wherever you get your podcasts. I have a
48:01
Speaker 3: new book out that came out in April. It's called
48:03
Speaker 3: Holy Hurt, all about spiritual trauma, spiritual and religious trauma,
48:06
Speaker 3: which I think is probably all of us at this
48:08
Speaker 3: point in North America, and my website Hillary el McBride.
48:14
Speaker 3: I'm I would say probably mostly on Instagram, Hillary Leona
48:18
Speaker 3: McBride although you can find me on Facebook and threads
48:22
Speaker 3: and all of those other places. And if you get
48:23
Speaker 3: onto my email list, if you go onto my website,
48:28
Speaker 3: Hillary el McBride, if you wait, there's like a box
48:30
Speaker 3: that pops up, put your email in, and then you
48:32
Speaker 3: can be on my newsletter, which is where I send
48:33
Speaker 3: out links to live events that I'm doing, trainings that
48:37
Speaker 3: I'm doing for clinicians group therapy programs I'm running. You
48:40
Speaker 3: can get information about psychedelic psychotherapy training program and new
48:44
Speaker 3: things that are coming out. So head over to my
48:46
Speaker 3: website and sign up for my email list to get
48:47
Speaker 3: info there.
48:49
Speaker 1: Yes, go do that, listeners. Thank you so much for
48:52
Speaker 1: being here till next tiank you so much till next time. Yes, Yes,
48:58
Speaker 1: if you would like to contact us, you can or
49:00
Speaker 1: email is Hello at stuffwenever told you dot com. You
49:02
Speaker 1: can find us on boost Guy. I'm also a podcast
49:04
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49:06
Speaker 1: We're also on YouTube and we have a book you
49:08
Speaker 1: can get wherever you can't hear books. Thanks as always
49:10
Speaker 1: to our super produced Christina or executive Puser and your
49:12
Speaker 1: contributor Joey. Thank you, and thanks to you for listening
49:16
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