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I would love to try a psychedelic trip with a trained therapist guiding me toward facing my fears. I’m generally a pretty anxious person (diagnosed with OCD, m

I would love to try a psychedelic trip with a trained therapist guiding me toward facing my fears. I’m generally a pretty anxious person (diagnosed with OCD, managed with ERP therapy), and I feel pretty confident that it would force me to face that part of me. I have no doubt that it’d be a beneficial experience. Buuuuut... part of me is super nervous about what I might also find. It’s like part of my mind wants to explore it, and the other part doesn’t, which creates a lot of inner conflict. I honestly don’t know what I’m supposed to do with two parts of my brain fighting with itself. Side note: How To Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan is a fantastic book and worth a read.

nazgulnarsil 7y ago
There are a few therapy modalities that can help, check them out and see if any resonate with you: core transformation (my fave), feeding your demons (buddhist), internal family systems, focusing (eugene gendlin), coherence therapy. All are predicated around the same few core concepts of having different parts of yourself that view the world in different ways, acknowledging and accepting that each of those parts has some positive contribution to our well being even though they get into conflicts with each other about their proper 'domains' of applicability sometimes. In this case, it sounds like one part is worried that you'll label it as bad and try to change it without acknowledging the ways in which it might be protecting or helping you. If you read the wikipedia page on coherence therapy for instance you'll see the steps around needing to address those parts needs before they're willing to compromise. Happy travels.
- sharkweek 7y ago
  I'd be interested in some more reading on core transformation - do you happen to have any recommendations? Thanks!
  - nazgulnarsil 7y ago
    the book by Connierae Andreas.
h2odragon 7y ago
Trained therapist? Nah. Good, trusted friend. Someone who will be willing to clean up embarrassing bodily functions for you type of friend. You can't pay somebody to discover you, you're going to have to do that yourself. Having a companion is just to help keep things from getting messy.
- llamataboot 7y ago
  Different roles. Having some good friends to help prop you up, tell you when you're being an ass, wipe your tears, etc - good and nec. Definitely not the same as a trained therapist who actually knows how to hold the mirror for you to see yourself in a different way.
  - h2odragon 7y ago
    Everybody's different and perhaps having someone do that role is a good thing. I'm not so sure. If you set out to discover yourself with someone else, then thats what you get, yourself with someone else. When they leave are you still the same? We're social animals, expecting to interact with someone is a different state. (yeah I'm not expressing this well but its been nagging at me for hours so I'm trying) Personally my favorite mushroom experiences involve a full moon spring night, a coon hound, and square miles of wild woods. That's the trip I recommend; but so few people are blessed with good coon hounds now.
- sharkweek 7y ago
  Maybe not, but there are therapists who specialize in guided psychedelic trips who encourage exploration and fear facing. Seems like they'd know how to guide the discovery process.
  - beenBoutIT 7y ago
    We need scientific clinical trials conducted without any therapist intervention in order to understand what good these drugs do on their own. All the BS about talk-therapy being necessary for them to work is going to keep them out of the reach of most people. The reality is that psychedelics will quickly put psychiatrists out of business unless the public is convinced they can't take psychedelics safely without a shrink watching over them.
tasty_freeze 7y ago
You are right to be cautious. Don't let people oversell the benefits and minimize the risk. Yes, Johns Hopkins and some other places have early promising results, but these subjects were given counseling before, during, and after their trip. I'm sure for some people a lightbulb goes off and suddenly they can see the problems in their life which had been invisible to them and the benefit is immediate. Most of the time the message isn't so clear, and the benefit comes from actual hard work and changes that come as the result of your insights. For example, I know I'm getting older, time is limited, and I'm mortal. Taking LSD and looking in the mirror and really seeing myself more objectively, all the wrinkles and saggy skin, the meat of my body hanging off my bones, makes my aging far more tangible and immediate than I can normally conjure. The trick is afterward maintaining that feeling and using it to make decisions about health, prioritizing things that are important, and dropping things that won't matter to me in 20 years. If I had anxiety issues or deep trauma to work through, I'd absolutely want to use psychedelics in concert with a trained professional to minimize the risk of having things go wrong and to get help in figuring out what the trip meant to me (or "integrating" in the parlance).
- sharkweek 7y ago
  Thanks for the thoughtful comment. There was a part in Pollan's book where he talks about how an experienced guide will remind you to face the things in your trip that are scaring you. And that running away is what turns a trip into a bad one. My personality would naturally want to run away, where perhaps the point of the "scary thing" is to face it and deal with it in a suggestible state of consciousness. As an example, I have a lot of health-related OCD triggers. Perhaps it would be a positive experience to "see" these things during a trip and recognize that 1) I have no true control over them 2) sitting around and worrying about them won't do me any good. I know that those two things are true, but my brain is pretty hard-wired to worry about whatever the current flavor of the week is. ERP therapy has been great in sort of numbing the associated anxiety, but I'd love to push it a step further.
  - blotter_paper 7y ago
    At the risk of overselling the benefits and downplaying the risk, I'll say this: even the trips I've had that were hell in the moment have (at least seemed to) teach me something about myself, and I don't regret them in the least. This isn't to say that a bad trip is something to be sought after, and you should definitely read up on set and setting before tripping (I would recommend being outdoors in the country on private land with good friends, daylight, and a source of upbeat instrumental music), but if it happens, just let go of all control, lay back, and remember that what feels like an eternity in the moment will be over before you know it. If you follow best practices, you'll probably have a wonderful time. If you don't have a wonderful time, you might still find it a useful experience. Edit: oh, and bring some paint. Even if you aren't normally visually artistic, some paint and a canvas -- even a piece of plywood -- is an incredible thing to have while you're tripping.
abdulhaq 7y ago
The problem with make or break solutions is they sometimes break you. Instead, be patient and overcome your anxiety step by step.
INTPenis 7y ago
Be careful because psychedelics are all about letting go of control and that can be hard for control freaks. I'm not saying you are a control freak but OCD leads me to believe you're not far removed. I know that I am one, so speaking from personal experience psychedelics can be frightening to a person who must control everything. You just have to tell yourself that you've taken a drug and there is a halflife of every drug. It can't make you do anything, it can only change your perspective of what you want to do.
peteretep 7y ago
As a step in that direction, have you considered propanalol with a trained therapist? It's non-narcotic
gdubs 7y ago
Meditation can lead to similar insights over time, with practice. And because it doesn’t happen “all at once” (unless you jump into the deep end of a silent retreat or something) it might alleviate some of your anxiety.

nazgulnarsil 7y ago

There are a few therapy modalities that can help, check them out and see if any resonate with you: core transformation (my fave), feeding your demons (buddhist), internal family systems, focusing (eugene gendlin), coherence therapy. All are predicated around the same few core concepts of having different parts of yourself that view the world in different ways, acknowledging and accepting that each of those parts has some positive contribution to our well being even though they get into conflicts with each other about their proper 'domains' of applicability sometimes. In this case, it sounds like one part is worried that you'll label it as bad and try to change it without acknowledging the ways in which it might be protecting or helping you. If you read the wikipedia page on coherence therapy for instance you'll see the steps around needing to address those parts needs before they're willing to compromise. Happy travels.

sharkweek 7y ago
I'd be interested in some more reading on core transformation - do you happen to have any recommendations? Thanks!
- nazgulnarsil 7y ago
  the book by Connierae Andreas.

h2odragon 7y ago

Trained therapist? Nah. Good, trusted friend. Someone who will be willing to clean up embarrassing bodily functions for you type of friend. You can't pay somebody to discover you, you're going to have to do that yourself. Having a companion is just to help keep things from getting messy.

llamataboot 7y ago
Different roles. Having some good friends to help prop you up, tell you when you're being an ass, wipe your tears, etc - good and nec. Definitely not the same as a trained therapist who actually knows how to hold the mirror for you to see yourself in a different way.
- h2odragon 7y ago
  Everybody's different and perhaps having someone do that role is a good thing. I'm not so sure. If you set out to discover yourself with someone else, then thats what you get, yourself with someone else. When they leave are you still the same? We're social animals, expecting to interact with someone is a different state. (yeah I'm not expressing this well but its been nagging at me for hours so I'm trying) Personally my favorite mushroom experiences involve a full moon spring night, a coon hound, and square miles of wild woods. That's the trip I recommend; but so few people are blessed with good coon hounds now.
sharkweek 7y ago
Maybe not, but there are therapists who specialize in guided psychedelic trips who encourage exploration and fear facing. Seems like they'd know how to guide the discovery process.
- beenBoutIT 7y ago
  We need scientific clinical trials conducted without any therapist intervention in order to understand what good these drugs do on their own. All the BS about talk-therapy being necessary for them to work is going to keep them out of the reach of most people. The reality is that psychedelics will quickly put psychiatrists out of business unless the public is convinced they can't take psychedelics safely without a shrink watching over them.

tasty_freeze 7y ago

You are right to be cautious. Don't let people oversell the benefits and minimize the risk. Yes, Johns Hopkins and some other places have early promising results, but these subjects were given counseling before, during, and after their trip. I'm sure for some people a lightbulb goes off and suddenly they can see the problems in their life which had been invisible to them and the benefit is immediate. Most of the time the message isn't so clear, and the benefit comes from actual hard work and changes that come as the result of your insights. For example, I know I'm getting older, time is limited, and I'm mortal. Taking LSD and looking in the mirror and really seeing myself more objectively, all the wrinkles and saggy skin, the meat of my body hanging off my bones, makes my aging far more tangible and immediate than I can normally conjure. The trick is afterward maintaining that feeling and using it to make decisions about health, prioritizing things that are important, and dropping things that won't matter to me in 20 years. If I had anxiety issues or deep trauma to work through, I'd absolutely want to use psychedelics in concert with a trained professional to minimize the risk of having things go wrong and to get help in figuring out what the trip meant to me (or "integrating" in the parlance).

sharkweek 7y ago
Thanks for the thoughtful comment. There was a part in Pollan's book where he talks about how an experienced guide will remind you to face the things in your trip that are scaring you. And that running away is what turns a trip into a bad one. My personality would naturally want to run away, where perhaps the point of the "scary thing" is to face it and deal with it in a suggestible state of consciousness. As an example, I have a lot of health-related OCD triggers. Perhaps it would be a positive experience to "see" these things during a trip and recognize that 1) I have no true control over them 2) sitting around and worrying about them won't do me any good. I know that those two things are true, but my brain is pretty hard-wired to worry about whatever the current flavor of the week is. ERP therapy has been great in sort of numbing the associated anxiety, but I'd love to push it a step further.
- blotter_paper 7y ago
  At the risk of overselling the benefits and downplaying the risk, I'll say this: even the trips I've had that were hell in the moment have (at least seemed to) teach me something about myself, and I don't regret them in the least. This isn't to say that a bad trip is something to be sought after, and you should definitely read up on set and setting before tripping (I would recommend being outdoors in the country on private land with good friends, daylight, and a source of upbeat instrumental music), but if it happens, just let go of all control, lay back, and remember that what feels like an eternity in the moment will be over before you know it. If you follow best practices, you'll probably have a wonderful time. If you don't have a wonderful time, you might still find it a useful experience. Edit: oh, and bring some paint. Even if you aren't normally visually artistic, some paint and a canvas -- even a piece of plywood -- is an incredible thing to have while you're tripping.

abdulhaq 7y ago

The problem with make or break solutions is they sometimes break you. Instead, be patient and overcome your anxiety step by step.

INTPenis 7y ago

Be careful because psychedelics are all about letting go of control and that can be hard for control freaks. I'm not saying you are a control freak but OCD leads me to believe you're not far removed. I know that I am one, so speaking from personal experience psychedelics can be frightening to a person who must control everything. You just have to tell yourself that you've taken a drug and there is a halflife of every drug. It can't make you do anything, it can only change your perspective of what you want to do.

peteretep 7y ago

As a step in that direction, have you considered propanalol with a trained therapist? It's non-narcotic

gdubs 7y ago

Meditation can lead to similar insights over time, with practice. And because it doesn’t happen “all at once” (unless you jump into the deep end of a silent retreat or something) it might alleviate some of your anxiety.