542: Healing Ancestral Wounds with Psychedelics with Erin Atkinson

0:00[SPEAKER_02]: It's a transformational experience, so afterwards, when you return to your life, you won't be the way you were before. [SPEAKER_00]: We can be integrating many things throughout our lives. [SPEAKER_00]: Like the term we talk about a lot with psychedelics, but we're also integrating grief, loss, you know, these like becoming a parent, major life, [SPEAKER_00]: thresholds. [SPEAKER_00]: And often it's sudden, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Suddenly, the way that I knew who I knew myself to be in the world is no longer true.

0:32[SPEAKER_00]: It's a, you know, I'm a different person on the other side of this. [SPEAKER_01]: This is the therapy chat podcast with Laura Regan. [SPEAKER_01]: I welcome back to Therapy Chat. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm your host, Laura Regan, and today I am so grateful to be joined by Erin Atkinson. [SPEAKER_02]: Erin, thank you so much for [SPEAKER_00]: Hi, Laura. [SPEAKER_00]: Yes. [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks so much for having me. [SPEAKER_00]: Really happy to be here.

0:56[SPEAKER_02]: Yes. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm so happy too. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm really excited to talk to you about our topic today, which is psychedelic integration, something that I know we're hearing a lot about, but people may not be clear on exactly what that is. [SPEAKER_02]: And [SPEAKER_02]: the way you are talking about it is something that I really want to bring to our audience. [SPEAKER_02]: So before we get into that, let's just start off by you telling our listeners a little bit more about who you are and what you do.

1:28[SPEAKER_02]: Sure. [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you. [SPEAKER_00]: So I am a licensed clinical social worker. [SPEAKER_00]: I've been in private practice for many years. [SPEAKER_00]: I own a group practice as well. [SPEAKER_00]: So in the clinical [SPEAKER_00]: 15, 20 years now, and I have come to really specialize in the areas of psychedelic therapy and integration, along with holistic and somatic approaches to mental health and wellness and healing in general.

2:03[SPEAKER_00]: And so I am a clinical supervisor, I am also a trainer on these topics and provide consultations, supervision training for clinicians and therapists as well. [SPEAKER_02]: And you're located in Maryland, but you, where do you practice? [SPEAKER_02]: Where's your, where are you licensed? [SPEAKER_00]: So we present wellness. [SPEAKER_00]: We have an office in Maryland, two offices in Maryland. [SPEAKER_00]: When in Baltimore, when in Frederick, and we also have a multi-state practice that focuses on holistic somatic and psychedelic integration.

2:39[SPEAKER_00]: And so we're also in Texas and Colorado. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm also licensed in Hawaii and yeah, we're growing into many states around this particular type of approach to therapy that we're talking about today. [SPEAKER_02]: Wonderful. [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so I guess the first thing I wanted to ask you about is what brought you into doing this work. [SPEAKER_00]: So I started into healing work. [SPEAKER_00]: I would say psychology was really my first [SPEAKER_00]: a sign of our society in general and kind of you know how we, how many people feel comfortable accessing healing right is through them, the mind.

3:33[SPEAKER_00]: That's where it started for me in high school. [SPEAKER_00]: I can remember my first, you know, psycho in a one class. [SPEAKER_00]: I was just like, oh, right. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, there's there's something here to understand how people work and how we think and [SPEAKER_00]: how we become who we are, and then through the years it has been psychology, it did my masters in clinical social work obviously, trained as a yoga teacher, facilitated breath work, meditation, integrated nutrition, so it's kind of been this journey from mind, body into spirit, and always, always deeper, always more layers.

4:17[SPEAKER_00]: and that has, it actually brought me around to training more formally in psychedelic therapies. [SPEAKER_00]: I had for a long time my own personal relationships with psychedelic medicines and then I had my therapy practice and it felt like that was how it would stay for quite a while. [SPEAKER_00]: It was maybe in 2019 or so I started learning more about the opportunities for training in psychedelic therapy. [SPEAKER_00]: And at that time, maps was the program that was available, which was MDMA assisted psychotherapy.

4:56[SPEAKER_00]: So in 2021, I did that program. [SPEAKER_00]: And that was kind of the first step in really bringing together these worlds of psychedelics and sort of my own personal healing journey in that realm, and also bringing that into the clinical therapy space, or the beginnings of creating something there, a Muslim-trained and somatic [SPEAKER_00]: help to open the door to bring all of these like the really truly holistic picture of healing together, which is unique and profound.

5:41[SPEAKER_02]: This is something I've been thinking about a lot this week, actually. [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, in particular, this, I like the way you talked about this entry point through psychology, because in the Western world, the European, you know, influenced world, the dominant culture of the US, the therapy, the world of therapy, the field that we're in, [SPEAKER_02]: has this, you know, top down way of thinking about healing, recovery, symptom reduction.

6:22[SPEAKER_02]: It's becoming more and more medicalized. [SPEAKER_02]: More and more behaviorally focused. [SPEAKER_02]: In the 70s, 80s, 90s, it's kind of like the trans personal was more how therapy was happening, and then we'll maybe 70s and then the 80s it kind of began to fizzle out. [SPEAKER_02]: It's the whole, and people have heard about this before on this podcast, the satanic panic. [SPEAKER_02]: and how hypnosis and, you know, anything that goes into the body or anything that is about multiplicity or anything like that is taboo and, you know, there's this whole like misinformation.

7:08[SPEAKER_02]: I think kind of around it that developed for intentional reasons. [SPEAKER_02]: For many of us who are practicing now, bringing some addicts in, bringing movement into therapy is what's needed, and yet there's just been this whole world outside of the whiteness culture that was already doing things this way, or used to do things this way, traditionally culturally, and had those practices. [SPEAKER_02]: you know, stripped the the culture was stripped.

7:47[SPEAKER_02]: So I guess I'm thinking about sort of how you're talking about this like the way that the therapy field has become, it's all about what's in our head and not a whole experience and our experience of being a living person is not [SPEAKER_02]: seen as us within the context of a connection to all other life, you know? [SPEAKER_02]: So it's like finding the way back to what's been done until more recently, I know this isn't revelatory what I'm saying, but I think that [SPEAKER_02]: we don't talk about it in that level of depth of like what happened, you know?

8:35[SPEAKER_00]: Like very recently, right, in the spectrum of human history, it's like we have this kind of modern idea that we, we know what's going on, you know, we've got the neurobiology dialed in, and you know, appear, and even the history of modern psychology is very recent in the spectrum of human history. [SPEAKER_00]: And so we are swimming upstream in some ways to kind of remember, like literally, we bring together the parts of what healing actually can look like, what wholeness looks like, and [SPEAKER_00]: I think mind-body spirit, you know, is something that's been in the more popular paradigm in the past many years, and I also really extend that to community and nature being a part of that holistic picture because it's not an individual.

9:36[SPEAKER_00]: journey, you know, we're remembering how to be in connected supportive community with each other and to reconnect to nature and know that we are a part of nature. [SPEAKER_00]: So, yeah, that it's all [SPEAKER_02]: I love that you said, remember, and you used another word earlier when we were talking before we started recording reclamation. [SPEAKER_02]: Can you tell us a little bit more about [SPEAKER_02]: your journey in learning about psychedelics and the work that you do, because I want people to hear what a process of developing skill and wisdom with these practices can entail.

10:31[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: And there is the, well, then the way we are, our, our paradigm sort of approaches things, the clinical, right, competency, right, in the world that we are working in as clinical therapists. [SPEAKER_00]: I've, I've completed several clinical trainings within my licensure, including [SPEAKER_00]: Academienicists that there be training and and these are, you know, what support our capacity right now to serve in legal ways within the system.

11:11[SPEAKER_00]: And also another really big piece of my journey has been traumatic training and [SPEAKER_00]: my own relationships with the plants, with wisdom traditions, with different healing modalities that are outside of the clinical framework, but really support what I believe is the way that these medicines are meant to be held. [SPEAKER_00]: And there are [SPEAKER_00]: many traditions all over the world who have expanded states and plant medicines as a part of their cosmology is a part of their healing traditions that [SPEAKER_00]: that are preserved and held and and then also from any of us that have been really forgotten.

12:06[SPEAKER_00]: So seeking that out, seeking good teachers, training in different thenages and approaches, I think is equally important in this work with psychedelics. [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, I feel like the way this is being brought into the clinical realm for therapists to be able to facilitate psychedelic psychotherapy with clients is important. [SPEAKER_02]: And we also have to understand that that's one form of delivery that also can look [SPEAKER_02]: And that, you know, if we're a clinician, I think we need to recognize and honor that people are also doing their healing experiences with psychedelic medicines, in other ways that are not in our offices.

13:09[SPEAKER_02]: And [SPEAKER_02]: Again, that can look a number of different ways as well and we need to really, we need to know that and we need to be aware that They may have experiences that don't get to the integrated [SPEAKER_02]: through that process and that they'll come back to our practices if we are their therapist, and they're going to need some kind of support. [SPEAKER_02]: So even if you're listening to this in your therapist who's not considering psychedelic therapy, as something that you want to offer, and even if you're someone who is doing [SPEAKER_02]: psychedelic medicines and journeying and not in therapy.

14:02[SPEAKER_02]: The two may meet anyway, whether it's intentional or not because surprises can occur and oftentimes, like you said, this remembering, there's a lot that is [SPEAKER_02]: remembered in these experiences that can be quite overwhelming when we come back to our ordinary state of consciousness if we don't know if we're not able to put it, you know, integrated into a place. [SPEAKER_02]: So let's talk about integration. [SPEAKER_02]: really what it is.

14:34[SPEAKER_02]: Will you start there? [SPEAKER_00]: Well, the the word integration is from the Latin root of integrar or to make whole. [SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, it's as I think about it and approach integration, it's really kind of [SPEAKER_00]: bringing back these pieces of wisdom that we gather through psychedelic experiences or knowing about ourselves, it could be traumatic memories, it could be ancestral memories, it could be the knowing of one-ness or transcendent experiences that we've maybe never had access to before.

15:20[SPEAKER_00]: knowing that we're all connected. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, these types of really, really big, really potent experiences that we may not have a template for. [SPEAKER_00]: So how do we take this wisdom experience felt sense of knowing sort of energetic openings that have happened in the psychedelic journey and bring it back into our. [SPEAKER_00]: waking, you know, ordinary lives in society, that can be often a challenge for folks who have really big powerful potent experiences to bring it back into their lives.

16:05[SPEAKER_00]: Often people feel very fresh and new and oh, I've had all this insight in all this healing and then coming back into [SPEAKER_00]: very familiar life, very familiar relationships, maybe challenging circumstances or just a lifestyle that is not supportive of that new way of knowing themselves, it can be really easy to kind of fall back into. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, habits, patterns, ways of being. [SPEAKER_00]: So there's kind of, you know, there's practical aspects of integration, lifestyle, diet, nutrition, [SPEAKER_00]: how we want to construct our lives.

16:46[SPEAKER_00]: And then there's also spiritual aspects of integration. [SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes folks are coming up upon encountering in psychedelic journeys, information that really rubs up against who they know themselves to be, the frameworks that they have held in their lives. [SPEAKER_00]: And so really kind of navigating that skillfully, [SPEAKER_00]: So lots of different parts to how I approach integration, how I teach about integration, but touching on five different, the five different domains that I mentioned earlier, which are mind, body, spirit, community, nature.

17:28[SPEAKER_00]: I think a lot of the practices that I teach and kind of frameworks that we talk about. [SPEAKER_00]: can fit into one of those domains as to how do we support ongoing integration as a long relational arc of integration. [SPEAKER_00]: I think one of their pieces often as facilitators or medical professionals even, [SPEAKER_00]: It's common to think about integration as oh yeah we do that right we have one preparation session one integration session and very integrated but it has been my experience and and you know the experience of people much wise are the me as well that integration can take.

18:18[SPEAKER_00]: 10 years, you could be really integrating a powerful experience for a long time. [SPEAKER_00]: And so it is more about creating framework-second hold this long arc of experience and an evolution that psychedelics can catalyze. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, okay. [SPEAKER_02]: So there's a ton in what you said there. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm thinking about, so first of all, the first thing that I thought of and what you said is, I thought about one big thing that's going on.

18:56[SPEAKER_02]: And I think when it comes to psychedelic work, probably this is where [SPEAKER_02]: The most people have heard about it, the most often, is a lot of veterans who are going in doing psychedelic healing retreats. [SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of talk on different podcasts about this. [SPEAKER_02]: And I mean, a lot of the discourse about legalization of psychedelics and need for research is really focused on veterans. [SPEAKER_02]: as a so common in our culture, when we think about trauma, people think about veterans.

19:37[SPEAKER_02]: So if someone is, someone who joins the military who has this idealized expectation of the heroism that they'll be able to have and the camaraderie and all of the best parts of what [SPEAKER_02]: joining any group, bring and what military service brings, the moral injury piece seems to come up for a lot of people when they go into those experiences and kind of unexpectedly they they're like, oh my gosh, all these things, I don't know, I have nowhere to put these things and then return to normal life where there's a big identity around [SPEAKER_02]: heroic service and, you know, there's so much in for people, especially those who have had more career military experiences, there's such a identity wrapped up in this is who you are.

20:39[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, the way that one is viewed, and if you're having a different relationship to some of the experiences you had, I can imagine that that [SPEAKER_02]: that's really hard to know what to do with that. [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm naming veterans because generally people who go into the military are also not necessarily people who would typically seek out therapy. [SPEAKER_02]: Unless maybe mandated to or in an extreme crisis and that's the only option that is offered.

21:18[SPEAKER_02]: So, I think that a lot of therapists and a lot of humans are going to be aware of these kinds of experiences happening for people they go away for a week or weekend to another country with a group of fellow veterans and then they come back and they're feeling like they're losing their mind and they don't know what to do with that. [SPEAKER_02]: Practicing with psychedelics be able to view that need. [SPEAKER_02]: You know, like, because I can't imagine that people would say, people who don't really know much about psychedelics and don't know much about integration might think this person is now psychotic.

22:03[SPEAKER_02]: They've had a psychedelic experience and now they're psychotic and how are we gonna, you know, like, they're lost kind of thing. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's a great question because it sort of speaks [SPEAKER_00]: in a psychedelic experience. [SPEAKER_00]: And it can happen with all different types of trauma. [SPEAKER_02]: Yes. [SPEAKER_00]: And also, [SPEAKER_00]: speaking specifically to veterans in kind of that experience is traditionally a very compartmentalized, controlled, contained way of moving through the world.

22:45[SPEAKER_00]: And so when there is a big experience with psychedelics, it that has opened up perhaps, [SPEAKER_00]: trauma that was experienced in their service, more injury, as you said, even family of origin, you know, first thing, it's like not having the framework of how to or the container and framework to the land and understand what it is that has been opened up. [SPEAKER_02]: Once the compartments are not available, [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, and neurobiologically, right, like some, the mechanism of some psychedelics is disorganizing the brain, right, it's like, yeah, or creating flexibility in cognitive structures, which can be used for.

23:39[SPEAKER_00]: benefit and healing, but can also feel very disorienting if we don't have the right support and right container. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's a really powerful community to witness in their healing as well. [SPEAKER_00]: When there is support and when there is the opportunity to really integrate and [SPEAKER_00]: You know, to hear them say, it's, it's all about love really this whole journey, right? [SPEAKER_00]: You know, there are whole lives have been taught to just be sort of cut off from their hearts and have, have done what they had to do, right?

24:24[SPEAKER_00]: But [SPEAKER_00]: to be able to come back around to sitting and sharing vulnerable with people that they don't even know in community together and talking about love as the primary driving force of life is like wow that's really profound. [SPEAKER_02]: It's like integrating the heart back in that had to be separated for [SPEAKER_02]: to be able to do one's job. [SPEAKER_00]: But the end of the universe, right, is the key there, being able to be held in that experience.

25:08[SPEAKER_00]: understand and be open to it. [SPEAKER_00]: Yes. [SPEAKER_02]: So the way we think of therapy oftentimes, this is like about the difference between a holistic view of healing, and sort of a medical approach where we're going in and making this symptom [SPEAKER_02]: a psychedelic experience and they have preparation, experience, integration session, going their way, or maybe even have five integration sessions by phone after they get back home, just making like a looping memory or a thought that won't an intrusive thought go away or subside, [SPEAKER_02]: changes people can have as they integrate material that they encounter during their journeys.

26:12[SPEAKER_00]: I tend to think about psychedelic work as helping to work through or peel back [SPEAKER_00]: throughout a long arc of psychedelic work, often people experience, I feel more like myself than I ever have in my life. [SPEAKER_00]: I can hear my body when it's talking to me, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Like, I feel sensation where I never noticed that before. [SPEAKER_00]: I, and some that we know when we talk about symptom reduction, sometimes that also means I feel emotions that I never allowed myself to feel before, which can be uncomfortable, challenging.

27:08[SPEAKER_00]: You know, that goes with grief, anger, sadness, as well as joy, connection, happiness. [SPEAKER_00]: But the, the orienting [SPEAKER_00]: thread there is authenticity and connection to self to others. [SPEAKER_00]: So when we come into a place of more attunement, more authenticity and then interact with the world, sometimes I can go really uncomfortable, right? [SPEAKER_00]: We might experience that the world isn't [SPEAKER_00]: relationships around this maybe don't feel as aligned or our, you know, we want to create a life path that has more meaning and purpose or maybe the the values that we had previously held, which really motivated.

28:05[SPEAKER_00]: a certain life path before are now kind of in question was that my story was at somebody else's story. [SPEAKER_00]: So this, the gift I think often is this experience of authenticity, of alignment, of more attunement, connection, and then, [SPEAKER_00]: We have to make some adjustments in our lives often to support that, to allow those changes to sort of be manifests in the world, in our, have its practices beliefs, in our life-scape, in our schedule, in our rituals, our routines, our ways of being with other people, [SPEAKER_00]: So integration is both, you know, conceptual sort of integrating the insights and ideas, but it's also very practical like what do we need to put into action in our lives and create to be able to sustain it.

29:06[SPEAKER_02]: As you're speaking, I just feel the sort of the message of like, it's a transformational experience. [SPEAKER_02]: when you return to your life, it won't, you won't be the way you were before. [SPEAKER_02]: So it's not going to feel the same, and integration is about. [SPEAKER_02]: how do I adapt to this shift? [SPEAKER_02]: And it's sort of like when we're going through therapy and we're like, why am I starting to feel worse? [SPEAKER_02]: That's what sometimes people will describe.

29:42[SPEAKER_02]: Like I seem like I have more sadness, more pain, more. [SPEAKER_02]: Now my body hurts in all these places that before they were dissociated. [SPEAKER_02]: So, [SPEAKER_02]: It wasn't feeling it. [SPEAKER_02]: It just felt numb and I didn't like that, but now it hurts. [SPEAKER_02]: But but also like, that's not a fixed state either. [SPEAKER_02]: These are like processes that are fluid. [SPEAKER_02]: And and what you're speaking about this long arc, you've said a few times.

30:11[SPEAKER_02]: You're really kind of talking about not just [SPEAKER_02]: I don't want to feel the way I feel, so I'll go do psychedelics, and then I'll feel good and happy, but being a whole living, breathing, being with a range of, you know, joy, sadness, pain, anger, fear, confusion, sense of purpose, sense of meaningless, sense [SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, our culture just like, we, it's just like quick fix, quick fix, quick fix. [SPEAKER_02]: And I think that's a lot of what people are hearing when they're hearing about psychedelics now.

30:59[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I think, [SPEAKER_00]: One thing that came up as you're talking to is around integration. [SPEAKER_00]: We can be integrating many things throughout our lives. [SPEAKER_00]: Like the term we talk about a lot with psychedelics, but we're also integrating grief loss. [SPEAKER_00]: becoming a parent major life thresholds where it's like an often it's sudden right suddenly the way that I knew who I knew myself to be in the world is no longer true it's that you know I'm a different person on the other side of this so I think that.

31:45[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that quick shift is what calls for, oh, yeah, we'd be some support around integrating this, integrating who I now know myself to be. [SPEAKER_00]: And the other interesting thing about psychedelic experiences is that. [SPEAKER_00]: They can be very expensive and otherworldly and. [SPEAKER_00]: time and space and spiritual experiences and so we don't have in our kind of colonized western society, medical model, we don't have inherently a framework that can hold that.

32:34[SPEAKER_00]: if in my training, if you're hearing voices or you're connecting with the ancestors, we're assessing for pathology, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And so the unique and extraordinary experiences that are available and often spontaneously happened with working with psychedelic medicines, it is a very [SPEAKER_00]: people need to support and integrating and understanding and making sense of. [SPEAKER_00]: In other cultures where indigenous lineages are more intact and with medicines like Ayahuasca that say or even mushrooms held in an indigenous container, there is a cosmology that can hold those experiences.

33:25[SPEAKER_00]: And so integration is likely not as much of a [SPEAKER_00]: a concept, right? [SPEAKER_00]: It's more seamless. [SPEAKER_00]: We integrate into the living world and, you know, this is a part of that. [SPEAKER_00]: It, I think it's a unique need in access or catapulting into legal psychedelic therapy and increased access. [SPEAKER_00]: It's a unique need in our culture to support all of these types of experiences. [SPEAKER_02]: And glad you brought that up.

33:57[SPEAKER_02]: And there was, I wanted to ask you before, this is my personal thing, when people say cosmology, I know the word and I sort of grasp what it is. [SPEAKER_02]: But every time I hear someone say it, I want to ask them to explain what it is because the word cosmology seems to contain multitudes in the word itself and naming that we don't have [SPEAKER_02]: a framework in colonized Eurocentric culture. [SPEAKER_02]: You know, we've talked about this here before, like that we don't have rights and rituals of passage that we would have had if we were still connected to our indigenous culture that our ancestry comes from.

34:50[SPEAKER_02]: Can you tell about what you mean when you say, having a cosmology to support that? [SPEAKER_02]: What that is and what we don't have. [SPEAKER_00]: in this simplest, kind of distilled way, I think about that as it's a cosmology being how we locate ourselves, orient ourselves in time and space and spirit with relationship to nature. [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, the cosmos, all that is, how we orient ourselves are community our culture in all that is.

35:32[SPEAKER_00]: Western Connise mindset that is often very narrow, very narrow and segregated and isolated. [SPEAKER_00]: And so [SPEAKER_00]: thing in many ways that's what our we experience culturally as challenging and, you know, creating pathology and isolation at our inspiration. [SPEAKER_00]: But it's a get it's such a fundamental level that we don't recognize it. [SPEAKER_00]: What's missing? [SPEAKER_02]: and that brings me to the other thing that I was going to ask you that you about that you named before.

36:15[SPEAKER_02]: I think you said it when we first started talking, but then when while we've been recording too, I believe you brought this up too, maybe not. [SPEAKER_02]: But what you said is that in many people's [SPEAKER_02]: One with oneself again, potentially, during psychedelic experiences, there's often a lot of grief that comes up. [SPEAKER_02]: I would like you to share a little bit more about your perspective on that, if you will. [SPEAKER_00]: I think grief can happen, can arise and be experienced for many people for many different reasons, right, many different experiences, cultural experiences, cultural and historical trauma.

37:05[SPEAKER_00]: trauma that, you know, has been done to individuals in terms of psychedelics, why I, what I see that they may uniquely sort of open the door, open the door, too, is when we remember, you know, if we have an experience in a psychedelic journey, we remember perhaps that [SPEAKER_00]: connected to a lineage of humans who moved and lived and related to the Earth and each other in a different way. [SPEAKER_00]: That is like, you can feel it.

37:48[SPEAKER_00]: If you've had that experience, it's like your body knows. [SPEAKER_00]: There is something that is of our original template. [SPEAKER_00]: There are original blueprint. [SPEAKER_00]: And then there's where we are. [SPEAKER_00]: the first part of our lives and how our society is constructed, it's being so far removed from that. [SPEAKER_00]: And so for me, and just personally in my experience, and the grief has been about what was lost, you know, those connections that were lost, the wisdom traditions that were lost, [SPEAKER_00]: what let's say should be how we're designed and how we're living and that is a long journey back of reclamation and while I've been on it for a while, there's still a long way to go.

38:49[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, thank you for naming that. [SPEAKER_02]: That's what I see too. [SPEAKER_02]: And really, that's what I feel that so many of us are tapping into this huge collective grief. [SPEAKER_02]: And when I say I see, I didn't make that up. [SPEAKER_02]: I have learned this from other teachers who, once it's explained, it's like, yes, that's what it is. [SPEAKER_02]: But at the same time, it feels this like ambiguous loss because with the, you know, stripping of connection to, [SPEAKER_02]: roots and culture what are we what's lost what there's not a thing like you don't know what it is if it's not there you don't know that it ever was or could have been and so then you know it the medicalized individualized approach of psychology is very well suited to say this is an individual problem with you [SPEAKER_02]: need a medication like instead of this is a right way to feel it's actually telling us something needs to change.

40:08[SPEAKER_02]: It's so endemic, emblematic of our culture that we instead of asking why are so many people feeling this way or saying, [SPEAKER_02]: you know, let's make it go away and pretend it's not happening. [SPEAKER_02]: And that's, you know, that's the cycle that keeps repeating generation after generation. [SPEAKER_02]: And, but as more and more people are, whether it's through psychedelics or shamanic work or trans personal work or, you know, which isn't always the same or, [SPEAKER_02]: other ways of not being an ordinary consciousness, the more people begin to see the more, I guess, potential there is for change.

41:02[SPEAKER_02]: Hope there can be for change. [SPEAKER_01]: That's what I hope. [SPEAKER_00]: That's so too. [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that in terms of, [SPEAKER_00]: systemic and cultural harms that we witness and have been witnessing for years in [SPEAKER_00]: and people of color, marginalized populations. [SPEAKER_00]: It's like that has been, it's more overt, right? [SPEAKER_00]: It's easier to see, and there is this desire to reduce harm to help to get involved with activism.

41:41[SPEAKER_00]: And I think we are in a much better place to be an ally and be a support when we can be rooted, like well rooted and well-resourced. [SPEAKER_00]: in our own roots, our ancestral lineage traditions that we all have of all cultures, and so we're not looking to fix or save or appropriate anyone else's, but that we can all be in community together, bringing our [SPEAKER_00]: unique gifts to support collective healing and create a society that we want to be in, that we, you know, where others are supported.

42:22[SPEAKER_02]: Well, thank you so much, Erin, for the work that you're doing to help [SPEAKER_02]: where they can find this stuff that you're doing, you offer training, you have consultations, supervision, as you mentioned. [SPEAKER_02]: So give us a little recap on what people can connect with you for and where to find you. [SPEAKER_00]: Sure. [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you. [SPEAKER_00]: So my practice is prism wellness. [SPEAKER_00]: It's prism, hyphen wellness.com and all of our offerings largely can be found there.

43:09[SPEAKER_00]: So we do have individual therapists who support psychedelic integration and have been especially trained in integration framework. [SPEAKER_00]: I also offer [SPEAKER_00]: 16 hours, really a deep dive into therapists who want to support the longer arc, the skillful, holistic, relational arc of integrating from psychedelic experiences, preparation and integration. [SPEAKER_00]: So that's on the website as well. [SPEAKER_00]: It's Prismonus, psychedelic integration specialist certificate.

43:47[SPEAKER_00]: And then also you'll find on the website and Instagram, Instagram is prismualness.love and prismualness.us. [SPEAKER_00]: Opportunities for experientials, for training, for therapists. [SPEAKER_00]: and opportunities to connect in community. [SPEAKER_00]: So group integration and community circles for clinicians, and then also training and clinical supervision and mentorship circles for therapists who are interested in or who are already working in these spaces because really that consultation and community around, all of these really huge topics that we're talking about.

44:32[SPEAKER_00]: is so valuable as we move through this work and this new landscape in therapy. [SPEAKER_02]: There's never too much mentorship, apprenticeship, connection, community, we, therapists, and other helping professionals. [SPEAKER_02]: We need all the support we can get. [SPEAKER_02]: We are carrying heavy loads. [SPEAKER_02]: By the way, we need this support of our ancestors too. [SPEAKER_02]: So this is why we need to get connected with our roots and not believe that we alone are gonna be the one to save the world.

45:06[SPEAKER_02]: We must work together, all of us. [SPEAKER_02]: So Aaron, thank you so much for being my guests on Therapy Chat today. [SPEAKER_02]: I really enjoyed our conversation. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, thank you, Lara. [SPEAKER_00]: It's a lovely to connect. [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for listening to Therapy Chat. [SPEAKER_01]: With your host, Laura Reagan. [SPEAKER_01]: LCSWC. [SPEAKER_01]: For more information, please visit Therapy Chat podcast.com.