What is Psychedelic Assisted Therapy?
Psychedelic-assisted therapy is a therapeutic approach that involves the use of psychedelics like psilocybin (found in certain mushrooms), MDMA, LSD, or ketamine, in a safe and supportive setting for the purpose of inner exploration and healing.
Because of the profound changes in perception, mood, and cognition induced by these medicines, one's body and heart become more open to release deeply held emotions, receive deep insight, and experience emotional healing, self-discovery and personal growth.
Depending on where you live, these substances are at different stages of legalization. In Oregon, psilocybin facilitation is legal through the OHA Measure 109 and Ketamine is available through prescription for off-label use.
What does psychedelic-assisted therapy look like:
Preparation: Prior to the psychedelic session, the facilitator will have a number of preparatory sessions with you to establish trust, set intentions, and ensure you are well-informed about the process.
Administration: During the therapy session, you are given a dose of the psychedelic substance in a safe and supportive environment. The facilitator provides guidance and support throughout the experience.
Integration: After the session, the facilitator helps you process the insights and experiences gained during the psychedelic session and find practices and new ways of being to integrate these insights into your daily life.
Benefits of psychedelic-assisted therapy:
Emotional Healing: Psychedelics can facilitate the release and processing of repressed emotions, leading to emotional breakthroughs and healing.
Enhanced Self-Awareness: The altered state of consciousness can help you gain new perspectives on their thoughts, behaviors, and life experiences, promoting self-awareness and personal growth.
Reduction in Symptoms of Mental Health Issues: Psychedelic-assisted therapy has shown promise in reducing challenging symptoms, especially in individuals who have not responded to traditional treatments.
Improved Well-Being: Many people report a greater sense of well-being, increased mindfulness, and a deeper connection to themselves and others after psychedelic-assisted therapy.
Breaking Negative Patterns: This work can help you disrupt entrenched negative thought patterns, stories and behaviors, allowing you to develop healthier coping strategies and behaviors.
Spiritual and Existential Insights: Many experience profound spiritual or existential insights during psychedelic-assisted therapy, coming to know themselves experientially as lovable, precious and of profound worth. These experiences can lead to increased self-compassion, self-esteem and a greater sense of meaning and purpose in your life.
Psychedelic Integration
Having a psychedelic journey can be a profound and life-changing experience, but these life-changes don't just happen by themselves. A powerful Ayahusaca or mushroom journey can be confusing, scary, instructive, insightful or sublime, but without gathering the gems you found along the way, polishing them and taking them with you, your profound experience can slip back into the unconscious and just become a good story to share with your friends around the fire.
Psychedelic integration is the process of assimilating the insights and experiences gained from psychedelic journeys into your daily life. This practice is essential for maximizing the therapeutic and transformative potential of these experiences, helping you make sense of profound moments and promote personal growth, healing, and self-awareness.
Integration is not just about the experience itself but about how it is woven into the fabric of your life, leading to deeper understanding, self-awareness, resilience, and fulfillment.
Psychedelic integration encompasses several key elements to help you fully benefit from your experiences:
Sense-Making: What the heck just happened?!? After a psychedelic experience, it’s essential to reflect on your experience. This involves recalling the journey, noting significant moments, emotions, and visions, and making connections to your life.
Completion of Processes: Psychedelic experiences can activate deep psychological and emotional processes. Integration involves continuing and completing these processes, which might include grieving unresolved losses, confronting past traumas, landing a soul fragment that had split off during a traumatic event or embracing newfound self-acceptance.
Developing New Practices: Integration often requires establishing new routines and practices that support and sustain the changes initiated during the psychedelic experience. This might include changing your relationship to certain substances or unhealthy people in your life, becoming aware of and altering your negative inner dialog, spending time in nature, or engaging in self-designed ritual or creative activities.
Ongoing Self-Reflection: Integration is an ongoing process that requires regular self-reflection. Practices like journaling, mindfulness and somatic exploration can really enhance the insights and growth you experience in psychedelic states.
Whether you have had a profound Ayahuasca, cannabis, mushroom or DMT journey, or experienced a powerful or scary experience while tripping with your friends, Anat can help you understand what happened and help you work with the material that is emerging.
Who would benefit?
If you've had any of the following experiences:
Depersonalization or out of body experience during or connected to a psychedelic experience
Feeling like you were going to die
Repressed memories emerging into consciousness
A confusing or scary journey, a “bad trip”
A powerful ego-dissolution or loss of self
Mystical experiences or Unity Consciousness
Experience of other realms, dimensions and beings – celestial realms, hell realms, faery worlds, machine worlds, etc
Intense emotional release
Insights about your current and past relationships
Insights into your patterns and habits
Insights into your family lineage or ancestral trauma
Existential questions about the nature of reality, existence, and consciousness
Inner child healing
With nearly 2 decades of inner exploring through altered state work, Anat has extensive personal experience and training to help you make sense of, ground and integrate a powerful experience, even decades later.
Call 503-479-8096 or email Anat LeBlanc for a free consultation: AnatLuceLeBlanc@gmail.com
Psilocybin Services
(Coming soon)
