Welcome to the 141 licensed therapists integrating with psychedelic therapies who are reading today’s letter. If you’re reading this but haven’t subscribed, subscribe here.

📋 In this issue

• A short review of the 5 top treatment modalities that work well with psychedelic therapies.

📢 Announcements

• Mark your calendar for the next Therapist Integration Council meeting! 8/15 at 10am PST/ 1pm EST. Click here for the calendar invite.
• Get my 24-page ethical due diligence paper.

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A useful analog for psychedelics is an amplifier. Whatever the client is focused on or trying to address in their lives, psychedelics can amplify that inner work in some amazing ways. This is why (mind)set and (physical) setting is so important for their journey.

With this amplification being the case, it's worth considering the type of treatment modalities that work well with psychedelic therapies.

If you're trained in these 5 treatment modalities, psychedelic therapy will be intuitive for you!

• ACT
• IFS
• SE
• MBCT
• EMDR

ACT - Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

One thing many therapeutic psychedelic journeys have in common is an up-close experience with challenging emotions. A therapeutic psychedelic journey can feel like a roller coaster of emotions. As a therapist, you already know fully experiencing emotions without hiding from them or pushing them away is immensely therapeutic for clients.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) helps clients accept themselves with whatever emotion they experience, and commit to behavioral changes that will provide for healthy long-term outcomes in their lives. Having these skills can naturally help guide clients through every stage of the psychedelic therapy process- from preparation, through experiential, and into integration. In fact, ACT is what Yale researchers determined as an effective modality for psilocybin-assisted therapy in this manual.

IFS - Internal Family Systems

Psychedelics can act as a magnifying glass as you look inward at your psyche. Often people discover different parts of themselves that need to be acknowledged, nurtured, or healed. From younger ego states to the over-worked protector, to the shadow - Internal Family Systems (IFS) is the top modality for helping therapists facilitate this inner healing work between parts of the whole system in our clients.

There are strong themes of IFS in the MAPS MDMA-Assisted therapist training, and other psychedelic-assisted therapy trainings, for this exact reason. If you're already trained in IFS, the experience many clients have during psychedelic therapy will be very intuitive for you.

SE - Somatic Experiencing

The body keeps the score. If you're a therapist who has spent any time around trauma, it's no secret trauma manifests itself physically in the body. From chronic aches and pains to full-on autoimmune disorders, unprocessed trauma is often a common denominator. Somatic Experiencing (SE) is all about helping clients tune into the body and help facilitate the healing and movement of trauma stored physically.

With psychedelics being an amplifier, this includes amplified awareness of the physical body. While in an amplified state, therapists trained in SE can help clients facilitate healthy movement to clear stuck trauma. This can also be an effective integration tool to help clients continue working on the physical manifestation of trauma after they've become more aware of its existence during a psychedelic experience.

MBCT - Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy

Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), or really any mindfulness-based modality, is a wonderful compliment to any therapy, particularly psychedelic therapies. Mindfulness training can cultivate an awareness of thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations that help clients identify what needs to be addressed. I often use the saying: "Awareness is half the battle."

Minfulness-based approaches can help a client throughout all stages of psychedelic therapy. During preparation, it can help a client work with fears/anxieties before a psychedelic journey and help them identify what they may want to set their intention toward. During experiential, mindfulness can help a client stay grounded and return to the present if they are getting overwhelmed, while also helping maintain focus on their intention. And finally, during the integration phase, a regular mindfulness practice often becomes a tool for ongoing inner work and access to a state of mind and connection to all things that psychedelics show are possible.

Having some form of mindfulness-based tool in your therapeutic toolbox, you're already equipped with a strong foundation for supporting the psychedelic therapy process.

EMDR - Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing

Eye-Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is an advanced modality that can incorporate elements of all the previously mentioned techniques. While more subtle than a psychedelic journey, EMDR can also be an amplifier. The bilateral stimulation that occurs with EMDR activates the hippocampus, enabling clients to recall more details of a memory. EMDR helps clients efficiently process a specific trauma or stressor and find healing, resolution, or closure.

During the EMDR process, a therapist can incorporate elements of ACT, IFS, and MBCT, and built into EMDR is a strong emphasis on somatic (SE) awareness and processing. Phases 1-3 of EMDR can occur during the preparation and experiential phases of psychedelic therapy. Phases 4-8 are perfect for the integration phase of psychedelic therapy, leveraging the neuroplastic window after a psychedelic journey to help clients really amplify their processing, healing, and growth. If a client has a distressing psychedelic experience, you can even use EMDR to help them process and find relief through integration.

If you're a therapist trained in EMDR, you can leverage psychedelic therapy to help clients have a richer, deeper experience. As a Certified EMDR Therapist and Consultant-in-Training (only four hours left!), I've been putting a lot of thought into how EMDR and psychedelic therapies can support each other and I'm building new protocols for this. Stay tuned!

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Well, that's it for now. I hope you can make it to the next Therapist Integration Council meeting on August 15... Mark your calendar now so you don't miss it!

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Until next time,

Chris

PS- Have questions or topics you'd like to see discussed? Reply to this email and let me know!

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Therapist Integration: Integrating licensed therapists into the field of psychedelic therapies.

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Disclaimer: The information contained in this newsletter is for informational purposes only. This is not legal advice and I make no guarantees about the outcomes or results from information shared in this newsletter. Proceed at your own risk and discretion.

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