Do we need psychotherapy after psychedelic use?
Psilocybin or Ketamine do not erase your memory, they may also not erase all your false beliefs about yourself. You may still get triggered after your journey and your shadows or inner critics may still come up. But what may be different in facing the storms and difficult situations are the memories and truths of your journey. The memory of spaciousness within us will keep giving us a chance to pause and reflect before acting. It’s a feeling similar to meditation. The experience of being able to hold our emotions and being able to look at them, like a cloud in the sky. Except that psychedelics get us to this skill and experience much faster! That pause, that separation that allows us to become an observer of our thoughts and emotions is everything. It helps us realize that we are not our thoughts. It helps us in this constant process of holding life and its difficulties —the challenges, the shadow, the struggles, the beliefs about the wounds we still carry from childhood. The unconscious is hijacking our parts and attention less. You can see more clearly how earlier relationships were shaped by unmet needs, projections, and inherited relational patterns. You can learn not to judge these past versions of yourself. You can understand them. Understanding replaces shame. Insight replaces repetition. You begin to recognize before reacting.
Life with ego is a constant process of working with your experiences, and choosing to turn them into acceptance, empathy, kindness, and understanding for ourselves and others. That is why psychotherapy post our journeys is important, because it supports us in this constant process. Psychotherapy after psychedelic experiences helps us see more clearly, it helps us implement change better, it helps us process the information better without falling back into old patterns. I will give you an example of this weekend, my daughter’s volleyball team was cheated out of a big win, when I made my way over to the other parents after the game, there was much commotion and anger, filing complaints with the volleyball association. At first I had no idea what all this anger was about? Then it dawned on me…they are still hung up on injustices and having lost the game. My mind had let go already, the loss was in the past, there will be many more games. A beautiful feeling, no? Working with someone who truly understands psychedelic healing can help you turn your experiences into calm and peace. Peace will not just automatically arrive on your doorstep. But you get to choose it.
The simplest way to put it…
Psychedelics without therapy is like…
striking a match but not lighting anything with it
opening a door but not walking through
That is if you are looking for emotional healing. If your objective is recreational use, that is a different story!
