July 9, 2025 • 49 mins
Registered psychologist, writer, researcher and podcast host Dr. Hillary McBride has done so much work and research in the field of therapy and how people work in general. We chat about vicarious healing, psychedelics in a therapeutic setting and the power of sharing stories.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Anny and Samantha and welcome to Stuff
I Never told you production, I hurtrat you. And welcome
to registered psychologist, writer, researcher, and host of the podcast
Other People's Problems, Doctor Hillary McBride. Thank you so much
(00:28):
for joining us.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Oh I'm so excited.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
I can tell already we're gonna have so much fun
talking about some really hard stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
That's our show. Pretty much.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Before we get into that, though, could you introduce yourself
to our audience.
Speaker 4 (00:43):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Yeah, that's always such a tricky question for me, like
what side of myself do I show you? But as
you mentioned, I'm a psychologist, so I'm really interested in people,
in people's minds. And I think that's because I feel
kind of like a little bit of a mystery to
myself sometimes. And I'm also I really deeply believe in
the experience of curiosity as a way of meeting the world.
(01:05):
So I'm curious. I like people, I wonder what does
it mean to be human? All of that filters through
my work as a researcher, therapist, you know, podcast host, writer, psychologist.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Yes, there you go.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Yeah, and you have done quite a lot. Can you
tell us how you've got into this field.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Oh okay, So I laugh because it's not always what
people expect to hear me say when I say I'm
a psychologist, because I think it had some really therapy.
I think I had some very poor mental health care.
And also I have therapists parents, and like the language
of mental health and the discourse around like our mysteries
(01:47):
in our world was always a part of my growing up.
And so I think the mix of feeling like I
knew it could be better, like there's got to be
better for people than the things that I got in
mental health treatment, and also this like deep appreciation for
the mystery of our yeah, the inner landscapes. So yeah,
I think that there's like there's a mix of that.
(02:08):
And it was really on the back of eating disorder
treatment and recovery that I, you know, don't recommend always,
but disagreed with my treatment team's recommendations to go back
to treatment again and instead went to grad school, which
is a plot twist, And yeah, really fell in love
(02:30):
with the ability to change the actual quality of our
lives through research through relationship. Like I have a colleague
who says, don't get mad get data, which is I mean,
also get mad, but I love the idea of, you know,
getting research that really can change the way that it
feels to be us and in our bodies. And so
(02:51):
I'm really passionate about evidence based, you know, data shaping interventions,
and that's that's really driven me into my introt around
trauma work and embodyment and psychedelic psychotherapy and now kind
of some of more of my emerging research around spiritual
trauma and and the ways that we are hurting. Let
(03:12):
me tell you there's a lot of hurt that's happening.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Okay, I'm not gonna lie.
Speaker 5 (03:17):
My heart is racing because I'm so excited to talk
with you. And it's one of those moments when you
meet someone for the first time and then you're like,
oh my god, you have so much we have so
much in common.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
I want to talk to you about this. I want
to talk to you about this, and this is gonna
I'm going to overtalk you.
Speaker 5 (03:33):
So I'm trying to calm down because I'm so excited
about this conversation.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
I think we do that.
Speaker 5 (03:38):
Definitely want to put this here about content warning, because
we are going to talk about loss. We're going to
talk about pregnancy, We're going to talk about so many
things that when it comes like in conversation about therapy
and trauma work especially, and we've I don't know if
you know this yet, Hillary, but our show with Annie
and I began because we wanted to come on here
(03:58):
and talk about the me too movement, how it affected us,
and how therapy and trigger warnings are still so important
and why is relevant in conversations that it's not just
a niche thing.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Wow, So you are the legend story.
Speaker 5 (04:14):
Yes, I snuck in here because I was like, I
want to talk about trauma. Look, I'm very excited to
write a conversation.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
I'm so ready.
Speaker 5 (04:25):
But of course, because in all of this, among our
commonalities is that you are a podcast host.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
So can you tell us about your podcast?
Speaker 3 (04:36):
I would love to. I would love nothing more than
to tell you. So I'm imagining when you're thinking about
is other people's problems?
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Is that correct? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (04:44):
So I was a innocent, naive. I think I made
him in a doctoral student at that time, and I
don't know how it happens. Someone gave my phone number
to a Emmy winning journalist, Jodie Martinsen.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
So I don't know how we got connected.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
I actually should go back and ask her about it,
but she reached out to me because she had had
this idea as someone who's crafting stories and investigating the
world through the lens of journalism, was like, wait a second,
therapy in actuality is a lot different the way it's
portrayed in media than the way that people talk about it.
We have these tropes of the therapists who kind of
sits back and is taking their notes and really like
(05:24):
judgmentally looking over the top of their glasses at someone
and then they dispense this you know, perfectly timed insight
that also helps the plot of the show along, right.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
This is kind of the way that it is in
TV and media.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
She was like, oh, this is this is really different
in real life than it's being portrayed. And so the
idea came about to put mikes in therapy sessions with
clients consent and then you know, turn it into something
that people who weren't in the room could then really
benefit from. And the principle behind this, I think is
(05:58):
vicarious learning and by care healing, Like we talk about
vicarious trauma in the trauma world, that we can kind
of like catch trauma in a way as we're you know,
bumping up against people in their stories and bearing witness
the pain that happens in the world around us. But
we can also heal vicariously too. We can listen to
people's learning and insights and journeys of transformation and get
(06:20):
something ourselves feel us alone. So the idea is to
turn therapy sessions into podcast episodes, and we've done that
for four seasons. We've done that over the course of
my doctoral degree and then beyond, you know, my work
has really changed, does all of us do right? Like
who we are five years ago, ten years ago is
really different than who we are now. And one of
the things that's become important for me in my clinical
(06:43):
work and academic research is psychedelic psychotherapy. And when you're
talking about things that people are talking about but are
not hearing or like don't actually have well represented, that
feels like a you know, there's like some some flashing
lights that go off in my mind, Like this is
another thing that we need to bring people into to
kind of demystify. So the idea for season five was
(07:05):
to put microphones in sessions of psychedelic psychotherapy with patients
and then including a session of my own where I'm
the patient and as a way of really showing people like, hey,
it could look like this, or this is kind of
what it sounds like or here's what it might feel like,
both to give people some education and information about what's
going on kind of behind the scenes and the mystery
(07:26):
of it all. But then there's also this other kind
of like there's this agenda that I have that I
think there's a lot of maybe unskilled is a generous word,
like an unskilled psychedelic psychotherapy that's happening where people don't
actually know how to work with trauma but are getting
into really deep water, both as the person who's sitting
(07:47):
and the person who's experiencing the medicine work.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
So my other aim was.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Like, hey, guys, it could be like this, Like you
could have somebody who kind of knows what they're doing,
and here's something to look for. So maybe creating a
benchmark or a standard in a way for the kind
of quality of care that we get people. So Season
five of other people's problems is people doing psychedelics, me
doing therapy. You get to hear it into the wild, mysterious,
beautiful world of people's minds as they interact with hallucinogenic
(08:16):
substances and get to heal in the process.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
It's great when someone gives us an answer that touches
on so many other points we want to talk about later.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
I just teeing you up really nice. Okay, you are
for sure.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
One of the other ways we overlap is back when
we Samantha and I did start with our trauma mini series,
we also did therapy and released a podcast of our
therapy sessions.
Speaker 4 (08:40):
Each Oh my gosh, think so much overlap and right, yes,
but it was the saying of that same desire of
like wanting to destigmatize it, maybe make it less intimidating,
because I think a lot of people don't really know what.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
To expect outside of those movie tropes or perhaps a
bad experience. And I have to say, I'd never heard
of using psychedelics in a therapeutic setting. This was new
to me. So can you kind of explain how how
that plays out? If I was somebody who was like
I want to get this or I think this might
(09:17):
help me, how would I how would it happen?
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Okay, So the answer to that question varies state to state,
country to country, province to province, and so I can't
actually give you a definitive answer or a pathway. But
what I can tell you is that in BC, which
is the province in Canada that I live in, there
are certain pathways depending on what your presenting concerns are.
So if you come to someone you say, hey, I've
got you know, I've got cancer, I'm dying, I'm feeling
(09:44):
really anxious about end of life, we would take one pathway.
We would say, hey, we're going to put in an
application to the Government of Canada. We're going to make
sure that this is all about board. We've got a
doctor who's ready to prescribe for you, We've got a
therapist who's got a license.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Here we go.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
We're going to like, we're going to take this, We're
going to take this next step above ground legally to
help you with this. And then there are other pathways
that perhaps have less gate keeping to them, like treatment
resistant oppression or eating disorders addiction complex PTSD. I mean,
there's so many other presenting concerns. But you could go
(10:18):
to your doctor, if your doctor's familiar with this work,
or a doctor who does this work, and get an assessment.
And maybe a psychological assessment an intake, and then we
could get you into a clinic and you could get
aketamine treatment or a cannabis treatment. In a clinical trial,
maybe you'd get MDMA or LSD, or depending on if
you were leaving the country, maybe you would have ayahuasca
(10:40):
or a boga or I have a game. So there's
like lots of different medicines that people can use depending
on the pathway that they want to take. There's lots
of underground pathways to take for people, which includes a
lot of risk, but sometimes it includes access to treatment
that otherwise people can't get. And then there's above ground.
There's legal right there's things that are regulated and kind
(11:02):
of under the purview of clinical and medical guidelines. So
it really depends on where you are what you're getting
treatment for. But usually there's somebody involved who ideally knows
a lot about the kind of thing that you're wanting
treatment for and a lot about the kind of medicine
that you're using, and they have a really good set
(11:23):
of skills around how to work with you should you
re experience your trauma during the medicine, and they know
how to support you after with the what can feel
like the earth shakingness of getting access to stuff that
has been buried for a long time. Because one of
the things that's really powerful about psychedelic work is that
I think if you do it really well, you go
(11:44):
into the things that are hardest. Sometimes you get new
insight and space from it, but actually your body is
re entering the things that have been really difficult for
you to enter in ordinary states of consciousness, and you
can imagine understandably that would leave up and like maybe
on the other side of it feeling really like they survived,
(12:04):
like they're relieved it's over. They got through, but also like,
holy moly, that was a lot, right that that thing
that I buried for so long is here. Oh and
I've integrated it, and oh wow, I faced it head
on and I survived.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
But that's really big.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Like integration on the other side and looking at it
through the lens of attachment work is essential, and not
a lot of people out there are doing that. So
ideally you have someone who knows understands attachment, trauma, integration,
somatic work working with the body, and you know is
kind of on top of risks and benefits and has
lots of skill in that area.
Speaker 5 (12:40):
Wow, there's a lot in that you just said, Like
this conversation, we could talk about the demonizing of these
types of psychedelics, and especially in the US, you know,
we have a lot of things that we have to
power through because of the whole level of you know,
everything the war gets drug. You know, there's so much
to be said, but also an understanding that yes, there's
(13:00):
a responsibility in using these types of treatment and how
beneficial it can be. But also it can be like
if you have the bad players, You're like, you know,
there's so much to this conversation, and obviously you're you're
so good at like putting this in a professional conversation,
because I want to be like, yeah, f them people
who are not even listening to the benefit, you know,
(13:20):
like I really want to be angry. I'm an angry person.
But in general, that conversation about the layout of the
benefits and how it can be helpful if people are
willing to look at the depth of it, and again
the along lines of like, yeah, you need to understand trauma,
you need to understand attachment, which is something that's so
kind of new and regular conversations, you know, and like
everyday conversations people like attachment and I'm like, yeah, but
(13:41):
do you know what you're do you know what you're
talking about? Because there's this level of depth. And I
say this as a you know, someone who worked with
reactive attachment this, so are understanding that and trying to
have that conversation with people. But again, because we only
have a short amount of time going back, can you
for today, right, can you talk about how you got
(14:02):
into this specific branch of therapy and why you thought
it was so useful.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
So there's you know, there's the ways that our professional
interests are always shaped by our lived realities. I'm sure
you've heard the expression researches mesearch, And I can think
about my interest in trauma as being like more felt
at first than I understood why. Like when I think
(14:29):
about psychedelic work for trauma in particular, and kind of
that was really my gateway into the benefits of psychedelic psychotherapy.
I think back to how drawn I was to trauma
work before I ever had really unpacked my own trauma history.
And it's amazing how our bodies kind of move us
towards something in a way that maybe it doesn't really
make sense to our conscious awareness or our mind or
(14:50):
our narrative. But we're like, I feel like this is
so I have to keep watching the data that's coming
out around this. So I was drawn to trauma before
I understood it a trauma history. Was drawn to psychedelics
before I thought I ever would do psychedelics. And it
was because, you know, as an academic, as somebody who's
paying attention to the research literature in the field of traumatology,
I am always scouring.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
The you know, the clinical literature.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Like what is the best treatment, what do we do,
what recommendations do I make when I'm giving someone a diagnosis?
What are the ways that I can actually be at
the forefront of what we know about how people can heal?
And why why the treatments that were offering people aren't
working very well? And so I was paying attention to
the research literature and seeing, you know, all the clinical
(15:36):
trials coming out related to psychedelic psychotherapy and PTSD, particularly
from MAPS like the Maps Clinical Trials. And I had
colleagues who were working in the MAPS clinical trials as
psychiatrists or psychologists or therapists. And then it kind of
became clear through an unfortunate series of events in my
own life that sounds like, isn't that the name of
(15:57):
a children's book? Just to apply named children's book, They're
not about my own lived trauma, about some very different things.
I had a life threatening experience in a car accident,
and you know, it was February twenty nineteen, and I
(16:20):
did not think I was going to walk away from that,
and I did, and my rehab process started and my
I was doing intensive trauma processing therapy and using all
of the best treatments that I knew. And at this point,
I think I was like a I was in my
residency as a doctoral student, so I was most of
the way through my doctoral training and had specialized in trauma,
(16:42):
and so like I knew what to try, I knew
who to go to. Compared to the average citizen, I
was like hooked up right considering what's out there in
terms of medications and treatment, and knew what to ask for,
knew what was Evan's face, And it just like wasn't
really moving the needle for me. Like I could get
in a car, are I could drive, But really it
(17:04):
was so bad at that point, like my trauma symptoms
if my partner and I were going to watch a movie.
He would watch the movie first to make sure there
was no scenes involving cars, and then I would watch
it right like it was so acute that I was just,
you know, really stirred up and really terrified a lot
of the time. And I saw the research literature of
(17:25):
OT psychedelics and I thought, Okay, like, however scary that is,
it has to be better than what it feels like
to live right now. And because I knew people and
I knew ways of getting access to safe treatment, I
decided to take the risk. And what happened on the
(17:46):
other side of that I couldn't have predicted. And I
don't want to sell it, like I feel kind of
like a snake oil salesman, and I'm like, and then
my trauma symptoms were gone, poof, they disappeared. But the
reality is like, that is what happened, and that isn't
the case for everybody. Isn't something we could guarantee. Sometimes
people actually get more access to their trauma symptoms on
the other side of the work because they get connected
(18:07):
to the place of the terror, or they have memories
that they didn't have before. Right, So it's not always
a guarantee that it's going to be like that. But
I went from a PTSD diagnosis one day to having
a medicine session and the next day and from that
point on not meeting any diagnostic criteria, no flashbacks, safe,
(18:28):
no hypervigilance driving, watching movies with car or accidents in them.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
Like it was.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
It was kind of miraculous. And I remember thinking, this
is the thing, This is the thing that everybody's putting
behind like closed doors, Like this is the thing that
I've been told was going to make my brain fry
like an egg in a pan, you know, like all
of the you know, the anti drug propaganda, which, like
(18:54):
I was that's why I waited so long, is because
I really believed it. I was like, I am going
to become psychotic. I'm going to have psychotics spectrum disorders
on the other side of this, so of course I'm
not going to do it. And then I did it,
and I was like more connected to myself than I'd
ever been and felt safer.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
So there was.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
That, and then, you know, it's been interesting doing this
work with people over the last number of years, and
now I'm a faculty member at the Psychedelics Somatic Institute,
and I trained clinicians, and I have a training program
that I run with a colleague of mind. We call
it Catalyst, where we specialize in working with attachment and
somatic work and ketymine in particular to train clinicians because
we feel so strongly about giving people good, like good
(19:34):
skills to do this work. And life keeps happening, right like,
just because you're trauma specialist doesn't mean that everything feels
safe in your body for the rest of your life.
And so I had a series of medical events that
happened a year and a half ago at this point
and found that on the other side of them that
processing the trauma, processing the charge through psychedelics was exactly what.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
I wanted to do.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
And that's what you hear in in my episode of
season five of Other People's Problems, where you can hear
me digging into my own kind of more recent work.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
This is a pretty at least for a lot of us,
it feels like pretty new and seeing the research coming out,
I know that there's a history that a lot of
us don't know that you get into and podcasts, but
uh yeah, you also talk about in the first episode
about some of the big scientific and ethical questions that
(20:38):
we still have because it's new. Yeah, can you share
some of what those are?
Speaker 3 (20:43):
Well, one, we don't really understand how consciousness works, so
it's pretty wild that we're kind of messing with it
a little bit, Like where is your mind?
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Nobody?
Speaker 3 (20:52):
Sure, like probably in your body somewhere. And also like
between us as people, like it's definitely interpersonal phenomena, but
how does the mind work? And then how do we
alter consciousness? Like we have some guesses we can talk
about the serotonin, you know, receptors in the brain, but like, wow,
there's a lot of mystery to being human. So there's that, right,
(21:14):
And then there's also I think the access to treatment,
like the legal versus ethical conundrum that we're in because
we have good evidence that psychedelics for certain presenting concerns
is like a frontline treatment and yet it may be
that that's illegal still, so WHOA what do we do
with this tension that our academic research is showing us
(21:35):
this could change someone's life, but the government is saying no,
you can't have it, Or what do we do about
the fact that maybe there are some people who do
get access to it, but we don't have good regulation
around the skills for therapists. So there's kind of like
the wild wild West out there where anybody in a
context where it's legalized could do this work because there's
(21:55):
no accreditation process, certification process like licensure. It's still like
really really new in terms of creating treatment guidelines, ethical guidelines.
So you could be doing it legally but unethically right
or irresponsibly. You could be doing it illegally but very
ethically and responsibly. So there's like all of the tension
(22:16):
there to do with that. And then I think, you know,
one of the interesting things that we kind of get
into in this season too is what do we do
with recovered memories? What do we do with when people
access places inside of themselves that they don't have the
ability to confirm with others, like fragments of memories, And
(22:36):
how do we stay away from the you know, the
false memory history and the fiasco that you know, therapists
really have to recognize their's blood on their hands around
that and make sure how do we make sure that
people when they're asking the question was I abused? What
was it abused? Did it happen? What do we do
with the questions when we don't know?
Speaker 2 (22:56):
How do we like?
Speaker 3 (22:57):
And I really do believe that we can support people
to treat the charge and the activation around trauma even
if we don't have the narrative. And that's part of
working with a bottom up somatic approach and an attachment
based approach. But you know, like, what do we do
with the material that we find when people on psychedelics
have the question like, oh, I think this happened to me,
but their parents are dead and they can't ask their
(23:17):
parents or they can't confirm with someone. And then of
course there's like, oh my gosh, this whole other facet
of this, which is that psychedelic medicine really belongs to
indigenous people, and here we are kind of moving it
into political settings and creating treatment guidelines that are related
to white Western allopathic forms of medicine that disqualify or
(23:43):
kind of erase the way that psychedelics have been used
for millennia in community with incredible wisdom, Like we're people
who are getting and I include myself in this, like
people who are getting into this field but don't have
a long cultural.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
History of it.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
We have to be really careful about if we are
appropriating medicines, if we what can we can learn from
indigenous populations, what kind of the tensions between using plant
medicines that have been used by indigenous populations for a
long time versus like synthetic compounds that are relatively new
in terms of the history of medicine. So there's, like,
(24:21):
I think there's really important cultural pieces to look at
there too, in terms of like ownership of medicine and
wisdom and.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
How to use it now not to use it.
Speaker 5 (24:31):
Man, you just opened up a whole other topic that
we're going to have to write down and bring you back. Look,
would you to have a mini series with just you
in these conversations?
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Okay, I feel like I'm not helping you in this
conversation though. And then there are all.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
Of these things we have to think about too, and
it's just each of them could be their own novel.
Speaker 5 (24:47):
And I love that you address them because that is
one of the big dings when we talk about, especially
when we talk about like psychedelics, when we talk about
these drugs and how it had again been demonized and
used against Indigenous people and people of color in general,
and then coming back and be like, but they're not wrong,
Like it's such a big conversation in.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
Those oh so big, or then how about this too,
Like the paradox of that, like this work when it's
legal is so expensive, it can be I think there
are ways around that, and I think that that's the
responsibility of us as care providers and people who are
lobbying for changes in structures of care and health care
contexts and insurance context like we have to use our
(25:25):
voices to advocate for people who need this treatment but
don't have a voice.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
That it is.
Speaker 3 (25:31):
Weirdly paradoxical that so many of the people whose cultural
traditions would have given them access to psychedelic medicines now
are disenfranchised in the healthcare context where they can't even
access the thing legally that historically their ancestors would have
been using. Because they can't, you know, they're not welcomed
in the system. They're often disqualified for treatments they wouldn't
(25:53):
have necessarily have the money or the financial resources to
be able to pay for them. So there's like, man,
there's all sorts of stuff that's wrong with this, and
it can be profoundly dangerous, Like this could be the
exact worst thing a person could do for their mental health, right,
So we need to have people who are really, really
skilled at assessment. And what I like to say in
(26:15):
psychedelics psychotherapy is I will not say yes to psychedelics
with you unless you can say no to me, right
or unless I can also say no to you right,
Like there is something about there needs to be an
awareness of this not being a panacea and us being
able to slow down, and can there be a better treatment?
(26:38):
Can there be something that is more effective? Have you
tried any other things? Like can you do you actually
have the ability to say no to me? Because it's
going to be really hard to say no to me
on medicine if you can't say no to me in
ordinary states of consciousness. And then all of a sudden
something is coming up and it feels like, you know,
I'm saying, hey, can I hold your hand through that?
And if you don't know how to say no, does
(27:00):
that feel like I'm taking advantage of your body or
crossing a boundary? Like the negotiating of touch is another
thing that we really have to be clear about in
this work. When people often regress to younger developmental states
and they just want to be held and they want contact,
but maybe the adult part of them who walked into
the room and signed up for the treatment is not
(27:22):
into having their handheld or not having you know, their arm,
like in contact with my arms. So wow, we have
to be thoughtful about boundaries, ethics, like protectiveness of people.
It's I mean, there's so much here that can be
really muddy, and to go slow and to be thoughtful
(27:42):
and to be judicious I think, and to consider history
and culture and context and access to treatment is it's
the only way. It's the only way we can do
this and not have what happened in the sixties and
seven how seventies happen again where people are really reckless
and careless and they kind of like ruin it for
everybody else.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
Right, I mean understanding that.
Speaker 5 (28:03):
I think one of the things that we talked about
when we started the show is like, this is an
individual experience and it has to be that way. We
have to make sure we prescribe to that individual and
what they are going through because these people have boundaries
that are different from other people.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
These people have traumas that are other from different people.
Speaker 5 (28:20):
It might be the same trauma, but they reacted differently
or the outcome was different. So all about like personalized
care is so important in everything, yeah, but obviously specifically especially.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
In this Yeah, yeah, you're so right. Yeah, although that
kind of makes me think, like it's an interesting counterpoint
to that that psychedelics have been used in group contexts
since time immemorial and indigenous populations, right, there was often
either the shaman who would take the medicine and would
speak to people in the group, or people who take
(28:53):
medicine in a group context. And so there's that my
colleague and I that I'd referenced earlier. Through Catalyst, we
run group psychedelic psychotherapy because it's a powerful thing to
return people to community. And let me tell you, people
are lonely. There are people who are lonelier than they
have ever been. And this like loneliness and sleep feel
(29:14):
like the things that are going to drive us. I mean,
maybe social media used to, but are going to Are
theyre going to tank our mental health in the next
ten to twenty years if they haven't already, because people
are more disconnected from their bodies and from each other,
and so how do we use how do we use
medicines to actually bring people back into connection with each
(29:35):
other and the earth. And I think that that question
is a.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Very important one.
Speaker 3 (29:40):
But we're again, we're like right on the forefront of
asking questions like how do we do that ethically when
we're giving people individualized care?
Speaker 5 (29:46):
Too? Girl, Why are you overlapping our episodes because we
just talked about loneliness.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
Yes, I'm going, I'm going to come.
Speaker 5 (29:57):
I will never quitt lay internet.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
If anyway, if I go missing, everyone knows where to look.
Speaker 5 (30:04):
No, no, no, no, no, no no, We'll just.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Be having a slumber party. Yes, yet that's what will happen.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Yeah, yes, Well, you, as we've alluded to, as you've mentioned,
you did share your therapy session on the show, and
it was well, a question we often wrestle with Samantha
and I on this show is kind of where you
(30:33):
where do you draw the line of what to share?
What is healthy for you to share? So I'm just curious,
what was that experience like for you, Why did you
decide to do it, What were some of the factors
that went into your decision.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
It's important to know the timescale when you think about
me sharing. So I did, I had the hemorrhage, I
saw I was pregnant with twins. I lost the twins
and pregnancy. Ten days later, I had a very cute
hemorrhage within which I, you know, I thought I was
going to die for sure, and so all of that
(31:07):
was mixed together, like there's this not of trauma. And
then about six or six months later, five months later,
I had the psychedelic session, which was recorded that you
hear on this on the show, but it was about
a year later that it actually came out, which meant
I had a year without ever even thinking it was
(31:29):
going to go on the show, to process that in therapy,
to to make sense of it, to re listen, to
feel what that did in my body, and to when
you know, re listen and realize WHOA I can hear
myself say some of those things and it doesn't feel
as charged for me. Wow, it really does feel like, Okay,
my body's moved to the other side of some big intensity,
(31:50):
and I really know that I'm safe and I really
know that I'm here. So I had a lot of
time to discern if that was the right move. And
I had a lot of people in my life who
are protective of me, who care for me, who often
help me sort through things related to media like listen
and talk through like is this a good choice? Is
it's not a good choice? And ultimately what it came
(32:11):
down to for me is I think about three things,
and the first one is I think that we construct
the archetype of the healer or the guru in such
a way that disconnects them from their own humanity. And
we take people and we say, well, they're a therapist,
(32:33):
like they might never struggle with that, or even like,
you know, where it looks where I think maybe it's
most obvious as you have parents who look at therapists
who work with children and families and would never assume
that those therapists also struggle with their own parenting. Sometimes right,
like we assume something about the role of therapists or
psychologists that means that we're impervious to our own you know,
(32:57):
like psychological basement, and that we don't have things we
have to look through or work through or struggle with.
And in a way then I think that sets us
up societally to think that if we just knew enough
or had enough degrees or got enough insight, then we
wouldn't also struggle with the pain of being human, and
I just simply disagree. I just think that's not true, right.
(33:17):
I think that it hurts to be human, whether you're
a therapist or not, whether you're a healer or not,
whether you're a pastor or a rabbi or a guru,
or a yoga teacher or a meditation teacher. It just
hurts to be human. And I want to make more
spaces where we can allow the healers in our society
to be welcomed into the conversation of being human instead
(33:38):
of excluded and in a way pressure to transcend. So
that's the first thing I think. The second thing is
it's a really important particularly I mean you had mentioned
this related to the Me Too movement. It's so important
for women to have a path like out before them
(34:02):
by other women that model what it is like to
walk right into the heart of the experiences in our
body which have left us feeling disempowered, objectified, sexualized, powerless,
vulnerable at the hands of men in particular, and to
feel the way that it is possible to walk through
that to the other side, like what I wanted more
(34:24):
than anything for women listening to that episode, or anyone
who's experienced any kind of sexual trauma, genital trauma, medical trauma.
To be able to listen to that and say it
can go differently from me, like I don't have to
feel scared to be in my body because my body
actually knows how to get to the other side of
(34:44):
the fear that lives stuck inside of me because of
what happened to me that was never my fault. And
for us to have audio media stories, however it is
of people saying here's how much it hurt, is what
it looks like to get to the other side, I
think paves the way for us to create possibility inside
(35:06):
of our own nervous system that healing could happen for
us too. So I think there's that, And then I
think it's also just really important for people to see
that even though we might be leading that we are
still responsible to tend to what's inside of ourselves. And
so I may be a podcast host, I may be
(35:27):
a psychologist, but here's my vulnerability, Like I'm doing this
work too. I'm doing this work too, and I want
for you to do this work too. And I'm not
above this and you are not above this, and really
nobody is above this. And I think it just humanizes
the process of going towards our pain in a way
that I think I really want people to know, like, hey,
(35:50):
I'm doing it too, I'm doing it too.
Speaker 5 (36:03):
So I was in the social work field before I
crashed into this podcasting field, and one of the things
about my friend group would talk about was that most
of us are here because of trauma, much like yourself,
and feeling like we need to correct things or we
need to help the system and things, as well as
the fact we all often talk about Yeah, no therapists,
social workers, people who are in this field, they need
(36:24):
to be in therapy, they need to be in constant therapy,
they need a therapist to like survive this work, which
is exactly that level of understanding we are human, but
with that that vulnerability, because sometimes people will talk about
this that they expect their therapist to be perfect, or
their person who is whoever that's in charge of whatever
(36:46):
situation should be perfect. In the actualities, No, we're broken
and that's why we're doing this work.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
Yeah, Or I could say like we are we are
we broken? Are like are we actually brave enough to
go to the places that are scary and we're modeling
that for our patients, which like, I think that's the
piece that you try, right, Like, that's the thing that
I want. I feel most clear about myself whenever I
(37:12):
do therapy and whenever I'm sitting across from someone doing therapy.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
Is there's a whole bunch of people.
Speaker 3 (37:17):
Out there in the world who are way too defended
and way too scared, Like under the defense is the
scared to look at, Like what does it feel like
inside of me? And the people who walk in the
door our culture might say that they're broken because that's
the way, you know, the story I have to tell
about why they need help and why other people don't.
(37:37):
And I think, actually, it's like, these are the people
who are the most powerful. These are the people who
are the bravest. These are the people who are telling
the truth about what doesn't work in our society.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
Now I feel like I'm preaching at you.
Speaker 3 (37:48):
I love it. I'm like this is like I really
think like people who who go to mental health treatment,
whether it's a group therapy setting, whether it's individual therapy,
whether it's like people who are in commune unity having
consciousness raising conversations, like I don't think individual psychotherapy has
the market on what healing looks like.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
I think I can look like.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
So many different things. But these are the people who
are often the bravest and brave enough to say it
hurts to be human, and I can't do it alone,
and I want to understand where the hurt comes from.
If I can do something different so I can feel
better and feel different, so that I can help other
people feel better and different, it is like, it is
the most admirable thing.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
I think.
Speaker 5 (38:30):
You start becoming self aware, you realize, oh, I need
this help. But he's like, because doing this alone is
not working really exactly, because when you were talking about
your own work and listening to that episode was so
raw and so marble. Yeah, but with that made me
wonder because myself, who've gone through other types of trauma
but understanding trying to like go through and relive the trauma,
(38:52):
how do you deal with that post traumatic stress, like
that level that's so constantly on red on an alert
that it feels like trying to navigate that through therapy
or trying to relive the trauma, it's so difficult to
even get past that point. And I know you kept
saying the phrase I'm here but not here to kind
(39:14):
of bring awareness to what was happening in your consciousness
and subconsciousness.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
How do you work through that.
Speaker 5 (39:21):
In this type of real deep trauma work.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
Yes, yeah, one of the things that comes to mind,
and there's a bunch, but the first thing that comes
to mind is something called the homeostatic self correcting mechanism.
And the homeostatic self correcting mechanism is just our way
of saying, in light of the autonomic nervous system, there
is an innate drive within us as a mammal to
(39:48):
move us back towards homeostasis. And if you're listening to
this or in this conversation, you're like, what what does
that mean? Think about any time you were hot and
then you sweat, Right, there is like an unconscious but
conscious like there's like a consciousness to your body's wisdom
that says, hey, something is getting just a little too
(40:09):
hot here, I'm going to.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
Cool you down.
Speaker 3 (40:12):
Similarly, I didn't get enough food to eat, and then
my body produces hunger. The sensation drives me towards eating food,
which regulates my nervous system blood sugar. Right, I can
get everything that I need protein, energy, and then away
I go So we have these drives inside of us
as bodies that know the way, and there's instinct to that,
(40:37):
there is wisdom to that, and it is not something
that we access through thought. It is something that totally
comes from the from the autonomic nervous system in the body.
And why I bring that up is because our bodies
actually know how to resolve autonomic charge. And autonomic charge
would be the thing that we would say, you know,
for familiar folks who aren't familiar with that, it's like
(40:57):
the energy that your body deuces, not by thought, but
in a body based way to help you respond to
threats by either shutting down, by fighting, by getting away,
by connecting, by fawning. So there's all of this energy
that your body supplies without you ever even having to
make a conscious decision to help you respond to the
(41:21):
threat in front of you. And that energy often gets
baked into the memory of the trauma. And when trauma,
the nature of trauma is that it's something that lives
inside of us unfinished. It's like the light switch gets
turned on of charge, like here's the charge, fight the beast.
But then the light switch never gets turned off, so
the body still thinks, hey, I need this charge and
(41:43):
it's connected to this memory and it's not over and
I'm in it. But maybe we have like enough awareness
sort of to be like, wait, the car accident is over.
I'm like sitting in my you know, on my couch
at home, Like, but why does my body feel like
the charge is still here? So it can sometimes be
confusing because we're like, you know this thing, you said,
I'm here, but I'm not here. I'm like, I'm scared,
but I also somehow know that I'm safe for what
(42:05):
like what do I do with all of this? So
in this particular context of working, what we do is
we start to connect to the charge that is left
over from the traumatic memory, and by getting closer to it,
what we do is we help a person's body start
(42:27):
to kind of in a way, re experience the activation,
and in re experiencing the activation, then we kind of
clear out any of the obstacles along the way that
might get in the way of interrupting that process and
bodies like if you've ever seen the footage, I think
Peter Levine often shows it in his trauma teachings, Like
a gazelle in the wild has been attacked by a
lion and then they freeze and they flop, and then
(42:49):
the lion kind of lose interests, thinking that they're dead,
and then the line goes away, and then the gazelle
kind of like shakes all of that energy off. That
there's charge in the body that is ready to, like
to be burned off as long as we are safe
enough to burn it off. So we're creating the conditions
in psychotherapy where with the help of psychedelics and also
the skill of the therapist, the person is getting to
(43:11):
release all of that stuff that was stored in the
memory at the time of the trauma, and in doing
so that homeostatic self correcting mechanism takes over. It's not
sweat because you were hot. It's like muscle activation because
you thought you were going to die. And in doing
so kind of like the releasing of it, then the body,
(43:32):
the body gets to know, oh I got away. It's
kind of like we get to say with our bodies,
I used up all the energy, I got away from
the threat.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
I'm here.
Speaker 3 (43:42):
And maybe another way of saying that is like we
don't really need to regulate ourselves when our bodies actually
know their safe bodies actually regulate themselves. We don't need
to take a ton of deep breaths to remind ourselves
are safe when our bodies know that they're safe. So
what we're trying to do is teach our bodies and
like that that we got through. The way we get
through is that we complete the charge that's connected to
(44:03):
the memory.
Speaker 5 (44:08):
There.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
Yes, you just you're gonna help it come back. I
know you are, absolutely are. It's just difficult because we
have a time limit.
Speaker 2 (44:16):
I'm like, h I know, there's so many things we
want to ask and talk about.
Speaker 1 (44:20):
Yes, but one of the things, as we're getting close
to wrapping up here, you have had there's just really
raw and vulnerable moments in these episodes on the podcasts.
What have been some of your takeaways or something that
maybe you have learned doing during this whole process.
Speaker 2 (44:41):
Oh, I love that question.
Speaker 3 (44:44):
I think I think like right off the top is
it's amazing what bodies can do in the right context, Like,
it is amazing how much terror a person can have
living under all of their defenses and their association. Like,
holy crap, that's pretty powerful. The bodies can hold onto
(45:05):
all that charge, and also that bodies know what to
do with it. In the right context, like what I'm
always like, what's happening? What's happening? Like why are we
so afraid of our bodies when our bodies know the
way to heal? Like how do they get so demonized?
They're so so brilliant. So there's like a Holy Moly,
there can be a lot under there for someone and
(45:25):
also whoa like we can heal, Like we can really
mend things and it's not too late.
Speaker 2 (45:31):
Like that's a big takeaway.
Speaker 3 (45:33):
I think another really big takeaway is that that there
is something so important about having a person who really
knows you and is not afraid of whatever is in
your stuff, to walk right into your stuff with you
in the most vulnerable moments, Like to have someone sit
with you on psychedelics who says there's nothing inside of
(45:54):
you that I'm afraid of changes everything, because that's so
much of it for many of us, Like I can't
go here because I'm going to lose connection, or like
someone's gonna judge me. You're like I'm gonna.
Speaker 2 (46:02):
Get overwhelmed, and then they're gonna get overwhelmed and then
they're gonna leave, and then what do I do it?
Speaker 5 (46:06):
Then?
Speaker 2 (46:06):
And it's a right to.
Speaker 3 (46:08):
Have someone who's like, hey, yeah, I know exactly what
we're heading into, and I'm not afraid. I think can
make us. It's the thing that can make us brave,
whether we're on psychedelics, or it's you're taking your kid
to school for the first day ever, or you're walking
with your friend into a surgery, or you know they
have to have a tough conversation like I'm right here,
I got you, Like, let's do it. I'm with you
(46:29):
all the way. Is that I think it's the thing
that can make us brave. There's that, and then I
mean like the power of telling our stories and showing
what it looks like and sounds like to heal, Like
vicarious healing is real. It's real, and in the age
that we're in where people are more connected than ever,
(46:49):
but not in an emotionally authentic, engaged way, to experience
someone's emotional vulnerability and feel the benefit of that is like,
it's kind of it's the media that I want to create.
It's the thing that I think will actually stitch us
back together inside of ourselves, in between each other.
Speaker 1 (47:09):
Absolutely that just knowing you're not alone, whether it is
somebody to go face The thing with you arts just
listening to a podcast and being like, oh, okay, I'm
not alone. I have someone else is feeling this.
Speaker 2 (47:23):
Yeah, you know that because you've done that too.
Speaker 3 (47:24):
You've given people really generous gifts of your own work
and these conversations which I think, yeah, I think it.
Speaker 2 (47:31):
It's what we need. So bravo you too.
Speaker 1 (47:34):
Yes, and to you as well, thank you so much
for taking the time. We know you're so busy. Oh
you will have to come back please.
Speaker 5 (47:43):
I be obligatory at this point is absolutely enough to
make it happen.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
But in the meantime, where can the good listeners find you?
Speaker 5 (47:50):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (47:51):
And thanks so much for listening everybody. I'm just so
touched that you're here all the way to the end.
It means so much. You can find me on other
people's problems wherever you get your podcasts. I have a
new book out that came out in April. It's called
Holy Hurt, all about spiritual trauma, spiritual and religious trauma,
which I think is probably all of us at this
point in North America, and my website Hillary el McBride.
(48:14):
I'm I would say probably mostly on Instagram, Hillary Leona
McBride although you can find me on Facebook and threads
and all of those other places. And if you get
onto my email list, if you go onto my website,
Hillary el McBride, if you wait, there's like a box
that pops up, put your email in, and then you
can be on my newsletter, which is where I send
out links to live events that I'm doing, trainings that
(48:37):
I'm doing for clinicians group therapy programs I'm running. You
can get information about psychedelic psychotherapy training program and new
things that are coming out. So head over to my
website and sign up for my email list to get
info there.
Speaker 1 (48:49):
Yes, go do that, listeners. Thank you so much for
being here till next tiank you so much till next time. Yes, Yes,
if you would like to contact us, you can or
email is Hello at stuffwenever told you dot com. You
can find us on boost Guy. I'm also a podcast
or on Instagram and TikTok at stuff We Never told you.
We're also on YouTube and we have a book you
can get wherever you can't hear books. Thanks as always
(49:10):
to our super produced Christina or executive Puser and your
contributor Joey. Thank you, and thanks to you for listening
stuff on Never Told You Direction by heart Radio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, you can check out
the heart Radio app app a podcast wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Hey, this is Anny and Samantha and welcome to Stuff
I Never told you production, I hurtrat you. And welcome
to registered psychologist, writer, researcher, and host of the podcast
Other People's Problems, Doctor Hillary McBride. Thank you so much
(00:28):
for joining us.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Oh I'm so excited.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
I can tell already we're gonna have so much fun
talking about some really hard stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
That's our show. Pretty much.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Before we get into that, though, could you introduce yourself
to our audience.
Speaker 4 (00:43):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Yeah, that's always such a tricky question for me, like
what side of myself do I show you? But as
you mentioned, I'm a psychologist, so I'm really interested in people,
in people's minds. And I think that's because I feel
kind of like a little bit of a mystery to
myself sometimes. And I'm also I really deeply believe in
the experience of curiosity as a way of meeting the world.
(01:05):
So I'm curious. I like people, I wonder what does
it mean to be human? All of that filters through
my work as a researcher, therapist, you know, podcast host, writer, psychologist.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Yes, there you go.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Yeah, and you have done quite a lot. Can you
tell us how you've got into this field.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Oh okay, So I laugh because it's not always what
people expect to hear me say when I say I'm
a psychologist, because I think it had some really therapy.
I think I had some very poor mental health care.
And also I have therapists parents, and like the language
of mental health and the discourse around like our mysteries
(01:47):
in our world was always a part of my growing up.
And so I think the mix of feeling like I
knew it could be better, like there's got to be
better for people than the things that I got in
mental health treatment, and also this like deep appreciation for
the mystery of our yeah, the inner landscapes. So yeah,
I think that there's like there's a mix of that.
(02:08):
And it was really on the back of eating disorder
treatment and recovery that I, you know, don't recommend always,
but disagreed with my treatment team's recommendations to go back
to treatment again and instead went to grad school, which
is a plot twist, And yeah, really fell in love
(02:30):
with the ability to change the actual quality of our
lives through research through relationship. Like I have a colleague
who says, don't get mad get data, which is I mean,
also get mad, but I love the idea of, you know,
getting research that really can change the way that it
feels to be us and in our bodies. And so
(02:51):
I'm really passionate about evidence based, you know, data shaping interventions,
and that's that's really driven me into my introt around
trauma work and embodyment and psychedelic psychotherapy and now kind
of some of more of my emerging research around spiritual
trauma and and the ways that we are hurting. Let
(03:12):
me tell you there's a lot of hurt that's happening.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Okay, I'm not gonna lie.
Speaker 5 (03:17):
My heart is racing because I'm so excited to talk
with you. And it's one of those moments when you
meet someone for the first time and then you're like,
oh my god, you have so much we have so
much in common.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
I want to talk to you about this. I want
to talk to you about this, and this is gonna
I'm going to overtalk you.
Speaker 5 (03:33):
So I'm trying to calm down because I'm so excited
about this conversation.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
I think we do that.
Speaker 5 (03:38):
Definitely want to put this here about content warning, because
we are going to talk about loss. We're going to
talk about pregnancy, We're going to talk about so many
things that when it comes like in conversation about therapy
and trauma work especially, and we've I don't know if
you know this yet, Hillary, but our show with Annie
and I began because we wanted to come on here
(03:58):
and talk about the me too movement, how it affected us,
and how therapy and trigger warnings are still so important
and why is relevant in conversations that it's not just
a niche thing.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Wow, So you are the legend story.
Speaker 5 (04:14):
Yes, I snuck in here because I was like, I
want to talk about trauma. Look, I'm very excited to
write a conversation.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
I'm so ready.
Speaker 5 (04:25):
But of course, because in all of this, among our
commonalities is that you are a podcast host.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
So can you tell us about your podcast?
Speaker 3 (04:36):
I would love to. I would love nothing more than
to tell you. So I'm imagining when you're thinking about
is other people's problems?
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Is that correct? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (04:44):
So I was a innocent, naive. I think I made
him in a doctoral student at that time, and I
don't know how it happens. Someone gave my phone number
to a Emmy winning journalist, Jodie Martinsen.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
So I don't know how we got connected.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
I actually should go back and ask her about it,
but she reached out to me because she had had
this idea as someone who's crafting stories and investigating the
world through the lens of journalism, was like, wait a second,
therapy in actuality is a lot different the way it's
portrayed in media than the way that people talk about it.
We have these tropes of the therapists who kind of
sits back and is taking their notes and really like
(05:24):
judgmentally looking over the top of their glasses at someone
and then they dispense this you know, perfectly timed insight
that also helps the plot of the show along, right.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
This is kind of the way that it is in
TV and media.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
She was like, oh, this is this is really different
in real life than it's being portrayed. And so the
idea came about to put mikes in therapy sessions with
clients consent and then you know, turn it into something
that people who weren't in the room could then really
benefit from. And the principle behind this, I think is
(05:58):
vicarious learning and by care healing, Like we talk about
vicarious trauma in the trauma world, that we can kind
of like catch trauma in a way as we're you know,
bumping up against people in their stories and bearing witness
the pain that happens in the world around us. But
we can also heal vicariously too. We can listen to
people's learning and insights and journeys of transformation and get
(06:20):
something ourselves feel us alone. So the idea is to
turn therapy sessions into podcast episodes, and we've done that
for four seasons. We've done that over the course of
my doctoral degree and then beyond, you know, my work
has really changed, does all of us do right? Like
who we are five years ago, ten years ago is
really different than who we are now. And one of
the things that's become important for me in my clinical
(06:43):
work and academic research is psychedelic psychotherapy. And when you're
talking about things that people are talking about but are
not hearing or like don't actually have well represented, that
feels like a you know, there's like some some flashing
lights that go off in my mind, Like this is
another thing that we need to bring people into to
kind of demystify. So the idea for season five was
(07:05):
to put microphones in sessions of psychedelic psychotherapy with patients
and then including a session of my own where I'm
the patient and as a way of really showing people like, hey,
it could look like this, or this is kind of
what it sounds like or here's what it might feel like,
both to give people some education and information about what's
going on kind of behind the scenes and the mystery
(07:26):
of it all. But then there's also this other kind
of like there's this agenda that I have that I
think there's a lot of maybe unskilled is a generous word,
like an unskilled psychedelic psychotherapy that's happening where people don't
actually know how to work with trauma but are getting
into really deep water, both as the person who's sitting
(07:47):
and the person who's experiencing the medicine work.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
So my other aim was.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Like, hey, guys, it could be like this, Like you
could have somebody who kind of knows what they're doing,
and here's something to look for. So maybe creating a
benchmark or a standard in a way for the kind
of quality of care that we get people. So Season
five of other people's problems is people doing psychedelics, me
doing therapy. You get to hear it into the wild, mysterious,
beautiful world of people's minds as they interact with hallucinogenic
(08:16):
substances and get to heal in the process.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
It's great when someone gives us an answer that touches
on so many other points we want to talk about later.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
I just teeing you up really nice. Okay, you are
for sure.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
One of the other ways we overlap is back when
we Samantha and I did start with our trauma mini series,
we also did therapy and released a podcast of our
therapy sessions.
Speaker 4 (08:40):
Each Oh my gosh, think so much overlap and right, yes,
but it was the saying of that same desire of
like wanting to destigmatize it, maybe make it less intimidating,
because I think a lot of people don't really know what.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
To expect outside of those movie tropes or perhaps a
bad experience. And I have to say, I'd never heard
of using psychedelics in a therapeutic setting. This was new
to me. So can you kind of explain how how
that plays out? If I was somebody who was like
I want to get this or I think this might
(09:17):
help me, how would I how would it happen?
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Okay, So the answer to that question varies state to state,
country to country, province to province, and so I can't
actually give you a definitive answer or a pathway. But
what I can tell you is that in BC, which
is the province in Canada that I live in, there
are certain pathways depending on what your presenting concerns are.
So if you come to someone you say, hey, I've
got you know, I've got cancer, I'm dying, I'm feeling
(09:44):
really anxious about end of life, we would take one pathway.
We would say, hey, we're going to put in an
application to the Government of Canada. We're going to make
sure that this is all about board. We've got a
doctor who's ready to prescribe for you, We've got a
therapist who's got a license.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Here we go.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
We're going to like, we're going to take this, We're
going to take this next step above ground legally to
help you with this. And then there are other pathways
that perhaps have less gate keeping to them, like treatment
resistant oppression or eating disorders addiction complex PTSD. I mean,
there's so many other presenting concerns. But you could go
(10:18):
to your doctor, if your doctor's familiar with this work,
or a doctor who does this work, and get an assessment.
And maybe a psychological assessment an intake, and then we
could get you into a clinic and you could get
aketamine treatment or a cannabis treatment. In a clinical trial,
maybe you'd get MDMA or LSD, or depending on if
you were leaving the country, maybe you would have ayahuasca
(10:40):
or a boga or I have a game. So there's
like lots of different medicines that people can use depending
on the pathway that they want to take. There's lots
of underground pathways to take for people, which includes a
lot of risk, but sometimes it includes access to treatment
that otherwise people can't get. And then there's above ground.
There's legal right there's things that are regulated and kind
(11:02):
of under the purview of clinical and medical guidelines. So
it really depends on where you are what you're getting
treatment for. But usually there's somebody involved who ideally knows
a lot about the kind of thing that you're wanting
treatment for and a lot about the kind of medicine
that you're using, and they have a really good set
(11:23):
of skills around how to work with you should you
re experience your trauma during the medicine, and they know
how to support you after with the what can feel
like the earth shakingness of getting access to stuff that
has been buried for a long time. Because one of
the things that's really powerful about psychedelic work is that
I think if you do it really well, you go
(11:44):
into the things that are hardest. Sometimes you get new
insight and space from it, but actually your body is
re entering the things that have been really difficult for
you to enter in ordinary states of consciousness, and you
can imagine understandably that would leave up and like maybe
on the other side of it feeling really like they survived,
(12:04):
like they're relieved it's over. They got through, but also like,
holy moly, that was a lot, right that that thing
that I buried for so long is here. Oh and
I've integrated it, and oh wow, I faced it head
on and I survived.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
But that's really big.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Like integration on the other side and looking at it
through the lens of attachment work is essential, and not
a lot of people out there are doing that. So
ideally you have someone who knows understands attachment, trauma, integration,
somatic work working with the body, and you know is
kind of on top of risks and benefits and has
lots of skill in that area.
Speaker 5 (12:40):
Wow, there's a lot in that you just said, Like
this conversation, we could talk about the demonizing of these
types of psychedelics, and especially in the US, you know,
we have a lot of things that we have to
power through because of the whole level of you know,
everything the war gets drug. You know, there's so much
to be said, but also an understanding that yes, there's
(13:00):
a responsibility in using these types of treatment and how
beneficial it can be. But also it can be like
if you have the bad players, You're like, you know,
there's so much to this conversation, and obviously you're you're
so good at like putting this in a professional conversation,
because I want to be like, yeah, f them people
who are not even listening to the benefit, you know,
(13:20):
like I really want to be angry. I'm an angry person.
But in general, that conversation about the layout of the
benefits and how it can be helpful if people are
willing to look at the depth of it, and again
the along lines of like, yeah, you need to understand trauma,
you need to understand attachment, which is something that's so
kind of new and regular conversations, you know, and like
everyday conversations people like attachment and I'm like, yeah, but
(13:41):
do you know what you're do you know what you're
talking about? Because there's this level of depth. And I
say this as a you know, someone who worked with
reactive attachment this, so are understanding that and trying to
have that conversation with people. But again, because we only
have a short amount of time going back, can you
for today, right, can you talk about how you got
(14:02):
into this specific branch of therapy and why you thought
it was so useful.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
So there's you know, there's the ways that our professional
interests are always shaped by our lived realities. I'm sure
you've heard the expression researches mesearch, And I can think
about my interest in trauma as being like more felt
at first than I understood why. Like when I think
(14:29):
about psychedelic work for trauma in particular, and kind of
that was really my gateway into the benefits of psychedelic psychotherapy.
I think back to how drawn I was to trauma
work before I ever had really unpacked my own trauma history.
And it's amazing how our bodies kind of move us
towards something in a way that maybe it doesn't really
make sense to our conscious awareness or our mind or
(14:50):
our narrative. But we're like, I feel like this is
so I have to keep watching the data that's coming
out around this. So I was drawn to trauma before
I understood it a trauma history. Was drawn to psychedelics
before I thought I ever would do psychedelics. And it
was because, you know, as an academic, as somebody who's
paying attention to the research literature in the field of traumatology,
I am always scouring.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
The you know, the clinical literature.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Like what is the best treatment, what do we do,
what recommendations do I make when I'm giving someone a diagnosis?
What are the ways that I can actually be at
the forefront of what we know about how people can heal?
And why why the treatments that were offering people aren't
working very well? And so I was paying attention to
the research literature and seeing, you know, all the clinical
(15:36):
trials coming out related to psychedelic psychotherapy and PTSD, particularly
from MAPS like the Maps Clinical Trials. And I had
colleagues who were working in the MAPS clinical trials as
psychiatrists or psychologists or therapists. And then it kind of
became clear through an unfortunate series of events in my
own life that sounds like, isn't that the name of
(15:57):
a children's book? Just to apply named children's book, They're
not about my own lived trauma, about some very different things.
I had a life threatening experience in a car accident,
and you know, it was February twenty nineteen, and I
(16:20):
did not think I was going to walk away from that,
and I did, and my rehab process started and my
I was doing intensive trauma processing therapy and using all
of the best treatments that I knew. And at this point,
I think I was like a I was in my
residency as a doctoral student, so I was most of
the way through my doctoral training and had specialized in trauma,
(16:42):
and so like I knew what to try, I knew
who to go to. Compared to the average citizen, I
was like hooked up right considering what's out there in
terms of medications and treatment, and knew what to ask for,
knew what was Evan's face, And it just like wasn't
really moving the needle for me. Like I could get
in a car, are I could drive, But really it
(17:04):
was so bad at that point, like my trauma symptoms
if my partner and I were going to watch a movie.
He would watch the movie first to make sure there
was no scenes involving cars, and then I would watch
it right like it was so acute that I was just,
you know, really stirred up and really terrified a lot
of the time. And I saw the research literature of
(17:25):
OT psychedelics and I thought, Okay, like, however scary that is,
it has to be better than what it feels like
to live right now. And because I knew people and
I knew ways of getting access to safe treatment, I
decided to take the risk. And what happened on the
(17:46):
other side of that I couldn't have predicted. And I
don't want to sell it, like I feel kind of
like a snake oil salesman, and I'm like, and then
my trauma symptoms were gone, poof, they disappeared. But the
reality is like, that is what happened, and that isn't
the case for everybody. Isn't something we could guarantee. Sometimes
people actually get more access to their trauma symptoms on
the other side of the work because they get connected
(18:07):
to the place of the terror, or they have memories
that they didn't have before. Right, So it's not always
a guarantee that it's going to be like that. But
I went from a PTSD diagnosis one day to having
a medicine session and the next day and from that
point on not meeting any diagnostic criteria, no flashbacks, safe,
(18:28):
no hypervigilance driving, watching movies with car or accidents in them.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
Like it was.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
It was kind of miraculous. And I remember thinking, this
is the thing, This is the thing that everybody's putting
behind like closed doors, Like this is the thing that
I've been told was going to make my brain fry
like an egg in a pan, you know, like all
of the you know, the anti drug propaganda, which, like
(18:54):
I was that's why I waited so long, is because
I really believed it. I was like, I am going
to become psychotic. I'm going to have psychotics spectrum disorders
on the other side of this, so of course I'm
not going to do it. And then I did it,
and I was like more connected to myself than I'd
ever been and felt safer.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
So there was.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
That, and then, you know, it's been interesting doing this
work with people over the last number of years, and
now I'm a faculty member at the Psychedelics Somatic Institute,
and I trained clinicians, and I have a training program
that I run with a colleague of mind. We call
it Catalyst, where we specialize in working with attachment and
somatic work and ketymine in particular to train clinicians because
we feel so strongly about giving people good, like good
(19:34):
skills to do this work. And life keeps happening, right like,
just because you're trauma specialist doesn't mean that everything feels
safe in your body for the rest of your life.
And so I had a series of medical events that
happened a year and a half ago at this point
and found that on the other side of them that
processing the trauma, processing the charge through psychedelics was exactly what.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
I wanted to do.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
And that's what you hear in in my episode of
season five of Other People's Problems, where you can hear
me digging into my own kind of more recent work.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
This is a pretty at least for a lot of us,
it feels like pretty new and seeing the research coming out,
I know that there's a history that a lot of
us don't know that you get into and podcasts, but
uh yeah, you also talk about in the first episode
about some of the big scientific and ethical questions that
(20:38):
we still have because it's new. Yeah, can you share
some of what those are?
Speaker 3 (20:43):
Well, one, we don't really understand how consciousness works, so
it's pretty wild that we're kind of messing with it
a little bit, Like where is your mind?
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Nobody?
Speaker 3 (20:52):
Sure, like probably in your body somewhere. And also like
between us as people, like it's definitely interpersonal phenomena, but
how does the mind work? And then how do we
alter consciousness? Like we have some guesses we can talk
about the serotonin, you know, receptors in the brain, but like, wow,
there's a lot of mystery to being human. So there's that, right,
(21:14):
And then there's also I think the access to treatment,
like the legal versus ethical conundrum that we're in because
we have good evidence that psychedelics for certain presenting concerns
is like a frontline treatment and yet it may be
that that's illegal still, so WHOA what do we do
with this tension that our academic research is showing us
(21:35):
this could change someone's life, but the government is saying no,
you can't have it, Or what do we do about
the fact that maybe there are some people who do
get access to it, but we don't have good regulation
around the skills for therapists. So there's kind of like
the wild wild West out there where anybody in a
context where it's legalized could do this work because there's
(21:55):
no accreditation process, certification process like licensure. It's still like
really really new in terms of creating treatment guidelines, ethical guidelines.
So you could be doing it legally but unethically right
or irresponsibly. You could be doing it illegally but very
ethically and responsibly. So there's like all of the tension
(22:16):
there to do with that. And then I think, you know,
one of the interesting things that we kind of get
into in this season too is what do we do
with recovered memories? What do we do with when people
access places inside of themselves that they don't have the
ability to confirm with others, like fragments of memories, And
(22:36):
how do we stay away from the you know, the
false memory history and the fiasco that you know, therapists
really have to recognize their's blood on their hands around
that and make sure how do we make sure that
people when they're asking the question was I abused? What
was it abused? Did it happen? What do we do
with the questions when we don't know?
Speaker 2 (22:56):
How do we like?
Speaker 3 (22:57):
And I really do believe that we can support people
to treat the charge and the activation around trauma even
if we don't have the narrative. And that's part of
working with a bottom up somatic approach and an attachment
based approach. But you know, like, what do we do
with the material that we find when people on psychedelics
have the question like, oh, I think this happened to me,
but their parents are dead and they can't ask their
(23:17):
parents or they can't confirm with someone. And then of
course there's like, oh my gosh, this whole other facet
of this, which is that psychedelic medicine really belongs to
indigenous people, and here we are kind of moving it
into political settings and creating treatment guidelines that are related
to white Western allopathic forms of medicine that disqualify or
(23:43):
kind of erase the way that psychedelics have been used
for millennia in community with incredible wisdom, Like we're people
who are getting and I include myself in this, like
people who are getting into this field but don't have
a long cultural.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
History of it.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
We have to be really careful about if we are
appropriating medicines, if we what can we can learn from
indigenous populations, what kind of the tensions between using plant
medicines that have been used by indigenous populations for a
long time versus like synthetic compounds that are relatively new
in terms of the history of medicine. So there's, like,
(24:21):
I think there's really important cultural pieces to look at
there too, in terms of like ownership of medicine and
wisdom and.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
How to use it now not to use it.
Speaker 5 (24:31):
Man, you just opened up a whole other topic that
we're going to have to write down and bring you back. Look,
would you to have a mini series with just you
in these conversations?
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Okay, I feel like I'm not helping you in this
conversation though. And then there are all.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
Of these things we have to think about too, and
it's just each of them could be their own novel.
Speaker 5 (24:47):
And I love that you address them because that is
one of the big dings when we talk about, especially
when we talk about like psychedelics, when we talk about
these drugs and how it had again been demonized and
used against Indigenous people and people of color in general,
and then coming back and be like, but they're not wrong,
Like it's such a big conversation in.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
Those oh so big, or then how about this too,
Like the paradox of that, like this work when it's
legal is so expensive, it can be I think there
are ways around that, and I think that that's the
responsibility of us as care providers and people who are
lobbying for changes in structures of care and health care
contexts and insurance context like we have to use our
(25:25):
voices to advocate for people who need this treatment but
don't have a voice.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
That it is.
Speaker 3 (25:31):
Weirdly paradoxical that so many of the people whose cultural
traditions would have given them access to psychedelic medicines now
are disenfranchised in the healthcare context where they can't even
access the thing legally that historically their ancestors would have
been using. Because they can't, you know, they're not welcomed
in the system. They're often disqualified for treatments they wouldn't
(25:53):
have necessarily have the money or the financial resources to
be able to pay for them. So there's like, man,
there's all sorts of stuff that's wrong with this, and
it can be profoundly dangerous, Like this could be the
exact worst thing a person could do for their mental health, right,
So we need to have people who are really, really
skilled at assessment. And what I like to say in
(26:15):
psychedelics psychotherapy is I will not say yes to psychedelics
with you unless you can say no to me, right
or unless I can also say no to you right,
Like there is something about there needs to be an
awareness of this not being a panacea and us being
able to slow down, and can there be a better treatment?
(26:38):
Can there be something that is more effective? Have you
tried any other things? Like can you do you actually
have the ability to say no to me? Because it's
going to be really hard to say no to me
on medicine if you can't say no to me in
ordinary states of consciousness. And then all of a sudden
something is coming up and it feels like, you know,
I'm saying, hey, can I hold your hand through that?
And if you don't know how to say no, does
(27:00):
that feel like I'm taking advantage of your body or
crossing a boundary? Like the negotiating of touch is another
thing that we really have to be clear about in
this work. When people often regress to younger developmental states
and they just want to be held and they want contact,
but maybe the adult part of them who walked into
the room and signed up for the treatment is not
(27:22):
into having their handheld or not having you know, their arm,
like in contact with my arms. So wow, we have
to be thoughtful about boundaries, ethics, like protectiveness of people.
It's I mean, there's so much here that can be
really muddy, and to go slow and to be thoughtful
(27:42):
and to be judicious I think, and to consider history
and culture and context and access to treatment is it's
the only way. It's the only way we can do
this and not have what happened in the sixties and
seven how seventies happen again where people are really reckless
and careless and they kind of like ruin it for
everybody else.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
Right, I mean understanding that.
Speaker 5 (28:03):
I think one of the things that we talked about
when we started the show is like, this is an
individual experience and it has to be that way. We
have to make sure we prescribe to that individual and
what they are going through because these people have boundaries
that are different from other people.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
These people have traumas that are other from different people.
Speaker 5 (28:20):
It might be the same trauma, but they reacted differently
or the outcome was different. So all about like personalized
care is so important in everything, yeah, but obviously specifically especially.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
In this Yeah, yeah, you're so right. Yeah, although that
kind of makes me think, like it's an interesting counterpoint
to that that psychedelics have been used in group contexts
since time immemorial and indigenous populations, right, there was often
either the shaman who would take the medicine and would
speak to people in the group, or people who take
(28:53):
medicine in a group context. And so there's that my
colleague and I that I'd referenced earlier. Through Catalyst, we
run group psychedelic psychotherapy because it's a powerful thing to
return people to community. And let me tell you, people
are lonely. There are people who are lonelier than they
have ever been. And this like loneliness and sleep feel
(29:14):
like the things that are going to drive us. I mean,
maybe social media used to, but are going to Are
theyre going to tank our mental health in the next
ten to twenty years if they haven't already, because people
are more disconnected from their bodies and from each other,
and so how do we use how do we use
medicines to actually bring people back into connection with each
(29:35):
other and the earth. And I think that that question
is a.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Very important one.
Speaker 3 (29:40):
But we're again, we're like right on the forefront of
asking questions like how do we do that ethically when
we're giving people individualized care?
Speaker 5 (29:46):
Too? Girl, Why are you overlapping our episodes because we
just talked about loneliness.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
Yes, I'm going, I'm going to come.
Speaker 5 (29:57):
I will never quitt lay internet.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
If anyway, if I go missing, everyone knows where to look.
Speaker 5 (30:04):
No, no, no, no, no, no no, We'll just.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Be having a slumber party. Yes, yet that's what will happen.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Yeah, yes, Well, you, as we've alluded to, as you've mentioned,
you did share your therapy session on the show, and
it was well, a question we often wrestle with Samantha
and I on this show is kind of where you
(30:33):
where do you draw the line of what to share?
What is healthy for you to share? So I'm just curious,
what was that experience like for you, Why did you
decide to do it, What were some of the factors
that went into your decision.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
It's important to know the timescale when you think about
me sharing. So I did, I had the hemorrhage, I
saw I was pregnant with twins. I lost the twins
and pregnancy. Ten days later, I had a very cute
hemorrhage within which I, you know, I thought I was
going to die for sure, and so all of that
(31:07):
was mixed together, like there's this not of trauma. And
then about six or six months later, five months later,
I had the psychedelic session, which was recorded that you
hear on this on the show, but it was about
a year later that it actually came out, which meant
I had a year without ever even thinking it was
(31:29):
going to go on the show, to process that in therapy,
to to make sense of it, to re listen, to
feel what that did in my body, and to when
you know, re listen and realize WHOA I can hear
myself say some of those things and it doesn't feel
as charged for me. Wow, it really does feel like, Okay,
my body's moved to the other side of some big intensity,
(31:50):
and I really know that I'm safe and I really
know that I'm here. So I had a lot of
time to discern if that was the right move. And
I had a lot of people in my life who
are protective of me, who care for me, who often
help me sort through things related to media like listen
and talk through like is this a good choice? Is
it's not a good choice? And ultimately what it came
(32:11):
down to for me is I think about three things,
and the first one is I think that we construct
the archetype of the healer or the guru in such
a way that disconnects them from their own humanity. And
we take people and we say, well, they're a therapist,
(32:33):
like they might never struggle with that, or even like,
you know, where it looks where I think maybe it's
most obvious as you have parents who look at therapists
who work with children and families and would never assume
that those therapists also struggle with their own parenting. Sometimes right,
like we assume something about the role of therapists or
psychologists that means that we're impervious to our own you know,
(32:57):
like psychological basement, and that we don't have things we
have to look through or work through or struggle with.
And in a way then I think that sets us
up societally to think that if we just knew enough
or had enough degrees or got enough insight, then we
wouldn't also struggle with the pain of being human, and
I just simply disagree. I just think that's not true, right.
(33:17):
I think that it hurts to be human, whether you're
a therapist or not, whether you're a healer or not,
whether you're a pastor or a rabbi or a guru,
or a yoga teacher or a meditation teacher. It just
hurts to be human. And I want to make more
spaces where we can allow the healers in our society
to be welcomed into the conversation of being human instead
(33:38):
of excluded and in a way pressure to transcend. So
that's the first thing I think. The second thing is
it's a really important particularly I mean you had mentioned
this related to the Me Too movement. It's so important
for women to have a path like out before them
(34:02):
by other women that model what it is like to
walk right into the heart of the experiences in our
body which have left us feeling disempowered, objectified, sexualized, powerless,
vulnerable at the hands of men in particular, and to
feel the way that it is possible to walk through
that to the other side, like what I wanted more
(34:24):
than anything for women listening to that episode, or anyone
who's experienced any kind of sexual trauma, genital trauma, medical trauma.
To be able to listen to that and say it
can go differently from me, like I don't have to
feel scared to be in my body because my body
actually knows how to get to the other side of
(34:44):
the fear that lives stuck inside of me because of
what happened to me that was never my fault. And
for us to have audio media stories, however it is
of people saying here's how much it hurt, is what
it looks like to get to the other side, I
think paves the way for us to create possibility inside
(35:06):
of our own nervous system that healing could happen for
us too. So I think there's that, And then I
think it's also just really important for people to see
that even though we might be leading that we are
still responsible to tend to what's inside of ourselves. And
so I may be a podcast host, I may be
(35:27):
a psychologist, but here's my vulnerability, Like I'm doing this
work too. I'm doing this work too, and I want
for you to do this work too. And I'm not
above this and you are not above this, and really
nobody is above this. And I think it just humanizes
the process of going towards our pain in a way
that I think I really want people to know, like, hey,
(35:50):
I'm doing it too, I'm doing it too.
Speaker 5 (36:03):
So I was in the social work field before I
crashed into this podcasting field, and one of the things
about my friend group would talk about was that most
of us are here because of trauma, much like yourself,
and feeling like we need to correct things or we
need to help the system and things, as well as
the fact we all often talk about Yeah, no therapists,
social workers, people who are in this field, they need
(36:24):
to be in therapy, they need to be in constant therapy,
they need a therapist to like survive this work, which
is exactly that level of understanding we are human, but
with that that vulnerability, because sometimes people will talk about
this that they expect their therapist to be perfect, or
their person who is whoever that's in charge of whatever
(36:46):
situation should be perfect. In the actualities, No, we're broken
and that's why we're doing this work.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
Yeah, Or I could say like we are we are
we broken? Are like are we actually brave enough to
go to the places that are scary and we're modeling
that for our patients, which like, I think that's the
piece that you try, right, Like, that's the thing that
I want. I feel most clear about myself whenever I
(37:12):
do therapy and whenever I'm sitting across from someone doing therapy.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
Is there's a whole bunch of people.
Speaker 3 (37:17):
Out there in the world who are way too defended
and way too scared, Like under the defense is the
scared to look at, Like what does it feel like
inside of me? And the people who walk in the
door our culture might say that they're broken because that's
the way, you know, the story I have to tell
about why they need help and why other people don't.
(37:37):
And I think, actually, it's like, these are the people
who are the most powerful. These are the people who
are the bravest. These are the people who are telling
the truth about what doesn't work in our society.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
Now I feel like I'm preaching at you.
Speaker 3 (37:48):
I love it. I'm like this is like I really
think like people who who go to mental health treatment,
whether it's a group therapy setting, whether it's individual therapy,
whether it's like people who are in commune unity having
consciousness raising conversations, like I don't think individual psychotherapy has
the market on what healing looks like.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
I think I can look like.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
So many different things. But these are the people who
are often the bravest and brave enough to say it
hurts to be human, and I can't do it alone,
and I want to understand where the hurt comes from.
If I can do something different so I can feel
better and feel different, so that I can help other
people feel better and different, it is like, it is
the most admirable thing.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
I think.
Speaker 5 (38:30):
You start becoming self aware, you realize, oh, I need
this help. But he's like, because doing this alone is
not working really exactly, because when you were talking about
your own work and listening to that episode was so
raw and so marble. Yeah, but with that made me
wonder because myself, who've gone through other types of trauma
but understanding trying to like go through and relive the trauma,
(38:52):
how do you deal with that post traumatic stress, like
that level that's so constantly on red on an alert
that it feels like trying to navigate that through therapy
or trying to relive the trauma, it's so difficult to
even get past that point. And I know you kept
saying the phrase I'm here but not here to kind
(39:14):
of bring awareness to what was happening in your consciousness
and subconsciousness.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
How do you work through that.
Speaker 5 (39:21):
In this type of real deep trauma work.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
Yes, yeah, one of the things that comes to mind,
and there's a bunch, but the first thing that comes
to mind is something called the homeostatic self correcting mechanism.
And the homeostatic self correcting mechanism is just our way
of saying, in light of the autonomic nervous system, there
is an innate drive within us as a mammal to
(39:48):
move us back towards homeostasis. And if you're listening to
this or in this conversation, you're like, what what does
that mean? Think about any time you were hot and
then you sweat, Right, there is like an unconscious but
conscious like there's like a consciousness to your body's wisdom
that says, hey, something is getting just a little too
(40:09):
hot here, I'm going to.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
Cool you down.
Speaker 3 (40:12):
Similarly, I didn't get enough food to eat, and then
my body produces hunger. The sensation drives me towards eating food,
which regulates my nervous system blood sugar. Right, I can
get everything that I need protein, energy, and then away
I go So we have these drives inside of us
as bodies that know the way, and there's instinct to that,
(40:37):
there is wisdom to that, and it is not something
that we access through thought. It is something that totally
comes from the from the autonomic nervous system in the body.
And why I bring that up is because our bodies
actually know how to resolve autonomic charge. And autonomic charge
would be the thing that we would say, you know,
for familiar folks who aren't familiar with that, it's like
(40:57):
the energy that your body deuces, not by thought, but
in a body based way to help you respond to
threats by either shutting down, by fighting, by getting away,
by connecting, by fawning. So there's all of this energy
that your body supplies without you ever even having to
make a conscious decision to help you respond to the
(41:21):
threat in front of you. And that energy often gets
baked into the memory of the trauma. And when trauma,
the nature of trauma is that it's something that lives
inside of us unfinished. It's like the light switch gets
turned on of charge, like here's the charge, fight the beast.
But then the light switch never gets turned off, so
the body still thinks, hey, I need this charge and
(41:43):
it's connected to this memory and it's not over and
I'm in it. But maybe we have like enough awareness
sort of to be like, wait, the car accident is over.
I'm like sitting in my you know, on my couch
at home, Like, but why does my body feel like
the charge is still here? So it can sometimes be
confusing because we're like, you know this thing, you said,
I'm here, but I'm not here. I'm like, I'm scared,
but I also somehow know that I'm safe for what
(42:05):
like what do I do with all of this? So
in this particular context of working, what we do is
we start to connect to the charge that is left
over from the traumatic memory, and by getting closer to it,
what we do is we help a person's body start
(42:27):
to kind of in a way, re experience the activation,
and in re experiencing the activation, then we kind of
clear out any of the obstacles along the way that
might get in the way of interrupting that process and
bodies like if you've ever seen the footage, I think
Peter Levine often shows it in his trauma teachings, Like
a gazelle in the wild has been attacked by a
lion and then they freeze and they flop, and then
(42:49):
the lion kind of lose interests, thinking that they're dead,
and then the line goes away, and then the gazelle
kind of like shakes all of that energy off. That
there's charge in the body that is ready to, like
to be burned off as long as we are safe
enough to burn it off. So we're creating the conditions
in psychotherapy where with the help of psychedelics and also
the skill of the therapist, the person is getting to
(43:11):
release all of that stuff that was stored in the
memory at the time of the trauma, and in doing
so that homeostatic self correcting mechanism takes over. It's not
sweat because you were hot. It's like muscle activation because
you thought you were going to die. And in doing
so kind of like the releasing of it, then the body,
(43:32):
the body gets to know, oh I got away. It's
kind of like we get to say with our bodies,
I used up all the energy, I got away from
the threat.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
I'm here.
Speaker 3 (43:42):
And maybe another way of saying that is like we
don't really need to regulate ourselves when our bodies actually
know their safe bodies actually regulate themselves. We don't need
to take a ton of deep breaths to remind ourselves
are safe when our bodies know that they're safe. So
what we're trying to do is teach our bodies and
like that that we got through. The way we get
through is that we complete the charge that's connected to
(44:03):
the memory.
Speaker 5 (44:08):
There.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
Yes, you just you're gonna help it come back. I
know you are, absolutely are. It's just difficult because we
have a time limit.
Speaker 2 (44:16):
I'm like, h I know, there's so many things we
want to ask and talk about.
Speaker 1 (44:20):
Yes, but one of the things, as we're getting close
to wrapping up here, you have had there's just really
raw and vulnerable moments in these episodes on the podcasts.
What have been some of your takeaways or something that
maybe you have learned doing during this whole process.
Speaker 2 (44:41):
Oh, I love that question.
Speaker 3 (44:44):
I think I think like right off the top is
it's amazing what bodies can do in the right context, Like,
it is amazing how much terror a person can have
living under all of their defenses and their association. Like,
holy crap, that's pretty powerful. The bodies can hold onto
(45:05):
all that charge, and also that bodies know what to
do with it. In the right context, like what I'm
always like, what's happening? What's happening? Like why are we
so afraid of our bodies when our bodies know the
way to heal? Like how do they get so demonized?
They're so so brilliant. So there's like a Holy Moly,
there can be a lot under there for someone and
(45:25):
also whoa like we can heal, Like we can really
mend things and it's not too late.
Speaker 2 (45:31):
Like that's a big takeaway.
Speaker 3 (45:33):
I think another really big takeaway is that that there
is something so important about having a person who really
knows you and is not afraid of whatever is in
your stuff, to walk right into your stuff with you
in the most vulnerable moments, Like to have someone sit
with you on psychedelics who says there's nothing inside of
(45:54):
you that I'm afraid of changes everything, because that's so
much of it for many of us, Like I can't
go here because I'm going to lose connection, or like
someone's gonna judge me. You're like I'm gonna.
Speaker 2 (46:02):
Get overwhelmed, and then they're gonna get overwhelmed and then
they're gonna leave, and then what do I do it?
Speaker 5 (46:06):
Then?
Speaker 2 (46:06):
And it's a right to.
Speaker 3 (46:08):
Have someone who's like, hey, yeah, I know exactly what
we're heading into, and I'm not afraid. I think can
make us. It's the thing that can make us brave,
whether we're on psychedelics, or it's you're taking your kid
to school for the first day ever, or you're walking
with your friend into a surgery, or you know they
have to have a tough conversation like I'm right here,
I got you, Like, let's do it. I'm with you
(46:29):
all the way. Is that I think it's the thing
that can make us brave. There's that, and then I
mean like the power of telling our stories and showing
what it looks like and sounds like to heal, Like
vicarious healing is real. It's real, and in the age
that we're in where people are more connected than ever,
(46:49):
but not in an emotionally authentic, engaged way, to experience
someone's emotional vulnerability and feel the benefit of that is like,
it's kind of it's the media that I want to create.
It's the thing that I think will actually stitch us
back together inside of ourselves, in between each other.
Speaker 1 (47:09):
Absolutely that just knowing you're not alone, whether it is
somebody to go face The thing with you arts just
listening to a podcast and being like, oh, okay, I'm
not alone. I have someone else is feeling this.
Speaker 2 (47:23):
Yeah, you know that because you've done that too.
Speaker 3 (47:24):
You've given people really generous gifts of your own work
and these conversations which I think, yeah, I think it.
Speaker 2 (47:31):
It's what we need. So bravo you too.
Speaker 1 (47:34):
Yes, and to you as well, thank you so much
for taking the time. We know you're so busy. Oh
you will have to come back please.
Speaker 5 (47:43):
I be obligatory at this point is absolutely enough to
make it happen.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
But in the meantime, where can the good listeners find you?
Speaker 5 (47:50):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (47:51):
And thanks so much for listening everybody. I'm just so
touched that you're here all the way to the end.
It means so much. You can find me on other
people's problems wherever you get your podcasts. I have a
new book out that came out in April. It's called
Holy Hurt, all about spiritual trauma, spiritual and religious trauma,
which I think is probably all of us at this
point in North America, and my website Hillary el McBride.
(48:14):
I'm I would say probably mostly on Instagram, Hillary Leona
McBride although you can find me on Facebook and threads
and all of those other places. And if you get
onto my email list, if you go onto my website,
Hillary el McBride, if you wait, there's like a box
that pops up, put your email in, and then you
can be on my newsletter, which is where I send
out links to live events that I'm doing, trainings that
(48:37):
I'm doing for clinicians group therapy programs I'm running. You
can get information about psychedelic psychotherapy training program and new
things that are coming out. So head over to my
website and sign up for my email list to get
info there.
Speaker 1 (48:49):
Yes, go do that, listeners. Thank you so much for
being here till next tiank you so much till next time. Yes, Yes,
if you would like to contact us, you can or
email is Hello at stuffwenever told you dot com. You
can find us on boost Guy. I'm also a podcast
or on Instagram and TikTok at stuff We Never told you.
We're also on YouTube and we have a book you
can get wherever you can't hear books. Thanks as always
(49:10):
to our super produced Christina or executive Puser and your
contributor Joey. Thank you, and thanks to you for listening
stuff on Never Told You Direction by heart Radio. For
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