Control Over Perceptual Experiences

Welcome to an extraordinary conversation on the latest and greatest frontier of unusual perceptual experiences. Meet Dr. Al Powers and Brittany Quagan, co-directors of the Yale COPE project (Control Over Perceptual Experiences) focused on research and potential interventions of those who experience it. Dr. Powers is a psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and Medical Director of the Prime Clinic, the psychosis and risk clinic at Yale University. Brittany Quagan is a clinical therapist, medium, with lived experience hearing voices, seeing visions, and feeling things without stimuli. Together, their innovative and cutting-edge research is dedicated to a better understanding of how individuals with unusual perceptual experiences can achieve control and regain empowerment. Listen to Brittany's personal story and learn just how common these experiences are!

Yale COPE Project: https://www.spirit.research.yale.edu/

Behind the COPE Project is a team of individuals from all different communities--neuroscientists, therapists, mental health professionals, mental health advocates, individuals with lived experiences, and individuals who view their experiences as spiritually oriented. Our group is called the SPIRIT Alliance (SPIRIT meaning the multitude of characteristics that make up an individual).

Al Powers: I’m a psychiatrist and neuroscientist.  I am passionate about understanding human experience and building bridges to help us empathize with each other’s experiences.  The way I choose to build these bridges is by viewing experiences like hearing or seeing things other people don’t as on the same spectrum with everyday perceptual experiences.  By understanding perception, I think we can begin to help normalize experiences and begin to decrease the stigma and dysfunction they sometimes carry.

My clinical work is focused upon the treatment of patients experiencing the very first signs of psychosis, as Medical Director of the Yale PRIME Psychosis Prodrome Research Clinic.

Brittany Quagan: I am a Master Level Clinical Therapist and psychic/medium.  My personal experience with hearing voices began when I was about 15 years old. I personally see these voices as Spirit Guides. Along with the voices of Spirit came an influx of distressing experiences such as anxiety, panic attacks, depression, health paranoia, and suicidality. I didn’t know what was happening. I didn’t know what I was hearing. And because I was so distressed by the experiences, I self-medicated with substances and alcohol because, in those moments, the voices and the other uncomfortable sensations and thoughts would quiet down. There were periods of time I couldn’t leave my home, petrified of what I would hear or feel if I did. My sanctuary was the only place I felt safe—or, at the very least—safer. My relationships suffered, I had to drop out of college my first year, and every day I spiraled into what I felt at the time was a never-ending abyss. This continued until I was about 21 years old. 

Now, I work alongside Al as co-director of the SPIRIT Alliance, a consortium of psychic/mediums, spiritual communities, therapists, neuroscientists, and people with mental illness to work as a team to understand these perceptual experiences and to create better, more person-centered treatments through the COPE Project.