Ketamine for Multiple Personality/DID: The Client Experience

Then whenever just going to regular therapy wasn’t really meeting the needs, I started more intensive therapy, and that’s when it became obvious that this was something different. And in retrospect, I think in college, I had tried to pull my therapists into. All parts, but they were not, I guess, able to recognize that. By that, do you mean that in retrospect, you would go into younger parts in therapy sessions? Yeah, but it wasn’t like a conscious decision. It was just a falling into it, and then it wasn’t recognized for what it was. It wasn’t recognized for what it was, right? And they didn’t really know what to do with it in retrospect, or they decided not to do anything with it. I don’t know, but it wasn’t I was not communicated with. It was not managed. It was just kind of like brushed aside and Okay, now we’re doing X, Y, Z work stuff or something like that. So going back into more recent years, you went into more intensive therapy, and we know some of that involved ketamine assisted psychotherapy as well as other kinds of work. When did it start to dawn on you? Like, Oh, yeah, this part stuff is back, yeah, that was, gosh, fairly recently, after being in therapy, you know longer, and seeing and looking very intensely at my way of being in different circumstances, and recognizing that, unlike I guess, normal or usual dissociation, where people have A sense of continuity from one state of mind to another that was missing in a lot of my dissociation from one state of mind to another, you would just switch kind of abruptly, yeah, and very situationally like not that I would feel in control of it. So it was often very appropriate and so not necessarily noticed by anyone that I was dealing with, unless it was a close family person or co worker. But I began to notice it myself as a very distinct pattern. When you say appropriate, you mean you would go into a part whose emotional state kind of match the situation anyway, so other people wouldn’t necessarily flag you as having you Right, right, yeah. Or if I felt myself being in an inappropriate space, I would recognize it as such, since we were doing this work and remove myself from the situation. Okay? So you would say I’m in a part that is not appropriate, so I need to get out of here. You could tell that you were in a part, but you couldn’t get out of it, right, right? Yes, because there was an observer part, right? Yeah, it was something being in the mind of a small child and recognizing as a small child that I’m not I don’t need to be here. I need to remove myself. Yeah, so you shared with me that even back when you were, I think, an adolescent or teenager, maybe in college, you had suspected you had multiple parts, because you had drawn out these diagrams of the parts of yourself trying to understand your own self, even though that wasn’t overtly being discussed in therapy. How did you understand that at that time? Was that like an imagination exercise or Well, I think how I first felt that, I think we had taken beginner psychology class or something, and in beginner just psychology class, they’re talking about psych 101, you know, different aspects of personality. And so I kind of extrapolated from that, and I believe that was when people were beginning to discuss ego states, which is normal for everyone. That’s how, whenever I brought it up, that’s how it was explained to me, just as, oh, this is normal ego states. Everybody does that. So you were aware you had these distinct personalities that you had even given names to, but you didn’t necessarily frame that as pathological to use that word, or as like, I’m just getting to know my own sort of ego states, which is on a spectrum of normal, right? And I felt internally, it wasn’t your average bear, but that was not confirmed. And since there’s a lot of work to do in college, I just had to deal with it like that and move on. You know, needed to keep studying and not focus on it. So you just shifted your focus away from that in the period of time between college, when this was suspected, and then more recently in life, when you actually got diagnosed and treated, just for the sake of any audience. It’s not like DID goes away. We could say it was less intense. So in retrospect, were you just living with shifts within your family life or work life that were subtle enough that you masked it? Yes, okay, which I think is a very common thing, which is why I was just highlighting that, because I’ve met other people with DID who are very high functioning, and you’re aware you’re switching, in a felt sense. But people around you don’t necessarily know that that’s what’s going on, right? And you’re covering for it. Is that correct? If I recognize it? Yes, yeah. And you and I have discussed that a lot of professionals are beginning to think that this is more common than was thought, because of the there’s so many traumatized children, and that’s what we suspect it’s originating from, is traumatized children. Okay? And then the more recent work that you’ve done, can you talk a little bit about how you discovered the discrete parts the individual named and identified parts. You don’t have to name them, but how you discovered them, how many they are like, what their developmental ages are. Talk a little bit about just what your discovery process was, getting to know your parts. And then I am interested in finding out a little bit about how psychedelic assisted psychotherapy played a role in that that was different from regular therapy. And what you think is important to know about that, so we can go in that order. Okay? So as far as in college, I think I counted about 22 different aspects of self, and in that way, college counseling was kind of effective, because I finished counseling with much less than that, even though the focus was not to deal with dissociation, and I didn’t really think about it really, but more recently, I identify nine aspects, and these are mostly, I can say, traced back to certain childhood traumas, very specifically, you know, from, you know, like even probably pre toddler age, and maybe two and four and six and 10 and teenage age. And so those would be like the child aspects, but they function often in a very grown up way, especially pre teenage. But they often get over faced in real career, work life. And then there’s, you know, like real grown up parts, which are probably originating from, you know, what do they say? Good objects, good people that were in my life, that I did demonstrate, that did demonstrate really great models of how to, you know, parent and how to be in life. So you’ve got parts of many different ages going from pre verbal child up to adult. And different parts of different ages on that spectrum, I think some are male and some are female. Is that right? Yes, and some are very high functioning in different domains of life. And those are often, I guess, the ones that have gotten you through those are the ones that would help with shifting or masking, as you said, masking, yes, and then some of these younger ones came about or were created to cope with certain trauma. Memory sets, yeah, basically to keep those memories like encapsulated, let’s say encapsulated, so that I can function. So you had different parts that had different parts of your memory that they were holding, and the whole system, or you as a whole, did not have access to these memories, right, which is an aspect of dissociative identity disorder, but that was your experience. And so I know that recently, what happened in therapy, I think, initially completely unexpected to you, but then later with intention, was accessing or dialoguing with some of these parts and also coming into conscious access with the memories that they were holding. Yeah, and then the meaning, because that’s the very important thing that is available with psychedelic psychotherapy or psychedelic assisted psychotherapy, is that the meaning that is coming from a very vague story. When a part is accessed, the emotional meaning provides the solution. If there’s no emotional memory or the memory is chopped, then there’s not a solution, because the picture is incomplete. So what do you mean? Meaning? Do you mean why? Is why this part is doing what it’s doing, like an explanation? Yeah, an explanation for why it’s doing it, and also an explanation for how to help it so that there’s not vice behavior that’s not helpful, right? So some of these parts, and this is pretty typical, have really mall adaptive behaviors that were unhealthy for you, yes, and so are you saying that understanding why and what their needs were helped to take that away in some ways? I mean, I know this is an ongoing process. Yes, it’s an ongoing process, but yes, it removes some of the intensity. Like. If there is an impulse to engage in vice behavior, then being able to tap into where that impulse is coming from, which is often a young part that is over tired or over stressed, or whatever it is, being able to feel into that and then see what it really actually needs, rather than whatever the vice is substituting for helps reduce it interesting. So when you say being able to feel into it or what it needs, this is something that’s new, or that this ability to do that came from recent therapy work, it wasn’t something you used to be able to do, right? Yeah. So there’s this ability now to kind of, when you say, tap into, or feel into, to kind of access these parts more voluntarily, yes, okay, and you have told me that there’s something about psychedelic psychotherapy that worked better than regular therapy for this. Can you explain why that is so? Let’s see three or four things. One is, I guess, any kind of trauma therapy is usually painful, long, difficult and psychedelic psychotherapy makes that process less painful, you can work with something and leave a session and be able to go the next day to your job or go be with your family, versus in regular therapy. Sometimes you need hours or maybe even a day off just to emotionally recover from trauma, from the trauma memory, yeah, because it’s just right there and just raw. And let’s see what I said before, also the realness of the memory, being able to, rather than just with a regular recall, seeing kind of fuzzy images to be with psychedelic psychotherapy, be able to sort of fall into it like you’re falling into a movie set, or like the Christmas story where Scrooge visits his old self. It’s very much like that, where he actually sees like in a movie himself as he was. And in that way, it has a real vitality to it, a felt sense that’s like, Okay, this is real. It almost sounds like you’re saying, and I’m speaking as a provider that in regular trauma therapy, you kind of knew that there was trauma there, but you didn’t fully re experience it or get clarity on what it was. But for some reason on psychedelics, it took you right into it, like into a movie, yeah, yeah, yeah. You almost were fully re experiencing it, but from the lens of, well, my memory is from the lens of that developmental age, yes, yes. So what interests me about this developmental age piece is that these parts exist, and these different parts are different ages. And so if you are merging with a, say, four year old part, the therapist needs to understand that, because the therapist that’s with you needs to talk to the four year old, not just the adult, right? And if they’re talking as an adult, then that can actually be pretty hurtful if they don’t understand that. Well, I’m bringing this up just because it’s something you and I have discussed. Can you explain what the role of the therapist is when you are fully in a younger part that is experiencing trauma? Right? So I think it’s really important for it basically seems like re parenting. So people talk about trauma and re traumatizing, and how not to do that, and what kind of work to do to avoid re traumatizing, and how to repair and not make more rupture. So to get repair, what was missing in most traumas, as I understand it, is someone that could see the situation from the perspective of the child, of the person. And when there isn’t someone, a responsible adult or someone there that can see that, then it just gets encapsulated raw, like a shock memory, like a car accident or something. It’s all raw. And if it with a therapist, gets spoken about from the point of view of the child, then the child as the patient. You feel yourself as a child there, but you also feel the therapist as the responsible grown up, who is there with you, seeing the thing that you see and the horrible thing that you see in the way that you see it, and communicates that in a way, and when they react to it or say something, then it is. It’s almost like time collapses. And that yourself as a little kid feels that as if it had happened back then. And so that is very, very healing, and it’s very effective, because as a patient, you have a feeling that you’re really there versus, you know, in many talk therapies, you maybe don’t have that sense of the vividness of it. It’s basically like the psychedelic whooshes you back into time. Yes, it takes you back to that moment in time in a very vivid felt sense way. Uh huh. It is a trauma memory. So you’re going back to a moment of acute trauma, and you are very young, but the difference is that there’s a kind of safe grown up there with you while it’s happening, and that’s what’s new or different. That’s what’s new, because there wasn’t a safe grown up there before that cared or, you know, witnessed or understood your perspective. And now there is, yeah, and then the last piece that I think we should name, because it’s so interesting to me as a clinician, is there’s the patient, which is you, in this case, in, let’s say, for the sake of argument, a three year old state, for example, describing what you’re experiencing as a three year old. And then there’s the therapist, kind of accompanying you and talking to you, but talking to you as you would talk to a three year old, yes, absolutely, but not as a grown up, but creating safety, uh huh. And then there’s also this third thing in the room, which to me, is really important for providers to understand, which is some aspect of your observer mind is still on board, right? Yeah, because it’s recording this and kind of like replaying over the memory like you would basically, you know, take a tape recording and record over it, and it would be a new recording. Now, instead of you by yourself with the bad thing that happened, it’s you with that grown up there watching the bad thing that happened and getting the support, huh? And so that almost becomes a new memory. Yeah. That’s fascinating. Yeah. And okay. The reason I’m making this distinction is because, for someone listening, here’s what I think is worth emphasizing. If you had been fully dissociated into this, say, three year old part, completely, like completely without awareness of any other parts or your Observer Self on board your adult observer, then there may have been this healing done for this part, but you may not have remembered that right. What was interesting about the psychedelic is that you went fully into the part. You dialogs with the therapist from the part, and also some adult part of you was watching that and had recall of it. And I think that seems to automatically happen on the psychedelic, yeah, I don’t know, it’s pretty fascinating, because you’re just watching your mind do this thing, and it’s just doing it, and it’s recording over, you know, like, bad information with new good information. And your grown up mind is like, Oh, look at that. That’s pretty cool. And then outside of it, it has a different feel to it. When you think back on the bad memory like that, it maybe didn’t exactly, it didn’t happen anymore, like with the bad thing that happened, yes, so the bad thing happened, but it was with the safety here now, right?

And then, what I’ve understood from you is that those parts don’t have as much fear afterwards, and therefore they are less just on a practical level, less symptomatic. Yes, exactly. And there’s more agency to choose in the regular, grown up life, at work or with family, to choose what state of mind that you want to approach something with, rather than just falling into one thing or another without agency, which is, I think one of the points that’s good to point out is that this diagnosis, we may find that it’s actually very useful with psychedelic psychotherapy, in ways that other therapies might not reach it so well, and of course, with the caveat of having enough support and functioning established but but with that so Okay, so given that this is an ongoing journey for you, but yet, we’re doing this interview because you have had some significant shifts and have learned a lot about this. And as a clinician, I’m also interested. So it sounds like some of the key things we’ve learned are that psychedelics can work really well with fully dissociated parts, because they enable the part to be 100% present and having their experience while also having some observer capacity on board that. Is an observer for the whole system, shall we say, which I think is fascinating in and of itself. And another thing we’ve learned is that the role of the therapist there is critical, because the part cannot do the repair without an other, like an I thou dyad. There has to be another, otherwise you’re just re experiencing the trauma. And a third thing we’ve learned is that if the part lays down a new memory of the trauma, meaning I still remember it, but I have a different sense of safety around it, then the patient with the ID, the whole person you is less symptomatic, because the parts are not as easily triggered, right right and reactive, and they’re not reactive, so they’re not just taking over, and they’re not pulling you into vice to meet what we’re assuming are their safety needs or something, because they’re not having the same needs. So what’s fascinating about it is almost the simplicity, in a way, yeah, like that. One by one, we go in, talk to these parts, figure out what their needs, their safety needs are. And then there’s a role of witnessing on the part of the therapist. And then there’s a role of safety for the part at the developmental age that they’re at which is relevant. And then agency for the patient as a grown up. Yeah, can you say more about that just having more flexibility? Because I think the difference between DID and regular everybody who dissociates is choice. And so with DID along the spectrum, there’s more or less choice about switching. And so that is the line, I guess, that gets crossed in the diagnosis part. And so as a person has more and more choice, they may eventually not even meet criteria anymore for DID, because there would be agency so that there wouldn’t be, you know, lost time, etc, right? So agency is like the big thing here, because what someone with the ID does not have is agency Exactly. It just takes them over involuntarily. And if you have agency, then having parts is not really then it’s a superpower. That’s a big deal because you have agency over how those parts are, right? You’ve developed these specific ways of interacting with your environment that can be really, really skillful and focused. And if you have agency to be in one part or another part in a really focused way, then it’s a superpower instead of a deficit. So would you say that the superpower, which is fascinating, because it’s like a step above healing, is it like, I have healed these parts, but these parts are now a resource for me? Yes, yeah, that is so cool. It’s more like, it’s like, more focus than you would normally have, as a person who never had DID, because I think usually you know at least how I understand it. People in regular ego states, they have more flow and maybe less focus. And so with DID, I think you develop this, like, super focus. And so then if you have agency in addition to the super focus, then you can choose, oh, I want to be super focused here. Now I want to, you know, do this in this way. And so, yeah, then you can really, so are you saying that you can pull on the talents or abilities of the different parts at will, yes, which have developed in their own way, very, very specific skills. So that also means you’re saying that these parts are not that separate anymore. In other words, you’re not fully dissociating into them. You’re more as I think healing or needs are met in this way. I think, yes, you become less dissociated. You become more able to stand in between and choose, and then go into it and then choose, oh, this is now what I want to do. So not to get all metaphysical, but who is the one choosing, yeah, the great self of Jung, I guess, yeah, there is some organizing self that is observing this, the observer, yeah, I guess we’ll call it the observer, yeah. We don’t really know it is the one that has a sense of agency that is sort of in relationship with the other parts at this point. And if and at first it doesn’t have agency, it’s just watching, it’s just observing. But then it’s becoming to have agency and choice, I guess. Yeah, yeah, because it’s maybe understanding. The whole system, and instead of then just being along for the ride as a passenger, it actually can understand the whole system and make choice and drive. So one of the reasons you’re an interesting person to talk to, other than the story itself, is that you have worked with psychedelics pretty significantly in your healing journey, and have become really skilled and knowledgeable about psychedelic psychotherapy. You’ve done a lot of study and research. You know a lot about it. And there is an assumption that people who are dissociative should not be using psychedelics, sometimes partly, particularly ketamine, because it is known for being dissociative. And my clinical experience has been that this is not the case. In other words, and I think a lot of the people that I work with would say this, actually, you can use a dissociative or a psychedelic, or a, quote, dissociative psychedelic, to work with dissociation, because the sort of gut response, or maybe like default response, would be, oh, don’t, don’t make someone more dissociative who’s already too dissociative. But what it sounds like happens on the psychedelic is that you can actually get clarity on on your dissociation, and maybe even work with it more constructively, whereas when you’re in ordinary awareness, you don’t have control. Like, there’s no clarity, right? Exactly. It’s just like taking you over, right? Exactly. So it’s an argument for using psychedelics with people who are dissociative, right? To put it simply, right, which basically is what trauma mostly does for people, even in somebody who’s in a car accident or in shock, right? Or even the diagnosis of PTSD, for example, which is so much of the population. So we talked before about a recent session, if you try to do that same kind of let’s call it parts work without the psychedelic on board. What happens to you doing that kind of work, like by myself, with meditation or with a therapist doing that kind of work. So in other words, without a psychedelic and without a therapist, or just without a psychedelic, maybe we could compare all of those things, if you want to. What I’m interested in is what the psychedelic does that you can’t get without it. Ah, yes, okay. So a couple things. So one is the clarity in the different parts, being able to see the different ages. Okay, so now I see this age, now I see that age. Now I see that age. What one can see very well with the medicine is very fuzzy. Without the medicine and alone, it’s also very fuzzy. Okay, so just to pause you, it almost like clarifies the picture, like clearing a glass window, yeah, like somebody that needs glasses and they’re not wearing their glasses. Okay? So before there’s a sense of parts, there’s an awareness that there’s a switching, but it’s confusing or muddy, and then when you get on the psychedelic you all of a sudden see the parts as individuals more distinctly, yes, more distinct, and then also more distinctly their needs and what came about to create that need and that separateness, which is big because you’re not only Meeting them, but you’re also understanding almost their origin story, right? Exactly, yeah, just fascinating.