Ketamine for Multiple Personality/DID: The Client Experience

Okay, so one thing that happens on psychedelics is you can just get more clarity on what your inner map is, yeah, and what needs to happen, okay, and also what needs to happen. So that’s almost a different thing. So you get clarity on this is my map. This is who the parts are, and I see them all more distinctly and as individuals. And then second is, I can also sort of see where they’re wounded and what kind of, let’s call it trauma therapy they might need or something. Yeah, like, what is needed so that they’re not in so much distress, right? And so they don’t just have their vice, whatever their vice is. Like a two year old might suck his thumb, and a grown up who didn’t get to suck their thumb might smoke a cigarettes or whatever, that kind of thing. And so when the two year old is feeling whatever has triggered distress, then instead of reaching for the cigarette, might be able to with the therapy and clarity, all that and all that, be like what the two year old really needs is whatever is coming out of that origin story. Like what they really need maybe was to sit and be with somebody who’s a safe person, which, as a grown up, might be okay. Well, you don’t have the same kind of need for a mom, but maybe you want to go on a walk with a really great friend and just be together in silence, or maybe that answers the need instead of another cigarette. Interesting. So this brings me back to something you said. Earlier, about collapsing time, and we talked about that a little bit. We joked about this word, quote, holographic. But I think what you were just describing was a concept that came up in your work, which was that the parts are real. The parts are part of who you are as your system. That means they exist, not in the past. They exist now, and their needs still need to be met developmentally, according to the trauma at the time it happened, which is in the past, but by doing that, you heal their wounding in the present. It’s kind of crazy to talk about, but on the surface, you’re going back in time and talking to apart from the past, but really you’re just working with the stuff that’s in your nervous system now in the present. Yeah, well, that’s one of the most amazing things in all of this, is seeing, and I think to some extent, everybody has this, to an extent. I mean, there are books and books on the inner child, but when you see that as a real thing, you have the feel of it as a real, a really alive bit of yourself that needs a certain kind of attention that is just as alive and vibrant as it was as a kid. Then there’s more motivation, I guess, to actually take care of it, for example, like the body itself, rather than ignoring its needs and going on and on, doing another four hours of work being like, Okay, this is something that is actually a real part of my mind that is in tact there, and when I respond to it, to its desire to stop and rest or have dinner or whatever, that’s not only meeting the body’s needs now, but it’s meeting the psychic needs as a whole, for self care and self respect and dignity. It kind of reminds me of we’re both aware of the interviews that Dick Schwartz, the creator of internal family systems, has done about working with parts, including what we call DID, which he just sees as an extreme on this spectrum of people having parts where he kind of stumbled on over time, over his career, the fact that really what parts work is, is family therapy, where someone in the system, whoever that Observer Self is, whatever we call it, is sort of taking all the parts and they’re all in one big family and making sure that they are. It’s like family therapy where everybody’s needs are discussed and addressed. Yeah, and the grown ups need to actually feed the kid, you know, rather than, you know, ignore the kid. And then not only is the kid stressed out, but also the grown up is stressed out because the kid is hungry, the body is hungry. And so, yeah, I think that’s like a family, you know, if a patient doesn’t feed their toddler on time, then the toddler is going to pitch a fit in the grocery store. Yeah. So I can imagine, like with family therapy, it would be the same with, say, teenage parts, like a part that’s a teenager, the adult has to talk to the teenager, figure out what the needs are, and so on. So I’m only repeating this because of its sort of elegant simplicity. Yeah, if you’ve parented effectively, then you can probably do this, yeah, which is, you know, again, being a good enough parent is a big deal. But yes, if you can do that, well, you can do this. And considering how incredibly debilitating having DID is to a person’s emotional and mental health, it is inspiring to know that there is a certain elegant simplicity to the solution. And interestingly, for this conversation, especially on psychedelics. Yeah, it’s just like, don’t ignore the needs. Yeah, it’s just like a regular family, don’t ignore the needs. You can’t take care of the needs when the picture is so muddy that you can’t see, you don’t have the full puzzle pieces. The psychedelic basically illuminates. It’s like, I guess, trying to do a puzzle in the dark, and then, you know, the psychedelic turns on the light, and you’re like, Oh, okay. So now look, this square piece goes here. This piece goes here, and you’re like, Oh, it’s a picture of a cat. The cat wants cat food, you know. Or it’s a picture of a dog, maybe the dog needs to go on a walk. So two things that I conclude from this one, psychedelics work really well for DID, which is, I think, not a commonly held belief, but maybe that will change. But two, you can’t do that by yourself. You can’t take a psychedelic at home. It has to be in the context of a therapist that is collaborating actively and playing an active role. I think it’s important to name that part from a safety point of view. Yes. Now, unfortunately, that’s not necessarily easy to find, but we hope that that will also change. So hopefully conversations like these can stimulate those kinds of discussions out there, right? Yeah, and that people have adequate support, you know, because therapists aren’t available. 24/7, so making sure, before you’re going into all this, that you have support from family, support from friends who are knowledgeable enough and caring enough. And, you know, support from your spirituality or whatever, just having all that in place before you’re deep, diving, not just going out and partying and finding some psychedelic to self treat, yes, taking it very seriously as deep and hard therapy. Work less hard on a psychedelic than without it. I think we’ve established, but let’s not minimize that. This is hard. This is, you know, this isn’t a walk in the park. And then have a therapist that knows what to do with working with parts, yeah, and wants to go deep, because just scratching the surface of it doesn’t finish the thing. If the thing doesn’t get finished, if a therapist is too scared to go into the emotion, then it’s not gonna work, because the emotion is still there, unfinished. If the two year old doesn’t, you know, can’t go deep in the emotion, and can only go a little bit because the therapist is scared about that, then the kid experiences still the worst of it on their own, and it doesn’t get finished. The therapist needs to have been well trained enough to be able to feel comfortable going into deep emotion and being able to stay with the patient in that until it’s done. Yeah? As a provider, I think that’s incredibly important. And then they have to have done their own therapy work, because they’re never going to feel comfortable if they’ve not so some of the basic rules for being a psychedelic therapist is do your own work so that your own triggers and things like that don’t get into the dynamic with your patient. Yeah, and have done psychedelic work too to know what your patient is feeling right. Have done some psychedelics? Yes, this is the basics of being trained as a psychedelic therapist, and you’re repeating the importance of that. And then this third one of you know, if you’re uncomfortable with your patient reliving their childhood trauma and you can’t stay with it, then that’s dangerous for the patient. Yeah, then the patient is going to know it, and they’re not going to be able to do it. They’re going to be more dis more dysregulated, instead of less dysregulated. They’re going to leave in a worse spot. So it may even just reinforce the belief that there’s no adult who can handle this safely. Yes, exactly, which I think is really important for people to hear, because I think that happens accidentally a lot with trauma work, where the therapist gets nervous and then tries to just regulate the client, yeah, backpedaling to get out of their distress, their distress, yeah. And I think that runs the danger of reinforcing the message, oh, I’m I am too much. Oh, my trauma is too bad. Nobody can go here with me, right? Yeah. And then they just go deeper into their vice and, you know, say, Forget therapy. Okay, this doesn’t work. It’s important to say this may not even be a conscious thought, right? And it may be these younger parts that are actually receiving this message, right? Oh, this grown up can’t handle this. Yeah, even non verbally. Yes, exactly.

So I don’t want to take up too much of your time, but I do want to ask you about the role that somatic work or touch plays at some critical junctures from your perspective as the client, right? So as a patient, of course, everyone wants to be very careful with therapy and touch, and rightly so, but when the patient is sober and has a good working relationship with a therapist, then when they’re agreeing on what’s going to happen when, then that’s the time to practice, you know, do you want a hand on your shoulder, if you’re feeling like, you know, really by yourself, or what kind of things? And then practicing that, and then being able, if the person is in a space where they can’t speak, or they can’t talk or whatever, and they, you know, maybe can only nod, or they’re in a non verbal part, and the therapist can see that, and then you would respond to the person just like you would respond like, if you’re a parent and you saw a two year old crying beside themselves, you wouldn’t just stand there and Be like, okay, honey. You know, you know, take some deep breaths, and now let’s just realize that, you know, it’s not the end of the world. No, you’re not going to do that, because the kids just gonna, like, redouble, you know, like feeling awful. So, you know, with a two year old, you would maybe pat him on the back, or pat him on the shoulder in a rhythmic way until they’re like, Hey, okay, it’s all right, it’s all right. And with your voice and your breath, just re establishing that parasympathetic, like, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay. So soothing, soothing, exactly, and we all know that soothing, especially with young children, is very much about touch and comfort through touch. And yes, we all also understand how nuanced the use of touch is, especially in psychedelic therapy, and how it can be done traumatically. And so this is by no means suggesting that touch should not be used with care and discernment and training, lots of training, and also. So certain types of repair, especially with young parts, as you just named, doesn’t really work without some sort of physical contact, right? Because they’re just abandoned. They’re like, okay, by yourself crying on the floor, great, you know, pat yourself on the back. You can’t verbally soothe someone who’s pre verbal and doesn’t understand what’s happening, but you can do that with contact. Yeah, okay. Well, is there anything else that you feel like it’s important or want to say that I didn’t think to ask? Gosh, I think we covered the basics. It’s the basics of going through DID treatment. No big deal. Yeah, I think the most important thing to realize for anyone who is listening is that it can be subtle, and it’s much more prevalent than what we think it is. And there are probably a lot of professionals, maybe even somebody you know who are either diagnosed or have all the symptoms of this, who are, you know, seemingly doing just fine, yeah, or maybe believe that their diagnosis is PTSD or something exactly when it is more in line with DID, and They don’t have a language for that. And I guess it’s worth naming that you are a highly educated white collar professional, so it’s very possible to function at a very high level in society with masked DID. And that’s another stereotype that it would be good to debunk, right? Yes, not everyone is Eve, you know, in the film or symbol, not by a long shot, yeah, okay. Well, thank you very much for doing this. You’re welcome. 

Outro 51:58

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