Overview of Foundational Competencies and Orientations

This week, we’re going to be adding to our list of foundational competencies and orientations required for psychedelic-assisted therapy.

The Numinus Care Model encompasses the following components as described in Module 1.

  • Code of Ethics

  • Integrative and Transformative Mental Wellness

  • Seven guiding principles

    • Justice, equity, dignity, and inclusion

    • Cultural safety and humility

    • Trauma and violence-informed care

    • Connection

    • Mindfulness: Nurturing awareness

    • Embodiment: coming home to ourselves

    • Harm reduction

Establishing the therapeutic relationship involves these characteristics as described in Module 2.

  • Inner-directed therapy

  • Unconditional positive regard

  • Love

  • Empathetic abiding presence and listening

  • Being grounded, self-regulated, and aligned

  • Orientation towards phenomenology

  • Relationship-centered care

  • Appreciation for human suffering

  • Health professional self-awareness and ethical integrity

  • Top-down versus bottom-up processing

Therapeutic skills and supporting theory will be discussed across two modules. In this module we will focus on embodied therapeutic skills which must be practiced and strengthened with the awareness that one’s entire being, inclusive of the physical body, is a therapeutic instrument. This is especially true when clients are under psychedelic-induced altered states of consciousness because they become uniquely open and receptive, processing a much broader bandwidth of information through multiple sensory channels beyond conceptual and verbal methods (Atasoy et al., 2018; Gallimore, 2015). This highlights the importance of embodied inquiry and sensitivity to receiving and communicating with somatic communication. On the following pages, we will learn more about the following embodied skills:

  • Interoceptive awareness

  • Awareness of embodied oppression

  • Embodied communication

  • Embodied inquiry

  • Dual awareness: tracking and working in two time zones

  • Therapeutic supportive touch

  • Movement in therapy

  • Working with the psychological flexibility model

  • Working with parts and internal family systems

  • Trust enhancement

  • Spiritual intelligence

  • Experience with altered states of consciousness

  • Perspectives on healing

Psychological Flexibility and Multiplicity

Increasing research points to the transdiagnostic importance of increasing psychological flexibility for mental wellness while also suggesting this may in part underlie the effectiveness of psychedelic-assisted therapy for treating a number of conditions possibly due to some of the neurobiological mechanisms of psychedelics when taken in an optimized environment. A therapeutic approach that supports increasing psychological flexibility is thus aimed at synergizing with this seemingly natural effect of psychedelics to increase psychological flexibility, while also being consilient with the mindfulness and embodiment emphasis of the Numinus care model.

As you will learn, the psychological flexibility model and its applications through ACT and ACE also support working with clients from a perspective of inner multiplicity of the personality. Psychedelic altered states of consciousness are often revealing of inner multiplicity and can enhance parts-based therapeutic process work.

We will learn about:

  • The psychological flexibility model (including the Hexaflex, ACT, and ACE)

  • Working with parts: Internal Family Systems

References

Atasoy, S., Vohryzek, J., Deco, G., Carhart-Harris, R.L., Kringelbach, M.L. (2018). Common neural signatures of psychedelics: Frequency-specific energy changes and repertoire expansion revealed using connectome-harmonic decomposition. Prog Brain Res, 242, 97-120. doi: 10.1016/bs.pbr.2018.08.009. PMID: 30471684.

Gallimore, A.R. (2015). Restructuring consciousness – the psychedelic state in light of integrated information theory. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 9(346), doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2015.00346