Anticipated Challenges

“There are no bad trips, just more challenging ones.”

—(Chandler & Meyers, 2019).

Health professionals should discuss common challenges that could be experienced during Medicine Sessions in an effort to reassure clients and prepare clients in advance how to navigate challenging moments.

Working Through Challenging Moments

As discussed, intention setting can support the client’s willingness to turn toward challenging states and to promote de-centering or de-fusion (e.g., teach me how to heal and be with my pain rather than help me get rid of my suffering).

Dosing

Building on the psycholytic versus psychedelic doses previously mentioned, it is important to help clients understand that they might feel their heart rate increase, they might feel hot, and they may experience some mild sensations of anxiety in the body.

Mind Robbers or Rubber Band Effect

Clinicians are to present the concept of mind robbers or rubber band effect to clients during the Preparation Sessions.

Mind robbers refers to the attempt of the mind to invalidate or discredit progress clients have made in a session (often primarily in response to a Medicine Session) through different mental processes, such as:

  • Shame-based thinking (“I should not have said that”)

  • Denial (“it was not really real what happened”)

  • Fear and doubt (“everything is going to be worse now”, or “I’m just not doing this right, I’m not cut out for this”)

Health Professional Tip

In Preparation Sessions, let clients know that this type of thinking is a normal defence mechanism that can occur when the ego’s habituated defence strategies activated.

The mind’s ego defences (or conceptualized through internal family systems as protector parts with their narratives and roles) snap back in (sometimes more intensely than before) after the psychedelic Medicine Session or even with the waning of peak effect, due to fear of too much vulnerability and change. This may effectively ‘rob’ the individual of progress, especially if they are not prepared for it to happen. Although this does not always occur, it is essential to prepare clients with an awareness of this possibility by describing it in a Preparation Session so that they may experience greater ease with defusion from such narratives if they appear later.

Note

Describing the ‘rubber band’ or ‘mind robbers’ effect after it happens typically results in greater difficulty with defusion or unblending and thus greater challenge anchoring therapeutic progress.

References

Chandler, T. & Meyers, N. (Producers), & Chandler, T. (Director). (2019). Dosed [Documentary].