Metabolizing
Metabolism is a chemical process reliant on enzymes and is either anabolic or catabolic, providing energy for cellular processes. How one works with difficult experiences shares parallels with metabolism.
As part of integration, metabolizing experience refers to how effectively one is able to identify, attend to, be curious, turn toward, stay with (often through somatic experience), and allow whatever arises to come and go. Metabolizing difficult experiences involves the digestion of emotions, their physical correlates, and other sensations. We might argue the more effective this process is, the greater the client’s wellbeing.
Health Professional Tip
To help your client metabolize an emotion, invite them to turn toward the sensations of the emotion in the body and sit with it, reporting how it feels and changes over the course of a few minutes.
When clients are unable to metabolize their experience, it can help determine what needs to change, if anything, and how. Alternatively, one may be able to choose to be with things just as they are.
This process is active and, at the same time, requires discernment around what is the most helpful response.
A Metabolized Experience
Psychedelic experiences can be conceived of as metabolized when the client has established either a different relationship with, or perspective about, what has arisen. If needed, they have processed challenges or have moved into meaning-making or recognition of how their new understanding may be applied to daily life.
Once integrated, clients will often reflect that while they know the past can’t be changed, it is now felt to be more like a page in a history book rather than something that carries charge and negatively impacts their lives by colouring their perception of present moment experience.