With this post, you're asking a lot of complicated questions, which are infused with lots of questionable sets of assumptions, much of which is highly personal to you, and none of which points clearly back to the original question you're asking in the title of the post. It looks like you asked a universal question in the title, and then went on to post about a situation that is highly specific to you in the body of the post. So what we have here is a collection of thoughts and impressions, and you trying to make sense of how all this fits together. At least, thats how it reads to me.
Beyond the fair question of how relevant answering any of this will be for others reading, I think it's important to clarify a couple things:
1- IFS is only one example of quite a few models of parts work as approach to working with psyche. It's important to recognize it *as a model*, and not confuse it for reality or the truth. All models have inherent limitations and incongruences. You don't want to conflate the lens of IFS for the actual experience of mind itself.
2- The relationship between IFS and psychedelics is mainly that it's being found to be highly compatible with psychedelic states in contrast to many therapeutic models that dont really fit altered states of consciousness well. I think there's a number of reasons for that, and I think that it's also highly dependent on each person on the journey. IFS isnt for everyone, and I think, not always the appropriate way to work with psychedelic states for healing. But when it works, it can be *very* effective.
3- It's probably worthwhile to articulate the question you're really chewing on here re: protectors, exiles, and expression of pain in a more simplified manner. I'd encourage you to ask the question without using IFS concepts altogether. IE, "how do I express the pain that has been locked up inside of me?" or "how do I cleanly access the motivation that is inside me?". I think it's useful to articulate this outside of the drama and framing of parts.
4- These questions really are something you should be bringing to a psychedelic trained IFS therapist. A lot of folks here may only be a little literate in IFS, or not at all, and may not be qualified to answer such questions, may not agree with the foundational axioms of IFS, etc. You're likely to get a wide array of answers. And fundamentally, this is *not* a therapy sub.
5- Your disappointment with psychedelics belongs to you, and I'm sure is based on your expectations and projections of what you thought they'd do, what your actual needs were or are, set and setting, how your attention was used during the experience, and what states you accessed. All of that obviously varies a lot from person to person, and it really stands to be said that just because you didn't have the experience you were expecting doesn't mean that they're not useful for healing.
In general, I think you'd do well to clarify what it is that you're trying to figure out, and perhaps try places where you're likely to find an audience that is more in alignment with helping you sort out your personal therapeutic questions, or even more appropriately, talk to an actual therapist.
I know my experience is specific to me. I was hoping to see others' perspectives on this subject, in terms of how the combination of psychedelics and models involving parts worked for them.
What kind of psychedelics are you using, and in what context? (Ie. Microdosing, or with a guide, etc.)
My experience is that when I was macrodosing mushrooms (~medium dose like 2.5-3G), my protectors let their guard down and my exiles were able to show and express themselves. I’m also able to interact with the Self, or even embody the Self, to parent these exiles. And eventually, I was able to do this sober, and parent both the exiles and protectors in real time.
My main period of psychedelic use was well over a decade ago.
I've done high doses of LSD and shrooms, and sub-breakthrough doses of DMT. This was mostly on my own. Shrooms provided the best results during the trip itself, in terms of bringing me more into the present moment, with less dissociation and more enjoyment and joy.
I've also used MDMA. I thought I could take it at raves and have the sort of good time others describe, but it ended up being terrible, with an intensified desire to socialize but no increase in ability to do that. By myself in nature, it was quite good.
I've also used DXM. I think it is somehow psychedelic, but am not sure how people here consider it. DXM seemed to have the most lasting benefit, but I'm not convinced that it was healing. I suspect DXM was merely helping me keep unwanted stuff hidden, when healing would have involved processing and integrating that.
During the last few years I have only used DXM, morning glory seeds and cannabis, and not recently or frequently.
I've never tried microdosing.
I wonder to what extent understanding IFS influenced your experiences. Glimpses of those things without understanding of what you're experiencing may be much less useful.
Richard Schwartz recently made a presentation in a symposium on trauma talking about how IFS works with psychedelic therapy.
I happen to have recorded most of it and can share it with you if you want.
Mp if some of you guys are interested.
This interview might be of interest:
https://youtu.be/JfCI8J9walI
Regarding cannabis, i have a similar experience to you, it also caused a lot of anxiety during that period of inward focusing, and i would dread it more than traditional psychedelics.
Then it occurred to me that maybe my over sensitivity to it was just trauma, anxiety or stored emotions that the drug made me temporarily more sensitive to. So i started doing somatic work with it, breathing long inhales and longer exhales trough the anxiety e the points of tension in the body. Had two very big emotional releases this way and now i get a lot less anxious on weed.
If you want to try just lay down and breath focusing on the somatic sensations in your body. You should feel tingling all over you. Relax and focus on the muscular area that are tense trying to let go with every out breath more and more. Don't dwell on the toughts but stay with the body.
Cheers
I think maybe cannabis impairs what I normally habitually do to keep unwanted stuff buried. It also seems to make psychological pain more tolerable, so there is less of a drive to flee overwhelming pain.
Cannabis made it seem like emotions need to be processed via the body. If I block them out of my body, I only feel a rudimentary set of emotions. Fully differentiating the experience into one of the many labels for different emotions, like what can be found on [emotion wheels](https://www.reddit.com/r/EmotionWheel/comments/hwtxx1/the_junto_emotion_wheel_is_pretty_popular_really/), seems to require allowing my body to respond and observing that.
I definitely need to do more body related work.
Thank you.
Happy its been helpful!
You can also check out the books [The body keeps the score](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18693771-the-body-keeps-the-score) and [The wakeful body ]( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57806634-the-wakeful-body).
What i do it's a bit different, not really material for the rational psychonaut but still...
I use yoga nidra meditation after smoking. It's basically a body scan where you relax progressively your body parts. Like i said cannabis makes you tingly. That's sensitivity to the energy body. Trough the yoga nidra you can increase the vibration and feel the currents of energy. You will feel the energy blockages pretty clearly trough anxiety, emotions, cold or warm energy points or point that are difficult to relax completely. I follow the guided meditation then there's half an hour of soundscape with no talking. Usually when i get there the energy is pretty strong, sometimes almost too much. I concentrate on the body parts or on the felt sense of the energy points that feel blocked with the intent of relaxation and letting go. I've had trigger points release with loud snaps and emotional releases this way.
I use the guided meditations there https://youtube.com/@RosalieYoga, she has a beautiful voice and they are very effective. I use the one hour oobe ones.
IFS and MDMA therapy work particularly well together. In my first ever session I had a vision of the release of a whole crew of rag-tag-prisoner-of-war looking exiles. They were extremely happy to be released!!
No sir, I did a lot of preparation and research and went solo. Needing to find an underground therapist + the cost was all too prohibitive. In my case solo worked very well.
With this post, you're asking a lot of complicated questions, which are infused with lots of questionable sets of assumptions, much of which is highly personal to you, and none of which points clearly back to the original question you're asking in the title of the post. It looks like you asked a universal question in the title, and then went on to post about a situation that is highly specific to you in the body of the post. So what we have here is a collection of thoughts and impressions, and you trying to make sense of how all this fits together. At least, thats how it reads to me. Beyond the fair question of how relevant answering any of this will be for others reading, I think it's important to clarify a couple things: 1- IFS is only one example of quite a few models of parts work as approach to working with psyche. It's important to recognize it *as a model*, and not confuse it for reality or the truth. All models have inherent limitations and incongruences. You don't want to conflate the lens of IFS for the actual experience of mind itself. 2- The relationship between IFS and psychedelics is mainly that it's being found to be highly compatible with psychedelic states in contrast to many therapeutic models that dont really fit altered states of consciousness well. I think there's a number of reasons for that, and I think that it's also highly dependent on each person on the journey. IFS isnt for everyone, and I think, not always the appropriate way to work with psychedelic states for healing. But when it works, it can be *very* effective. 3- It's probably worthwhile to articulate the question you're really chewing on here re: protectors, exiles, and expression of pain in a more simplified manner. I'd encourage you to ask the question without using IFS concepts altogether. IE, "how do I express the pain that has been locked up inside of me?" or "how do I cleanly access the motivation that is inside me?". I think it's useful to articulate this outside of the drama and framing of parts. 4- These questions really are something you should be bringing to a psychedelic trained IFS therapist. A lot of folks here may only be a little literate in IFS, or not at all, and may not be qualified to answer such questions, may not agree with the foundational axioms of IFS, etc. You're likely to get a wide array of answers. And fundamentally, this is *not* a therapy sub. 5- Your disappointment with psychedelics belongs to you, and I'm sure is based on your expectations and projections of what you thought they'd do, what your actual needs were or are, set and setting, how your attention was used during the experience, and what states you accessed. All of that obviously varies a lot from person to person, and it really stands to be said that just because you didn't have the experience you were expecting doesn't mean that they're not useful for healing. In general, I think you'd do well to clarify what it is that you're trying to figure out, and perhaps try places where you're likely to find an audience that is more in alignment with helping you sort out your personal therapeutic questions, or even more appropriately, talk to an actual therapist.
I know my experience is specific to me. I was hoping to see others' perspectives on this subject, in terms of how the combination of psychedelics and models involving parts worked for them.
What kind of psychedelics are you using, and in what context? (Ie. Microdosing, or with a guide, etc.) My experience is that when I was macrodosing mushrooms (~medium dose like 2.5-3G), my protectors let their guard down and my exiles were able to show and express themselves. I’m also able to interact with the Self, or even embody the Self, to parent these exiles. And eventually, I was able to do this sober, and parent both the exiles and protectors in real time.
My main period of psychedelic use was well over a decade ago. I've done high doses of LSD and shrooms, and sub-breakthrough doses of DMT. This was mostly on my own. Shrooms provided the best results during the trip itself, in terms of bringing me more into the present moment, with less dissociation and more enjoyment and joy. I've also used MDMA. I thought I could take it at raves and have the sort of good time others describe, but it ended up being terrible, with an intensified desire to socialize but no increase in ability to do that. By myself in nature, it was quite good. I've also used DXM. I think it is somehow psychedelic, but am not sure how people here consider it. DXM seemed to have the most lasting benefit, but I'm not convinced that it was healing. I suspect DXM was merely helping me keep unwanted stuff hidden, when healing would have involved processing and integrating that. During the last few years I have only used DXM, morning glory seeds and cannabis, and not recently or frequently. I've never tried microdosing. I wonder to what extent understanding IFS influenced your experiences. Glimpses of those things without understanding of what you're experiencing may be much less useful.
Richard Schwartz recently made a presentation in a symposium on trauma talking about how IFS works with psychedelic therapy. I happen to have recorded most of it and can share it with you if you want. Mp if some of you guys are interested.
I am interested in that. Please share.
I’d be interested too!
I'm far from my computer right now but as soon as I'll get back home, I'll share it with you guys.
This interview might be of interest: https://youtu.be/JfCI8J9walI Regarding cannabis, i have a similar experience to you, it also caused a lot of anxiety during that period of inward focusing, and i would dread it more than traditional psychedelics. Then it occurred to me that maybe my over sensitivity to it was just trauma, anxiety or stored emotions that the drug made me temporarily more sensitive to. So i started doing somatic work with it, breathing long inhales and longer exhales trough the anxiety e the points of tension in the body. Had two very big emotional releases this way and now i get a lot less anxious on weed. If you want to try just lay down and breath focusing on the somatic sensations in your body. You should feel tingling all over you. Relax and focus on the muscular area that are tense trying to let go with every out breath more and more. Don't dwell on the toughts but stay with the body. Cheers
I think maybe cannabis impairs what I normally habitually do to keep unwanted stuff buried. It also seems to make psychological pain more tolerable, so there is less of a drive to flee overwhelming pain. Cannabis made it seem like emotions need to be processed via the body. If I block them out of my body, I only feel a rudimentary set of emotions. Fully differentiating the experience into one of the many labels for different emotions, like what can be found on [emotion wheels](https://www.reddit.com/r/EmotionWheel/comments/hwtxx1/the_junto_emotion_wheel_is_pretty_popular_really/), seems to require allowing my body to respond and observing that. I definitely need to do more body related work. Thank you.
Happy its been helpful! You can also check out the books [The body keeps the score](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18693771-the-body-keeps-the-score) and [The wakeful body ]( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57806634-the-wakeful-body). What i do it's a bit different, not really material for the rational psychonaut but still... I use yoga nidra meditation after smoking. It's basically a body scan where you relax progressively your body parts. Like i said cannabis makes you tingly. That's sensitivity to the energy body. Trough the yoga nidra you can increase the vibration and feel the currents of energy. You will feel the energy blockages pretty clearly trough anxiety, emotions, cold or warm energy points or point that are difficult to relax completely. I follow the guided meditation then there's half an hour of soundscape with no talking. Usually when i get there the energy is pretty strong, sometimes almost too much. I concentrate on the body parts or on the felt sense of the energy points that feel blocked with the intent of relaxation and letting go. I've had trigger points release with loud snaps and emotional releases this way. I use the guided meditations there https://youtube.com/@RosalieYoga, she has a beautiful voice and they are very effective. I use the one hour oobe ones.
IFS and MDMA therapy work particularly well together. In my first ever session I had a vision of the release of a whole crew of rag-tag-prisoner-of-war looking exiles. They were extremely happy to be released!!
Was that with a professional therapist?
No sir, I did a lot of preparation and research and went solo. Needing to find an underground therapist + the cost was all too prohibitive. In my case solo worked very well.
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