We're Our Own Best Healers
The current definitions for psychological and emotional trauma are too narrow and fail to capture the range of conditions and symptoms that can result from life’s distressing events. To exclude “mental distress” and “suffering” from the definition of trauma is analogous to excluding berries and citrus from the definition of fruit. We need to rethink our definition of psychological and emotional trauma and expand it. It is my contention that psychological trauma is far more prevalent and ubiquitous than we can measure.
Mental distress and suffering are products of the trauma response. It makes no sense to distinguish these from trauma because they occur universally for all, whereas trauma is considered an individualised response. As Gabor Mate eloquently explains, “Trauma is not what happened to you, but what is happening inside of you now, because of what happened to you.”
My working definition of trauma includes not only PTSD and complex trauma, but also any psychological wound or emotional injury that is unreconciled or unresolved and impedes a person’s healthy psychological development. With this expanded definition, it’s difficult to imagine any person who would not qualify for the diagnosis of psychological trauma. Who among us can authentically claim that they have fully recovered from the effects of all distressing events in their life?
It is also my contention that the current list of approved treatment options for psychological trauma is painfully inadequate. Over the last three years we have seen a drastic rise in the frequency and magnitude of distressing life events, worldwide. There is a growing gap between the scope and incidence of psychological trauma and the number of people effectively treated. We need more effective treatment options if we are to close the gap.
The medical model of our institutionalised health care system is too restrictive, naïve and cumbersome. It fails to address the needs of the growing number of people looking to heal their psychological wounds. It has become evident through increases in anxiety, depression and suicide rates that current approaches are failing. Expanded waiting times to secure an appointment with a mental health professional only exacerbate the risk of deteriorating mental health for those seeking treatment.
Many mental health professionals are acutely aware of the inadequacies of the current system, with some of the more open-minded practitioners and researchers looking at the role that psychedelics and other banned medicines could play in expanding effective treatment options. Clinical studies and research into the efficacy of MDMA and psilocybin in treating anxiety, depression and trauma are producing overwhelmingly positive results. These results necessitate the need for expedited law reform to open up access to these previously maligned medicines.
My own personal experience with accessing effective mental health treatments over the years proved unsatisfactory. My complex PTSD was never diagnosed and my need for emotional and psychological healing went substantially unmet through conventional channels. Frustrated, I travelled overseas to the US, Mexico, Costa Rica and Peru, in search of traditional medicine approaches to trauma.
Although my ayahuasca journeys helped me purge unwanted memories and traumas, I cannot recommend it for all, as it also has the potential to exacerbate the trauma response. Whilst overseas I micro-dosed with psilocybin to treat my low mood disorder and had several sessions of MDMA therapy for my complex PTSD. Both these medicines (banned in Australia) provided outstanding healing results and proved far more effective than talk therapy. (The author notes that MDMA is not strictly a psychedelic)
An interesting feature of the psychedelic approach to healing trauma is that it disposes of the need to outsource your healing to a professional expert. The healing with psychedelics comes from within, through gaining access to the contents of your own psyche. The doors of the unconscious open and exiled memories, events and emotions can be revealed. With open access to the contents of the unconscious psyche, you as the healer can join the dots to form a gestalt that restores wholeness to the disparate parts of self.
A heuristic approach is one that negates the need for an expert healer other than yourself. When you assume responsibility for your own psychological healing you also acquire the power and potential to manifest it. Carl Jung asserts that the human psyche is so vast and unfathomable as to be beyond comprehension by another, and that the idea that any expert can understand another’s psyche and design techniques to heal it, is absurd. A heuristic approach allows the person to come to their own healing and understanding without being told by another. It is being informed through experimentation and trial and error. Psilocybin and MDMA, when dosed correctly, have excellent safety profiles. These medicines when used in a heuristic context allow us to become the wounded healer (Chiron). Recall the biblical axiom, “Physician heal thyself.”
If you'd like to learn more about heuristic approaches to healing trauma you could research here:
