Trip for me babe… trip for you?
After a fortnight in the jungle, your relationships might never be the same
Soheila Sokhanvari, The Gift, from the exhibition Rebel Rebel at The Barbican, London till 22 Feb 2023
“I’ve a feeling we’re inadvertently harming a lot of family members. If your partner goes for a two week ayahuasca retreat in the jungle, your life is going to change.”
Thus warned Dr Adele Lafrance in her lecture to Vital students about how feedback from the frontlines is informing psychedelic therapy.
And the emotion-focussed therapy expert told the Vital cohort that things can get even more cluster-fucked than that, once psychedelic rhetoric sets in.
“The concept of blame in psychedelic work is very delicate and potentially dangerous,” she says in her quietly subversive style, “there’s that fundamental belief that ‘we are all one’ and ‘inner conflict is related to outer conflict’.”
Transcendent resolutions usually only happen in retreat brochures. “Healing can be disruptive,” points out the self-declared ‘steward for reality’ – “We don’t want to throw anyone under the bus.”
If handled correctly, “Holding the healing for the patient’s chosen, natural environment can encourage positive effects, lessen negatives, and evolve relationships,” says Dr Lafrance, improving key connections for the benefit of all concerned.
“Neuroscience supports the healing power of supportive caregiver-loved one reactions,” she continues, encouraging “Working at letting go of blame narratives and fantasy as a tool, in particular those involving our primary caregivers… as for some reason, at this stage of evolution, humans are strongly affected by the context of attachment relationships.”
Psychedelic culture, its rhetoric at least, is infamous for butting up against reality: from free love to not doing any washing up in the hippy commune and the ‘all conflict is bad, mmm-kay?’ notion referred to by Dr Lafrance above.
“It’s a skill to hold space for absent family members”
And patient-voyagers often come crashing back down to Earth when they head back to the all-too-real environment of the office, family dinner table, or marriage bed.
“As a field we need to think how we’re managing systemic stress,” says the working doctor, “If we foster asymmetry of growth by only treating one person, it can have worse outcomes for the client – breakdown of a marriage, for example. There is a high chance of getting divorced, when if we treated both the relationship could have thrived.”
MDMA-assisted couples’ therapy is still a few years off. What can psychedelic therapists do to keep ‘systems’ like couples and families in union till then?
“It’s a skill to hold space for absent family members. And it can be an especially complex skill to deeply validate the client’s experience while still honouring the family member,” advises Dr Lafrance.
“We don’t want to throw anyone under the bus”
She’s a specialist in Emotion Focussed Therapy (EFT) which has its own branch for next of kin, Emotion Focussed Family Therapy (EFFT).
During Zoom lectures, “I normally have my hibiscus behind me,” says the congenial clinical psychologist, with no further explanation of her favourite flora’s current whereabouts, “I normally point at it while I say this; a client’s lineage makes up the whole plant. So, an example of what I might say [about their family] is, ‘Yes, they were not able – not didn’t care, or didn’t try. Let’s cultivate these experiences, so you can be the first flower in your family lineage to bloom.”
Cod spirituality around ‘respecting the ancestors’ is best kept in mind, rather than hectored at the client. "We don’t have to tell the patient, but it’s important for us to remember the cultural, religious and social influences that changed the directory of their lives.”
Here in the UK, family members have a legal right to a ‘needs assessment’ that can provide additional support, and a study on Multiple disassociation disorder (MDD) Dr Lafrance is consulting for here in Europe involves the family. “This could be a formal process during screening [in the USA] as things get legal, especially if they are under-resourced or unaware,” she says.
Those of us who are wary of social services padding about our home, or feel their help may be superfluous, might also find ourselves cast in a role of responsibility, where certain emotions are unwelcome.
And personally, I’ve seen more women presenting at services usually associated with men, like anger management (see the Kardashian sisters for a celeb example). It’s connected to a sense of overwhelment, usually from satisfying others’ needs before one’s own.
“We don’t want people to taint our experience when it’s so fresh, raw and vulnerable. So we tell the family that they can’t expect to hear all about it”
Says Dr Lafrance, “There are gender differences, unfortunately, that are still true you know, in terms of how we have been culturally conditioned to connect with emotions. Men still struggle more with sadness, fear and shame. Women, because of cultural conditioning, and socio-political movements meant to suppress female assertion, still struggle with healthy anger. So that's why I use this dichotomy: ‘Which one is true for you?’ Because it's not always gender specific, especially as we continue to evolve as a culture around questions related to gender roles.”
The respected clinical psychologist also recommends discretion around any potent visions and insights voyagers may’ve enjoyed. “At the end of the session we’ll ask the client what they feel comfortable sharing that doesn’t compromise them, their needs, or their integrity, but is still informed by what a couple might need. We don’t want other people to taint an experience when it’s so fresh, raw and vulnerable. So we tell the family that they can’t expect to hear all about it.” Bear in mind that sharing you spoke to an omnipotent mushroom counts for that.
What if, like myself, you sometimes get carried away with the notion that everyone in your family would benefit from a little medicine work?
“When I was in the jungle what came up over and over again was – you have to be in touch with reality”
In the post-lecture question and answer session, I asked Dr Lafrance how not to share too much with friends and family: “Yeah, in fact, that would be another point of direct intervention, actually. So thank you for bringing that up,” she replied, “If someone in the context of the ceremony, you know, or session says, like, ‘Oh my gosh, I wish my parents would do this, I wish my brother would do that, I wish my sister…’ then I will ask them to look more deeply into that.”
Doing so might enable the patient to “Release themselves, and release that person from, you know, having to be at the same stage of healing,” says Dr Lafrance, “Release self first, release other second. And if that comes up in integration sessions, I would do it the same way – like, ‘Yeah, check in with the part of you that is longing for that. Let's see what it needs. Let's see what it says’.”
Dr Lafrance can certainly tell you what the Grandmother Spirit had to say about her own familial ins-and-outs, during a lengthy ayauasca retreat.
“When I was in the jungle, that was one of the things that came up over and over again – like, you have to be in touch with reality.”
Which is probably a better tip than ‘You must respect the ancestors.’ But like anything genuinely helpful, it’s not easy to take on board.
“They are limited in their capacities,” she explains, “And it's not because they don't love you. It's not because they desperately want you to be different, that you're not going to be able to get what you're looking for. And so where else you're gonna get it? Inside. And I cried many tears over that, you know, sprawled out on the earth outside of the maloca. Like, not wanting that to be true.”
