Psychedelic Preparation & Integration Therapy
Grounded support before and after transformative experiences
Experiences of expanded consciousness can touch the deepest layers of who we are. They may bring moments of profound beauty, insight, awe, and connection. They may also evoke fear, grief, confusion, vulnerability, and questions we never expected to encounter.
These experiences can open a renewed sense of meaning, purpose, and belonging. And they also soften the protective strategies that have helped people survive, allowing access to psychological material that is difficult to reach. Often, they involve both.
Expanded states are not only about transcendence and expanding outwards into mystery, interconnectedness, and new ways of understanding. They can also involve a movement towards immanence — an expanding inwards towards our history, our unprocessed wounds, emotions that we have disconnected from (our grief, anger, fear), the parts of us that have been marginalised/those aspects of ourselves that have carried the impact of trauma.
In this sense, psychedelic experiences may support both transpersonal work and trauma work, often revealing how deeply interconnected these dimensions can be.
Having a safe and compassionate space in which to prepare for, explore, and integrate these experiences can be invaluable.
I offer integration support for individuals seeking support before or after psychedelic experiences that they are pursuing or have occurred outside of my clinical practice and within legal, traditional, ceremonial, research or other contexts.
Preparation
Preparation creates the conditions for approaching these experiences with greater awareness, intention, and support.
Together, we may explore:
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Clarifying intentions and understanding what is drawing you towards the experience
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Identifying hopes, fears, expectations, and areas of uncertainty
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Exploring personal history, experiences of trauma and what may arise in psychedelic session.
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Developing greater awareness of the nervous system and how to work with these experiences in a somatic/embodied/emotional resonant manner.
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Strengthening resources and practices that support grounding and self-regulation
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Understanding the importance of set, setting, and support
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Considering how meaningful insights and experiences might be integrated into daily life
Preparation supports feeling informed and safe moving towards the experience, having a sense of what personal material may emerge, having some navigation instructions on how to work with this material, and strengthening the capacity to remain present with whatever may arise — whether that involves encounters with mystery and transcendence, or emergence of unprocessed experiences needing tending to.
Integration
The psychedelic experience itself is often only the beginning.
Psychedelic experiences can illuminate new possibilities and perspectives. They can also open the door to unresolved grief, developmental wounds, traumatic memories, and aspects of ourselves that have long remained protected beneath layers of adaptation and survival.
Integration involves making space for both.
For some, integration centres around meaning-making and understanding how insights might shape the way they live. For others, it involves continuing the deeper therapeutic work that has been initiated by the experience itself. Often, these processes unfold side by side.
Integration may include:
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Processing emotions, memories, or bodily experiences that have emerged
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Continuing trauma work that has been opened or accelerated through the experience
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Working with attachment wounds and protective patterns that no longer serve
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Supporting nervous system regulation and a greater sense of internal safety
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Exploring spiritual, existential, or transpersonal dimensions of experience
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Understanding changes in identity, values, or worldview
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Integrating insights related to relationships, purpose, creativity, and community
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Embodying new understandings through meaningful and sustainable changes in daily life
Integration is not simply talking about what happened. Nor is it only about interpreting the experience intellectually. It is the ongoing process of digesting, processing, and embodying what has emerged — allowing insight to become action, emotional experience to become integration, and moments of transformation to support lasting change.
At times, integration involves revisiting and continuing the healing process that was initiated during the psychedelic experience itself.
Holding the Horizontal and Vertical Dimensions of Healing
My approach honours both the horizontal and vertical dimensions of healing.
The horizontal dimension concerns the ongoing work of being human. It includes trauma work, attachment and relational patterns, nervous system regulation, grief, identity, embodiment, and the challenges of living in relationship with others and the wider world. It asks how we translate insight into meaningful changes within everyday life.
The vertical dimension concerns our relationship with mystery, meaning, transcendence, and the transpersonal aspects of experience. These experiences are many and varied and may involve encounters with awe, the mysterious, an expanded sense of the world and the larger cosmos, archetypal material, spiritual insight, or deepened sense of belonging within the larger web of life.
Psychedelic experiences often move in both directions simultaneously. They may invite us into profound states of transcendence whilst also guiding us towards the immanent realities of our own histories, vulnerabilities, and unmet needs.
I understand healing as involving both of these movements: expanding outwards towards meaning, connection, and the transpersonal, whilst also expanding inwards towards the parts of ourselves that require compassion, integration, and care. And finding a way to embody these two domains of life in the every day.
My areas of interest include:
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Trauma resolution
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Post-traumatic growth
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Men’s work
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Relationships
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Life transitions.
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Existential concerns of meaning and purpose
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Developmental/attachment dynamics
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Family/ancestral systems
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Spiritual inquiry & mythopoetics
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Spiritual emergence/spiritual emergency
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Psychedelic psychotherapy/plant medicine preparation & integration.
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World & Eco grief.
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The Poly-Crisis: living within uncertain times
A Trauma-Informed and Relational Approach
My approach is grounded in a trauma-informed understanding of healing and draws upon relational, somatic, attachment-based, experiential, and transpersonal perspectives. We pay attention not only to thoughts and stories, but also to emotions, bodily experience, patterns of relating, and the wisdom held within the nervous system. Integration often involves creating the conditions in which previously defended aspects of ourselves can be approached with greater safety, curiosity, and compassion.
Beyond Insight
Insight alone rarely transforms our lives.
Integration invites us to ask:
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How do I embody what I have learned?
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What aspects of myself require ongoing care and attention?
Lasting change often unfolds not through dramatic breakthroughs alone, but through the quieter work of practice, relationship, responsibility, and tending to all aspects of our life with intention and care.
The outcome of psychedelic work is often an invitation to deepen their relationship with themselves, with those they love, with the natural world, and with whatever they understand as sacred or meaningful.
Sessions
Preparation and integration sessions are available in person from Mullumbimby, in the Byron Bay hinterland, and online.
If you are considering a psychedelic experience, or are seeking support in making sense of one that has already occurred, I welcome you to reach out.
Whether the journey involves opening towards new possibilities, turning towards old wounds with compassion, or both, psychotherapy can provide a grounded and supportive space in which healing and integration may continue to unfold.
You are welcome to book a complimentary 20-minute discovery call to explore whether working together feels like the right fit, or, if you already know you'd like to begin, you can book an initial psychotherapy session.