Four Reasons To Work With A Psychedelic Guide For People In Eating Disorder Recovery
There’s something to be said for having a guide, trip sitter or therapist to hold a space safe as one navigates different realms of consciousness and embodiment. For folks navigating disordered eating or eating disorders, having someone directly support the psychedelic journey can form part of the healing process.
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The presence of a supporter role is added resource that can allow for a deepening of healing that might not have been possible if they weren’t there.
Of course, there are many ways to navigate a psychedelic journey, and I’m all for each one of us in finding our way in these spaces in ways that work for us and meet us where we’re at. Some people enjoy group settings for psychedelic journeys, some prefer 1:1, whilst others like to journey alone. However, it is certainly safer to have someone nearby, either in the room or in the same house as you, should you need help, guidance or TLC when those challenging moments arise in the psychedelic journey.
If you are new to exploring altered states under psychedelics, it is usually advised to have either have a guide, therapist, trip sitter/friend/loved one to be a sturdy anchor as you navigate the waves that psychedelics aim to teach us how to surf. Stay safe and within your capacity, do your research, and go slowly and enjoy the process of being supported, witnessed and celebrated through that.
Here are four ways in which a guide can support your psychedelic journey within the context of recovering from an eating disorder:
1. Practicing Vulnerability
For people with eating disorders there is often a fear of being close or vulnerable with another person.
The heart is guarded and the nervous system is in a state of Protection with the support of the plant medicine, the brain's fear response lowers and the patterns of defense soften, allowing for increased connection.
When this is consciously tracked and worked with, this can leave a somatic imprint that can shift the ways in which one relates and connects with oneself others and the world.
2. Establishing Co-Regulation
Co-regulation is when someone “borrows” the nervous system of another for people with eating disorders, there has often been a history of developmental trauma, which means that one received co-regulation that was likely missattuned. This may have looked like having one’s emotional experience unacknowledged, one’s biological impulses ignored, or growing up in an environment that didn’t feel safe enough for that young person to emit and emote their authentic expression.
Working with a trauma informed guide in a psychedelic or plant medicine journey can be a powerful embodied experience of receiving attuned co-regulation that is validating, understanding and accepting of one's experience. When one receives attuned co-regulation, there is an increased sense of embodiment and capacity to listen to trust one’s internal cues. This then has the profound impact on one's ability to self-regulate.
3. Coming Out Of Functional Freeze
Most people navigating eating disorders are in a state of functional freeze, meaning that their nervous system is storing unmetabolized flight and fight energy underneath a layer of shutdown, numbness and freeze.
In the plant medicine journey, it is possible that the freeze melts and the highest sympathetic energies bubble up. Meeting these energies on wanting to fight or flee can be scary. And so having a guide to safely support the titration of meeting these feelings can be highly supportive, allowing those energies to be processed, digested and released out of the body.
4. Asking For Help
It's very common for people with eating disorders to want to do things alone, not ask for help, override, or will try to figure things out without any support, white knuckling through life. In a psychedelic journey, basic things like going to the bathroom or getting a warm blanket can be more challenging.
The pattern might be to not want to be a burden or take up too much space but one can use this more cognitive flexible experience to rewire that pathway where by intentionally practicing to ask the guide for help can be part of the healing process.
Let me know in the comments: How has having a supporter role in medicine spaces helped you deepen into your healing? What did they mirror back or reveal to you that you might not have seen without their presence?