Dr. Richard Schwartz PHD is the founder of Internal Family Systems (IFS) psychotherapy, and in this podcast he brings me into a vulnerable and emotional reconciliation with an aspect of my Self. IFS is a transformative model of psychotherapy that seeks to integrate fractured ‘parts’ of our identity that are developed from experiential wounds (trauma) occurring early on in life. The idea is to acknowledge the adaptive role that these parts have played, and invite them to integrate back within our core Self, so that we can re-capture our fullest expression. This is an extremely powerful show. A special thank you to the Psychedelic Coalition for Health for inviting me to host my show on their platform. 

AUBREY: Dick, let's dive right into this. So, we're all aware that the psyche is one of the most complex mechanisms, perhaps that exists, period. I mean, there's a lot of complex machines. Who actually knows how a CD player used to work, and that's 10-year old technology. I don't know how that works. Most of us don't. But if we had any idea of trying to figure it out, try and explain what it is, we have to take the thing that's whole, just like our psyche and break it into parts. And then start to understand the parts. Then of course, reassemble the parts if things aren't working in the way that's most desirable. Reassemble the parts back together in a way that fits with a little bit more awareness and a little bit more understanding. And that's what IFS has done. It's allowed a map to break apart this incredibly complex thing of the human mind, the human psyche, human self, if you will, and to help us understand so that we can understand ourselves. Know thyself, that classic, classic wisdom. So, why don't you go ahead and explain not only what IFS is actually doing, but the need from your perspective, and then go into the map itself.

RICHARD: Okay, yeah. And it's an honor to be here. I'm honored by your interest, Aubrey. I'm a fan. Yeah, I wouldn't phrase it exactly like you did, breaking apart the psyche. Basically, I'm inviting people to go in and witness their psyche, basically. And they will find, and people have been doing this now for a long time, that the psyche contains these, what I call parts. Other people call them sub personalities or other terms. And my take on it is, and after 40 years of studying, and basically learning from my clients, this didn't come out of my pea brain. I am a good scientist, basically. And I've empirically studied the psyches of many of my clients. And they talked about these parts and would say things, there's this critic inside, and then that triggers this really young, vulnerable one. And then that triggers the binging part, and so on. And in getting to know them, I ultimately concluded that, like the title of his book, there are no bad ones. That actually it's the nature of the mind to have them, to be subdivided that way. They're all there to help us in our lives. And they all bring qualities that we can use to enhance our lives. But trauma, and what are called attachment injuries, so bad parenting, forced them out of their naturally valuable states into roles that they don't like, but they think are necessary to keep us safe a lot of the time. Because trauma freezes them in the past during the trauma. Most of them think we're still six years old, and they have to guard us this way. And they inject into them, what I'm going to call burdens, which are extreme beliefs and emotions that came into us from the trauma, and attached to these parts almost like a virus, and then drive the way they operate thereafter, like the Coronavirus. And so, what I found was, if it's possible for a client to get to know a part, learn about its positive intention, even if what it's doing is destructive, and learn about what it's protecting, and we can go and heal that part, get it out, the one it's protecting, get it out of where it's stuck in the past and unburden it, then the protector can relax and do something entirely different, do what it's designed to do. So, in that sense, it is quite non-pathologizing. There's no bad parts, even though many, many parts have been pathologized or been demonized, both by the culture and by psychotherapy.

AUBREY: One thing that I've noticed, you mentioned the critic. And one thing that I've noticed in myself, and a lot of the people that I coach in the Fit For Service fellowship, is that people have developed a critic that's just a little bit harsher than the harshest critic they've experienced in their life. And this has a purpose, of course. Because if your internal critic, the one that punishes you internally by the withdrawal of love is harsher than the one that you're going to face externally, well, that our psyche thinks is going to keep us in line. That's going to prevent us from being subjected to the punishment on the external. And of course, for me, that was my father. For everyone else, it's somebody. But you can really understand that you're your own judge that doles out the punishment and judges you, is just going to be a little bit harsher than what you've experienced in your ordinary life. But that's not a state that we want to live in. Because of course, I'm 25 years, from living in my father's house. I'm well past that, I don't need to carry that anymore. So, talk a little bit about that particular, my example here and that part, and how we start to work with it.

RICHARD: Yeah, that's a great example of one of the things I'm talking about. Because if I were to have you focus on that critic, and find it in your body, and it's likely to find it in your head or around your head, and ask some questions, like, why do you call me names all day? And wait for the answer to come. Don't think of the answer. Just wait and see what comes back to you. You would learn that it's trying to preempt the criticism of your father. And if it does it first, then it won't be so bad when it happens. Or if it does it enough, you won't do the things that bothered your father when you were a kid. And then I would say, okay, now how do you feel toward him? Because initially, most people, when I have you focus on it to begin with, how do you feel toward it? They say, I hate it, it drives me crazy. Or I depend on it, I need it for my super performance. But if I get those parts to step back, and just have you curious about it, you'll learn that that's its positive intention. And then you can show it appreciation rather than fight back. And as these parts feel appreciated, they tend to soften a lot. And then we could negotiate with your critic, permission to go to the parts it protects, which would be you as a boy who was suffering, when your father was so critical. And, get that boy out of where he's stuck back there.

AUBREY: Let's just use me as a case example. Because I think this is one of the great ways to learn. So, if you're asking me the question, and of course, I've done a bit of work around this, but let's open it up. There's always more work to do. There's always deeper levels. So, you would ask me the question of where do I feel it in my body. And actually, when you said that, I could say that it was right here, kind of where my clavicles meet right underneath my throat. And I think maybe one of the reasons for that was, I was always getting in trouble for things that I was saying. So, it was connected to my throat. So, I feel that energy here. So let's take it from that part of that section.

RICHARD: So, how do you feel toward that part as you notice it there?

AUBREY: I feel that it's created a lot of sadness, and it's created a lot of suffering. And of course, I understand what it's been doing. But, it's hard. It's hard to acknowledge how much I've suffered because of it.

RICHARD: Okay, so I totally get that. But we are going to ask the parts that feel so upset at it for creating the suffering, to give us just a little space for now to just get to know it better. And we'll check in with them later, but see if they'd be willing to go into a kind of waiting room there or something, until we're done.

AUBREY: Okay, yeah. 

RICHARD: And then focus, see her again and tell me how you feel toward it now.

AUBREY: There's a neutrality to how I feel towards it. It's now like observing. It's like observing a sharp object, an object that has a sticker that's there. But I don't have any judgment towards it. I just am aware that it's there. And I feel like I can look at it objectively.

RICHARD: Good. And do you feel open to getting to know it? 

AUBREY: Yeah, I do.

RICHARD: Okay. So just ask it what it wants you to know. And don't think of the answer. Just wait and see what comes from there. And if nothing comes, that's okay. What does it want you to know about itself?

AUBREY: I'm trying to help you.

RICHARD: Okay. And ask more about that. How's it trying to help you?

AUBREY: It's trying to guide me towards actions that will put me in a position where I'm loved by the Father mostly. And it's not just my father, but the Father.

RICHARD: Does that make sense to you, Aubrey? 

AUBREY: It does, yeah. 

RICHARD: So, let it know that that makes sense. 

AUBREY: Yeah. 

RICHARD: And how do you feel toward it now as you did that? 

AUBREY: There's starting to be a small bud, a growing feeling of gratitude towards it.

RICHARD: Yeah. So, if you can just give it that small bud, just let it know. You get it's trying really hard to help in that way. And just see how it reacts to that gratitude.

AUBREY: I can almost visualize it flourishing with a little bit of light. Instead of being hard and calcified, it's now like breathing, and has almost lifeforce energy into energy that almost gives it the potential to grow, transform, alchemize. It's alive.

RICHARD: That's great. So ask it, if we could go to the part that it's been trying to get this love for, from your father and the Father. And we can help that one. So that it didn't need that love quite as much from that place. Would it have to work so hard inside?

AUBREY: Yeah, it's serving a happy little boy, a boy that likes to laugh, that likes to make jokes, is inherently a bit of a rascal, but it's always full of love. And, enjoy.

RICHARD: Yeah, so ask again, if we could go to that boy and help him so he didn't feel such a need for the love, because he could get that love from you, would this part have to work so hard and be so critical?

AUBREY: No, that part could grow its own sprouts. Instead of becoming this sticker burr seed, it could germinate and assimilate back into my body. I could just see that, like that seed that had all the sharp little edges, it could just expand and grow and sprout leaves, and become a part of me.

RICHARD: Great. So, then ask it if it would give us permission to go to that boy and help him.

AUBREY: Yeah. 

RICHARD: Alright, Aubrey. So, focus on that boy and find him in your body, around your body.

AUBREY: He's right above, right at my solar plexus, right before it connects to my sternum.

RICHARD: And how do you feel toward him as you notice him there?

AUBREY: I feel like I don't know him as well as I'd like to know him.

RICHARD: Okay. Alright, so let him know you'd like to get to know him better. And just see what he wants you to know about himself.

AUBREY: He says, I am you. 

RICHARD: Right. How's that feel here?

AUBREY: Feels good. I mean, a huge smile. A huge smile is on my face right now. to just recognize that that joyous boy is still me. 

RICHARD: Yeah, it's great. And anything else he wants you to know? And ask him if it's true that he craves your father, or the Father's love.

AUBREY: Yeah, he does. He says, actually more than anything. And I think there's an awareness that I've received the love that I'm looking for from the feminine, but what he's been lacking is the love from the masculine, the father.

RICHARD: Okay. So let them know you get that. And you do see him, Aubrey, or you just sense him in there?

AUBREY: What would I be looking for? Would I be looking for an anthropomorphized, like a little version of me, or a shape or an image? 

RICHARD: No, I don't want you to look. I'm just asking if you see him or just sense him.

AUBREY: It's a sensing more than a seeing. 

RICHARD: Okay. And do you have a sense of how close you are to him in terms of feet away?

AUBREY: Yeah, about two and a half feet away.

RICHARD: Okay. Perfect. All right. So, from that proximity, just let him know you care about him. And see how he reacts.

AUBREY: Yeah, I reach out my hands, and now he has more of a shape. Still amorphous, hard to pick out details, but I know that we're holding hands. And I could see that he's starting to smile, but he doesn't fully trust yet that it's safe to come home.

RICHARD: That's right. And ask him more about that. Why doesn't he trust you?

AUBREY: He's afraid of that judge, that critic that was up in my throat. He's afraid of that part of me. And that's why he doesn't want to come home.

RICHARD: Okay, so does that make sense? 

AUBREY: Yeah. 

RICHARD: So, let him know you don't expect him to come home until that part is transformed. But that's part of what we're doing with this.

AUBREY: Yeah, he says, I trust you. 

RICHARD: Okay, good. 

AUBREY: And that he is trusting me to invite him when it's safe.

RICHARD: Yeah. Okay. All right. So, we've done a lot already. And you have the option to do one more step if you're up for it.

AUBREY: Let's go. 

RICHARD: Alright, so ask this boy, where he's stuck in the past, what he wants you to know about what happened to him. And just don't think again, just wait and see what comes to you.

AUBREY: He says it's six years old. One of the incidents I'm not really clear, I have some in my mind, it might have been six. But there was such a shock to my nervous system. He wants me to see it was almost like he got struck by lightning. And that, I guess, kind of froze him and scared him.

RICHARD: That's right. Yeah, and you don't have to give us details if you don't want, but just tell him to really let you get how shocking that was. Just everything he wants you to see, sense and feel about that experience. Just tell him you're ready to really get it now.

 AUBREY: Yeah, I do. I'll tell a brief story. So, this wasn't physical abuse. This was just emotional. My father struggled with different rage, and he would express it kind of verbally and emotionally. And there was one particularly gnarly experience in a hotel room in New York. That was the one that I had to do the most work healing. And actually, 20 years ago, I was working with a shaman in New Mexico. Obviously very blessed to be on this path. I don't know what it was, it might have been vilca, but it was a DMT snuff. And I'd had no intention of going back anywhere. It wasn't guided in that way. But I went right back to that hotel room. I went, and I was 20, 21 years old at that point. So, I was big and strong. I was in college. And I went back to that point, but I was back there with my adult body and I confronted my father, who was yelling at me. And at that point, I confronted him. But I was strong. And I said, "Try that now. Try that now, Dad." And it was just like a reclaiming of my power. So, I kind of rewrote that situation in my mind with that psychedelic experience that I had. I rewrote it to a place where it wasn't scary anymore. Because I asserted my own power, like my willingness to show up. But what I haven't done until now is actually listen and hear from that little boy, how intense that was, how shocking that was to my system. I just kind of, I kind of recoated it in my mind with this other assertion of, I'm strong, and this won't happen to me again. But I didn't come with that compassion, no, I see you and I feel you.

RICHARD: Yeah. So, go back to him, to the boy, and ask him if now he does feel like you get it. Or if there's more he wants you to see or sense or feel. 

AUBREY: It's almost like he's been waiting to tell me for a long time how intense this was, and he really wants to remind me of it. It was a flash that went all the way to the top of my head, it went all the way through my organs. He's like, no, you really got to know this was deep. This was really deep. He's insistent on letting me know how intense the experience was, and I can...

RICHARD: So you're up for that? 

AUBREY: I can feel that, yeah. 

RICHARD: Yeah, so tell him to really let you get it now. Just that you can handle it. You're ready. You really want to feel it.

AUBREY: Yeah, it's a lot. 

RICHARD: Yeah. It's okay. It's okay to feel all this.

AUBREY: Yeah.

RICHARD: Yeah, tell him. It's a lot, and it's okay to let you finally get it.

AUBREY: I feel you, Aubrey. I know. I know. I can feel myself holding him in an embrace, and just letting him know like, I know, I know, I know. It was hard. And I know it hurts. And it's okay. It's okay, I got you. 

RICHARD: Yeah, actually, Aubrey, I'd like you to go into that scene and hold him there in that way. Just tell me when you're in there with him. 

AUBREY: Okay. 

RICHARD: How's he reacting to you being there?

AUBREY: It's still hard, but he's really grateful and he's just saying don’t leave me, don't leave me. Don't leave me alone to go through this.

RICHARD: What do you say to him?

AUBREY: I got you, and I'll never leave you.

RICHARD: That's right. That's perfect. And how's that for him to hear?

AUBREY: It changes, it changes everything, honestly. It's still really hard, but he knows that he's going to be okay. He knows, the part of me that's going to him there is a part that's so much more powerful than the part of my father that was expressing itself. It's like he's being held by a dragon, and there's a, I don't know, a wolf. He knows that he's held by something that can keep him safe. 

RICHARD: And ask now if there's anything he wants you to do for him back there, or if he just wants to leave, come with you to a safe place?

AUBREY: He just wants me to be gentle, to wipe his tears, to hold his heart, to pat his head, to hold him when it's all over. 

RICHARD: Perfect. Let's do that.

AUBREY: Okay. 

RICHARD: Now see if he'd like to leave that time and place with you so you can take care of him.

AUBREY: Yeah, he's ready to get out of there.

RICHARD: I bet he is ready. So, let's take him. He can come into the present with you, or he could go to a fantasy place. It's really up to him, wherever he'd like to be.

AUBREY: He wants to go play for a while. He wants to go play for a while in a place that my mom set up for me, partly because my mom and my dad were divorced. And she set it up as like a place for me to go, in my own little fantasy world. It was up in the attic, and it was called Candyland. It was all carpeted, and it had pictures of different types of candy, like posters of candy up there, on the walls. It's like he wants to go play around in Candyland, and just enjoy himself for a while.

RICHARD: That's great. So let's take him to Candyland. 

AUBREY: All right. He's showing me all of the old He-man figurines and My Little Ponies. Yes, it's embarrassing. I love My Little Ponies. I still love them actually. They don't smell the same as they used to. But I still have a great affinity for a good My Little Pony. But yeah, he's showing me all of his little toys. And he's just showing me the part of him that likes to play. It's like we're reconnected now and it's really beautiful actually. 

RICHARD: It is beautiful. Very moving for me as well. And so, tell him he can stay there. He never has to go back to that time. And you are going to be taking care of him now. 

AUBREY: Yeah. 

RICHARD: And given that, see if he's ready to unload all these feelings and beliefs that he got from that experience.

AUBREY: Not completely. He's happy and he trusts me, and he wants to continue to develop the relationship. But he's still healing in a little bit of way. It's like there's...Yeah.

RICHARD: Yeah, that's fine. There's no pressure to do that. Although as an alternative, he could take it out of his body and put it in a box in case he needs it. Just ask him if that would work for him.

AUBREY: Yeah, I saw immediately. It's actually a box that I have now. But it's a box that has, it's made up of cut and pressed ayahuasca flowers and it's formed into a box, and it has a little bit that opens. And I saw immediately that box and he was immediately eager to put it into that box.

RICHARD: Okay, fantastic. So, ask him how he feels without it now.

AUBREY: He's exuberant, and he wants to travel far beyond Candyland. Now he wants to go all over and explore the forests and the land, and he wants to journey with me.

RICHARD: Okay, tell him that that's good. And if he wants to before you start those journeys, you can invite now into his body, qualities he'd love to have, and you can just see what comes in. 

AUBREY: Courage and faith.

RICHARD: That's great. Okay, so again, tell him you're going to stay connected to him this way. Then let's go back to the original part, and bring him in to see this boy now that he doesn't need that love. So, this part doesn't have to do this job anymore. Just see how it reacts to this.

AUBREY: It's like it cracked open entirely and exposed, like a hollow interior. And it's empty. It's like empty of the gravity and the energy and the weight. And it's like a walnut shell. Yeah, it's open.

RICHARD: That's great. And you can ask it what it'd like to do inside of you now, instead of being so nasty.

AUBREY: Well, it doesn't want to dissolve permanently. It says, I'll be there if you need me. But until then, I'm off duty, basically. 

RICHARD: Wants to rest.

AUBREY: Yeah, totally. 

RICHARD: So let it know it can do that. It can just rest. Yeah. Okay. Alright, Aubrey, does that feel complete for now?

AUBREY: It does. It does. Thank you so much for that.

RICHARD: Thank you. Very, very moving for me. I have a very similar setup, and have always stuck in similar places. So, really, you've worked for me as well.

AUBREY: Yeah. Yeah, it was incredibly powerful, and I think illustrative of how powerful your system really is. I mean, this was one example of one specific thing. But I know through your system, there's many different parts, many different ways that you can apply this for the healing purposes.

RICHARD: That's right. And I also think it's a good illustration of how, I know you've had a lot of psychedelic experiences. And that took about half an hour. And a lot of the reason for that is I think, through those experiences, people access more and more of what I call self. And when you access a lot of self, you just naturally know how to do this. So, whereas in other systems, I would have had to get a lot of other parts to separate, and they would have given me a hard time, you had to ask a couple of parts to separate in the beginning. Immediately, you felt at least neutral toward the critic, and got interested in getting to know it. That's the beginning of self, what I call self with a capital S. And then, as we got to know the critic and its positive intentions, you had a lot more compassion for it, appreciation, which is more so. And then when we got to the boy, I just got out of the way. You just knew exactly what to do for him. And you were in a lot of stuff at that point.

AUBREY: I love how you're using self in that way. I mean, a lot of people would probably use the nomenclature using capital S self, I would imagine that kind of idea. Because self is a challenging word, because it's used so colloquially. So, you have to differentiate. A lot of people would say true self, God self, higher self, or capital S self. Are all of those terms kind of similar for you, is basically what you think people are getting at?

RICHARD: Yeah, that is what I stumbled on to. Many systems will talk about this essence that's in us that has all these positive qualities. And, I stumbled onto this way of accessing that very quickly, as you could see in the work we just did. For healing, many systems, the self is an observing presence, like mindfulness and other things like that. But what I found was, it's not compassionate to just witness suffering being parade by. When people really access a lot of self, they naturally want to go to these little boys, even the big protector critics, with love and compassion, and get to know them. Some of my amazement, Nick alluded to this in the beginning. When I started to learn about MDMA, and some of the other psychedelics was, people were spontaneously doing IFS with the medicine, without any coaching from the facilitators whatsoever. There was something about the medicine that disarmed protectors sort of automatically and your heart's fully open. And that's a big invitation to these exiled parts to come home. And they come in and people just start doing this healing naturally. And also to these big protectors, some of whom seem very scary. So, that's my take on and not just MDMA, I think, ketamine. You leave, but you come back and you've got a lot of stuff and you can do a lot of work. So, yeah, each of them seems to access self in a different way.

AUBREY: Yeah. Can you give a few others because we obviously went deep on one example, but just a snapshot of some other protector exile relationships, so that people can see, okay, maybe this is more along the vein of what's going on with me.

RICHARD: Well, we worked with a critic. And that's pretty ubiquitous, most everybody has one of those. But we use this with all kinds of addictions, for example. And rather than vilifying the addictive part, we go to it in this curious way, ask what it's afraid would happen if it didn't keep you high all the time. In answering that question, usually will point to pain, that it's trying to keep you higher than. And then we'll get permission to go to the pain, and heal the pain. And now the addict part wants to do something entirely different, just like your critic did. So, this applies to almost any problem people have, actually.

AUBREY: What do you say to people who, there's a lot of talk, I mean, relationships are one of the key cornerstones of our life. And there's a lot of talk about trauma bonding and ways in which relationships can be toxic, because parts of you are trying to heal through parts of the other person. How does it support the awareness that allows you to understand when you're in a dyad with another person, and how those parts are interacting?

RICHARD: Yeah, so we ask each member of the couple to do what we call a U turn in their focus. So, when couples come in, and they're trauma bonded, most of them are focused on changing the other person so that they better meet their exiles, basically. Each of us wants our partner to take care of our exiles. And we don't know that we can do that ourselves. Like you just found out, you can take care of that boy. You don't need a father figure in the outside world to do that for you. But most of us hook up with people because they resemble our father maybe. And we're still desperately trying to get that approval from somebody who's like that father. That would be a trauma bond. So, we can pry their focus apart and focus inside and do a U turn. They'll find similar parts to what you found. And then they begin to do the healing, they become the primary caretaker of their own exiles, which then frees up their partner to be a secondary caretaker. And it clears up a lot of the distortions in the way you view the other person. And when they hurt you, you don't go back to that time when your father yelled at you that way, and feel all those feelings again, because you've unloaded them. And then that frees people up to choose whether they want to stay in this relationship or if it is toxic, because so many people in the trauma bonded relationships are hurting each other through the relationship.

AUBREY: Yeah, it's almost this impulse to find somebody who resembles your protector to actually externalize the work that you need to do inside by softening and redeeming that protector in another person. But fuck, it's so hard to change yourself, let alone try to change somebody else. So it ends up being this fruitless task, like the healing has to be internal.

RICHARD: Exactly. That's exactly right.

AUBREY: Yeah, it's super, super valuable to think about all of the ways that this can be applied, because it's a map to start doing, like some really significant and important, important healing work.

RICHARD: Yeah, it's exciting for me to have you experienced that and feel this way.

AUBREY: Yeah. We're going to go to questions here in a moment. Is there anything else before we get to questions about the system, something that people might not be aware of, or anything you want to share before we jump into question?

RICHARD: Oh, yeah, maybe real quick. For me, this took me a long time. I've been on a long journey from agnosticism or even atheism to now I consider myself very spiritual. And it really just came from the constant interaction with the Self, with capital S of clients, and getting to know my own self. And coming to the conclusion that self isn't limited to our bodies. It's something like a field or an ocean almost, and we're a drop of that ocean. And that psychedelics opens the door to be in that wave state of self without boundaries, that non-dual, and then come back with the wisdom from that place. And that's also why, for example, things like ketamine are very useful for the end of life. Because you realize this body keeps you quite isolated and separate from everybody. And there's so much more out there, which allows for a much easier transition. So, all of that has become increasingly important to me. It's moved from being just a form of psychotherapy to a kind of life practice. Spiritual life practice.

AUBREY: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. The ever expansiveness of the self. When you actually encounter the self, you try to carve a boundary from okay, here's self and here's not self, good luck. The self is inexorable with the great self. I think there's a quote, the sum total of the conscious minds in the universe equals one. It's like, we're all a piece of this, a piece of this giant, giant puzzle. And you've mentioned ketamine a few times. And I want to just share. I've been on the ceremonial plant medicine, and psychedelic journey for 22 years now, since a vision quest when I was 18. And one of the most profound medicines that I've encountered in the right setting, I actually put it, I have a dark room, fully blacked out dark room. I had a great experience in the darkness retreat, some amazing music from Jon Hopkins and East Forest. I know East Forest is coming up later. And then it's the combination of ketamine and cannabis, has been probably one of the greatest teachers that I've encountered and really, exponentially leveled up my healing and spiritual access. And the reason I think for that is that ketamine, of course, dissolves us into the greater, the greater self. But it typically dissociates us from our body. It kind of leaves our body behind. And then as you said, we kind of come back into our body. The cannabis actually brings the body, it feels like it brings the body with you into the void. And then all of a sudden, you have the intelligence of the greater self-interacting with the body. And some immensely profound healings occur. I could feel fascia moving on its own, my jaw readjusting, things happening where the body's like, oh, great, finally, I'm getting access to the capital I intelligence, rather than the limited Aubrey brain and now we're going to really fix some stuff. So that's been a really profound healer and teacher for me. And I think, as this field expands and people explore new things, we'll discover these different technologies and how useful they are. All right, I think we're going to jump into questions here. Question is, can you speak more about IFS and psychedelics? Do you do IFS therapy with small doses? Or do you do IFS after large doses? What do you do differently than in normal IFS therapy while using psychedelics?

RICHARD: Yeah, it depends on the medicine, I think. My experience with ketamine, for example, is that large doses do take you into that ocean. And then as you come back, you're just much more open to doing a lot of work. So, we can do the kind of work that you and I just did. I typically don't need psychedelics because we can do something like what we just did without it. So for me, it's when a client is really stuck, that I'll give that a try. And typically, we can get to exile that we weren't able to get to before with the medicine. So, one of my worries about this is that the medicine itself is going to be seen as the big solution, just like in western medicine, pharmaceuticals are seen as the thing rather than what you do with the medicine. So, that's part of what I want to do is bring this kind of process for healing once you take the medicine. And in terms of dosage, I haven't had enough experience to say for sure. I think, smaller doses you do stay in your body, and you do access more self, and you can do a lot of work that way. And what do I do differently? I don't really do anything different, except that we can do more, because there's more stuff present.

AUBREY: Great. Well answered. Yeah, I think just to comment, while we wait for another question to come up. Just to comment on what you're saying. You talk to Rick Doblin, which I do often. And he makes it very clear that what we're talking about is MDMA assisted psychotherapy. This is not just giving somebody MDMA and send them home. It's the process itself, and you cannot separate those two medicines, and have the treatment be effective in the way that it's effective. Like they need to be conjoined. And obviously, there can be healings alone with medicine, of course, but what we're talking about from the research we've done in the clinical setting is the real power comes from the combination of medicine plus therapy. The medicine opens you to allow the therapy to just go deeper.

RICHARD: Yeah, Rick has been an amazingly great shepherd of this movement. I'm meeting with him next week, actually. And he's one of my big heroes, because he has really driven home that message, so important.

AUBREY: Yeah, absolutely. Next question. The richness of seeing this work really happen versus You two talking about the work is such a gift. Can you speak to the importance of having an experience of one's parts versus simply understanding the parts?

RICHARD: Well, Aubrey, I mean, maybe you could start with that. What was it like, so experience rather than talk about.

AUBREY: It's the difference between knowledge with a K, and Gnosis with the G. You could describe to somebody who was in the Amazon, or, Sub-Saharan Africa, you could describe like an avocado and be like, alright, so it's got this rough skin, and inside it's got this green, soft, and it's fatty, and it's creamy. And the big seed, and they're like, "I get it. I think I get it." And they get asked a couple of questions about it. And then you serve them guacamole, and they're like, "Holy shit! I get it. I get it." I think this is the reality with all of these different things. When we actually know something with a G, we have that gnosis, that knowledge, which is eating the avocado. That's the only way we actually really know. And it's helpful to see it happen. But it's even more helpful to have it happen. And that's also where I have a deep criticism of a lot of the people who will talk about psychedelics, and have never done psychedelics. It could even be an experienced meditator. All the respect in the world to the experienced meditator, but if you're going to denigrate psychedelic medicine, probably do psychedelic medicine before you try to talk about it. So ultimately, I really trust the gnosis over the knowledge, all the way.

RICHARD: Yeah, I did too. It's so hard for people to get IFS. And so whenever I present, I'll usually do a very brief exercise with the whole group where they just focus on a part, ask them questions, and then the rest of the presentation, they get much deeper.

AUBREY: Yeah, absolutely. Alright, we have time for at least one more question here. When working with ketamine, would you recommend that the client ask questions to their self or parts before taking the medicine, while on the medicine, or after ketamine has worn off?

RICHARD: Yeah, again, I think it depends on the dose. Because if you take a big dose, you're not even here to answer questions. But one of the things I want to bring to the psychedelic work is in pre-sessions, having the facilitator ask the clients' protectors, if they really give permission to do this, and if they have fears about doing the medicine, and what kind of fears do they have, and then going over all of their fears to get permission to do it. Because if you don't do that, I mean, some protectors can totally make it so you don't even experience anything. And other protectors, when you kind of go into the void, are going to freak out, because they think you've totally lost who you are and your identity. I said earlier, when you access that much self, you're going to invite all kinds of parts. And sometimes they're very negative and scary ones. So, you need to have formed a relationship with the protectors, before you have the person go on the journey. And then during the journey, I think IFS offers beginner non-pathologizing maps so that if a person seems to be having a panic attack, you don't as a facilitator get scared. You think, okay, there's this really scared exile that's just come in. Let me help it, get to know it, and calm it down, and let it know it's safe and welcome it. It's really great that it broke out and it's here. Rather than uh-oh, my client's having a panic attack. Because so much of the person's experience is dependent on the state of the facilitator. So, the facilitator can hold a lot of--

AUBREY: It's all part of the shared self, right?

RICHARD: Totally.

AUBREY: You're in the shared field. 

RICHARD: Exactly. So, the facilitator is holding a lot of self-energy. Then that's going to have a big impact on how much self actually the subject has. So, there's a lot of applications like that.

AUBREY: Yeah, this is kind of a deep and heavy topic to cover right here at the close. But something you said drew this question out. For a lot of people who've had significant trauma, whether it's some kind of sexual trauma in particular, or any kind of serious abusive trauma, their recollection of it is often new. And a lot of times in these medicine journeys, whether it's any type of journey, particularly in a lot of the MDMA assisted psychotherapy journeys, a lot of these will come up, but sometimes an ayahuasca journey, sometimes in different journeys these memories will come up. Is it a function of a protector to wall off the actual access and memory of these? And how do you work with that particular type of protector?

RICHARD: Yeah, so that's a lot of our work is, asking protectors who have formed these walls inside, and often they appear to the client like a wall, and will talk to the wall. But ask the wall what it's afraid would happen if it lets you open the door. And then there are about nine common fears these protectors have of what's going to happen. One of them is, you'll be overwhelmed. Another is, you'll see things that I don't want you to see about happened to you. But there's a whole list of different fears that they have. And we now have evolved ways to address each of those fears, because we don't open those doors, without the permission of the protector. It's just try to be an ecologically sensitive person in somebody's delicate ecosystem. And so it's up to us to be convincing, what I call a hope merchant. I'm selling hope to hopeless systems. That we can open the door, and Aubrey can handle all that stuff. Aubrey is not six years old anymore. He can deal with this. And, I'm going to be right there with him the whole time, and it's all going to be good. And once you do let us open the door, you're going to be freed up to do some other job. You don't have to be this wall that sucks. So, it's just a bigger package like that.

AUBREY: There's actually, in my experience for people who have these walls and these things, these protectors that are always online, there's an immense amount of energy that's being utilized. I've noticed that people will experience what you could pathologize as chronic fatigue or something like that, and try to diagnose like that. But really, it's just they have all of this psychic energy applied towards forming the wall, form the wall, form the wall, watch out for this. But you start to let these go, then so much more lifeforce energy is freed up in your life. All right, we are getting wrapped up. This is like at the Oscars where the music starts playing, and it's time to get off the stage. Final comment. I feel honored that we were able to go on that journey together. Thank you, Aubrey and Dick. Amazing. It was like the space became sacred. And I just want to say thank you for everybody for holding space for me while I went through that journey, and of course, thank you to you, Dick, for masterfully taking me through a legitimate healing process. That was really beautiful.

RICHARD: And thank you, Aubrey, for the courage to do this in front of your audience, and this audience. It was very moving for me as well. I'm really grateful.

AUBREY: And let's have some more conversations. I feel like we're just getting started.

RICHARD: Same here.