If you've spent any time on my website, read my writing, or found your way onto my email list, you may have noticed that I talk about psychedelics. Quite a bit, actually.
They are an area of deep professional and personal interest for me. I've spent years learning about psychedelic-assisted therapy, preparation and integration, and the complicated questions that come with bringing these experiences into Western therapy and medicine. I write about them. I train in this work. I think about them a lot.
So it would be completely reasonable to wonder: What if I'm not interested in psychedelics at all? Can we still work together?
The short answer is yes. Absolutely.
Psychedelics Are an Interest of Mine, Not a Requirement for You
You do not need to be curious about psychedelics. You do not need to have used them before. You do not need to be considering using them someday. We could work together for years and never talk about psychedelics once.
And I would be just as interested in you.
Because while psychedelics are one area of my work, what I'm actually interested in is much broader than that. I'm interested in how people become who they are. I'm interested in the patterns we develop to protect ourselves and what happens when those same patterns stop working quite so well. I'm interested in relationships, attachment, trauma, identity, transitions, grief, intimacy, and the strange experience of understanding something about yourself intellectually while still finding yourself doing the exact same thing you've always done.
That is the work I've been doing as a therapist long before psychedelics became part of it.
There Isn't One Right Way to Heal
One of the things that makes me somewhat wary of any particular approach to healing is what happens when we start treating it as the answer.
Psychedelics can be profound. They can also be confusing, underwhelming, destabilizing, beautiful, difficult, or simply not something a person has any interest in doing.
Therapy can be profound too. So can relationships. So can changing a boundary, grieving something you've spent years avoiding, understanding yourself differently, having a conversation you've been terrified to have, or realizing that something you once needed to survive isn't something you need anymore.
There isn't one experience everyone needs to have in order to heal.
In fact, part of good therapy is figuring out what makes sense for you, rather than trying to fit you into someone else's idea of what healing is supposed to look like.
What We Might Actually Talk About
Most of my therapy clients come in because something in their lives isn't working the way they want it to.
You might keep ending up in relationships that leave you feeling anxious, lonely, or unsure of yourself. You might have built up beautiful coping skills but still feel scared to go there when it comes to unpacking your childhood. You might be successful and capable in most areas of your life, only to find that relationships bring out an entirely different version of you.
You could be navigating a transition, questioning something you've always believed about yourself, or realizing that the coping strategies that got you this far aren't going to get you where you want to go next. Or you might not have a particularly neat explanation for why you're looking for therapy. You just know something feels off.
Those are all good places to begin.
My job isn't to steer you toward psychedelics or toward any particular version of healing. It's to get curious with you about what is happening, why it might be happening, and what could become possible if we understand it differently. In fact, I don't typically bring psychedelics up!
You Don't Have to Be Interested in What I'm Interested In
I think sometimes we choose therapists because something about the way they see the world resonates with us. That doesn't mean we need to share all of their interests.
You don't have to care about psychedelics because I do.
You don't have to want the same experiences I've had or be interested in the same paths I've explored. You don't even have to agree with me about everything. In fact, I hope there is enough room in our work together for you not to.
What matters much more to me is whether we can be curious together. Whether you feel like you can bring the complicated, contradictory, unfinished parts of yourself into the room. Whether our work helps you understand yourself more deeply and gives you more freedom in how you move through your life and relationships.
Psychedelics might be part of that story. Or they might have absolutely nothing to do with it.
Either way, I'm interested.
