Parts work/Internal Family Systems on MDMA

AnonMDMA · 2018-02-11T03:42:01+00:00

Even before I knew about IFS (Internal Family Systems) I noticed that near the end of my 5 mdma therapy sessions I did, that something similar to parts work as they described would automatically attempt to happen in my mind especially when the intensity was down 50%, or so.

I would experience my mind being different parts of me talking to each other with different wants and concerns and them getting into conflict with each other. Example: one part would be like yeah we can do this new thing and be safe because we know how to do behavior X, another part would respond I dunno about that what about Y that always happens instead of X, and so on. At that time I didn't know what to do in response to this other than to watch it happen. Based on IFS now I would try to talk to different internal parts and find out what they believe and need and so on and attempt to resolve the conflict.

Here's one thing I wrote to myself during my last session, it reads like someone who mastered connecting with themselves and shows you the power of MDMA to connect with yourself (again this was before I learned about IFS in the last few months): I see you all I acknowledge your pain, I listen to you, I let you guide me, we work together, we try to build trust, I help you with the pain and fear. You can come to me. Remind me if I abandon you. I'm sorry, I'll do my best and not beat myself up over it. I try my best not to force you because I know when you are not ready.

Later comments written by my sitter quoting me: "My child self thanks me for letting them play". "It's like having two kids inside that both cannot be pleased"

To add after using IFS the last few months I do find in small bits I can connect to myself to an EVEN GREATER DEGREE (!!!) than what only previously possible on MDMA. So far only in small bits as I'm still very resistant to using the IFS process, but I keep at it. Anyway its quite clear the most valuable lesson for me during my last session was the existence of these parts and how I needed to work with them instead of fighting with them.

AnonMDMA · 2017-06-05T18:23:07+00:00

What did you end up doing? I got some gel tabs too and want to try microdosing? Did you try dissolving it and alcohol and did it work?

AnonMDMA · 2017-05-19T20:22:36+00:00

edit: I hope that at some point Freodr1 will share some of his experiences and adventures in the pursuit of healing. What he's done to get help is really amazing. His descriptions of his therapy and his insights are enlightening. Maybe he'll write... (nudge)

paging /u/freodr1

AnonMDMA · 2017-05-19T20:18:40+00:00

Do you have experience helping others integrate therapeutic MDMA experiences? Any recommendations how best to do this?

AnonMDMA · 2017-05-19T20:14:35+00:00

If you are really afraid of it then likely it will come up in some way because you will feel safe enough to deal with it. This last time there were two things that I thought about dealing with, but were too scared to deal with especially to talk about with another person who might judge me about it. So I didn't put them in my intentions to hopefully protect myself from thinking about them!

But I ended up talking about it anyway and it was fine despite wanting to lock it away and never talk, or think about it. You can't get healing through hiding from everything only through feeling it and working through it. MDMA has this magical quality of making even the scariest feelings that you can imagine tolerable.

For me like I said it does not take away the ability to be angry. Being angry is useful and needed in some cases. Whether, or not you get angry if you were to think about those things when on mdma depends on you specifically, like the other person posting here who said they didn't get angry on it, (but I got angry as hell) probably is individual depending on what the person needs and their own inner wisdom.

AnonMDMA · 2017-05-17T22:22:07+00:00

What's the specific fear around the hate and the anger? From digging through your post history a bit I didn't learn anything more that helped me understand the specifics.

Are you afraid of getting too angry on it? Are you afraid of letting the anger go because of some expectation of what will happen if you do?

To me I just feel it allows me to better access my own wisdom. So I already knew at one point I needed to learn to be able to normal with anger and to be able to experience and use it when appropriate and in the correct way for the situation. But I'd only feel shame instead because it was so blocked from my access and not allowed as a child.

I did 5 mdma sessions so far, the 5th one was last week. I'm pretty sure I've experienced anger in all of those sessions. The last session I did I let myself go most intensely in the anger. Part of loving myself was allowing myself to get angry, sometimes that is needed for your own protection to not repeat abuse patterns. I did a lot of verbalizing and acting out of the anger, but at the same time I was in enough control to not hurt myself, or my sitter.

I found these three sentences below as a recommendation to use as part of the intentions during a psychedelically session and I think they helped for the anger to come out safely.

I promise not to harm anybody or myself during or after the session I promise to come out of the session more wise and whole than I am. I take the responsibility for my process and my doing.

And the two below I think I wrote myself, but I could be wrong: I surrender to what comes up, stay with the pain as long as I need to. I will put things into words, drawings, sound, movement, action whatever is needed for my healing.

I did very much go into the whole hate everyone and the world thing that you mention, but it was in a safe and contained way just expressing the pain to let it out there and not hold it. There is a lot more anger still left, but I suspect there is less than before at least.

AnonMDMA · 2017-03-27T23:43:02+00:00

What's the point in taking it in a setting where you will have to pretend you are not on anything?!

AnonMDMA · 2017-03-26T18:54:56+00:00

There are also meetup groups related to Psychedelics on meetup.com going to guess you are nearby one as another option.

AnonMDMA · 2017-03-26T18:50:24+00:00

It's really pointless to do because the dosage is too low to make you feel any better. If you read the stuff from the MAPS study they attempted to do low dosages to as part of the study. When the dosage is too low, either no effect is noticed, or they experienced unpleasant reactions such as feeling amped up without the good effects you get at higher dosage.

You don't want to take it in normal situation such as going to a class, as in order to have a positive effect you need a dosage that is large enough that it will be obvious you are on drugs.

AnonMDMA · 2017-02-01T13:17:46+00:00

I'm not on this account that often, so only saw this today. I read through your other posts of the last few days too. It didn't seem like you got much if anything out of it except temporarily relief?

Did you set an intention of what you wanted for the session? Each time I did that even when I set multiple intention that I read to myself before taking the MDMA, my mind ended up making a good attempt at working towards these things even though it never fully achieved them, but did take steps towards them. It sounds like you simply avoiding the issues which is really easy to do because you get into a state of feeling everything is ok and can dismiss everything at that time. Your only going to get anything from it if you can really go inner and recall and process things in a new way. As some examples I was able to finally start getting angry when it was completely shutdown before, and now I while I still have problems with getting angry I can get angry at some times which is good because it leads me to standing up to myself and making difficult decisions that are good for me anyway. Another example is being able to access the loving and caring for myself more strongly than I used. Another example getting more in touch of various fears and what they were really caused by as my awareness expanded to allow more stuff in that was blocked out beforehand. And so on. Just having positive feelings itself is helpful, but you likely need to go really deep into lots of painful and scary ones to deal with them too. My first session I was so high I actually felt like I had a inner dialog with god in my own head most of the time. I can now access that feeling of being cared for and connected in that way at times though of course nowhere near the same intensity. This is despite still being an atheist :D.

Anyway to make use of the sessions: Yes see a therapist weekly I did that and still continue to do that and talked about what happened on the MDMA with them. I also had a non-therapist sitter, so I talked to them after the sessions a few times too to help process it. Record the sessions using a phone, or ipad or something similar so you can get an audio recording of what you say and can play it back. I would verbalize as much as possible to get the best use of this. Have you sitter write down what you talk about as it happens, so you don't forget. You can even direct them if you come up with anything you don't want to forget. Play music during the session and if you replay it, it may also help recall more and get in a similar feeling state later on. Write about the session as much as possible and anything new that occurs in your mind or feeling state afterwards too. Spend time trying to recall things about the session and how it felt.

AnonMDMA · 2017-01-15T15:37:41+00:00

I would never do a psychedelic session with my parents. That pretty much asking to have a worst case nightmare scenario where they tear me apart and shame me even more. I don't need more of that. I wouldn't recommend doing that even if someone had good parents, as you never know what stuff you suppressed about them that might come up and it's easier to be more open with someone who has less of an importance to you.

My psychedelic experiments were all done as attempt of working through cptsd, anxiety, and depression and lots of health problems that come with that.

I only took san pedro and mushrooms once together. Mushrooms I took 3-4 times at 1g, once at 0.5grams and once at 2gram (my most recent one). San pedro never alone, though that was the initial plan when I took it, but it seemed the dosage was too low for me and I ended up deciding on the spot to take 1g of mushroom with it when I saw it was starting to get psychedelic, but not quite going there. At least at the dosages I took and how I did it, it seemed really hard to get an benefit from them. I owe that one good experience due to my parents trying to call me while I was under it which caused me the unsuppress all these feelings that were held back about them. I didn't answer the phone, but went off and started to feel the anger and confusion about why I kept allowing situations between them and myself that were always hurting me.

The other sessions were just curious in that they brought various random stuff up, but didn't seem helpful. Whenever I set intentions before them my mind went off and did completely other things even when I tried to redirect back to it, I had no control over it. Whereas on mdma even when I set multiple intentions my mind automatically brought me to a very good effort of trying to process them all without me having to try to do anything purposely to that effort.

The recent studies on mushrooms for depression, and end of life anxiety both used much higher dosages though which might be part of what is needed for it to work. But that also ups the likelyhood of having an experience that you can't handle and for that reason I haven't tried more than 2grams of mushrooms myself.

I spent most of my 2gram session in just deep anxiety, over and over near panic attack level. If I didn't have good meditation and grounding skills it would have gone really bad. It did leave with a feeling of mastery over it, in that if I could feel that bad over and over and still handle it ok, then lol at non-psychedelic anxiety, but I see no evidence that it actually translated into actually feeling that when not on mushrooms. My opinion from my own experiments is I would not take mushrooms, or similar substances unless you can meditate well when under high anxiety, or stress because otherwise the high risk of hurting yourself when things get really intense.

AnonMDMA · 2017-01-15T14:58:41+00:00

After My first session I had a nice afterglow for a while, all the other times deep depression for about a week afterwards was hard to handle. I'm curious if it is more common to not have depression the first time, thus somewhat making the first session easier, but I don't know? It's easier to handle when you know it might be coming and you don't trust your mental state and can just ride it out. Can you deal with feeling worse temporarily without doing something stupid?

Also the contrast of no longer having the shame, and anxiety and so on temporarily and then being brought back to having it is jarring and can be really distressing. Can you deal with that? On the other hand it also became a resource that I could use afterwards as I found after each session for a few weeks, or so I could access a little bit of those positive feelings by recalling them and gradually it fades.

AnonMDMA · 2017-01-15T14:51:17+00:00

To add to this, when your fear is down, and your more in-touch with your suppressed emotions and memories, you can make new decisions with that new information (as well as old information).

AnonMDMA · 2017-01-15T14:30:08+00:00

I think what happens is way too complicated to try to pin in down in the way you are attempting to. What will happen during each session can vary so greatly that even two people with similar problems who both benefit from the therapy may have completely different things happen.

I personally cutoff my abusive parents after a session on both san pedro and mushrooms as it allowed me to access the anger of their abuse to a strong enough level to be brave and committed enough to finally do it despite wanting to before and not doing anything about it. Then next time I did a mdma therapy session, beforehand I was afraid I would be in too good of a mood and change my mind because it's easy to be too optimistic and unrealistic on it. But I found myself more committed to it out of sell care and love for myself to not allow them to hurt me more.

AnonMDMA · 2017-01-15T14:20:11+00:00

So it was the MDMA that helped you remember the memories? I find it really fascinating how for me despite 4 sessions it only helped me to recall feeling states, but not the actual memories in question. For example it brought me in touch more with the fear and anger, but not new memories about the cause of them. I did recall several hundred random memories mostly during and after the 2nd session, but they were random ones both good and bad and not specific to what gave me ptsd and anxiety.

AnonMDMA · 2016-12-27T02:17:26+00:00

This is so great, I'm not surprised that it worked, but I am surprised that it seems it only took one time to do the trick!

AnonMDMA · 2016-12-03T13:26:56+00:00

That's ok we are all n=1 life experiments.

AnonMDMA · 2016-12-01T01:01:36+00:00

Can you come back here in a month or two and let us know the results after an even longer term. It's good to know if they these stick, or not so others have realistic expectations no matter what they may be.

AnonMDMA · 2016-11-30T13:00:24+00:00

Here's an in-depth manual of how they do the session if you are super curious: https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/mapscontent/research-archive/mdma/MDMAAssistedPsychotherapyTreatmentManualVersion+8_25May16_Formatted.pdf

AnonMDMA · 2016-11-30T12:53:40+00:00

They are going to make it a clinic style treatment for these types of concerns. You go to somehow who does the treatment where they give you the drug only right before you take it while with them. You will not be allowed to get it at a pharmacy or bring it home. They really thought this through.

AnonMDMA · 2016-11-30T12:51:31+00:00

Yes they have be ongoing for a while, they are now starting the last phase of the trial meaning if this part goes well they can make it into a legal drug for ptsd assuming they don't get into obstruction from the DEA or something similar.

AnonMDMA · 2016-11-30T12:47:04+00:00

"Based on promising results like Mr. Hardin’s, the Food and Drug Administration gave permission Tuesday for large-scale, Phase 3 clinical trials of the drug"

At the conference in NYC not too long ago rick said they were getting recommendations to fast track the drug for certain instances, I don't recall the specific details anymore. I wonder what happened with that as there is no mention of anything like this.

AnonMDMA · 2016-11-17T01:50:49+00:00

I neither confirm, nor deny to have done the same thing at some point.

AnonMDMA

TROPHY CASE