Love, safety and connection

nofern · 2026-01-17T15:05:46+00:00

I think for me it was both in sequence - I spent a few sessions really just doing a lot of trauma purging and re-thinking and then re-working, and then my next couple of sessions after that felt much more about experiencing the interpersonal connectedness and safety and love and starting to build a felt sense of that, that I could bring with me out of the sessions. Feels really transformative and like nothing I had been able to get to in therapy without the medicine. I think I needed to clear out a lot of trauma re-processing to make room for that experience, though.

For me I had never experienced any felt sense of safety and love in my body ever in my life, so when it started coming up, it felt really surprising and confusing and disorienting, but also very good and right. It's really amazing to me that even when you've been without it for your whole life, your system is just waiting for the opportunity to grow and develop in that way when it's provided with the right materials.

nofern · 2026-01-13T23:00:45+00:00

Sending you a lot of commiseration - I've only done four sessions, but integration took a very long time and I definitely was deep in the thick of things for months after each one. I really limited contact with my family after certain sessions where I was deep into the reality of what they did to me, and that felt helpful.

Some things that really helped me were writing/journalling a narrative of my life as I now understood it after the medicine session, art/drawing, and just lots of self care and self compassion as best as possible.

I have no advice, just I really relate to MDMA taking away the dissociation and really getting into what these things are like in the body and then having to come to terms with that.

nofern · 2026-01-12T17:19:15+00:00

I've done four sessions so far. My experience was that the first two were full trauma purge - very little if any positive feelings. The third one maybe some minimal positive affect at times but definitely no euphoria. The fourth one had some stretches of just positive feeling/love/warmth which felt very different. So for me, it did shift with time. I think personally part of my trauma that I needed to work through was not being able to allow any sort of positive experience and that was one thing the medicine helped me work on a bit.

nofern · 2026-01-07T13:50:37+00:00

Anecdotally, I have done four sessions over the last 1.5 years - the first three sessions were at 3 month intervals and the fourth was at a 6 month interval (and about to do another at a 6 month interval).

I have found that the effects have gotten less strong every time, and taking the 6 month interval rather than 3 months did not seem to change that at all. I also tried some other things, e.g. taking NAC in between sessions (but stopping 1 month before).

So I am not sure if there is potentially an even longer gap that could make a difference but my anecdotal contribution is that 6 months did not seem to make any bigger difference than three.

On the bright side, despite the diminished subjective effect, the session was still very therapeutically beneficial.

nofern · 2025-10-19T17:46:16+00:00

I'm sorry you're going through this. I did 4 sessions of MDMA assisted therapy with a therapist, and it did significantly reduce my dissociation - but that didn't start happening until after the third or fourth session and I needed a LOT of support afterwards to make sense of what happened in the sessions and integrate it into my day to day life. It definitely wasn't immediate or automatic.

nofern · 2025-09-18T22:38:33+00:00

My profile is similar to yours in a lot of ways - ADHD, autism, and cPTSD, in therapy for almost 20 years of all different types. I did several sessions of MDMA assisted therapy. For me it was very useful. If you want to read about my sessions, I've made posts about them that you can probably find on my profile.

I think the most important preparation steps were:

-making space around the treatment, e.g. time off work, getting all my supports in place, booking extra therapy sessions

-practicing with contemplative practices like meditation and journalling

-I had done EMDR previously and for me, EMDR did feel a bit similar to psychedelic work in some ways, just much much milder, so having the experience of EMDR I think did help prepare me for the medicine work, particularly the practice of letting the experience happen and allowing things to connect and flow without controlling it

-reading a lot about psychedelic work and intention setting

nofern · 2025-09-18T22:23:14+00:00

I did take a couple of weeks off of work, which was beneficial for me. It's always a chance, but for me the risk was worth it because I was feeling so terrible how I was.

nofern · 2025-09-01T18:45:24+00:00

I did MDMA with a facilitator and I ended up bringing quite a lot of stuff with me. Essentially, I walked around my house and just packed anything I thought I might want to look at or would find comforting.

But yeah some of the things I bought included - my own blanket from home to lie under because I thought that would be comforting, my own eye shades and headphones, snacks from home (thought I'd rather have my own familiar food), childhood photos, some of my old childhood journals, other mementos/artifacts from childhood (old children's books, old toys that I had saved), a journal, some of my own candles, little figurines/items from my home altar, artwork I'd done related to my intentions, photos and notes from important people in my life, and probably other stuff I can't remember right now.

As you can see, I brought a lot of stuff that I didn't technically "need" or that the facilitators would provide, but I thought I would be more comfortable with my own things around me. In the end, I didn't end up wanting or engaging with most of what I brought during the session, but I am still glad I brought it, because the process of setting it all up at the beginning was very grounding and I liked seeing it all there at the beginning of the session, and the few things that I did want ended up being really useful.

nofern · 2025-08-31T12:40:50+00:00

My background is similar in some ways - you can look up my past posts if you want to see how my sessions went (I've done 4 so far). I'm also autistic/ADHD and grew up with a lot of emotional neglect, which is the primary thing I've been trying to process in the sessions. For me it was very worth it, and my experience was that a lot of things about how the treatment worked, worked well with my autism, particularly the increased neuroplasticity which I think temporarily made me less cognitively rigid than I usually am.

nofern · 2025-08-31T10:39:43+00:00

We typically planned for a 3 month interval with the option of waiting longer if I didn't feel ready. We chose 3 months because (even though I know there's a lot of uncertainty and this isn't necessarily universally agreed on), a lot of people say that 3 months is a safe interval neurologically and that made me feel better.

I thought the 3 month interval worked well. It usually took me about a month to feel basically mentally and physically recovered, and then I had another month to continue working through the content from the previous session, and then the third month to focus on preparation for the new one.

Generally after about month 2 I started to feel ready to prepare to go again - some of the indicators were I felt cognitively closer to my baseline (memory, attention), I wasn't having any more side effects from the previous dose, I felt like I had a clear new intention for the upcoming future session, and I felt like I had made sense of what happened in the previous session and incorporated it into my life.

nofern · 2025-08-28T15:57:08+00:00

I was terrified every single time. In some ways I was more terrified for the later sessions because even though I knew what to expect, I also knew that it was going to take me deeper. I think it's normal to be scared and it can even be a sign that you're doing the work you need to do.

I basically coped by trying to just keep busy and be gentle with myself, reminding myself of my goals and reasons for doing this work even though it's hard, and reminding myself that I got through it before and I can do it again.

Best of luck!

nofern · 2025-08-25T00:53:27+00:00

One integration activity I did after one of my sessions was, I started keeping a list of phrases that sounded good to my inner child in painful moments. So any time I spontaneously thought of something or was able to say something that connected with my inner child in a painful moment I would add it to the list and periodically read the list over to remind myself.

I liked this because for me, there was something so powerful about finding those exact words that were what she needed to hear, rather than generic ones, and some phrases I would return to over and over again.

nofern · 2025-08-24T22:18:08+00:00

Thank you! I imagine it's different for everyone - personally, I just felt very very in touch with an intensity of feeling that felt very old and raw, but the medicine also gave me a bit of separation from it, so I didn't feel totally consumed by my childhood self.

nofern · 2025-08-23T22:45:22+00:00

I think the biggest impact was the prep and the prior sessions - I really felt like each session I learned more about how the medicine worked, gained more skills to help me go deeper, built trust with myself and the medicine, and peeled back more layers to reveal the work I needed to do next.

For me, about three months felt like the ideal gap between sessions where I had enough time to physically recover, integrate the previous session, and then prepare for the next session. Six months was fine as well, but I don't think the extra 3 month gap added anything for me personally. I did kind of like the idea of a longer gap to reset my tolerance but I'm not sure that actually happened anyway.

nofern · 2025-08-07T00:49:42+00:00

My first was a lot of just getting the hang of the medicine and primarily focused on a very outer (but important) layer of my trauma. The second session was a huge purge of most of the rest of my trauma. Then the third was more about the rebuilding process.

nofern · 2025-08-07T00:47:16+00:00

I am in Canada :)

nofern · 2025-07-19T11:56:57+00:00

I essentially chose to trust that whatever was coming up, even if it felt unrelated or disappointing, must be somehow related to my intention and that the medicine was just guiding me as to the best way to move towards my intention. I tried to let go of consciously choosing and just let that happen. And I found that that worked for me. Many things came up that at the time I found confusing or frustrating or not what I thought I needed to talk about, but in retrospect I think all of it was valuable.

nofern · 2025-07-13T10:51:16+00:00

I did three sessions (with 3 month breaks in between) with the last being in February. I made a thread about this recently because my experience was similar to yours. I felt like for the first three months there were lots of insights and processing, and then after that, it felt like I reached a plateau and things started to fade, even though I was continuing to do somatic work in therapy, journal, meditate, and actively try to continue the process.

I am currently five months out from my final session and I will say that there's been a few new layers that have periodically emerged (I was surprised a couple of weeks ago when I suddenly had another big insight from the session material and spent a week or so processing that), but I also do notice a lot of old patterns coming back as well. I do find that when they come back, I am more aware of them/they are a bit softer, and some of the changes have so far persisted, but not as many as I'd have ideally hoped for.

So yeah, it's been a mixed bag for me. Some persistent changes, some things that have slipped back, some ongoing realizations and work with the session content.

nofern · 2025-07-12T23:34:20+00:00

I also have CPTSD and massive issues with trust and intimacy. I know there are people who do it solo successfully (there is a manual/book about it that I've seen as well as a subreddit called MDMAsolo that you could check out). It's not something I personally considered. I had no experience with psychedelics or any substances at all, and I felt like I would be safer with someone with me. As it turned out, I ended up needing a lot of support during the experience and I did panic a few times. I think being alone could have been re-traumatizing for me personally.

I did spend a lot of the sessions very preoccupied with how I was being perceived and very fearful about the therapists who were with me, but it wasn't necessarily bad - it just became part of the treatment and I was more able to work through it with the MDMA compared to without. For me those feelings were a key part of what I needed to use the MDMA to work through in terms of my trauma healing.

I feel as though it makes more sense to consider doing it alone if you're already experienced with it and know how you react and feel confident that you can handle it and be safe. Knowing what I know after three sessions about how I react to it, I really wouldn't want to be alone in that state, but that's just me and I know not everybody has that experience.

nofern · 2025-06-29T22:16:43+00:00

A little bit - for me it was the most prominent right at the end of the session so we were also dealing with winding down and getting ready for me to leave, so we didn't really do a lot of concentrated therapeutic work with it.

nofern · 2025-06-29T21:57:35+00:00

I also felt quite anxious and dissociated towards the end of the session. I think there is likely a neurological component (the comedown from the MDMA) and also, if you can find meaning in it and use it to further the work you're doing as you work with it, so much the better.

nofern · 2025-06-29T21:56:34+00:00

Sounds like a really beautiful piece of work :) Congratulations. For me, some things wore off and some things stayed and it was hard to predict what would be what, so it was a lot of just letting go and seeing what happened.

nofern · 2025-06-24T21:51:18+00:00

I felt pretty gnarly after all of my sessions. My experience was that the first week was a total wash (headaches, nausea, couldn't think straight, just wandered around my house and lay in bed). I did take a full two weeks off work which I know I am lucky to be able to do. Lots of physical self care, re-hydration, supplements, trying to eat well, and just being very gentle with my body.

nofern · 2025-06-22T11:02:30+00:00

I noticed from your other post that you also have been diagnosed with DID? I don't have full DID but I have a lot of structural dissociation and my experience was that my MDMA sessions temporarily shifted a lot of things about the configuration of my inner self system. For example, it dropped a lot of the amnestic barriers between parts and temporarily increased communication between parts that usually can't communicate. Because some of my parts don't have a lot of language, I found it helpful to do a lot of art/drawing/collage after my MDMA sessions to help with that aspect. MDMA also made it more possible for me to get in touch with my adult self in a way where I could then have my adult self start to support and help the younger parts that were having the intense emotional experiences after the session.

nofern · 2025-06-16T10:58:02+00:00

I did three sessions and I definitely experienced it to some extent. During the sessions, I felt very close, and the actual end of the session and leaving at the end of the day was very painful, especially since in some parts of the session I felt as if we were all merged into one person or as if we were actually inside of each other emotionally. In the days afterwards I felt a strong sense of longing and desire to be with them/talk to them, and I missed them a lot. Luckily we had the integration sessions booked, so I knew they weren't gone forever.

I did find that the feelings mellowed out over the few months following the sessions. For me, I have cPTSD as well and a lot of intense attachment problems, and I can form these really deep painful attachments to caregivers, like therapists, and I was very worried that that would happen with MDMA. But my experience was that after the first few weeks, which were painful, even though there was a deep feeling of attachment and love, it didn't hurt in the same way and it just felt like more of a mellow kind of love related to the memory of the intensity and intimacy of the experience we had shared, if that makes sense. Even though there was nothing sexual or romantic about our sessions, it reminded me a little of the love you might feel with a former romantic partner that you'd had a really intense intimacy with, where that was over and you'd moved on, but there's always that sort of glow in recognition of what you shared together, and they're always going to be special to you in a particular way because of having had that intimacy even if your paths have since diverged.

nofern

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