Who is steering your ship?

Has anxiety been your captain for awhile? What if there was another way? Plus few words on the importance of preparation and integration in a psychedelic journey.

I was listening to the Pete Holmes podcast the other day. I hadn’t listened in years, and I remembered why Pete used to be one of my celebrity crushes. He really makes me laugh. We’re both Taurus moons and have Venus in Pisces. That’s some nice synastry. Anyway, on the show they were talking about psychedelics. They used this metaphor of a captain steering a ship, and it’s been sticking with me for several days now.

Psychedelics give us the opportunity to have a different captain steering the ship.

Say you have been dealing with anxiety for a few years or a few decades, and you’re living your life from this place. Anxiety is impacting your decisions, your choices, and it keeps you awake at night. Anxiety is the captain of your ship. Anxiety is steering you. Psychedelics can give you the chance to experience a different captain. Imagine for a moment being steered by clarity, confidence, or intuition.

But the thing is that in order to be open to that, there has to be a level of surrender. Which of course can be super complicated for a lot of folks, especially those with trauma. 

Through preparation before a psychedelic experience, we can develop trust with our systems. So when you go into a journey, you have trust with the captain. You can say - Hey anxiety, you can let go for awhile. I promise I will be back. I need you to trust that I can go on this journey and be ok without you for a bit.

If that sounds impossible, I totally understand. If anyone had asked me to fully let go into an experience like this 5 years ago, it would have been a hell no. I’ve been building a relationship with my anxiety (and other parts) for several years. So now when I ask my anxiety to step back and let me release into a journey, it’s no problem. We have a trusting relationship. 

I know that might sound really hard. Fighting with anxiety is also really hard. When I got myself into IFS therapy, I was sick of fighting. I was ready to try another way. I was so exhausted by it.

Wouldn’t it be nice to try another captain? Even for a few hours? Imagine confidence as your captain. Imagine clarity as your captain. Right now you might be thinking about being confident or making clear decisions. The embodied experience of confidence is so much more powerful. That’s the potential of a psychedelic experience.

I had a client recently who had a psychedelic experience before we worked together. She shared with me that in her journey she felt confident and loving towards all of her parts. But a few weeks after her journey, all her anxiety came back and was even worse than before.

This experience is unfortunately very common, which is why I’m so passionate about preparation and integration. My teacher Heather always says, “Keep the therapy in psychedelic assisted therapy.” I couldn’t agree more. This is what happens when we don’t get permission and don’t have a relationship with our captain.

Psychedelics can put protectors like anxiety to sleep - without their permission. That’s what happened to my client. Her anxiety did not give her permission to be with some of her other parts that were locked away for a long time. Parts like shame or young parts that experienced trauma. We were able to repair the relationship with her anxiety and apologize for bypassing it.

This particular story has a happy ending, although that’s not always the case. Because my client had the lived, embodied experience of her Self energy, it was easier to get back to that. If this has happened to you, there’s a chance you can repair with your parts and get back to the openness you felt in your journey.

I’ve never been great at ending my writing. Conclusions are not my strength. In elementary school I used to end all my essays with “That about wraps it up!” But I suppose instead of that ending, I’ll just invite you to consider who has been steering your ship lately? What’s your relationship like with that part? If you asked it to step aside so you could surrender to a psychedelic experience, would it be open to that?

I’d love to hear what you think about this. I’ll probably be sharing more about psychedelics in this space, and I know that’s not for everyone. Feel free to unsubscribe if that’s the case. I know many of my followers connected with me when I was primarily sharing about astrology. I’m still giving readings, and it’s a true joy. I love the cosmos and will still share some astrology stuff here too. Happy Taurus new moon, btw.