COVID-19 is like a challenging psychedelic trip.
We are in a time of massive collective uncertainty. The COVID-19 outbreak has pushed humanity into the great unknown in a way none of us have ever encountered. We are forced to look our mortality and vulnerability smack in the face. Fear takes over as we spiral out of control. Life as we knew it has receded and we live in a sort of purgatory.
However, these dark days also present an opportunity to purge those things in our lives, and those ways of thinking, which haven’t been working for us. As life slows down, and as we are forced to recognize our inter-connectivity and reliance on the earth and those around us to sustain us, we can see ourselves and our place in the world more clearly. How have we been living that contributes to our individual and collective alienation and suffering? As comfortable denial and complacency crumble, we are forced to confront and evaluate what we haven’t wanted to see.
The Psychedelic Journey and The Shadow
The experience is analogous to a “trip” on a psychedelic drug. “Psychedelic” means “to manifest the psyche.” The resulting experience, both frightening and enlightening, is precisely why psychedelics are useful tools for healing. The more we can make conscious within ourselves that which has been buried, the more power and control we can claim over our lives and our choices. Going on a psychedelic journey inherently requires facing the great unknown. We relinquish control over our conscious lives and open ourselves to seeing what’s hidden beyond our conscious awareness. This is brave work. Encountering “shadow material” in the psychedelic journey requires looking at the parts of ourselves we’d rather not know about or acknowledge. This subconscious reality can carry deep pain, shame, grief and/or conflicts around identity and ways of being in the world. Such shadow material may have formed at some point as a protective mechanism, to help keep us feeling in control of our conscious existence, yet it can also cause great suffering and limit our capacity for growth if we choose not to face it.
One way such a shadow reality may show up is in the defense mechanism called projection. Perhaps you find yourself getting angry at others for being selfish and aloof. These might be qualities you or society have deemed “bad,” so you unconsciously project them outward in order to avoid the pain of acknowledging them in yourself. When such qualities stay in the shadows, we continue to act them out without awareness. When we don’t take hold of our complexes, they will take control of us.
Another way shadow might show up is in our efforts to numb out and disconnect from the pain of our current reality. We might turn to alcohol, sugar, work, compulsive exercise, or a variety of other substances and behaviors to distract ourselves from confronting the source of our suffering. Not wanting to feel our actual fear of death, grief, unworthiness, loneliness or vulnerability, we keep our deepest fears and longings in the shadows.
Trauma, Bad Trips and Psychedelic Healing
A frequent reaction to a bad experience during a psychedelic trip is a panic response to feeling out of control. Yet this loss or relinquishment of control is what also can lead to healing. For trauma survivors especially, something terrible may have happened at a time when life itself felt out of control. The response to the trauma has been to erect a false sense of control which allows the person to feel some semblance of safety, yet the control is not real because it does not confront the underlying trauma, which continues unabated, if unconsciously. This disconnect is perhaps best exemplified by those suffering from perfectionism and OCD, where the need to feel in control in everyday life instead debilitates normal functioning. The drive for a false sense of control overrides the need for rest, balance, and acceptance of oneself as a lovable, fallible human being.
COVID-19 As an Opportunity for Shadow Work
As a society, this COVID-19 pandemic offers us the opportunity to look at how we’ve been living, both collectively and individually, and to take the time, while we are “distancing,” to assess what needs to change. What hasn’t been working? As we are “sheltering in place,” we also have the opportunity as individuals to look at our own personal shadows. In coming to grips with this novel experience, where so much of the external control we thought we had is no more, we have more access to our emotional responses. As in a psychedelic experience, deep meditation, or a psychoanalytic treatment, the workings of our psyches are amplified when we slow down and watch our reactions to the frightening unknown.
What is coming up for you right now? What are your emotional responses and reactions to feeling out of control? Where does your mind go? What’s happening in your relationships, or your relationship with yourself?
What I am noticing as a therapist is a tremendous amount of fear, stress, anger, and a collective grief like we’ve never known. Since we are all experiencing a trauma, it becomes more difficult – yet vitally important - to support each other and to turn to loved ones when they are struggling too.
The Container in Psychedelic Work and Trauma Therapy
In order for healing to occur, there often needs to be some “container,” something to hold the person together while he or she allows the self to come apart. This protection of the container is extremely important in psychedelic work as well as in the therapy relationship. The container helps us feel safe enough to go to the places which we fear but where we need to go. In the COVID-19 pandemic, there is no readily available container, no safety net, nobody protecting us. Our closest connections with others might be fraught with fear, sadness and loss.
This is where the support of a therapist can come in. We want to be here for you. Most of us, including myself, rely on our own therapists and mentors to create containers for us. This is what we were trained to do. We can create a container within which you can do the healing work your soul is calling forth right now. Groups and communities, collective cultures and societies can also create excellent containers; yet American culture today sadly doesn’t offer such support and indeed may be part of why we find ourselves in this place of dissolution and disintegration to begin with.
I encourage each of us to take this opportunity to do some profound personal introspection. On a societal scale, there has been no more appropriate time. We can no longer afford to be consumption caterpillars; we must cocoon, turn to mush, and emerge as something transformed. Just as the caterpillar contains all the DNA to become a butterfly, your psyche contains all the information it needs to transform. Yet we need a safe cocoon in which to do this healing work.
I believe that the COVID-19 pandemic presents a special calling and opportunity for transformation. This is certainly not to minimize the trauma, loss and pain that it is causing, nor to blame or shame anyone for whatever they are experiencing. It is okay to feel paralyzed, exhausted, enraged, devastated and terrified. It is also okay to feel relieved and peaceful. What I’m proposing is making a personal choice toward transformation on the basis of love and compassion. With help and support, you can face and embrace the shadow within yourself for your greater good and for the greater good of humanity.
“Filling the conscious mind with ideal conceptions is a characteristic of Western theosophy, but not the confrontation with the shadow and the world of darkness. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” – Carl Jung
I offer psychedelic integration therapy in Oakland, CA, and virtually throughout California.