Episode 155: Trauma Therapy and Psychedelics

[00:00:00] Autumn Carter: This is episode 1 55. We are talking about trauma therapy, psychedelic use in this and so much more.

[00:00:12] Welcome to Wellness In Every Season, the podcast where we explore the rich tapestry of wellness in all of its forms. I'm your host, autumn Carter, a certified life coach, turn wellness coach, as well as a certified parenting coach dedicated to empowering others to rediscover their identity in their current season of life.

[00:00:31] My goal is to help you thrive, both as an individual and as a parent.

[00:00:35] Thank you for listening. Today I have with me Julian Bermuda, and I am so excited for this conversation. I've done trauma therapy as a patient, huge advocate for it, and I have heard about using psychedelics.

[00:00:49] With therapy and I think it's super fascinating. So I'm very excited to have you on. Thank you for coming on.

[00:00:57] Julian Bermudez- Psychedelic Integration: Yeah, thanks for having me.

[00:00:59] Autumn Carter: So let's start with, [00:01:00] tell us your business name and. I will let you go from there. 'cause there are so many different ways we could go. So I'll just, you follow your passion, I'll follow you.

[00:01:05] Julian Bermudez- Psychedelic Integration (2): Sure. My business is called, or my practice more like is psychedelic integration. It's exactly as you described it. I focus on going straight for the core of what's bringing people. I don't spend time going around and doing all the fluffy things and talking about how this week went and all that stuff that most therapists will do to try to build a well-intentioned but maybe superficial safety or comfort with each other.

[00:01:36] I, go straight for it and the safety and comfort just happens as we go and we're gonna start building a relationship with it immediately. And that's what I do.

[00:01:44] Autumn Carter: That is such a huge difference. I've been to different therapists and it takes forever to get started and I've talked to other coaching clients of my own and friends and other people out in the wild, and they all are so frustrated with [00:02:00] it takes months before I'm actually getting the help that I need because of creating the safe space and the container and everything else.

[00:02:08] So I really like that it's a different approach and that's something that I like with coaching as well, is let's get into the deep stuff, the real reason why you're in here.

[00:02:17] Julian Bermudez- Psychedelic Intergration: Yeah, unfortunately you're lucky if you spend a few months trying to build a relationship and getting to the good stuff. I work with people who've been in therapy for years, decades even, and they're saying in five minutes of a conversation here, we get to things that they've never gotten to there.

[00:02:32] So yeah, you're kinda lucky if you get to those spaces in a few months, but unfortunately, a lot of people don't. 

[00:02:32] Autumn Carter: Wow. The, thing I'm most interested in and let's dive there and then we can back up, is psychedelics. So how do you use this in your practice? And I assume it's only if you're local, in person, correct.

[00:02:42] Julian Bermudez- Psychedelic Intergration: It depends. I'm actually adjusting my approach for the foreseeable time being right now, which is I am pretty much working with people exclusively, remotely at this point. No more in persons for, I don't know, maybe the next. [00:03:00] Six months to a year, maybe even a little bit more. We'll see.

[00:03:02] I'll probably still do some retreats in this time. But for the foreseeable next year, it's gonna be just remote. And so what I do with people is we really start to, go for the core of what's going on. I look at things like what's the unresolved pain from the past that continues to show up here in the present, and what's your relationship with it and what do you do with it?

[00:03:25] I would look at what are the important messages from this pain from the past? Why is it showing up? What is the, wisdom? What is the teaching of it? Why is it here? What lessons do we need to learn? And so the therapy that we're doing is very intensive. Experiential and applicable. So right away in the first session, we start building a practice that people are gonna start to do because the psychedelic aspect is very powerful.

[00:03:55] Super powerful. It's really good at very specific things, which I'll go into in a minute, [00:04:00] but it doesn't do the work for you. And with all of the headlines out there these days and all of the buzz like captions that you see from people talking about this it's really easy to think that it's a magic pill, that it's gonna do everything for you and I, the majority of people that I work with are.

[00:04:15] Even aware of this conscious, but they still have that belief, and that's not the case. So what we start doing is we start building up the foundation, the skills, the tools that are necessary to transform the pain that we carry to transform these patterns of trauma. And then the psychedelic aspect really helps us to do it much faster and much deeper.

[00:04:36] Autumn Carter: My interpretation of it. There's different psychedelics for different things. Like my idea is if you're in by yourself, maybe use the one that dubbed the love drug for maybe feeling your own love or I don't know what psychedelic the other one would be, but really lowering your walls that you have up within [00:05:00] yourself.

[00:05:00] You can actually do work. Maybe build that trust faster so that you can talk about things that you don't normally talk about, and it would just be more of that idea for me, how much of that is truth versus not.

[00:05:17] Julian Bermudez- Psychedelic Intergration: Yeah. Yeah, there's various psychedelics and they all have their own characteristics and personalities, so to speak.

[00:05:26] I have a therapeutic relationship with one of them in particular. And the good news is, with all the legislation that's happening in the states right now, is that you can buy everything you need from a store, and there's probably five stores within a half a mile of where I'm at.

[00:05:42] That'll give you all the resources that you need to grow your own mushrooms. And you can go online and there's numerous distributors that will mail 'em directly to your house and they're very credible. There's so many options and these mushrooms that grow everywhere, they probably grow in your backyard at some point.

[00:05:57] So they're accessible. [00:06:00] I don't recommend doing it on your own. The very skilled healers from the indigenous cultures, they very rarely do it on their own. They almost always have somebody with them to go through this experience. It's very important.

[00:06:18] Autumn Carter: Why? Maybe that'll help people. Some people need to know the why to know not to.

[00:06:19] Julian Bermudez- Psychedelic Intergration: Yeah. You ever watch The Matrix, like the movie, the Matrix? No. Yeah. When, people jack in, you always gotta have somebody there to make sure that things stay okay. And when there's not somebody there, things hit the fan. It's that simple. You talked about defenses a moment ago.

[00:06:33] And they are very strong and they protect us from pain.

[00:06:38] So one thing that the psychedelic is very good at doing is bringing things to our awareness. The word psychedelic itself is referring to the human spirit manifesting or arising. So you're gonna start to connect with all the things that are blocking you from connecting with the human spirit for all that wisdom, the potential, the ability that knows how to [00:07:00] heal.

[00:07:00] It's inside of you, but what's stopping you? From accessing that most of the times it's pain and it's patterns of trauma. Now, what's your relationship with those patterns? For the most part. And I'm sorry, there's a leaf blower nearby, so I don't know if you can hear that or not. Nope, not at all. Okay, terrific.

[00:07:13] That'll gimme some peace of mind. 

[00:07:13] Autumn Carter: Yep.

[00:07:13] Julian Bermudez- Psychedelic Intergration: So for the most part, the pattern that I see is we don't like the pattern of trauma, however it's coming up and we're very harsh. To ourselves when it comes up. So we're judging ourselves, we're evaluating ourselves, we're criticizing and punishing ourselves, and then we go through extreme lengths to disconnect from those feelings from that pattern.

[00:07:35] So we distract ourselves first and foremost, and those distractions take all sorts of forms. Now when you start working with a psychedelic, it's gonna bring all those things to your awareness. And if your pattern is to try and get away from it, to distract from it, to evaluate it and say, I don't like this, I want it to go away, go to your room until you can regulate those emotions and then you can come back and get your, connection with me.

[00:07:58] Now you're gonna have a very challenging [00:08:00] time. If that's the case. So those defenses are gonna get activated and you've gotta be able to engage with it and participate in it, which is why I work with people from the beginning building the ability to do that. But they're elusive. They're sneaky. And sometimes it's like you're putting a puzzle together and you're staring at it from just a couple inches away.

[00:08:17] You can't see the pieces and you really gotta have somebody there who can see the patterns that are going that you're going through and help you to see them when you get stuck, if you don't have that there. You might just get stuck in the loop of the patterns just going through and playing into those same familiar patterns and just reinforcing them in new ways.

[00:08:33] I'm not saying that it won't be therapeutic or helpful. It could be very stressful and very challenging, and I've experienced that and I've seen lots of people experience it too. 

[00:08:38] Autumn Carter: You just clearly labeled the Y and you're already building the safety net. Before you introduce them to this.

[00:08:43] Yeah, 

[00:08:43] Julian Bermudez- Psychedelic Intergration: precisely.

[00:08:43] Autumn Carter: There with them through it.

[00:08:46] Julian Bermudez- Psychedelic Intergration: Yeah. It's very important. Like I said earlier, the skills, the tools that you need to heal yourself, they're all inside of you. The wisdom's there, the knowledge, all every, bit of the information [00:09:00] that knows how to heal, it's inside of you.

[00:09:02] The problem is we become disconnected, which is the hallmark of trauma and the psychedelic experience itself. A lot of people wanna believe that they can look to the thing out there that's gonna heal 'em, whether it's the psychedelic or it's God, or it's the aliens.

[00:09:18] Somebody's gonna come and save me. But that's not the case. What the psychedelic is gonna be very good at doing is showing you. What it's like to step outside of the pattern that you're currently in, and it'll show you the pattern that you're in very clearly, oftentimes from other perspectives. And if you don't have the foundation underneath you to engage with that, to participate in it, to comfort and soothe the pain that you're carrying, and instead you're just punishing it like you were punished as a child.

[00:09:50] So the foundation, the preparatory work is crucial. So that way when you start engaging with the psychedelic experiences, you're ready for it, and you can [00:10:00] use that experience as a tool to go much deeper in your own healing experience.

[00:10:06] Autumn Carter: Sounds like depending on the person, they might need to do it several times to really get their blind spots if they have a few, or depending on how big it is and everything else,

[00:10:11] Julian Bermudez- Psychedelic Intergration: right?

[00:10:11] Yeah. Yeah, that's an interesting way of looking at it. Everybody from the very beginning of our conversations start to get benefits from it how deep you go and. How sustainable that depth is dependent on so many factors. Your own relationship to yourself, the work that you've done putting into it so far of taking the inventory, seeing what's inside of you.

[00:10:41] Building the relationship, learning how to recognize, identify these patterns how much support you have in your life. These are all the resources that are very important, and they play a major role in how deep the healing practice goes and how sustainable it is. Everybody's going to go through different levels and [00:11:00] everybody goes at their own pace, and there's no right or wrong when I see people make transformations like that.

[00:11:06] And then I see people who move a little bit slower and it's a little bit more challenging and it requires a lot more. Attention and support, and they might be at the same plateau level and they're outta nowhere. Boom. Things just click and it just starts taking off.

[00:11:22] Everybody's different.

[00:11:24] Autumn Carter: Wow. So how long is this experience

[00:11:29] Julian Bermudez- Psychedelic Intergration: yeah. What about with, I work with people, I do 90 minute sessions, and this is just talk. Like coaching, therapy, whatever you want to call it. They're all 90 minute sessions. I always found when I was in therapy, we do the 50 minute, 55, 60 minute, whatever it is that there's a pressure.

[00:11:46] Of, we have a very limited window here, and I know that as soon as we start to get to the good stuff, it's time to conclude and wrap up for next week.

[00:11:56] Autumn Carter: Yeah.

[00:11:56] Julian Bermudez- Psychedelic Intergration: And I never liked that. So I always do 90 minutes and [00:12:00] sometimes we finish at the hour mark and then we practice for half an hour. Sometimes we're pushing it to the 90 minutes and we're still needing the time, whatever, it's, so each one's 90 minutes and that's just working like this.

[00:12:14] When we do a full facilitation where somebody's gonna have the full psychedelic experience and I'm gonna help them through it, it's more like seven hours.

[00:12:21] Autumn Carter: It's an all day

[00:12:21] Julian Bermudez- Psychedelic Intergration: thing. But what, I'm really working with these days is with people microdosing. That's what I'm finding to be the most powerful in terms of the therapy for long-term.

[00:12:33] Sustainability and they're taking a sub perceptual amount, a certain amount of times per week in conjunction with this practice that I'm talking about.

[00:12:44] And then when they come to me. It's where are we getting stuck? What are the barriers? What are the difficulties? What's working really well? Where can we expand and where can we celebrate? So that's the way that was work. And those are 90 minute sessions too.

[00:12:57] Autumn Carter: And then is there insurance involved?

[00:12:59] Can you [00:13:00] use like F-S-A-H-S-A cards?

[00:13:03] Julian Bermudez- Psychedelic Intergration: Yeah, that's great. These are questions

[00:13:04] Autumn Carter: that are going to be asked.

[00:13:06] Julian Bermudez- Psychedelic Intergration: Yeah. I have seen people get this covered on insurance, surprisingly, but that was for people who had traumatic brain injuries and they were. Debilitated in lots of ways. And so the insurance companies were spending a ton of money on all sorts of therapies and they said if you wanna try this and it gets results, let's see what happens.

[00:13:29] So I have seen it, but it's very unlikely. Mushrooms, psilocybin still a schedule one drug. Meaning the government classifies it as extremely dangerous, highly addictive, with no medicinal benefits whatsoever. It's classified the exact same as heroin and fentanyl and all the amphetamines and all the various drugs that you get from the doctors too.

[00:13:55] Insurance isn't exactly covering it right now, although that legislation piece is [00:14:00] very actively changing in multiple states right now. So insurance covering it, don't count on it. But at the same time if finances are a barrier. If you're really committed to your own process, reach out to people and see who's willing to work with you.

[00:14:18] Because the people who are really committed to this craft, who are really doing it because they want to develop the healing practice, they wanna maintain the connection to the human spirit, and they want other people to experience that too. They're gonna do it for a reduced cost or for free. And I'm speaking from experience, there's lots of us out there who will do that.

[00:14:37] And those are the ones I think you decide for yourself who you wanna work with.

[00:14:42] Autumn Carter: Okay. That's great to know. And then do you also do regular therapy?

[00:14:49] Julian Bermudez- Psychedelic Intergration: Oh yeah, of course.

[00:14:49] Autumn Carter: Just want that.

[00:14:50] Julian Bermudez- Psychedelic Intergration: Yeah. The microdosing is so good at, like you mentioned earlier, lowering those defenses.

[00:14:57] So it's really good at bringing things to our [00:15:00] awareness so we can see the patterns so quick and easily in conjunction with the psychedelic and the way that I do my therapy is designed for this type of experience.

[00:15:09] You can get to it through reflection, through inquiry, through meditation. So many ways to get there, exact same experience, and we get there right away. And then when you're doing the microdosing it's really good at taking that conditioned mind, that worldview, the lens that you look at. The world through yourself and everything else, and we could take this way of processing information and just soften it just a little bit and look at things that are happening with a clean lens.

[00:15:44] So it's really good for that and those defense mechanisms that are designed to protect you from looking at the pain and from feeling the pain. We could soften those just a little bit and become much more aware of them too. So we can say, oh, there's my defense mechanism. It's [00:16:00] protecting me from this pain.

[00:16:02] It might take the form of anger or fear or shame, or I'm self-loathing. I'm blaming myself and criticizing myself, oh, I see that now. Or the busy mind trying to take me away. Oh, I see it now. Thank you. Thanks for trying to help me. I don't need that though right now. I'm gonna comfort and soothe and nurture this pain that I'm carrying around.

[00:16:22] And then the more that we do that with the aid of a microdose, the easier it is for us to do that on our own.

[00:16:30] Autumn Carter: What else do you feel is. Something that you need to correct. That's a misconception out there around what you do.

[00:16:43] Julian Bermudez- Psychedelic Intergration: If I were gonna correct something, I don't know if it would be necessarily in what I do, but it's one of the, earliest things that I try to address with people. There is a correction that has to happen, and it's this belief that I carry [00:17:00] and every single person I've ever met carrie's and it's very elusive.

[00:17:03] A lot of the times, most people are aware that they have it. But the way that it shows up is very sneaky, and it justifies itself and rationalizes itself. It's this belief of unworthiness. I'm not good enough. I'm not deserving. I'm not worthy of being loved. I'm not worthy of healing. I don't deserve it.

[00:17:28] This belief right here, or I'm broken, I'm damaged. There's something wrong with me. A lot of the times people come in with the, I got this problem, I got these issues. There's something that I'm dealing with that's wrong with me, and that's the correction that I would like to make right away is whatever it is that you're dealing with.

[00:17:52] Even this sense of unworthiness, this belief of unworthiness. Every one of these are adaptations to [00:18:00] something that happened to you at a time where you didn't have the resources to navigate the pain of that experience. So that belief of unworthiness, this is a defense mechanism in itself. It's a survival mechanism.

[00:18:12] It's trying to help you. It's not that you're broken or that you're damaged, it's that you went through trauma and you adapted to it in the ways that were available to you. When we look at it that way, rather than being just damaged goods and there's nothing I can do, or maybe I can find this pill that'll fix me.

[00:18:30] When we look at it as I'm adapting to a pain that's inside of me, I'm not at the will. Or the mercy of fate in the world around me. I'm actually very powerful. I'm not just a victim anymore where things are happening to me. I have the ability to make choices and to navigate how I'm going to interact with this pain that's inside of me and what I'm gonna do with these adaptations.

[00:18:52] I have the ability to make choices. And to cultivate agency, and this is how we liberate ourselves from these patterns. [00:19:00] It's not the medicine, it's not the prescription, it's not the psychedelic. It's you recovering the part of you that knows how to be whole or knows how to heal. This is what we say in addictions, right?

[00:19:12] When somebody's healing addiction, they're in recovery. The word recover means to find something. So if I recover my phone after I've lost it, I find it again. If I recovered my keys, I lost them, and now I found them. When somebody's recovering in addictions, what is it that they're finding? It's the part of them that existed before all of the pain that forced 'em to adapt with the addiction so they recover who they were before the pain.

[00:19:37] And that's what we do here.

[00:19:40] Autumn Carter: And I love that, especially because addiction is us finding a crutch to be able to continue through life. And if we can rediscover who we were before, whatever traumatic thing happened, whatever we're trying to mask, if [00:20:00] it's a mental illness, if it's PTSD for trauma, whatever, it totally makes sense.

[00:20:07] Julian Bermudez- Psychedelic Intergration: Everybody who has an addiction will tell you the exact same thing. When you really look at, and you ask them and you try to figure out what does the addiction do for you, we know what it does wrong for you. It destroys your health, it destroys your relationships. It destroyed your family. You lost your wealth.

[00:20:26] All the things that come along with the addiction, we know what goes wrong with it, but what goes right with it? So much that despite all these things that are happening that are going wrong. The addiction sustains. That's almost always, it numbs the pain. It gives me an escape from an experience that is so painful and unbearable that I can't be with it.

[00:20:33] And so if we can start to address that pain and we can start to address how unbearable this life is and build the skills and tools to navigate it and to engage with it, the addiction loses so much of its power and its weight.

[00:20:49] Autumn Carter: And I love that.

[00:20:50] The tuning out. So the addiction helps us tune out and you're helping us to tune back in, but

[00:20:56] Julian Bermudez- Psychedelic Intergration: precisely

[00:20:57] Autumn Carter: to a station previous. [00:21:00] I like that. Precisely.

[00:21:01] Julian Bermudez- Psychedelic Intergration: Yeah, that's right. These are all, and an addiction isn't necessarily just to a substance. I would define an addiction as any behavior that provides short-term relief.

[00:21:13] So there's a craving of it and an inability to give it up despite the fact that it has long-term consequences. So then there's relapse that's involved as well. This could be to any behavior that follows that same parameter, short-term relief, long-term harm, inability to give it up. So right now, the most common addiction I see is a form of checking out with our phones.

[00:21:38] And I see it when people are driving their cars. They can't stop looking at their phone for a few moments just to drive their car, and people are getting hit and killed because the people are walking in the street on their phones. Legit. That is the definition of long-term harm right there.

[00:21:53] Short-term relief, long-term harm. It's super destructive. Our relationships, our children, our [00:22:00] parents, everybody we're disconnected, and that's the hallmark of trauma, right there is that disconnection. And then the addiction comes to sustain that disconnection.

[00:22:10] Autumn Carter: I love that. And there's so many people that I see driving, not very well.

[00:22:14] Usually it's swerving and I'm like, okay, I'm gonna be peeking in. Are you on your phone? And half the time, more than half the time they're on their phone.

[00:22:22] Julian Bermudez- Psychedelic Intergration: Yeah. It's, terrifying to drive across town now is no exaggeration to risk your life. Yep. And that's the way I see it. And what do we do with that fear?

[00:22:33] What do we do with the anger that comes up? What do we do with the pain of how difficult it is to live in the world right now because it's so dangerous? The vast majority of us don't have the skills to, we

[00:22:43] Autumn Carter: Shove

[00:22:43] it down, and then it erupts.

[00:22:45] Julian Bermudez- Psychedelic Intergration: Yeah, exactly. And one of the ways that we shove it down is we.

[00:22:48] Disconnect. We distract. We look to our phones. We look to video games. We look to social media. We look to all sorts of things to help us to disconnect. And then yes, it comes bursting [00:23:00] out the seams in very unconstructive inappropriate ways.

[00:23:03] Autumn Carter: I was interviewing somebody else about binge eating. And bulimia. And he said something very profound, and I've heard it before, but just hearing it after hearing his whole story is that this can be one of the hardest addictions because you still need to eat. So it's not like you can cut it out and be done and move on.

[00:23:28] And that's not really the same with our phones by any means. I even had to do the pause and check in and no, I grew up in the generation where we didn't originally have phones survived just fine. But it's interesting. And I'm curious, have you ever worked with anybody with a food addiction of any kind?

[00:23:52] Julian Bermudez- Psychedelic Intergration: Yeah, actually I just started my own podcast with people that I've worked with mainly, or people that I'm working with, and we do the [00:24:00] work live on the show. The episode that launched yesterday was with somebody working through a food difficulty. And it was interesting because he was talking, he was saying one of the most important things for him was to find somebody who.

[00:24:17] Was going through something similar and he wanted to put the information out there for that, and I never really told him much of my own personal experience because. I was still figuring out how to navigate how much of myself do I share with people when they're going through it. And this was something that was important for me because, he really wanted to connect with somebody who really understood him.

[00:24:37] And this is one of the gifts that I have, is my childhood was so messed up that. I can really understand and relate with what other people are going through and they can see themselves inside of me. The last person I talked to just a couple hours ago was saying, wow, it's so easy to open up to you because I can see you really understand what I'm going through.

[00:24:57] And I'm like, oh yeah. And he's you went through it too. I can tell. Yeah. [00:25:00] And so I have very big which have gotten a lot better over the years, but problems with food as well. So for me. In my childhood my parents were bouncing me back and forth. They were never together. They were teenagers. They didn't like me.

[00:25:15] They hated me, to be honest. I was a burden and they just didn't want me around. And resources were fairly scarce. Not so scarce that they weren't there, but it was a, control mechanism in lots of ways. So I go to my mom's house after school and she says, you're going to your dad's. You'll eat when you get there.

[00:25:31] And so I can't eat. And then I go to my dad's and he does he's. 19 years older than I am, and he's working all the time. He goes to his mom's house to get some food after he picks me up and him and his four siblings are there and their kids are there and they're all fighting over who's gonna get to eat, and he says, oh, Julian doesn't need to eat.

[00:25:49] He ate at his mom's house. Okay, great. And so now I'm starving and I can't eat anything. I'm being told over and over He doesn't need to eat. And so then I would start to sneak [00:26:00] food. And when I would get caught sneaking food, there was tremendous punishments. So I learned very early on this feeling of hunger could easily be disconnected from, I can push it away and I just don't need to eat.

[00:26:13] And then when the opportunity presents itself for me to eat, I stuff my face until I'm sick. And. And this shows up in so many ways with me today. Like when I eat, I got Raptor hands. Numerous times to this day when I sit down and I eat with people and they grab their food and they start to examine it and figure out what they're gonna eat next, they look up and my plate's clean.

[00:26:37] And there's times where I go days without eating and I can push that feeling of hunger away and I used it as a way to have control in my life. To control something. And again, this was an unconscious pattern that was showing up from the past. Now I'm much more aware of it and I can engage with it [00:27:00] much differently.

[00:27:00] And I allow myself to eat, and I don't force myself to eat when I don't want to eat. And if it's nighttime and I want to go make myself a snack, I don't have to be so sneaky about it. I was cooking something in the, kitchen. It was probably around midnight and I was cooking something like about a month ago maybe, and I had felt the presence of somebody come walking into the kitchen and my heart fell to the floor like that super scared feeling like you just get shocked and frozen stiff.

[00:27:31] Nobody was there. My partner was sleeping. My dog's in there with me like yeah, let's have it. But there it was. It was the pain from the past and I saw it right away and it really allowed me some time to work with it. So yeah, all of these conditions, which I have 'em, my partner has 'em.

[00:27:48] I've worked with numerous people who have had 'em around food. There's some pain underneath it. Something happened in this, whether it's bulimia, anorexia, the person that [00:28:00] did this podcast with me, which the episode's out there, anybody can listen. He was suppressing all of his emotions. Anger, resentment.

[00:28:08] Fear, shame. He was stuffing 'em all down. And the way he described it was they were fermenting in his stomach and so he was bloated and full and he couldn't bring himself to eat because there was such pressure and anxiety and so many big emotions that were already there. He couldn't put anything else in it, and as soon as he started processing those stored up emotions.

[00:28:28] Learning how to recognize them and to nurture them, and to express them, and to communicate them as they're coming up in real time, rather than suppressing them, expressing them, and processing them in real time. Now he can actually go out and eat with people, which was one of the.

[00:28:44] Major goals that he had was just to be able to go out and have a meal with people. So yeah, lots of transformations with those. And yeah, there's always some pain, some pattern that's involving the pain that's underneath it.

[00:28:59] Autumn Carter: My heart [00:29:00] really goes out to anybody with that, to you, to him, to your partner. That's really difficult and I love that you were vulnerable because everybody needs to hear vulnerability and it's so hard to do.

[00:29:16] Julian Bermudez- Psychedelic Intergration: Of course,

[00:29:16] Autumn Carter: and I'm hopeful that anybody listening or watching.

[00:29:22] Can see themselves, first of all. And second of all, see somebody else in this. Share the episode because this is very valuable. And even if somebody's not ready for psychedelics, he does therapy. But also realize that there are so many opportunities in your life, and this is one that's presented to you right in your face to really acknowledge the pain that you have, the discomfort, and to give yourself space.

[00:29:52] To remember that you're human, that none of us go through this life unscathed. Unfortunately, if somebody does, I'd like to meet [00:30:00] them and become friends with them, but we're all on this journey journeying through pain and trying to figure out how to heal. That is the point of this episode today and the podcast in general how do we heal?

[00:30:17] How do we become more well? And what is wellness? And this is an incredible conversation around wellness because therapy. Been amazing in my life. I've seen it transform other people's lives, and I love that there's a whole other modality that you're adding into this for people who are suffering

[00:30:42] try a different path if things aren't working for them or if they're ready to try therapy for the first time, and they've heard so many stories about it taking years, here's a way to not just fast track it, but to lower your defenses. [00:31:00] Because there was a point in therapy where I just plateaued because.

[00:31:06] I was scared to open that Pandora's box of what was going to happen from a certain abuse that happened in my childhood. I was able to work through everything else, but this one really giant area I was not able to work on. And I ended up doing somatics and EMDR with my therapist. So somatics with the coach and then this and that helped, but it still took so long to get through.

[00:31:30] If there is a way to fast track it, I recommend trying that out because wow, I remember just feeling so stuck and feeling like I was never going to get through that and that maybe I was the problem and I was envisioning going to the main person who abused me going to their funeral and doing the whole let me stand up and say something great about them.

[00:31:58] And then sit down saying nothing [00:32:00] like having that kind of mic drop moment. But would that really do anything for my healing? No. So I, find this very important for all of that.

[00:32:07] Julian Bermudez- Psychedelic Intergration: Yeah. It's really important to know that we can make transformations quickly, but there's no end destination here.

[00:32:17] Autumn Carter: The good and bad.

[00:32:18] Julian Bermudez- Psychedelic Intergration: What's that?

[00:32:19] Autumn Carter: That's the good and the bad.

[00:32:21] Julian Bermudez- Psychedelic Intergration: We don't need to judge it.

[00:32:23] Autumn Carter: Yeah.

[00:32:24] Julian Bermudez- Psychedelic Intergration: It. We don't. That's just what it is, and it's really quite incredible too, that our whole lifetime is presented with opportunities for learning and for growth and for healing and wholeness. Every moment you're presented with it, so there's no end destination where we get to and everything's rainbows and butterflies.

[00:32:43] It's learning how to navigate all of life's experiences. You mentioned just a few moments ago, it's difficult to be vulnerable, and then here you described all of the areas where it's still very difficult. So this is an ongoing practice. You're constantly being invited with [00:33:00] new opportunities, revisiting the exact same pattern.

[00:33:04] New experiences, new times, same pattern. How are you gonna engage with it? Are you gonna do the same things or are you gonna try to develop and deepen and mature and nurture a practice of doing something differently? And how wonderful. We can spend the rest of our lives doing that if we're not growing and learning and developing and trying to figure out how to be more whole and heal and to tap into the wisdom that's inside of us and to recover what it means to be a human being again.

[00:33:35] What else are we gonna do? Just stare at our phones all day, go to work and pay our bills and then die. So it's really quite incredible to be able to do it. And yeah, everybody's at different levels, but we're all going through something very similar.

[00:33:48] Autumn Carter: Oh, I love that. And that is one thing, once I was able to come through more of the other side, of course I'm still on the journey of healing, developing, [00:34:00] growing, becoming who I envision myself becoming.

[00:34:05] But coming through the other side of therapy, it was the realization that I want others to have this type of growth and this type of healing because. For instance the chances of this guy listening to this episode are really small. And it could be anybody. So there's this person on the.

[00:34:17] In pickleball. I have yet to ever talk to him. I've seen him from a distance. That's about it. But hearing the stories around him and hearing how it's been six months, and then he is still saying, I have PTSD, I have a bunch of stuff going on in my family all while he's exploding, just because he's stuffing it down, just it comes out at very inappropriate times.

[00:34:43] Plays pickleball aggressively. No one really wants to be his partner or play against him. There was a whole thing that happened last night. I wasn't there, so I heard the secondhand account and realizing that if we are doing this, we are showing up in the world in [00:35:00] this way, and it's been happening for a while.

[00:35:03] That is a huge indication. You need to do something. Even if it happens the first time, that's an indication that there's something coming up. What's going on and digging deeper within yourself. For me, a lot of stuff comes up for me in my sleep. It's probably 'cause I have four kids, And then I have my own coaching practice and everything else going on that's my time when my brain is a little more shut off. But that's my opportunity to reflect of, okay, what came up in my dream? What am I still needing to heal? Usually it's childhood memories that I'm working through. So that's for me.

[00:35:34] And then for him the part that really hit home for me the most is when I was told that his wife is expecting and super pregnant. It's that does not need to be happening in her sphere while she's growing a baby, having that negativity and everything else. Yeah. He really needs to be working on himself desperately needs to be working on himself.

[00:35:47] And we all know people who are like that in bigger degrees and smaller degrees, but it's that reminder that this world or in this life is not meant for us to [00:36:00] just be unloading on each other, the pains that we have. Because we can't hold onto them ourselves. It's one of those we should be letting things go and letting it float away, like with love or seeing it disappear like smoke, not we're piling it up on somebody else to hear.

[00:36:18] This is going in your backpack now?

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[00:37:25] You can also book private coaching sessions for more personalized support on your journey.

[00:37:30] Julian Bermudez- Psychedelic Intergration: Yeah, I'd push a little bit on that. I'd say rather than just letting it go and fly away, it's here for a reason. It needs to be engaged with. It needs to be, you need to participate in it, and you need to figure out what the unmet needs are, and then you need to meet those needs.

[00:37:46] Autumn Carter: That's when I see it go away. Yes. It's the, therapy part of, I wish, there you go. Yeah. But it's definitely the, when you get there, you can instead of like when you see it lifting off your shoulders, you just see it just evaporate.[00:38:00] 

[00:38:00] Julian Bermudez- Psychedelic Intergration: For me, I always see, it's always present. It never goes away from me, and for a lot of the people that I work with, it's always right there. The difference is we're aware of it and we know how to navigate situations. This pattern, this adaptation is no longer necessary. We can make choices to meet our own needs and to have boundaries and to express ourselves authentically.

[00:38:24] So these old patterns aren't necessary and we can see them and we can make choices to nurture them rather than having them get activated. Unfortunately, these are almost always intergenerational patterns.

[00:38:37] Autumn Carter: Yes.

[00:38:37] Julian Bermudez- Psychedelic Intergration: So the things that happened to you were done by somebody. Where did they learn that from? Probably their parents as well.

[00:38:44] And where did they learn it? Probably their parents. And on we go. And so this pickleball, acquaintance is, yeah, has so much pain. Where did he learn that from? Probably from his parents, and now the next generation's [00:39:00] coming, and that pain just flows through us so easily onto them. It would be really nice to have support.

[00:39:04] Because we're not meant to heal in isolation. And it sounds like this person's really isolated with it. And it's really difficult to engage with somebody when they're in that, of course. 'cause you gotta take care of yourself. But yeah, it's, again, we're not meant to exist or to heal in isolation.

[00:39:22] And that is. Like I was saying, the hallmark of trauma is a disconnect. First, we disconnect from our own experience. We have emotions and we can't navigate. We can't process 'em. We can't make the pain stop. We can't go away physically, and we're left with all this pain and we don't know what to do with it.

[00:39:38] So we disconnect from it and we go away mentally. And we distract and we do all the things to stay away from it. And if we can't be present with what we're experiencing, if we can't be present with our own emotions and we can't engage with them and express them and participate and have other people be attuned into our emotional experience, then we become disconnected from other people as well.

[00:39:59] So we're [00:40:00] disconnected from ourselves and then we become disconnected from others. And if we're disconnected, we can't be present with ourselves. We can't be present with others. We can't be present with anything that's happening in the world around us. We become disconnected from nature and then the things that we do.

[00:40:14] Everything that we create is not a representation of who we are anymore. It's not representing the real human nature, real human needs. What we do represents an adaptation to trauma. So we go and we try and accumulate wealth. We go in to try and accumulate status and positions of power and respect, because I was never valued, respected, or

[00:40:23] nurtured as a child, I was never able to just be accepted. So now I gotta go prove my worth to everybody out there, see? So everything that I do is now a reflection of this trauma, and it has no reflection of who I am. So all of these disconnections are the result of trauma. And yeah, if somebody's really going through that again, they're not meant to go through it alone, but unfortunately, these patterns are that of disconnection.

[00:40:49] Autumn Carter: I love that. And the thing is, once we accumulate whatever it is that we're going for, we find that it's actually empty. Because what we needed [00:41:00] all along is really within ourself and needing to be healed.

[00:41:05] I grew up in Arizona, so huge reservation nearby, actually two is the spiritual walks. I'm sure it's very similar to working with psychedelics and depending on the tribe, I think you either did it alone or you did not. But it's interesting that you take some type of psychedelic and then you're out in nature.

[00:41:26] Julian Bermudez- Psychedelic Intergration: Yeah. Part of that I'm native and I come from a lineage of healers who have done this perfect for generations.

[00:41:31] Autumn Carter: Train meet.

[00:41:31] Julian Bermudez- Psychedelic Intergration: The cultures that you were close to down there, were working with peyote. And which is under complete threat right now with so much industrialization, the wind farms it's just, other ways of trying to destroy cultures.

[00:41:44] So I don't recommend anybody who's outside of these cultures to go and engage with that. Let them have their own culture please. It's under threat. So they work with peyote. And when you look at, when somebody in the culture gets sick, what do they do? [00:42:00] They have a ceremony for them and they all come together and there's somebody who leads the ceremony and they'll work with the peyote.

[00:42:09] This is the culture that's over there. It's, not my culture. I don't work with peyote. And then they chant and they sing and they drum, and they have this ceremony for this person who is sick and who is hurting. And this person is cherished and valued because this illness that shows up inside of them is a reflection of the dynamics in the culture.

[00:42:32] This is exactly what happens in my culture, except we were working with a different substance. It's the same thing. There's a ceremony, there's singing, there's chanting, there's drumming. People come together and they cherish and value, and they connect with the person who's dealing with the illness, and this is how we heal.

[00:42:51] We're not meant to heal in isolation. When you go to say an infusion room for people who are going through cancer [00:43:00] treatment, they're all sitting in their individual chairs with their individual IV all in their own little world staring at their phones. And you might have a TV on the wall that has pictures of a natural setting.

[00:43:13] It's so disconnected and so removed from nature and from actual connections, and the vast majority of people who are going through that treatment are so isolated. That's not how we heal. One of my predecessors said it's always the spirit that gets sick. So when we have emotional. Trauma. We have mental trauma.

[00:43:37] All of these impact the physical body. And so when we have a physical illness that's coming out or a mental illness, there are higher levels of who we are that have to be engaged with. We have to go into those realms and to address where the real illness lies. And that's what these ceremonies are all about is reconnecting and identifying where emotionally.[00:44:00] 

[00:44:00] Where mentally, where spiritually this illness has happened because all of that is on top of the physical body and we can see the illness manifesting through the physical body. So yes, the native cultures, when somebody gets sick, we come together. We work with each other and we circle each other and we sing, and we chant and we drum and we have a ceremony.

[00:44:21] That's how healing happens. It's not this, go into the infusion room and be alone and get this chemical pumped into you. That could help. I've done it in the past. I've, needed to do that to heal parts of my body, but we have to address the other parts that are sick as well. And we cannot do that in isolation.

[00:44:39] And unfortunately, the more that trauma builds up, the more your body gets sick. It's a signal saying, something's happening here, something needs to be addressed. This pattern that you're in can't continue anymore. And if it continues, your body's gonna get more intense with its message of saying, pay attention, something's gotta change.[00:45:00] 

[00:45:01] Autumn Carter: I love that. I was thinking about how in Native American cultures, how there's some ceremonies that you do that are inside compared to outside. So that nature part. And then I now live in Maryland, and I went to a hematologist for a totally different reason. And, turned out to be fine, thankfully, but realizing I was going to a hematologist for this reason, it's also cancer freaked me out and so I spent time really paying attention to where I was in the building and just really trying to ground myself while there.

[00:45:39] And the room that you're talking about actually in this place in Frederick is a large room and they're all together.

[00:45:48] Julian Bermudez- Psychedelic Intergration: Yeah.

[00:45:48] Autumn Carter: Most people, how many people have this nearby and they're using it?

[00:45:51] Julian Bermudez- Psychedelic Intergration: So yeah, that's usually how the infusion rooms are, is they'll have private rooms, of course, but then there's the large room where they're all like in a circle or a horseshoe lining [00:46:00] the room.

[00:46:00] But the vast majority of the times, people are totally isolated and disconnected. Come there and it's because they. A lot of the times. Yeah. And then they look at what they're getting fed cheese crackers and sodas and things like that, and it's oh man, this is not a place for healing.

[00:46:15] Autumn Carter: Is there anything else that you want to leave us with?

[00:46:18] Julian Bermudez- Psychedelic Intergration: There's a couple things that we could say here. First and foremost. Every single person I've ever met is working through some amount of trauma.

[00:46:24] Like you said earlier, you don't come out of life unscathed, and that's not the point. Yeah. Everybody's dealing with some amount of trauma right now, and we're not responsible for the things that shaped us. We were talking about the intergenerational trauma earlier. We're not responsible for the environment that we grew up in, that shaped our nervous system, that shaped our emotional circuits, that shaped our neurological circuits, that shaped all of the adaptations that we have.

[00:46:48] We're not responsible for that, but we are responsible for what we do with that we can't change the things that happened, but we can start to take responsibility and accountability for what we do with that. And I think that is [00:47:00] the task that each and every one of us is presented with right now. And if we don't start to do that as individuals, this whole house, of cards is gonna come collapsing down and we're seeing it happen right now, all around us.

[00:47:12] So this is a gentle invitation for every single person out there to start to turn your attention inward and to start to take care of your own inner environment. Judeo Krishna Mete said it very eloquently, is that if you wanna change the world, start with changing yourself. Because when we, as individuals change and heal ourselves, the world and society changes and heals naturally and inevitably, I added some to that on my own.

[00:47:38] Those weren't his words verbatim, but that's what he said. So this is just that gentle invitation to anybody listening that if you see somebody out there who's struggling. If you are interacting with people who are triggering you and activating you, and you want them to change, that's not where the power's at.

[00:47:55] The real power is in the combustible ammunition that you're carrying around, that's getting triggered by [00:48:00] the hairpin pole that somebody's pulling on you. That's where you can start to address the pain and you can start to make changes so that way people can't pull this little trigger so easily and there's not any combustible ammunition to explode if they do pull it.

[00:48:15] So gentle invitation. Be yourself. Be authentic. Be connected to what you're going through. Pay very close attention to yourself. All the information that knows how to heal and be whole is inside of you. It's just a matter of reconnecting with it, and you do not have to do that alone. Just like that belief that we have to be, or that we're unworthy or broken or damaged or not deserving.

[00:48:40] A very common one is, and I have to be strong, independent, and do everything on my own. I can't let anybody see what I'm going through. That's not the case. Just like we were saying, we're not meant to heal. We're not meant to live in isolation, so reaching out, getting some support can be very, useful.

[00:48:57] As you were saying yourself a moment ago. [00:49:00] 

[00:49:00] Autumn Carter: I love that. And we do have this tendency when we're not doing well, when we feel like we're just super out of balance, spiritually sick, that you don't wanna be around me right now. I, need space. And that's a good reminder. We're not meant to be in isolation.

[00:49:13] We're not going to heal well in isolation.

[00:49:16] Julian Bermudez- Psychedelic Intergration: That's right. Yeah. We oftentimes. Disconnect. And here's the theme again. When I'm in pain, I disconnect. I disconnect from myself and I disconnect from others. You don't want to be around me. That's not how it's supposed to be. Why do we wanna disconnect? Are we scared of being rejected?

[00:49:33] Are we scared of hurting somebody? Are we scared of being abandoned? What is it that's, the pain that we're carrying around. And again, we have to work with that and we have to be the ones to go in and engage with it so that way we can reopen up to ourselves and to connect with others.

[00:49:49] Autumn Carter: Okay. So for those who are like, quit talking, just hurry up and tell us where to find this person. In the show description, obviously. Where else can we find you?

[00:49:57] Julian Bermudez- Psychedelic Intergration: Website's the, best spot, [00:50:00] psychedelic integration.net. There you can find all sorts of resources If you want to come and do a podcast with me and work through what you're going through, come on down.

[00:50:09] We also have free groups every Friday except for the, months that have five Fridays, like August but first, second, third, and fourth Fridays, there's always free groups happening. You can log in. And if you want to talk about what you're going through, see how this could support you, come on in.

[00:50:23] There's gonna be other people doing the same things probably, and we'll give you the time to talk and I'll help you go through whatever it is. And if you want personal one-on-one support, of course that's available through the website as well. Aside from that, there's Instagram where we post all sorts of clips and stuff like that too.

[00:50:39] And that's a good spot. Or YouTube, there's always things on those platforms.

[00:50:44] Autumn Carter: Perfect. Thank you so much. This was amazing. And if you listen to this and you still have questions, go to his website. If you want to refer him to somebody else, share this and share his website. So [00:51:00] thank you for listening.

[00:51:01] Thank you for being on, and I hope everybody has a great rest of their day.

[00:51:11] Thanks for tuning into this week's episode. I am your host, autumn Carter, a certified life coach dedicated to empowering individuals to rediscover their identity, find balance, miss chaos, strengthen relationships, and pursue their dreams. My goal is to help people thrive in every aspect of their lives. I hope today's discussion inspired you and offered valuable insights.

[00:51:33] Stay engaged with our wellness community by signing up for my newsletter at wellness and every season.com/free resources. When you join, you'll have the option to receive a five day guide called Awaken and Unwind, five Days to Mastering Your Mornings and Evenings, along with Free Guides, special offers on my programs, practical tips, personal stories.

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[00:52:15] So please spread the word about our podcast and about our newsletter. Thank you for being a part of our podcast community. I look forward to continuing our conversation, sharing stories and exploring wellness in all of this aspects. Take care until our next episode. You can also work with me one-on-one or on demand through one of my programs by visiting wellness in every season.com/programs.

[00:52:43] One last thing to cover the show legally, I'm a certified life coach giving general advice, so think of this, this more as a self-help book. This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. I am not a licensed therapist, so this podcast shouldn't be taken as a replacement [00:53:00] for professional guidance from a doctor or therapist.

[00:53:03] If you want personal one-on-one coaching from a certified life and parenting coach, go to my website, wellness and every season.com. That's where you can get personalized coaching from me for you. See you in next week's episode.