Embark on a journey to embrace fear within psychedelic experiences, exploring the transformative power of self-reflection and emotional depth. This guide illuminates how facing and understanding fear can enhance psychedelic journeys and personal growth alike.
In this soul-stirring article, we will embark on a springtime journey of growth and introspection, echoing the season’s renewal. Inspired by a podcast listener’s profound query on fear’s role in deciding to pursue another psychedelic experience, we delve deep into the essence of fear and emotions within the psychedelic realm.
Today’s piece is not just about psychedelics; it’s an exploration of our relationship with fear—its power, purpose, and how it weaves through the fabric of our lives, often dictating our actions and choices without us realizing.
Through anecdotes, philosophical insights, and a compassionate understanding of human nature, we offer a fresh perspective on facing our fears, not just in psychedelics but in life itself.
Whether you’re grappling with the decision to embark on a psychedelic journey or seeking to understand your emotional landscape, this reading is a gentle reminder of the intricate dance between our fears, hopes, and the transformative power of self-reflection.
This article is inspired by our insightful podcast episode hosted by Psychedelic Passage co-founder, Jimmy Nguyen, which you can listen to on all streaming platforms.
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Key Takeaways
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- Embracing fear within psychedelic experiences demands a deep introspection into the nature of our emotions, recognizing them as teachers guiding us towards growth and self-awareness.
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- The significance of the inherent wisdom of the body highlights the importance of tuning into our visceral responses as a compass for navigating fear and making informed decisions about engaging with psychedelics.
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- Preparing for a psychedelic journey involves an honest assessment of one’s current emotional and mental readiness, considering the potential for both intensified emotions during the experience and the transformative healing it can bring.
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- Psychedelic Passage: Your Psychedelic Concierge — The easy, legal way to find trustworthy psilocybin guides, facilitators and psychedelic-assisted therapy near you in the United States.
Using Emotions to Improve Psychedelic Experiences
Fear is an inevitable part of life, influencing it in myriad ways, regardless of our actions. Moving away from the natural inclination to seek relief from negative emotions or feelings, we invite you to rethink your relationship with your emotions and recognize the potential each one holds.
We believe emotions are neither all good or bad, instead they have a context-dependent identity that can serve different uses in an array of situations.
Fear, our primary example today, can act as a tool for survival by heightening the body’s senses in a dangerous situation, or it can inspire thoughtfulness when making a big decision.
Our western ideologies teach that we should shy away from “negative” emotions like fear, sadness and anger, but in doing so we may manifest bigger issues down the road.
“Generally in our society, we try to tamp these things down. We say, hey, it’s not okay to express anger and rage. Well, what if somebody crossed your boundary? What if somebody physically assaulted you?
In those contexts, I would say that anger and rage are probably likely very important. And likely so, anger and rage would probably lead to hopefully a pathway where you are protecting yourself or reestablishing your boundaries.”
Leaning into what western society has deemed negative emotions can actually lead to liberation and healing with the proper intentions and guidance.
Getting Familiar With Your “Emotional Home”
The idea of an “emotional home” is the default emotions that a particular person is most comfortable with, emotions that you return to again and again. It may be grief and sadness for some, or anger and rage for others.
In a therapeutic context, these emotions can actually serve as teachers because, similar to a physical injury, feeling and expressing emotional pain may be an indicator that healing is needed.
Oftentimes emotions get used like band aids, covering up painful memories or experiences under a guise of anger or fear. By exploring our emotions instead of shutting them out, we have an opportunity to learn about and heal ourselves.
Deciphering Pre-Trip Fear
Coming from a seasoned psychonaut, the fear and nervousness pre-psychedelic journey never truly goes away, yet how can you decipher cautionary fear from nervous excitement? The process involves taking an honest look at your relationship with emotions in everyday life.
Recommended Reading: How to Deal With Pre-Trip Anxiety During Psychedelic Therapy
In some cases individuals may find one particular emotion ruling their lives, which is when it can become problematic. Jimmy uses an analogy from The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer to show how an individual’s relationship with fear can quickly turn to a dictatorship.
Compare fear to a thorn in your side. The thorn is too painful to remove, so you start catering to it, only laying on one side, you wear loose clothing because it keeps getting caught on fabric.
Soon it hurts to breathe deeply so you adjust your breathing. Before you know it every decision you make is determined by the thorn in your side, or the fear that you feel.
If fear is showing up in everyday life, chances are you are going to have many opportunities to confront your fear without psychedelics, although psychedelics have the tendency to jumpstart that process.
This is where your sovereignty comes into play, you decide whether your pre-trip anxiety is an intuitive warning, or an opportunity to explore that emotion.
Deciding Whether or Not to Trip
Whether it’s pre-trip anxiety, addressing fear through psychedelics, or both, fear can loom over your decision to have a psychedelic experience.
Even though it’s presence can be overwhelming, it may never truly go away, and there are more important factors that can help you make up your mind.
“There can often be somewhat of an internal tug of war. I think for many folks, they may feel a nudge or a calling or an intuitive reason to want to explore psychedelics, whether it’s your first time or a follow-up or you’re extremely seasoned, right?
I recently had a birthday and had decided to have a mushroom journey on my birthday. And I’ve probably had over 100+ psilocybin experiences and I still was feeling nervous and fearful. So this isn’t something that you all of a sudden master and overcome. What I’m sharing with you is that you’re a human, it’s normal to feel fear and to feel nervous.”
Determining if a psychedelic experience is right for you becomes a matter of preparedness, not courage. Consider your current stability, support systems, and capacity for potential destabilization post-experience, do you feel stable and resilient? Can you take time off of work if needed?
If, in being honest with yourself, you don’t feel ready for a psychedelic undertaking, there shouldn’t be any shame in that decision. Ultimately you’re the one who knows yourself best.
Insights From Jimmy’s Recent Psychedelic Experience
If you’re coming into a psychedelic experience wishing to dispel fear and it actually heightens that emotion then there may be a tendency to label it or feel like a failure, but we’re here to remind you that’s not the case.
Reflecting on his personal experiences and those of others, Jimmy highlights the unpredictable nature of how fear manifests in psychedelic sessions.
Sometimes, fear may intensify, bringing with it a range of emotions that can lead to a cathartic release. He shares a potent memory of an “astral surgery” during a session, where the extraction of a “thing” from his heart or chest led to a flood of emotions.
“I was shifting through tears of joy, tears of grief, laughter, crying, sorrow, pain, hopefulness, passion. I wasn’t even shifting, I was feeling and experiencing all of these emotions simultaneously. Now I was thinking about being a facilitator and then sitting as a journeyer and then thinking about my friend who was there supporting me.
I thought, this is probably really hard for them to tell how much of this is fear or joy or tears, and it’s this constant reminder for me that actually all of these emotions are just a razor line hair different from each other.”
This account illustrates not only the potential for profound healing but also the intricate dance between joy and sorrow, fear and hope, that characterizes the human experience.
On the other hand individuals in a constant survival mode or heightened sensory mode can find relief in a psychedelic experience.
The range of possibilities is abundant, however the important piece is asking yourself, do you have the capacity to do the “work”, or do you need some relief from the heavy emotional baggage?
Exploring Your Motivations & Expectations For Psychedelic Experiences
Sometimes individuals can get distracted from the bigger picture, or their intuitive feelings, by the pressure they place on themselves and the psychedelic experience.
This habit can switch the focus from therapeutic material to hyperfixation on extraneous details compared to “sideshows”, meant to distract from any meaningful, intuitive content.
Another way to describe a sideshow is an illusion that keeps you locked in fear’s grasp, an idea that consumes your thinking, such as fixating on when to have a therapeutic journey instead of the content of that journey.
If you notice yourself ruminating or becoming distracted, you can dissect your motivations, remove the fluff from the equation, and rediscover your goals.
The Physicality of Emotions
Studies are beginning to show how emotions can physically manifest in the body, creating heightened physical pain, fatigue or headaches, and a host of other strange symptoms.
Their entanglement with the body can also be used to better understand your own unique internal landscape.
“I always ask them where they feel it in their body. And oftentimes when folks are feeling whatever that feeling is more cerebrally, more in their head, I just always have a healthy measure of skepticism around whether that emotion is in service to them or not.
When people feel it in their gut, when people feel things in their belly, when people feel things a little bit more viscerally, I’m like, ah, okay, the body has a really hard time lying to you.”
Recommended Reading: Psychedelics and the Physical Dimension of Emotional Release
Trusting your intuition is one of the first steps to addressing fear, which can feel counterintuitive to individuals who live with fear in their daily lives.
Discerning between an emotion that you feel superficially versus one that is felt deep within your being will help you determine whether it’s time to embrace your fear, or release it.
Meeting Desperation With Hesitancy
There is no shortage of people who have suffered for a prolonged time and may feel desperate for change. Psychedelics are a powerful, expansive tool that require the proper preparation in order to utilize them to their full potential.
Compare them to a samurai sword. If someone were to pick up and attempt to use a samurai sword without any previous knowledge or practice, the odds of them hurting themselves are probably high.
Psychedelics have a habit of demanding respect. Once you establish a knowledgeable relationship with them they become excellent therapeutic tools.
Taking the time to become familiar with these mind-altering substances may just be the difference in embracing fear, or letting fear embrace you.
A Guide to The Physical Dimension of Emotions
These resources help us understand how psychedelics interact with our mind and body to create a tailored, unique experience for each individual.
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- How Do Psychedelics Affect My Emotions? Find out more about the mechanisms in which psychedelics operate in the brain, and how psychedelics affect anger issues.
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- I Have Anxiety But Want to Try Psychedelics. Is It Worth It? You may be surprised to discover 8 ways in which psychedelics help with anxiety.
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- When Fear Hijacks Our Mind and Body, PTSD Can Take Hold. How can psychedelics help heal trauma? Hear it from Heroic Hearts Founder Jesse Gould.
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- What Can A New Mother Gain From Taking Psychedelics? From breastfeeding to postpartum depression, we’ve collected all the medical and anecdotal evidence we could to assist you in finding answers.
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- Fear Isn’t The Only Thing That Gets Worse With Resistance: Find out how psychedelics interact with obsessive compulsive symptoms in our thought-provoking article on psilocybin and OCD.
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Frequently Asked Questions
1. How can embracing fear enhance my psychedelic journey?
Embracing fear within psychedelic experiences offers a unique pathway to personal growth and self-discovery.
By acknowledging and confronting your fears, rather than seeking to escape from them, you open yourself to deeper insights and emotional healing. This process of introspection and acceptance can significantly enhance the transformative potential of your psychedelic journey.
2. What is an “emotional home,” and how does it affect my experience with psychedelics?
An “emotional home” refers to the default emotional state a person naturally gravitates towards, such as sadness, anger, or joy. In the context of psychedelics, being aware of your emotional home can serve as a powerful tool for introspection.
It can uncover underlying issues and provide a clearer understanding of how certain emotions dominate your life, offering a chance for healing and growth.
3. Can fear be a positive force in my life and psychedelic experiences?
Yes, fear can act as a crucial survival tool, heightening your senses in potentially dangerous situations or encouraging a thoughtful decision-making process.
By reframing how we perceive and engage with fear, particularly in the context of psychedelics, we can harness its power for our benefit, leading to newfound awareness and the courage to face life’s challenges.
4. How should I prepare if fear or anxiety surfaces before a psychedelic trip?
Pre-trip anxiety is common, even among experienced users. To prepare, consider your current emotional and mental state, your support system, and whether you have the necessary time for integration post-experience.
Reflecting on these aspects can help you determine whether you’re ready to proceed. Remember, acknowledging and respecting your fears is crucial, and delaying a trip until you feel more prepared is a sign of wisdom, not cowardice.
5. How do I distinguish between intuitive caution and exploratory opportunity when feeling fear before a trip?
Deciphering between intuitive caution and the chance to explore emotions requires honest self-reflection. Assess how fear manifests in your daily life—does it act as a protective mechanism or is it stifling growth?
Understanding this distinction can guide you to make an informed decision about proceeding with your psychedelic journey, ensuring that it aligns with your readiness and intentions for personal transformation.
