Kim Howard  00:05

Welcome to the Let’s Talk EMDR podcast brought to you by the EMDR International Association or EMDRIA. I’m your host Kim Howard. Today we have a slightly different podcast episode we have a panel of two EMDR therapist and a psychiatrist to discuss the psychedelic movement and treating mental illness and how that fits with EMDR therapy. On our show today, we will speak with EMDR, certified therapist consultant and trainer Wendy Byrd and her business partner Robin Landers, who is also an EMDR certified consultant and trainer and trained in ketamine assisted therapy. To add to this dynamic duo is psychiatrist Dr. Yevgeniy Gelfand, who works in the trauma field. Thank you all for being here today. We are so happy that you said yes.

 

Wendy Byrd  00:48

Thanks for inviting us, Kim.

 

Robin Landers  00:49

Thanks for having us.

 

Kim Howard  00:51

So Robin, and Wendy can you tell us about your path to becoming an EMDR therapist.

 

Wendy Byrd  00:56

Our paths are super interesting, because they’re kind of entwined. But I was working at a treatment center for children abused and neglected children early in my career. And I came across a therapist who was trained in EMDR. And she was having some really great success at the treatment center. And I just became interested in it. I was actually an undergrad at that time. And so I decided graduate school. And then when I got out started, you know, seeking advanced trainings and things like that, and had always decided that I was going to get trained in EMDR. So the woman who was my mentor at the treatment center had been trained by Carol York, and she had worked at the treatment center that that I’m referring to Carol had for several years prior to me. So I reached out and was in one of Carol’s first trainings that she did here in Austin, Texas with Christie Sprawls. And so did that training, I think it was 2008 – 2009, something like that. EMDR just made so much sense to me. So I’ve been practicing EMDR sense. And then, you know, went on to get certified and become a consultant. And then Carol passed away in 2015. And so that’s when I reached out to EMDRIA. And did some volunteer work with EMDRIA for I guess about six years. So had wonderful experiences with that. And then during that time, Robin and I were in different consultation groups together and had become friends. And so she was doing some other some other work if I remember, I don’t remember exactly what that was Robin…

 

Robin Landers  02:42

I was really involved with the system centered therapy, which never became very well known but very powerful therapy.

 

Wendy Byrd  02:51

So I kept telling her you have to get EMDR trained, you have to get EMDR trained. And so she did.

 

Robin Landers  02:58

Yeah, so that was really the beginning of EMDR. For me, I had worked in a juvenile justice school, my degrees in social work. And I had worked in a juvenile justice school right out of graduate school. So that was, of course very eye opening for me as far as seeing. I was young, just out of school and seeing all of the lack of resources and good treatment for teens in the juvenile justice system, who had experienced a good bit of trauma, started my practice and knew windy around that time. And so when, you know, when Wendy introduced me to EMDR, I was delighted at how effective it was. And being able to help heal trauma, obviously, and you know, not just trauma, but seeing the difference was pretty wonderful. So I was thankful to Wendy, she told me it wasn’t a choice that I had to so and then later we’ll talk more it’s when I told her she had to get involved with psychedelics. So it was a perfect pairing.

 

Kim Howard  03:59

There’s nothing like a little peer pressure from your colleagues to do something professionally. So I’m glad you both found each other. That’s great. Dr. Gelfand, can you tell us about your path to becoming a psychiatrist?

 

Yevgeniy Gelfand  04:10

It was not always that way. I want it to be some sort of a surgeon because that’s what I thought would be the epitome of some really distinguished doctor. And when I was in the summer between college and medical school, I had the luck or the privilege of discovering psychedelics for myself. And as a result of what unfolded and some of the experiences I had, instead of going at pathology like headfirst and trying to annihilate it, I decided to change and help people make better choices with healthier lives understand why they do what they do understand the nature of who they are. And it was really an obvious choice at that point for me to pursue psychiatric training, and at the same time I really wanted to not lose the grasp of knowing the body and all the biological systems as well. So I did a training in internal medicine and psychiatry combined. And I thought that was going to put me in a nice place to work with wellness. As I saw psychedelics as a tool to help people grow and also promote wellness, it just seemed like an overall a really good fit. And I really trusted that the path took care of itself and led me in Charleston  [S.C.]for my residency training.

 

Kim Howard  05:31

We’re glad that it happened that way. I think it was all meant to be. How did you guys connect professionally?

 

Robin Landers  05:37

So, kind of rewinding back to me telling Wendy that we needed to get involved with psychedelics we trained in ketamine assisted psychotherapy. We had a colleague actually he was part of the consultation group that Wendy and I were in when we were first starting our practices Dr. Brent Turnipseed, who had trained under Phil Wolfson, for ketamine assisted psychotherapy. And he was one of the first doctors to bring KAP to Austin. So I was able to train early on when it was in Austin, then brought Wendy into it. And we started doing it in our our group and had such amazing results with KAP, that I knew we were going to be interested in MDMA as it was coming down the pipes. So I signed up for the MDMA MAPS training. I think Wendy was probably at an EMDRIA event, so she could not come?

 

Kim Howard  06:27

Yeah, EMDRIA soaked up a lot of her time before she rolled off the board.

 

Robin Landers  06:33

But this is we divide and conquer. So it works. So I went to the training and you of Yevgeniy was the first person that I met as I pulled up in the parking lot. And I said it was love at first sight; that we connected and started developing a friendship. And Wendy and I had just begun doing KAP trainings with a different medical provider in Austin. And Dr. Gelfand and I started talking and discussing trainings. And then it organically went from there. And the three of us just had a really great chemistry. And I’ve had some really, we were just so pleasantly surprised by how well and how deep the trainings went. And here we are.

 

Kim Howard  07:15

That’s a great story. Thank you guys for sharing. Robyn and Wendy, what’s your favorite part of working with EMDR therapy?

 

Wendy Byrd  07:23

Oh, gosh, what isn’t amazing about working with EMDR therapy? Right? I mean, I think I think the first thing that you notice how effective EMDR is, it’s been years now. And I’ve been accused of being in a cult, even some sort of EMDR cult, but it’s just because it’s such an effective therapy. And, and so grounding for people, I think that there is a really beautiful thing about EMDR, where you can bring someone in, they can tell you what’s happening to them, you can sort of, you know, go through their history and treatment planning, using that adaptive information processing model. And then they feel very grounded about what’s going to happen, kind of why maybe they’re feeling the way they are, some of the symptoms start to make sense to them, when we connect it back to their past. And, and so I think that’s probably my favorite part of working with EMDR is, you know, that finding the puzzle around treatment planning, and then obviously, seeing people get so much better. So quickly. That’s so powerful.

 

Robin Landers  08:33

Yeah, mine similar, I think the most fun part for me is seeing people’s amazement, and discovering, connecting the dots, right, they maybe they’ve been in therapy for years, but the way that you know, EMDR poses questions, and then the treatment planning just and reprocessing, when people have these, you know, pretty exciting discoveries, and they start connecting the dots, which is similar to psychedelic work that, you know, it’s just a different tool of being able to get out of our own way. And the way EMDR helps people to do that. is pretty powerful.

 

Wendy Byrd  09:10

I think I think another piece and and I see this in the psychedelic world, too, and working with ketamine is the non pathologizing. Everything makes sense, the way people are makes sense. And if we can be curious about what’s going on, we can see how the things that the person may be challenging, having challenges with their will, it’s really adaptive for what they had to go through. So there’s this non pathologizing way of helping people. And both of these modalities have that and I really love that.

 

Kim Howard  09:48

Thank you, both. Wendy, you talked about have people accusing you of being in an EMDR cult? I’m the same way with yoga. I mean, nobody’s accused me of that, but I’m like the world’s on fire and I’m like, have you tried yoga/ It will change your life. I mean, like my joke, and my daughter’s like, oh my god, Mom, yoga does not fix everything.

 

Wendy Byrd  10:05

I’m pretty it can, though.

 

Kim Howard  10:07

I am sure it fixes quite a lot physically, emotionally, mentally. I mean, I’m just saying. Dr. Gelfand, psychedelics have been around for thousands of years. What have we learned from that history? And can you please discuss the psychedelic movement in psychotherapy?

 

Yevgeniy Gelfand  10:24

Yes, so they have been around for thousands of years. I think some of the first accounts of psychedelic therapy used was maybe like 40 to 50,000 years ago, or something like that. In Algeria, there’s a famous, I think cave painting of a shaman, a martial shaman that some of us have seen. And then there’s accounts about something called Chi Qian being used by the Society of Eleusinian mysteries in Greece. In in the ancient India, there was this magical potion called Soma. You know, we know about Mesoamerican use of psilocybin mushrooms and salvia divinorum and peyote, mescaline connect containing cactus also in South America there for thousands of years. And they join us tribes use a Alaska, which is a concoction of different herbs, as well as also mescaline containing cactus and coca leaves. And then you start looking at wow, I guess this is so prevalent, it was really around this is how people used to connect to themselves connect to the cosmos, connect to their Godhead, or their religion connect to each other connect to the earth, and also do collective healing in that paradigm. So, you know, I think also we would have known much more about psychedelics, has there been more reciprocity in the colonial expansion? In that because a lot of the stuff kind of either went underground or was labeled heresy or, who knows. So we’ve lost actually a great deal of time because of that. But I believe that communing with the numinous realm is sort of in our DNA, and it’s within our rights as a human being and it can make our lives so much more fulfilled and meaningful.

 

Kim Howard  12:13

Thank you. Can you please explain the difference between MDMA and ketamine assisted therapies?

 

Yevgeniy Gelfand  12:20

Yes, well, when we talk about non-ordinary states, you know, then we have vehicles that take us to these non-ordinary states, so different tools that can help us work with certain content. So different psychedelics have a bit of a different psychedelic signature, you know, almost like a tent, or like, the way the glasses change, which you see, MDMA is a little bit more. Well, let me just say ketamine is a dissociative anesthetic along with changes in how we hear things, how we think, and how we experience ourselves, or there’s also this, this kind of distancing from the human body, the body starts to feel different, maybe different in size, we feel like we’re less connected to it. And that sort of is the process that unburdens our mind, and we’re not weighed down by the body as much as sort of this like a bit of an ethereal state, where we can have awareness of the body or not at all. And this awareness is sort of like more prevalent or lack of awareness of the body is more prevalent, where with other psychedelics, you generally know that you have a body, you can feel your body, you can move. But of course, as you go down and adapt of the ketamine therapy, you start having more trouble sensing and more trouble moving. And it is a continuum with anesthesia, where there is no continuum such as that and other psychedelics, it’s more like a dream state or a daydream where you kind of go off into it. And then you can come back to here now, where with ketamine, that’s mostly a time variable, where whenever the medicine wears off, and then you can start feeling your body again, if that makes sense. And I think also at a moderately high dose, the lower range of the ketamine dosing, it can feel a little bit more like MDMA, because there’s less dissociation. And then we’re getting into like, what is it doing in the brain. And both of those medicine actually reduce amygdala activity and can enhance activity of the prefrontal cortex. Of course, unless you take too much ketamine, then there’s not going to be anyone there thinking about anything, you’ll just be anesthetized. But at a lower range, ketamine, you can still preserve your verbal activity, you can move, you can talk with less challenge, and people can process the challenging things kind of like with other psychedelics such as MDMA, or like EMDR in a state that’s less, less challenging to feel, because it’s important to engage emotional centers, not just process things in a numbing way. So certain things like EMDR like I mean, like MDMA, they give us something called the optimal arousal zone of processing which is not to hyper aroused and not to hypo aroused, that the constant can actually get mobilized and worked with and processed in a different way. The some differences between MDMA and ketamine yet some similarities, but as you go higher in a dose, that’s when these things become more and more different.

 

Kim Howard  15:25

Thank you, I’m sure our listeners want to know the difference, because I know I want to know the difference. So thank you for that explanation. How do you know when psychedelic therapy is right for your client or patient?

 

15:36

Well, without sounding like I am in a cult… And to say like, why not to anyone, I really wouldn’t say that, because there are certain contraindications for some clients. And for some other people, this is sort of not within their comfort zone. And or maybe sometimes it’s really not needed. So I kind of look at the progress someone is having in therapy and how much motion we have forward how much and burdening of symptoms we have. And often times I think all over us are familiar with when our clients get stuck, or when they feel like they just hit a point where they cannot move forward. And no matter what they do, it just does not seem to end. And that in my mind is a nice time to consider psychedelic medicine, to help us with taking a different look creating more space, so we can maybe see the forest for the trees versus just gonna be stuck. And wherever we are, that might be an option, then as long as someone does not have contraindications, such as some psychopathology that is prone to psychosis or prone to severe mania, or when someone might be in an elevated state or substance induced mood or, you know, a lot of substance use, because that can make ketamine or psychedelic use just unsafe. But aside from those contraindications, if someone does have the stuckness, I think that will be a fair thing to try. Or if someone has tried a lot of different things, but their growth is just kind of not as what they would like they still have trouble functioning, although their functioning. This, the way they function is very impeded by symptoms. And it’s really difficult to establish any momentum and inertia and any ease. And that also can drag people into depression. So sometimes, after trying trying different things, maybe psychedelics can be an option. And also, I will just say, if someone is interested in that, and I don’t think we have to fail, fail, fail and check some boxes before we can try something that might have a bigger chance of working. Hopefully, as we move further, and we have more indications for psychedelics and more ease and more awareness of what they can do, we can go to the choice sooner versus it being left for only treatment resistant cases. Because wouldn’t people want to feel better, more authentically, more deeper in a quicker time, not to say that we are rushing for but I think there may not be a need to have unnecessary suffering for decades before you try something that might help.

 

Kim Howard  18:13

The great response. Thank you. How do you integrate EMDR and ketamine and psychedelics?

 

Robin Landers  18:18

They weave together very nicely. We think of ketamine really, I think any it’s going to weave together with with any therapeutic container, it’s going to amplify the therapeutic work that you’re already doing with the client. It really we think of it as like adding water to clay that’s too dry. So it’s going to lubricate the process and allow you to get in there and really work with whatever you know, stuck patterns, whatever trauma experiences that you maybe you’re having trouble getting them to move we see that a lot with, maybe somebody can’t quite make the progress that they would like with EMDR or reprocessing targets and there’s some movement but they just can’t quite get there. When we add ketamine assisted psychotherapy to the process. It always moves it more quickly. We tend to use it as the EMDR is a container so we will and psychedelic work and ketamine assisted psychotherapy, you have three stages to the therapy, you have the prep stage, the journey, and the integration. The way that we tend to use EMDR is in the prep phase. So we’re doing our treatment planning or resourcing and then often identifying targets and then we’re reprocessing targets during the integration phase of K AP. That makes sense. So they’ve had the journey and now you know these dissociative barriers have been lessened and so they have more access to emotion, memory sensation, and so it really supports the EMDR reprocessing phase very nicely.

 

Wendy Byrd  20:01

To add on to what Robin’s talking about, you know, sometimes we see people’s adaptive strategies, the way they’ve had to adapt to the world from the pain that they’ve had throughout their life maybe that they learned early on as a child, these adaptive strategies work, whether it be avoidance, or you know, different ways of not working with painful variances internally, the ketamine can allow for those defense patterns and those adaptive strategies that are no longer serving the person, it can, it can make that a little bit less intense, so that we can access those painful experiences in an easier and more gentle way. And so we just see those behavior changes happening without having to do so much of the working around those defenses. And those soldiers that people have created as ways that they had to take care of themselves. So you know, that dissociation that that we were just talking about as EMDR therapists, we tend to think of dissociation, as, you know, maybe something to be avoided. But in the academy, we’re working with it through ketamine, it’s a positive dissociation, so we can distance ourselves from some of that painful, painful experiences, some of those emotions, we can find a loving place, oftentimes people can connect to a space of loving themselves in the journey. And they haven’t had that experience of knowing what it felt like to actually be kind and compassionate and loving towards themselves. And then we can use that experience as a way to go back into some of those earlier painful memories. And we can remember, we’re bringing in that that love that you found for yourself in that in that journey, right. And it’s just a gentler, easier process.

 

Yevgeniy Gelfand  22:03

Oh, one of the things that like I really feel essential to this work is something we call curiosity. And without curiosity is really difficult to understand things and to get someplace with things Be patient. And it’s also really difficult to maintain curiosity, when we are in pain, when we’re suffering when something that we’re like, who wants to hold a hot potato and get burned and like, be curious Oh, and this is nice, how my hands are sizzling. This is when we stay with that, right? So to maintain curiosity, it’s important to kind of reduce the amount of steam we get from the content that we’re in, which is where EMDR techniques help reduced activation. Although I’m not trained in that modality, this is something I know about it. And psychedelics as well. We talked about reduction of amygdala activity, maybe broadening of this optimal arousal zone where people can inhabit that place and feel and be curious about something. Because on the other hand, when you connect to yourself and connect to your strength, you can also be more curious about the things that have been tormenting you for your whole life. And now with these new resources that went so well put, you can go in there more supported with gloves, so you don’t have to get hurt by the heat of the thing that you’re working in now. Because you are going into this place that you’ve tried to process over and over again, I sometimes talk about psychedelics like Augmented Reality goggles, like there’s all this stuff that perhaps didn’t see. But now we can put them on and see things we couldn’t really see before. So we have a different chance, a brand new way to work with something that we could never really work with before. So putting all those kinds of things together, this process starts on fall there is filled with awe and wonder and curiosity in depth to fathom hell, or soar, angelic being Euro pinch, psychedelic. That is kind of how they talk about it.

 

Robin Landers  24:05

You know, one more thing we want to add when thinking about integrating EMDR or other modalities with ketamine as that ketamine is known for being a different medicine at different doses. And it’s really an art there really are so many different ways that you can weave in other modalities and work with the ketamine. So, for example, I think Dr. Gelfand was talking earlier, maybe about the load, the low dose experience versus a high dose at a lower dose at a more psycholytic dose, you know, you can still be interacting, right there’s still the client is still connected to the body so you can be utilizing EMDR or your other modalities while the client is on the ketamine at that lower dose, versus when you’re reaching into those higher, more psychedelic doses. You’re going to be weaving in those other modalities more so in the prep and the Integration phases. You know, I think that we’re just at the beginning of, of all of the possibilities of ways to work with ketamine and other psychedelics.

 

Kim Howard  25:10

Do you guys administrate the ketamine? Or do you work with somebody else? Who administers it? And then they come see you for the therapy session, like next door, like, here’s the ketamine guy, and then I’m right next door. I mean, is that how that works on? Like, who’s giving me this drug? And are they qualified and blah, blah, blah?

 

Wendy Byrd  25:25

I think another interesting piece for us is EMDR therapists. And I think all therapists get excited about this, but I think EMDR therapists probably particularly get a little giddy over the idea that ketamine and psychedelics can increase that neuroplasticity, and that dendritic growth. And so because we are trying to change the way information is stored in the brain, right, so anything that’s going to allow that process to be a little bit more pliable, like Robin said, adding the water to the clay, so when we think about the ability to increase that neuroplasticity, and the ability to have the brain change a little bit more easier. And that’s kind of the goal of the therapy that we’re using already, then you can see how they just marry so well together, because we’re going back into into those neural networks, right, accessing painful information. So it’s nice to have that painful information not be quite so intense. And so we get that from ketamine and other psychedelics are showing that as well, especially MDMA, where you can access information, it’s not quite so painful. But the other piece that’s really exciting is from that space of that neuroplasticity, where the brain is going to change easier. So people have more options for different ways of thinking and feeling more quickly. And that is a side effect of the medicine. That’s a beautiful side effect and one that we can take advantage of, from a therapeutic lens to go okay, I want to go in and, and get this brain to be able to just shift from that ruminating painful, you know, negative cognitions that people just beat themselves up with, you know, with no choice of their own to be able to go, oh, I can feel capable, I can feel good enough. I can feel you know, like I deserve good things. And so that neuroplasticity plasticity gets me very excited as an EMDR therapist, especially because sort of start speaking my language.

 

Kim Howard  27:30

Thank you all. So I think one question that I have and I think maybe the listeners might have is who is administering the ketamine? Is it you? Is it psychiatrists that you work with directly? How does that out of the logistics happened with that? Can you talk a little bit about that?

 

Robin Landers  27:45

So I think that, you know, could look different in any practice. For example, Wendy and I are therapists, not psychiatrists, whereas Dr. Gelfand is a psychiatrist, and I can let him speak to his process, but he’s able to administer the medicine obviously, and do the that therapy, whereas Wendy, and I will partner with different medical providers. And so we have collaborations with a few different providers, and we are there for the therapy, we are there for the ketamine, we’re there with the client, but we are not obviously administering the ketamine so they have to go through a medical clearance with our medical provider. And we coordinate all of that with our clients and the provider.

 

Yevgeniy Gelfand  28:27

From my perspective, like Robin said, I can give it and do therapy with people. So that does make it much more easier. In that way. Another thing that I sometimes do, not a lot, but in those people who can, let’s say don’t cannot afford to pay a fee for myself every time they can also take ketamine lozenges, sometimes, even with their therapist, and this way, they can self administer that lozenge. Again, if it’s someone who’s familiar with the medicine, they kind of understand how it works, what it does for them. And, of course, they’re not going to put themselves in any harmful situations, we’re getting right back or, and the therapist needs to be competent with working with ketamine without any way of sort of dealing with a stressful situation without a medical means. So this is why that can happen with someone that we have trust, and there’s a good relationship with a client. So that’s another way that the therapist can be more independent, without relying on that provider to prescribe. And, of course, I really want to add that a lot of growth actually happens during the period of integration, you know, which is when we are reinforcing new neural circuits that have been maybe that have come up or presented themselves as more wholesome waves, ways of dealing with things and then that is actually the bulk of the work that happens with the therapist, not with the medicine. And the analogy I like to use for that is several ones. One of them is like it will be The tunnel wants to reinforce the tunnel of built otherwise it will collapse. Integration is like reinforcing of that tunnel. And I really want to stress this because a lot of people come to this work, wanting this experience wanting this healing and wanting something that really will change the experience I’ve had all these years. But also, it’s important to know that, as helpful as that will be, maybe it’s really the integration that is really, really going deeper. And that is what’s helping us and build those neural networks.

 

Wendy Byrd  30:33

To add to that, I think that that’s where we get excited about, you know, talking about ketamine assisted psychotherapy, because the therapy part of it does have a very big impact in and my opinion, for good work that needs to be a part of the process. It’s not just the ketamine or the journey, it’s, it’s the whole package. And you know, as EMDR therapists, we can put that through the lens of the EMDR, treatment planning and the AIP model and all of that, and I think that we have as EMDR therapists, we have a lot to say about this population, because we’ve been working with trauma, and you know, the effects of trauma and for years and years and years, and so our community has a lot of knowledge to share with the psychedelic community, as far as you know, what we understand and what we know how to do. And I think the psychedelic community also has a lot to bring to EMDR and ways that can help EMDR integrate into the process that’s already there. So it would be fun for us to have really great friends in both, right?

 

Kim Howard  31:41

Great answer. Thank you. How do you imagine integrating EMDR with other psychedelics or non ordinary states of consciousness?

 

Robin Landers  31:48

Well, we imagine that there will be it will generalize. So the way that we weave EMDR and with ketamine, currently, there’ll be some similarities that will generalize. And there will also be some differences across the medicines and the main, you know, the main aspects of psychedelic work that prep the journey and the integration. So far, we’ve seen that we’ve seen that across medicines, for example, the MDMA protocol, uses prep phase journey and integration as well as psilocybin research. So we’ll be able to still follow those phases and still integrate EMDR. And the same way that we do currently with ketamine, but the medicines will also have their differences. So, for example, ketamine is hour and a half to two hour session, typically for a KAP session, when the client is taking the ketamine, but an MDMA session is often around six hours. So the details will be different, but those main phases should generalize across.

 

Wendy Byrd  32:54

I agree. And I think it’ll be real interesting, as you know, some of these medicines come out of their trials and get approval because what you can do in session with one medicine, you might have to wait until the next session to do with another, for example, ketamine can kind of make it hard for people to talk after the journey, they need a little bit of time to integrate, and kind of come back to the room. But for example, with MDMA, we may be able to do more trauma work right there in the space with the client. So it will look different, but I think Robin’s point is, we’ll still use those, those three phases of preparation, the journey and integration.

 

Yevgeniy Gelfand  33:37

Also, I think different medicines will have different sweet spots, in a dose for the right amount of therapy, we’ll probably we’ll be sticking more to the psycholytic range of dosing. That is where the ego is a little bit more intact, and have a little bit more discerning mind working, where we can be processing things more intently versus more randomly in a psychedelic belong way. So that’s another consideration, like what dose of the medicine is best to do what?

 

Kim Howard  34:09

This question was not on our on our list, but do people typically have they already been dosed and have experienced the side effects before they even reach out to a therapist? So they sort of know because, you know, when you a doctor prescribes you a medicine, a lot of times you don’t know if it’s going to work for you, or if you’re going to have an overreaction to it in a negative way until you have the medicine in your system. So I presume that they sort of been not pre screened, but they sort of been pre screened in a way that they know that yes, this medicine works for me and here I come to my therapy session is that how that generally happens or look so there are no surprises in the therapy room.

 

Robin Landers  34:46

So if a client signing on for KP, for example, they will have a medical screening with Dr. Gelfand or, you know, whoever our medical provider is, I think I’m understanding your question when we show up for that first session, you know, they have not experienced ketamine before.

 

Kim Howard  35:04

Okay, so it’s, it’s right out of the gate, it’s all new to them. Okay.

 

Robin Landers  35:09

Unless of course, they’ve had some sort of, you know, prior experience with a different therapist or recreationally.

 

Kim Howard  35:15

Okay. All right.

 

Wendy Byrd  35:17

Yeah, sometimes a client might sort of know that they’re interested in it, and they feel like KP will be helpful to them. Sometimes it’s us suggesting it to him and sort of sort of going, Hey, I think this might be a good thing to add to your treatment plan. But generally speaking, unless they’ve had some experience prior to maybe as a series of ketamine without therapy, for example, they’re going to be experiencing the ketamine journey with us first time. Okay. That’s the majority of, of people.

 

Kim Howard  35:52

Okay, that’s good to know. Thanks.

 

Yevgeniy Gelfand  35:54

Usually, there are surprises, it’s hard to get a room without surprises. But usually, we would have made sure everything is safe. So whatever surprise comes up, it’s always part of the journey, always part of the process, which is another very important part of psychedelic therapy is that everything that happens? Nothing is actually wrong. Everything is right.

 

Kim Howard  36:17

Right, okay that’s good to know, in case somebody is out there listening, who’s someone’s talk to them about it, or they’ve researched into it, and they think they might need it, it can be a little more prepared. So okay, good. As psychedelics are gaining credibility as a promising treatment, what are you as EMDR therapists seeing that clients are needing and seeking?

 

Robin Landers  36:39

One of the things we’re seeing quite a bit of is just lack of information or proper information. You know, clients are hearing about psychedelics, maybe from friends, maybe from podcasts, and, you know, a bit of the wild west out there right now. So they’re, sometimes I think, having a hard time getting the right information. And so we’re really passionate about training other therapists, and proper training for ketamine assisted psychotherapy, so that when they’re interacting with clients, you know, clients are getting proper information we hear a lot of, there’s a lot of myths out there, that, you know, you do the journey, and you’re healed, right, the sort of miracle cure. And you really, it’s a process that you’ve got to commit to. And the therapeutic container is such an important aspect of the process, the preparation and the integration, and a lot of people aren’t, I think it’s getting better the information that’s available to people, but we still have a long way to go.

 

Wendy Byrd  37:45

Yeah, I think I think making sure that clients and therapists have the accurate information is going to be really important. You know, I know that, like Robin said, it’s kind of the wild west out there. And I’ve had therapists call me whose clients have gone in for just ketamine sessions, and so that therapists can be kind of in unfamiliar territory, if their client is having ketamine outside of their, you know, therapeutic container. So therapists really need to be educated and understand what can happen with with these medicines, and what can be brought up. And also clients, you know, need a realistic idea of what really good psychedelic medicine work looks like. And that probably most the time will include that therapeutic container.

 

Yevgeniy Gelfand  38:37

Managing expectations is always like one of the first things that we discuss, it’s nice to know, like, what are people looking for? What have they heard, and try to help them see a more accurate picture of what might happen or how their work might work?

 

Kim Howard  38:53

Yeah, that’s absolutely important. I mean, most of the time, when we have something wrong with us, the first thing we go is to Google, right? Whether it comes from WebMD, or someone’s website, and you’re trying to find information on whatever your issue is, whether it’s physical or mental, or emotional. And there’s a lot of good information out there. But then there’s a lot of information and you’re like, I’m getting conflicting information. I don’t exactly know who to believe anymore. So it’s good that people they should come in, in a curious way they should do their homework, basically, and find out so they can make sure that they’re it’s the right path for them and to make sure that they’re getting the best benefit to help them heal, and not come in with unrealistic expectations because they read it on a Buzzfeed site or something, you know, let’s not do that. Let’s go and find out from the sources and get the right information. So that’s good advice. Thank you.

 

Wendy Byrd  39:48

Yeah. Tic Tok.

 

Kim Howard  39:49

Yeah.

 

Wendy Byrd  39:50

Tic Tok therapy advice.

 

Kim Howard  39:52

If you’ve seen it and you heard about it, that’s good, but maybe you should do just a little bit more research beyond the 30 second clip. You know, picked up even if it’s from somebody who’s a legitimate source. Just, heah. What successes have you seen using EMDR therapy for clients seeking psychedelic treatment?

 

Wendy Byrd  40:08

I think that we can say this about EMDR. In general, it integrates so well with so many other different psycho therapies. And I have found that to be true with psychedelic treatment as well. And really wonderful ways the medicine work can be integrated right into that, that AIP treatment model that we use. And it really is, I would say, a lubricant on one level. And on another level, it brings out information for clients that they might not have even known that they sort of needed, right, so we talked about some of those resources earlier. But we can gain access to information in a gentle way that then we can integrate into the treatment plan. And I have seen that just work really beautifully for people. And it’s a it’s a gentle way to do really hard work.

 

Robin Landers  41:04

A lot of my clients, if they’re already doing EMDR, and we decide to start KAP treatment, it really moves, you know, patterns or blocks that have been in their way for years, really, really quickly and effectively. And helps them really start to shift the patterns that they may have had for, you know, their whole lives. And like Wendy said, it, you know, think when dosed properly, when, when done within a therapeutic container, it can be very gentle. At the same time, we’ve also seen those examples when it is not properly and and people have been overwhelmed.

 

Kim Howard  41:43

We don’t want that

 

Wendy Byrd  41:44

Exactly. Training is really important. But you know, like sometimes in the journey, people will have the experience of having a visit from a maybe mother or dead loved one who’s passed or, you know, and then that can become a very healing experience, for example. So in the journey, we just, we have that sort of open, curious mind about what might come in, and then we can use our knowledge of that client and our knowledge of the therapeutic process and what they might need. Whether that information is is hard information, or whether it’s a very kind of loving or spiritual experience, you know, we can, we can just integrate that right into the person’s treatment plan. So kind of like you can’t predict when you start off at a target where you’re gonna go in EMDR, right, it’s gonna go to all of those channels of association, it’s kind of the same with the psychedelic and ketamine work is, you can’t predict what the journey is gonna look like. But like Dr. Gelfand was saying, whatever it is, that comes up, it was the right thing that came up. And, and we use it with that client, however we need to for their treatment. Thank you both.

 

Kim Howard  43:00

So Robin alluded to this a few minutes ago. So now we could talk about this. Are there any myths that you would like to bust about working with EMDR therapy and psychedelics? I’m sure there are many.

 

Robin Landers  43:12

Yeah, I’ve mentioned that. I think the one of the biggest ones, I think that this one and done idea. I’m gonna, I’ve gotten a lot of calls actually, from clients who have gone and done psychedelic work and different medicines in different places. And, you know, one of the common things out here is I felt so much better, you know, my behavior changed, or my patterns changed, initially, and then, you know, went right back to where I was, and they’re frustrated, they feel hopeless, because they were told, you know, that because they felt better. And they were, you know, this is going to change your life, this is going to change you. It’s not completely I think, untrue. It’s the piece that’s missing is that what we were discussing earlier that you, you know, the integration and the therapeutic container are what are going to allow those changes to really stick, that’s what’s going to help change the neural pathways change the brain to have long lasting changes. And so, when you explain this to people, and when you talk through it, it makes sense. They can understand it and make an informed informed consent make an informed decision about what they’re agreeing to do and entering into, but it’s when I think they’re given that misinformation that they feel very disappointed and, and hopeless and frustrated.

 

Kim Howard  44:31

I would imagine. Yeah. Any other myths?

 

Yevgeniy Gelfand  44:35

This myth of we’re going to be done. In general, I think it’s gonna be applied across a variety of human experience. We all want to be done. But the reality is, we likely will have some work to do. At some point, probably forever, and that’s okay. Because such as life, right, we always have to adjust life is always predictably unpredictable. I like to look at physical analogies To the mind and to the processes that are happening in the mind. And one of the analogies for me is the chiropractic work. You come in, you get adjusted, you feel great. And then you need an adjustment again. But what do we do in between adjustments? Right, that we’re looking at, like, ergonomically what our life is doing to our bodies, right? What we’re overusing? What are we doing that keeps aggravating what is hurting. So, to me, ketamine is also almost like, a windshield wiper, or psychedelics can be like that, in general, like you wipe your windshield, you get a clearer sense of maybe what to do, you get some sunshine, maybe if it’s shining, but also you get a glimpse at maybe, what were the work that we might need to do. But if we don’t take that, so look at what’s outside of our car, we’ll just keep staying in the rain, and we can wipe our windshield as much as we can. We’ll never figure out which way to move to get away from the storm, you know. So I like to think along those lines as well and remind people that our human experience is that things will never get done. And that’s okay.

 

Kim Howard  46:09

Good advice. Thank you. Dr. Gelfand, what modalities do you use in your practice? And how do you integrate those with psychedelics?

 

Yevgeniy Gelfand  46:19

Nowadays, everything I do is pretty much mindfulness based or some sort of awareness based. And psychedelics, to me are just tools to help see that a little bit more. One of my favorite analogies for psychedelics and when I say psychedelics, I just want to be clear. Currently, it is only ketamine and MDMA experience that I’ve had is from the clinical trials, but it can be somewhat generalized psychedelics, they do for the state of the mind, what microscope does for the study of the cells, and telescope does for the study of the stars. So they really just helped us see a more nuanced thing that was unfolding in the mind, they can exaggerate certain things that they can be more noticeable. So to me is whatever helps to increase awareness, whatever helps believe that we can work with things is anything that I will do. So mindfulness is one of the biggest tools I use, I’m also trained in not proficiently, but well enough for me to use an internal timeless systems. And I use whatever tools that I’ve sort of accumulated across my journey, sort of have a bag of tricks, so to speak. But I would say everything is really rooted in mindfulness. And relatability, you know, tried to kind of, not to create this journey that seems insurmountable for the participant, but to make them feel like they can actually do it, and that all of us are kind of doing the same thing. I also sometimes do a little bit of like self disclosure, only to help a client feel like what they experience is not completely unique to them, that even providers will struggle with certain things ourselves. So that’s kind of, adding the relational component to the therapy is another thing that I do.

 

Kim Howard  48:08

Good answer. Thank you. And that leads to my next question, which is how does mindfulness play into the overall mental health experience?

 

Yevgeniy Gelfand  48:17

I would think all of us probably learning mindfulness as we go through life, as long as we’re open to the fact that there’s more and more things to notice. And more and more things to be aware, be aware of, the more we notice, the more we can work with things, the less we notice, the more guesswork we’re gonna do. And the more we’re gonna be repeating certain patterns. So I think in order to see things clearly, and figure out how to act, it’s nice to be able to be able to observe things, so without being afraid of it. So, you know, mindfulness is really the corner at the center of all of the work that I do personally.

 

Robin Landers  48:59

Wendy and I both work with mindfulness as well. And it’s that ability, right to get some distance from yourself to have that meta awareness so that you can observe what you’re doing. And without mindfulness, you’re really running on automatic, right? So it’s crucial to have that awareness, like Dr. Galvin was saying, To even begin to even begin to look at anything at any of our patterns or thoughts, feelings, sensations. So it’s really a really important piece of doing growth work.

 

Wendy Byrd  49:36

One of the things I love about EMDR is that our clients sort of start to organically kind of investigate their own internal process through the process that we use with the structure, right? So they might start asking themselves questions like, Oh, what is the thought that’s bothering me now? What is that negative cognition piece or what am I actually feeling it So just inherently sort of in the way that we’re teaching them, they’re starting to have some of those mindfulness practices, maybe they’ve not ever had the experience of feeling their body because they needed their body to be offline, because it was too much for them to be able to handle right. And so just kind of organically through that process, they start learning some of those mindfulness places. And if we can help them see that that’s what’s going on, and help them start to get curious about how reaction that they’re having, without trying to suppress it or avoid it or needing to fix it or, you know, be consumed by it. But just notice it, then, that’s a really powerful tool that they get to have with them at all times as they’re walking through life. And then they get to decide how they want to react what they want to do, just because you think something or you feel something doesn’t mean you have to react to to that thought in that moment.

 

Robin Landers  51:00

Can I Yeah, add in to sort of mindfulness and ketamine or psychedelic assisted therapies that it’s, it’s also very important to teach people mindfulness, I think as part of prep, if they’re not familiar with it, going into ketamine assisted psychotherapy, teaching them, mindfulness is so important, because as they’re going into these journeys, they’re going to start having emotions, having sensations having things come up from the unconscious into their conscious awareness. And that’s such an important part of the integration phase. And so it’s important that they have these mindfulness tools to be able to be with What does come up in the psychedelic work. And I also think, on the other hand, that that the journey sort of organically teaches mindfulness, the dissociative piece of kind of getting that distance from your body, and your thoughts, and your feelings and sensations is sort of an experiential way of teaching mindfulness.

 

Yevgeniy Gelfand  51:58

And can I also just add that we all use this word mindfulness, and it has a certain ring to it, you know, a fad even, but…

 

Kim Howard  52:09

I’m in my yoga clothes, and I’m on a mountain, and I’m saying, um, is that not what mindfulness is? That’s what people mostly think it is when they first think of it.

 

Yevgeniy Gelfand  52:17

That is the definition of mindfulness. Right there. There’s no other one.

 

Kim Howard  52:22

Yeah.

 

Yevgeniy Gelfand  52:23

But I think that whenever we use it, sometimes it can be even sound like, oh, I don’t know if I want to do this new thing called mindfulness. But it’s just being aware, all it is meaning that we just being aware, it doesn’t have to be Buddhist, it doesn’t have to be Asian, it doesn’t have to be anything other than we just aware of what is happening, right here, versus we’re like thinking about the future or the past.

 

Kim Howard  52:49

Living your life as a human being, it’s really helpful to understand what bothers you and what doesn’t bother you so that you, and we can use the word triggered here if we want, but you know, what’s going to trigger you? You know, and, and why does that happen to you? And how can you manage that. And so being aware of those things is not necessarily bad, as long as you know how to deal with whatever it is that’s bothering you, so that you can let it go or move past it, and function and be centered, you know, and good and happy. And that’s kind of a goal, I think of any of that is to just kind of know yourself a little bit better, because some, some people don’t grow up in that kind of environment, right? They don’t grow up with families who discuss deep topics or have arguments and then deal with the fallout. And it’s okay for us to disagree. And this is how we manage it. And you know, they don’t grow up in certain circumstances like that. And so it’s good to know that what your body can handle and what it can’t.

 

Robin Landers  53:57

Absolutely

 

Kim Howard  53:57

What are some of the issues that show up around therapeutic access for the minority community?

 

Yevgeniy Gelfand  54:02

There’s been a long history of mistrust in the medical community, patient populations, and not without reason. And I think oftentimes, it’s this thing like, what is this fringe new thing that the white people are doing that they want us to do? Let’s not forget that the ski experiments and all of that has happened in the past with people of color institution, so that could be a barrier. So it always, I think starts with education. Awareness, again, that word comes back in a different in a different jacket. And also being real acknowledging that there has been wrongs that are done there is mistrust that there are things we do not understand about each other as individuals and I think just mindfully talking about that, and not avoiding it as kind of the way to go and all. Often times it might need to be where certain people might need to start with seeing people that look more like them or that have more life experiences that they are have in common, just to kind of help with that connection, relatability and rapport.

 

Wendy Byrd  55:16

I think in the psychedelic community, I think in the therapeutic community in general, we know we haven’t we have an access problem for lots of different reasons. Some of that is trust, especially with the psychedelics, there can be a history of, there’s a lot, there’s been a lot of negative propaganda about psychedelics. And so how do you gain people’s trust to go, oh, is this is this medicine safe, including people of all different backgrounds in the clinical trials is going to be really important so that we can, you know, understand and see what everyone’s experiences.

 

Robin Landers  55:55

I think there’s also issues around access due to finances, you know, so there’s ketamine assisted psychotherapy, I think, in general to get I think robust, good. Treatment is pretty expensive. So really, there’s only going to be a certain portion of the population that can afford good treatment right now. And that’s a huge problem. You know, there are other you know, there’s there’s ketamine, there’s lozenges, the trochies that people can get a more affordable costs that can be, you know, sent to the clients, there’s lots of different ways that people are exploring that right now. So there are some options for more affordable treatment. But in general, I would say that affordability is a huge problem around access right now.

 

Yevgeniy Gelfand  56:46

Affordability is a big issue, and we need good ways of being able to solve it and decrease the barrier for people to enter therapy. Uh, one of the other things that I know we need to try to do is to train more diverse body of therapists, because then people in the communities will see that therapists will just be aware of more options that are out there versus saying, Well, this is the kind of stuff we do here. And then those people do stuff over there. So I think it starts with education, of the community and education of the therapists and helping a diverse group of therapists get trained at some of these modalities.

 

Kim Howard  57:29

Absolutely, this is a good time to mention in our Find an EMDR Therapist Directory, the public can go in, and they can not only search by location, and specialty and insurance, they can also search by population served couples, LGBTQ plus Asian community, Black women [and Black men, Latinx], so you can go into our Find an EMDR Therapist Directory. And if you’re looking for a therapist who’s like you, you can find somebody like you in there. And so there’s options for that. And then also do want to put in a little bit of a plug for our EMDRIA Foundation, which one of the points of our foundation is to what you just said Dr. Gelfand is just to make sure that we are including more diverse voices in the EMDR therapy community beyond a basic training. So we want these, these applicants and people that we help move along in there propel them forward to become certified in EMDR. And so or to become consultants or trainers and so we we have a program in place for that as well, that it offers a little bit of scholarship money to help therapists will color in their community to achieve the professional goals that they want to in terms of EMDR therapy. So that’s a small way that we’re trying to help population.

 

Wendy Byrd  58:47

So, yeah, and I think that there’s probably going to be programs that are needed like that in the psychedelic educational piece, as well. Of how do we get people to be able to get trained to be able to learn about, you know, this new, upcoming opportunities to help to help people heal?

 

Kim Howard  59:10

Yeah, absolutely. That’s, that’s the goal here is to heal the world. So the big goal, one person at a time. We’re trying. What do you what would you like people outside of the EMDR community to know about EMDR therapy and psychedelics?

 

Wendy Byrd  59:24

I think that I would love for people to realize that there is a really robust community here that’s been working with PTSD and really, you know, very complex challenging patients for a long time. We have a we have a lot of knowledge and information that we can share and I think that our community is it’s a community that I’m so proud to be a part of, because in my experience, it’s it has people who are really passionate about healing and and helping people get over really challenging experiences, right and PTSD and depression and so, you know, we’re here and we want to be of help. I think there’s a lot of EMDR clinicians who are curious about what’s happening with the psychedelics, or you know, those clinicians I would say, start learning and getting curious about what’s what’s happening how, how to use things like ketamine and and start learning about the trials and the benefits that are the other psychedelic medicines are starting to show then we’ll be ready when we have access to those.

 

Kim Howard  1:00:36

Thank you, Wendy. Robin work in our listeners find out more about EMDR therapy and psychedelics?

 

Robin Landers  1:00:42

We’ll start with our websites: connected heart therapy.com. And there we have a training page that if anyone’s interested in doing KAP training with us, they can fill out a form there to learn about upcoming trainings. Dr. Gelfand’ website – he’s he’s on our page, but his website is Zen therapeutics solutions.net. Right now we have a KAP training for therapists to get trained in KAP. And eventually, we plan to have an advanced training with EMDR and KAP and how to weave them together. Also the MAPS website, which is MAPS.org. And I think we have a link to that on our training page. And there’s also there’s some books that might be helpful or documentaries. There’s “How to Change Your Mind” by Michael Pollan, pretty common one that people can learn about all the different psychedelics and he has a documentary as well. I think it’s also called “How to Change Your Mind. There’s a book “Integral Psychedelic Therapy” that I believe some colleagues of Dr. Gelfand wrote. And there’s also “A Dose of Hope” that’s a pretty common book about MDMA therapy that’s from Dan Engel. And then there’s also the Kriya Institute -that’s Raquel Bennett. She’s a ketamine researcher. And that’s KRIYA institute.com.

 

Yevgeniy Gelfand  1:02:17

The Ketamine Research Foundation is another very good source of information and activities and events, trainings.

 

Kim Howard  1:02:26

Right. I will add links in the podcast description for people listening, so they can go and check it out directly. So is there anything else any of you would like to add?

 

Robin Landers  1:02:36

Thank you for having us on to talk about EMDR and psychedelics, something we’re really passionate about and excited. Excited to get the right information out to people.

 

Kim Howard  1:02:50

We’re happy to have you guys on.

 

Wendy Byrd  1:02:52

Yes, thank you, Kim. It’s fun. It’s always fun to come talk about EMDR and, and especially EMDR in psychedelics.

 

Kim Howard  1:03:00

It’s a great way to end the podcast. Thank you all. This has been the Let’s Talk EMDR podcast with our guests Wendy Byrd, Robyn Landers, and Dr. Gelfand. Visit www.emdria.org for more information about EMDR therapy for to use our Find an EMDR Therapist Directory with more than 16,000 therapists available. Like what you hear? Make sure you subscribe to this free podcast wherever you listen. Thanks for being here today.