Coming Soon: Inside the Nightmare
A Substack for Clinicians Navigating the Depths of Psychedelic Therapy
In a field that’s growing faster than it’s deepening, I’ve created this space as a kind of home base—a place for clinicians and students in the psychedelic therapy world to slow down, ask harder questions, and develop the kind of nuance that protocols and manuals often leave out.
You’ll find a mix of clinical writing and personal essays here, all grounded in my work with complex trauma, relational dynamics, and somatic interventions—particularly through the lens of Psychedelic Somatic Interactional Psychotherapy (PSIP). These reflections emerge from both my private practice and the PSIP trainings I lead, where I work closely with clinicians navigating the subtle complexities of altered states, early attachment wounds, primary consciousness, and the therapeutic relationship. My goal isn’t to promote a particular model or dogma, but to speak honestly to the layered, messy, and often contradictory realities that surface in this work—whether in the treatment room, the training space, or in our own inner process.
Who This Is For
This Substack is written primarily for:
PSIP students and alumni seeking to deepen their understanding and clinical application of the model
Therapists, facilitators, and clinicians working in the psychedelic space, especially those interested in relational and body-centered approaches
Practitioners who aren’t satisfied with simply offering tools, but are committed to ethically addressing the unconscious programming that shapes their clients’ lives and relationships—beyond surface-level symptom management.
Clients and non-clinicians are also welcome here, especially those curious about what healing can actually look like beneath the surface of peak experiences and integration checklists. Alongside the clinical writing, you’ll find personal essays drawn from my own experiences in this work. These reflections offer a raw, unfiltered view into the vulnerability, uncertainty, and challenges that often accompany deep psychedelic work—revealing how healing is often difficult, nonlinear, and far from a simple or picture-perfect process.
What You’ll Find
Some articles take a clinical perspective, introducing ideas about how clients unconsciously manage their inner experience, the relational dynamics that shape healing, and how therapeutic interventions can sometimes miss deeper layers. Others are invitations to track the subtler territories of therapy—places where something seems to be working, but deeper contact is quietly missing.
A few examples:
The Invisible Layer: What Clients Don’t Know They’re Hiding
Explores how clients can unknowingly filter or distort their experience—often presenting adaptive versions of their truth—while pressurization and somatic tracking can help reveal the unconscious infrasturcture shaping their relational world.When Parts Work Becomes a Defense
A nuanced look at how IFS, while powerful, can sometimes be used by clients (and reinforced by therapists) as a way to intellectualize, control, or bypass deeper affective and somatic experiences—especially in complex trauma cases.When “I’ll Be Here With You” Isn’t Enough
Examines how a therapist’s steady presence, though well-intentioned, may not always be sufficient for certain systems—and how more active, directive, or pressurizing interventions can support clients stuck in implicit survival responses.Anything Can Be Co-Opted to Manage One’s Experience
Discusses how even insight, somatic tools, or spiritual narratives can be unconsciously repurposed as secondary defenses, and why noticing the function of a client’s strategy often matters more than the form it takes.Reading the Body, Not Just the Ask: Physical Contact as Intervention or Defense
Investigates how physical contact in psychedelic therapy can serve as either profound support or a reenactment of old strategies—highlighting the importance of reading the body’s cues, not just the client’s verbal requests.When the Medicine Doesn’t Know Best
Challenges the idea that psychedelic insights are always accurate or inherently healing, and shows how psychedelic experiences can reflect internal defenses or create illusions of clarity that bypass the deeper therapeutic work.
Where This is Going
This isn’t just a place to write. It’s a place to gather. I’ll be offering group consultations and topic-focused mentorship soon, and this platform will be the first place I share those opportunities. Whether you're a PSIP therapist looking to sharpen your interventions or a seasoned clinician wrestling with the limitations of your training, I hope this space helps deepen your work—not by giving answers, but by asking better questions.
Thanks for being here.
