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Tom Neilson – Fall Workshop

How to Make Psychotherapy Easier and More Effective: Why the NPI Fall Workshop is More Important Than You Thought

On October 21, 2023, the Nashville Psychotherapy Institute is sponsoring a 6 CEU workshop by Mary Cosimano, LMSW on The Healing Presence of the Psychedelic Therapist. Even if you’ve kept up with the news about Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy, this workshop might be more important than you thought. Here’s why:

We therapists often struggle with how difficult psychotherapy can be. Many of our clients have difficulty changing, and too many do not achieve the goals they want. Some of our clients progress quickly and easily, but many don’t. Recent research may have told us why therapy is so difficult, and how to make it easier and more effective.

It is well-known that humans and other animals have critical periods for learning certain behaviors. Young children learn languages much more easily than adults because there is a critical period for language development that begins at the age of two and ends at puberty. The critical period for the development of human attachment runs from birth to the age of two and a half. There is a critical period for developing binocular vision that runs from approximately four months to twenty months, and there is another critical period for the development of hearing. In general, the first five years of life are considered the core critical period for human development: we learn language, motor skills, social cues, and many other skills during this time. It is much more difficult—if not impossible—to develop new skills and ways of being in the world after the critical periods have ended.

Neuroscientist Gul Dolen, M.D., Ph.D. has discovered that psychedelics, including MDMA, psilocybin, LSD, and ketamine, all reopen these critical periods and allow growth and change that would either be difficult or impossible. The significance of this finding cannot be overstated. It may explain the research showing Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy to be so effective. It suggests that psychedelics can be used to treat attachment disorders, which have long been considered untreatable. If you want to learn a new language as an adult, psychedelics may make the process much easier. Psychedelics appear to have the ability to facilitate most forms of psychotherapy and behavior change. If you want to learn new skills, change your behavior, or change patterns of thinking and feeling, psychedelics may help you do so. While more research is needed, psychedelics may just make your work as a psychotherapist easier, more effective, and more joyful.

During my training in Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy, I watched many video recordings of psychedelic therapy sessions. These recordings often left me in tears, as I watched change happening that I simply had not believed was possible. I always left those video sessions marveling at how clients could move through pain and trauma and into peace (and often joy) so quickly. Just watching those sessions left me feeling lighter. These days, I often have a similar experience as I work with clients in Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy.

Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy is arriving more quickly than you might expect. Therapists are already doing Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy with great success. The second Phase III Trial of MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy for PTSD has been completed, with more than two-thirds of the recipients no longer qualifying for a PTSD diagnosis after only three MDMA sessions. It is expected that MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy will be approved for general use by the FDA in late 2024. That is only about a year away.

Would you like to be a more effective healer? Would you like to help more people, more completely and more quickly? I believe that there will always be room for non-psychedelic psychotherapy, but I also believe that our field is in the middle of a paradigm shift that could make your work easier, more effective, and more joyful.

I hope to see you at the Fall Workshop. To register for the Mary Cosimano’s workshop:

https://nashvillepsychotherapyinstitute.org/upcoming…/…

And here is a link to an excellent summary of the remarkable work of Gul Dolen:

https://www.wired.com/…/the-psychedelic-scientist-who…/