Why is Mindful Self Compassion a useful tool for psilocybin?

There are many ways to prepare for and integrate an experience with psilocybin. It won't take much digging online to find all sorts of protocols, ranging from special diets to artistic endeavors. All of these can be helpful.

In particular, we believe it's worth spending some time thinking about how you would like to hold challenging psilocybin experiences. By challenging, I mean experiences that bring up difficult memories or thought patterns, physical sensations that are uncomfortable, or even the rare case of completely falling asleep during a psilocybin experience. A good reminder to add here: challenging psilocybin experiences have still been shown to have therapeutic potential!

Well, how could one hold challenging psilocybin experiences?

To start, it is paramount to acknowledge your psilocybin experience was difficult, if indeed that was how it felt. When we face difficulty, sometimes it is tempting to lean one of two directions: (1) ignoring the fact that we face difficulty, or (2) over identifying with the difficulty we face. What is really important to remember is, there is a way to face our challenging experiences right in the middle of ignoring and over identifying. We can mindfully accept that the experience was difficult without dropping into believing that the difficulty of it is all there was. We almost have to step back from our own experience to see it this way and intentionally remind ourselves that this is a perspective we can adopt. 

Digging a little deeper, it can be so tempting to believe that if we did face a difficult psilocybin experience, something went wrong. Something out of the ordinary happened. Oh how isolating this can feel! But of course we don’t have to look far into religious perspectives, spiritual knowledge bases, and wisdom traditions to be smacked in the face with the truism: being alive as a human involves suffering, not a single one of us gets out of it. Indeed the severity of difficulty each of us faces is quite variable, but we all face it. But how easy it is to believe there is something wrong with us or our experience if it was difficult. The reminder here is that facing struggle actually makes us more human. 

And finally, when many of us approach difficulty or suffering, we often try to problem solve or change. This makes sense, we want to feel better! But also, recall a time you offered a nice blanket to a dear friend or loved one who was sick - did this blanket banish the illness from their body and fix the situation? No! Yet we still offered support. What a powerful reminder in the face of a difficult psilocybin experience - we do not need to solve or change to offer support. 

Now if you take a look at the three previous paragraphs, you’ll notice they each emphasize a central component to Mindful Self Compassion: (1) facing difficult with a mindful perspective, (2) moving away from isolation and brokenness and towards common humanity when we face difficulty, and (3) practicing support and kindness without trying to fix or change. These three pillars are foundational to Mindful Self Compassion, and are well backed by research.

Here’s the point: equip yourself with Mindful Self Compassion and you will be better able to hold difficult psilocybin experiences.