I'm like this woman, hear me roar, I am strong now. Like before I just felt so vulnerable and weak and like just meek, I guess, just hiding and cowering in the corner and trying, you know, everything to control my situation around me so that I didn't have to ever experience that trauma again, but I was just constantly reliving it every single day.

So I look back at that journey and I think about how I saw that person in a whole different light, like almost as an infant. Like this thing that was seeking power in their own way to deal with their own whatever and having that power over me and praying on somebody who was vulnerable.

And then in that session, I saw this person as this infant and then I saw them as like this, you know, this bug that's on your shoulder and you just like bat away and you like squish.

And it was this, it was a really visual session, but I just remember seeing that person like stripped of their power. And suddenly I had my power back.

Welcome to the To Curious MD podcast. I'm Dr. Ali Ahmed. And I'm Dr. Surya Ravan. With the wisdom from holistic, alternative, and these conventional medicines, we are here to challenge the status quo.

We're curious about the connectivity and complexity between diverse fields of knowledge as it relates to consciousness, chronic illness, mental health, resilience, and beyond.

learning more about the art and science of healing, or listening to stories of extraordinary healing. You're in the right place. Let's dive in. So welcome to the To Curious MD podcast.

Today we are excited to honor and interview one of my dear, esteemed, and most valued patients who worked with us at Child Minds. Her name is Lindsay Pipps, and she is here today to really share about her story and the work that she's been doing and the process of how she worked with Kenamine and in terms of her development of coming through to the person that she is today.

So welcome, Lindsay. Can you introduce us a little bit about who you are and How you, I guess the moment you realized you're looking for something else in the healing journey that you were experiencing.

Sure. So me as a person, I guess I've just like always sort of felt like there was a big part missing. And I came to ketamine and Shaw minds, I think out of desperation.

That was probably the biggest thing. I had been living my life sort of in this like barely surviving most of the time. There were you know periods of times like maybe even years that things would be like feel okay but it just never quite really was.

And then in I think it was 2022 I was diagnosed with PTSD and it kind of like clicked and everything made so much more sense. But prior to that, I was diagnosed with depression, anxiety, PMDD, given medications, and working with psychiatrists.

No one ever asked me, what's your home life like? What's going on in your life? How are you navigating life? No one ever asked me that before. And so I always just felt like this, I just need the right medication or something to fix me.

And I got that diagnosis and suddenly things just, like I just didn't feel so crazy, I guess you could say. Like, oh, this all makes so much more sense.

And everything, all of my symptoms, the way I was living life and struggling through it just made so much more sense. And I didn't feel like there was so much wrong with me anymore.

But I still, I tried therapy, the medications weren't working, I tried all these different things, and nothing would ever provide long-lasting relief.

And I saw on social media a friend of mine had posted about going through ketamine therapy and how life-changing it was. And that just kind of opened the door, like, what is that?

I'm going to look into that. And then I found Shaw Minds and did more research. And it just sounded like I'm desperate. I don't know what else to do. Something has to work.

I'm going to try this. One of the things I often see now more and more, especially in health care, mental health care, is that patients feel like something's wrong with them, that they need to be fixed, as you said.

And what is it that you felt you needed fixing? and what felt wrong to you, what felt not right. How would you describe that? I think the biggest thing for me was that, like, I felt like I had this amazing life.

I'm living through these incredible experiences. I have an amazing husband, an amazing relationship. You know, I felt really abundant in my life in so many different aspects, but I wasn't happy.

Like inside internally, I was constantly struggling with this like deep drowning sadness all the time. And it just, it just didn't make any sense. Like, why am I feeling this way all the time?

Given that my like externally, everything is just going so amazing. And I think that was like the sign that like, or I kept telling myself I need to fix me.

Like what do I need to fix about me to like flip this switch and like finally feel good in this life that I have instead of just constantly feeling like I would rather be sleeping and in bed and just isolating myself and looking to the future, I just thought there can't be more of this for the rest of my life.

How can I live through the rest of my life feeling this way? And it was this constant message of something's wrong with me and I need to fix me. So then as you felt this uneasiness, this discomfort, something's not fitting for you in your life, didn't make sense.

And the key word being ketamine coming in, you know, and that light that sometimes shows up and says, huh, ketamine. And then there's this curiosity to ketamine.

What did you know about ketamine? What was it that you were curious about? What was that intrigue that As you heard from your friend on social media, something clicked.

What was that? What did you think ketamine was at that point? Looking back, I was very uninformed about what ketamine was and what ketamine-assisted psychotherapy looked like and what journeys were.

I really had no idea. Going into it, I thought or I think I was hoping it would be this like passive process that I really didn't have to actively participate in because therapy for me up to that point was very terrifying.

And I had this idea in my head that healing from trauma meant I had to relive trauma. I had to talk about trauma. at all the different parts of trauma and really like revisit it.

And that was something I was just, I didn't want to touch with a 10-foot pole. Don't take me anywhere near it. And so my misunderstanding was like, I can take this ketamine and then feel better because I read so many stories of other people saying that it changed their lives, like it healed them.

And so I think I was really hoping that I'd be able to go through ketamine and as like a passive participant in the whole thing and then not have to face any of those fears about What do I have to actually do to deal with and heal for myself?

Yeah. Revisiting trauma, of course, can feel very unnerving because it's unsettling. You don't know what's going to show up knowing that you've been through it, right?

And sometimes the uncapping of something that you feel like you're actively doing in a very subtle way, but it lives in your body. through that experience.

At what point did that change for you? Because obviously there's work involved, obviously that it's not a passive experience. When did that change for you?

When did that acceptance? I mean, you know, and I do talk about ketamine therapy being a very big and strong and important component to treatment of any kind, right?

Especially in psychedelic medicine where you're dealing with that heavy trauma and then having therapeutic support around that is so valuable. How did you actually prepare for that experience where it wasn't a passive experience?

I think for me there was like no preparing. I was just so terrified and for me in my experience with PTSD and trauma like I have so much hypervigilance and I need control of situations in order to feel safe.

And this was absolutely about letting go, control completely. And I think I was in a mindset of so much desperation that I will do anything to feel better.

There were parts of me that honestly didn't think I would be able to continue living. You know, I didn't see a future because I was just struggling so much.

And I remember coming to that first session with you and my husband's next to me and I'm just like, terrified and I hate crying in front of people and I struggle with emotion anyway and I just I just started crying because it was like suddenly I felt like I was in a safe space with you that you had really created for me and then you and the therapist that I worked with at the time like went through like this is what it is and you know I think you call it the pre-flight appointment and we really talked about what this is what do you expect from me and I remember you talking about like you need to eat healthy and you need to be active and get outdoors and You gave me this outline of things I needed to do and I was like, all right, I'm writing this down and I am doing this.

There was a mix of so much desperation that this has to work and I'm willing to do anything. I think that's really important to realize ketamine is really just this key that unlocks this door that you've been boarding shut for so long and putting so many barriers in front of and with no willingness to even peek around.

For me, Ketamine was like, here's the key, we're unlocking the store, we're opening the door. And it felt okay to do that. And it sort of like gave me this sense of, you can do this now, you can walk through this door and do the hard things and do the work.

And that's what it was for me. It was just opening that door and stepping through. And then on the other side of that door, I had to be willing to do the hard work and really be an active participant in the whole process.

You're right. It is about unlocking and letting go and allowing one to be in something in a very different way and a very supported way and knowing that you're safe to do that.

There's a lot of fear even around that too. So I don't want to say that this is something for patients that there is a preparation that's very much involved and that preparation is the preparing the mind, the body and the spiritual and emotional health of that person, the resources around that.

Would you be able to describe to our audience, because our audience is a mix of patients, people who are interested or curious about ketamine, or people who are in the healthcare field, and I will say that that's a variety of different perspectives, but to give perspective to our audience How would you describe a session or a collective of sessions for you and what did you feel, what opened, what did that unlocking of that door look like?

I think the big thing is like every session was so completely different from the one before it. and you really have to lay aside your expectations about what you want out of the session.

I mean, you can set your intention as part of, you know, like we do as part of that ritual, going into a journey, setting your intention, but then you have to be willing to just completely let it go and lay back with your eye mask and, you know, the powerful music and just let ketamine take you where it takes you.

You have to definitely have that willingness. And I don't think at any point in my life up until then had I ever been able to just like let control and see where this goes.

And so, you know, at Chow Minds, you create such a sense of safety and care and like, I'm going to be okay, even though I'm so scared and I have no idea what's going to happen.

And I had a lot of like fear around like, Breaking my mind, I guess I could say, what are psychedelics going to do to me? Am I going to do this and be worse off on the other side of it?

There was a lot of fear about that. But with Shami's, there was so much care around setting up that process. And I really loved how it was treated like a ritual.

It wasn't clinical, I guess you could say. I wasn't coming into this doctor's office and laying back on this paper-sheeted bed and being administered a medication and then staring up at this bright light above me like you do on a typical doctor's appointment.

It was like laying on the couch on pillows and having a blanket. having this eye mask and curated music really set the stage every single time you have a session.

And it was almost as if like telling your mind and your body, okay, here's what we're doing now, because this is the ritual, this is how we go into it every single time.

And then just letting that medicine do its work and being willing to see what happens. And those first several sessions were incredibly visual for me.

And it makes no sense in the moment like what is happening and where you're going and you're just sort of flying through the motions and the experience.

And then as you come out of it and you begin to journal about your session, which I feel like is so important because the further away you get from that session, you start to lose those important details.

But as you're journaling it and talking with the therapist after about your experience, that's when the insights come. And it's like, okay, this seems so weird and incredible, but this is what maybe it meant to me.

This is maybe what it means in my experience and making that meaning collaborating with the therapist or with you as we go through that process. You know, after that journey, I created a ritual for myself every time I left Shaw Minds.

And like, this is what I'm going to do after I leave Shaw Minds. This is my ritual. And I stuck to that every time. And I think that helps, like, reinforce what the journey was and not forgetting.

And new insights would come in the days following. And I just really felt myself transform from the very first session that I was looking back at my notes.

journal entries and I think my PTSD score like before we started was like 40 or something like that and I think by the second or third session I retook it and it was like one and so it was the first time I ever felt relief like immediately and every session just gave me new insights and like I think the big thing was the making meaning of what it was and for me it was like There's this little girl, Lindsay, and when she was born, she was supposed to become this.

But because of my trauma and my life experiences, I never got to be her, right? And I think through ketamine and the healing and this whole process, I'm her now.

And I think without that, I would have never been able to realize that. What was that little girl and what is this Lindsay now? How would you describe that little girl?

And, you know, going back to your natural self, I would say, but what would you say about that little girl and who you are now? I feel like the way I describe it when I talk to people is like my whole childhood, like childhood trauma and adult trauma, like is all on this.

I think about this analogy, like my life was on Island A, this Island over here, and it's kind of isolated. And there's this Island B, this beach I see off in the distance.

And that beach I see in the distance is like this image I have of who I want to be and who I really see myself as. Like if all these things could just line up, this is who I would be.

and I'm just out there on this tiny little canoe, like, rowing over to that beach so hard through this storm and never able to get there. That's what, like, depression felt like for me, that I was just trying my best to row myself through this storm to get to Island B, and sometimes I would be in the ocean drowning, and I would go under and be, like, swimming and trying to break the surface, and I would get a gasp of air, and that was, like, the moments when things were okay.

And then I would be shoved under again. And it was just this constant fighting for life, fighting to survive. And over on Island A was just this individual who had all these horrible experiences and didn't know what to do with it and had spent her whole life burying it and putting concrete and bricks and mud.

And how deep can I bury this and just avoid it? And at the point when I came to Shell Mines, it was seeping up. You can't keep this down anymore. You have to face this.

It was all just falling apart. And that Lindsay was just like hurt and lost and defensive and shameful and just all these negative, sad, horrible emotions, you know, but I just was out there trying to get over there.

Like I know I can get over there. And Island B was like who I am now. And it's like. I get to feel positive and happy and realize a whole new career. And, like, I always saw myself as this athlete who loves the outdoors and mountain biking and carefree and has a sense of humor, like, you know, just so much lighter.

And I realized, you know, oh, I'm on Island B now, like, I'm her now. It was just such a powerful experience. I hope that makes sense, but that's kind of how I feel.

Let's talk a little bit about getting there, getting to the island, some of the integration practices, some of the rituals that you mentioned earlier.

What got you there to the other island? What were some of those practices that you spoke about? And tell us a little more about that. Yeah, so it always started with coming out of that journey, laying there on the couch and just grabbing my pen and journaling it as all the things that happened in the session right away so that I wouldn't forget.

And then I would leave your office, my husband would pick me up always with like my favorite coffee and a little snack since I hadn't eaten, you know, for like four hours or whatever.

And then we would go do some sort of water therapy. For me, I feel so connected to water, whether it's sitting by a creek or cold plunging or sauna, swimming, whatever it is, I just feel so connected and free and safe in water.

So he would pick me up, we would go do some sort of water therapy, and then we would talk about my journey. because it really helped to verbalize what I experienced, again, to not forget it.

And then also as we would be talking about it, I would just have so many new insights that would come up throughout that process of talking about it. So Lindsay, you were telling us more about how important water is to you and I was, as you were describing that, I was thinking, wow, thus the island, right?

And that even though water was your challenge, right? Because you had to swim across to one island to the other and often feeling submerged and taken over by the weight of that water or the energy of that water overcoming and trying to, it's just very interesting how in narrative medicine or in the story of people's illness, some of the words, some of the language become so revealing of what it feels like, right?

What does that struggle feel like? I just wanted to highlight that that's an interesting metaphor you bring in, Island A and Island B, and getting to there.

So some of the practices that got you there. Tell us more about that. Water has been a theme through my whole healing journey, and it's often a theme in my journey, in my sessions as well.

So after a session, my husband and I would go have water therapy of some sort. A lot of times it looked like, you know, just sitting in the hot tub and talking or in the pool and talking or by the river and just, you know, going over my session again and getting those new insights.

And that would really help just like implant it in my brain. and give me things to think about and hearing his take and having that partner to really share the journey with because it's so hard to describe what you're doing to your friends and family because if you've never done it, it's impossible to really understand what the experience was like.

But having that partner help with that was really big. Then the days following, before I would have my next session, I really focused on the things that you all told me to do like eat healthy, get outside, get exercise, journal.

you know, anything that we talked about at the previous session could integrate my experience, I would do that. And a lot of times that was a little bit of meditation, affirmations, statements of gratitude.

And then I think the biggest one I discovered, which was a surprise to me after that very first session, and that has always continued, is this new level of awareness you have that you never had before.

And that's like awareness, just how you're navigating through your daily life, like how you exist and noticing the little things that you do, your behaviors, your thought processes.

Suddenly you're able to get outside of yourself and see it for what it really is and be like, that's why I do that. Or, oh, this is this thing that I do.

And come with that level of awareness comes like, all of a sudden I have the ability to do something about it. and I never was able to do that before.

So I think that was a big one too, is always being willing to be aware of what I was doing and how I was experiencing the world around me, and then being willing to notice it, take note of it, latch onto it, and do something about it.

And like we said before, like really just be an active participant in my healing instead of this like passive journey I thought I would get to have and not have to do much about it.

It's such a different frame that we get to have on healing itself that you're describing. It's like there's such a common idea that, oh, when you heal, something else from the outside makes you heal.

And this is like, well, no, something from the inside actually appears. you know, what was already there maybe is tapped into as a resource. And it's a journey of self-discovery, as you're describing.

And I really want to also recognize that, yeah, when you're with your partner and you're sharing that or they're noticing what's happening and they're reflecting that back to you, How does that feel?

What did that add to it? And, you know, obviously you didn't expect that to happen. How did that come about? It was reaffirming because in my mind, I'm feeling all these changes and noticing all these new things and having all these new insights.

But is that really going on externally in the world around me? You know, and hearing my husband say that he notices me thinking differently or approaching things differently or reacting differently to things.

that was really reaffirming that, oh, this is really working. It's not just in my head. It's not like a placebo effect that I'm hoping this is actually happening.

No, he's actually seeing it happen and seeing me sort of transform before his eyes. And, you know, and he says like this person that I fell in love with, you know, I got to see you just really blossom and become like who you were meant to be all this time.

And so that was that was really big. Absolutely. And so as you're embodying that new being, that new sense of self which is really reclaiming your own true sense of self.

What have you seen appearing? What is showing up for you? I think the the biggest things that showed up for me throughout all of this looking back is that like new doors were opening for me that I didn't think were there.

You know I earlier we talked about like this feeling of looking ahead into the future and not seeing anything but more sadness and more drowning and like this is never going to get better.

like suddenly I had hope and suddenly I felt like I can dream but more than that I can actually realize these dreams. I actually have the capacity to do the work to go out and discover and try and not be so afraid and like there's purpose for me that I didn't feel I had before.

This is sort of this weird sense of like selfishness when you're lost in this like depression that you're so involved in yourself and your internal experience and you know looking back it felt so selfish but now it feels like I have so much more to give that I don't have to spend so much of my mental and physical energy on staying alive I guess you know and just coping and dealing with day to day like I have so much more to give to other people and so much more I guess to give the world and to give back and pay it forward and experience and it's just like so many new things that I it's so hard to put words to sometimes for me but it's been like miraculous I guess.

You mentioned a little bit about that selfishness of depression, and it is true. I mean, the neural pathway to that self-protection, say, because trauma has occurred and there's this, I have to protect it, I have to guard it, I have to, I can't let it go.

And then, you know, that breaking through that experience of, I don't have to think that way anymore. How would you say that showed up? for you when you didn't have to think that way anymore.

What was that like? It opened so much more space for everything else that you know this person that I saw on Island B or this image I had of who I wanted to be like I finally had the space for that because it wasn't being taken up over here.

And it's weird because I need this like sense of control to feel safe. And by having this willingness to come into Shami's and just completely say, here I am, tell me what to do, and I'm giving up control for the first time in my life.

It's weird when I think back about the experience. The ketamine almost gave me back the control, but in a way that… showed me that I had the ability to make the change.

Like I had control in a whole different way instead of control as if trying to protect myself in the situation and the outcome. It was like, oh, I actually have some control over actions that I can take to change and be better and be different.

So it was this new way of like, like a more inspirational type of control. I guess you could say a more healthy version of it where I can actually go and take action.

I think back as a child and you know you play like make-believe with your friends and I always wanted to be Little Mermaid like I just loved this idea of living in the ocean and being part of ocean life and that has stuck with me like my husband calls me a mermaid all the time I feel so drawn to water I feel so at peace with it and something about I love to go paddleboarding, but I will spend half my time paddleboarding just laying on the board floating and listening to the trickling water and just closing my eyes.

It's one of the few places I actually can feel like I can be meditative. and just the feel of water against my skin. Like it's funny because we'll go swimming or something like that and then Jeremy will just be like, you just have the biggest smile on your face.

It reinvigorates, it energizes me, it just like fuels my battery to be around and in and on water and in some capacity of some sort. And I think as a child, I just love to swim, you know, I will I will swim until my parents are like, all right, that's it.

It's time to go. We have to leave now. I will be the last one out of the pool. And I still am. My husband's like, all right, you need to go. One of the concerns I had when I did your intake, there was a concern and you related to your diagnosis, right?

And maybe we talked about this, but because what I mean is indicated for treatment resistant depression. A lot of people ask, well, Ketamine is also a dissociative medication.

It's a medication that does dissociate. That's how we were trained to understand it in that way. And it is a dissociative medicine. And trauma is also a dissociative experience.

So why would one want to give a dissociative medication to somebody who has had a dissociative effect due to their trauma? And dissociation, just for the audience, is really a separation of the mind and body, right?

What does the mind do when, you know, or the body do when something bad occurs, right? If there's trauma that occurs, the response to trauma is, well, I have to even imagine I'm in a different place or I'm disconnected to my body.

I have to stay protected. I have to, you know, be always on guard in the head space. or the opposite, right? Dissociative. Some break that results because of some effect of that experience has on the body and the mind.

And then ketamine being a dissociative medication, why would one, you know, administer that? And for that question of diagnosis, right? Because the exponent, you've had extensive trauma, extensive trauma, say complex and chronic and more recent.

So some of the concerns around that Well, for me, I had to sit with that diagnosis and I recognized that, is this going to be effective? And how long is this going to, you know, what is going to be the opening that unfolds here?

And you don't want to re-traumatize. I think that's where the concern comes from is, you know, as a practitioner, you don't want to inadvertently send somebody into a space which connects them with their trauma in that way.

So then comes the, well, how do you re-associate and what is ketamine doing? Ketamine is allowing one to kind of revisit something or re-associate. you can provide another perspective or to reconnect to that dissociated art, right?

That child that was hurt, to see her, to love her. And so we get this opportunity to re-associate it to that dissociated break. And what did you feel was your re-association to your experience that you held in your body or mind?

I think in thinking about disassociating as the person with PTSD and that struggle, I see that as more of this unhealthy loop that you're in constantly and reassociating to it through disassociating with ketamine was more like breaking that loop and maybe having the ability to add more parts to it.

and being able to see it from a different perspective, see your trauma from a different perspective. You know, I think you might remember in one of my sessions, I was able to forgive my abuser and that was something I had never even like considered that I was capable of doing or that I felt I even wanted to do.

And I think going into that session, that wasn't even my intention. I had some other intention that I wanted to work on that day. But as you say, Ketamine Changed the Channel was like, nope, today this is what we're working on.

And it gave me a whole new perspective on who that individual was as a person and maybe why that person carried out the actions that they did to me for many years.

And it gave me, I guess, a new perspective on their life experience. And I had this realization that they placed them in such a powerful position and control over me and my future.

And I always said, don't let your past control your future. But here I was letting my past control my future, like my whole adult life up until recently.

When you said you forgave your abuser, what was the effect of that for you on your body or your mind or on your experience? I'm like this woman, hear me roar, I am strong now.

Like before I just felt so vulnerable and weak and like just meek, I guess, just hiding and cowering in the corner and trying, you know, everything to control my situation around me so that I didn't have to ever experience that trauma again, but I was just constantly reliving it every single day.

And then in that session, I saw this person as this infant and then I saw them as like this, you know, this bug that's on your shoulder and you just like bat away and you like squish.

And it was this, it was a really visual session, but I just remember seeing that person like stripped of their power. And suddenly I had my power back.

And in forgiving, it was almost like taking my power back and not being this vulnerable victim anymore. And it was instead like, I am strong now, I am me now, I am powerful now, and this is no longer going to dictate my future because I actually have the capacity to have control over it.

And visually in that session, I just became this huge woman standing there on earth and this other individual was just nothing. It was literally meaningless and nothingness to me.

And it was almost as if, how can I not forgive this person? They don't matter. you know what matters is like here and now and me and I just was like on top of the world you know that was the feeling that I had and in the days following it was like I remember telling my husband that I had forgiven them that person that had done that to me and he was even really surprised about it but I think he could see that just like I'm standing taller now I'm you know standing with so much more strength now it was it was a really incredible experience.

the power that somebody can have over your psyche, right, over your life. Even in abuse, that is often the way of power, whereas somebody does have that level of control over you.

And really being free from that fear or from that effect of that trauma I had on you, right, where you were really governed by something else. and having to be meek about it and scared and coward.

So I would say your trauma response was that, right? That feeling just that I don't have me. You know, I'm only here and everything else has been controlling me.

Now, who is Lindsay in her power? What is Lindsay doing? What is… where you are now and how that's been for you in the purpose and work that you're doing.

Yeah so I think before it was like it was almost as if my purpose was who do I need to mold myself into to make this other person happy and to manage their emotions and manage like what life home life is like and that transferred over even when I left that marriage that transferred over into all of my other relationships, adapting myself and molding myself into whatever that other person needed and always carrying that work and that emotional weight of doing that.

And so since forgiveness and since going through all of these journeys, it was like, I don't need to do that anymore. I get to be who I want to be, have the thoughts and feelings and actions and dreams and whatever it is that I want to have for myself.

I don't need to mold myself for other people. I can mold myself however I want to. And one of the later sessions, at the end of the journey, I had this realization that I came into Shaw Minds needing my handheld, needing healing, needing healers.

And in one of my sessions, it was like, OK, that stage is done now. You've done the work. You've been healed. And not to say that I'm completely healed.

There's still triggers. There's still symptoms. There's still work. I think to maintain where I'm at, there's still a lot of work involved with that. But it was almost as if the universe or whatever was telling me, now it's your turn to be a healer.

Now it's your turn to pay it forward. You have the strength. These life experiences have given you this special gift that I wouldn't have had otherwise to become a healer myself and be able to understand and relate to what people go through that were in my position.

So it inspired me to go back to school and become a therapist. And so I started graduate school in March of 24. And now I'm at the phase of my graduate program where I'm in internship and actually putting into practice being a therapist trainee.

Looking back, I was always interested in psychology even in high school, but I didn't really know what therapy was or that therapist was a career. I had never been exposed to that.

And then I just realized like, this is what I was always meant to do. This is what I had to have those experiences in my life so that I could be a healer myself and have the ability to be what other people needed me to be, but in a positive way, right?

And in a helpful way. And at my internship site, we're doing equine assisted psychotherapy. which has been like a really big full circle moment for me as well, not just in being the one that needed healed and now I want to help others heal, but I did my undergrad in equine science and wanted to be in the horse industry in some aspect, but never really found my place in it all this time ever since I graduated back in 2012 with that bachelor's degree.

And now this opportunity presented itself and I was like, oh wow, this is why I went to school for equine science because now I compare it with, you know, psychotherapy and have this really unique special way of helping people heal and deal with their trauma and, you know, in a really unique way that a lot of people don't get to experience.

Thank you for sharing that. It's amazing how when we open up to the path, the path kind of appears and then it all kind of makes sense, so the synchronicities and being able to see that.

Tell me a little bit about, maybe you can share a little bit about now that you're kind of stepping into the therapist realm, you know. A lot of people who come for this kind of healing have tried all the different psychotherapies have sometimes even gone to therapy and felt like every time I recall what happened to me, I get re-traumatized.

And so sometimes what we find is people were kind of burned out on therapy and they're saying, well, therapy didn't work for me or I'm too far gone. Like there's this broken story that kind of starts to form.

And so as therapists in training, what would you say to those people who are stuck there? What was your experience like of having experienced probably therapy in a different way and now having this kind of therapy?

I was somebody who hated therapy because I didn't want to talk about my trauma. Don't ask me about it. What other ways can we dance around it but not actually go there?

And I'm not a person who likes to sit on a couch in front of another person and talk. Like I'm introverted. I take time to warm up to people. I don't like the attention.

And so that was hard for me and I can see for a lot of people how it would be. And I think it's a lot like you have to shop basically to find the right therapist, to find that right.

You have to be willing to try multiple people and see who has that right connection for you. And then in going through my graduate studies, there are so many different theoretical orientations and types of therapy and ways to go about therapy.

And so I think it's about finding the one that hits home for you and really connects to who you are and what makes sense to how you view the world and how you think people heal and how you think maybe you can heal.

So for me, it was really neat to be like, you know, I don't have to sit on these couches in front of my clients to help them. I can be outdoors and we can be connecting with nature.

and we can do guided imagery about rivers, and we can pet horses, and we can learn from horses. And I think a big thing for me was realizing you don't necessarily have to talk about your trauma if you don't want to.

Some people need it. Some people need to verbalize and externalize their experiences and what happened to them, and that's the only way they are going to heal.

There's also a lot of us who that is going to be re-traumatizing and it's going to make therapy really hard if every time you go in to have therapy, you're just talking about all of your traumatic experiences and then 50 minutes later, an hour later, you're like, okay, now what?

I've been crying and I feel more depressed than when I started. You know, I think that there are ways to process and heal from our trauma without having to verbalize them.

And in my experience with equine assisted psychotherapy, that can be working with horses and seeing how your interactions with horses translates into your life in the outside world.

How do you build relationships? How do you build boundaries? And having a horse as like a co-therapist in that space with you, I can step away if you need to say something out loud about your trauma and you can say it to the horse.

You don't have to say it to me. You can tell the horse what you're afraid of, you know, what your experiences were. And it's so incredible to see that these horses lean into those clients.

They will walk up to a client, you know, having an emotional moment and just be there in presence and share that energy with that client and just create so much space for healing.

Because with the horses, they're not judgmental. I mean, I'm not judgmental, but the client doesn't necessarily trust that because I'm another human, right?

But they can trust that this horse is not going to judge who they are, what their experiences were, their shame, what they identify as, or any part of who they are.

You know, that's something you can share with an animal in a really safe space. One of the things I think that comes to mind is, as you're speaking, is that relationship.

What that relationship is like, whether that be the therapy healer, therapist-doctor, therapist-therapist relationship, I will admit I've had to learn the importance of that relationship.

I've learned as a physician and patient, there was a relationship that there was, and we talk about this in narrative medicine as well, that there's a hierarchy in that relationship, right?

Just because somebody's coming to the doctor to seek help. And of course, the doctor is supposed to know all the answers. Sometimes they don't know. We're kind of figuring out a problem together, but there's always this relationship of known what's known.

What I'm appreciating in therapy is that the therapist's relationship with the patient is almost you know, there's no judgment, there's no hierarchy. It seems to be, you know, there seems to be much more of an alliance, a connection that makes sense to the patient and to the therapist because there's an alliance of that.

And I'm seeing that and I witnessed that as well. Your coming to story is you're coming to the person that you are, where equine therapy, science, the coming towards something that brings you whole circle to something that I think you already knew.

You already knew your path, and it didn't just happen. It just was there, and you were able to see it. Synchronicity, or it showed up. It actually was there already, and you knew that process was the right combination.

I coined therapy, I coined science, and that relationship which you're describing is so revealing of kind of who you are. Yeah, I think when you're sort of lost in the depths of your experience of PTSD, you don't see the other side of it.

And I had always been drawn to like these professions of healing and helping people in some way, but I never felt I was in the right place or had the right knowledge or tools to be helpful in the way that I wanted to.

And through the healing journey, it was like it lifted the veil so that I could finally see and put all the pieces together. and see like this is what was really meant to be and it's and it was for me it was so much about like the universe is always laying a path in front of you and it's about whether or not you walk on it and I feel like when you walk on the path the universe has laid out for you it's the path of least resistance right I mean there might be a lot of work involved but when you're like no I'm going to go this way That's when things get hard and you have constant struggles and obstacles and I feel like it's like the universe is like, okay, come back to the path that has always been here, just get back on it, you know?

And with the healing journey, it was like the clouds lifted and the sun came out and it was like, oh, I can see the path again. Even as you're talking, like this idea of fragmentation, right?

Where trauma is a fragmentation, and it's a protective fragmentation. It's the psyche saying, I can't deal with what's here, so I'm just going to protect the parts I can.

And then, you know, we're going to keep moving. And then there's this kind of coming together or kind of clarifying. You know, I almost think of it as, you know, on a telescope, you know, these big telescopes that we're making right now, the lenses.

When they talk about grinding the lenses, there's a process of clarifying the lens, making it more and more and more clarified so you get the impurities out.

So there's kind of like this sense that with trauma, we have like a broken lens that we're looking through and there's a distortion field and everything looks distorted.

And then as we're doing this work and things are being clarified, there's like a cohesive story. There's a cohesive vision. that appears, that was always there, but we just couldn't see it.

And when that vision clarifies and you connect with it, it's like, oh, everything within you aligns with that sense of self, that sense that says, I know my place in the world.

I know who I am. I know what I like. I know what gives me purpose and meaning and now they all kind of are here. Yeah. I love how you described that because the trauma, it distorts your lens, right?

It distorts your worldview, how you see yourself, others, how you experience the world. It's so true. So what's the vision that's coming through? What's the clarification that you're finding?

I know you've kind of recognized the pieces and you've told us a little bit. I remember once when we did a group session, we noticed that you had even noticed a physical difference in yourself.

Like you noticed that you were standing up differently and, you know, kind of presenting differently. So yeah, what's that vision, not just of self, but who you truly are that's coming through for you?

Yeah it's like I see myself so differently now like I think about or even look back at pictures of my life before and my husband actually just talked the other day about this picture of me standing in my my first apartment after I had left that first marriage and just the sadness in my eyes like she just so sad and broken and like I don't know what to do now, but here I am.

I'm trying. I'm going to start life over again. And I've had these opportunities, as I say, to completely start life over. I got a second chance at life when I left that marriage.

And then I was like, I love horses. I'm going to go back to school for horses. I'm going to do whatever I want. I get to make my own decisions now. And then my journey through Shaw Minds was another chance at life again.

And it's like, I get to be this person that I've always knew was in there and wanted to be. And now when I look at pictures of myself, I see lightness and happiness.

And not only do I feel like I look different, I move different. Sometimes I talk about having to differentiate the symptoms of PTSD that still exist in some capacity.

And depending on my stress levels throughout my week or month or whatever, they might come up and be heightened a little bit, but also this new experience of real human emotion that I never had before.

Like I could never differentiate is this a PTSD symptom or is this a real human emotion symptom that people who've never experienced trauma also experience.

And so sometimes I have to sit back and understand like I'm just having a normal human emotion. to whatever's going on in my life. And I never had that before.

Everything was always blinded by like trauma and, you know, suffering and anxiety and depression. But sometimes you get a little blips of that just in your normal human experience.

So literally everything about my life has changed. My relationships have changed. Being able to set boundaries or being able to have confidence in myself has changed my outlook on the future.

You know, Jeremy and I love to travel and we live this life of like, work the minimal amount you need to support the life that you want to live, rather than just working yourself to death and you don't really get to experience life.

And so we do as much as possible of experiencing life every single day in whatever way we can. And I'm really excited to get through the graduate program, get through licensing, because it's such a long process to become a licensed therapist.

Two years of supervision, 3,000 clinical hours, it's a process. I'm looking forward to that process and everything I'm going to learn because every single day I leave my internship site with new like, wow, this was incredible or I learned so much from that experience.

So I'm looking forward to that learning process. And then I'm also really looking forward to having a private practice of my own in some capacity. and really implementing ecotherapy, implementing nature into that, going out on a trail for a session rather than being inside of an office room or an office space, maybe incorporating animal-assisted psychotherapy in that because I can really see that power that animals have, especially horses being empathetic beings.

and sensitive beings, and horses have their own life experience. You know, all the horses at our facility are rescued. So they have trauma. Many of them have illnesses.

Many of them have anxiety. Some of them have depression. And seeing how that is exhibited in them as individuals, they're just such a special creature to share our human experience with.

And so I'm looking forward to like figuring that out. And my experience with Shell Minds really inspired me to also want to incorporate ketamine-assisted psychotherapy in my own practice.

And that's why I'm here too, because I want to talk about my journey with ketamine-assisted psychotherapy because it saved my life. I truly believe it saved my life.

And more people need to know about it. More people need to know what it is, how it works, if it's right for them. And I think also more people need to know the work that is involved with it.

It is not a passive treatment. You have to be an active participant. So I love sharing my story and spreading the word about it so that more people hopefully have access to it.

Yeah. What would be a question now? How would you ascertain the patients should do ketamine or equine therapy? Or, you know, what type of patient would you say, you know, because I had that caution and can learn from your process that the importance of the resources and things like that.

But what would be now that you're a therapist and What would be that way that you would recognize this? Is this the right patient for ketamine or not, or something else?

I'm not sure I know that answer just yet, but I think looking back on my experience, I feel like the right person does need a mix of desperation to make this work.

It involves a lot and you have to be willing to listen to what people tell you you need to do. You have to have that openness to say, I'll do whatever you tell me and I will actually follow through and do it.

Because I think when you have depression, And at least in my experience, it's so hard to do, like do anything. You can make promises. You can say, I'll journal five times this next week, or I will go for a 30 minute walk and get out in the sun five times this week.

But you actually have to wake up and at some point during that day, do the thing. And that's one of the, I think the hardest things. to even do as someone with depression is like just existing takes so much energy.

So I feel like there has to be some level of desperation on their part to really like want to see that change and do whatever you say. And I think that an individual needs to have some sort of desire to explore.

and be open and lose that sense of control and just be open to whatever comes and hold it in their hand and say, okay, what is this? What does it look like?

What can I do with it? And make meaning of all of these different things. I think if somebody is not willing to, you have to be willing to look at your trauma, I think in a way that you never have before.

You have to be open-minded to say, maybe I'm wrong in how I've interpreted this experience or in how I'm using this experience in my life right now. And maybe I can look at it through a different lens.

There has to, I think, be that willingness in a client to do those things. But otherwise, I'm still, you know, still figuring out that journey of what it would look like in a client to be the right candidate for something like this.

But I think those things are important for sure. Well, you've obviously done the work and now putting your work into practice, both for yourself as well as for others.

And you did answer the question quite eloquently, I would say, you know, a level of desperation, right? And a willingness to, you know, to show up and a willingness, there's some things driving that, this idea of curiosity.

You know, I want to learn something, something maybe I don't have those, asking those questions, which again, when you ask those questions, that's where the neuroplastic chain starts to begin.

It really does open up that willingness, the willingness to let go, to not to say, okay, I don't know, and I'm willing to listen or willing to be guided.

I think that's an important part of trust and having trust in the process. So you definitely answered all of those questions that I think are very important and that there's something that may show up and you just don't know and you have the resources to maybe later on figure it out.

And there's an arc of the experience in which you described. So thank you for sharing that. And I think it's important for people to hear that message because obviously some people Maybe not ready now, maybe we'll be ready later, or maybe there's another option for them.

Yeah and I think you said a really important word there and that was the word trust. I think that you have to, it's so hard from my experiences with my own specific trauma to have trust in others and like full trust and like feeling safe with others and so I think that word is really important as well in a possible, a potential client to experience this is you.

you need to have some level of willingness to trust yourself with somebody else and trust your healing with somebody else and that they know that you're coming from a big place of experience and to trust the process that you're laying out for them.

And then I think also finding the ability to trust yourself because I think with certain traumatic experiences we lose the ability to trust our own intelligence or our own decisions about how we Like, I made this bad decision and it resulted in this trauma.

So how can I ever trust myself again? So I think it's really important also to learn how to establish that trust within yourself again. It truly is. The more we work in this space, we recognize that there are these themes that you both are mentioning and trust is a huge part.

And thank you for sharing that piece. It's like, yeah, to learn to get back to trusting oneself again is probably some of the hardest work there is, especially when we've lost that the way.

to that, but it's lovely and it's beautiful to hear that it can be reclaimed. Definitely. And it might look like letting go of shame and letting go of guilt and having forgiveness and forgiving yourself.

It sounds weird to say that I needed to forgive myself, but I think that's something important too. I'm going to speak a little bit about developmental effect, right?

Because this is kind of the theme of some of the quadcasts that we've been doing is that developmental break and where that happens, especially as pediatricians where we know that there's a developmental process for children as they grow, their milestones that they achieve and then the self-trust, you know, then there's the identity and then, you know, there's ericsson stages of growth and development.

What would you say was your age where trauma hit you, and what do you think happened at that point thereafter to that child? I did experience trauma at a very young age.

I have limited memories of it, but I was under probably around the age of five when I first experienced trauma. And I think when you experience trauma as a child, it really takes away the sense of like, the world is this amazing, wonderful place to explore and be safe in.

And you lose that sense of safety and then forever, I think you're just trying to find that sense of safety forever again. And depending on maybe how you develop or what your life looks like as you're getting older, it continues to impact how you look for safety or in what ways you look for safety.

And that could be in really unhealthy ways or in ways that lead to more trauma, right? And then looking back on my experiences, there were other ways in which I experienced some trauma as I was growing up throughout my childhood.

And then getting into a relationship at the age of 16 with somebody who was 21 and that turning into like, I think maybe my sense of safety was with that person or trying to find an outlet or a way out of where I had experienced my life up until that point.

And so I latched onto it and then was married in this relationship from like 16 to my mid 20s before I finally left. And then that I experienced, you know, mostly emotional and mental trauma, but I also experienced abuse, but I also experienced some physical and sexual abuse throughout that relationship as well.

So, I mean, we know that our minds are still developing until we're in our mid-20s. So in that space of like transitioning into adulthood, Like once again, I was experiencing where I would say is most of my trauma is from that age of like 16 to mid 20s is where most of my trauma happened.

And it's such an important age of self discovery and rites of passage. And after I left that relationship in my mid 20s, I looked back and I was like, I didn't have any rites of passage that a typical teenager has or a typical 18 year old or when you turn 21 or going to college, living in the dorms, having your first apartment and roommates.

I never experienced any of those rites of passage. And then they really quickly happened once I left and was trying to figure out, what do I do with my life now?

And so I can see how my upbringing and then those years between 16 and 25 taught me at that time, this is what relationships look like. This is what it is to be a wife.

This is how you navigate the world. This is who you are. It taught me about marriage, but it all taught me all these things in the wrong way, right? In a very unhealthy way.

So once I became 25, I had to then go through, I think, all that learning that I would have gone through otherwise and figure out what does a healthy relationship look like?

What does Lindsay look like to be independent? What does being an adult look like? Like, I just had all these misconceptions. I had the wrong teachers in my life I guess you could say up until that point and so I really had to like relearn everything.

I love how you brought that developmental framework because when we talk about arrested development right it's like okay something happened and then the development yes just kind of stopped but then when you were back in safety it was able to resume.

And that's something we kind of forget is that development is one of those things that can resume when it's given that space and time and energy. And so it's just this beautiful hope that I'm getting from your story.

And I hope others can also recognize that that trauma is not the be all and end all. That's not who you are. You know, I think people carry this real story within themselves.

Well, I'm my trauma. I'm broken as a result of it. and I'll never get out of it, especially childhood trauma. And so just recognizing that the human body, the mind-body space, the psyche has a self-healing capacity.

And if we can just put it back into safety, put it back into that place of growth, that it can resume, that those steps that didn't happen can happen for you.

And that brings completion and wholeness and authenticity. So thank you so much for that. Yeah and you speak about like that sense of safety is so true because my husband now, I mean we've been together 15 years, 15 years coming up in a few months and we've spent a lot of our relationship with me not feeling sense of safety because of what I brought with me from my past and I am forever grateful that that Jeremy has stuck by my side and not given up on me because he had every right to be like I need to like be in a relationship where This is not so hard.

I definitely put him through the wringer for a big part of the beginning of our marriage. He put up with a lot from me and I'm so grateful that he stuck with me because I feel like a lot of marriages go through this transition of the honeymoon phase and then things get comfortable and then sort of stagnate a lot of times.

And for us it was like tough in the beginning and then since then every year we're happier and healthier and we're best friends and we love each other so much and like our souls are just and our beings are just so intertwined with one another and he really created that sense of safety for me that I needed to be able to heal and it wasn't until even just a few years ago, that I finally was like, okay, I trust Jeremy to hold me in a safe space and not harm me like I had been harmed so many times before.

And I really agree that that sense of safety that he has created for me to just exist in was definitely needed in order to have this journey work for me.

And I don't think if I had that with him, I wouldn't have been able to make the progress that I have been able to do. Well, I think it's a combination of things that you said that I think can make this story whole.

One is you're showing up to the experience. And I can tell you, I was concerned that you wouldn't show up for the sessions. I remember telling the therapist, well, the dosing will have to be very delicate with her dosing because there's going to be, she's not going to fully go, you know, and there is this, I could see that there was some resistance there too.

And so our dosing had to be very gentle and supportive of what you're, you know, and trusting the medicine. You know, that's the rich element of this is trust the medicine, you know, yeah, really it's really about trusting yourself.

because that's all the medicine does is it just let's go of the ego a little bit and allows you to just hey just yeah just see your you are yourself the message of safety which you described came early you knew that you were unsafe as a child you were unsafe and you knew it and so you had to be that You had to be vigilant.

You had to be taking care of yourself. You had to be at the same time. And then that repeated, you know, and feeling unsafe when in a relationship that should be safe, that should just naturally be safe.

And then you were still, and then the maladaptive type of things that show up because we don't know, you know, we haven't had that experience to really know.

And we have this idea of a marriage and it's not, you know, what we know already. Yeah, I want to ask a little bit of what you meant by that, the dosing, because I think we don't talk about that piece enough.

How can we be trauma informed about the ketamine dosing, right? Because right now we're in this situation where everybody's getting access to ketamine from all these different perspectives and massive doses and everybody, you know, there's this culture of like, more is better, right?

Blast through it. And here we're talking about childhood trauma. We're talking about relational safety. And we're also saying that when you first start with a practice like Shah Minds, that it's really important for the healers, the people who are dosing you, to be very aware of what the medicine can do and to respect that, yes, starting slow, going gently, honoring that almost kind of like when you're with a horse, And the horses, you know, not tameable.

You have to take permission. You have to approach with respect and you have to establish a sense of we see each other in that same way. I feel like ketamine dosing to go gently in the perspective of trauma, to go at the pace of what the person is ready for.

I just wanted to drop that in and ask you a little bit more details, you know, as a practitioner. You know, I'm kind of curious. It's like, how did you approach that when, you know, that your own trepidation of you, you notice what was happening.

You knew that if you hit this too hard, you might find that these controlled, these protectors, right, would fight back because that's what happens is when you're vulnerable and you open up and it's too much, the protectors come back and say, no, this isn't safe.

You can't trust this. And I'm sure that has happened to many people with trauma who've gone through ketamine therapy and been scared by it. and been re-traumatized by it, right?

So just want to acknowledge that that was a really intuitive way that you approached that, and I want to bring that in. It really goes back to, I think, the ethical components of this work, and I think there's a lot to be said about ketamine.

psychedelic therapy treatments and the ethics of that and the importance of knowing that this is the right thing to do, you know, because there's a lot of things that come up for patients and providers too that could put things to question, right?

A patient doesn't feel safe in a setting and that there's a clinical kind of that approach is not really addressing the patients. set and setting in the ethical way.

So there's questions galore that come up with this. And so yes, you know, every person who I think should undergo treatments with ketamine, we need to kind of really ask those questions like, is this the right thing?

You know, and Be honest and transparent about what this might look like and allowing for that person who is experiencing to have some agency to speak to what they know already.

I believe everybody knows what they need to know. It's all there and it will show up at the right time. and trusting that process. And so there's so many ethical questions that rise up, but yes, thank you, Simi, that dosing is important.

It is, and there's a very delicate way to do that. And although there are protocols and there's research, but there's such a delicacy in how you carry through those sessions dose by dose.

Yeah. I don't see that written about a lot and I think that's really important. for us to share that, to respect where the person is, to be partnered together in that conversation.

It's like, what are you ready for? And so the person knows that I don't have anything to be scared of here. It's yet another level of safety. of, you know, this first session is going to be a little lighter.

And then, yeah, we can go to the deeper ones later. We're not going to drop you right into the deep end. And there's no benefit to doing that. It can actually harm.

Yeah, I feel like that therapeutic relationship, there's so much of it that's about alliance and collaboration that's really important to peace to focus on.

Like without that, you don't have anything else, you know? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And ketamine is a single drug that has unique experiences on everybody's process.

It's a completely unique experience for each person. And even for the same person, the next session is going to be uniquely helpful or not, but be a unique experience to your healing journey.

So as we come to a close here, one of the questions that we often ask our guests is to curiosity, the importance of curiosity. And what would be a question that you are curious about looking back with your retroscope on yourself or to this process or to us in the partnership that we have?

What would be a question you'd like to ask? What would be a curious idea or thought. I think I would look back and ask her, are you ready to have your mind blown in a way that you've never even imagined?

I think back when we're younger, we dream about our future lives as adults and we sort of imagine it in a certain way. Never in a million years The Lindsay that was five, the Lindsay that was 16, 25, the Lindsay that was Lindsay-ing like, you know, before I came to Shawmines in 2023. Like I can't even like, there's no way I could have said, here's what you're going to be doing on October 12th of 2025.

And this is what your life is going to be looking like at that point in your life. Like I would have thought you were nuts. You're crazy. Like my life is not going to look like that.

So I think I would just look back and be like, you know you know put on your your bootstraps and just be ready because you have are you ready for this because you just have no clue what this is gonna do.

I love that. I love that. Get ready because yeah there's there's this like we have these lowered expectations. And it's just lovely that you just connected with that.

It's just like, yeah, just dream big, allow yourselves, be ready. There's something big here that could happen and so beautiful to hear your story and to connect with the various parts of it and just how it's led to the next phase of your own journey as a healer.

Thank you. I really appreciate the opportunity to share about it. Thank you. I also want to say thank you for being here and making this, you know, really sharing to your pain and vulnerable moments in your life and how what you're able to discover in this conversation, right?

We talk about curiosity. Curiosity, you know, invites or, you know, discovery, right? It invites. It says, hey, come on in. I'm curious about you. You invite discovery.

And then what does discovery do? It creates, it allows for creativity to be there. So I love how this conversation has kind of opened me to be curious more about, you know, the work that you're doing and who you are and even to your your journey, the arc of your journey to be part of that.

So thank you for allowing us to have this conversation where we are able to discover more and open our minds even more. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm still curious, like, where will I be in another year?

Like, who will I be? And I don't have expectations for it. I have no clue. And I'm just open to seeing, like, where it goes. And I'm excited about that.

Thanks for joining us on the Two Curious Andy podcast. We hope today's episode inspired you to ask new questions and explore fresh perspectives. We challenge you to ask us those unasked questions that you're curious about in your medical practice, condition, health and wellness.

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Reclaiming Your Story: A Ketamine Therapy Transformation

Lindsey Phipps

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