You CAN Change The Past

This idea for this blog post has been percolating for weeks. Inspired by direct clinical transpersonal Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy-related experience, and recent deep dives into traditional shamanism. Glad to finally get around to writing it.

A provocative title, eh? Intentional. Bare/bear with me…(take your grammatical pick there).

So you’ve probably heard the saying: "Even God can’t change the past,” often attributed to Agathon, or anonymous. However you interpret this doesn’t really matter. I’m not quibbling with the literal God concept per se, if only because I don’t wish to spur on an ontological debate, or come across as claiming to know the will of God.

If only!

you can heal your life

I am however using this idea in part, firstly, as something of a sensational and sentimental homage to the late mother of self-help, Louise Hay, who titled her best known book “You Can Heal Your Life.” Long before ‘The Secret,” authored by an accomplished an infomercial producer, muddied the waters with an omission-filled, inchoate version of ancient esoteric spiritual principles for western masses hungry for Divine intervention while sitting on the couch, Louise Hay had pretty much written the book on healing thyself and manifesting already. So did others steeped in deep esoteric and mystery school traditions before her, to be fair.

Louise didn’t claim to be able to change the past, or be a spokesperson for God (People like Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell and Benny Hinn had the market cornered anyway, so why compete?). But what she did with/about the horrors of her personal past was phenomenal. And she sure found an audience. And with this, laid the foundation for an unintentional empire (Hay House Publishing) built on her subjective experience of understanding that her cancer diagnosis, in her view, was root-cause attributable to repressed emotions carried in the body, resulting from early childhood sexual abuse.

She wasn’t the first to propose this mond-body connection, of course. It’s a given in Ancient Chinese Medicine (TCM). And even Freud famously said:

“Unexpressed emotions will never die. They will come alive later in even uglier ways.”

Relatedly, like other mind-body pioneers before him, the late Dr. John E. Sarno, originator of the psychosomatic pain condition he named TMS, and author of ‘Healing Back Pain,’ and ‘The Divided Mind,’ believed that over 95% of all back pain was the result of repressed (unacknowledged/denied/stuffed or, in IFS terms ‘exiled’) emotion. He said in the documentary about his life’s work:

“All of this because of one simple idea: the fact that the mind and the body are intimately connected. That’s the whole story.”

In any case, Louise Hay was a proponent of the power of the spoken word through journaling and a kind of self-led narrative therapy. Through assisting others in a quasi counseling role as a metaphysical minister, seeing similar patterns as her own in so many, she ultimately landed on the power of the affirmation (autosuggestion) as her main tool. In fact, she claimed till her dying day to have cured her cancer solely through the power of intention, practice and repetition of well-crafted daily self-love, acceptance, healthy mind and body, and forgiveness-based affirmations.

In other words, she put “Ask, Believe, Receive” to the ultimate test. She proved it to herself and many others over many decades of metaphysical ministry, authorship, and walking the talk. And if entirely true about her cancer, I’d call it miraculous in a sense, definitely. She obviously understood how to harness God Consciousness/Divine Intelligence to the degree that she didn’t have to change the past to heal. She just committed herself to the belief that it was possible to neutralize the negative, potentially deadly effects of the past to the point of permanent cancer remission, all from the standpoint of the future-present. Again, if entirely true, miraculous.

Yet, even Jesus said:

“Greater works than these will you do”

Whose to argue?

Dr. Candace Pert, M.D., author of Molecules of Emotion said:

“The body is the subconscious mind.”

Louise Hay obviously believed this to the core of her being. And while I love the idea of affirmations/autosuggestion for healing, and I know how effective they can be in moving the needle in the right direction of a healthy mind, body and spirit, to have accomplished what she did with her terminal (or terminal appearing) health condition is next level. To accomplish things of this magnitude using the power of the mind-based positivity and repetition alone requires a near 24-7 applied mind-state and lifestyle shift that most of us lack the time, energy, will, or whatever to be able to commit to.

For many, the weight and power of unhealed trauma, inner conflicts/limiting beliefs, generational burdens and energetic blockages are simply too much for even the most potent and consistently applied affirmations on constant repeat.

energy stuck or flowinG

The power of the spoken word / the ancient art of invocation (in other words, speaking things into existence/reality) goes way back, arguably to creation itself. (“In the beginning was the word…”). And the spoken word via affirmations/autosuggestion are the basis my own energy psychology-based Subconscious Heal and Release® approach. This method provides something of a ‘hack’ in the way it precisely identifies the exact causes of our misalignments with our target goal, and offers a quick n’ dirty (and safe) way to dissolve the ‘energetic signatures’ at the root, getting us into a state of alignment with our goals—be they health, prosperity, life purpose, or virtually anything else that’s in our ‘highest and best good.’

Does this actually change the past? No. It uses the wisdom of the body (muscle testing by proxy + my own higher guidance (claricognizance/clairsentience) to source and clear the aforementioned markers of overwhelming life experiences and/or generational burdens that, from the energy psychology perspective, either creates or exacerbate subconscious- level limiting beliefs and trapped emotional energies which lead to/exacerbate states of mindbody misalignment and/or dis-ease.

Actually change the past?

So, if not even God can change the past, how can we? And what does change the past really even mean?

Here’s where a little leap of faith ability/willingness comes in handy. The first of which requires consideration of the quantum mechanical view of linear time as illusion. Meaning past/present/future not even being a thing in the way we’ve been conditioned to perceive it. In short, in quantum terms, there’s only now. All is happening now. But…maybe multiple now’s? How exactly this squares with multidimensionality and parallel universes and the multiverse theory (which quantum models seem to strongly support), I don’t know. And if past lives exist, then are they really then more simultaneous other-present lives? Beyond my pay grade.

Suffice to say, experientially, in certain realms, at certain times, under the right conditions, we can all experience this sense of only-now-ness, or timelessness. This I know. So do many dedicated meditators, shamans, mystics, saints, sages, psychedelic explorers…and some of my IFS clients especially as of late.

Internal Family Systems (IFS) as Shamanic-Based Therapy

Shamanic traditions and practices offer a corollary in shamanic journeying—to the lower, middle and upper worlds—that traditional shamans experience in the imaginal, timeless inner realm.

Imaginal, but as real as anything.

To illustrate, and as tie-in to IFS, noted trainer and author of Transcending Trauma: Healing Complex PTSD with Internal Family Systems, Dr. Frank Anderson, says:

“Imagination is a very powerful neuroplastic agent. The work we do in IFS—which is very much imaginary—absolutely has neurophysiological effects on the brain and body. Its a beautiful intersection between psychotherapy and neuroscience. And we have more evidence to show the ways they’re linked together.”

So now into the heart of this ‘change the past’ idea.

In IFS, there’s the concept of a do-over. When I first came across it, I didn’t give it special credence. But like so many things in and about this beautiful and ever-evolving model, it takes time and experience to grasp it all. I’ve been practicing IFS on/off for about 15 years and I’m still surprised and humbled by its power, efficacy and scope on the regular.

In essence, there are times doing IFS where, when working with a young, vulnerable part—getting to know it, inviting it to have us feel some of the extreme beliefs and emotions its been carrying— that we invite the part to show us a scene or memory from the past for our Self to witness. A scene or memory that helps us better understand the part, what ‘exiled’ it, and what created the burdens (wounds and extreme beliefs) this part of us carries.

The witnessing (Self to part) is powerful enough alone. Depending on the events of the scene/memory itself, we might also ask the part if it would like us (The Self) to intervene in some way—to advocate, to speak on behalf of/speak up for, or otherwise put a stop the the hurtful or frightful action within the seven/memory. Even initiate and create an entirely different outcome.

This is the aforementioned “do-over.”

Sometimes, the part does not wish for this, doesn’t believe it possible, would help, or change anything. By definition, our child parts are frozen in time at a particular age. So sometimes to them, what happened happened. It’s over. They’re just sitting there, alone, stuck holding the bag, so to speak. They have no reason to believe anything can or will change about it. Occasionally, there’s even a palpable distrust on the part’s part (yup) that’s sometimes expressed as some version of “Why now? Where were YOU then, when I needed the help??” Which is understandable. In which case, from Self, we empathize, even apologize to the part for being unaware and absent, and reiterate the offer of intervening and helping the part now.

But, when the young part has enough trust in the Self, feels open, or perhaps just feels desperate for intervention and advocacy, then the do-over can immediately commence.

Whether or not the part understands that this can and does actually rewrite/rewire the event and essentially transmute the negative/painful/traumatic effects, their willingness is what opens the door for the Self to advocate or intervene in the way was most needed then and change the entire event i.e. change the past. Once this happens, we check in on how the part experienced it, what it feels and believes now, and what other effects this had on the young part.

The effects, I will tell you, are often fucking profound. The part often completely transforms into who or what it was always meant to be/become right there as a result.

This reminds me of a Dr. Joe Dispenza saying:

“Trauma without the negative charge equals wisdom.”

“there’s No Such Thing as The Past”

Sight detour…

This line is something of a Jungian mantra. Not that Carl Jung ever said it that I know of, but modern Jungian writers and analysts say it. From this perspective, the past is always alive within us. Were always living it out, projecting it from our unconscious, enacting and re-enacting. And Jung was of course an absolute pioneer of unconscious and collective consciousness exploration, and quite familiar with the inner worlds the shamans transverse.

But Jung didn’t recognize or conceive of ‘parts’ of recognize a Self per se. He therefore didn’t directly work with them in the way we do in IFS. Jung’s complexes and archetypes were in some sense versions of what we call parts, but not living, fully-formed, transformable subpersonalities within us. Although toward the end, as revealed in The Red Book, he had quite a relationship with an wise inner elder being who identified himself as Philemon, who in IFS terms would be probably considered an Inner Spirit Helper (ISH). Not a part in the conventional IFS sense, but an accessible, internal(ized) guide, akin to an elder, that lives within, or in our ‘field,’ the way our parts can and do.

Amway, using sing active imagination, Jung worked closely with the various elements of his/the psyche, but presumably, never had the experience of unburdening or initiating a ‘do over” for any element/complex/archetype (part), and therefore like most Jungians, would be inclined to see the (hurts of) the past as repeating in the present until the unconscious is amplified, made more and more conscious, and essentially outgrown or somehow magically otherwise transformed.

Jung experimented with other adjunctive ways of creatively externally embodying and assisting in this. Presumably again, because he didn’t see and treat our complexes/archetypes/neurosis/personas as [manifestations of] parts as we do in multiplicity-based IFS.

‘May The Schwartz Be With You’

By contrast, I’ve heard Dr. Richard Schwartz, creator of IFS, say that through IFS we can absolutely change the past. The first few times, I understood what he was meaning, but that’s where it ended. It wasn’t until I began deep-diving shamanism—not just the shamanic elements of IFS (the unburdening ritual to the elements)— but the true roots, history and methods of ancient shamanism, and doing some trainings and shamanic journeys that I began to understand the implications.

It also coincided (un-coincidentally) with the arc of my post-DNOTS/psychic dismemberment (itself shamanic)/spiritual awakening-based ongoing initiation odyssey, and the shamanistic tone that began emerging through this personal work.

To elaborate, in addition to my being visited by the consciousnesses of various ascended masters, spirit guides, ministering angels, multidimensional [cosmic culture] soul family guides, saints, sages, mystics, avatars and others from time immemorial coming in to work with me in my personal meditations, suddenly, the energies of ancient shamans (South American, Siberian and European) have started to appear as my hosts/guides, deepening my understanding of things like the ephemerality of past/present/future, and the absolute truth/reality that there is no death but of the body.

All of this also greatly informs my Spiritual for Extraordinary Experience (S.E.E.) work for experiencers of the whole range of non-ordinary phenomenon.

As this has gone on, my transpersonal IFS work with my spiritually-inclined clients (and even some not so much) has gone deeper, and gotten wilder. Still safe, and incredibly healing, but just wilder. More often now spirit guides, ancestors, deceased loved ones, shamanic animals and elementals from the nature kingdom are entering the fold. My clients imaginal realm experience is taking on more and more of the qualities of this quantum timelessness experience. Its also mor4e common now to connecting to Inner Spirit Helpers (ISH) that have a fondness for imparting profound pearls of wisdom and assisting the work in subtle ways.

My view is, as long as it’s of the highest Light and reflective of Absolute Truth, we’ll take the help from anyone who desires to provide it.

And young, exiled parts, often with the assistance of the spiritual realm, are welcoming the “do-over” offer. As a result, these young parts come alive before our very eyes with a new, profound trust in the Self, a readiness to unload their burdens, leave the “past,” come into “the present” (where the Self resides) and invite in new qualities and new roles in the system.

The parts that are their protectors are more often than not surprised and pleased by the effects of the “do-over,” enabling them to consider their place in time, an unburdening of their old roles, and an update in what they do for the Self.

Verdict?

So. Can we change the past?

Whether God can, can’t, would or wouldn’t anyway, and if there’s truly no such thing as the past as some Junginans like to say, or no such thing as the past because there’s only the eternal now as ancient spiritual mystery schools and modern quantum models demonstrates, hell if I know. You tell me.

All I know is that in the Therapy Outside the Box transpersonal-imaginal-shamanic IFS space, I see young, vulnerable parts reaping the benefits of ‘do-overs’ in past events that brought great harm and saddled these young parts with extreme beliefs and emotions. And that ‘do-over-ing’ transforms the meaning and effects of the event itself for that part, often with the support and direct assistance of non-material forms in/of the hereafter/beyond the veil.

And hey, if the body (i.e. the subconscious mind) truly doesn’t know the difference between imagining being at the beach under hot sun and literally being there—if it responds physiologically just the same (it does), then I guess it’s all good, as the kids say.

If YOU are looking for a Nashville Therapist, or a Therapist in Franklin, TN and would be interested in ‘changing the past’ for some part of you, I’d LOVE to help. Back here in linear time though, I’m on a waitlist for new clients. But if Divine Timing prevails, perhaps by the time I could get you onboard, it would be perfect.

Feel free to reach out here, or contact me directly @ 615.430.2778 with questions or to get on my wait list.

Some services also available via Telehealth/Secure Video the world over (Time zone reconciliation allowing).

Peace, Love, and Imaginal Spaces,

Chris Hancock, LCSW, ACMHP

Franklin, TN

www.therapyoutsidethebox.com

One of Many Reasons I Distrust Big Pharma

Dr. Pierre Kory, MD of the FLCCC is someone whose work I’ve followed for years now. One of my pandemic-related medical heroes. Brilliant, truth seeking, unafraid to call bullshit on established norms that flow from and propagate medical/Pharma propaganda-based narratives. Does he get it all right all the time? No. No one does. But if you need a little proof of why Big Pharma (with Pfizer leading the pack) is patently untrustworthy, that is, if the intentional creation of an all but totally debunked ‘chemical imbalance theory’ of depression, a deadly opioid crisis, and the countless lawsuits all the major pharma co’s have settled isn’t enough, consider the fact that Pfizer, along with the FDA, attempted to conceal their alarming CV vax safety trial data…for 75 years. Nothing says “Trust the Science” quite like that. A judge overturned it. Aside from concealing (and publicly lying about) the robustness of natural immunity resulting from previous infection, check out this article on one of the other bombshells, from Dr. Kory’s blog:

Massive Miscarriage Rates Among Vaccinated Pregnant Women Found Buried In The Pfizer Documents

The pharmaceutical industry has committed crimes for decades, paying $30 billion in civil and criminal fines since 2000. The Pfizer documents reveal their latest criminal assault on our health.

Pierre Kory, MD, MPA

Aug 20, 2022

Let’s start with the fact the PFDA (the P is not a typo) asked a federal court for 75 years to make public the many thousands of pages of data submitted to them by Pfizer to support the EUA they (the PFDA) issued.

One interpretation of this action is that they wanted the data to stay hidden for a long time to hide fraud and/or criminality (same thing). The other is that they only had enough staff to complete this task within 75 years. Let’s ignore the 2nd one as absurd on its face (especially since they seem to be pouring out documents monthly after the judge ordered them to). Where there is a will there is a way apparently.

Now why would they want to keep the data hidden? What lies within the realm of possibilities is that at the time they went to court, they knew the EUA and the resulting massive national and global vaccine campaign were pre-determined and independent of whatever “science” emerged to support or not support the campaign. Unfortunately for them, the “science” was not supportive. At all. So they tried to suppress the serious troubling toxicity and lack of efficacy data contained within those documents.

Well the court ordered them to make public thousands of pages of documents each month. My hypothesis above seems to be validated by the uncovering of what is not just troubling, but absolutely terrifying data on the lack of safety in pregnancy. While Dr Naomi Wolf and the WarRoom/DailyClout Research Volunteers recently corrected a report that overcounted miscarriages in one section of the Pfizer documents, they are right to have early and often called attention to signals about this issue overall. Indeed in May 2022, they broke the story of another section of the Pfizer documents, in which the mortality rate of fetuses and babies of women vaccinated with Pfizer’s mRNA injection was about 80 per cent.

Now, let’s do a dive on just one page of the many thousands. See below, Section 5.3.6, Page 12 of the document called “Cumulative Analysis of Post-Authorization Adverse Event Reports.”

Looking at the first bullet under the header:

Pregnancy cases: 274 cases including:

In this paragraph, at first read, it is just a list of adverse events and numbers, detailed in a way that is confusing at best, and obfuscating at worst. I think it is the latter because, if you do some simple arithmetic trying to parse that paragraph, you end up with this:

270 pregnancies were reported in vaccinated women during the first 12 weeks of the vaccine campaign. In 238 of them, “no outcome was provided.” So, they only knew the outcome of 32 pregnancies reported. What happened in those 32 pregnancies they followed up on?

My hands are literally trembling as I write this, but here goes. In these 32 pregnancies, there were:

• 23 spontaneous abortions

• 2 spontaneous abortions with intra-uterine death

  • So, 25 of the 32 pregnancies with known outcomes resulted in a miscarriage, a rate of 78%. Note that miscarriage normally occurs in only 12-15% of pregnancies

• 2 premature births with neonatal death

• 1 spontaneous abortion with neonatal death

• 1 normal outcome

Note that this only adds up to 29 known outcomes, but then they note that “two different outcomes were reported for each twin” and then they talk about “fetus/baby cases as separate from mother cases.” I have no idea how to interpret this explanation of outcomes, so it may have been one or two less (or more) deaths then.

So, of the 32 pregnancies they knew the outcome of, 87.5% resulted in the death of the fetus or neonate. Burying this data in the way and not alerting the world to what they found, is criminal activity yet again. This is what they do and have always done when one of their novel products begins to cause death. It is just these kinds of actions that have resulted in the billions of criminal and civil fines they have paid in the last 20 years alone. They have done this with numerous newly launched medications such as Avandia, Bextra, Vioxx, and let’s not forget oxycodone. Many hundreds of thousands of deaths have resulted with the burying of adverse event and death data around newly launched products until they are caught, pay massive fines, and then carry on doing the same thing.

Check out this article reviewing their decades of criminality in which this quote appears:

While the defense industry used to be the biggest defrauder of the federal government under the False Claims Act (FCA), a law enacted in 1863 to prevent defense contractor fraud, the pharmaceutical industry has greatly overtaken the defense industry in recent years.  The pharmaceutical industry now tops not only the defense industry, but all other industries in the total amount of fraud payments for actions taken against the federal government under the False Claims Act."

This one is bigger though. And maybe why I keep hearing of a bunch of folks now starting to short their stock as they see this fraud as potentially bankrupting these companies. Maybe, maybe not. They are really good at surviving their frauds and scandals.

Further, in looking at the Pfizer documents more broadly you find so many fragmentations and obfuscations of data in the way they present the data, combined with inexplicable categorizations of deaths as unrelated to the vaccine when they could never have known that (yet should have assumed it until proven otherwise). No wonder it takes an army of volunteers months to dissect and pull out what the actual data indicates.

Now, ignoring and obfuscating the massive toxicity to the fetuses of pregnant women exposed to the vaccine also has major implications on fertility.

And this is where it gets even more horrifying. Birth rates are plummeting in many countries around the world, but the way in which they are plummeting is unprecedented. They are large drops, and they are occurring, almost like clockwork, approximately 9 months after pregnant women around the world started to be vaccinated . This is occurring after women the world over were told it is “safe and effective” in pregnancy despite the fact the trials did not include pregnant women.

Yet, in the first 12 week post-vaccine rollout surveillance report submitted by Pfizer to the PFDA, of the 270 pregnancies reported, they followed 32 of them and found a horrifying rate of fetal/neonatal deaths. Again stirs up memories of one of the most historically shocking statements ever uttered by an FDA voting member, my “friend” Eric Rubin, editor-in-chief of my favorite journal, the New England Journal of Medicine (this is a joke), “but we’re never going to learn about how safe this vaccine is unless we start giving it.” Dr. Rubin and I have a little history. In a NY Times Magazine article which partly profiled me, he was quoted as saying I “got lucky” when I testified in the Senate on the critical need for corticosteroids in hospitalized COVID patients in May of 2020, months before Oxford’s trial made it the standard of care overnight.

Well they started giving it all right. Now let’s see if there are any data to suggest the vaccines are having an impact on birth rates. Note that although birth rates can vary from year to year, and have small peaks and valleys within the year, you don’t typically see large decreases suddenly from one month to the other, in numerous countries around the world. This data is even more horrifying, some of which I obtained from Peter Imanuelson’s Substack called the Freedom Corner with Peter Sweden.

In Stockholm during the first quarter of 2022, birth rates plummeted by 14%, shocking a Professor in Demographics:

"It is a drastic and remarkable reduction beyond the usual. We have never seen anything like this before, that the bottom just falls out in just one quarter" said Gunnar Andersson, professor in demographics at Stockholm University to Dagens Nyheter.

As someone who has been witness to massive censorship, much of it voluntary (i.e self-censorship), what the Professor says next is completely expected and in-line with what is now almost two years of many leading (cowardly) scientists, researchers and physicians who have willingly avoided making conclusions that might put the vaccines in a bad light, despite the immensely disturbing data on COVID vaccine toxicity screaming from VAERS, the life insurance industry, and disability statistics since the roll-out. Here is what he says in a newspaper interview:

"It correlates exactly in time with the mass vaccination program in April, May last year. People understood that the lock downs ended and now we had to go out in the world again. Demographists in other parts of Europe see the same timing" the professor said.

His interpretation is that lockdowns ended, vaccines were provided, thus giving everyone the freedom to start newly re-exploring the world instead of making babies? Although I find this almost too absurd to explore, I will say this: Sweden never really had any significant lock-downs. I am so sick and tired of hearing idiotic alternative explanations for truly disturbing data on the vaccines. Things like “anyone can put a report into VAERS”, or “working age people died at higher rates because of unemployment and deaths of despair.” Yet in 2021, lockdowns were over, unemployment rates were at historic lows, and drug overdoses have been on a fairly constant (but not precipitous) rise for years. I could go on, but you know what I am talking about, the constant explaining away of “inconvenient truths," with my personal favorite (favorite is not the right word), the explosion in articles about Sudden Adult Death Syndrome in trying to explain all the healthy, active young people dropping dead all over the world.

Now check out Germany’s first quarter births compared to the first quarter in previous years:

Switzerland data from the Swiss Policy Research Report here:

Hungary is down 20% since the vaccine roll-out and this massive decrease was addressed by one member of parliament is this widely circulated video from the RAIR foundation. Other reports are even more shocking: Taiwan is down 27%, UK, North Dakota are reporting 12-13% declines, and Norway 6.2%. Admittedly these are a subset of countries, this is not meant to be a comprehensive analysis globally, but the month to month drop still needs explaining.

Further, disastrous impacts on fertility should not come as a surprise. Although censored, many in my network were aware of massive Facebook groups of women reporting and discussing severe menstrual irregularities as a result of these “vaccines.” These groups were shut down by Facebook. Remember, the vaccination campaign had only one enemy: “vaccine hesitancy” and our Federal government paid $1 Billion to media companies to support a favorable view of the vaccines. Massive groups of women reporting severe menstrual irregularities would drive vaccine hesitancy, so such talk must be suppressed at all costs (or minimal cost to Facebook).

We knew about the University of Illinois researchers who were trying to survey 5,000 women to study the effects on menstruation and were besieged with over 30,000 responses in like a day or two. The results were disturbing (and were either explained away as temporary or just ignored).

Google searches find many dozens of articles actually addressing the widespread menstrual irregularities reported by women but always concluding the problems were transient/temporary. But never forget the inaction, ignoring, and suppression of these data by the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG). Never forget the Infectious Disease Society of America’s (IDSA) distortion and rejecting of the immense data supporting ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. Never forget the American Neurological Association and American Heart Associations ignoring of the massive rises in strokes and heart attacks among young healthy people with no co-morbidities. Never forget the Deans of the nations’ 126 Academic Medical Centers who had to have been aware of what was happening in their University hospitals, yet said and did nothing. It is an endless list of leaders in Academic Medicine who either were cowardly or willfully complicit in the suppression and ignoring of these data or who simply fell victim to what should have been easily detectable propaganda.

I appreciate the efforts of some who explore alternative “hypotheses” to explain these suddenly dropping birth rates. Fine, prove them. Unless you can, as per the now ignored, but long standing regulatory standard, when a new medicine or device is introduced, you must first assume any adverse effects or deaths reported to be related to the intervention until proven otherwise. That is what I am doing here. We must assume the vaccines are impacting fertility unless some other provable or credible explanations for a sudden drop in month to month birth rates. So stop the shots until you can prove they are not (this would be the 189th reason to stop the shots).

Too many young people dying, too many becoming disabled, too many pregnancies resulting in fetal or neonatal death as above, and now we find out that if we continue with this vaccine obsession, they will not be replaced. This is a humanitarian catastrophe heaped atop the one caused by dangerous gain-of-function research. When will the world wake up to this rapidly unfolding horror? For those of us who know what is going on, it is hard not to feel helpless as we are forced to watch increasingly apparent and widespread needless death. But we will continue to try to get these truths out despite the massive censorship and propaganda overwhelming the globe. We have a moral and ethical obligation and take that responsibility seriously no matter what befalls us. Stop the vaccines, now. And if we can’t stop them, we must try to convince everyone we know to no longer agree to get vaccinated. Their lives and our future depend on it.

The Risks of Psychedelic Experiences: Myths and Facts

Reposting of a common question and answer guest article from the blog of Psychedelic Support Network, of which I’m a member. Enjoy!

Harm ReductionMental Health

#Healing, #Mental Health, #Psychedelic Integration, #Psychedelic Therapy, #Psychedelics

The Risks of Psychedelic Experiences: Myths and Facts

Psychedelics could bring mental health relief to millions of people. But are there risks in psychedelic experiences?

By Marie Hasty, RN

August 9, 2022

At Psychedelic Support, we’re convinced of the evidence-based potential psychedelic substances have to improve lives. But does our excitement make us overzealous about the risks of psychedelics? Let’s talk myths and facts about the risks of psychedelic experiences. 

In the last few years, psychedelics have been decriminalized in cities across the country, like: Denver, Oakland, Santa Fe, Ann Arbor, Somerville, and Washington, D.C. On top of that, Oregon has gone one step further by aiming for statewide access to psychedelics in early 2023. 

At Psychedelic Support, we’re excited about decriminalization and creating avenues for access. That’s why we’re all about empowering clinicians to confidently offer psychedelic therapy to their patients. But has our excitement about psychedelics led us to move too quickly? Are there significant risks of psychedelics that we’re overlooking? 

Many of our early ideas about psychedelic risks come from criminalization measures. Sensationalized media stories from the mid-1900s painted a scary story about psychedelics and the people who used them. Yet when we look at psychedelic’s risk from an evidence-based perspective, these reports don’t hold up. Reality is more nuanced. Here’s the evidence-based scoop. 

Do Psychedelics Cause Schizophrenia and Psychosis?

For a while now, we’ve had this cultural idea that psychedelics cause psychosis. In research during the 60’s, patients sometimes experienced psychotic symptoms lasting up to 48 hours. This was an important fear to establish when the DEA outlawed psychedelics in 1970.[1]

These early studies often did not meet the standards we require today. For example, may early studies [1]:

• Neglected to control the setting where patients took psychedelics

• Failed to exclude patients at risk for psychosis

• Did not maintain a control group

As we know now, all these factors make the results of these studies difficult to analyze at best, and irrelevant at worst. 

With what we know now, it’s clear that these adverse patient outcomes often resulted from unethical science. Patients were often given high doses of LSD without preparation, and were even restrained during their experiences. Given this context, it would appear that psychotic episodes were caused not by LSD, but by abusive research methods [1]. 

However, there are rare cases when psychedelics have caused overwhelming hallucinations. People with a history of psychotic disorders may be at a higher risk for these negative outcomes. Modern clinical trials have yet to see psychosis resulting from psychedelic medicine, but it still remains a concern for many people [1]. 

Do Psychedelics Cause Dependency?

In the 60’s, the media coined the term “period use amongst arty types”[1]. The root idea being that hallucinogens caused a specific type of substance dependence. Many believed that, since people were using them frequently, they must have a high potential for abuse. 

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V) acknowledges hallucinogen use disorder (HUD). The manual lists three categories of HUD: hallucinogen dependence, hallucinogen abuse, and other HUD. 

Yet psychedelics don’t meet the profile of other substances that cause dependency. Few people find it difficult to cut down on psychedelic use – a hallmark of pathological dependency. The bottom line is that HUD is uncommon, and there’s a low risk of people developing dependency after experiencing psychedelics [2]. The majority of people who use psychedelics are not dependent on them. 

In fact, when compared with other substances, psychedelics have very low abuse and dependency potential. In 2017, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration ranked psychedelics at the bottom of their list of dependence risk [3]. 

Psychedelic therapists should still educate themselves about abuse and how to prevent it in the rare cases when it can happen. 

Note: For more about the nuances of psychedelics abuse and dependency, check out our blog Can Psychedelics Be Abused? And How to Prevent It in Patients. 

Can Psychedelics Cause Flashbacks?

Maybe you heard in high school that LSD flashbacks can happen years after a psychedelic experience. This popular legend still persists, and has been documented in some users. But these post-experience hallucinations are not specific to psychedelics. They can also happen with other psychoactive substances, like alcohol and benzodiazepines [1].

If these hallucinations persist, they’re called Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder (HPPD). We’re still not sure how common this syndrome is. The DSM-V reports a prevalence rate of 4.2% in people who use hallucinogens [4]. However, this is even more rare in the clinical context, and we believe this is because of screening and patient preparation [1]. 

One small study seemed to show that people who experienced anxiety and panic during their psychedelic experiences were more likely to experience HPPD afterward. Because of this, symptoms of flashbacks may be more similar to a trauma response rather than residual effects from the psychedelics [5]. 

What if Patients Experience a “Bad Trip” in Therapy?

Your patients may be worried about having challenging experiences, or “bad trips,” while taking psychedelics. This can happen, although it’s more rare in the context of therapy. There’s no exact definition of this experience. Generally people describe feelings of fear, anxiety, dysphoria, and paranoia that don’t last past the acute hallucinogenic period [1]. 

Yet even these “bad trips’” may not be all bad. One 2016 survey measured outcomes from people who self-reported challenging experiences from psychedelics. 84% of this group said that they still benefited from their experiences in the long-term, despite these “bad trips” [6]. Research suggests that these unpleasant experiences are transient, and they don’t take away from the therapeutic benefits of psychedelics [7]. 

We’re still not sure why some people have negative experiences and others don’t. Some research suggests that people with high levels of openness, acceptance, and absorption may be more likely to have positive experiences. People who are more apprehensive or preoccupied may be more predisposed to “bad trips” [8]. 

To mitigate this risk, psychedelic experiences should be paired with therapy sessions and close supervision. Setting and dose should also be carefully controlled in order to decrease the likelihood of negative experiences. With time, we’ll know more about how to prevent or interpret challenging experiences in patients.

Interested in preventing bad trips with evidence-based harm reduction? Check out our free guide.  

Can People Hurt Themselves While on Psychedelics?

It’s no secret that psychedelic experiences can be emotional for people. Psychedelics can bring past trauma to the surface, and make people see the world differently. Sometimes folks are overwhelmed with their experience. If they’re unprepared, or in the wrong setting, the effects of psychedelics may cause people to act out in dangerous ways [9]. 

In rare cases, people experiencing psychedelics have jumped from buildings and did not survive [10]. This is a serious risk for people who undergo psychedelic experiences without supervision. 

Other substances such as alcohol and opiates cause thousands of deaths per year. Compared with other substances, the risk for physical harm is relatively rare [11]. 

Within psychedelic medicine, physical harm is mitigated by using safe standards of care for all patients. Establishing rapport and trust with patients before their experiences helps them feel safe. The controlled setting of supervised therapy ensures that patients can’t hurt themselves or others. That’s why proper education is vital for the success and safety of patients. 

Can You Overdose on Psychedelics?

At normal doses, psychedelics are physiologically safe. Overdoses have happened under very large doses, for example, at more than 550 times the recommended LSD dose [1, 12]. Even at these high doses, they have made full recoveries. Mixing psychedelics with other substances like alcohol can also increase the chances of toxicity [13]. 

However, in the clinical setting, dosage is set and controlled. Clinicians strictly monitor patients for physiological symptoms outside of the norm, or symptoms of overdose. Because of psychedelic medicine’s strict standards, toxicity and overdose have not occurred within the clinical setting. 

Are Psychedelics Neurotoxic?

Early, flawed research in psychedelic medicine promoted the idea that psychedelics were toxic to the brain, and could even damage chromosomes. These early conclusions were widely publicized. Unfortunately, when these ideas were disproven or retracted, the damage to public perception had already been done [1]. 

Most researchers believe that psychedelics are non-toxic. They don’t damage mammalian organs, and they’re generally physiologically safe [14]. We’ve failed to see any neurocognitive problems from contemporary research [15]. In fact, some research even suggests that psychedelics promote neuroplasticity and neurogenesis  – meaning they may actually help us build more connections and new neurons [16].  

Learn more about how psychedelics help neurons grow on our blog.

Key Takeaways About the Risks of Psychedelic Medicine

So often in medicine, we look for answers that are “right” and “wrong.” We want to give patients clear answers that don’t confuse them. 

But psychedelic medicine, like all medicine, is more complicated than that. Just like when prescribing any other medication, psychedelic clinicians must understand that one therapy won’t be useful for all patients. Every medical intervention has its risks and benefits. By dismantling old misconceptions, we hope to create a better understanding within this growing field. 

Psychedelics medicine holds the potential to change countless lives. With the right education, high standards, safety precautions, and increased research – we can mitigate the risks of psychedelic therapy in order to unlock its potential for healing. 

Want to learn more about reducing the risks of psychedelic experiences? Psychedelic Support has created a free learning course on psychedelic harm reduction. In this course, you’ll learn how to limit the harm of “bad trips” and understand the risks of psychedelic use. Sign up for this online course today!

References:

1. Schlag AK, Aday J, Salam I, Neill JC, Nutt DJ. Adverse effects of psychedelics: From anecdotes and misinformation to systematic science. J Psychopharmacol. 2022 Mar;36(3):258-272. doi: 10.1177/02698811211069100. Epub 2022 Feb 2. PMID: 35107059; PMCID: PMC8905125.

2. Shalit, N, Rehm, J, Lev-Ran, S (2019) Epidemiology of hallucinogen use in the U.S. results from the National epidemiologic survey on alcohol and related conditions III. Addictive Behaviors 89: 35–43.

3. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) (2017) Results from the 2017 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: Detailed Tables. Available at: https://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/cbhsq-reports/NSDUHDetailedTabs2017/NSDUHDetailedTabs2017.htm#lotsect1pe

4. American Psychiatric Association (APA) (2013) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). Washington, DC: APA.

5. Halpern, JH, Lerner, AG, Passie, T (2016) A review of hallucinogen persisting perception disorder (HPPD) and an exploratory study of subjects claiming symptoms of HPPD. In: Halberstadt, Vollenweider, Nichols, DE (eds) Behavioral Neurobiology of Psychedelic Drugs. Berlin; Heidelberg: Springer, pp.333–360.

6. Carbonaro, TM, Bradstreet, MP, Barrett, FS, et al. (2016) Survey study of challenging experiences after ingesting psilocybin mushrooms: Acute and enduring positive and negative consequences. Journal of Psychopharmacology 30: 1268–1278.

7. Carhart-Harris, RL, Bolstridge, M, Rucker, J, et al. (2016) Psilocybin with psychological support for treatment-resistant depression: An open-label feasibility study. The Lancet Psychiatry 3(7): 619–627.

8. Aday, JS, Davis, AK, Mitzkovitz, CM, et al. (2021) Predicting reactions to psychedelic drugs: A systematic review of states and traits related to acute drug effects. ACS Pharmacology & Translational Science 4(2): 424–435.

9. Johnson, MW, Richards, WA, Griffiths, RR (2008) Human hallucinogen research: Guidelines for safety. Journal of Psychopharmacology 22(6): 603–620.

10. Honyiglo, E, Franchi, A, Cartiser, N, et al. (2019) Unpredictable behavior under the influence of ‘magic mushrooms’: A case report and review of the literature. Journal of Forensic Sciences 64(4): 1266–1270.

11. Nutt DJ, King LA, Phillips LD; Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs. Drug harms in the UK: a multicriteria decision analysis. Lancet. 2010 Nov 6;376(9752):1558-65. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(10)61462-6. Epub 2010 Oct 29. PMID: 21036393.

12. Haden M, Woods B. LSD Overdoses: Three Case Reports. J Stud Alcohol Drugs. 2020 Jan;81(1):115-118. PMID: 32048609.

13. Van Amsterdam, J, Opperhuizen, A, Van den Brink, W (2011) Harm potential of magic mushroom use: A review. Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology 59(3): 423–429.

14. Malcolm, B, Thomas, K (2021) Serotonin toxicity of serotonergic psychedelics. Psychopharmacology. Epub ahead of print 12 July. DOI: 10.1007/s00213-021-05876-x.

15. Aday, JS, Mitzkovitz, CM, Bloesch, EK, et al. (2020b) Long-term effects of psychedelic drugs: A systematic review. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 113: 179–189.

16. Ly, C, Greb, AC, Cameron, L, et al. (2018) Psychedelics promote structural and functional neural plasticity. Cell Reports 23(11): 3170–3182.

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Marie Hasty, RN

I'm Marie Hasty - a nurse, medical copywriter, and artist living in Charlotte, North Carolina. I get to use my clinical and academic background to create accurate, readable medical copy. I am passionate about writing informative articles for patients and the community.

'These Therapists Want to Help You Trip on Shrooms and Ecstasy'

*CHRIS HANCOCK, LCSW, ACMHP D/B/A THERAPY OUTSIDE THE BOX DOES NOT RECOMMEND OR ENDORSE THE AQUISITION, USE, ABUSE OR DISTRIBUTION OF ANY ILLEGAL SUBSTANCES*

Sensational title, eh? I was recently contacted by a freelance journalist for The Daily Beast (article below) about being a therapist embracing the new psychedelic paradigm. Because I’m listed as a provider for the Psychedelic Support Network. I thought, what the hell. It was a weird conversation to enter into given that I had no idea of the angle. But I went with it. Now I’ve outed as someone who consumed a fair share of psychedelic substances in his youth. Guilty as charged! And while didn’t approach it with much mindfulness back then, inspired by Huxley’s ‘Doors of Perception,’ I was clearly searching. Now I understand far better for what. The irony is, while I do embrace the potential of psychedelics, and they’re clearly here to stay, my more recent spiritual unfoldment odyssey has allowed me more than a glimpse of what I was after all along. And my post DNOTS-awakening journey and initiatory relationships with the higher realms appears to not call for plant intermediaries at this time. I did have a profoundly harrowing ayahuasca journey some years back; one that foreshadowed the dark night to come. I’m grateful for that now. And who know what the future has in store. I have an open mind. Not so open that anything falls in, but open. Anyway, while the bulk of what was discussed is not included in this piece, I now know two things. One, Daily Beast is not above publishing stories with numerous typos :> Two, I apparently have green eyes. One of these is verifiably true. I’ll leave it to you to determine which. To be absolutely clear, I do not practice psychedelic-assisted therapy in the conventional sense. Meaning, no one’s coming to my home office or meeting with me via telehealth tripping their balls off and having me guide them or talk them down off a ledge. For now at least, I leave that to professional trip sitters and research study personnel. What I provide in this area is assistance in pre-psychedelic discernment, preparation, post journey processing, recovery and integration, as well as support for people considering or already microdosing for medicinal, supplemental mental health and consciousness expansion purposes. In any case, enjoy…

These Therapists Want to Help You Trip on Shrooms and Ecstasy

MAGICAL MYSTERY MIND

With the growing popularity of psychedelics, therapists are popping up to guide patients on their inner trips—they just can’t help score the drugs. (Yet.)

Nick Keppler

Updated Aug. 13, 2022 10:48PM ET / Published Aug. 13, 2022 8:37PM ET

Laying in a bed in Bellevue Hospital with a blindfold over her eyes, Bronya saw the dragon. As her body metabolized the psilocybin, a hallucinogenic mushroom extract, the 55-year-old home health aide then somehow was inside the beast, resting in its belly like a baby in the womb as it flew over mountains.

They arrived at what Bronya can only remember as a vast “fleshy thing, it was like flabs of pinkish tissue.” She pushed herself through. It enveloped her and she found herself in a dark cavern. There she saw a batch of glistening eggs. She was encased in a womb for the second time during the trip. It was a reverse birth. One of the eggs transmitted a message to her: The egg was her, from another time and dimension, and she wanted to be born.

The vision contrasted with a notion she carried for decades. “I often thought it would be better if I had been never born,” said Bronya (a pseudonym). She grew up in Eastern Europe with cold and distant parents. She emigrated to New York City for a job as a translator. The job ended. The city was a lonely place. Her depression caused brain fog, sapped her of desire or ambition and stoked self-loathing. She used alcohol to get by, sipping down half a bottle worth of…

Click here to read the rest…

Transpersonal IFS, Synchronicity, & 'Compassionate Depossession' PT2

Assuming you’re familiar with what I discussed in PT1, onto the most recent of the high strangeness occurring in Therapy Outside the Box two weeks ago.

And I’m writing this on Sunday 8/7, in fits and spurts, between walking around the lake with a friend, talking to my daughter about dating, dump runs, meditating, helping my other daughter write a biography, and attending an online Meetup on mircodosing. So this might not be the most cohesive post! But if I don’t get it done today it won’t happen. And I’ll be seeing this client again this week, so I’m as eager to finish this and follow up with him as I know he is to revisit what occurred and see what happens next.

Here goes…

RECAP—Days prior to the session I’m about to describe, completed a web-based training on Shamanism and Psychotherapy (IFS), hosted by two lead trainers in the IFS model. One of those, Robert Falconer, discussed his accidental ascent into the weird offshoot of what in IFS we are unattached burdens. These are not parts of us in the conventional IFS sense, but something other. Entities, if you will, that can become attached to us (in my view on the etheric level) as a result of our susceptibility during times of extreme trauma, or any circumstance or event that leaves us feeling utterly powerless. Of course indigenous cultures practicing various forms of shamanism have understood this for an eon. In any case, Falconer became convinced of the reality of this phenomenon after a profound experience encountering and ultimately helping to release someone from one of these unattached burdens that, by the persons own description, changed the entire course of her life. Because he was the first therapist in a long line to both 1) take the idea of an attachment seriously and 2) actually help release it.

Despite much guff, some ridicule and ostracization by those in the psychotherapy and the mainstream IFS community, he felt compelled to forge ahead into this area. He continues to help others do the same, and is soon to release a book about this phenomenon titled ‘The Other Ones.’ I can’t wait.

So anyway here I am, fresh off some of my own increasingly weird but beautiful clinical happenings (detailed in PT1), fresh off this training that made me aware of the neo-shamanic spirit release method called ‘compassionate depossession’ that Falconer has borrowed from, and my deciding to apply for training in it by one of its founders, Betsy Bergstrom.

Then, the following happened:

RELEVANT BACKGROUND—My client is a male in his 40’s. I’ve been seeing him for a few months and for this session we agreed to go further into my transpersonal approach to Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS). We did one introductory IFS session some weeks back. Our work before and since have been largely Integrative Counseling, and one or two Energy Psychology (Subconscious Heal and Release®) sessions, all aimed at helping him navigate and ultimately accept the likely end of a gut wrenching on/off romantic relationship. One that commenced not very long after a 15 or so year highly dramatic and toxic marriage ending in divorce. That was with someone who, by this individual’s account, would regularly decompensate into horrifying, rage-induced dissociative breakdowns marked aggressive, frightening mood/affect changes, deep, seemingly unnatural guttural vocal sounds, occasional exclamations of being something other than who she is/non-human, and odd/unusual physical behavior. All of which no intervention could control or bring to a halt until it ran its course.

You can probably see where this is going.

The ending of the current relationship, one overlaid with much of the unprocessed pain and rescuer-based dynamics of the former, was coffin nailed so to speak the week before by an unexpected final communication following a painfully long silence. Whatever the contents of it by the now official ex, it left the client in a state of acute despairing about his own unforeseen psychological dynamics, relational patterns, and family of origin traumas/attachment wounds that have co-created the downfall of his romantic endeavors to date. A bitter pill to be sure. But one that led him to commit to bringing the focus back to himself—to accessing, understanding and bringing compassionate healing and relief to his own wounded and hyper-protective parts.

THE SESSION—After some revisiting of the impact of the death knell communication from the now official ex, with eyes wide open as to the depth of his own pain, and his ability to distance from it via romantic rescuing and ‘achievement bypassing,’ we settled in. Establishing an intention for this IFS session, we agreed to hold it loosely, allowing for whatever may arise (foreshadowing if there ever was). We called in and called upon ancestors, guides, masters, angels, archangels, spirt and totem animals, helping spirits and elementals to join, support, assist, guide, and direct. Off we went.

Right away the client became aware of tightness in the heart area, accompanied by a stabbing sensation, and a ‘funnel imagery’. My intuition/guidance seemed to suggest this was a protector part, although it wasn’t entirely clear. (Meaningful, as it turns out). Then there was a part the client felt was suspicious of this part. ‘Suspicious, but okay.’ This part seemed to respond to a request to make space. Thus far, more or less standard IFS.

As the client returned his focus to what he noticed in the heart, he said he got that it was ‘hurting, and scared.’ Then something about ‘rejection, not being wanted,’ and that it had ‘been here for too long.’ At this point I’m still intuiting that this is what in IFS we would consider a protector part.

It’s gets stranger then when I suggest asking this part its age. “2 years old,” he says. That’s awfully young for a protector part, in my experience. Two would most certainly be a younger, or ‘exile’ part, as its called in IFS. When I suggest the client ask the part how old it thinks you are he gets “I don’t even know who you are,’ …but then, strnagely, the part seemed to warm up, the client said.

Now that’s unusual. Because a part saying it doesn’t even know (the person) it usually results in the part receding, or it becomes less clear, or goes silent. It doesn’t warm up or come closer. I asked the client to just stay with the part, and then (as I probably should have done sooner) asked the client the magic, penultimate IFS question, which is:

“How do feel toward this part right now?”

[In IFS, this is the Self-Energy detecting question. It’s what tells us how much Self is present, as opposed to other parts being in the way of the connection we hope to establish between the Self and the part we’re endeavoring to help. If the response is anything other than things like “I feel curious about it, open to it, sorry for it, or like I want to help it, then we assume it’s another part describing how it feels toward the (target) part. We then acknowledge that part, tell it we get that, and ask it to step out and make space. And that’s usually what happens].

Not this time…

HOLY F*&#K—In response to the magic question, I begin to get a sense of why things weren’t quite adding up. The client, fortunately a highly spiritually aware and adept seeker, super well-read and studied in various schools of philosophical and spiritual traditions of east and west including deep esoteric and ceremonial magic practices, suddenly looks some combination of surprised, scared, and yet, poised.

Amazing, considering what came out of his mouth next.

“Um, there’s this…a dark being…an overlord…right here. It’s…demonic. (My intuitive guidance via up/down head nod confirms the entirely of the statement. I breathe, and doublecheck: affirmative.). I literally hear myself think Holy F@*k. I ask that alarmed part of me to step back, and remind myself to hold steady, trust, have faith, and stay with it.

To my amazement, the client then confidently says: “Wait, I know what this is…I invited him in.”

I intuitively knew he didn’t mean intentionally.

He goes on to describe that he knows this things came in during his marriage to his highly unstable ex. Specifically as result of the many, many attempts at containing and preventing his ex from harming herself or him during the aforementioned ragefully dissociative breakdowns.

In these, he’s stating now, while he thought he was essentially safe playing the role of rescuer/therapist/shaman/exorcist, so to speak, he was…and the entity apparently gleefully confirmed this…that he was being manipulated, tricked, controlled, essentially possessed to some degree.

The client then says: “His name is [something like] Ackanoizan”(sp?).

As I’m observing, attempting to remain focused and in Self, as if for comedic, dramatic effect on the part of Mother Nature, it literally begins storming outside (?!?!?!).

Having no idea what’s next, I start reaffirming the presence of the Highest and Holiest, calling in by name the biggest guns I can think of—The Christ, Holy Spirit, Mother Mary, Archangel Michael, Elohim, my Ascended Master guide Saint Germain, Babaji, and The Great White Brotherhood.

Not that I’m surprised, but I tell you, the already palpable white light energy in the room ramped up.

The call was clearly being answered.

COMPASSIONATE (SELF) DEPOSSESSION—As mentioned prior, I had just recently completed a training in shamanism and IFS, and decided to train in ‘compassionate depossession.’ Before I get the chance, here I am facing a Mack Daddy of a dark, apparently demonic unattached burden :>

It’s at this point that we get to the meat and potatoes. Yet I cannot even provide a descriptive accounting of what transpired next. Because honestly, it was all the client.

Drawing upon his own resources, intuition, intelligence, spiritual knowledge and wisdom, and without a doubt the assistance of the Highest and Holiest Emissaries of The Divine, the client initiated his own compassionate depossession process. Maybe a little lighter on the compassion than I would have led with, but effective nonetheless. The outcome is what matters.

All I can really say is that for the last 15-20 minutes or so, lightning and thunder crashing outside, as I prayed and held space, I simply observed while the client silently engaged his full strength of energy, power, faith and conviction in his own ability and/or will to release the entity.

At what appeared to be the finale, I see the client’s head slowly rise, his chest puff up and out slightly, and his countenance begin to shift. Once his face was upright and in line with mine, I shit you not, I half expected to see him open his eyes to reveal sheer, empty blackness and the expression of a man demonically possessed. Fully incorporated, as they say.

At this very moment, I noticed a palpable wave of intense fear pass me by. Not wash over me. Not as if attempting to enter me. And not from within. Rather, as if something was moving through the room, exiting, and I was just privy to the felt sense of its negative energetic nature on the way out.

The client then looked up at me with clear eyes, a surprisingly relaxed smile, an unspoken “whoa,” and simply said:

“It’s gone.”

Long exhales.

CONCLUSION—Already far over time, we marveled and took stock of what occurred. The client said there just came a point where he knew what to do, or what he must attempt to do. He drew on the classical wisdom that suggests when dealing with such phenomenon—especially something identifying as demonic—that you must get their name. Keep demanding it. Once he got it, it gave him confidence to attempt to release it by any means necessary. His description was such that he simply gathered his power, harnessed all the energy he had, and essentially mind-forced the thing out.

I believe this is exactly what he did. And that this entity was the fearful energy I felt pass me by prior to his eyes opening, at the end of this seemingly accidental, though synchronistic compassionate depossession process we found ourselves in on this day.

When I asked about the 2 year old part, the client felt that this was actually a decoy—a ruse on the part of the entity to lure him in, and to get his attention. Which would make sense given the anomalies I was experiencing in the lead up to the fireworks. (To date, I’ve never met a 2 yr old protective part of anyone. Protectors are usually at least a few years older than that).

My sense is that my guidance chose not to prematurely alert me to the fact that this was a decoy (if in fact it was) or that there was an entity/other situation at play. It was likely for the client to realize it himself. In other words, I trust that there was a rhyme and reason to it unfolding as it did. The outcome is probably the best evidence for this.

Perhaps also, the entity, whatever the hell it was, may have underestimated the power of the individual he attached to to be fearless, confront, and ultimately kick it out. Either that, or it sorely underestimated the power of the Highest and Holiest forces, or didn’t think we’d have the sense to call in the big guns. Perhaps all of this. Who knows.

Before wrapping up, we agreed to keep in touch over the next few days by email or otherwise if needed.

He beat me to the punch the following morning:

“Yesterday evening and this morning I am feeling more clear headed and focused than I have in a long time.”

I followed with:

“Fantastic _______. I've just begun documenting the experience. Only as far as definition of terms: IFS, unattached burdens, compassionate depossession. Checked in with my guidance about it early this morning and got confirmation that all is well, that what we believed happened actually did, and what we thought that entity to be is exactly correct. As well as your take on from where, when, why and how it came into your system. More power to you for staying fearless, grounded, and intuitively knowing exactly what to do. You did the heavy lifting. If you can do that, what can't you do? Best is yet to come.”

He responded:

“Thank you for your feedback and encouragement. I too checked-in this morning to verify. I got a strong confirmation. I believe this type of internalized exogenous part is more common than I think people realize. I can see how IFS dovetails into the intersection of what parts are of the primary constellation and what entities, deamons, intended or unintended homunculus' have docked inside our non-primary constellation unaware. Humans are always doing magic. Whether they are asleep at the wheel or not matters not. I feel open, light, clear, positive and grounded. I feel strength, motivation, courage and compassion. I can feel a part of me has been restored and the channel to my higher-self has been unclogged. Indeed. Best is yet to come.”

“There’s an Outside the Box Solution for Every Problem.”

Godspeed.

Chris Hancock, LCSW, ACMHP

www.therapyoutsidethebox.com

chris@therapyoutsidethebox.com

Franklin, TN

615.430.2778

Transpersonal IFS, Synchronicity, & 'Compassionate Depossession' PT1

I had a wild and undeniably synchronistic last week of Therapy Outside the Box. It came to head in a session which I’ll detail in PT 2, after some more processing. In the meantime I’ll set the stage, and try to present this in layman’s language as much as possible.

On that note, a few definitions of terms:

INTERNAL FAMILY SYSTEM THERAPY (IFS)—A revolutionary, de-pathologizing, compassionate, shamanic-based, comprehensive therapy, life practice, and spiritual path. I discovered IFS in 2006 and have been studying and practicing it on and off ever since. At this point, with how the model has evolved, and its natural crossover with the shamanic and transpersonal and my own unfolding spiritual odyssey, I’m all in. Anyhow, IFS views our inner system/psyche as naturally multiple; both one and many, made up of 1) A core Self—the undamaged, eternal, infinitely whole healing essence within all of us, as has been written about in the great spiritual traditions for an eon. And 2) Parts (aka subpersonalities). Parts become psychically separated from the Self, mainly as a result of trauma and attachment wounds early on. Some parts carry old pain and extreme beliefs (called burdens in IFS) while others inhabit managerial roles to protect both the Self and the vulnerable parts from being exposed to more hurt. The larger goal of IFS is harmony amongst our parts, unburdening the pain and extreme beliefs our vulnerable parts carry, relieving our protective parts of the need to hyper-protect and take on newer, more updated roles, and increased trust in the Self to lead.

The qualities of Self (The 8 C’s) are: calm, curiosity, courage, confident, compassion, clarity, creativity, and connectedness.

An important ‘off-label’ concept in IFS—central to what this post series is about— is the concept of unattached burdens. These are considered to be something ‘other.’ Not originally parts of us, but things, constructs, energies— entities of unknow origin, and for all we know vast, multiple varieties. These are entities that become attached to the person (on the etheric body level I believe) with the permission of a part or parts, usually in times of extreme trauma, distress, or vulnerability resulting from overt abuse, surgery, or near-death experiences.

According to IFS lead trainer Robert Falconer, who specializes in releasing unattached burdens, these entities persuade [parts of us] to allow entrance with the promise of power to the powerless, or power in times of helplessness. We’ll get more into this with the case example to follow in PT 2. For now, note the synchronistic Divine Timing of my recent exploration into this territory, culminating in the case example to come.

You can’t make this shit up. Well, I guess you can. But no need when it happens on its own for real.

Back to definition of terms:

COMPASSIONATE DEPOSSESSION—A neo-shamanic term coined by a buddhist-trained shamanic practitioner named Betsy Bergstrom who developed this modern, non-adversarial approach to dealing with all forms of attached suffering beings. This type of spirit-release work can include the depossession of so-called ‘demonic,’ shadow beings, and extra-terrestrial (ET) entities. It’s a kinder, gentler, no-drama way of helping a spirit move towards the light. In this view, if a person who has experienced soul loss or other serious traumas have become a host to suffering beings or entities, these beings may live off of that person's energy and influence them in a variety of ways. Illness, depression, substance abuse, phobias, emotional problems, suicidal tendencies and other issues may be in part due to the influence or overshadowing of entities that have attached to the person. These beings may be people whose own experience at the time of death has become compromised in such a way that they did not successfully make their own journey to the Light.

Compassionate Depossession benefits both the person and the entity from whatever reality the being comes from. Akin to the Catholic Rite of Exorcism, but without the formality, pomp and circumstance, and with non-judgement and compassion (obviously) replacing reliance on aggression, command, authority and forceful banishment of the religious approach. One that’s often led to great harm to the individual and performing priest/exorcist alike.

SOME BACKGROUND—As you may know if you follow my blog or my Instagram, I’ve been in a post-spiritual emergence(y)/Dark Night of the Soul/Spirit Guide/Ascended Master-led initiation for a few years now. In surviving, surrendering, and integrating the experience, I was graced with a kind of claircognizant/clairsentient capacity. I’m also being prepared to become some type of channel, or so my ongoing spirit communion meditations seem to suggest. All of this is what led to my transition from more or less conventional therapist to nearly giving it all up entirely, to my re-emergence/rebranding as Therapy Outside the Box. What’s clear now is that I was always meant to go full woo woo (in the most grounded and still clinical way possible, of course ;) with my life’s work. Apparently, it took me experiencing a full on mid-life, to-the-knees-breakdown and (thankfully temporary) descent into madness to wake me up to it. Better late than never. And now the farther I go with courage, trust, faith, patience and surrender to The Divine and The Divine Plan, the more outside the box things get, with no agenda or forcing on my part. It’s fucking beautiful, honestly. I’m in awe. As they say here in the south, I’m blessed.

Anyway, as I’ve been forging ahead in curating and applying my transpersonal IFS approach, there have been a number of spontaneously shamanic, mediumistic, even psychopompic occurrences as of late. [A ‘psychopomp' is one, usually a shaman, or hermetic figure classically, who guides the spirits of the dead to the afterlife or the otherworld. In some religions, psychopomps can be creatures, spirits, angels, or deities whose responsibility is to escort newly deceased souls from Earth to the afterlife]. These occurrences have come about simply as a result of myself and my clients together formally inviting the Divine, The Christ, Holy Spirit, Archangels, Guides, Ministering Angels, Masters, ancestors, crossed over loved ones, spirit and shamanic power animals into the fold at the start of each session—to assist, enlighten, guide, direct and facilitate healing in whatever way is in the highest and best good. ‘And so it is.’

STAGE SETTING EXAMPLES:

Recently, in the middle of an otherwise straightforward IFS session, there emerged the appearance of a client’s spirit animal (A wise old wolf in this case). The wolf came through suddenly and clearly to the client with a PROFOUND, life-altering message, then proceeded to chaperone the retrieval of a young vulnerable part into the present and help guide the shamanic unburdening/transmuting of the younger part’s wounds and extreme beliefs into fire. Extraordinary.

In another case, confirmed by my higher guidance, with a young, precocious, highly intelligent and psychically advanced client who is what’s called a *‘soul walk-in’ from age 12, we’ve experienced on more than one occasion thus far the intervention of spirit guides, elementals, and cosmic/galactic culture guides, making for quite uncommon happenings with the shamanic-based IFS process. [*A soul “walk-in” is considered a higher soul, other than the original soul, that enters in the body as a result of a prior deal/contract. The original soul returns to higher dimensions while the higher soul uses the body for a new destiny]. In this individual’s case, we believe there’s a variation at play. Our understanding, again confirmed by my guidance, is that members of this individual’s soul pod (group soul) came in at age 12, in dramatic fashion, for specific reasons, some connected to the client’s difficult family dynamics, and that did not in this case include the departure of the original soul. More like an addition. Talk about multiplicity! :>

On two other occasions with a different client, immediately upon beginning the IFS process, after calling in the ‘highest and holiest,’ guides, ancestors and loved ones, etc, what I can only describe as spontaneous mediumistic visitations, or after-death communications, (ADC’s) took place. Meaning, one of the client’s crossed-over loved ones came right through with a peaceful presence, and a few uplifting, freeing messages. It was unmistakably real, natural, and healing for the client. This presence was viscerally felt, recognized, and unquestionably accepted as the consciousness of the deceased. All I can say is that is was definitely not a part, not the clients Self , and most certainly not an unattached burden/entity. No question.

In the next session, the second of two loved ones appeared, in stark contrast to those before, in a state of quiet distress—trapped between walls, seemingly dazed, in a state of suspension. My own guidance helped me intuit that this loved one was here not to provide validation of well being, or encourage my client’s being at peace, like the prior visitors had. This loved one came in need of help— to begin facing and accepting the very fact of his crossing over. And this made sense based on what we’d discussed about the circumstances of his life and passing. The client went with it, took my que, and functioned in this case as a both medium and psychopomp—providing context, validation, and ultimately freeing the loved one from the liminal/bardo state he’s been stuck in since passing, on to wherever his soul is meant to proceed from there. By the end, the walls gave way, he stood up straighter, and simply wandered off, as if exploring his ability to be spiritually mobile for the first time since shedding the body.

Of note is that for all my woo woo and personal spiritual goings on, I’m not a medium or psychopomp, nor intending to become any of these. And neither is this client. This person has no particular spiritual leanings or practice! This was an organic, but welcomed occurrence. One that’s brought about a unique and unexpected sense of healing and peace. The beginning of real closure in regards to the multiple losses incurred.

In PT 2, after I’ve gathered more of my thoughts and checked in some more with my higher guidance to be sure I’ve sufficiently understood to the degree that I can what occurred, I’ll be detailing the strangest of the strange to date: A case of unplanned and unexpected ‘compassionate depossession’ of a foreboding, imposing, dark unattached burden/entity occurring in a session literally two days after completely a training on Shamanism and IFS with a focus on unattached burdens in which I learned of the concept of ‘compassionate depossession’ and had just decided to apply for training in the method.

Stay tuned…

Pharmaceutical Industry and the Corruption of the Medical Evidence Base

In light of recent growing awareness and cultural acceptance of the all-but-totally-debunked ‘serotonin theory;’ i.e. ‘chemical imbalance’ theory as the root cause of depression, such as is being reported by many reputable sources like these. Of course, there are other brain chemicals-neurotransmitters- involved in the relative stability or instability of our mood, emotions and mental health. It’s not all about serotonin. Never was. But Prozac Nation as it were really began with the promulgation of the unproven serotonin theory. In any case, this article I’m reposting from the website of the new documentary Medicating Normal exposes the basis of the conflicts of interest, propaganda, and all out kabuki theatre in service of manufacturing public consent that is the playbook of the pharmaceutical industrial complex marketing machine. This is especially true with respect to it’s infiltration of psychiatry, where new diagnostic categories/labels are made up and voted into existence by a panel of DSM committee members,100% of whom have stock in major pharmaceutical companies. (Conflict of interest much?). The way Big Pharma has corrupted and hijacked the mainstream medical system—from research to education, continuing education, to health care service delivery, not to mention their stranglehold on Big Tech, legacy media, the FDA, CDC, and other major institutions, it’s as astonishing as it is insidiously corrupt. While there IS definitely an appropriate time, place and use of medications including psychotropics for mental health, how it’s become the first line of attack based on evidence-lacking, unproven, unscientific profit-driven theories is beyond the pale. In other words, the following is a taste of how the sausages are made. Thankfully, and no coincidence that it’s happening in the midst of the new psychedelic medicine paradigm, little by little the public at large is waking up to it.

For deeper dives, read Pharma by Gerald Posner, Empire of Pain, by Patrick Radden Keefe, Drug Dealer, M.D. by Anna Lembke, or Anatomy of an Epidemic, by Robert Whitaker, as well as those cited at the end.

The Pharmaceutical Industry and the Corruption of the Medical Evidence Base

A Brief Overview

Patients believe that the practice of medicine is based on evidence and good science. Doctors and other health professionals are assumed to prescribe treatments and medications according to the findings of research and clinical trials which prove that these treatments work. Good practice of medicine involves balancing the risks and benefits of treatment, and telling patients about those risks and benefits so patients can make informed decisions about their health.

But what happens when the evidence base is corrupted? Doctors and patients alike may be misled into believing that there are more benefits, and fewer risks, than is actually the case. Most medical research is financed by pharmaceutical companies, and this creates a conflict of interest whereby many studies and clinical trials are intentionally designed to make drugs look good by exaggerating benefits and ignoring side effects, even when severe.

Ghostwriting is one primary method the pharmaceutical industry uses to manipulate the evidence base. This tactic involves misleading the scientific community and the public about who conducted a study. In this practice, employees of the pharmaceutical company are tasked with designing a study that will find a positive effect for their drug—a process which can involve several unethical or controversial research methods—and then writing a paper that spins any negative results into a positive finding. Finally, influential academic psychiatrists but who had nothing to do with the study are asked to put their name on it – as if they had conducted and written it themselves. In some cases, they are not even allowed to see the actual data, even if they ask for it. The study is then submitted to medical journals with the name of the prominent psychiatrist as the authors.

Important psychiatrists at medical schools and teaching hospitals are paid large amounts of money to be consultants and speakers for pharmaceutical companies. These payments can amount to hundreds of thousands–even millions–of dollars a year. Obviously these psychiatrists, who are on the payroll of pharmaceutical companies, and whose research is funded by these companies, can’t practice true objective science. Independent researchers have found that studies written by industry employees (or even by researchers who have received money from pharmaceutical companies) are likely to over-report benefits, under-report harms, and spin negative outcome data to make it appear positive.

A further problem is that the medical journals, and the peer review process, which are supposed to be the gatekeepers of science, also have serious conflicts of interest. Many of the doctors and researchers who do the peer review are also paid consultants of pharmaceutical companies. Furthermore, a large part of the income of medical journals comes from selling “reprints” of articles to pharmaceutical companies for the drug reps to hand out to doctors. The former editor of the top-tier medical journal, New England Journal of Medicine, Marcia Angell, has written a book and many editorials about this problem. The former editor of the prestigious British Medical Journal has also spoken out about medical journals cannot be honest gatekeepers.

The clinical trials can be biased by design and otherwise be used to provide unreliable information. Below are a few examples:

Hiding adverse effects: The easiest way to do this is just not to ask if your patients had side effects. If you don’t have the data, you can’t report it. You can also hide it in tables or supplemental materials. For example, many antidepressants are extremely effective in suppressing sexual desire and causing sexual dysfunction, (while only slightly effective or not at all in elevating mood and well-being). But this side effect is not looked for in studies, so it’s not found.

Using withdrawal effects to indicate that a drug is effective: This common strategy involves taking the group of patients who are enrolled in a clinical trial, and making all of them go off their psych meds for a few days (wash out period) before being started on the new drug. The patients immediately get worse as many of them experience severe withdrawal symptoms. Then when the same patients are started on the new drug, and another group is started on a placebo, the group on the new drug do better as it alleviates their withdrawal symptoms while the placebo group continues to experience withdrawal. The new drug looks great compared to the placebo.

Statistical significance to hide clinical meaninglessness: A tiny statistical difference between two groups (one on the drug, one taking the placebo) is used to indicate that the drug is effective—even when it translates to a clinically meaningless change.  Antidepressants are repeatedly found to generate a less than 2-point difference from placebo on a 52-point scale, but this is used to suggest that they are “significantly effective.”

Short Term Studies: Psychotropic drugs, particularly the benzodiazepines and the stimulant drugs, do actually “work” in the short term. An anti-anxiety medication like lorazepam will make someone feel calm, and alleviate panic for example. But when taken everyday, these drugs will likely cause problems. Many people will develop tolerance– the drug may stop working, the person will need higher and higher doses, and if they stop they will likely experience severe withdrawal. For this very reason, the studies used to justify the use of stimulants and benzodiazepines are mostly short term studies.

Publication bias is another problem that distorts the medical evidence base. Pharmaceutical companies finance most medical research but when the researchers find negative results, they simply don’t publish them. For instance, a company will finance ten studies of an antipsychotic drug, with slightly different trial designs. Let’s say seven of them find no effect of the drug, but three of them find a small positive effect. You simply send only the three positive studies to scientific journals for publication. The other seven studies just disappear. Doctors only read the three positive studies, and they believe the evidence is unanimously in favor of the drug!

And at the end of a convoluted trail of money and corrupted science is the doctor, who relies on the drug reps (working for the pharmaceutical company) to inform him about new treatments and their risks and benefits. Doctors are required to attend CME, Continuing Medical Education, which is often funded by pharmaceutical companies and consists of paid doctor-consultants giving lectures about the benefits of new drugs. The non-profit Pharmed Out at Georgetown University has numerous articles about the problem of industry sponsored Continuing Medical Education.

The justice system has repeatedly found that the pharmaceutical industry engages in illegal practices to corrupt the evidence base. Numerous pharmaceutical companies have been forced to pay out millions of dollars in fines and settlements after court cases uncovered illegal research and marketing practices. The best books on the issue of corruption of the evidence base in psychiatry are Psychiatry Under the Influence by Robert Whitaker and Lisa Cosgrove, The Truth about the Drug Companies by Marcia Angell, and Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime by Peter Gotzsche.

Expanded Mental Health Services Won’t Stop Mass Shootings

Came across this guest article in Mad in America. As I’ve discussed in a prior blog in an older version of my website, and more recently on my Instagram, I wrote an impassioned, now obviously utterly naïve paper back in grad school (1999) about the Columbine school shooting. In that paper (long destroyed in a flood) I waxed poetic about gun education, gun safety, gun control, mental health AND the possible unseen role of psychiatric medication effects in the cases of the Columbine gunmen, as it was (quietly) revealed at the time that they had both taken and/or were currently on psychotropic meds at the time of the shootings. Never in a million fucking years did I think that two decades later school shootings and mass shootings in general would be as American as apple pie, retail therapy, and popping pills. But here we are. I feel fortunate my own children made it out of High School alive. What a thing to have to say?! Anyway, I continue to smell a rat in the form of psychiatric medication effects as being endemic to this phenomenon, starting with post ‘Prozac Nation’ Columbine. So while the mainstream press continues to hypnotize, politicize, propagandize, polarize and divide us in their typical ways on this and other pervasive societal ills, I’m focused still on the eerily absent though far from accidentally shall-not-be-mentioned boogeyman, i.e. the likely troubling role of psych med effects in these massacres.

Shout out to writer Megan Wildhood and Mad in America.

Expanded Mental Health Services Won’t Stop Mass Shootings

Megan Wildhood

June 25th, 2020

First published by Mad in America

In the 23 years since the Columbine High School massacre, the school shooting in an affluent, formerly unknown suburb of Denver, Colorado (my hometown) that put school shootings on the map, gun laws have become looser and looser despite victims’ efforts for stricter laws. SCOTUS ruled yesterday to continue the expansion of gun rights exactly one month after the Uvalde shooting that claimed 19 lives, most of them elementary school students. While this post doesn’t directly address gun laws, it’s about another topic related to mass violence: the increasing demand by the public for “expanded access” to “mental health services” as a way to stop mass shootings.

I won’t go over the growing list of most recent mass shootings in America, likely because, by the time I think I’m done, there will be another one. The reason I’d bet on it is that, on the day of the shooting at a hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma earlier this month, which was perpetrated by a man who’d been released from surgery the day of the Uvalde shooting in Texas, I was sitting with a friend at a restaurant thinking to myself that Oklahoma hadn’t had a shooting in quite a while that I know of and, running down the list of places mass shootings have happened, I didn’t think we’d had a shooting at a hospital. An hour after I got home, I heard the news of the Tulsa shooting.

One might argue that thoughts like the ones I was having are quite morbid, and that would be part of the reason I’m writing this. The friend I was having lunch with the day of the Tulsa shooting was in Oklahoma City when the bombing happened in 1995, close enough to feel every floor of the federal building collapse. I am from Littleton, Colorado—everyone I’ve ever talked to after 1999 knows what I’m going to say next—where the Columbine High School shooting happened; I was less than ten minutes away in middle school and I didn’t realize until 20 years later that my peers and I were the first kids to experience the school lockdown. Provoked by the shooting in Buffalo followed quickly by the shooting in Texas, my friend and I were discussing what it’s like to be so close to a famous true-crime incident and how it colors the way you think forever, in ways you don’t realize until decades later.

I was old enough in 1999 to remember everything about what I experienced on April 20, 1999, but I was not old enough to understand hardly any of it, and there was much about the Columbine shootings that, despite things like being best friends with the daughter of the chief of police of Littleton at the time, being taken to the memorials every year I remained in Littleton afterward, attending the protest gathering of the NRA rally they decided to hold in Denver ten days after the shootings, and knowing two of the Columbine victims, I didn’t learn or really understand the implications until recently (as in, more than two decades after the shooting). Like the fact that it wasn’t “supposed” to be a shooting; it was “supposed” to be a bombing a la Oklahoma City, just four years prior at that point. The media, the adults around me and, increasingly, my peers, were firing blame in all directions: violent movies (The Matrix was still in theaters at the time of the Columbine shootings), first-person shooter video games, bad parenting, psych meds—the discussion was not just about gun control and mental health.

My point is not to argue about gun legislation but to marvel at just how complex, nuanced, and broad the conversations were after Columbine, and just how narrow—and honestly vicious and abusive—the conversations about mass shootings are today.

For example, the only place online that I could talk about my misgivings about the demand for expanded access to mental health “services” for kids as a response to the increase in mass shootings without being verbally assaulted was in a private group dedicated to talking about the Columbine shootings. That’s probably because one of the students who was badly injured in the shootings initially sued the manufacturer of the drug that was found in the system of one of the shooters at the time of his death, alleging the drug’s dangerous effects on the thoughts and feelings of the person taking it. In other words, the black-box warnings on an increasing number of medications that reads “may cause suicidal or homicidal thoughts.” And yet, even when drug companies openly admit that their products may in fact cause murderous thoughts, our culture not only fails to include this fact, as well as the known (and the fact that there are unknown) risks of psych meds in the conversation about expanded access to mental health care, but attacks and silences anyone who even asks if we can take a look at the possibility that they might play a role.

The Stockholm Syndrome to Big Pharma is wild. Prescriptions of psychiatric medications, including to children, are skyrocketing even as access to talk therapy (as problematic as THAT is as well) is in some ways decreasing, and mass shootings seem to be increasing. Of course there are many factors that play into mass murder, but the fact remains that I still have heard no good reason for why I’m instantly shut down almost everywhere online and in this culture when I ask the question about what role products that are labeled with warnings that they may cause thoughts about murder might play in mass murder. I’m not saying there definitely is a connection—there may well not be—but we can’t even have a reasonable discussion about it. In my experience, the conversation is instantly shut down by defensive people on medication or overzealous mental health “advocates” with claims like “I’ve been on such-and-such antidepressant for years and I’ve never thought about killing anyone” and “mental illness does not cause violence.” I agree, and despite the problematic use of the term “mental illness,” which is not defined, so does at least one scientific study. Why, then, do we think that expanding access to mental health services will reduce mass violence?

Because it’s not about reducing anything, but rather expanding the market for pharmaceutical products. You don’t get to have it both ways: you can’t claim that kids getting easier access to mental health treatment has anything to do with reducing school shootings and also that mental illness does not cause violence. “Easier access” to mental health treatment is likely to translate to getting more kids in front of more prescribers to produce more lifetime customers, with the added benefit of starting them even earlier so they’ll be with Big Pharma for longer.

Violence is just a convenient proxy for Big Pharma to force markets open for itself where there are not legitimate ones. Whether medicating children definitely produces school shooters or not, expanding access to mental health “treatment” as a way to reduce mass shootings is like asking a thief to draw the floor plans to your house. They may get the job done, at least by all appearances, but the only benefit they’re concerned about is their own.

What makes all of this even worse is that those who are calling for easier mental health branding—I mean, “access” and “treatment”—probably sincerely believe that mental health treatment, whatever they mean by it, will actually help. They are not in on the “secret” that the mental health industry, the psychiatry industry, and the psychology industry use “helping” and “caring” about mental and emotional wellness as marketing schemes only. Their business models would not be profitable nor sustainable if they were truly “helping” people, which, of course, they and their industries (rather than the individuals receiving said “treatment”) get to define and apply further and further across the board. They think that, if only these troubled people who open fire on masses of strangers or their peers got “help,” they wouldn’t go through with their murderous plans.

Charles Whitman, also known as the Texas Tower Sniper, sought consultations with multiple doctors and psychiatrists because he knew something was wrong, even up to three months before he opened fire from a tower on the University of Texas at Austin campus on August 1, 1966, killing 17 and wounding 31 others. He requested an autopsy be done on him after his death to see if anything biological may have contributed to his obsessive homicidal thoughts; a tumor was found in his brain after police shot and killed him to end his shooting spree; there was disagreement among doctors about whether the tumor contributed significantly to his actions. The point is that he sought help multiple times from multiple people, including the mental health system, because he himself knew something was wrong.

On the other end of the spectrum, Columbine shooter Eric Harris wrote in detail in his journals about how “mankind needs to die” and gushed angrily about his desire to “kill mankind.” Even if talking about how mankind being alive makes him feel would have helped Eric sufficiently process his murderous rage, how far would mental health treatment need to be “expanded” to get him to a) attend in the first place and b) tell the truth. I realize that this is just one story (and, to be sure, the Columbine shooting remains singular in history for multiple reasons, not least because it’s the only one that involved two shooters) but, if there are statistically significant numbers of would-be mass shooters being detected and prevented from carrying out their plans by the mental health system while also not being harmed by the system, I have yet to see them.

This is not intended to be a debate about whether some people are savable or helpable or not. Nor is this about definitive conclusions on any side. This is about the sloppy, contradictory, too-easy “logic” of the widespread and uncritical call for expanded mental health services/treatment/access after (yet another) mass shooting. What the widespread demand for expanded access to mental health services tells me is that the majority of the culture still thinks traditional mental health services are good, or at least potentially helpful, which means they haven’t truly thought through the consequences of more and more people, especially young people, coming under the grips of it.

If ‘mental illness’ doesn’t cause violence, yet we need to expand mental health services as one way of reducing mass shootings, what problem are we trying to solve? After Columbine, we talked about a lot of possible culprits, but we did not talk about expanding mental health services. As I mentioned, we in fact talked about, among other things, reducing a certain aspect of mental health services, that of medication—which many people claiming to be advocates get almost literally up in arms about the nanosecond it’s suggested. Expanding mental health services would probably not reduce the use of psych meds.

“Expand access to mental health care” sounds like a nice rallying cry, though. It’s tough to argue with on the surface; you sound like you just want kids to toughen up and people to fend for themselves. The thing is that, when it came to Columbine, I did just that. I didn’t talk to any adult about Columbine until I was an adult (so at least seven years after the shootings) and the only time I talked to any of my friends about it when I was still a kid was the day it happened. We got released from hours of lockdown (that word was used in retrospect; during the event, we were not once told that “lockdown” was what was happening) and my friend’s mom came to pick us up. We walked into her house and saw the part of the live coverage that is now known as “the boy in the window”: Patrick Ireland struggling to escape from the second-floor library window that had been shot out and falling into the arms of the Denver SWOT team, who were standing on top of an ambulance. We had no idea what was going on; at one point, my friend recognized the aquamarine glass of Columbine High School but we quickly ruled that out because “they don’t have guns at schools.

It wasn’t optimal to be confused about Columbine for years and to be unaware of its deep effects on my thinking and how I saw people, the world, myself, and the future. But, as an adult a generation later, I’ve started to understand for myself the shootings at Columbine and my proximity to them as a seventh-grader in spite of the years of therapy I had. In fact, I had “easy” access to mental health care my entire life and literally none of the five therapists I saw ever once asked me about Columbine when I mentioned I grew up in Littleton or when I said things that I am realizing now were conclusions I drew during lockdown on April 20th, 1999. I am just one person, of course, and there are survivors of the shootings, including people who were shot and horribly wounded but lived that day, that have mentioned benefiting from therapy in their 20-year-anniversary interviews.

But that’s a different scenario than postulating therapists as preventers of violence. Given that there are a growing number of survivors of the mental health industrial complex, therapy as a one-size-fits-all prophylactic for mass shootings is more wishful thinking (largely out of ignorance of how the mental health system actually works) than useful suggestion. But this would include the ability to have a candid, respectful conversation about the dangers of psych meds without canceling, shutting down or ridiculing people we disagree with, and we are farther away from that than we were in the days after Columbine.

Nashville Voyager Magazine Feature

Pretty cool to get a local spotlight. Very honored.

Life & Work with Chris Hancock, LCSW of Franklin

Today we’d like to introduce you to Chris Hancock of Therapy Outside the Box

Hi Chris, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.

“Thank you! I really appreciate this opportunity. Well, I grew up on suburban Long Island. But my father was raised in a small town in South Georgia, so my affinity for the South runs deep! I feel totally at home here. Growing up it was really all about music. So much so that after graduating college, I reunited with old mates and we gave it go up in Boston, MA. We achieved a modicum of success through the 90’s recording two records, one for a major label, and doing a good bit of touring. But the lifestyle and the malarkey of the industry left me cold. I made my exit in 1997 to answer a loudening soul call to something higher. I returned to New York, got into therapy (again), and began taking classes. The first 10 minutes of my very first class in human development confirmed I was exactly where I was supposed to be…

Click here to read the whole story!

'There is Nothing that is not Spirit'

Lead me from the unreal to the real; Lead me from darkness to light; Lead me from death to immortality.

—Brihadaranyaka-Upanishad

“There is Nothing that is not Spirit”

Does that title not captivate you? Transfix you? Instantly resonate as truth in your bones? If not, no need to read further. But if so…

Slight digression first. So I’ve been reflecting a lot lately on Selfhood. The concept of the personal and eternal Universal Self that’s been wrestled with by various schools of eastern and western philosophy and psychology, eastern and western religious and spiritual traditions for an aeon. Modern psychologically speaking, Self—as defined and utilized as the undamaged, infinite, eternal healing essence and agent of change via Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS)— is my biggest practical focal point as of late. Dr. Richard Schwartz (developer of IFS) turned 30 some years ago to the treasure trove of eastern spiritual wisdom to inform and amplify his own clinically-informed multiplicity of mind/polypsychicsm-based conception of Self, as distinct from the many separate but interconnected ‘parts’ (subpersonalities) within us all that hold the story of our pain (trauma) and protect us in a myriad of ways from real or imagined further pain (re-traumatization).

As a longtime seeker of eastern spiritual and esoteric knowledge, in tandem with the post-dark night of the soul spirit-led initiation process I’ve found myself in over the last years (ostensibly preparing me to become some type of intuitive and/or trance-voice channel), I’ve been on a mad spree of collecting up choice, vintage spiritual writings. This, in an effort to continue often complicating, but ultimately hopefully deepening and integrating my understanding of how spirituality, personal (gnostic) spiritual experience, Selfhood, psyche, and healing converge.

Currently I’m finding inspiration in a book titled Mysticism, a Study and an Anthology, by F.C. Happold, published first in 1963. The following are some select passages from the chapter entitled “There is Nothing that is not Spirit” (hence the blog title) which draws upon on The Upanishads, the concluding portion of The Vedas, the oldest sacred literature of Hinduism, composed from about 1500 to 100 B.C.

The way Self is articulated, i.e. the various poetic yet matter of fact descriptions of its transcendent potential, inseparability from (notably masculinized) Godhead, and its eternality, is purely resonant music to my soul (if my soul had ears, that is). As is the way the sheer ineffability of the All That There Is—the Lord of All—is portrayed. For many, I imagine, this would create anxiety. Terror even. For me it brings quiet comfort. Which can only mean intuitive resonance with a deep, eternal, yet non-conscious knowing.

Select passages below are taken from The Ten Principal Upanishads, and were beautifully and clearly put into English by Shree Purohit Swami ands the Irish poet, W.B. Yeats (The Macmillan Company (first published in 1937 by Faber and Faber Ltd).

Enjoy…

The Self is one. Unmoving, it moves faster than the mind. The senses lag, but Self runs ahead.

Unmoving, it outruns pursuit. Out of Self comes the breath that is the life of all things. Unmoving, it moves; is far away, yet near; within all; outside all.

The Self is everywhere, without a body, without a shape, whole, pure, wise, all knowing, far shining, self-depending, all transcending; in the eternal procession assigning to every period it’s proper duty.

-From the Isha-Upanishad

***

The Self knows all, is not born, does not die, is not the effect of any cause; is eternal, self-existent, imperishable, ancient. How can the killing of the body kill Him?

He who thinks that he kills, he who thinks that He is killed, is ignorant. He does not kill nor is He killed.

The Self is lesser than the least, greater than the greatest. He lives in all hearts.

The individual Self and the universal Self, living in the heart, like shade and light, though beyond enjoyment, enjoy the result of action. All say this, all who know Spirit…

…Eternal creation is a tree, with roots above, branches on the ground; pure eternal Spirit, living in all things and beyond whom none can go; that is Self.

-From the Katha-Upansishad

***

There is nothing that is not Sprit. The personal self is the impersonal Spirit.

The Self is the lord of all; inhabitant of the hearts of all. He is the source of all; creator and dissolver of all things. There is nothing He does not know. He is not knowable by perception, turned inward or outward, nor by both combined. He is neither that which is known, nor that which is not known, nor is He the sum of all that which might be known. He cannot be seen, grasped, bargained with. He is undefinable, unthinkable, indescribable.

-From the Mandookya-Upanishad

***

This Self is nearer than all else; dearer than son, dearer than wealth, dearer than anything. If a man call anything dearer than Self, say that he will lose what is dear; of a certainty he will lose it; for Self is God [!]. Therefore one should worship Self as Love. Who worships Self as Love, his love never shall perish…

-From the Brihadaranyaka-Upanishad

***

In this body, in this town of Spirit, there is a little house shaped like a lotus. And in that house there is a little space. One should know what is there.

What is there? Why is it so important?

There is as much in that little space within the heart as there is in the whole world outside. Heaven, earth, fire, wind, sun, moon, lightning, starts; whatever is and whatever is not, everything is there.

If everything is in man’s body, every being, every desire, what remains when old age comes, when decay begins, when the body fails?

What lies in that space does not decay when the body decays, nor fall when the body falls. That space is the home of Spirit. Every desire is there. Self is there, beyond decay and death; sin and sorrow; hunger and thirst; His aim truth; His will truth.

-From the Chhandogya-Upanishad

Pax, Godspeed!

Chris Hancock, LCSW, ACMHP

www.therapyoutsidethebox.com

chris@therapyoutsidethebox.com

@therapyoutsidethebox

Franklin, TN

615.430.2778

Confirmed: The Jab Increases Risk of Infection (NEJM)

I know, ‘hot button’ topic. Take a breath. And let me say first that I’m sharing this for three reasons. None of which have anything to do with being provocative, polemical, or medically polarizing (pro-vax/anti-vax):

1) Though this results of the study referenced here (and recent others like it) were arrived at by the highly respected New England Journal of Medicine, much like the FOIA Pfizer data dump (i.e. the vaccine trial data Pfizer wanted hidden for 70 years but was court ordered to release) it will likely never make the mainstream news. Because it runs counter to the big pharma-controlled dominant mainstream narrative. As does the fact that the Moderna shot is apparently banned in several countries. You probably haven’t seen that on the news either. (Follow the money trail…).

2) I trust you, the reader, to take in new information, vet sources, apply discernment, and arrive at your own conclusions. This is ‘the age of information.’ Yet post-2020 (cum 1984) so much is auto-censored and auto-labeled mis/disinformation, most immediately and fervently when it counters the highly profitable mainstream narrative. Just consider the litany of claims about the dire necessity and efficacy of these non-sterilizing vaccines from the beginning till now. See if you can even keep up with how many of them have been proven false/inaccurate.

3) This and other similar conclusions based on recent studies echo what I’ve been anecdotally hearing, seeing (the vaxxed + boosted getting Covid multiple times) and what I’ve understood to date about the virus/vaccine from many brilliant though lesser known (some completely silenced) non-big pharma and/or government payroll vaccine scientists, immunologists, virologists, epidemiologists, and evolutionary biologists— especially concerning the rushed and woefully problematic nature of the mass vaccination campaign.

Decide for yourself. As I see it, the fact that conclusions like these are coming out of NEJM (and another similar one below via JAMA) makes this the latest chapter in the grand wake up call. We’ve been sold a bill of goods.

Shall we wake, or remain asleep?

Blue pill or red?

Up to each of us.

Question, at least, absolutely everything, I say.

"Conspiracy Theory" Confirmed: Covid Jabs INCREASES Risk of Infection According to New England Journal of Medicine

This isn't new information to those who have been paying close attention, but the fact that it's finally getting acknowledged by a highly respected medical journal is a breakthrough.

JD Rucker

Jun 21, 2022

Several recent studies have indicated the Covid-19 vaccines actually increase the risk of contracting the disease over time, but these studies have been ignored or even debunked by corporate media and Big Pharma for months. Now, they'll have to contend with a new study published in the highly respected New England Journal of Medicine.

This study was huge in scale, sifting through data collected from over 100,000 people infected by the Omicron variant. It lends credibility to the statistical significance of the findings, which are absolutely startling. Here are the key points:

• Those who have been "fully vaccinated" with two shots from Moderna or Pfizer are more likely to contract Covid-19 than those who have not been vaccinated at all

• Booster shots offer protection approximately equal to natural immunity, but the benefits wane after 2-5 months

• Natural immunity lasts for at least 300-days, which is the length of the study; it likely lasts much longer

This jibes with the current narrative coming from Big Pharma and their minions in government and corporate media that the jabs are supposed to mitigate the effects. But even that claim has been called into question as recent studies indicate the vaccinated may be dying even more than the unvaccinated. According to The Exposé:

The Government of Canada has confirmed that the vaccinated population account for 4 in every 5 Covid-19 deaths to have occurred across the country since the middle of February 2022, and 70% of those deaths have been among the triple vaccinated population.

Despite the scope of the study and the credibility of the source, it will not receive any attention from corporate media. It is imperative that our readers get the word out because this is an absolute narrative-buster for Big Pharma. Now more than ever, we must alert the people of the truth because we are on the verge of seeing millions of children under the age of five-years-old injected.

The good news is we've seen more vaccinated people becoming receptive to the truth. That's anecdotal, based on what I'm seeing online and the correspondence I receive, but I believe there are more people who are becoming skeptical of governments' unhinged push for universal vaccinations. If we can share more news that will keep them from getting boosted, and more importantly keep them from jabbing their children, then it's a worthwhile effort.

If this is, as I believe, part of a nefarious plan to control people and enact the globalist elites' depopulation agenda, then it behooves us to prevent as many people as possible from getting boosted. The science seems to indicate more shots mean more damage, so limiting exposure is important. We're going to need allies if things continue down this road. The fewer booster-addicted Americans, the better.

Here are the details regarding the news study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in an article by Marina Zhang from our news partners at The Epoch Times:

Vaccination Increases Risk of COVID-19, But Infection Without Vaccination Gives Immunity: Study

Having two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine has been linked with negative protection against the disease, scientists say, while a previous infection without vaccination offers around 50 percent immunity, according to a study analyzing the Omicron wave in Qatar.

The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine on June 15, examined the Omicron wave in Qatar that occurred from around December 2021 to February 2022, comparing vaccination rates and immunity among more than 100,000 Omicron infected and non-infected individuals.

The authors of the study found that those who had a prior infection but no vaccination had a 46.1 and 50 percent immunity against the two subvariants of the Omicron variant, even at an interval of more than 300 days since the previous infection.

However, individuals who received two doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine but had no previous infection, were found with negative immunity against both BA.1 and BA.2 Omicron subvariants, indicating an increased risk of contracting COVID-19 than an average person.

Over six months after getting two doses of the Pfizer vaccine, immunity against any Omicron infection dropped to -3.4 percent. But for two doses of the Moderna vaccine, immunity against any Omicron infection dropped to -10.3 percent after more than six months since the last injection.

Though the authors reported that three doses of the Pfizer vaccine increased immunity to over 50 percent, this was measured just over 40 days after the third vaccination, which is a very short interval. In comparison, natural immunity persisted at around 50 percent when measured over 300 days after the previous infection, while immunity levels fell to negative figures 270 days after the second dose of vaccine.

These figures indicate a risk of waning immunity for the third vaccine dose as time progresses.

The findings are supported by another recent study from Israel that also found natural immunity waned significantly more slowly compared to artificial, or vaccinated, immunity. The study found that both natural and artificial immunity waned over time.

Individuals that were previously infected but not vaccinated had half the risks of reinfection as compared to those that were vaccinated with two doses but not infected.

“Natural immunity wins again,” Dr. Martin Adel Makary, a public policy researcher at Johns Hopkins University, wrote on Twitter, referring to the Israeli study.

“Among persons who had been previously infected with SARS-CoV-2, protection against reinfection decreased as the time increased,” the authors concluded, “however, this protection was higher” than protection conferred in the same time interval through two doses of the vaccine.

Enrico Trigoso contributed to this report.

Here’s another referencing a peer-reviewed study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) as reported by Nexus Newsfeed.com on the same theme…

Pfizer and Moderna jabs are useless at protecting against Covid

Neither the Pfizer nor Moderna mRNA vaccines are effective at protecting against COVID

by Thomas Lambert

Studies have found that both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines offer almost no long-term protection against COVID-19, particularly with the Omicron variant.

According to a peer-reviewed study published in JAMA Network Open in May, neutralizing antibodies provided by the Pfizer vaccine rapidly declined only weeks after patients received their second and third doses.

“Our study found a rapid decline in Omicron-specific serum neutralizing antibody titers only a few weeks after the second and third doses of BNT162b2,” researchers write.

As per the study, relative to the Delta variant, Omicron-specific neutralizing antibody responses “declined rapidly” from 76.2 per cent during the fourth week down to 53.3 per cent by weeks 8 to 10 and then dropped down to 18.9 per cent by weeks 12 to 14.

In other words, almost all protection provided by the Pfizer vaccine was gone after three months.

“A limitation of our study is that its cross-sectional design precludes evaluation of antibody decrease rates on an individual level. Nevertheless, the observed decrease in population neutralizing antibody titers corresponds to the decrease in vaccine efficacy against polymerase chain reaction–confirmed Omicron infection in Denmark and symptomatic Omicron infection in the United Kingdom.”

Researchers continue, saying that any immunity conferred by the Pfizer vaccine is “transient” before curiously suggesting that people may need to receive even more “transient” booster doses. “Taken together, vaccine-induced protective antibody responses following a second and third dose of BNT162b2 are transient, and additional booster doses may be necessary, particularly in older people; however, conserved T-cell immunity and non-neutralizing antibodies may still provide protection against hospitalization and death,” researchers say.

These findings are similar to those found in a study on the Moderna vaccine, which showed that those inoculated with Moderna’s mRNA vaccine are more likely to be reinfected, possibly indefinitely, than those who acquire natural immunity.

As per the study, researchers analyzing the vaccine efficacy of Moderna looked at 1,789 participants (1,298 placebo recipients and 491 vaccine recipients) that were 18 years old or older with no known history of SARS-CoV-2 infection and at appreciable risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection and/or high risk of severe Covid-19. They ultimately found that those not inoculated with Moderna had more antibodies after being infected than those who received the vaccine.

“Among participants in the mRNA-1273 vaccine efficacy trial with PCR-confirmed Covid-19, anti-nucleocapsid antibody seroconversion at the time of study unblinding (median 53 days post-diagnosis and 149 days post-enrollment) occurred in 40% of the mRNA-1273 vaccine recipients vs. 93% of the placebo recipients, a significant difference,” the researchers conclude.

According to Children’s Health Defense, “Anti-nucleocapsid antibodies are antibodies specific to the nucleocapsid portion of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the virus responsible for COVID-19.”

They further report that the findings suggest that those who received the Moderna vaccine are more likely to be reinfected, perhaps “indefinitely.”

“The authors’ findings, which are corroborated by U.K. data that demonstrate the rates of infection are significantly higher in the vaccinated, suggest Moderna knew of this safety signal in 2020 when the vaccine maker was conducting its trials,” writes Children’s Health Defense.

“…. Specifically, the study implies that the reduced ability of a vaccinated individual to produce antibodies to other portions of the virus may lead to a greater risk of future infections in the vaccinated compared to the unvaccinated.”

Overall, the researchers’ findings suggest that natural infection is likely to provide more robust protection when an individual is exposed to COVID-19 in the future.

As for AstraZeneca, waning vaccine efficacy is also a significant defect of the jab.

Reporting on a study published in The Lancet, the University of Edinburgh says, “In Scotland, when compared with two weeks after receiving a second dose, there was approximately a fivefold increase in the chance of being hospitalized or dying from Covid-19 nearly five months after being double vaccinated.”

“The decline in effectiveness begins to first appear at around three months, when the risk of hospitalization and death is double that of two weeks after the second dose, experts say.”

“The risk increases threefold just short of four months after the second vaccine dose. Similar numbers were seen for Brazil.”

But what about the Johnson & Johnson vaccine? Surely at least one of the big four COVID vaccines offers decent protection for more than half a year. Unfortunately, nope!

The Johnson and Johnson vaccine provides, perhaps, the worst level of long-term protection.

According to a study published by the medRxiv, vaccine efficacy drops from 88 per cent to just 3 per cent after six months, reports Medical and Life Sciences News.

Not one of the four most widely distributed vaccines provides adequate long-term protection.

On 'Vibration'

The following is an article included in a course I did recently on Kundalini, Bioenergy, and Awakening, by Integrative Mental Health For You (IMHU). While the very terms ‘vibration,’ ‘frequency,’ ‘alignment,’ and of course ‘energy’ can set off eye rolls, chuckles, or judgmental woo woo alarms in many people, its wise to look beyond our cultural conditioning and consider what’s really meant by such concepts, and how they can be practically applied. For instance, I’ve found over the last three years of offering my intuitively-guided Subconscious Heal and Release® energy psychology-based healing and alignment approach, that it is exponentially more (perceptibly, viscerally, and practically) effective the higher one’s baseline vibration. I’ve come to understand that when I consult my higher guidance as to whether a prospective client and myself are ‘in alignment’ to work together (“Is it in the highest and best good?”), when I get a ‘no,’ what it means essentially is that we are not, at the time of inquiry, a vibrational match. Presumably because the inquirer is resonating predominantly with the thoughts, emotions and behavior of lower energy/vibration/frequency than is required, which would amount to little or no perceivable benefit from a mind, body, spirit and energy psych-based therapy. Particularly, as I state on the page description about this approach, unhealthy/extreme levels doubt or skepticism, cynicism, jadedness, and/or a strong victim consciousness identification, are sure fire rule-outs. Meaning, one has to be resonating at a reasonably—not perfect— but reasonably high level to perceive benefit. What that means to me otherwise is that a person at a low level of vibration is being dominated by the hidden pain of their exiled (most vulnerable, usually child) ‘parts,’ and hypervigilantly managed by their fierce managerial/protector ‘parts,’ a la Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS), which I also offer.

In any case, if you would benefit from a ‘punch list’ of descriptions highlighting the differences between low and high states, read below, and enjoy!

Do You Have a “Low” or “High Vibration”? 

There are 63 Signs To Look For

We’ve heard the phrases many times before … “Man, he has a really negative vibe,” “That place had AMAZING energy,” “She’s so energetic.” Yet few of us ever really stop to fathom the depths of these common expressions and remarks. The truth is that instinctively, on both a primal and intuitive level, we can sense that not only is everything composed of energy, but this energy varies in its quantity and quality drastically in our everyday lives.

Have you ever been in a busy and bustling train station and felt a sense of “heaviness”? Or have you ever gone to a concert and felt a sense of inner “lightness” or elation? These are simple and fairly common examples of our ability to “tune into” different frequencies of energy in our lives.

 So what does having a “low” or “high vibration” mean, and where does it fit into this equation? If you've heard these phrases used before, and if you are curious to learn more about what having a high or low vibration means, keep reading.

 Everything You Need to Know About Low and High Vibrations – Simplified

High vibrations are generally associated with positive qualities and feelings, such as love, forgiveness, compassion and peace. On the other hand, low vibrations are associated with darker qualities such as hatred, fear, greed and depression. We’ll explore low and high vibrations more in depth below. But what does all of this really mean? Essentially, the higher your vibration is, the more in touch you are with your higher self, inner “God/Goddess,” Divinity, Consciousness, Holiness, Soul, or the many other words out there to describe your true nature. This also means that the lower your vibration is, the more out of sync you are with your higher nature, and therefore the more conflict you experience in life.

63 Signs That You Have a Low or High Vibration

 Before you read the lists below, it’s important to remember 2 things. Firstly, you are rarely ever 100% “either/or” anything in life. Therefore, you’ll most likely fall along a spectrum of 25% high and 75% low, 55% high and 45% low – and so forth. So refrain from boxing yourself up into black or white labels. Secondly, discovering whether you have a primarily low or high vibration is really helpful . . . for you. However, be wary of using these labels against others (e.g. “He/she has a low vibration, keep away!") – ironically, this perpetuates the low vibrations linked to segregation and discrimination. That is why this is best used as a self-discovery tool.

 So with this in mind, what kind of vibration do you have, and how does this impact your life?

 If you have a low vibration …

• You feel “stuck” or stranded in life, not knowing what to do next.

• You struggle with apathy, or an uncaring attitude towards yourself and others.

• You are emotionally distant.

• You are emotionally reactive.

• You struggle with constant fatigue and lethargy.

• You have a primarily self-centric view of the world.

• You often struggle with despair and desperation.

• You find it almost impossible to get “unstuck” from old habits.

• You have a prominent Shadow Self.

• You struggle with chronic illnesses.

• You feel physically unfit and unhealthy.

• You bottle up feelings such as resentment and jealousy.

• You find it hard to forgive yourself and other people.

• You suffer from a guilt complex (i.e. you constantly feel guilty about something/seek things out to feel guilty about).

• You don’t really know what you want in life.

• You continue to make poor choices.

• You struggle with mental health issues such as anxiety, OCD or depression.

• You find it hard to see the beauty in life.

• You feel unfulfilled.

• Your connections with others constantly bring you pain.

• You are overly cynical and skeptical.

• You are argumentative.

• You complain a lot.

• You have substance abuse issues.

• You self-sabotage.

• You focus primarily on the negative in life.

• You struggle to feel gratitude.

• You eat a lot of fatty or processed foods (e.g. meat, fast food, lollies).

• You are needy or demanding of others.

• You watch a lot of violent movies and TV shows and/or listen to intense music (e.g. heavy metal, screamo, rap).

• You find it hard to make any real progress in life.

If you have a high vibration … 

• You are self-aware (i.e. you are conscious of what you are saying, doing, thinking and feeling, as well as the affect this has on others).

• You are empathetic towards others needs and you make a habit of seeing through the eyes of other people.

• You are highly creative and are often bursting with ideas and inspiration.

• You are emotionally balanced.

• You feel connected to that which is “beyond” you (e.g. life, divinity, love).

• You have a great sense of humor towards life.

• You don’t take yourself too seriously.

• You regularly feel gratitude for what you have in life.

• Smiling and laughing comes easily to you.

• You don’t experience much disappointment because you don’t cling to passing things (e.g. material comforts, friendships, indulgences).

• You are self-disciplined.

• You can delay pleasure if it does not serve you.

• You do not “need” anything to feel happy.

• You are in-tune with your body and its needs.

• You nurture yourself often.

• You nurture others often.

• You often experience synchronicity.

• You live in the present more than the past or future.

• Your body feels strong and healthy.

• You eat raw, unprocessed food.

• You try to keep your life clutter free.

• You forgive yourself and other people easily.

• You feel as though you have found your calling in life.

• Opportunities and new doors spontaneously appear to you in life.

• Patience comes easily to you.

• You don’t feel the need to argue or compete with others – let them win and feel right, it’s OK!

• You are open to many different types of people, ideas, beliefs and experiences in life.

• You feel confident in yourself and your abilities.

• You are attracted to profound, calming and inspirational music/movies/TV shows.

• You are highly intuitive.

• Other people easily open up to you.

• You often find yourself in the role of the counselor, peacemaker or teacher in friendships and relationships.

The reality is that most of us share some forms of “low vibration” and other forms of “high vibration,” but the goal is to become aware of what you are excelling at and what you could improve on within your journey of inner evolution, or Involution.

One of the easiest ways to determine whether you are vibrating at a “high frequency” or a “low frequency” is by paying attention to how you physically feel. Do you feel light, energized, clear and healthy? Chances are you have a high vibration. On the other hand, if you feel weighed down, repressed, oppressed, stuffy or heavy, you are most likely operating on a low vibration.

Learning to unconditionally love yourself is essential for your healing and fulfillment in life. I’ve been there before, and still am at times! So for now, I hope you benefited out of this article.

  by ALETHEIA LUNA, Author/Blogger

 previously published on http://lonerwolf.com/low-or-high-vibration-signs/ 

 **************************************************************************************

Are YOU seeking fresh approaches to your mental and emotional health? To spiritual growth? Have a reasonably high vibration already and want to clear remaining energetic blocks to catapult your joy, increase prosperity mindedness, and fully embrace your highest purpose?

Reach out to see if were aligned to work together, get on my waitlist, and to book a FREE 20 minute phone consult.

Visit me at www.therapyoutsidethebox.com, email me at: chris@therapyoutsidethebox.com, or call me directly @ 615.430.2778.

PAX,

Chris Hancock, LCSW, ACMHP

Franklin, TN

Love Letter to Oneself

The following is a piece of writing from a client of mine. I’ve posted it here anonymously, with permission, love, and a fervent hope on both our parts that it inspires others to dig deep and access the core— the energy, compassion and limitless capacity for love and forgiveness (for self and others) that exists untouched and undamaged within each soul, regardless of what slings and arrows one has experienced. The author has been in weekly Integrative Counseling with me for almost a year, and supplemented her healing with a ketamine infusion course targeting mindbody pain and other debilitating symptoms of complex trauma, depression and anxiety. According to the client, the idea of writing a love (amends) letter to herself, or what she initially titled “My Remission and Love Letter to Myself,” came about spontaneously, inspired by her meditation efforts, meeting her Larger/True Self and many neglected ‘parts’ through intuitively-guided Internal Family Systems (IFS) work, as well as her awakening connection to The Divine, including her own divinity.

“I’m sorry that I’ve compromised my expression and bearing what I denied as a contentious weight and worth of myself in the thoughts and actions of what I had only seen in another, instead of recognizing it, was the I that I had made up.

I’m sorry that I’ve neglected my expression by not responding instantly to it, but instead reacting unconscious in it suppressed, while sitting in the septic of its disregard because of my own misunderstanding; the I that I had made up.

I’m sorry that I have avoided feelings. I’m sorry for not knowing the feeling and therefore was unable to acknowledge myself, left unseen. I’m sorry that I haven’t honored my ‘no,’ because I answered under a convoluted abstract, instead of giving purpose to its expression.

I continued to say yes when I meant no, mislead in fear I wouldn’t get the love from another when I AM the love— the yes and the no I need and that guides me all along my path.

I’m sorry for denying the lead, for dismissing the guide, for becoming angry before I spoke on behalf of its truth, for gaslighting its intention, for judging harshly its rightful anger, its rightful sadness, its rightful rage, and depriving it of the time it needed.

I’m sorry for micro managing my expression. I am sorry for becoming fixed on it and I viewed as wrong or as a problem to fix, compromising myself there. Swept up in it's anxiety.

I’m sorry for not following through, not being there when I needed myself too, and avoiding it by avoiding the parts of myself that I am.

I will hold the overwhelm now. I will see and comfort for the fist time, every time in the provisions consciousness holds in either work, whether in the light or the shadows, it is all good, it is all for me to see that I AM the space that surrounds me.

You are safe. You are seen. I love you. I am here. I am with you. I see you. I am the loving space that surrounds all parts. Whole self. Each part. I’m practicing. I’m seeing. Holding more while resisting less and it is all so beautiful.”

*If YOU are ready to begin YOUR healing journey and would benefit from an integrative / outside the box approach, visit me at Therapy Outside the Box or learn more about my services. Or email me at chris@therapyoutsidethebox.com, or call me directly at 615.430.2778.

*At the time of this posting I’m on a bit of a lengthy waitlist, but if we’re aligned to work together and you trust Divine timing, feel free to request to be added to the list!

PAX,

Chris Hancock, LCSW, ACMHP

Therapy Outside the Box

Franklin, TN

Kindness

Do you weep a little while reading this like I did?

Kindness

A poem by Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness.

How you ride and ride

thinking the bus will never stop,

the passengers eating maize and chicken

will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,

you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho

lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,

how he too was someone

who journeyed through the night with plans

and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

You must wake up with sorrow.

You must speak to it till your voice

catches the thread of all sorrows

and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,

only kindness that ties your shoes

and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,

only kindness that raises its head

from the crowd of the world to say

It is I you have been looking for,

and then goes with you everywhere

like a shadow or a friend.

The Great Reset = Global Digital Dictatorship?

“They are going to turn your home, car, and your community into a digital concentration camp with absolute control along with the technology to enforce it”

—Catherine Austin Fitts

Does the above quote sound extreme? Like science fiction? Horror? Paranoid Fantasy?

I’d have been at least partially inclined to think so pre-2020. But with all that’s gone on in the world since then, arguably going all the way back to 9/11, and reflecting on things like Huxley’s Brave New World, the prescient work of Rudolph Steiner, or even what George Carlin always warned about through his subversive dark comedy, well, maybe not so extreme. Or fantastical.

I don’t spend much time ‘inside’ the box these days. I watch no current television or corporate mainstream news. The coverage of the politically weaponized pandemic has proven to me beyond any doubt that all corporate media, if it wasn’t already, has been captured and thoroughly corrupted by the agendas of the unholy alliance of three branches of government: Big Agriculture/Food, Big Pharma, and Big Tech. It’s now almost entirely propaganda curated to to manipulate, instill fear, divide, and manufacture compliance and consent. That’s the goal of all propaganda, of course. To add to it, internet mass tech-led censorship, shadow banning and kabuki theatre quotient is off the rails.

For me, the insane goings on in our consensus reality clown world, especially the geopolitical Global Dark Night we’re experiencing—archetypal and spiritual implications aside— has had to mostly take a back seat to staying grounded and focused on what matters: family, health, work, and my spiritual development and initiation odyssey. Yet, I follow along and know enough to be dangerous, as they say. I know whose views and opinions I trust, why I trust them, and why not so much others.

As I write this, in real time, most of the country seems more than happy to be dramatically distracted by the soon to be totally irrelevant Oscars’ slap heard ‘round the world. Meanwhile, as you know, Russia is slaughtering Ukrainians while robbing their own citizens of what little rights and sovereignty they had to begin with. And as you may not know, because there’s been little to no mainstream coverage, mass killings have been going on in Ethiopia. The threat of global food shortages are looming. At minimum there seems to be a renewed cold war mindset taking hold.

More to the point, just last week our current sitting president recently literally declared the oft-labeled conspiracy theory of the Globalist-led New World Order to be not only real, but upon us and in full swing. And that we, the U.S. must lead it. Remember when the ‘New World Order’ was like the reigning crown jewel of discredited conspiracy theories? Me too! Remember when UFOs were branded swamp gas? Pure fantasies of tin foil hatters and/or delusions of the desperate for attention, or the ‘mentally ill?’ Me too! Even the mystically-minded Jung ultimately chalked the phenomenon up to non-physical archetypal projections of the collective unconscious. And there’s probably something, some element of that at play. But can non-physical projections, figments, holograms, fantasies or illusions be tracked on radar like the military has been releasing?

In any case, it’s a New World alright.

And insofar as this NWO is [allegedly] synonymous with the Klaus Schwab/World Economic Forum-led Great Reset Globalist Agenda in which we will all ultimately “own nothing and like it” and have our every thought, feeling, decision and action monitored, scrutinized, and controlled, effectively severing what little remains of our own personal sovereignty, freedom, liberty and privacy… well, I’m paying a bit more attention here and there now.

Few can describe what led us here better than Richard Dolan, who is in my view a cosmically-inclined but utterly grounded genius and visionary. Although I’d say Dr. Peter Breggin, M.D., author of Toxic Psychiatry, long considered the ‘conscience of psychiatry’ is doing a good job opening eyes from his side of the street as well. He also sees a dystopian digital ID nightmare on the horizon. Breggin’s recent book COVID-19 and The Global Predators: WE ARE THE PREY (2021) is one shocking account. It’s all I could do to get through it. Unless you’ve already read Peter Gozsche M.D.’s Deadly Medicine and Organized Crime: How Big Pharma Has corrupted Medicine (2013) and already know the bitter truth about the complete hijacking and corruption of much if not most of our medical system and scientific establishment—from education to testing and research to diagnostics to billing to patient care— by the pharmaceutical industrial complex, and you’re ready for the morbidly ugly backstory of the recent pandemic and all the implication thereof, then I’m actually not recommending it. Can’t un-know how the sausages are made.

But should we be surprised?

“Nothing in this world works the way you think it does. Banks do not loan money. Governments are not empowered to protect you. The police department is not there to serve you. Institutions of higher learning, colleges and educational institutes are not there to educate you. The entire superstructure of the Western world is a combination of brilliantly put together and well-planned schemes to direct the minds of the people in such a way as to serve their masters.”

-Jordan Maxwell, Matrix of Power

Holy red pill.

In any case, back to Richard Dolan. He’s best known as an academic historian turned preeminent UFO researcher and author. But his scope has always been far wider than just the UFO enigma. In this video, he summarily breaks down the stages of humanity’s evolution, up through the emerging Great Reset that he reclassifies as The Fourth Stage: The Global Digital Dictatorship. I post it for anyone who may wish to get up to speed and/or expose themselves to a new alternative, expansive view of where we’ve been and where we seem to be headed, like it or not. Please view with your discernment, intuition and critical thinking up front.

So, beyond staying informed as possible via what I intuit to be non-corrupted sources, while I’m by nature eternally hopeful and possibilistic [despite the red pill pragmatic realism expressed here] I’m not sure what any one of us can do to alter the potentially more sinister giveth-and-taketh-away elements of the apparent globalist agenda descending upon us. Not to mention the darker aspects of the technological AI and Transhumanism agendas. That is, beyond the only thing we ever have total control over— praying for peace, for the forces of light, truth, and the highest good to prevail. And remaining mindfully and intentionally focused on our own healing, awakening, consciousness elevation, spiritual growth, embodying of love and compassion, and kindness to one another.

That’s first and foremost the priority for myself and most of those who work with me here in Therapy Outside the Box.

I hope, wish and pray the same for you, whoever you are, wherever you are.

“Find your inner self and fight the good fight”

-Richard Dolan

Godspeed.

Chris Hancock, LCSW, ACMHP

Franklin, TN

www.therapyoutsidethebox.com

@therapyoutsidethebox

615.430.2778.