Episode #47

Episode #47: Laura Mae Northrup on The Psychedelic Leadership Podcast.

Laura Dawn: Your keynote at Horizons was a highlight for me. You literally could hear a pin drop. You received a standing ovation. I was super moved by everything that you shared. Right now, with the psychedelic movement, there’s a lot of hype and we feel this sort of frenzy of so many people coming into the psychedelic space and people are pretty much claiming that psychedelics can cure anything under the sun these days. So, it’s like very amazing to see the way that it’s in such a positive light, and there are shadow aspects to this. You spoke about harm and hype and bias and failure in psychedelic therapy at Horizons. So, I just wanted to give you the opportunity to share a little background of, little about yourself and how you came to offer such a riveting speech at Horizons. 

Laura Mae Northrup: Yeah. Thanks. Thank you for your kind words. Let’s see. A little bit of background. So, I’m a psychotherapist and I specialize in working with sexual trauma. I have a very special interest in the healing of sexual trauma. I think as a politicized person, we can’t really think about sexual trauma and supporting survivors only from this tiny lens of like, okay, harm happened and now how do you heal? When we are really invested in healing around sexual trauma, we have to be invested in the larger community. So, I’ve done a lot of political work around this. I was involved in a collective called, The Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective for a while that is trying to build community-based responses to sexual violence. Then also I have my podcast, Inside Eyes, which is all about people who are using psychedelics and entheogens to heal sexual trauma. 

So, I’m very invested in healing, sexual trauma, but while I was making my podcast, I was also one of those people who was like, hey, guess what everybody? You can do all this incredible healing work with psychedelics. They’re amazing. I was kind of like, I can’t really wholeheartedly, put this series out there without acknowledging… This is very specific that people who are survivors of sexual trauma are more likely to be sexually abused by the practitioners they go to for healing. So, this kind of all started with me making an episode about that and just really getting into the psychology of it. There’s a lot that I have to say about it from the clinician perspective of why that happens, and some things that happen in therapy that can be really confusing for clinicians that then make an opening for some kind of abuse to happen. 

Of course, clinicians, choose to cause abuse. It’s not that they sort of are just invited to do it and then sort of happen to do it. So, I made this whole episode about that. I actually spoke at Horizons. I want to say it was before the pandemic, maybe 2019. I spoke not on the main stage and in a smaller setting that was like a one day on dealing with sexual violence in the community. So obviously, there’s been so many big, high-profile cases that have come out in the last few months around sexual violence from practitioners toward the people who they’re working with in psychedelic spaces. The people who run Horizons just felt like it was really time just to have it on the main stage. Of course, Horizons has their own history with sexual abuse, not necessarily practitioners abusing clients, but the previous MC for years was called out for being sexually predatory with a lot of young women who would go to the conference and just in general in the community. 

So that’s kind of how I ended up there. The only other thing I’ll say about it is, I think that the feeling that people had when they were listening to me, give my talk, part of what was in that was also a lot of rawness of, you know I am a survivor and I said that in my talk and it’s a lot to go and speak that publicly and really be calling out slash calling in your colleagues and yourself. I mean, anybody can cause harm in a therapeutic context. So, it was a very powerful thing for me to give and then I think it was also really powerful for other people to hear. 

Laura Dawn: It’s so interesting, and again, it’s such a nuanced topic here because we’re talking about people coming to the medicine to heal from trauma, yet they’re also like why is that, that they’re then more vulnerable to either — or people who have been sexually abused? Why is there more likelihood of that happening again in that container? 

Laura Mae Northrup: Well, one thing I’ll say is, I mean, if we’re going to get real about what’s going on in the world, we have so much trauma. I mean, even people who have lived lives that are very, very privileged where they don’t feel like they have that much trauma. If you are existing in this world, you have probably been shamed for your sexuality. You probably have a lot of shadow stuff around how you feel about your sexuality, even if you’ve not known sort of “trauma”. We’re living at a time where we have inherited generations and generations of abuse, genocide, colonialism, so much violence, capitalism. So, I think one thing I’ll say is just none of us have actually been spared of harm and we live in a world that really normalizes harmful behavior. So that’s like a baseline. I think there can be an idea that like a therapist or a healing practitioner of any kind doesn’t cause harm. That is not true. We are normal ass people. 

We do all kinds of things that are not necessarily acting in the highest integrity. So, say I think that’s one of the first sort of like demystifying things about why harm happens in healing spaces. Then the piece about it’s very specifically happening to of sexual trauma. One thing is I think people who have a predatory part of them, that that is looking for someone to abuse. I think that people who have that kind of streak in them can really see a lot of vulnerability and a lot of potential to harm someone who’s already really traumatized. So, somebody who has less trauma oftentimes is going to have a little bit more of an intact sense of boundaries and an intact sense of like how they deserve to be treated. Somebody who is really traumatized and really vulnerable and seeking healing may be more likely to be in a place where they’re so in need of healing that they’re willing to do whatever the healing practitioner or says is okay. 

Also, people with sexual trauma oftentimes communicate in a very unconscious way about their trauma and they do that because they don’t necessarily have the words yet. Part of what happens in trauma is that a lot of things become very unconscious. So, when you’re in a healing space with someone who a lot of unconscious material that is really evocative and they’re bringing it in, in a very unconscious way. When I say that, what I mean is like, for example, in the field if somebody misses a session and doesn’t tell you that they’re not coming, somebody who’s not a clinician might be like, oh, they just forgot the session. As a clinician, you’re thinking, I wonder what was going on unconsciously, that they forgot the session. What are they communicating? They might be communicating something as simple as I am afraid to go to therapy, or I didn’t like something you said in the last session or whatever. 

So basically, when there’s a lot of unconscious communication, some of that unconscious communication can look like invitations for any kind of like boundary crossing. For example, in some of these cases, people who are, the practitioners will say, well, the client invited me into a sexual relationship, but when a client does something like that as the clinician, we say no to that. So that’s communicating something, it’s communicating, are you safe? Will you cross my boundaries? Is my sexual trauma something that can destroy your boundaries? I mean, there’s a lot of really complex communication in that that gets missed when somebody is like, well, I’m not really going to be in my clinician role anymore, and I’m just going to go for this. Of course, there’s something very unconscious happening in the clinician as well. If they’re sort of seeing that as an actual opportunity for sexual contact, as opposed to very much a clinical issue. I hope that all makes sense. I know it’s kind of complicated. 

Laura Dawn: I mean, it is super complex. So, I’m curious, do you have a standard definition of trauma? I feel like it’s amazing that trauma is like really boiling to the surface in our culture right now, but then people are like, I crossed the road and something happens, it was very traumatic versus actual real trauma. So, how do you distinguish? Is there a distinguishing factor in what actually makes something a trauma? 

Laura Mae Northrup: Yeah. Well, and I hear what you’re saying. Sometimes people use the term trauma just to mean that they’re upset, which is, being upset is a totally valid experience. I think that there’s so many ways people define this, but I think probably how I would define it is that your body, your organism, your nervous system experiences, something that I want to say that feels potentially life threatening. Or like, I want to say like, maybe isn’t quite to the point of like I could die, but I’m suddenly like confronted with extreme vulnerability, which I think in the end is related to death anxiety. So, like extreme vulnerability and then for some people, people can experience trauma just by witnessing someone else be traumatized. I think a lot of it has to do too with just what ends up like what your symptoms are. So sometimes people experience something, for example emotional abuse. You might not be feeling with emotional abuse, like I am at risk of death, but you may be being made to feel powerless and being made to feel an extreme level of vulnerability. I think what determines whether that’s traumatic or not is what that person’s lasting symptoms are. So sometimes we experience abuse and we don’t end up with trauma, and other times we experience something that might feel more mild than what we would call abuse and we have trauma, and that has a lot to do with — I could go on and on about all the different aspects of why something ends up being traumatic, but I’ll leave it there. 

Laura Dawn: What do you think we need to understand as a community and especially people who are stepping into hold space with psychedelic medicines about holding the power dynamic and understanding that? 

Laura Mae Northrup: I mean, I would say one, one really big piece of that is that people just really underestimate the power dynamic. 

Laura Dawn: Maybe you could explain what the power dynamic is for some people listening. 

Laura Mae Northrup: Yeah. Well, depending on the kind of work you’re doing, the power dynamic could be, different in different context, because obviously there’s a lot of ways to be a practitioner in a psychedelic space. Oftentimes when you’re a practitioner, you know a lot more about your client than they know about you. You know a lot about their psychology, you know a lot about their wounding. They do not know as much about you. You are inviting them into one of the possibly most profound experiences they’re going to have in their life and you are in some way associated with that being possible. I say it like that, because I think the medicine is really kind of the collaborator in that space that is more — I don’t want to make practitioners sound godlike, but practitioners are doing incredible work. It’s very powerful to be holding space for somebody who’s dropping into that and when practitioners underestimate the power dynamic. 

What they’re not seeing is that there could be so many ways that the client or the journeyer, the seeker is experiencing the practitioner that they might not even be aware of or they might not give voice to. So, for example, they might not really actually feel very safe saying, no, they might be very trusting in a circumstance where, maybe that that practitioner doesn’t actually deserve that trust, but they can be very trusting. They also can sometimes feel things like, oh, if I had a sexual relationship with this person that would maybe heal me, like maybe if I was partnered with somebody who was a therapist or partnered with somebody who was a medicine guide that would be a really healthy relationship. So, there can be just a lot of idealizing. Oftentimes when these circumstances happen where for example, I talked about this at Horizons; it seems like a consensual relationship between a practitioner and their client. 

In retrospect, the clients often feel like it was traumatic and sometimes they even exhibit symptoms of incest survivors. If you think about it, there’s this person who has a lot of power over you. This person knows a lot more about you than you know about them, and you’ve entered into some kind of sexual relationship with a huge power dynamic. Then when that ends, if you look at that in some ways it does mirror, some of what happens with incest survivors. Oftentimes with incest, the person who is the abuser has a lot more power over the person who is being abused. So, I think even if a clinician doesn’t fully understand the power dynamic, which you should question your ability to practice, if you can’t ever. I think people really need to get to that point, but I think in the process of getting to that point, it’s just important to understand there is a huge power dynamic and it is never okay to have sex with your clients. 

Laura Dawn: Okay, this is such a huge conversation right now because like, I actually know a lot of people who hold space, they’ll hold ceremonies, and then they’re also single. They’re like, well, is it okay if like six months after the ceremony that I hold that I’m in communication with that person and what if something develops? So, it’s such a gray area to know around what is appropriate and what’s not appropriate and actually remember that moment that you said that at Horizons and it was like, bingo. Even if it’s consensual, there’s a power dynamic at play. As a person in that power position, it’s actually not okay. Even if that person is consenting, but like at what point, you know because we’re all humans, some people are like, oh, I might meet my life partner doing this work. So, where do you draw the line? 

Laura Mae Northrup: Yeah. So, I think this is really complicated and when I spoke at Horizons, I was really specific to talk about psychedelic therapy; because I do feel comfortable saying it is never okay to have sex with your client in a therapeutic context. There’s also a lot of really complex ways that people access medicine work. I’m not going to say that one way — I understand it’s like maybe you meet somebody and two years later you meet them again, and you did one journey with them once in a huge group setting, or maybe they assisted at a ceremony or something. I understand that it’s very different than having an ongoing therapeutic relationship. I was talking to my friend, Leia Friedwoman about this before I gave my talk. I was like, I don’t know, what should I say this? People always ask me this question. She was like, Laura people just need to learn how to not cause sexual harm. 

That’s what people need to learn. It really just kind of cut through it all. So, what I would say is definitely psychotherapists or people who are practicing in a therapeutic context like coaches and whatnot that do ongoing work or if it’s one on one, where there’s psychedelic work happening should not have sex with their clients. Beyond that, what I will say in terms of things that look a lot more like a community is that, if you are a clinician, you really need to educate yourself on what sexual harm is and how to not cause it. That will mean that there are many people that you will meet in your community. Maybe even people that you never worked with that you should not be having a sexual relationship with because of the power dynamic. I’ll leave it there, but yeah, people need to educate themselves. 

Laura Dawn: Okay. Can we talk about that? Yeah. Let’s talk about that. 

Laura Mae Northrup: Yeah, sure. 

Laura Dawn: Defining sexual harm and how we educate ourselves on not causing it. 

Laura Mae Northrup: Sexual harm, I think is anything where the power dynamic makes consent impossible and it’s anything where consent was not received. So, for example, we’ve got abuse. That’s just like no consent was asked for or consent was asked for, and the person said no, and the sexual contact happened anyways or it doesn’t have to be physical contact. It could also be like sexual harassment or something that’s less physical. Obviously all those, I think that’s what we normally think of is like, okay, somebody said no, or they didn’t consent and the person moved forward with it anyway. That’s non-consensual, that is a form of sexual violence. I think the part that we’re sort of talking about, that’s more confusing is when people are in a position that they don’t actually feel very aware of the fact that they don’t feel a total right to consent. 

I mean, this is so complicated. I think, if you’re a clinician and you are thinking about having a sexual relationship with someone, you should definitely talk to your colleagues. I think anytime that you want to make something secretive, that’s a sign that — and especially again, like a lot of people who are being abused by practitioners are people who already have preexisting histories of sexual violence and for a lot of people that can be childhood sexual abuse that oftentimes includes a lot of secrecy. So, anything that looks like secrecy, you don’t want to tell people, you feel like other people wouldn’t understand what you’re choosing to do. That is a sign that there’s something wrong. I think it’s really important if you are considering any type of relationship where you have any question that you don’t just go act on the relationship and that you also don’t just go to your peers and colleagues that are the people who are kind of just going to be like, yeah, totally. 

Go seek out somebody who can actually give you an honest opinion about that. I mean, I think even paying to consult with a clinician that is more experienced than you, or has a pretty strong trauma lens would be a great idea. Yeah. Then from there, I think also as clinicians, we really need to work on understanding our role in the world and how people actually view us. So, when you’re a clinician and you’re around people who know that, and even if they’re not your clients, that they are possibly imbuing you with and idealizing you in a way that makes you seem like you don’t have faults. I think that’s really common with clinicians and practitioners. They may be viewing you as someone who, like I said, like a relationship with you would be somehow beneficial to them because you are, “healer”. 

When we get a lot more in contact with how people actually feel towards us, I think that allows us to see more of like, oh, idealization, that’s not a sign of a healthy dynamic to create a relationship out of. That’s a sign that there’s something happening, there’s wounding that’s emerging here between us. It probably feels good in that moment. It can feel really good to be idealized, but the flip side of idealization is devaluation and it’s not going to feel good when the coin flips. Idealization produces a lot of potential for abuse. I think trying to date people who are peer to you is a big one. If somebody is 22 years old and is not a clinician of any kind and you meet them. I mean, I think this is some of the stuff that was happening with Neil Goldsmith at Horizons, and you are like the MC at an event, or you’re a revered clinician. 

There is a power dynamic and you can’t ignore that even if you don’t want it to be the case. The final thing I’ll say on this about how people can, cannot cause sexual harm and can really be navigating this is you need to be doing your own personal work. If you’re a clinician that has… I mean, we all need to be doing our personal work, but if you have your own trauma, you need to be working that. It’s not like I work that and now I’m over it when you’re a clinician, because you’re interacting with other people’s psychic material and spiritual material for your entire career, you need to be doing healing work your entire career. We just do healing work that is way beyond the average person would ever want to do and that’s part of our job. 

Laura Dawn: Yeah. I hear you saying the word clinician a lot, and I would say probably like actual clinicians listen to this podcast, it would be interesting actually, I’d be curious to know like how many people are in the actual therapy camp, because there’s a lot of people going for it right now, stepping into guide practitioner, facilitator roles. So maybe from that angle, I mean, there are people stepping into this space by the droves at this point. What would you say is like some of the most necessary training to become trauma informed? Like as a baseline? 

Laura Mae Northrup: Yeah. Two people who are doing that, I mean, if I had a dollar for every person who took mushrooms and then was like, Laura, I had a calling, I’m going to start guiding next week. With love, I just say, please don’