How to Heal Generational Trauma with Psychedelics [Eating Disorder-Sensitive]
Psychedelics have a way of connecting us to the timeless. They dissolve any boundaries of how we perceive the world, including time and space. This means we can connect with our ancestors, past lives, and the lives of our ancestors, and living family members. The nature of psychedelics is that they bring up anything that has been suppressed or repressed to come up to be seen and dealt with. Sometimes it’s our own stuff that we have been avoiding, and other times we have to see stuff from previous generations that isn’t ours but may be affecting us regardless.
Working with plant medicine can help work through and process eating disorders by offering us a unique opportunity to go to the root cause. Unlike western medicine and traditional eating disorder treatments that are mainly focused on stopping the eating disorder behaviours, plant medicine can go right to the root, and that root may not have even started in our life.
This is indicative of indigenous cultures that view the interconnectedness of all things, and that what was experienced in a previous generation can still have an impact in the next one. Indigenous wisdom also teaches us mind and body as one, and that illness and health are on one continuum, reflective of the inner and outer worlds in which we flow between. Nothing is separate and it is this precise fragmentation in our culture (especially Western culture) that is causing so many mental and physical challenges in people. Restoring our inner and outer wholeness, including harmony between generational lines are what brings healing.
Turning to plant medicine can help us restore that wholeness and look beyond the external validation and approval of diet culture, and instead turn within. Indeed, on a collective level, those who came before us, blood or not, have been up against the big energetic ball of judgement, expectation, dominance, and patriarchy that is diet culture. Diet culture keeps us from looking within; it demands us to look outside of ourselves, comparing and fighting with each other to look a certain way. We are all swimming in this and it can feel even more intense when we are trying to do our inner healing work.
When we turn inwards, what we see at first may be challenging. However these sacred plants know what’s up and are helpful allies in guiding us to look at our trauma. Plant medicine and psychedelics can help us look at painful experiences with a new perspective or from a slightly different angle. This is because psychedelics help us lower our ego defenses and create new and novel links. We are not constrained by logic or everyday thinking. With more information coming in from all angles, there is a higher resolution of perception. Thus, we can find ourselves engaging in new ways of perceiving and meaning making. Rather than avoiding the trauma or changing the memory, the plants help us redefine its meaning. These allies can help us find meaning in our suffering, see how it has impacted our growth and resulted in inner resilience and tolerance.
Additionally, when we look at the powerful medicine of Iboga, it is possible that random and harsh things can come up in the journey as a way to actually get rid of old, irrelevant thoughts, and thought patterns of the inner critic. It’s like a purging of the mindmap with a feeling of great stillness and spaciousness felt afterwards.
intergenerational trauma imprinting and somatic organization
That spaciousness could feel like a new felt sensation. This is because trauma often leads to constriction and thus narrow thinking, or what we can call “spotlight consciousness”. Eating disorders reflect this thinking too. One can obsess over the tiniest of details (like how much oil was used to cook with) rather than seeing the whole picture. We see just one tree instead of the whole forest so to speak. On psychedelics, the brain becomes more interconnected, with more input from the whole brain, leading to increased exploration. The mind can go in any direction. Nothing is constrained. This is what we call lantern consciousness. And this is what we can call the process of healing.
With an open mind and perspective that can felt when sitting with psychedelics, it is also important to prepare the body. There are increased body sensations and emotions that may be challenging to deal with, especially if one has been deep in an eating disorder – which is a strategy to quell perceived overwhelming sensations and emotions. It is wise to work somatically before a plant medicine ceremony to understand the body’s habitual patterns.
On that note, these habitual somatic patterns (aka “somatic heirlooms”) are what have been passed down from generations. Indeed, body-to-body experiences passed down and are later remembered not as visual or verbal narratives but in the form of body memories, procedurally learnt emotional, autonomic, motoric, visceral, and meaning-making states, and are reflected in actions and responses. This is what we call memory procedural memory – “what we do with one another” - while declarative memory captures “what we know about one another”. For example, when safe attachments are not available, the body must adapt. Early on, the baby’s body must make an adaptation to the quality of the attachment field, laughing and smiling while crying or collapsing and shutting down emotionally. This then becomes the blueprint for our beliefs about our self and the world. Sometimes the previous generations had some kind of eating disorder and sometimes the sensitivities are passed on which then result in the child developing an eating disorder to try process the world in ways that don’t overwhelm the nervous system.
As preparation it can be helpful to observe how your family moves around the world and engages with others. Notice their body language, how close they get to people, what they do when they get upset, their tone of voice, how they show affection – all of these are clues to what you are carrying, and what you have been imprinted with from birth.
Generational trauma also shows up as a family who are emotionally numb, don’t like speaking about feelings, and/or perceive discussing feelings as a sign of weakness. Generational trauma can show up as a family having trust issues with “outsiders” and/or are anxious or overly protective of their family members, even without signs of danger. Generational trauma can show up as unhealthy relationship boundaries and unhealthy survival behaviours. There are many ways in which generational trauma shows up and affects subsequent generations.
So what can we do to stop generational trauma from continuing?
In the words of Bessel Van der Kolk (who wrote “The Body Keeps the Score”), the ability to feel safe is “probably the most important aspect of mental health”. One of the best things we can do for ourselves is to find places of safety and people who are safe so that we can learn what it feels like. For example, working with a coach is beneficial as it is an empathetic relationship based on the coach’s unconditional acceptance of the individual’s thoughts, feelings, and experiences.
embarking on the medicine journey
In preparation for a journey it is useful to start connecting with the body and noticing your patterns of safety and threat. How do you reach out? How do you communicate with your body that you need support or help? How close do you allow people into your space? How do you create boundaries? How does your body tell you when it’s time to rest or get going again? These are generational imprints that you can bring into the ceremony and look at. In this way, you are also setting up a foundation to create and embody new body patterns of pride, compassion, empowerment, strength, and ease. Maybe your ancestors didn’t have the opportunity to embody these somatic patterns. Perhaps they had shapeshift to match society around them, betraying themselves and their unique expression in order to be safe and not hurt by those around them.
Along with observing these somatic holding patterns, one can also link it with an intention. In what ways do you want to connect with your ancestors? You can ask, “Where did my eating disorder come from”, or “What is the root cause of my ED?” You can also ask, “What are the unknown factors at play that contributed to the development of my eating disorder? “What will it take for the eating disorder to let go of me?” And, “What do I need to do to change the narrative of this eating disorder – what are my blind spots?”
It can helpful to call in other trusted allies, like power animals, helping spirits, angels and guides, and other elemental forces to weave a web of support as you dive into these questions in the journey. Singing and dancing is a powerful way to connect with our ancestors as is music making (drumming, drumming on the body). Bring in objects that represent your lineage and have them in the space. Create an environment that is welcoming and supportive for these messages to land. Working with the elements is a powerful way to connect to higher wisdom and the places where our ancestors reveal themselves.
As you continue journeying, state your intention bur release the intent. Release attachment to the outcomes. If you don’t end up receiving any information on the root cause, trust it was not the right time. It took me almost four years to make the connection with the history of my eating root cause.
I just wasn’t ready. To be more clear, I wasn’t ready for the integration that was required of me.
integrating intergenerational trauma
After receiving a download like this, there is usually some kind of integration that is required (ongoing), in order to end these generational patterns. For some people, it is a conversation with a parent or family member. For some, it is ending certain eating behaviours, no longer going to certain places, or hanging out with people. For some, it is starting a new morning practice or finding a new support system. Changes can be big or small, internal and external. The integration is where the generational pattern is finally broken.
Integration is only as useful as we apply consistency over time, practice over time, and apply mindfulness. The process of change includes, according to the The Transtheoretical Model (TTM):
· Precontemplation: Unaware of or in denial of a problem(s), not ready to change.
· Contemplation: Aware of problem, considering a change.
· Preparation: Ready to change, making a plan to change, motivated.
· Action: Making changes and seeing results.
· Maintenance: Living consciously to maintain results and continue changing.
How a person uses, applies, implements, and integrates tools for transformation into their life is what determines the level of impact. Just doing these activities may or may not bring as much value as doing them with consistency, mindfulness, introspection, adjustment (as needed), openness, self-awareness, and commitment to the process.
In my one plant medicine ceremony, it was made clear that this eating disorder and somatic pattern can end with me. It wasn’t stated HOW the pattern could end (the plants don’t do the work for us) but the medicine was certainly clear that I have the capacity to end this cycle. It was after the ceremony what was made clear what I needed to do. If this integration action piece came through any earlier in my recovery path I wouldn’t have been able to do it. This is because I have more capacity and resources now. The plants are working together in revealing pieces of information at the most perfect time. They meet us where we are at. They never overextend us. We can trust in the timing and their highly intelligent ways – which are, of course, reflective of our own growth, work, and higher and intuitive knowing.
With generational trauma, we can think of it in terms of the identified problem being something we were born into, not necessarily a problem that we have created for ourselves. Somatic therapy and plant medicine have personally been highly impactful in looking at my eating disorder and generational trauma. The plants have shown me time and time again who I am without the layers of trauma and conditioned somatic states of suffering. I remember my wholeness, my gits, my connection, and I am able to have a felt sense and embody it fully. I feel grateful for all that my ancestors have passed down to me, however complicated they may be. Even the most challenging parts are gifts because they opportunities for healing and stepping into my true self. When we are embodying and connected to our true self, the trauma pattern is broken.
And so, how do we want our children and our children’s children to remember us?