part one of two

In my book "Snapshots and Kaleidoscopes: A Story of Healing from Complex Trauma Through Psychedelics," I spend about half of my time talking about my childhood, my relationships, and religion, specifically Christian Science. Wound throughout the retelling is how I ended up exploring mental health options and what ultimately led me to seek psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. It is a long and intense story that cannot fit within the scope of this particular article.

So, instead, I've decided to do a series, starting from what first led me to seek treatment and what I experienced entering the mental health world as a naive 19-year-old Autistic girl with ADHD. A girl with no understanding of the medical world or how it worked and without the correct tools to advocate for herself.

My mental health journey began in 1999 when I met a man named Jason and fell in love. My childhood, you see, was splattered with severe abuse. That abuse created an erratic, self-loathing, depressed, violent, and anxiety-ridden individual who was angry and afraid of the world. Jason would see past my defenses, see the person I was inside, and fall in love. This love, however, would turn toxic, and instead of a loving relationship, we would form a trauma bond.

Desperately wanting to help me, he would push me to see my first therapist. The problem, however, was the particular professional he pressured me to see had been his therapist during childhood. It was against one of the fundamental rules of psychotherapy for her to see me; I was the definition of a conflict of interest. Not knowing better, I would begin to see her starting in late 1999. During my time with her, she would pressure me to see a psychiatrist to get medications to help with mood regulation and impulsivity.

Unfamiliar with what a psychiatrist was and unfamiliar with the mental health world, I went in believing that they were going to help me. The appointment lasted less than fifteen minutes, and by the time it was over, I would be leaving with a six-month supply of a high dose of Zoloft, a diagnosis of severe MDD (or major depressive disorder), and no clue what the medication would do. Not once did I receive an information sheet about the medication, nor was I informed about side effects or potential dangers associated with taking it; I was instructed to take a pill every morning for mood regulation and was promised it would "fix" me. So that's what I did; I took the medication without question, hoping it would fit the broken pieces of my soul back together.

Instead of getting better, however, I would learn firsthand how broken the mental health system was and still is. It started with a reaction to the medication. Rather than making me feel better, it put me in the clouds, detached from reality and feeling like I was watching my life being played out like a movie versus participating in it. As a result, I would begin to take them intermittently. Eventually, I would consume all six months' worth in an attempt to commit suicide at 20 years old. My suicide attempt would reveal to me a failing mental health system, a system I didn't really want to participate in but had no other choice.

Instead of being met with compassion and empathy in the emergency room that night, I was met with disgust. I was seen and treated as an individual without worth, all while fighting to find worth within myself. Medical professionals seriously lack the training needed to properly care for those struggling with severe dysregulation and mental illness, often making situations worse rather than better. This would be the first time I would experience the emergency room, and it would burn a negative impression into my brain and my body and create fear around treatment.

The aftermath of the overdose would extend out and include my therapist. She would accuse me of stockpiling pills, lying, and being deceitful towards her and would drop me as a client. This was my introduction to what the mental health world could do for me. Yet, I felt joyful contentment from the artificial serotonin in the Zoloft, which was slowly exiting my bloodstream. As it left my system, it gave me hope that maybe there was another option, another drug that could fix my emotional outbursts and the impulsivity that I never could keep under control. I would go on to try nearly every SSRI on the market before settling on Prozac. I would take Prozac for 25 years and treat a misdiagnosis with it, letting it wreck my body and my brain, thinking it was the only thing I could take, even though it really didn't help.

I saw the overdose as a learning experience instead of a setback, and I went back to the drawing board to search for resources. Eventually, I headed to my college counseling center. The college would, in turn, send me to the "Counseling Center." The Counseling Center was a low-income facility where interns just entering the workforce could gain experience and earn their final credits toward graduation. It is here that I would meet Eliza. Eliza was a contemplative psychotherapist with a specialty in mindfulness who graduated from Naropa University and worked with clients like me. She was also a supervisor at the center and had specific training that the center believed I would benefit from.

While my time with her was influential and my growth was exponential, it was not treating the core root of my issues. Her diagnosis was Borderline Personality Disorder with Dissociative Identity Disorder and PTSD. This diagnosis would prove to be the wrong diagnosis and would haunt me for 24 years. While the diagnosis would prove to be debilitating in several ways, what I would learn from Eliza would directly influence my journey toward psychedelics and open the door to the possibilities I've experienced while taking part in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. What Eliza taught me and the ten years I would spend with her would set me up for success for the rest of my life.

It was with Eliza that I began DBT (dialectical behavioral therapy) and CBT (Cognitive behavioral therapy). While both therapies can be powerful tools for treating conditions like BPD, I did not have BPD. While I have a form of dissociative disorder, what I suffer from is Dissociative amnesia (a topic I will talk about a lot more moving forward). So, while DBT and CBT worked to help curb some of the behaviors, they did not treat the roots of my trauma because I have no memory of the roots of my trauma to access and allow healing. I would try DBT and CBT years later to treat ADHD, and once again, it would fall short of healing.

It's also with Eliza that I would try EMDR. Often, I have described ketamine therapy as EMDR on crack. I found EMDR to be lacking in that I could not access the memories to work with during an EMDR session. My mind would often wander and focus on other topics. I also found that I was so desensitized to the trauma I was attempting to access that my body would refuse to process the emotional responses associated with an EMDR session. Eventually, EMDR would be another intervention I felt was unsuccessful in creating safe spaces to heal.

Jason would commit suicide in 2007, and a year of hell would follow. Four months later, my grandmother would fall and suffer an injury that would ultimately take her life; my mother would follow her six months later, passing suddenly from cancer. Their deaths would leave me with a hole so large it would be impossible to fill. I would begin to participate in severe self-harming behavior, and my mental health journey would come to a screeching halt for several years.

Stay tuned for the second installment.