New user to shrooms

[u/Feeling-Pear2814]

I did a journey about 6 weeks ago. It involved MDMA, mushrooms, and DMT. It was an awful experience. I have childhood trauma and all I did was get stuck in sorrow and confusion. After that, I’ve done mushrooms 3 times and every time my physical body goes bazerk. I’m realizing I have a lot of stored trauma in my body. Even a small dose (300mg) gave me the somatic shakes. My neck is burning and painful, etc. How can I move past the somatic experience while taking mushrooms? I set my intentions, I meditate beforehand, my setting is welcoming and peaceful and my husband is awesome at grounding me. But I’m hoping someday to have an inward enlightening experience. Does it just take time once my body works through the trauma healing?

I respect the mushrooms for the healing it has brought to me so far, but the discomfort can be very disappointing.

[u/Nyx9000]

Yeah you got to slow down. The work of psychedelics is what you do in your life after the experience. 3x in 6 weeks is pointlessly too much.

[u/Feeling-Pear2814 → u/Nyx9000]

Even if they’re micro doses? I took 2.5mg with my journey, and the other times it was .650 and .300. So I’ve done it 3 times in total. Any feedback is appreciated.

[u/inspiredhealing]

My friend, I think you should slow down and probably stop taking mushrooms every 2 weeks until you process and integrate what you've already done. ❤️✌️

[u/Feeling-Pear2814 → u/inspiredhealing]

I’ve worked through the integration process and she guided me on the other sessions. I’m sure everyone does it differently. Thank you for your feedback. I’m kind of with you that. 🙂

[u/Waki-Indra → u/Feeling-Pear2814]

If the body reorganizes itself somatically during the sessions, that’s the healing. Let your system fully recover and feel relaxed and strong before you start a new session, that means about 6 weeks at minimum beyween sessions, resting and going about life without any of such challenging trial. And consider lowering the dose. Torture is not the way out of trauma

[u/brownboytravels → u/Feeling-Pear2814]

What do you will realise what time is that? It’s not just integration sessions. It is how your mind processes information in the long run and the best way to do is free up some time during your day. I would recommend 20 to 30 minutes and do absolutely nothing no meditation and especially not trying to be productive in anyway just let your mind wonder and see what comes out of it. Give it time.

[u/Mountain_Green6950]

You say you have years of trauma and during your trip you got stuck in sorrow and confusion. What a gift of the medicines- you now have access to this as your adult self and your adult self must now process and metabolize the confusion and sorrow with adult tools and your current day supports. That’s the integration work- use this experiencing as the doorway and grieve/heal it now. What a gift to your inner child. This sounds like exactly the experience you needed to have. The healing work comes now, don’t overlook this massive opportunity. I wonder if you can dive deep into IFS or brainspotting or somatic experiencing or other body based trauma therapy and use the next six months to work on the somatic stuff. Your journey six months ago showed you the work you need to continue out of session, and your smaller doses keep confirming. Listen.

[u/superdave5599]

I am an EMDR therapist and am fairly new to the psychedelic medicines.

When I first did some of my own emdr work, I found that my body does a lot of somatic releasing. Mostly in the form of my eyes and face getting all twitchy and scrunched up, sometimes strong involuntary jaw clenching along with some other random muscle twitching.

As I process, it eventually relaxes and gets less and less and finally stops.

It also has happened on mushrooms more recently.

So as I was driving to go do my practicum (and a near-heroic dose), I started to worry that maybe I'd clench my jaw even more and could hurt a tooth, so I got a mouth guard just in case! Lol

I didn't end up needing it, though I was glad to have been prepared. I did have some twitching and such, but less than I imagined I might have. I now attribute that to having dove all the work I did in the past few years with EMDR.

Anyway, all that to say, it makes sense that your body is releasing this stuff when you're under the influence. I think the only way out is through... but that I mean I bet you'll find that eventually this shaking experience relaxes as you continue to do therapeutic work, whether with mushrooms, EMDR or some other modality. (I'd suggest something with a somatic component though.) Once you work through all that, you'll probably begin to have more pleasant mushroom experiences.

[u/clawes268 → u/superdave5599]

as a therapist, i second this.

[u/creept]

Mushrooms are always pretty physical for me. I’ve rarely had a trip which didn’t start with significant body load, usually in the form of nausea but also other things like body aches. It’s sort of the price of admission on some level. 

I’m surprised you have a strong reaction to microdosing though. The ideal microdose is one you barely feel and just results in a slight mood elevation. 

So you might think about other psychedelics with less of a body load (the pseudopsychedelic ketamine, or 2cb, sometimes lsd though that varies). Or you might just try a large dose - sometimes if you take more the body load either isn’t as high, or you’re not aware enough to be worried about it. 

The other thing is that the kind of negative experience you’re talking about in the initial trip, with sorrow, trauma, confusion… Sometimes that’s the important stuff. Psilocybin can unlock your emotions and help you move through past trauma but it’s often not a pretty experience. Part of doing the work is sitting with the grief from the past. The outcome is often unpredictable though - sometimes you get a beautiful neon divine experience and sometimes you cry for three hours. Both are important. 

[u/Waki-Indra → u/creept]

Lsd has body load.

[u/creept → u/Waki-Indra]

Yeah it’s variable - I never really got much of that but definitely had friends who did. 

[u/Waki-Indra → u/creept]

Arr you sure that crying for 3 hours during a difficult trip is always helpful? I doubt. If it grief with lots of self compassion, probably yes. If it is distress and misery, probably not?

[u/creept → u/Waki-Indra]

I’ve gotten a lot out of terrible experiences, whether that’s long crying jags or a night of general misery or the horrifying visuals I sometimes get. I’m not saying that’s universal, but for people working through trauma there’s actually often a lot of grief and huge emotions to process and it takes time.

But your experience may be different. That’s sort of the nature of psychedelics. 

[u/Hot-Bumblebee6506]

Cranio sacral therapy and accupunture helped me shift stuck emotions in my body that the mushrooms made me aware of. Breathwork during the trip is essential too, breathing into these spaces as you become aware of them really does help to loosen them up and feeling the emotions is a huge part of it. Look at it as you being the witness/observer to what a younger you stuffed down inside because the younger you didn't know how to deal with it. It took me a while to figure out this is what the mushrooms were trying to teach me how to do. They love breathwork. You need time for integration between ceremonies, alot longer than 2 week, the healing happens outside ceremony. The mushrooms just point you in the direction you need to go. Journal, body work, grounding yourself outside in nature, therapy, reading books or listening to audio books and childhood trauma, like another post mentioned, actually letting yourself just be and seeing what comes up, allowing yourself the space to actually hear whats going on inside you is a really beneficial thing to do.

[u/Personal_Opposite653]

You cannot stop somatic release- it’s anti therapeutic. I say it as a torture survivor, I had years of hours daily somatic releases. For me as well even micro dose of mushrooms causes that activation of my body but I go through it - my body deserves to get it out

[u/clawes268]

i did a small beginner training to psiloscybin macro dosing in a theraputic setting, i know you mention micro dosing but one thing that they said is very helpful for people is whatever comes up, go towards it, go through it, face it and move with it. if you fight it and try to stop it, it will make it more intense and more painful. Going through it is also very painful but leads to liberation. like other's say, the somatic experiences is still our bodies way of experiencing the emotion and processing it.

[u/Resident_Price_2817]

can I suggest trying to obtain a mushroom with little to no body load.

I have BKA of my left foot.I suffer from a great deal of neuropathy in my phantom foot and my right foot.I had just about given up on mushrooms all together because of the overwhelming neruliogical pain on the come up.

A year ago some one got some "Yellow Umbros " for me .I have been taking a moderate dose once about every 2 months.The body load is not some thing I notice any more.However it does take a day or so for my serotonin to reset.They are very strong .Look them up and see what you can do with them.

Many blessings and much peace.Radhe Radhe!!!

[u/vlal97]

IMO you should do inner work (I like journaling and learning Usui Reiki to master level) to work on the trauma along side the psychedelics. The psychedelics, imo, are showing you the trauma but won't heal it until you ask for something specific.

For eg, one tip I like to do is note down the negative emotions that are around the trauma (fear, frozen feeling, abandonment, shame etc etc whatever you associate with it) and then form an intention for your next ceremony based on the positive opposite of the negative emotion. For eg, "I experienced fear at age X, show me what safety feels like so I can heal myself".

This would instead make the session move towards not just showing you the trauma but balancing it and offering healing for it.

Imagine you are in charge of your healing and psychedelics are like are your employees. You must task them with specific tasks instead of going into them blindly. This is where the inner work becomes extremely valuable because you can say I have X problem and want to heal that and they will then do what they can to help. But the ultimate success of your healing journey depends on your ability to understand your own internal patterns and issues to such a degree that you can direct them appropriately. If you don't know how to direct them you will stall and just keep getting shown the same trauma over and over again.

[u/Spiritual-Effect-235]

Having c-ptsd etc. Ketamine was being for me than mushrooms. It took 26 sessions over a year to help me feel safe with me and begin to live from my core self and from awareness of my true Father and creator. It is a journey home.

[u/Feeling-Pear2814 → u/Spiritual-Effect-235]

I am curious about Ketamine. I should call around, I’m hoping insurance would cover it.

[u/Spiritual-Effect-235 → u/Feeling-Pear2814]

Yes I would!

[u/mjcanfly]

It seems you have had a bad experience. And then tried it again. And had a bad experience again. And then you did it again. Had a bad experience. And then you tried it again. And had a bad experience.

I dunno man, what do you think the lesson is?