Sabrina Santa Clara, LPC, R-DMT, CIFST, CPIT, RYT and I discuss the importance of training regarding touch in therapy. Touch can be so healing yet we receive little to no training on how to integrate physical touch in healthy and appropriate ways and how to document these interactions. Sabrina also discusses the healing power of Psychedelic Integration Therapy.
Sabrina Santa Clara is a licensed Colorado Counselor and somatic psychotherapist, though she works internationally as an educator, trauma-informed transpersonal coach and spiritual midwife. She was a massage therapist for many years and earned her Master’s in Somatic Counseling Psychology from the Buddhist-influenced Naropa University. The dearth of touch training in her program led her to design her course on the Ethics and Fundamentals of Psychotherapeutic Touch™, a comprehensive Certification training on the use of Touch in Therapy.
Sabrina is also a psychedelic integration therapist and has designed a training in Self Psychedelic Integration™ which she will be offering for the first time in London this summer. Self Psychedelic Integration combines Internal Family Systems, Harm Reduction Psychedelic Integration, somatic psychology, Creative and Expressive Arts and neo-shamanistic ritual. While this training is helpful for both clinicians and psychedelic sitters, it is aimed at making integration tools available to the solitary medicine journeyer.
Sabrina is kicker of boxes and breaker of meaningless rules, and a staunch advocate for adherence to rules rooted in sanity, care and high ethical standards. She is a bicultural, bilingual, gender-fluid, artist, poet and dancer who lives in the in-between spaces. She has an affinity for working with therapists and coaches, spiritual seekers, and people who experience themselves as “outside the norm.”
OFFERS & HELPFUL LINKS:
Sabrina Santa Clara, LPC, R-DMT, CIFST, CPIT, RYT and I discuss the importance of training regarding touch in therapy. Touch can be so healing yet we receive little to no training on how to integrate physical touch in healthy and appropriate ways and how to document these interactions. Sabrina also discusses the healing power of Psychedelic Integration Therapy.
Sabrina Santa Clara is a licensed Colorado Counselor and somatic psychotherapist, though she works internationally as an educator, trauma-informed transpersonal coach and spiritual midwife. She was a massage therapist for many years and earned her Master’s in Somatic Counseling Psychology from the Buddhist-influenced Naropa University. The dearth of touch training in her program led her to design her course on the Ethics and Fundamentals of Psychotherapeutic Touch™, a comprehensive Certification training on the use of Touch in Therapy.
Sabrina is also a psychedelic integration therapist and has designed a training in Self Psychedelic Integration™ which she will be offering for the first time in London this summer. Self Psychedelic Integration combines Internal Family Systems, Harm Reduction Psychedelic Integration, somatic psychology, Creative and Expressive Arts and neo-shamanistic ritual. While this training is helpful for both clinicians and psychedelic sitters, it is aimed at making integration tools available to the solitary medicine journeyer.
Sabrina is kicker of boxes and breaker of meaningless rules, and a staunch advocate for adherence to rules rooted in sanity, care and high ethical standards. She is a bicultural, bilingual, gender-fluid, artist, poet and dancer who lives in the in-between spaces. She has an affinity for working with therapists and coaches, spiritual seekers, and people who experience themselves as “outside the norm.”
OFFERS & HELPFUL LINKS:
Jennifer Agee: Hello, hello and welcome to Sh*t You Wish You Learned in Grad School. I am your host, Jennifer Agee, licensed clinical professional counselor. And with me today — we have a special treat — Sabrina Santa Clara is a spiritual midwife, somatic psychotherapist, and owner goddess. I mean, that is a pretty amazing title. She does some phenomenal work in the area of self-psychedelic integration, and I am really glad that she's on the show today. So welcome to the show.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Thank you for having me, Jennifer. And what a beautiful introduction.
Jennifer Agee: Well, hey, you're the one doing this stuff. So tell us, what is something that you wish you learned or understood in grad school?
Sabrina Santa Clara: You know, I went through a somatic psychotherapy program. And you would think in a somatic psychotherapy program that there would be appropriate education on the use, ethics, indications, contraindications on touch and therapy. Yeah, and even in my specialist, there was not sufficient. And so, I look at that for myself, who is a somatic psychotherapist, that I had to sort of gather that information on my own. So, yeah. And that's part of what [CROSSTALK]...
Jennifer Agee: Go ahead.
Sabrina Santa Clara: And that's part of the reason why I train on this is because it's the missing information most of us don't get, other than, you know, touch is a slippery slope into sexual abuse.
Jennifer Agee: Yeah, I was just thinking touch is touchy with therapists, right?
Sabrina Santa Clara: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer Agee: And...
Sabrina Santa Clara: Yeah.
Jennifer Agee: What, what we may intuitively want to do for our clients, um, I think because people scared the ever-living crap out of us in grad school about lawsuits and things like that, it becomes a, a really weird space to sit in, you know, if your client asks for a hug or things like that. So, tell me a little bit about how you, you integrate those things and, and how you balance all of that.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Well, the first thing is that, you know, that we have to look at our culture as psychotherapists. Our culture, as therapists, has a biased against the use of touch in therapy, right? It's not based on actual research. It's not based on, um, it's not based on what is actually true. It's based on fear.
Jennifer Agee: Yeah.
Sabrina Santa Clara: And one of the points I often make when I'm training on touch and therapy is that choosing, uh, intervention or not choosing an intervention based on fears of litigation is not ethical. It's understandable, but it's not ethical.
Jennifer Agee: Okay.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Right?
Jennifer Agee: Yeah.
Sabrina Santa Clara: And so, what we need to do is we need to, you know, train people on being, on touch because touch is not just about physical contact. Touch is also about Proximus, right? If I move, even on the screen, if I move myself into the screen and get close to the camera, you're gonna start feeling invaded.
Jennifer Agee: Sure.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Right? Because there is an, there is an addition to a physical body, we have an energetic body, right?
Jennifer Agee: Mm-hmm.
Sabrina Santa Clara: And so, yeah, so I, I, I think that my, one of my passions and one of my intentions is to get all therapists trained. Even if you never touch a client, you need to know how to reject a client's reach for touch without having them go into shame.
Jennifer Agee: Oh, yeah. That's a really powerful to think about. Mm-hmm.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Right. We need to be able to talk about touch. And because we don't actually explore our own internal material around that, we're, we are, as clinicians, generally speaking, uncomfortable with it. And while there is certainly power to harm, there is also great power to heal.
Jennifer Agee: Yeah.
Sabrina Santa Clara: You know, I, I, especially with men, you know, I have men in general, as therapists, are, are much more terrified of touching clients.
Jennifer Agee: Mm-hmm.
Sabrina Santa Clara: But I can also say, as a woman who has been touch violated by men, some of my most healing experience has been a loving, supportive, safe touch by male therapists.
Jennifer Agee: Okay.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Right? And there is a way to do that, right? We're just not trained.
Jennifer Agee: No. So, what, how, I know, um, training is helpful. Well, I think it's necessary if you're going to integrate touch, learning how to do it appropriate. And like you said, if you were choosing not to knowing how to have that conversation with the client...
Sabrina Santa Clara: Right.
Jennifer Agee: [INDISCERNIBLE] touch.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer Agee: Um, I think is also incredibly important. Have you gotten any pushback from your, any boards or codes of ethics?
Sabrina Santa Clara: Oh, so much. [CROSSTALK] So much. So, so, for example, if you look at all of the li-, you know, the, the governing bodies like, you know, the MFT, the LCSW, et cetera, none of them actually prohibit touch, except for LC, the, the social work.
Jennifer Agee: Mm-hmm.
Sabrina Santa Clara: And that limits a very specific kind of touch, holding, right? But none of the other ones even address touch really.
Jennifer Agee: Okay, so this is starting to...
Sabrina Santa Clara: Which is interesting.
Jennifer Agee: Yeah. This goes back to one of those ideas that oftentimes what we think is ethical or an ethical violation may or may not actually be in our code of ethics because we haven't read it ourselves. What we've done is let other people spoonfeed it to us and then we take whatever they say as though it were in the code of ethics instead of reading it ourselves.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Right. And we've all been trained, like, from– I remember even in my master's program, which is a pretty — I went to Naropa — it's a pretty liberal, expansive program. And even the, even in that program — I believe it's changed now — but even in that program, there was this tension around touch, you know? And so, this sort of group think that comes along with this, right, is entrained.
Jennifer Agee: Mm-hmm.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Right? And so, the only, um, really governing body that really speaks and speaks eloquently to touch, which I highly recommend everybody go look at, is the, um, USABP, which is the United States Association of Body Psychotherapy. They do a beautiful job of speaking about touch and what's ethical and what's not, what's not ethical. And so, none of us have training.
Jennifer Agee: Mm-hmm.
Sabrina Santa Clara: At all. Like, we don't even know how to document a touch intervention, you know?
Jennifer Agee: That's true.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Or, or a reach for touch or a rupture in touch. We don't know, we don't know anything.
Jennifer Agee: Mm-hmm.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Right? And it's, it's, it's ridiculous to me that we don't have any training. So, when you asked about pushback, you know, I've developed this training in psychotherapeutic touch, the Ethics and Fundamentals of Psychotherapeutic Touch, and I tried to get CEs. And every single organization pushed back, even though I had ethics is interwoven in the training. That I got so much, um, pushback, right, that and sort of jumping through hoops, and jumping through hoops, and I jumped through all the hoops. And the last, the last hoop that they made me jump through, um, was they wanted to see, um, clinical studies that showed that touch was effective in the field of psychotherapy.
Jennifer Agee: Okay.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Well, nobody's doing that research. However, there is plenty of research — there might be some now with the psychedelics coming up, right, but at that time, there wasn't — there was plenty of research in the field of nursing, for example, on the effect of touch and depression, and the effect of touch and, you know, positivity and anxiety, et cetera. But because it was in the medical field, it wasn't allowed.
Jennifer Agee: Mm.
Sabrina Santa Clara: And so, I got rejected for the third time with a, the general summary of we have a right to reject anything based on our, any choice that we make. And that was the point when I sort of, like, I kind said, you know, I'm, I'm done with the traditional field of therapy.
Jennifer Agee: Yeah.
Sabrina Santa Clara: I still operate as a psychotherapist when I'm training, um, but the whole premise of, you know, traditional psychotherapy is based on pathology and individualism, right, and patriarchy and all these things that, that, for me, they don't, they don't sit anymore.
Jennifer Agee: Yeah. It's no longer a fit. Mm-hmm.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Right. And I feel like something, it's not just me, I feel like it's something happening in the world of psychotherapy, right? Where, you know, you know, as, as Ernesto does host, you know, Not Your Typical Psychotherapist, right? That whole movement of something different is happening.
Jennifer Agee: Mm-hmm.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Right? Where the scientific-based understanding is important, it's meaningful, and it's not everything.
Jennifer Agee: Yeah.
Sabrina Santa Clara: It doesn't incorporate felt-sense, knowingness, traditional wisdom, mystery, right? Ritual. Some of these things that we know as whole human beings are really important for, um, what we would call mental health wellness, what I would refer to as actually spiritual wellness.
Jennifer Agee: Yeah. Well, we are touch deprived and lonely as a culture, uh, an American culture in particular. And I can think even as a kid, right, many of my teachers would hug me at the beginning of the day when we, when we would come in.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer Agee: And I, I can't imagine what that might feel like now, as a teacher, with all the threats of lawsuit and things like that.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Right.
Jennifer Agee: Things that were intuitively just being done as a part of nurturing–
Sabrina Santa Clara: Right. Right.
Jennifer Agee: Um, have been taken away because of fear.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Exactly. And, and how detrimental it is for the human spirit. We do not, you know, we don't know ourselves except in relationships to the other.
Jennifer Agee: Mm-hmm.
Sabrina Santa Clara: You know, like we learn that I am an I through the felt sense of the skin-to-skin contact.
Jennifer Agee: Mm-hmm.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Right? There is a me separate from another person, and there is a connection. And so, we live in this world that, you know, my whole, one of my, my passions right now is that what is going on right now in the, in mental health and the increase of depression, anxiety, et cetera, it's a cultural issue. This is not an individual issue, and we're treating it individually.
Jennifer Agee: Yes.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Right? We're treating it, as therapists, individually, and this is a, this is much larger than, than an individual issue. And so, in some ways what we're doing by doing individual therapy — I'm not discounting that; I still do individual sessions, right — um, but that we're sort of treating the symptom.
Jennifer Agee: Yeah.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Right? And it's not that the symptoms don't need to be treated, but there is something way bigger that needs to happen, right, in order for us to repair and shift our culture.
Jennifer Agee: Mm-hmm. It strikes me too that even just in that fear-based thinking around touch, it keeps therapists from being open and honest about what's actually happening sometimes in a session. I can think of an example. I had a client who came to me — it was the first time I met her — and she shared, um, that she'd been diagnosed with cancer. She had not told anyone. No one in her family, no one. She said, I just needed to sit with someone, and say it out loud.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Right.
Jennifer Agee: And she did, and she sobbed, and she asked for a hug. Do you think I wasn't gonna hug that woman? Of course, I hugged that woman, right? And because she was, she was broken. She was absorbing something that was incredibly huge to absorb, and she needed comfort. It wasn't inappropriate. There was no butt grabbing her. But I was a compassionate human being in the room with a woman that was hurting.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Right.
Jennifer Agee: And needed compassion.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Right.
Jennifer Agee: And we have all of these, this, um, stigma around, if you touch, then all touch is, has, is sexualized in our culture.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer Agee: We're not having honest conversations about the fact that most of us have probably touched a client appropriately, um, and in a therapeutic way that has been a benefit to not only the therapeutic alliance but to the client's healing.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Right. And this is part of the reason why, why I'm focused on this training is that I want clinicians who are using touch first of all to know what they're doing, to be able to justify it, to be able to speak about it with confidence, rather than with shame.
Jennifer Agee: Yeah.
Sabrina Santa Clara: You know, when I first, my first training that I did was, I don't know, like 10 or 12 years ago, and I was working for a non-profit agency. And this is right after I could of finished grad school and didn't, you know, and still didn't have my license. And the argument I made to them was that clinical research shows that by and large therapists do touch clients, whether it's a handshake, whether it's a hug, right? It is happening. But because these po-, these organizations have no-touch policies, it becomes secret.
Jennifer Agee: Mm-hmm.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Right? And that is one of the ethical, um, prohibitions around touch and therapy, right, is that nothing in therapy should be secret.
Jennifer Agee: Right.
Sabrina Santa Clara: It can be private, but it can't be secret.
Jennifer Agee: Yeah. 'Cause in secrecy, um, things do have space to take root that could be unhealthy.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Exactly.
Jennifer Agee: Whereas if there's openness, it's can, it can be seen, be held accountable, and, and be beneficial.
Sabrina Santa Clara: And then you can have, you know, group consultations, and peer consultations, and, and get feedback. But if we don't talk about it, if it's shadowed, that never happens.
Jennifer Agee: Mm-hmm.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Right? And then we've got, you know, it's, it's interesting that, um, as I named, uh, earlier with you privately that I worked with psychedelic integration.
Jennifer Agee: Mm-hmm.
Sabrina Santa Clara: And there is this, sort of, turning up upside down because in the world of psychedelic integration, particularly with psychedelic assistive therapies, right, touch is considered our normal part of the process. There is an understanding that touch can be beneficial. And yet, by and large, most people who are doing psychedelic integration are not appropriately trained. They do not know how to write a clinical documentation. They don't know the ethical boundaries around it, right? They don't know, like one of the main things I, I teach people is, look, if you don't have a no, there is no yes. So, before you ever put your hands on your clients, you need to make sure that they know how to say no.
Jennifer Agee: Mm-hmm.
Sabrina Santa Clara: In any way they want, right? So, they can say, get your damn hands off me. They can cuss at you, whatever you need to test that. And, and let them know that you are going to be completely non-reactive and supportive in any way that they say no.
Jennifer Agee: Yeah.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Right? Otherwise, there really isn't a, a clarity that they actually have, have a yes. No is a prerequisite for yes.
Jennifer Agee: That's an excellent, excellent point. I have never done psychologic- — or it's not psychological — psychedelic interventions of any kind. I've not used psychedelics, myself, before.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer Agee: Even recreationally. So, I really don't know what that even looks like. Can you shed a little bit of light on that?
Sabrina Santa Clara: Yeah. So, you know, the world of psychedelics, there's doing, they're doing a lot of research now and, and finding some really, um, positive benefits. And I will also put a caveat that there is no magic pill, including psychedelics.
Jennifer Agee: Right.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Every, every intervention has potential for assistance, and every intervention has potential for harm, right? And so, um, making appropriate assessment on who is an candidate for which particular kind of psychedelic is critical. So, basically, how psychedelics work is... Basically, how they work is this — and it's true for all of them to some degree, while they all have different nuances and, and the experience — but the theory is that what they do is they, um, soften the default mode network. And what that, that means for, for those who aren't, don't know that particular language, and then we talk about, you know, neuroscience and the grooves that our brains get into, right? Every time I, you know, walk to the kitchen to get coffee, I have my ritual of putting cream in it, and then I do this, this, this, right? That's the simplistic, but from a psychological perspective, right, it's the, um, ways that we react and respond to particular material and experiences. And the reason why our brains create these default mode networks is because it's efficient.
Jennifer Agee: Sure.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Right? So, if you go into a forest and you want to get to the other side of the forest, you're going to take the pathway.
Jennifer Agee: Mm-hmm.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Versus getting out the machete and hacking out a new, a new road, right? So, what it does is, is it to softens that default mode network, and it allows for greater neuroplasticity, which means that we then have the potential to, um, experience different, um, states of being and grow different neural networks.
Jennifer Agee: Okay. I could see that. Mm-hmm.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Okay.
Jennifer Agee: Well, I know the research that's coming out, uh, with psychedelics is pretty phenomenal and extremely impressive and becoming more and more accepted, even in our culture, in the US culture. It's starting to become a lot more just normalized and accepted as well. What does physical touch look like, 'cause you said that's, that's really a natural part, a lot of times, in doing psych-, um, psychedelic interventions. What does that look like?
Sabrina Santa Clara: Well, the first thing is I will say that, you know, I, I mentioned earlier that I, I sort of oriented myself as an integrationist, right? And though my background is not only in touch in somatics, but it's also in internal family systems and other forms of non-ordinary states of consciousness, such as authentic movement and meditation and breath work, et cetera. Um, so going into a psychedelic session, the first thing I would say is, before, um, any touch gets used within a psychedelic session, there has to be consent.
Jennifer Agee: Mm-hmm.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Right? And there has to be consent of all your parts. 'Cause you may have five parts of you that are like all down with, yay, I wanna do this, I have this thing that I wanna move through, or I'm depressed, and I want to shift that. And you may have two other parts that are terrified.
Jennifer Agee: Yeah.
Sabrina Santa Clara: So, from an IFS perspective, we need to actually work with those two parts that are terrified first.
Jennifer Agee: Okay.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Right? We need to alleviate the terror, right? And we need to get their consent for the psychedelic session, right?
Jennifer Agee: That makes perfect sense.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Because if we don't do that, my belief is that there is greater likelihood that we will have challenging psychedelic experiences, which do happen, right? And, um, and the other thing as far as touch, you know, my orientation is that touch gets talked about. For example, if you're doing an MDMA session, MDMA is very somatic, it's very sensory, it's very loving, typically, right? There's a lot of connectivity. And so oftentimes, touched is desired, right? And so, in order to create safety, in order to really, um, have consent, we don't do any kind of touch that hasn't been agreed upon before the session, before they're actually in an altered state of consciousness. And we don't actually participate in any kind of touch that hasn't been practiced or experienced outside of psychedelic, um, sessions.
Jennifer Agee: That's a great point. So, the first time that they are experiencing physical touch in a therapeutic way should not be in an altered state of consciousness. It should be something–
Sabrina Santa Clara: Exactly.
Jennifer Agee: That, again, has become a comfort zone, something that they already know that they're comfortable with before the session.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Exactly, right? And that will also alleviate any parts that are worried or scared, et cetera. Now, if you have the first psychedelic session and the client wants a particular kind of touch that you haven't consented to, right, then what you do is you state, you name that: We haven't consented to that. Right? And there is oftentimes alternative things that you can do. So, for example, if somebody wants to be hugged, right, and that hasn't been something that's been consented to, you can use weight bags.
Jennifer Agee: Yeah.
Sabrina Santa Clara: So, if you go on my YouTube channel, I have a couple of, I have several videos that, that are training videos, and one of them is How to Use Weight Bags to Alleviate Anxiety. So, you could have a very heavy weight bag, which is just a bag that's pretty much full of rice. Place it on the client's chest, and then you can put a hand on top of the weight bag so that there's a felt sense moving through that bag, but you're not actually touching the client.
Jennifer Agee: Okay.
Sabrina Santa Clara: And even that can be consented to, um, on the front end of the session. Then when you do an integration session, if there was a particular kind of touch that was desired, um, that hadn't been consented to, you can renegotiate consent.
Jennifer Agee: Okay. Yeah. I mean that, that makes perfect sense. And having the weighted bag, it allows the physical pressure, but having your hand on top of it allows the energetic exchange.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Exactly. Exactly. So, you can get the felt sense, right? And, and for those who have been working in psychedelics, we have a general idea of what kind of touches people, generally speaking, want.
Jennifer Agee: Okay.
Sabrina Santa Clara: You know, so for example, with, with MDMA, there's, because it's so sematic and so sensory that a lot of times people want touch. And so, you know, when I'm working with MDMA, I might have, you know, some massage cream and do like a little sweet, little hand massage, right?
Jennifer Agee: Mm-hmm.
Sabrina Santa Clara: And that's a way of making connection that is intimate but not too intimate.
Jennifer Agee: Sure, yeah.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Right? And lets the client really feel nurtured. And because my background is in massage therapy, that's something I feel comfortable doing.
Jennifer Agee: Yeah. How, so, who is actually doing this work now in, in the US? Like how– 'cause I did look into it at one point 'cause I read so much research that just impressed the crap out of me. I, I looked in, um, at least in our area where I am, it had to be done in really some form of medical facility where there was the ability to stay the night, and you had, you know, medical staff on, and all that stuff. So, can you tell me a little bit about the reality of that? 'Cause someone might be listening and think, I've read this research too. I think I have a client that actually might be a really good fit for this.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Right.
Jennifer Agee: What do, what do we do here?
Sabrina Santa Clara: So, it is really not legal anywhere except for Oregon, I believe. So, Oregon has, um, legalized a psilocybin therapy. Um, so that came about a couple years ago. They had two years to actually formulate how this would work, and now it's, um, now it's moving into actually training clinicians, right? Everything else is really not legal in most states. That is, that is changing and is expected to change soon. Um, ketamine is the one that is legal across the board because it's legal medically. So, basically, they're using ketamine on off-label for, um, for therapy. It can be done, um, both remotely, and it can be done live. So, there are ketamine clinics. And ketamine clinics, they use things like injections, right? When you're working remotely, um, they typically use [INDISCERNIBLE], which is [INDISCERNIBLE]. Um, and there are organizations, like, one of the organizations I, um, train their clinicians on is called Journey Clinical. And so, I train their clinicians on touch, and they do remote ketamine, right? As far as psilocybin, MDMA, et cetera, it's still in the research phases, so people who are doing it right now are really the underground therapists.
Jennifer Agee: Okay.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Hey.
Jennifer Agee: I wondered 'cause I, I was thinking, I, I've had a few clients that, based on the research I've read, I thought could be very good candidates for that. I know especially in the research around PTSD, there's been some, [INDISCERNIBLE] resistant depression, there's been some phenomenal studies that have come out, um, but I'm like, where in the heck can I even send someone to do this?
Sabrina Santa Clara: Right. Right. And so, legally, I can't recommend anything.
Jennifer Agee: Sure.
Sabrina Santa Clara: I can, I can tell you what's being done.
Jennifer Agee: Yeah.
Sabrina Santa Clara: I can tell you that there are a lot of therapists, as well as people who are non-licensed professionals, um, that are doing the work against the laws, right, in part because their, their personal ethics is, is greater than what they believe is legal, right?
Jennifer Agee: Yeah.
Sabrina Santa Clara: So, for example, is it ethical, right, to prohibit the use of a treatment methodology that has been proven to be effective?
Jennifer Agee: Right.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Right. And so, each person has to make their own evaluations around risks and safety and, and what are your personal values around ethics and legalities, right?
Jennifer Agee: Mm-hmm.
Sabrina Santa Clara: From a legal perspective, from a, um, complying with your insurance and complying with your organizing body, right, then that is not something that you can do.
Jennifer Agee: Yeah.
Sabrina Santa Clara: And it's, and it's being done. And it's being done by quite a few people, right?
Jennifer Agee: Okay.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Because we know that, you know, treatment-resistant depression, like people have done, people have done a lot of therapy. It's not working for a lot of people.
Jennifer Agee: Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Well, and as a clinician who's, who's sat in, in the physical pain of someone who has that treatment-resistant depression and...
Sabrina Santa Clara: Right.
Jennifer Agee: You want to offer them solutions because they're trying ketamine. They're trying this and that, and...
Sabrina Santa Clara: Right.
Jennifer Agee: They're doing, you know, ECT. They're trying all the alternative stuff. They're willing to do whatever.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Right.
Jennifer Agee: And sometimes people just get super, super stuck.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Great. And so there, you know, there are people that are doing more psychedelics, like ayahuasca and things like that are more, um, readily available out of the country and other places where it is legal. So, that's an option as well.
Jennifer Agee: Mm-hmm.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Um, but yeah, it is, it is painful, as a clinician, to be, sort of, doing your best therapy, being your most compassionate, right, and, and having people that just can't seem to cross that divide. It is a, it is a painful place to be, um, to be a loving therapist and to be witness to that, you know?
Jennifer Agee: Well, and it strikes me, this is one of those situations where you probably have to start a separate company that is apart from your clinical license in order to be able to do some of the, this work so that, um, it's a very clear distinction which co- you know, whether or not you're operating underneath your clinical code of ethics maybe based on ACA or LCSW.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Right. And then, if you're doing that underground in a separate company, does that really protect you legally? And the answer, probably no. I'm not a lawyer, but probably not, right?
Jennifer Agee: Yeah, fair point. Fair point.
Sabrina Santa Clara: And so, you know, it's, it's just a point of what risk do clinicians want to take? And there's also this, you know, ethical question. Like, it's one of the questions I'm holding, right? So, for example, most people that are doing underground work are charging their hourly rate.
Jennifer Agee: Mm-hmm.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Right? So, let's say I charge 250 an hour. If I'm doing, if I was going to do an assisted session, that's six hours, that's $1,500.
Jennifer Agee: Right.
Sabrina Santa Clara: It's great income for me. It's not very accessible to most people.
Jennifer Agee: Sure.
Sabrina Santa Clara: And so, I have been really holding this, you know, this, um, cognitive dissonance in my own and my own self around how do we do this thing in a way that is accessible? Because even when it does become legal, if it's within the medical model, we're still limiting it to people who have great insurance, assuming insurance will cover, or people who have a lot of resources. When, when some of these methodologies, for example, the plant medicines like psilocybin and ayahuasca, and, you know, those things have been historically, they're, they're designed by the earth for the people.
Jennifer Agee: Right.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Right? And if you look at psilocybin, what will become legal medically will be the chemical psilocybin.
Jennifer Agee: Mm-hmm.
Sabrina Santa Clara: That is designed and created by a lab somewhere, and which will probably be hundreds of dollars. It's already right now, I don't remember– I don't know what the cost is, but it's ridiculous. Whereas three grams of mushroom on the street will cost you $30.
Jennifer Agee: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Sabrina Santa Clara: And you can grow your own.
Jennifer Agee: Then they'll capitalize on it, right?
Sabrina Santa Clara: Exactly. And so, that is part of the question I'm holding. And when I'm looking at designing– I'm in this process of designing this program called Self Psychedelic Integration, which is an integration of, you know, internal family systems, and ritual, and somatics, and, sort of, all these, sort of, integrative components. But we need to bring it into groups of, of the people for the people.
Jennifer Agee: Yeah. How do you make, how do you make a treatment that works accessible?
Sabrina Santa Clara: Right. And how do we take it out of, in some ways, you know, take it out of this medical model of treatment and– treatment. Because treatment implies that there is something wrong with you.
Jennifer Agee: Yeah.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Right? And right now, you know, the psilocybin and the other psychedelics, they're being medically approved to treat a condition rather than what they've historically been used for, which is not only for healing but also to connect to the divine.
Jennifer Agee: Yeah.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Which is, I believe, part of our, part of our deep wounding is that we have become horribly disconnected. We have just become disconnected from our own parts. We have just come disconnected from community, from each other, from the earth, from that greater something, whether you call it God, Buddha, spirit, right? And, and I don't see us getting well until we actually recognize that the whole human needs to be realigned. Our society needs to be realigned. And so, when I look at, for example, psilocybin and how we could use that in community, I think that a different model needs to be approached rather than just the medical model. And maybe it looks like nine people with one faciliter.
Jennifer Agee: Mm-hmm.
Sabrina Santa Clara: And you make a commitment for every two months to do a journey. And on one journey, three people sit out, and they learn how to sit. They learn how to attend. And the next session, you know, different three people sit out. Something has to happen at the community level, which is why I believe, you know, I look at psychotherapy, and psychotherapy, it doesn't work. It works to a certain degree for what it's designed for. It does not address the larger cultural issue of isolation. And we are dying. We are dying in loneliness, and we are dying in, in isolation. And of course, right? Of course, we're depressed. Of course, we're anxious. How could we not be? We are not biologically designed for this kind of isolation.
Jennifer Agee: Mm-hmm.
Sabrina Santa Clara: This kind of community isolation, this kind of somatic isolation, right?
Jennifer Agee: Yeah. I com- I completely agree. I think I, I don't know how many times I've had the conversation with other therapists where if my clients were just, uh, better connected communally, a lot of what they're dealing with would naturally go away. Because they're lonely. They're isolated. Um, and because of that, their thoughts are not positive. You know, they're taking them to really negative places. And I think a lot of our disease model, um, the base for a lot of that really is this sense of disconnection and the various ways that this comes out.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Right. And even, you know, as, as, like — I don't know how it's been for you — trying to find groups for people, I cannot find therapeutic groups for people, and that's really what they need.
Jennifer Agee: Yeah.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Right? I've got clients that have social anxiety. I've got clients that are isolated. What they need is they need healing within a community, and I can't find enough groups.
Jennifer Agee: Yeah. Yeah.
Sabrina Santa Clara: And so I look at this therapeutic model, and I'm, like, it's not working.
Jennifer Agee: Mm-hmm.
Sabrina Santa Clara: It's not working the way that it's been done. We need more groups, we need more community, we need more us-ness.
Jennifer Agee: Yeah.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Right? And I, and I also recognize I'm also part of the problem. I am doing individual work, right? And so, this is the challenge that I'm working with is, how do I create something different that I can also live sustainably?
Jennifer Agee: Mm-hmm.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Right? And also offer something that's different that's greatly needed.
Jennifer Agee: Yeah. I think, I think great– the hallmark of a great therapist is willing to sit in our own discomfort of the push and the pull of the different parts of ourselves that also exist.
Sabrina Santa Clara: Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, if you don't know your own parts and you aren't working with them, how, how in the heck are you going to be able to attend to other people's?
Jennifer Agee: Absolutely. This conversation has been completely fascinating to me and one that I really wanted to have because I have a lot of curiosity, and I just appreciate you being so open and sharing so openly about these things. Because I think there's a lot of us out there, we can feel that there's a shift, right? There's a shift that's happening societally. There's a shift happening in our field. Um, spiritually, there's a shift that's happening. We feel it. We don't exactly know what it all means yet, but we, we're open to trying different things because what we have been doing is not working. So, I really appreciate you coming on today. And how can people best connect with you?
Sabrina Santa Clara: Um, you can go to my website, which is sabrinasantaclara.com. Um, I've got one upcoming training, which will probably be done by the time this gets, um, aired. I'm not doing any trainings until February of next year. I'm heading into a sabbatical to, kind of, regenerate and recuperate. Um, but all my trainings will begin starting again then. You can also go to my YouTube page. If you just search my name, you'll find it. I am doing lots of free trainings and videos and meditations, and that's, sort of, how I'm balancing my own cognitive dissonance of offering things for free.
Jennifer Agee: Well, thank you again for being on today, and go check out her resources. And if you'd like to connect more with me, I'm on all the social media stuff. The links are below counselingcommunity.com. And I hope this has been helpful, and get out there and live your best dang life.