Escaping a Religious Sex Cult: How Psychedelics, Trauma & Integration Led Olivia Macdonell to Healing

What happens when your entire identity is built inside a world you never chose?

In this deeply moving episode, Dr. Lida Fatemi sits down with Olivia Macdonell, founder of TAP Integration, to discuss her extraordinary journey from being raised in the Children of God—a notorious international religious cult—to becoming a leader in psychedelic integration and trauma healing.

Rather than focusing solely on survival, Olivia shares a story of transformation. Together, she and Dr. Fatemi explore the complexities of holding paradox, the long-term effects of religious trauma, the search for identity after leaving a controlling environment, and how psychedelic-assisted healing became a catalyst for profound self-discovery.

This conversation also explores one of the most important topics in today's psychedelic movement: integration. Olivia explains why the medicine isn't the destination—it's what happens afterward that determines lasting healing.

Throughout the episode, they discuss integrity, community, nervous system regulation, childhood conditioning, and why healing requires both compassion and courageous self-examination.

Whether you've experienced trauma yourself, work in mental health, or are simply curious about the future of conscious healing, this conversation offers wisdom, hope, and practical insights.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Olivia's experience growing up inside the Children of God religious cult

• The psychological impact of ideological conditioning and identity loss

• How trauma shapes our nervous system, relationships, and sense of self

• Why psychedelics became a turning point in Olivia's healing journey

• The importance of integration after psychedelic experiences

• How communication transforms unwanted behavioral patterns

• Why community can both heal and harm

• The role of the inner child in trauma recovery

• Integrity, ego, and the future of psychedelic-assisted healing

• Why lasting transformation happens long after the medicine journey ends

If this conversation resonated with you, please subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with someone who may benefit from it. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

We want to get to know who you are and your story. I mean, the past that you've had is so rich. And then how psychedelics helped you kind of see yourself from different angles to learn from all those experiences and then how that evolved into you doing what you do now and how you serve now. Um, and you show up to the world. It's fascinating. So yeah, I would love, let's start.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

Tell us about yourself. Thank you, Alita. I really appreciate this opportunity. Every time I tell the story, it's so different. I'm just like, what came out when it comes out? So we'll see how it goes this time. So my name is Olivia McDonnell. I was born and raised in the Children of God, which is uh is and was a very notorious international religious sex cult. And I guess I'll preface that by saying that this is not a story about trauma and survival. It's a story of overcoming. And I think I'll start this story off by saying that one of the key concepts that really helped me to integrate and shift in my life is the concept of paradox. Carl Jung says it's the closest thing that we have as humans to really understanding the fullness of life. And so the paradox of my life was being able to hold on the one hand that I was born and raised in an international religious sex cult, and to also hold in the other hand that it was a missionary organization that had the mission of telling people about Jesus and spreading love and light to the world. Growing up, that was the only thing that I understood or knew. And then having to understand what I went through, I had to be able to hold the other in the hand as well. And then to integrate them both into both can be true and both were true. So it was um, those were the extreme polarities of the way that I grew up. So we had uh communes in 120 different countries around the world. I think when it was at its largest, it was um over 100,000 people all over the world. So when I was younger, we I I grew up in communes of like 80 to 150 people. So all these families living together. The group was started in 1969, Huntington Beach, California, by the son of an evangelical minister. So he had grown up very religious, very Christian, and uh decided um in 1969 that he wanted to break away from the church and he wanted to do his own thing. And so he took his kids, they went out to the beach where all the hippies were just strewn out, you know, smoking their weed, really into psychedelics. And uh they started playing their guitar and singing songs of love, and there was something about that message that really attracted these hippies, and they wanted to know more. So, just historically, there was the whole hippie psychedelic movement in the 1960s, early 70s. Right on the tail of that was the Jesus Revolution in California. At the same time, there were quite a few cults that started, like even in the same year as ours, that were all centered around Jesus and Christianity. Christianity just blew up, and like uh there's um there's a movie on Netflix with Frasier, the guy who acted as Frasier. This is one of my favorite TV shows. Yes. It's called the Jesus Revolution, and that gives you a really good insight to what that was like back then historically. People didn't only turn to Jesus, they also turned to um Hare Krishna and Buddhism and Eastern religion and philosophies. Because as we know now, now that we're so intimately connected to our own psychedelic renaissance and revolution, we know that it naturally comes with this seeking and this opening. And so that was the shift that was happening. They were opening their minds and then they were looking for something. They were looking something for something outside of the world and the societal constructs that they knew. So this was something different. It was outside of the church that they knew, and he was really revolutionizing this whole way of thinking. So he would uh meet in the nightclubs and old nightclubs, and they would come and listen to him preach, and they wanted to drop out, and it's so funny because there's so many correlative like terms like to uh turn off, tune in, drop out. That was the yeah. So he was doing his own drop out, drop out of the system and uh leave everything, forsake all and follow Jesus. So they were doing it by the hundreds, and so he started he started opening these ranches, communes, and basically giving people a handbook for how to live communally, how to live as full-time disciples of Jesus, where you didn't work and you just dedicated your whole life to doing that. So I grew up in an environment where we no one in these communes had a secular job. Commune was autonomous, so it was financially responsible to support itself independently of the rest of the group. But any money that did come in, you had to give 10% to the basically to the leaders, and then 11% was seed money, which would go back into the centers that create that were the production centers that created videos, tapes, posters, all of these materials that we would then go out and sell. So that's how we would promote our message, and we would also support ourselves. So ever since I was like three years old, I was out there in parking lots, going door to door, business to business, selling these tracks that said Jesus loves you or somebody loves you, or selling a CD or tape or whatever. So I started selling uh selling Jesus at a very young age. We had uh performing teens. So we'd go out and and sing in restaurants and old folks' homes, schools, orphanages. And the idea was that we were trying to share light and love and hope for people. And so there was some really beautiful things about that. I have videos and pictures of when I was a kid, and I'd be smiling and dancing, and so very filled with this sort of sense of purpose. And the day-to-day life of the group was quite interesting too. So everyone kind of followed the same schedule. Someone was in charge of going around the entire home and waking everybody up. It was called Revelie. So everyone had sort of roles inside the home, and a lot of times someone would come with a guitar and they'd sing for everybody to wake up, and you would be in you'd be in a room with other kids your age. I'd sleep in in one room with like 20 other kids that were in my age group. And uh, we'd wake up, then we'd go downstairs, and then we would have inspiration. So the whole home would get together and sing songs, and people would play guitar, we'd sing, we'd dance, and then we would read. So we'd have devotions, that's what it was called. We'd read something, maybe something that the leader had written, or maybe something from the Bible. And then we'd have breakfast, then everyone would pitch in to clean the house, and then everyone would go off to do whatever role they were assigned to in the home. Like some people were in charge of the kitchen, some people were in charge of school. So every home was a school, and the we had different schoolrooms for the different age groups. Some people were in charge full-time of provisioning. So provisioning was a family term, which meant you'd go out and ask people to donate food or clothes or car services, like mechanic work, whatever we needed. So if you think about it, it's kind of insane. But from 69 to 2011, when it disbanded, finally, like these ho homes in 128 different countries around the world supported themselves just in that way. Where people would give to them every week, they'd go to the market and get free food to feed the whole home.

SPEAKER_00 8:06

Honestly, like you think about that, like pretty intelligent and pretty fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 8:12

It's a really intelligent system. Each home had its own governing body. So it was kind of like a democracy. Everyone of a 16 and up could vote on who the leaders of the home were, who was in charge of the finances, who were the spiritual leaders, the shepherds is what they were called, who was in charge of these different roles. So it was voted on every three months. And uh, most of the time the same people would get voted on. But the idea was that it was sort of like a democracy. But depending on which home you lived in, you could have a vastly different experience. You know, you it's like going from one corporation to the next, where maybe it's within the same umbrella company, but if it's run by different people, you could have a very different experience, you know. So in some of the homes, there is quite an abuse of power, really, really difficult. That was very like a dictatorship versus a democracy. Sometimes you'd be in a mom and pop shop where there'd be two people that just had all the authority and they wouldn't let anybody like join in the voting system. So we had a lot of challenges. I grew up with a single mom and a couple of sisters, and we had to move a lot from home to home. So the homes would vote on who they would allow into their home, and they usually would want people that could really contribute either financially by going out fundraising or that could teach or whatever it was if they had a role that needed to be filled. So um, just because you lived in a home didn't mean that you were gonna stay there. They could vote you out at any time. So we experienced quite a bit of instability. We moved every like six months to two years. So I had to say goodbye to a lot of the people that I grew up with over and over. So you'd make really fast connections because you're living with these people. So it's like they're your family, and all of a sudden you have like 10 moms and 10 dads that are all parenting you, and uh, and then you'd be in a new environment where you do it all over again. And so lots of uh interesting nuances and and complexity there, but I'll just pause there in case you have any questions.

SPEAKER_00 10:16

It's so fascinating to me. Um, because the structure when you talk about it, right, it sounds very utopian. And then when you really get into it and you bring up the complexities of it, humanity is complex, right? As humans, we are complex beings, and depending on what is feeding the ego and who is more egotistical or wants that power, right? That's the direction that the home would go towards. And it's so fascinating. And like it's both for me a foreign idea and also a very close idea talking about those paradoxes because I'm from Iran and we also have a very close community, especially when I lived in Iran and when I was uh until age 14. We lived in war for the first eight years of my life. So if one part of the city was getting bombarded, then we would all go to a neighboring, like across the city to be with a relative that's sleeping, right? Like in the middle of like a living room, like you have 40 people and an uncle who's like old and is farting in the middle of the night, and so the rest of those kids are like ha ha ha ha ha. But I got that that sense of a community. Now, the religious part was not a part of it. People, everybody fed each other, you know, food was a thing because it was rationed in the war. So you know, somebody killed sheep, you know, for an occasion, a celebration or you know, whatever, they would feed the whole community. But all at the same time, you would have these aunts and uncles who are always on top of you. So that role of village was really big in being raised in that culture and also having a lot of guardrails, which is good, but also like it can be very encroaching upon privacy. And and that space that we all, I believe we all need as human beings to get to know ourselves and really sit and do that meta-analysis of ourselves within us without having somebody telling you what to do and what not to do all the time. Do we need that guidance? We do, I believe in that, but don't be curious about your experience in receiving that having like 10 moms and 10 dads. Like, I hear that because I had a bunch of aunts and uncles, but I we it wasn't like that close proximity of like closed environment. Here it is, this is this is what you got. So, yeah, very curious. Oh, yeah, that's a good question.

SPEAKER_01 12:56

It was all very much under the like walking in obedience, you had to be obedient and follow the rules. So uh the the leader, David Ramberg, he died in 1993, and after that, or 94, and after that, his wife took over. Uh, so we called him grandpa because we were the second generation, and we called her Mama Maria. Weird. But anyway, she changed a lot of the rules. So we had just gone under like major scrutiny um prosecution in Australia, France, and Argentina, where the government came in and they raided the homes and they took the children and they put the parents in in jail because there was a lot of child abuse allegations, which was happening, but it just didn't, it just happened to not be happening in the homes that they raided. So by the time closer to his end, when he was right before he died, he had got like completely lost it. He had become like a complete sexual deviant. Um, he was like grooming the kids, like because like child brides, and he had become an alcoholic and he just he totally lost it. But by that point, you know, when someone has been in power that much and he's convinced everyone that he's a prophet, no one's gonna say anything. But when he died, his wife stood in and she changed a lot. So when he was still alive, if you questioned the adults or the authorities, you could get put on silence restriction for sometimes like three months, which meant that you weren't allowed to talk for three months. So there was like some pretty extreme severe punishment for falling for rebelling or being disobedient or questioning or whatever it was. Inhuman. So exactly. So there were examples of that afterwards too, but they kind of changed some of the stuff. So there wasn't they were still really like spanking. So yeah, I mean, you lived in fear, right? You didn't want to uh step out of line, you didn't want to get caught, you didn't want to be in trouble. But what that did is like the the honesty and the good behavior wasn't necessarily reinforced. So that just made you want to do things covertly, and so that created a deep, deep rebel in a lot of us, and a lot of the people I grew up with where now like as adults, where you don't have any authority in your life, you're contending with your own higher self as the only authority in your life, and you were volley against that. So that was something that I really noticed and and had to work with a lot having left the family. I was a huge insubordinate at every job I had. This guy, Peter Sage, he said the best definition I've ever heard of an entrepreneur is someone who is certifiably unemployable. And a light bulb just went off in my head. I was like, oh my God, that's it, that's exactly what I am. Because I just at that point, you you get out and you just have so much like resist resentment and yeah, so much dissonance between authority, leadership, yourself, autonomy. It's all a big jumbled mess.

SPEAKER_00 16:02

Yeah, yeah. Can I ask you, and you don't have to answer if you don't want to, but you called it a sex cult. Were they involving children or were they was it just with the adults? I don't know if you've read the book Sex at Dawn, but it's a PhD and MD that got together and looked at all the research and looking at like evolutionarily how did we develop sexuality and how the nuclear family, as we have it, is a form of control. And that back in the day was like, you know, in villages and nomadic people would really it would be one woman and like five to eight men, and then they would raise the children all together. Again, I I'm sure that's a utopic vision that we have, and it was on the ground, it's a whole different thing. I don't know. These are speculations, though they do bring good research in. But my, you know, it's interesting to hear this and know that part of our evolution is humanity uh had to do more of that communal life. Now, of course, this went way far. You know, that's where we have an issue in humanity is that if we stay in equilibrium, then things are fine. But when we are really like to one side, that's when things go wrong. So, what was it that you saw or you you experienced in this?

SPEAKER_01 17:20

Yeah, that's a really good question. I feel like I can really speak to both sides of polyamory and sexual freedom and openness because I witnessed all of it. And so again, I was like six years old when he died, and then things changed quite a bit. So sex with minors became an excommunicable offense. You could have started having sex with parental permission at 16, but only up to 20 years of age, and then 21 and up could only have sex with people that were 18 and up. So they made the rules very clear to to abide by the laws of any country around the world. But prior to that, he was grooming kids, and there is a lot of really perverse stuff. Here's the thing like there's quite a few documentaries about um the children of God, which then became known as the family when Maria took over. They always just focus on those aspects of the group, right? Like they want to make everything very sensational. And yes, so that was a really awful dart thing that happened, and there was a lot of people that got hurt, quite a few people that I know. And when she came into power, then it changed quite a bit, and then it became more of a polyamorous, it was always polyamorous, but then it was contained mostly to the adults. So, what that looked like, for instance, I've kind of paused in my historical narrative. So there was the Jesus Revolution, and then there was the sexual revolution that happened in the 1970s, mid-70s to the mid-80s, so which happens with psychedelics too. It's like you open up and then you start like questioning all the constructs around sex and all of that stuff, too. So that's when Studio 54 was a thing in New York. I remember watching a documentary about the sexual revolution in the United States. It was like on E. And they were film, they were interviewing this girl outside of Studio 54. And I is it okay to just like talk about anything on your podcast? They were interviewing her and she was like naked, and she, you know, she was just kind of covering herself, and they were like, you know, having fun. She's like, Yeah. And and they asked her, like, how many people have you had sex with tonight? And she said, 90. Yeah, and they're and they're like, Are you tired? And she's like, No, I want more. And I just remember like so shocked. But anyway, so essentially the children were probably following suit with that with a sexual revolution. Grandpa came out with this concept called flirty fishing, where he was was training the adults in the home to go out and proselytize through sex, so they would go to nightclubs and they would like show people the love of Jesus. So that there was like this whole sexual type of proselytization that was happening, and that way they were getting new converts to the group, but they were also getting like donors and stuff. So it started getting a little really weird. He landed on the front of Time magazine because of this practice. Then AIDS became a big epidemic. So he decided that he wanted to close the ranks of the group to protect the sexual freedom of the members of the group. So then after that, you had to go through a six-month process to join the group where you got tested for STDs at the beginning and at the end of the six months to make sure that you were clear. And during that six months, you went through like this whole process of having to read all of the material that he had written and learn the rules of engaging in sexual freedom. So there was like a 10-part series called The Law of Love. And within that 10, there was like 10 volumes of books that you had to read and study so that you engaged in the sexual freedom with integrity and honesty, because that was the basis of it, which was love the Lord thy God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. And if you're abiding by those two, then everything is lawful and expedient, essentially. So what that looked like was if you were in a home, let's say you were in a home in Guatemala, and in that home, there was like two single moms, and then there was three couples, so married couples. Well, within the group, it's everyone's job to make sure everyone's needs are getting met. We're a whole like family that takes care of each other. So what that looks like is the wives sharing their husbands with the single moms in that specific situation, but there was all types of different variations in the homes. So because they weren't allowed to go outside of the home at that point to find another partner, you were only allowed to engage in sexual activity with the members of the Group. So in that case, I saw a lot of the married couples sharing with my mom, for example. And um, and it was always done in a very loving way where it was like very inclusive and caring and loving. And they talked about it first and they would pray about it, and everyone would be on the same page. And I never saw any drama as a result of it within the adults. So I think that there was a lot of first generation adults that really understood what the spirit of and the intention was behind that type of a practice. So it was almost like a sacrificial way for some of them. So I have this really interesting theory about love and sacrifice. I think that there's this whole notion of sacrificial love that comes from Christianity. But what I've realized is that when you tune into the frequency of love, it's not, it doesn't feel sacrificial. It feels regenerative and replenishing. And so I saw that nuance in that context, which was really interesting to see and observe. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:09

Yeah, that's so interesting, right? And you would have never known that if you didn't experience this life. And it's so interesting you bring that up. I think it it if you're not in tune with love and you're just doing it out of pleasing, right? Then it's not real life love anyways. You're doing it for for pleasing system pleasing others, therefore you can't really call it love and then and then it is sacrifice. Yeah. Yeah, because I grew up in a terrorist Islamic regime. And that was there's no love there. There's just that war and fight and fear and oppression. Fear and oppression.

SPEAKER_01 23:53

Perfect love casts out fear. So if something is done through fear, it just automatically cancels out any love that could be uh could be there in the in its stead.

SPEAKER_00 24:05

Right, right. It's so beautiful. Some of these, as you said, I love that you were bringing this perspective in of it, wasn't all those horrific things, right? That people think or that it's been sensationalized and brought out. It's also there were some beauty. There was beauty. I mean, you the way you talk about it, like the fact that it was uh so uh there was consent. There uh not only consent, but there was openness and and of course if the people that didn't want to be a part of it wouldn't be a part of it, right? That's what I would think as adults, or were they forced into it? I don't know. Tell me.

SPEAKER_01 24:45

So there's there's some there's a concept called ideological possession. And that's what some maybe some people term as brainwashing. But the idea is that you get sort of mentally possessed, that sounds like a crazy word, but ideological possession. So you're kind of getting possessed by this idea that sort of consumes everything. But what's really happening is it's wiring into your identity as a person. And without that identity, I mean, I don't know if you know the pain of having to shed an identity, but I'm sure you do as a doctor who's shifted into another space altogether and having to shed certain identities around that as just one. I'm sure you might have many. But um her identity was very much tied to that because, for one, in her opinion, in her life, it saved her, as it did so many of the first generation adults that had chosen to be there. Jesus changed her life, gave her life meaning and purpose and fulfillment and community and connection. And knowing the family she came from, this very southern, conservative, Republican, racist mother, for instance, in Jacksonville, Florida, totally opposite from this new environment. She she was even till the day she died, would not allow for us to talk about the dark side of the group. And so I had not had a fully honest story or example from a first generation adult until I my interview came out with Henry on tri-school day, and I had an FGA, that's what we call the first generation adults, reach out. He emailed me. He's like, Oh, I heard your story. He's like, I wrote a book. Um, I would love for you to read it. And so he mailed me his book. His name's Ray Connolly, and it's called Something Something Somebody Stole. And it's from the he was there in the in the group from the very beginning. He was like, worked under the leader of the group, Dave Ramberg. But he has a fully comprehensive story from the time he joined till when he left, and then looking back and really describing ideological possession and what that looks like and what that means, and the things you start to compromise in your life because you are so tied to this identity and this idea. I mean, there's a verse in the Bible that says, Everyone that hath forsaken houses or brothers, fathers or wives, or sisters or mothers, or children or land for my name's sake shall receive a hundredfold. And they used that verse a lot to get people to separate from their family, to separate from their children, to leave them. That happened within my nuclear family as well in the group. So there were things that were it's hard to say that it was totally consensual in a lot of different circumstances. So then when it came to sex, we were trained to get prophecies every day, which meant that we were supposed to listen to Jesus and get a prophecy, like hear from him about what we were supposed to do. Well, you were supposed to get a prophecy before you had sex, too. But what some people would do is say, Oh, yeah, Jesus told me that we're supposed to have sex. And then how are you gonna argue with that? So, and the difference between the first generation adult sexual law of love practice and the second generation law of love practice was very different. We did not choose to be in the group, we were born and raised in it. And so by the time we reached the age where we could have sex, first of all, we'd been like really exposed to sex since we were children. So we were totally ready to have sex by the time we could. And we a lot of us started even younger than that. We were just using it to our full advantage. You know, there wasn't any like, let's be thoughtful and communicate. It was just like everyone was doing it with whoever, there were no rules, there were no boundaries around it. There so it was just a very different experience between the younger generation and the older generation as well.

SPEAKER_00 28:52

Wow. That's huge. That's so huge. So then what would you say? Give me the good and the bad. I'm so interested to know from your perspective. What were some of the good things that were there for you growing up?

SPEAKER_01 29:04

And what were some of the like this was not like so community, living and growing up in community, as you know, it's so beautiful. Like to have that many children your age growing up. We had a bunch of different teachers that would teach us like cooking, carpentry, art, science. And you're just learning from all these skills from different adults. We had math dots when we were like one, two. I knew how to read when I was three years old. So I could read at a very young age. They would give us lots of books. So you're learning from all of these different people, you're learning from different generations of people, too. As kids, your minds are sponges. And so having that much and that much poured into you was a really incredible experience. Learning how to connect and converse with people by going and performing, like those were all really, I think, positive things. Learning how to communicate with people, but then also being super connected to a sense of purpose at a very young age was also, I think it set the path for my life. Lived in community since then, since I left the group because I love living with other people. I think um I just really thrive in community and connection with others. So that was the that was the the good side. Some of the bad stuff, I mean, the punishments that we would get for doing anything wrong, for stepping out of line, that fear-driven sort of um type of parenting and leadership. Um, there was a lot of disparity in certain homes, tons of abuse of power, uh, where you just couldn't even question anything. You just had to do stuff, even if it was um if it was wrong. Um, I think I think a lot of the the sexual coercion, you know, that came from a s a super sexually charged environment where there wasn't any boundaries and we weren't really taught how to say no. So it was like you just said yes, and even when you didn't want to, created a major dissonance between me and my body. And I then ended up experiencing a lot of sexual freedom. So I ran away from home when I was 15 in Guatemala. I had just graduated high school. I ran away. Um, my s older sister had just left and um I was shot at a couple times, and then I just had a series of sexual trauma occur because I did I didn't have any ability to know what was okay and what wasn't okay because I was used to an environment where it was just like, yeah, you just kind of say yes to everything. And so that was tough. And but and at the same time, my mom had fortified me with such a sense of um empowerment and the ability to overcome and the ability to sh to change my thoughts at any moment and to shift into a uh a mindset that could get me through any challenge. And so that got me pretty far until I just completely crashed. You can work with what you have until you just can't go on anymore. And that crash came around 30 years old. I had gotten so far away from myself and that sense of purpose that I had found when I rejoined the group. There's so many different like chapters to this story. But yeah, I think I think uh having uh knowing what a sense of purpose feels like, knowing what meaning feels like, knowing what loving community looks like, and also knowing what dysfunctional community looks like and what dysfunctional power looks like. And so just being able to have such a clear understanding of polarity in itself, I think was is was one of the greatest blessings of my life.

SPEAKER_00 32:56

Oh beautiful, and your perspective on it and the depth of understanding that you bring to it is just wonderful the wisdom. Thank you for sharing. The other question I have for you is I I I'm interested. When you started your psychedelic journey for healing, and was that a fortuitous thing? Was that a sought-out thing? And and where are you now? Yes.

SPEAKER_01 33:21

Well, I um so I had rejoined when I was 16 after I ran away, and I had a spiritual experience where I knew I was supposed to be a service, but then I went from one corrupt situation to the next, finally left and came to Austin when I was 19, started to go to school for psychology. I was so desperate to fit in with a society that I and a system that I did not understand or connect to. I didn't have any cultural references at all. I felt so out of place. So I got, I just started using the coping mechanisms of everyone I saw around me, alcohol. Um, I just I was started partying a lot because that was the only thing that could make me feel comfortable while I was going to school. And so that just started me down a path that just kept disconnecting me further and further from myself. I became like very chaotic in my relationships. Um, a lot of them ended in just like burning bridges, literally. And I I just got to a point of desperation where I was like, I need help. I need to find out what's wrong with me. And so I um around that time started hearing podcasts about psychedelics and what MAPS was doing, and this must have been like maybe six or seven years ago, um, and there was just something about it that spoke to me that help made me think that maybe there is something in that for me. Meanwhile, I was trying everything else I could, um, got like completely sober, started doing yoga, was reading tons of books, listening to a lot of podcasts about healing and self-help. And but when you haven't gotten to the root, all of that stuff just starts to back up in the hard drive of your mind. It's like you can understand it intellectually, you're like, well, it makes sense. It starts kind of like creating a little slight clearing or opening within you, but they were the big missing piece. And so I had somebody come and tell me were offered to do a MDMA therapy session with me. He told me that he'd been facilitating for a while, and I had actually known him for some time. And so I was like, Oh yeah, I've been wanting to do this, I'd love to do this. So we did the session, and before that, he asked me, he's like, Have you ever taken an the ACE test? And I was like, No, I've never heard of it. And then he told me what it was about, and I was like, Oh, I don't think I need to take that. That's for people who've had like real trauma. At this point, I I didn't even associate myself with having had trauma, like, and also I couldn't remember a big piece of my childhood. So there was like 80% of my childhood memories were sort of missing or inaccessible to me. So we did three journeys. I took the ACE test, I scored an eight out of 10, which is like very high for yes, for the ACE test. And it was like a light bulb went off inside me again. I understood all of these things about myself and my my life. It was like a huge weight was lifted. I was like, oh, that's why I've had all this dysfunction, behavioral, social, economic dysfunction in my life for so many years. And it's because of these things that I went through. Because up until then, I had only been holding this one idea that I grew up a missionary, my mom was a beautiful, wonderful person, which she was. But I I had no concept of the dark, of the polarity of that. And so understanding those things that had impacted me just totally liberated me and also revealed to me a path to helping others to experience this for themselves. Um, at this point, I had had a lot of experience working with people and just having lived with so many people over the course of my life, I had a really good understanding for people. So then I started going through a training to be able to help facilitate uh transformation for people. And so I've been on this path for the last five years, and it's been a real process of having to experience everything myself in terms of all of the pitfalls and traps that the ego goes through following um these types of journeys and sessions, and then being able to share that with other people, you know, through my own experience, what to look out for, what to watch out for. I see a lot of very similar patterns through people and their journey. For instance, one thing I see a lot, and I can always tell when somebody's like pretty new in on their path, and maybe they're just like in their first year of working with psychedelics, but they're like very much in this like high vibes only. They only want to be around like-minded people, and it's like their program is the best program, and the only ones that are doing it right, or whatever it is, and you're like, oh yeah, romanticized version of yeah, yes, exactly. So it's interesting, it's been such a fascinating thing. But I mean, psychedelics have have changed my life, they helped me find so much more acceptance and understanding for all the parts of myself that I really just didn't like, that I didn't want to have. I have a part of myself that I used to call OE Blia and um have been, you know, integrated that part. So yeah, it's been an incredible journey.

SPEAKER_00 38:29

Yeah, that's incredible. And then what are you doing now? You mentioned facilitating. I know we've talked about a little bit about what else you're trying to create to offer to people in the community who are also wanting conscious healing. And yeah, what are you offering now?

SPEAKER_01 38:44

So I have a software platform called Tap Integration, Tap Sense for the Activation Project. Um, and it's all about integration, simplifying the psychedelic aftercare process. The goal is to provide instant access to the tools and resources that are so needed following a psychedelic experience or really any transformative experience because it all requires integration. I believe that integration is applications, taking these profound insights, and then it's applying them to the day to your day-to-day life so that you can see change. Sometimes you have this empathy that comes through for your mom or your dad or your brother or your sister. And then there's a certain amount of application or action or follow-up that's required to really start to shift things within you, but then also to sometimes bridge that gap if it's needed with your family. But overall, just bringing you towards more connection with others, if that's the case. Maybe there's communication skills that are needed so that you can start to shift certain dynamics in your life. I personally believe that we can change any pattern in our life, wanted or unwanted, by changing our communication, the way we communicate with ourselves, the way we communicate with others. Language is a software. It can either build up and change and transform or it can corrode and act like a virus. So really learning those communication skills. So that's a part of it. I think that there's four different components, the way that I've categorized them through tap integration, mind, body, heart, and spirit. So for the mind, you know, when you're in that neuroplastic state following a journey, what um, what new information can you take in that's going to help you to wire in a new way of thinking? So I have a whole library of resources that are categorized into different topics like people pleasing, perfectionism, vulnerability, depression, mother hunger. And then you have the body integration, which is really learning how to regulate your nervous system because the more regulated we get, the more present we can be, the more space we have to connect with others, to connect with ourselves, to connect to the infinite wisdom that we can connect to in the universe. And then there's heart integration, which involves emotional processing, being able to release things that were stuck that are stuck in us, like resentments, pain, so in the past, all the things that create that little gunk in our heart that keep us from fully opening and experiencing joy and happiness. A lot of times we have to go through this process of grief and sorrow. One of the frameworks that I work with is called Privilege through adversity. So it's about really understanding what true privilege is all about and how it's directly connected to the adversity that we've experienced in our life. And oftentimes, what that requires is returning all the way to the seat of the victim and stepping into the shoes of what it was to be the victim of our story because there's an inner child in us who really was. And bypassing that is going to keep you limited in your growth. So going through that, being witnessed in that through an empathetic witness there that can hold space for you, and then allowing all the emotions to move through you, the grief, the sorrow, the anger, until you get to this place of finally being able to just accept everything that's happening or that has happened, and acceptance being that turning point that then allows you to let go and to surrender and to move on to true privilege. So uh we have all of that in our software platform. There's a back-end for facilitators to be able to track the progress of their clients. Then there's people who can just go on there, even if you're not working with a facilitator and integrate. Then uh TAP integration is powering conference for facilitators, by facilitators in Austin, Texas. That's gonna be May 14th and 15th. It's gonna be split into those categories: mind, body, heart, spirit. It's gonna be an incredible interactive, experiential journey in and of itself, and also a really great place to connect with other people. So we're looking for referrals and testimonials for people that you, the community, think is doing really good work in those areas that has integrity, that has a really powerful mission and modalities for healing.

SPEAKER_00 43:06

Beautiful, beautiful. What you've done is so intricate and so necessary. And the levels, the different levels, or not even levels, just components, right? That that is a part of all of our beings needs that type of attention, right? And I love that you talked about that, you know, younger self, that inner child that we have to pay attention to and we have to listen to. And a lot of us were not heard, we were not held, that space was not held for us. We were shut the children are to be seen but not heard. Um, that is the rhetoric that I hear over and over and over again in my clients. And it is so hurtful. And the feeling of invalidation that a lot of humans, like I would say majority of us, carry with us until a later age where we Are in our journey of healing, and then we go back. No, you're I'll hear you, little one. I'll hear you, you know, and to really see that role that we have now as adults that we can bring this forward to the next generations. I think it is so powerful. Um, that each one of us stepping into that healer role with that integrity. I love that that you're using that term because I was just talking to a friend of mine um at our hospice um office yesterday, and she was like, it's as if they've taken integrity out of the dictionary. I'm like, Jay, it's so funny you say that because our ward for the year for our hospice do organizational coaching for our for our staff, and it was integrity. I had contemplated on the ward for the year for about a month, and that's what kept coming up. And everybody was so excited for this. They're like, that is what's missing in healthcare. That's what's missing in a lot of different industries or in just humanity, I feel like. So you bringing that in, I think is such a central point to the work and to the conscious healing process of um, there's honesty in that, there is courage in that and integrity. There's so many components in integrity. There's like, let me let me check with my morality and values. Where am I? I I love how you d explored that of how do we bring it here to this world because it's a miracle that we're alive and that this planet is alive. It's a miracle. And to recognize that psychedelics with a lot of people who carry the stigma from the past of uh with psychedelics, they're drugs and they're gonna make you lose your mind. Yeah, if you're using it for escapism versus engagement versus heart connection and that beautiful communication, um it's a whole different world. And to the same degree, I I love to hear from you what you're seeing. And we touched on this previously, be uh on on the ego side of psychedelics, the the shadow side of psychedelics, because there's also that, and we have to hold that polarity as well, and to really check in with our inner compass, the intuition of would bring into that vulnerable state that we're right.

SPEAKER_01 46:30

Yes, but um it's really interesting to me because the whole psychedelic movement renaissance is very much is also mirroring my experience growing up and family, like where where it's gone, like like that's in it's like the spiritual healing, and then it's like the tantra and the sex like polyamory, and then it's so there's all of that, and I think you know, I've seen with ayahuasca that it can exacerbate narcissism and facilitators and uh that same sort of like corruption of power that starts to weave in, where it's like, oh no, but I'm a direct channel to God, and so everything I say, I'm a prophet, but I'm a shaman, and to me it sounds the same. Oh, you're a prophet. So, like that's what I hear when people are self-proclaimed shamans, it's just like gotcha. And it's not to discount the their ability to help people, because if there's one thing that growing up in that environment taught me, it's like you never throw the baby out with bathwater. He became a corrupt sexual deviant pervert, but he started with a really good intention and mission that ended up actually changing a lot of people's lives. And so it's like when that starts to happen, starts to corrupt, well, then it's the job of the community around to take a stand and be like, this is actually it's going in a path that can end up really hurting people. So the nature of blind spots are to become blind again. Our ego hides our blind spots from us um because it wants to protect us and it wants to keep us from feeling that type of pain. So it's gonna happen. So if we are blind to ourselves, well then it's the jobs of the people that are in our community to help to reveal the blind spots. So what we need to do then as an antidote is to stay open and receptive to feedback and not wait for it, but to constantly be seeking it out and to have groups where we can talk and share things where without the fear of being judged, but where we can be held and just sort of like kept in this space of we were sort of held to a higher standard than the HIPAA oath, which is to do no harm. Goes beyond that. I think it's sort of the job of the community because as one person, it h history has shown us time and time again that the ego cannot withstand that. It's going to end up in that type of uh a corruptive path. So I think we just need to look out for each other. We need to hold each other, we need to make sure that you know we're staying open and we're seeking help and counsel.

SPEAKER_00 49:05

I love it. I love it, I love it. I'm gonna uh conclude this beautiful, beautiful session. Thank you so much with your openness and wisdom and willingness to share your beauty and all of it, all the polarities, and oh, I just love what you bring forward and thank you for stepping into it.

SPEAKER_01 49:27

Thank you, Dr. Alito. So, so, so great talking with you today, and I can't wait to meet you in person. Definitely. So much love to you, so much love to you. Bye. Bye.