Geral Blanchard, LPC, is a psychotherapist who is university trained in psychology and anthropology. Formerly of Wyoming and currently residing in Iowa, Geral travels the world in search of ancient secrets that can augment the art and science of healing. From Western neuroscience to Amazonian shamanism, he has developed an understanding of how to combine old and new healing strategies to optimize recovery, whether from psychological or physical maladies.
MDMA, Shame, and Self-forgiveness
Geral T. Blanchard • June 26, 2022
Many food and medicinal products are given an estimated shelf life. After a certain date we are to throw them out.
Even sour cream is to be discarded lest it becomes even more sour. But it seems like some human missteps that have given us shame seem to have no end date assigned. So we unwittingly hang on to our shame indefinitely. It can become increasingly sour.
Shame can be like an unending penance and a repeated internal announcement of our unfitness to be on this planet with others. Externally, we apologize for ourselves and apologize for apologizing – that’s how deep its roots can be. Today, if shame’s inherent benefits – its nutritional value to our mind – is finally being questioned, it may be the time to seriously consider cleaning out the refrigerator of our soul.
MDMA is a relational medicine. And while interpersonal relationships -- especially when deceit and betrayal are involved and give rise to trauma -- it is wise to consider how we further betray ourselves with punishing ruminations over perceived mistakes. One must ask, how many times must I replay that act of 1998 and berate myself with a story of unworthiness, dishonoring myself today for what amounts to ancient history?
It’s one thing to have healthy guilt over behaviors that hurt others. That’s why we make serious, empathetically detailed, heartfelt apologies and move on. But if we are not wide awake, guilt can morph into shame when we no longer feel like our previous behavior by itself was flawed. Rather, the conclusion is made that even today as human beings we are now inherently and, in fact, permanently flawed regardless of much our relationship skills have improved. If we don’t address the underlying mistaken assumptions, neglecting ourselves could be the recipe for additional guilt and shame down the path. Remember: shame promotes a sense of worthlessness but shame itself is what is worthless. As a recovering heroin addict said to me, “The only thing worth shaming is shame itself.”
An Episcopalian priest once introduced me to an important word that is germane to this healing process. It is
expiation. Sometimes atonement, he said, can be overdone and harmful. We may punish ourselves long after a hurtful deed was done and act as if nothing could possibly banish memory of the event from our mind or from the memories of those who know us. Errantly, we assume others are hanging on to the “Act of 1998” in a similar fashion when, in fact, most people may have moved on decades ago, no longer remembering it.
My priest friend advised that when we receive and understand “the call” -- fully owning and understanding the outdated shortcoming and the harm once done -- our next responsibility is to “hang up.” If we no longer commit similar acts, we are allowed to say to ourselves: enough is enough!
To do otherwise is to accumulate more guilt, convert it into more shame and, as a result, develop an angry attitude toward others fearing they will want to hurt us because of who we are (or who we once were). If we hang on to shame, a “strike first mentality” sets in: reject others before they can reject us. The result is like spraying ourselves with a “people repellant” that keeps folks away from us. And when that happens we can erroneously conclude, “See, I am worthless!”
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An MDMA ceremony may help draw a demarcation line between the past and the present. It may be a time when our emotional armor can be dropped and, once and for all, bring updated insights to longstanding relationship patterns – especially the relationship with one’s self/Self.
There is much to be said about a pilgrimage to the treatment location. By getting psychologically ready, booking a flight, packing bags including sacred items, reflecting on what the desired outcome could be, recovery is put in motion. Hope arises. We arrive on site with half of our work already completed. The ceremony makes the work sacred and official.
There is the value of dropping defenses which is encouraged by the medicine. The medicine shifts (enlarges) our worldview and allows us to reboot our human biocomputer -- our mind. A fresh start.
This is done while in the company of safe, caring, and non-judgmental persons who bear witness to our journey and lift us up on our Healing Path. It is often helpful to know, especially in advance, that the ceremonial caregivers will likely find brave confessions merit immense respect. The process paves over shame with newfound self-respect.
Leave shame behind at the treatment site, far away from your home. Journal what is being jettisoned, what no longer serves a useful purpose in your developing life. Take the notes outdoors and bury them in Earth. Mother will be the Ultimate Composter who turns it into fertilizer for something better to emerge (more hope).
So lingering shame is an unexamined force, for good or for harm. Some choice is involved. Electing to mindfully use an empathogen is a way to make a jailbreak from shame – escaping the old prison of our mind. Our task is to focus more on going deep than being right. This entails brave self-examination done in a sacred and safe setting.
And recognize that your work is everyone’s work. That your transformation can be contagious. Being in your presence is not toxic. Proof of this comes in the experience of caregivers who are rewarded by being in the company of your vulnerability, your bravery, your example, your spirit. As one grows, all three in attendance grow. That’s how it works. What you believed to be your toxic poison becomes, fertilizer – Miracle Grow. Or as Thich Naht Hahn wrote, “No mud, no lotus.”
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“I see the truth in thee, and what is in thee is in me.”
- Upanishads
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Other Topics
Basics of MDMA
Rituals and Ceremony
Brain and MDMA
Trauma
Heart
Energy Movement
Quantum Physics
Native Cosmologies
Nature
Spirituality/Enlightenment
Kogi Tribe
Books written by Geral T. Blanchard
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In recent years psychotherapists have become increasingly aware of the risk of transmitting trauma intergenerationally. By examining the impact of the Holocaust, or the experiences of Native Americans who were systematically abused by colonizers including the Catholic Church, it becomes obvious that indirect passage of depression, despair, anxiety, and damaged self-regard are but a few of the ancestral legacies of uninterrupted abuse. If, however, trauma can be passed from generation to generation without direct experience, could it also be possible for the reverse to happen?
Just as we have started to witness the reality of individual post-traumatic growth (PTG) – not just bouncing back after trauma but bouncing forward – could we entertain the concept of intergenerational growth (IG) – in other words, thriving from generation to generation?
There can be two levels at which trauma is processed. The first tier may be a time of quiet denial or the dissociation of nearly all thoughts of how painful the past was. The body feels it, but the mind does not speak it. On the second level a person awakens to the entirety of it, often an unpredicted and sudden onslaught of previously suppressed details with extensive associated pain. When trauma is reconstituted at the second level it often happens unwillingly. A person may be swept away by an awakening that seems very ugly. It feels like too much to absorb in its entirety. The result is often to feel afraid, even shattered – at first. Now with everything out in the open, what must be done with it?
At the second level of awareness, it is almost impossible to go on pretending that everything is fine. No longer can the visuals and emotions be kept submerged. One wonders, “Damn it, will I ever get better?”
Traumatized persons, with their pervasive pain, typically seek mood altering experiences. This can include ascetic restrictions, hedonistic over-eating, chemical dependency, sexual dependency, sexual anorexia or celibacy, romance addiction, relationship dependency, compulsive gambling, TV or movie binging, rock climbing, auto racing, reliance on antidepressants and/or antianxiety medications, religious addiction, and so much more that can serve to pacify, distract, and avoid unpleasant thoughts and feelings. By thrill-seeking, the higher the risks being engaged, the greater mood alteration one can experience. It’s a big dopamine splash and more.
These are the adult versions of childhood thumb sucking, according to Dr. Harvey Milkman, the author of Craving for Ecstasy (the feeling of ecstasy, not the drug). Harvey pointedly said, “Growing up consists of finding the right substitute for your thumb.”
There are many emotional reactions to a drug-free spiritual awakening experience and a ceremonial MDMA journey. While this article focuses on empathy – both the feeling and the cognitive component – it is obvious to those who have awakened from a spiritual emergency that a variety of related emotions arise.
It is one thing to imagine how another person feels. Psychopaths, despite what the general public believes, are very good at empathy on an intellectual level. Even criminal psychopaths can put themselves in another person’s position and understand their perspective. It is bigger, better, and far healthier when empathy, in its deepest sense, allows us to “feel with” other people by recognizing a sense of oneness with them, what’s called unity consciousness. To hurt others would be to hurt ourselves.
It’s impossible to talk about projection without incorporating a discussion about Sigmund Freud and Donald Trump. In this article I will skip Donald but throw in a little Carl Jung. Freud, of course, named several distinctive defense measures – reality distorting strategies to keep us safe. Two of the big ones are displacement and projection.
First, a definition of projection: This is evident when an individual attributes their own unacceptable impulses onto others. For example, a person might accuse others of engaging in thievery when, in fact, they are swindling money from their employer. Some of the behaviors and thoughts we are most ashamed of could be called shadows. We can see them first in other people before we can “call them out” in ourselves. We are defending against humiliation and mortification lest we be exposed.
Does this empathogen work in a similar manner as psychedelics, blasting us off to a sudden and dramatic awakening of the mind and soul? Not necessarily. Much like massive stress, psychedelics and MDMA can knock people off an unhealthy path and offer them an entirely different trajectory, but there is a lot of arduous individual work that must follow the use of these propellants.
So, could it be concluded that MDMA is a transcendent spiritual event -- a chemical event, or perhaps a neurological experience? By themselves, both seem unlikely. They can change activity in the brain, but enlightenment comes from hard work before and after their use. Entheogens and empathogens likely have a catalytic but not a primary casual effect in awakening.
Many events in life can change us, some in profound ways, others somewhat superficially. Some positively, some negatively. Some temporarily, some permanently. Let’s break it down.
With the “help” of psychology and the diagnoses of PTSD and C-PTSD, an entire trauma industry has developed. Much help has been delivered and, unfortunately, in many instances the assigned labels stick like glue and there can be difficulty relinquishing the newly imposed identity of “breakage.”
Many life events are transformative:
Many great minds have come out of India. Like countless spelling bee champions, Mahatma Gandhi, and Aurobindo Ghose who later took on the name of Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo became a highly regarded spiritual teacher and author in the twentieth century. His main insight was that what many humans experience during altered or higher states of consciousness are glimpses of the future of evolution. And, he contended, one day these states of expansion will be normal for the whole human race.
Countless numbers of people are seeking the unity consciousness that MDMA can offer. It can make them feel bigger. And more deeply connected and powerful. Like many billions of tiny ants inching a fourteen-wheeler up a hill, every tiny bit of effort pulls the big rig along. Similarly, each one of the eight billion or so people residing on our planet today may, via a combined assemblage of singular efforts, raise their individual consciousness, while tugging the entire race forward.
“Where did all the time go?” That is the ubiquitous question every patient asks after a treatment. They ingest the medicine at 9 a.m. and, after what seems like perhaps an hour or so but was actually five or six, and once the eye mask comes off there is bewilderment as to just how much time has passed. Of course, this is all built on the bedrock notion in Western culture that time is a straight line and linear manifestation. And that there is such a thing as time! Stepping out of existing paradigms, even if for a brief “time” can be eye opening while your eyes are closed.
Traditional Native American cultures have long believed that time is a circular phenomenon. Remotely like the movie Groundhog Day suggests, every day is very similar and reoccurring like the last. In indigenous worldviews, the sun rises and the sun sets, routinely; we always have a predictable reset of sorts, the start of what we call a “new day,” or what Arapahos called “sleeps,” both reflecting measurements of time.
Dark nights of the soul as Saint John of the Cross called those long, despairing periods of our life, are never easy, in fact they are usually dreadful. They are so necessarily awful and so damn long because some of us don’t do subtlety very well. If we are open to these moments, even a tiny bit, they can serve as an internally calculated and blaring wakeup call that will guide us to solace.
John Nelson, in Healing the Split, refers to a fleeting or ephemeral sense of a higher purpose, not fully conceptualized, but compellingly near the heart. It holds answers to life’s pain but isn’t quite within our grasp…at least until the dark clouds engulf us. Then, with great staying power and inexperience matched with trust, a spiritual emergence nears surface awareness. And it always happens, as psychiatrist Stan Groff defined it, around the time of a blurry spiritual emergency.