Dissociative Learning – Announcements and Updates
Our post-doctoral research (Applied Recovery) offers our justification for providing dissociative-inspired and psychedelic-based learning as a educational and experiential process. For example, in her 2016 book, Maia Szalavitz (Unbroken Brain: A Revolutionary New Way of Understanding Addiction) has presented that addiction is more of a learning disorder, which we can see validity in, but know that dissociation is underneath those, based on our findings (O’Brien, 2023a). In an effort to promote healthy development, universal healing, building resiliency, and to enhance performance. We have shared our significant doubt on the part of the educational department, legal system, governmental officials, professional organizations, corporate society, and industrial culture. We recognize that these are the result of intergenerational dependence dynamics that remain unrecognized as key components as to why citizens are uninformed about the basics of life, liberty, and how to pursue happiness with the basic materials of life.
WHI offers an alternative to alternative learning. For those who don’t get it, who know who they are but cannot be themselves in this world or lifetime, or those who are getting it but not quite there yet, we offer this path. This is also a path for those gifted with extraordinary talents. With an eye on the realities of all realities, the dissociative learning that WHI offers is experiential and is designed to help promote emotional, spiritual, and moral development in the psyche, community, and citizenry. As our work points out that the field of psychology is not able to accurately name addiction as a dissociative outcome and as dissociation is a normal response to a normal event and the reasoned start of the healing process, this blog offers a brief reasoning for our purpose, outline, and aim with Mindful Dissociation and our Dissociation-Based Learning Process.
The lived experience of “study high, test high” is now upon us. Learning and our learning environment is highly impacted by our memory systems and our lived experience. Whether or not you dissociate or not, we are interested in qualitatively understanding what it is that you experience when you learn. Therefore, we educate on what we know and what we don’t so all can learn.
While providing an explanation for the insidiousness of destructive behaviors, the ADM academically suggests that healing states of consciousness can be achieved through regular meditation practices that produce dual attention states of consciousness, activating memory consolidation and potentially stimulating the endocannabinoid system. Our solution is to bring unconscious body awareness to the unconscious mind by providing an innovative maintenance program that serves to prevent recurrences, foster awareness, and increase wellness.
Normative addictions are not diagnosable by Diagnostic Statistical Manual (DSM)(American Psychiatric Association, 2022) standards and medical necessity; therefore we utilize performance enhancement techniques, PTG with Brainspotting Expansion, maintenance and resiliency training with Biofeedback and Neurofeedback regulation training, body-mind strength-building practices/exercises with cannabis products of your choice, and coaching and mentoring for personal and professional development. We utilize wellness and recovery models, integrative medicine and health, and the core tenets of Positive Psychology. Moral and spiritual development are essential to retaining all that is gained in this learning process. All of these are supported by the ADM findings that recovery is healing, healing is recovery, recovery is spiritual, and spiritual is emotional.
Cannabis (CBD/THC) as a psychedelic learning tool offers so much more right now at this stage of our cultural development than we can calculate. The fact that they are making it legal is progress, but permission to use these homeopathic medicines in moral, emotional, and spiritual ways should not be required. Considering the system said they had no medical value and that they created a “non-addictive opiate”, said that mental health is “due to chemical imbalance”, and that what is emotional is irrational, an honest appraisal of our current times is upon us. However, legalization of psychedelics does not pay back the debt to all of those people and families that did not deserve to be locked up for marijuana “offenses.” Families, lives, and generations were ruined because of their mislabeling, misguided attempt to preserve their rights while taking citizens away. Laws change and the war on drugs has ended and historically was a crime against humanity. Again, these medicines are our birthright, just like the processes of memory reconsolidation, which is how we teach what we know.
We are all yearning to breathe freely. Free from their regulation. Free to make our own decisions.
Freedom of free choice for citizens is the only thing the government should be defending.
WHI educate everyone on healing so more healings are happening. WHI supports a developmental maintenance program to help dissociated ego states reach full maturity through a process of self-healing, which is what we educate and teach on. This can be done in conjunction with the use of cannabis because it supports our endocannabinoid system efforts to heal ourselves. Our program teaches individuals how to use this medicine responsibly, and offers a screening, assessment, and evaluation process for other professionals to learn how to ensure the safety of client, experience, and practitioner. We educate on how to heal unachieved developmental milestones through the use of memory re-coding and memory reconsolidation.
To help facilitate this selves-learning (O’Brien, 2024a), we use altered states of consciousness that are really facets of dual attention. These can be induced with breathwork, meditation, reflective processes, and the use of cannabis products (and other psychedelics as they become legal).
More information HERE
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References
O’Brien, A. (2023a). Addiction as Trauma-Related Dissociation: A Phenomenological Investigation of the Addictive State. International University of Graduate Studies. (Dissertation). Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/courses/addiction-as-dissociation-model-course/
O’Brien, A. (2023b). Memory Reconsolidation in Psychedelics Therapy. In Path of the Wounded Healer: A Dissociative-Focused Phase Model for Normative and Pathological States of Consciousness: Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/courses/addiction-as-dissociation-model-course/
O’Brien, A. (2023c). Path of the Wounded Healer: A Dissociative-Focused Phase Model for Normative and Pathological States of Consciousness: Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
O’Brien, A. (2024a). Healer and Healing: The re-education of the healer and healing professions as an advocation. Re-educational and Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
O’Brien, A. (2024e). Path of the Wounded Healers for Thrivers: Perfectionism, Altruism, and Ambition Addictions; Re-education and training manual for Abusers, Activists, Batterers, Bullies, Enablers, Killers, Narcissists, Offenders, Parents, Perpetrators, and Warriors. Re-Education and Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
O’Brien, A. (2025). American Made Addiction Recovery: a healer’s journey through professional recovery. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
O’Brien, A. (2025a). American Made Addiction Recovery: a healer’s journey through professional recovery. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
O’Brien, A. (2025b). Applied Recovery: Post-War on Drugs, Post-COVID, and What Recovery Culture and Citizens Require Moving Forward. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
O’Brien, A. (2025c). Recovering Recovery: How Psychedelic Science Is Ending the War on Drugs. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
*This is for informational and educational purposes only. For medical advice or diagnosis, consult a professional.
