Tale of the Comet
“Take a walk through the land of shadow, take a walk through the peaceful meadow.
Don’t look so disappointed, it isn’t what you were hoping for, isn’t it?” – Talking Heads
Introduction
In a variety of trauma trainings we have been taught to trust the healing process and to meet clients where they are at. For example, in Brainspotting (BSP), which will be our example in this paper, we are taught to follow the “tail of the comet” while clients are reprocessing or reexperiencing/reenacting emotions, traumas, or adverse life experiences. Reprocessing emotionally painful experiences helps people feel better about the past and allows them to feel more organized in the present because the past is no longer intruding on today. Therefore, clients have to bring their hurt to therapists and Healers so they can make the memories of the experience better by releasing the pain of yesterday. This dynamic is based on what we have termed as the “tearing and repairing” process in our doctoral research on trauma, dissociation, and addictions (O’Brien, 2023a) and needs more explanation because our work on healing is showing who and what we are trusting, following, and believing in. What is this relational healing process, particularly healing developmental and attachment trauma, that we are blindly and unconsciously trusting and believing in to heal our clients exactly?
As we are reeducating people and professionals on these phenomena, we have to start by stating that we are discussing these phenomena are transdiagnostic spectrum of dissociation healing where they are all a part of the same interdependent process of healing (O’Brien, 2023a). Some recent sessions and consultations have had us saying more than once, “let’s not confuse following the “tail of the comet” with “the tale of the comet”. Another way of saying this clinically is that the natural innate wisdom and knowledge is in everyone and we have to ensure that the tale that the comet is telling aligns with what we know about psychological healing (e.g., memory reconsolidation) (O’Brien, 2023a), innate physical and endogenous healing processes (O’Brien, 2023a; O’Brien, 2023b), and recovery standards (O’Brien, 2024a). Assessing and screening for clinical disorders are still required before readily applying any treatment, but with dissociation-informed and established recovery measures, there can be a new way of measuring what is not there to the observer. As we will argue here, common sense recovery principles are essential to know if “treatment” will “work” and how solid their recovery will be. We have major concerns for the level of competence around professional systems on these subjects because there are key ingredients missing from our conceptions of mental health to sit by and not say how far off they are (O’Brien, 2024b; HERE), how far off psychological professions (HERE) and psychology’s society (HERE) are in their mental health beliefs (O’Brien, 2023a; HERE) and practices (O’Brien, 2024b).
In our clinical experience, everyone has dissociative layers and may or may not understand what that means experientially and developmentally. This psychological lack of awareness may be because unconscious informed consent has not been given or is not readily understood professionally because key psychological definitions are missing from psychology’s Diagnostic Statistical Manual (DSM) lexicon (O’Brien, 2023a). We aim to help with this professional and qualitative shortsightedness so psychology can help those who do not know the difference between the definition of psychological terms they use and their real-world meaning. For example, McKay and Coreil (HERE) use of the term pseudoscience.
While this work may seem subjective to readers now, our lived experience of being trained in traditional therapeutic approaches, such as meditation and talk approaches, but we are also have advanced knowledge in EMDR, BSP, Neurofeedback, and psychedelic healing. We have to question the long-held belief that we have to follow our clients lead (relating to care versus healing process or intervention) because apparently psychology does not readily know more about who is telling the story when the client is presenting (O’Brien, 2023a). We can know because we know the culture that they come from and is why we are applying micro-applications of the macro-implications of our doctoral work to systems level thinking.
Often the clients do not know who or when that part is, so this leads to their symptoms and desire for a positive outcome. If we (and the client) do not know which self is driving their care (based on the questions they ask) or motivating symptoms AND we do not have their unconscious permission (based on unconscious informed consent), we would recommend not applying or “doing treatment” until it is there. Furthermore, to not have a societal and professional understanding of what the “unconscious” is, what “addiction” is, or what “recovery” means that all are missing operational definitions from the diagnostic lexicon of psychology (e.g., the DSM) (O’Brien, 2023a).
Now that psychology has finally conceptualized and codified that transdiagnostic status of trauma, dissociation, and now addiction has been established (O’Brien, 2023a), we can show how addiction and dissociation hides in all pathology (even professional pathology because if corporations are people, then so are professional organizations). But if developmental and attachment trauma are not diagnosable, they have to at least be understood by professions who regulate, imprison, or treat them as if they are what these systems and outcomes imply. To our point, treating what is not diagnosable or what is normed means that the society and culture needs a better education on the subjects at hand, which is why we are reeducating people and professionals on mental health, pathology, trauma, dissociation, addictions, psychedelics, consciousness, unconsciousness, and healing at the Wounded Healers Institute.
Background to the Problem
To heal from developmental and attachment trauma healing we have to get sick to get well. Therefore, what healing developmental and attachment trauma actually requires is hurting the relationship to be able to repair from it OR at the very least, setting up the conditions to help those sides, parts, aspects of self to emerge BUT if one does not understand, accept, or treat trauma, dissociation, and addiction as transdiagnostic conditions, then applying any treatment or care may be short-term solutions for long-term conditions (O’Brien, 2023a). What we see and caution against, because of our research findings (O’Brien, 2023a) and Addiction as Dissociation Model, is that healing from developmental and attachment trauma is different than clinical PTSD or all standards of modern models of care (HERE).
Our work highlights that developmental and attachment traumas are not diagnosable disorders currently in the DSM (and nor should they be diagnoses, in our humbled recovery opinion) they are underrepresented in clinical practice and our educational and training institutions. We have to be cautious about diagnosing normal because everything is dependent on something being normal so pathology can exist and governmental or professional overreach is currently present (HERE; HERE). We have to observe system level shortcomings to demonstrate why people, professions, and professionals may not consciously understand what healing is (O’Brien, 2023a), what is evidence-based practice actually means (O’Brien, 2023b), or what industrialized psychology or therapy implies (O’Brien, 2024c). What some would call “God” (HERE) we see as Healing (activation of the opiate and cannabinoid system) because God is who/what is healing biologically (O’Brien, 2023a). Furthermore, the term “dependence”, as a stage of healing, is not the goal, but required to happen prior to opening up to the trust needed to heal completely from within. For our purposes here, we have to separate the belief systems of the profession and the different forms of intelligences that other models of treatment and care employ because what is really being “treated” if pathology is not accurately defined (O’Brien, 2023a) and “normal” is being diagnosed and treated?
We note that the field of psychology is diagnosing experiences that are normal, not treating true pathology, particularly when it comes to unidentified addictions of perfectionism, altruism, and ambition (O’Brien, 2023a). This shortcoming has historically confused dissociation with schizophrenia, addiction as separate from mental health, and is missing that mental health “issues” are really psychological expressions (e.g., dissociative experiences) of our physical health or dysregulation than it is due to some behavioral pathology (HERE). Furthermore, if diet and environmental toxins are playing on the psyche and only compound our inability to see what is really going on, then society is missing these wisdoms. While who is living dissociated and who isn’t may not seem like much, but knowing and being able to prove that you are sane, healthy, moral is worth its weight in our ever changing bureaucratic landscape (HERE).
Rational reasoning says that the term psychology is synonymous with emotion, spirit, and feminine aspects of nature and rationality is a byproduct of logic and embodies masculine aspects of nature (O’Brien, 2023a). Dependence between these two experiences is essential to creating a therapeutic bond that allows two people to “go there” and “come back”, but if these attributes are lacking, then mistrust and stress responses (e.g., dissociation) is what occurs. Furthermore, if psychology is aware of itself, then what is the therapeutic relationship built on? The dynamics between client and professional means that we have to be doing something valid to justify charging and paying for services. Therefore, we have to identify the source of intelligence that we are relying on to guide the purpose of care and delivery of services (O’Brien, 2024c).
This required validity is what is required by law, academic institutions, and the general public require and should pass the common sense test (O’Brien, 2024c), but the fact that we have to justify our stance that meditation is evidence-based is asinine. The fact that a lot of therapies are based on this notion, negates the fact that meditation is already evidence based (O’Brien, 2023b). To the educators, regulators, policymakers on this subject (HERE) who still do not understand why this is so important, we must object to their modern reasoning and rationality for using psychology the way that it has; therefore, this is the “Tale of the Comet”. The tale is that “it” (e.g., the source of healing) is the same as where the choice of addiction is made, but psychology is not there yet (O’Brien, 2023a); however, recovery is (HERE).
With this recovery knowledge, proper screening and assessment for addiction and dissociation would help prevent abreactions, dissociative expressions, and unconscious reenactments. For the record, our standard of screening and assessment is our Meeting Area Screening and Assessment (MASA). Combined with Neurofeedback (NFB), which can include quantitative EEG analysis, we can see more truth behind our observations on the current models of medical and psychological care.
Review
We have argued that Western culture is inherently philosophically, psychologically, and societally flawed due to term confusion (O’Brien, 2023a; HERE, HERE), professional dependence (HERE), and greed (O’Brien, 2024c). As individuals living dissociated from nature and intellectualizing everything, we have to be able to see how addictions are hiding outside of the realm of just drug and gambling in the DSM. Otherwise, we are then being driven by a developmentally delayed 7-year-old boy (the weaker sex genetically) who does not know what he is doing, who he is, where he comes from, or where he is going because he still believes that a “nation of laws” is what will save him from people or professions who write or use the addictive logic that came up with the laws in the first place (O’Brien, 2024c). This reality is what we would call, “living dissociated” and addiction is dissociative dependence by any other name (O’Brien, 2023a).
As we are challenging Western thought by questioning diagnostics and the definition of the words used, we suggest that the reader would be better served to review our existing research before responding or asking questions (HERE). This work is particularly for professionals or professions who don’t know that the body is the unconscious (O’Brien, 2023a), addiction has been defined as dissociation (O’Brien, 2023a), and what recovery and healing conclusions are clinically, societally, and historically implying (O’Brien, 2024a). Consumers of psychology can draw their own conclusions from this work, but we suggest connecting with a professional Healer to explore them because the field of psychology is decades behind the times because of these professions (e.g., use of psychedelic healing). To those who benefit exponentially from not keeping up with the evidence, are still confused, need to do more unconscious research or actually do their own program, then we have to call foul on their reasoning for the words they use and question their inability to apply said meaning of the words they choose (HERE). This professional level of addiction to denial is what we believe are driving our personal, societal, professional, and national outcomes (HERE). Next generations requires better today from the professionals who claim moral character for their citizens (HERE; HERE; HERE).
Orientation
Dr. David Grand is now educating on the Neuroexperiential Model that underpins BSP (Grand, 2021). His work offers a lot of support for future research and BSP’s development. As a side note: Throughout this paper, the reader can substitute EMDR Therapy, meditation, Neurofeedback, psychedelic care, or any trauma resolution method of healing with BSP because these have all been shown to turn off the default mode network, promote states of healing with dual attention, and have been shown to perform memory reconsolidation (O’Brien, 2023a;); therefore are already evidence based (O’Brien, 2023b). Reasoning for screening, assessment, and proper pacing (therapeutic relationship/alliance) to client care are the main observations that we are exploring here.
BSP is a focused meditation-induced state of awareness that we observe is adaptive dissociation (Mindful Dissociation). Mindful Dissociation promotes states of dual attention, dual attunement, and memory reconsolidation, suggesting that it is evidence-based (O’Brien, 2023b). These states of focused mindfulness are common enough to highlight how common healing is (O’Brien, 2023b). Dr. Grand wisely understands that treatment is diagnostic because assessment and screening happen in real time, but at some point in person’s care, whether or not it is the beginning, middle, end, or in hindsight, we have to ask who is driving and whether or not we are promoting professional dependence on non-diagnostic conditions (e.g., attachment and developmental traumas) and reenacting unresolved attachment trauma or enabling addictive relational tendencies (O’Brien, 2023a). Confirming that these exists prior to application and is completely understood is why we would argue obtaining unconscious informed consent (O’Brien, 2023a; O’Brien, 2023c) before applying any treatment. We are offering to people in our Path of the Wounded Healer (O’Brien, 2023c; O’Brien, 2024a).
We have to ask this question because we see key differences in people who are doing NFB, MASA, and psychedelics and those who are not. The others are primarily doing trauma resolution methods like BSP or EMDR only because they this is what they know they need and feel comfortable with, which is all well and good because they are getting what they feel they need but questioning the therapeutic medical model being applied to psychology is where we are having the most difficulty relating. In a relational and dependent way (e.g., “fixing” instead of healing), we posit it is also because the therapeutic relationship is influenced by professional and irrational societal expectations of what mental health is and what it isn’t (e.g., who is driving the behaviors or reasons why they are coming in in the first place).
The key difference that we see is a regulated-self (that is not trying to co-regulate with us) because they are able to do it with NFB, MASA, or psychedelics. We would argue that the clients doing BSP and EMDR only are the ones not able to establish a sustained state of dual attention without maladaptively dissociating or psychological gatekeeping (e.g., the decider of who lets inside things out)) into previously “established dysfunctional patterns of surviving”, as defined by society and cultural standards of the day. Our observations with MASA also confirm that the absence of an established baseline, therapeutic bond/trust, academic understanding, and/or MASA is what predicts or influences the outcomes and course of the therapeutic relationship versus the Healer relationship (HERE; HERE).
Reorientation
There comes a point in most people’s care where the reality of what they really want to unconsciously work on can only be considered “healed” with a complete surrender, radical acceptance, expression of trust, leap of faith, and passing the test of absolute trust in a process that hurts them (e.g., BSP) and that their unconscious labels as killing them. This leap of faith into recovery is often cited as being brought back to reality, ultimate reality. Therefore, this skill of having been there and come back Further, trusting in the process does not have to extend to the Healer. What healing means depends on who, when, and what is defining as “healing” by the clinician and the client. The truth about trauma healing is that the experience has long since happened and the cognitive mind thinks that is what is wrong. What is wrong is that the person has had to go on with this trauma and not having a place to go that is actually safe. The privacy factor in trauma resolution methods is key to understanding dissociation informed care (O’Brien, 2024a) because it protects the sanctity of the persons’ dignity.
What the professional relationship legally requires is that we tease out what people unconsciously believe that it will not work or work for them (e.g., blocking belief and implicit bias) before applying treatment of care with why they are “really unconsciously coming” to us to “fix”, “let go”, or “heal” (e.g., their symptoms or trauma memories). But what if they are dependent (e.g., addicted) on the trauma or dependent on healing the traumas for their identity and profession? As a result of retraumatizing the client so they can get better and is seemingly prevented by legal guises of ethical restraint, but what is morally required to heal is that relationship to faith. It is that moment when someone has been there for you in such a way that you didn’t even know it was possible; so much so that you will always remember them with kindness, respect, and mutual love because they risked themselves being seeing. It’s that moment when you have met your match, archenemy, someone who knows more about the recovery and healing process then you. Trauma bonding occurs in the relationship with a Healer whereas therapists are performing a symptom service. This is the danger of believing that we are fixing something and not healing together.
By having a trauma bond and retraumatization occurring as necessary ingredients to heal, we have to acknowledge the endogenous opiate and cannabinoid systems and addiction recovery and dissociative populations superior knowledge and lived experience of living in a dissociative state. With respect to innate lived experience and training, this qualifications seem pretty particular and a specialty… performed by a specialist… in navigating dissociative insanity because they now the way back because they know what logic got them lost in the first place. A therapist fixes, a Healer is someone who brings you home to the reality that brings you to your knees, in front of God. The reality that often gets missed is that we need a person like this in our life, in fact, we depend on it to exist. We all do. This is our shadow side. And to not be grateful for their death, is to know the possibility of real change based on real faith. Because we do not want our clients to be tricked by irrational beliefs like the need for healing will ever end, cognitive rationalist who believe that they can fix you from a system that requires it to stop paying for it, industrial psychology, or religious missionaries, we must protest to their basic assumptions as to what healing is (O’Brien, 2023b).
A goal in healing work is to create a dependent relationship (through co-regulation and principles of conditioning (O’Brien, 2023a; O’Brien, 2023c; O’Brien, 2024a)) because that is the developmental age that is often needing the healing. Nonjudgmentally, we are cataloging dependence as a stage in relationship development, not the desired outcome or a “disorder”, but can people “get better” without a therapeutic relationship? We argue that clients can get regulated without the relationship because we have seen it with NFB (e.g., people only doing NFB, applied recovery, and people doing psychedelics). Since the body as a universal language that NFB trains (e.g., differential system), then we can create universal options for the masses to get regulated. To get the body regulated is to get the mind regulated because the physical body is the psychological unconscious (O’Brien, 2023a; O’Brien, 2024c) and is as close to healing as one is going to get.
We posit that this is because dual attention cannot be readily reached prior to treatment or care; we have had people who have come to us only for NFB or BSP and can compare them to the clients who only see us for one or the other. Our question is “what kind of therapeutic relationship does one need to heal if the person believes that they are unhealable, need fixing, or are permanently damaged?”, particularly if psychology or pathology is not accurately defined the key aspects of psychology that seem pretty common sense like meditation is evidence based and it is the antidote to the level of dissociation present in society and the professional milieu. Acknowledging the professional dependent relational dynamic (e.g., addiction as dependence) shows how abuse in power and control can happen and directs us as to why.
Our point is that doing BSP “to” or “on” someone is different than doing it “with” or “for” them, which is the major distinction that we make between “therapy” and our establishing of a Healing profession that is based on adaptive dissociative experiences and the natural ability to dissociate (O’Brien, 2024a). We also point this out because when working with psychedelics, these missing aspects of pathology and care are important pieces of information that should be considered before anyone is “treated” or given a “drug”. All we are saying is that ASSESSING AND SCREENING WOULD BE BETTER BEFORE getting into a trauma bonded process that can be used to heal the unresolved attachment “disorder”.
Again, our bigger point is that screening and assessing for dissociation and addiction would be a good place to start before anyone doing any healing process in an addictive way, particularly prior to taking a chemical drug like MDMA, Prozac, Benzodiazepines, and Lexipro. The difference is that plants, mold, mushrooms, roots, frogs sweat, or cactus are not as dangerous because they are food (HERE), endogenous, and have the lowest addiction rates of any drug shall not go by unrecognized by this addiction and dissociation expert (O’Brien, 2023a). This may seem like it is impossible to the logical mind because they may have never had to think about it because someone always did their thinking for them (HERE). To consider that someone can become addicted to pain and relief because it makes them stronger tells you something about the person that you did not consider before. If this is a surprise, then what else would be?
Data
Over the course of our clinical career, we have had a variety of clients who are not able or willing to engage in the variety of different services that we offer. Particularly, we have had people who do not want to or cannot engage with cannabis, meditation, or NFB and are primarily doing trauma resolution through BSP and EMDR or more talk and educational approaches. The option for trauma resolution only is usually in regards to online and in-person, but we have had clients just do NFB so we have a different baselines to derive our observations and clinical opinions from. We also have reviewed enough qEEG’s to validate our interpretations, implications, observations, and conclusions.
Clients or client-led dynamics who are doing their own program, (e.g., clinical recommendations have been made and the client is not doing them) are living dissociated on some level and/or have a belief, usually from a developmental age of a significant trauma, that is counterintuitive to healing (e.g., that the healer heals). This irrational belief is often a juxtaposition of conditional terms, of which we find not accurately defined, are using meanings differently, or we have different standards as to what is required to establish a recovery and moral baseline (e.g., societal and clinical).
Psychological advertising is a dangerous science to sell because if the relationship cannot exist freely, then it should not exist. Another example is that we have had clients claim that they had medical conditions that are preventing them from continuing NFB, but appear to forget that the physical body is the psychological unconscious; therefore, the data that the client is looking for is actively being ignored, denied, or pretending like it does not exist – or they are dissociated and don’t know it and NFB is addressing the dissociation that is preventing them from realizing that they are.
Discussion
Relationally and with “client led” care, one would assume that we are equals and expect to be “treated” as that, but equality is not the case, from a healing, recovery, memory, and moral perspective because a lifestyle of lived recovery is a universal qualitative wisdom (O’Brien, 2023a) that most are not aware of because their society isn’t (HERE) – OR they are unconsciously aware of it and are dissociatively choosing to live dissociated from deaths reality. The threat of losing reality should be scary enough to want to stay in it, but to not know it is to choose to remain ignorant. This observation is particularly true when psychological healing has not been accurately defined in our modern age (O’Brien, 2023a; O’Brien, 2024c) and now that recovery has become a profession (HERE) psychology’s ability to screening, assessing, apply clinical pacing, and healing outcomes can be applied with people who may not know cognitively what is going on. This dissociative systems educational issue (HERE) becomes what they become aware of. When anyone becomes unaware of something that they have never considered, which part of them had the knowledge the whole time and which part of them didn’t? They become angry with self and feel like someone has been fooling them. The reality is that this is the blame and venom that the healers and therapist get, but clients don’t know until it is too late.
Conclusion
We argue that dependence is not a “good” or “bad” thing. Dependence is a stage in any relationship and what we have learned is that “treating” developmental and attachment trauma is different than standard models of psychology and medicine can do or explain because they are limited by their profession and law (HERE; HERE). As developmental and attachment traumas are not diagnoses, the obvious observation that they are not problems is evident. In the absence of a clinical baseline and accurate definitions, clinical screening and assessment appear to be lacking in the field of psychology and society because dissociation and addiction have not been operationally and readily defined by the field of psychology or the industrial medical model.
Clients often want to continue to have BSP “done to them” to “fix” them and/or are utilizing if to co-regulate with the provider could lead to co-dependency or therapy addiction. There is nothing wrong with either approach or path, but dependent societal and personal assumptions or expectations are necessary to acknowledge, process, and reprocess because by depending on “therapy” or “healing” to do the healing work is missing the leap of faith, point of surrender, point of no return, true acceptance, dissociation, and addiction. As we all know, healing is painful; therefore, the endogenous opiate system would be at play during reprocessing but principles of conditioning (O’Brien, 2023a) in successful care also need to be considered. Both suggest to us that both client and professionals need to take a better look at the kind of “client led” dependent relationship that they are creating within the confines of unethical psychology or amoral business practices (O’Brien, 2024b), absent addiction and dissociative pathology conceptualizations, illegal laws (HERE), and moral-ethical responsibilities (O’Brien, 2024d).
In our responses (O’Brien, 2024c; HERE) to McKay and Coreil (2024) calling BSP a “pseudoscience”, calling the masters-level clinicians who follow or practice BSP as having “apophenia”, and accusing them of being gullible, we have concluded that the exact opposite must be true. The opposite would be people who are rigid, inflexible, pervasive, and ignorant of their own actions, implicit nature, or the implications of their existence. Therefore, our conclusion is that following the ““tale” of the comet” as their main source of care should be identified (e.g., “God”) and should not be questioned when the field of psychology has yet to define the unconscious as the body, addiction as dissociation, and industrialized therapy as an extension of professional mechanism of societal control. We have to question the professions who already know this and are not actively able to advocate against systems of injustice. More so to the point, if clinicians do not have an active recovery, neuro-regulation, or a moral program, then how can they give what they do not have? We posit that they are dependent on not utilizing moral character and that is why there is a professional, societal, and cultural stalemate in psychology and social science (O’Brien, 2024b).
On-the-other-hand, from a dissociative and recovery-focused perspective, all paths lead to healing so “it’s all good”. Therefore, it does not matter what path you are on, just that you are aware enough to know which one you are on and whether or not it is honestly working for you or not. If one does not know, then one does not know and that is the unconscious program or “tale” that is being told. BUT as the world was once flat, we were the center of the universe, and dependence was a bad thing, then we have to name what it is we are really attaching to in order to heal (HERE). When “detaching with compassion” is the spiritual practice that professions preach, but do not see that detaching implies the absence of compassion, which is not spiritual (HERE). “Attaching with compassion” is.
As a result of our recovery-based research (O’Brien 2023a), psychologically lacking key terms can make professionals believe that what they are doing is right (HERE), but what they may be enforcing addictive and dissociative pathology. If we can use this to our advantage, then we can get the outcomes our clients deserve, but with hearing different paths to healing, we must admit that there are slower and fasters methods of healing. Our concern is that because key psychological terms and definitions are missing their applied meaning (O’Brien, 2024c), then they are missing from society and culture, such as, they are also missing from educational systems schools, sports, hobbies, religion, and parenting styles. Even worse may be that people believe that they are all good, when they are not or professions are diagnosing normal and pretending like they don’t know they are not.
This potential professional fraud (HERE) would include the enabling professions supporting an ignorant society and culture, such as, lawyers, administrators, governmental officials who take a more literal interpretation of experiences and not the symbolic nature of what it means to be a human being (HERE). This unconscious motive is particularly reinforcing when there are exponential profits to be made by not providing accurate information and citing public health as a justification. To the point, by selling that developmental trauma or attachment disorders are diagnosable conditions when they are not, we are diagnosing normal and enabling systems of power and control on organic and safe psychedelics that no one other than someone who has gone there and come back would know, we have to see the advantage go to recovery and lived experience. Additionally, if the ACES found that trauma was the norm, then trauma is the norm. Trauma is dissociation and observe Van der Kolk’s (1985; 1989; 1996; 2014; O’Brien, 2023a) seminal work on being addicted to trauma, dissociative reenactment processes, and compulsions to repeat as evidence of abuse.
Professionals know what they are doing is morally wrong, but report feeling ethically powerless to stop or change it. What this demonstrates is a lack of moral development, professional gatekeeping, economic dependence (O’Brien, 2024b), and how bureaucratic rhetoric (HERE) is preventing people and clinicians from getting what they need and what they expect (e.g., someone who practices Moral-Ethics instead of doing what is Ethical Legal)(O’Brien, 2024c). In the end, all addictions hide in plain sight, but professions who do not want to name them all (e.g., perfectionism, altruism, and ambition addictions (O’Brien, 2023a)) are the ones suffering from them. What psychology has to be honest about is how they may be creating psychological dependence (e.g., addiction) and not know it. If evidence is required, then which science is to follow? If professions are going to need to get onboard with what they do not know about addiction, which is that addictions are states of dissociative healing that are dysregulated. True regulation and a willingness to surrender to recovery or moral responsibilities is upon us as a society and as a people. Too much more better has got to go, or we will die addicted to not knowing why.
Solutions
Because the intangibles are now real again (HERE), we must honor that they have a real effect that psychology has on the biological body because they are one and the same. We see that the “Meeting Area” (MASA) and unconscious informed consent need to be established prior to any physical or psychological (because the body is the unconscious) reprocessing, interventions, or starting an morally-informed and consenting healing relationship (O’Brien, 2024a). What keeps memories from resolving to “last weeks lunch” becomes the important question to ask when squeezing the lemon or following in the tail of the comet. Dissociation-Informed Care and Recovery-Focused Care is Applied Recovery. Applied Recovery is the application of our morals to our lives, our meeting area, others, and ourselves (e.g., past, present, and future). “Tale of the comet”, “Squeezing the lemon”, “what keeps memories from resolving to an agreeable zero” can only be self-assessed and self-measured in the meeting area in our clinical experience; therefore we suggest experiencing it for the first time again with a Healer.
Future Directions
As parents, clinicians, and consumers of psychology, please be mindful of what we are planting, enabling, or reinforcing in people’s minds because meditation (dual attention and memory reconsolidation) is already “evidence-based” (O’Brien, 2023a); therefore, so is all healing (O’Brien, 2023b). Knowing that pain brings presence means that we all can know who we are following and who we are not.
Context isn’t blame. Context is spiritual freedom from the critical feeling that leads to critical thinking because these two skills are mutually dependent and can be living dissociated from. Those who know love, drugs, and Rock n’ Roll (emotional expression of love) may know more than those who are dependent on normal dissociative responses (fight, flight, and freeze) for their paychecks. This observation is because we know that fear is the short-term form of love and that psychedelics can help “those type of people”. If people really want to help from others and want to start working on the core of their mental health presentation with developmental and attachment trauma, then they would need to awaken to the fact that the body is the unconscious.
Not living dissociated from the environment we live in is key to our healing and is often missing from client’s care. People have to trust and surrender to the healing possibilities of psychedelic care, regulation (standard of care would be NFB), and bring their actual family into their healing work (e.g., not just the memories of what happened because that is usually self-serving) to see how their logic has failed them yet again (O’Brien, 2024c). Again, a nation of professional finks is what we are living dissociative from and are addicted to. The tale of the comet is that the following in the “tail of the comet” means that we have to be mindful of who or what part is telling us their tale of healing before we dive into reprocessing. For this, we offer our MASA training because healing requires tears to repair (O’Brien, 2023a) and parts want to be aware. If your healing process does not have a conflict, then you can question whether or not it is happening. If you do not know what is really happening, then who does and what do they know? Can you lean into that knowledge that lies within now?
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. (2024b). Diagnostic Privilege: Meta-Critical Analysis. In Healer and Healing: The re-education of the healer and the healing profession as an advocation. Re-educational and Training Manual and Guide. Appendix 2. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/courses/addiction-as-dissociation-model-course/
O’Brien, A. (2024c). Meta-Critical Analysis: The “Science” of Pseudoscience. In Healer and Healing: The re-education of the healer and the healing profession as an advocation. Re-educational and Training Manual and Guide. Appendix 3. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/courses/addiction-as-dissociation-model-course/
O’Brien, A. (2024d). Moral-Ethics. In Healer and Healing: The re-education of the healer and healing professions as an advocation. Re-educational and Training Manual and Guide. Chapter 14. 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. (2024). Blogs: woundedhealersinstitute.org/blog/
