PUNK Therapy | Psychedelic Underground Neural Kindness

In this deeply thoughtful discussion, Dr. T, Truth Fairy, and Sean Merrick explore how structural dissociation shapes the way trauma survivors experience psychedelic medicines. Sean explains the distinctions between primary, secondary, and tertiary structural dissociation while emphasizing that developmental trauma often creates subtle yet pervasive forms of disconnection that practitioners can easily miss without specialized training. The conversation challenges assumptions within the psychedelic field, proposing that when someone appears unaffected by medicine, the appropriate response may not be more medicine but greater relational presence, curiosity, and attunement. Throughout the episode, the hosts argue that the maturation of psychedelic therapy depends upon integrating contemporary trauma neuroscience with careful, compassionate clinical practice.

The conversation moves into the lived experience of dissociation, examining the subtle bodily cues, shifts in posture, eye movement, confusion, shame, and emotional disconnection that may indicate protective nervous system responses. Truth Fairy and Sean emphasize that practitioners must first become familiar with their own dissociative processes before they can accurately recognize them in others. Together, they discuss developmental trauma, alexithymia, attachment wounds, embodied awareness, and the importance of moving slowly enough for clients to develop self-empathy, emotional regulation, and relational trust before engaging in deeper medicine work. Rather than viewing psychedelic healing as medicine doing the work alone, they describe healing as a fundamentally relational process requiring careful co-regulation and genuine human presence.

Dr. T contributes clinical reflections from research settings while Sean offers practical insights drawn from both underground medicine traditions and advanced trauma training. Together, they examine how memories may emerge symbolically, emotionally, or somatically rather than as clear autobiographical narratives, highlighting the importance of avoiding premature interpretation or overwhelming exposure. The episode concludes with a call for greater humility, stronger practitioner education, and an evolution of psychedelic therapy that prioritizes nervous system safety, developmental understanding, and ethical relationship above outcome-driven approaches. Their closing reflection captures the heart of the conversation: healing happens together by entering dissociation together and finding the path back together.

"How about we stay in the relational field and see what happens when you don't feel anything, as opposed to throwing more medicine at it?" — Sean Merrick

 

About Sean Merrick, MA, LMFT:

Sean Merrick is a licensed psychotherapist whose work bridges underground plant medicine traditions with advanced clinical trauma treatment. His clinical focus includes developmental trauma, structural dissociation, attachment, neurobiology, and the integration of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. Drawing upon extensive training in dissociative disorders and years of medicine facilitation, Sean advocates for relational, trauma-informed approaches that prioritize nervous system regulation, careful assessment, and ethical psychedelic practice.

Website: SeanMerrickMFT.com

 

Resources discussed in this episode:

The Haunted Self by Onno van der Hart, Ellert Nijenhuis, and Kathy Steele

International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD)

Allan Schore

Understanding and Treating Chronic Shame by Patricia DeYoung

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Contact Punk Therapy:

Patreon: Patreon.com/PunkTherapy

Website: PunkTherapy.com

Email: info@punktherapy.com

 

Contact Truth Fairy: 

Email: Truth@PunkTherapy.com

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Truth Fairy welcomes Luna Jaffe, author, visual artist, and grief companion, for a deeply moving discussion on grief-literate guiding in psychedelic healing. Drawing from the loss of her only child, Hunter, Luna explores why grief cannot be viewed as something to overcome or fix, but rather as an experience that expands our capacity to love, witness, and remain present with profound suffering. Through the lens of her memoir Look, Mom, I Can Fly, she shares how writing, poetry, flower mandalas, and carefully supported psychedelic journeys became pathways for continuing relationship, meaning, and repair rather than attempts to erase pain.

Together, Truth Fairy and Luna examine the critical need for grief literacy within psychedelic facilitation. They discuss how many practitioners remain unprepared to support acute grief, shock, developmental trauma, and the complex emotional landscapes that often emerge during medicine-assisted healing. Luna reflects on both supportive and poorly held psychedelic experiences, emphasizing the necessity of preparation, nervous system regulation, relational safety, movement, and deeply attuned guides who can remain present without rushing toward resolution. Their conversation highlights the importance of witnessing rather than fixing, allowing grief to unfold at its own pace while honoring the bereaved's evolving needs.

Throughout the episode, Truth Fairy and Luna explore the intersection of trauma, attachment, creativity, and the continuing bonds that can exist after death. They discuss how psychedelic experiences may deepen communication with loved ones who have died, while emphasizing the importance of careful integration, titrated medicine work, and trauma-informed guidance. Luna describes how poetry emerged as a living collaboration with her son and reflects on how healing often occurs through relationship rather than certainty. This episode offers an important exploration of grief-informed psychedelic practice, compassionate facilitation, and the ethical responsibility of guides to create spaces where profound loss can be witnessed with courage, tenderness, and humanity.

"Grief is not something you heal. It's something you learn and grow a capacity to hold."  - Luna Jaffe

About Luna Jaffe:

Luna Jaffe is an award-winning author, writer, visual artist, and grief companion whose work explores love, loss, creativity, and the enduring relationship between the living and those who have died. Following the death of her only child, Hunter, in 2020, Luna devoted herself to understanding grief through writing, art, pilgrimage, and carefully held psychedelic experiences. Her memoir, Look, Mom, I Can Fly: Notes from the Wide Skies of Grieving My Only Child, has received both the Foreword INDIES Gold Award and the Nautilus Book Awards Silver Medal for Memoir.

Previously, Luna was the author of the award-winning Wild Money series and founder of Lunaria Financial. Today her work centers on grief literacy, creative expression, and companioning others through profound loss with compassion, honesty, and hope.

Website: LunaJaffe.com

Book: Look, Mom, I Can Fly: Notes from the Wide Skies of Grieving My Only Child by Luna Jaffe

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Contact Punk Therapy:

Patreon: Patreon.com/PunkTherapy

Website: PunkTherapy.com

Email: info@punktherapy.com

 

Contact Truth Fairy: 

Email: Truth@PunkTherapy.com

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Dr. T and Truth Fairy welcome clinical psychologist Dr. Bianca Sebben, whose work bridges complex trauma, dissociative disorders, Indigenous psychology, psychedelic integration, and eco-soul-centric approaches to healing. Drawing from her experience working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, as well as her research into traditional medicines and cultural safety, Bianca explores what it means to reconnect with humanity’s deeper relationship to the Earth. Together, they discuss ecological grief, soul, belonging, and the importance of understanding ourselves as part of a larger living system rather than isolated individuals.  

The conversation examines the intersection of trauma, dissociation, and psychedelic healing through a developmental and relational lens. Bianca challenges the growing tendency to frame psychedelic medicine as a quick solution for depression, PTSD, or emotional suffering. Instead, she proposes that psychedelics often reveal what has been hidden, initiating a longer process of integration, meaning-making, and transformation. Dr. T, Truth Fairy, and Bianca explore concepts such as soul initiation, descent, grief, structural dissociation, and the risks of seeking transcendence before establishing sufficient grounding, embodiment, and relational safety. 

Together, they also question dominant medical narratives around treatment-resistant depression, symptom reduction, and pathology. Bianca offers a perspective that reframes suffering as an adaptive response to relational and environmental conditions rather than simply a disorder to eliminate. The discussion highlights the importance of therapist self-awareness, resistance in the therapeutic relationship, Indigenous understandings of wellness, and the need to honour grief without pathologizing it. This episode offers a thoughtful and deeply philosophical exploration of trauma-informed psychedelic care, ecological belonging, and how healing may emerge through relationship, authenticity, and connection to both self and Earth. 

"We've all come from an ancestry of people that have deep, deep connection to the earth, and those of us that are part of the community of colonization, we're just more disconnected from those origins of our earth-connected connected nature, our true nature."  - Dr. Bianca Sebben

About Dr. Bianca Sebben:

Dr Bianca Sebben is a Clinical Psychologist in private practice with experience working in both public and private sectors, including hospital inpatient settings. Bianca has a special interest in complex trauma, dissociative disorders and working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. In her clinical practice, Bianca provides harm reduction and integration support to clients who have worked with non-ordinary states of consciousness in community and trial settings. Bianca completed PhD in Indigenous Psychology in Mexico, where she looked at incorporating traditional medicines into the western medical system to make it more culturally safe and accessible. Bianca provides training to therapists in providing psychedelic integration, with a particular focus on working with adverse events. Bianca has a special interest in 5 MeO DMT harm reduction and is a lecturer for the FIVE- 5 MeO Information and Vital Education platform. Bianca is also co-founder and Director of Indigenous Psychedelic Assisted Therapies, an organisation which advocates for Indigenous wisdom and consultation in the psychedelic field.

Website: ConsciousInsights.com.au

Instagram: conscious__insights

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Contact Punk Therapy:

Patreon: Patreon.com/PunkTherapy

Website: PunkTherapy.com

Email: info@punktherapy.com

 

Contact Truth Fairy: 

Email: Truth@PunkTherapy.com

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Dr. T flies solo in this episode and hosts guest Otto Maier in a discussion on psychedelic therapy through depth psychology and lived experience. Otto describes his early work with ayahuasca and a pivotal, overwhelming initiation with 5 MeO DMT that led to a prolonged spiritual and psychological crisis. Instead of framing the experience as positive or negative, though, he emphasizes the meaning it held for him. It taught him, among other things, the importance of preparation, appropriate dosing, and trauma-informed facilitation. Dr. T and Otto unpack psychedelic healing within a harm reduction framework while challenging simplified narratives often found in the field.

The discussion examines the tension between clinical models that prioritize symptom reduction and a soul-oriented approach to healing. Otto draws on Jungian psychology and archetypal theory to describe how psychedelic experiences can unfold as nonlinear processes that disrupt identity and access deeper layers of the psyche. Dr. T and Otto suggest that meaningful transformation may include disorientation and existential questioning, rather than immediate improvement, which points to limitations in current research practices.

Together, they also explore the cultural divide between Western models of control and more relational, animistic perspectives. Psychedelic work is framed as an invitation to engage with uncertainty, embodiment, and the unconscious, countering the dominant concepts of cognition and productivity. The episode advocates for an integrated approach of both scientific rigor and soul-based inquiry, emphasizing ethical responsibility and the complexity of medicine-assisted healing.

“I think that the soul work is something that gets us in touch with the nature of our being. And I think it includes a bit of mystery.”  - Otto Maier

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Contact Punk Therapy:

Patreon: Patreon.com/PunkTherapy

Website: PunkTherapy.com

Email: info@punktherapy.com

 

Contact Truth Fairy: 

Email: Truth@PunkTherapy.com

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Special episode! Today, a previous episode gets re-released to celebrate a milestone. Dr. T is finishing his PhD, and we're marking the occasion by re-sharing the foundational episode where Dr. T interviews the Truth Fairy. Congratulations to Dr. T!

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Content Warning: Trauma and abuse memories

Dr. T interviews The Truth Fairy as part of his research and together they explore the value of somatic therapy as well as how a therapist must be prepared for the journey when combining somatic with psychedelics.

Dr. T presents The Truth Fairy with some questions he has developed as part of his research, questions she’s not heard ahead of time. What results is a conversation on what somatic means and its importance to the therapeutic process. The Truth Fairy explains the differences between right and left brain tendencies and how somatic healing seeks to tap into the more creative and connective abilities of the right brain.

Dr. T addresses the idea of the relational in therapy and the concept of “relationship over outcome” which leads to questions about including medicine in the work. The Truth Fairy relates experiential stories on how somatic therapy looks very different when working with psychedelics and lays out things the therapist must prepare for themselves and their client before embarking on that journey. 

“The body is an extraordinary, complex organism with so many systems, organ systems, all working in synchrony and collaboration on the best of days and working out of synchrony and out of collaboration on more difficult days. We have history inside us.” The Truth Fairy

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Somatic therapy explanations and techniques

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Contact Punk Therapy:

Patreon: Patreon.com/PunkTherapy

Website: PunkTherapy.com

Email: info@punktherapy.com

 

Contact Truth Fairy: 

Email: Truth@PunkTherapy.com

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