In this episode J. Ashley T. Booth, LCSW, MS joins to discuss the importance of long-term psychedelic integration. Ashley is a Los Angeles-based psychedelic therapist, IFS practitioner, and author of Quieting the Storm Within: An Illustrated Introduction to Your Parts Through Internal Family Systems and Beyond. With a background in research, education, and clinical work—including serving as a co-investigator on the MAPS MDMA trials—she specializes in helping clients integrate psychedelic experiences through compassionate parts work and Self-led healing.
In this conversation, Ashley explores the nuances of psychedelic integration, discussing how this process can be supported through ongoing self-audits, somatic practices, and Internal Family Systems (IFS) work. She highlights the need to slow down, focus on one insight at a time, and anchor felt experiences into the body so they become lived behaviors rather than fleeting memories. The discussion also addresses challenges such as insufficient integration, psychedelic narcissism, and the pressure to "fix" oneself. In closing, Ashley stresses that even years after a journey, integration is possible if one revisits experiences with intention, and she underscores the central role of supportive communities in sustaining lasting transformation
In this episode, you'll hear:
- What things are important to focus on in long-term integration
- How someone can discern when their integration process has been sufficient to pursue a subsequent psychedelic journey
- An overview of the internal family systems model of the psyche
- The downsides of insufficient integration
- Developing deeper relationships with the parts of one's psyche through IFS
- Why it's never too late to integrate psychedelic experiences from one's past
- What to do when integration seems to come into conflict with feeling well adjusted to society's expectations
Quotes:
"What I encourage clients to do is to take notes on everything that felt important and then separate them out into: 'I'm going to just focus on this one thing for like a month, and then maybe next month will be that second piece of it.' And so you're really allowing yourself to make particular practices and focus on one thing at a time." [6:21]
"So whatever wound we're dealing with in our bodies, whether it's an extreme sort of big T trauma or little T trauma… there's a slowness that needs to happen. And so if there's parts of us that want to speed up that process, we need to be curious about that and see if there are ways that we can tend to that before the next journey." [13:59]
"I think that part of the longer term questions are not just how we change our life but what kind of meaning are we making of our lives and how are we sitting more comfortably in that meaning in a way that is serving us and empowering us?" [25:52]
Links:
Ashley's website
IFS and Beyond on Instagram
IFS and Beyond website
Quieting the Storm Within: An Illustrated Introduction to Your Parts Through Internal Family Systems and Beyond by J. Ashley T. Booth
Aware Project: Southern California Psychedelic Society website
Previous episode: Navigating Psychedelic Narcissism with Adam Aronovich
Psychedelic Medicine Association
Porangui
