TrueLife - Denise Rue - As I Watched Them Lay Dying

Episode Date: June 5, 2023

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/https://www.deniserue.com/Founder, New Jersey Psychedelic Therapy Association, Trauma-Focused Therapist, Clinical Hypnotherapist, Fluence Trainer, Clinical Supervisor and WriterPsychedelic Integration CoachLCSWEMDR trainedCompleted Fluence's "Psychedlics 101 forClinicians" trainingCertified in Advanced Clinical Hypnosis;Medical Hypnosis SpecialtyTraining received in Complex Trauma in Children at the Dorothy B. Hersh ChildProtection CenterFacilitated group for Women Survivors ofChildhood Sexual AbuseCo-facilitated group for Women Recovering from Trauma (Sandra Bloom's SanctuaryModel)Poetry Therapy (non-certificate) trainingDeath Doula (non-certificate) training One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear. Hears through ruins maze, lights my war cry, born from the blaze.

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Serafini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life podcast. It's Monday. It's a beautiful day. The birds are singing. I hope the sun is shining wherever you are.

We've got a great show with an incredible guest. Denise Rue, she's the founder. of the New Jersey Psychedelic Therapy Association, trauma-focused therapist, clinical hypnotherapist, fluent trainer, psychedelic integration coach, clinical supervisor, and writer. She has an incredible background in so much that we're going to hopefully get in today, whether it's hypnotherapy or poetry. Denise, I'm so excited you're here today. How are you feeling today?

Oh, I'm feeling great. It's a beautiful day here, too, as well. Yeah, we are on complete opposite sides, it seems like, of a lot. the world. What an amazing technology we have where we can get together and talk about it. Yeah. Yeah. So I am fascinated by this space that seems to be emerging. There's so much potential for health and help, but I think we both read this recent article by Jules Evans that spoke about facilitators having some issues here and there. But before we jump into all of that, I was hopeful that maybe you could paint a little bit of a background for people to understand who you are.

Yeah, well, so I'm a therapist and a hypnotherapist. That's a big part of my life. I am probably therapist was my fourth career. Prior to that, I was in clinical hypnosis. And before that, I was doing teaching poetry. And prior to that, I was a speech. language pathologists. So I've really been fortunate. I've been able to follow a lot of my passions. So in terms of the psychedelic world, I came to psychedelics very late in life. It just wasn't even in my universe. So I was working at a community mental health agency, and my caseload was complex trauma, mostly adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse, because that's just where the need was at this particular agency. And I loved working with this population. I did individual therapy as well as groups. But, you know, these women primarily were really suffering. And about that time, I started reading the literature coming out of Johns Hopkins Imperial College,

NYU, and something just clicked. And I said, this is the future. This is going to alleviate so much suffering. But I had never done psilocybin myself. So I booked, I booked a 10-day retreat at a legal psilocybin center in Jamaica. And I went. I was, yeah, I just turned. And over the course of those 10 days, I did four psilocybin trips. And they were completely transformational. A lot of my own personal healing. And what the retreat leader picked up on was that I was absorbing the energies from the other members of the group. And he said, I think you can do this work and he kind of showed me how to work with people in that space. And they invited me back as a facilitator. So I moved to Jamaica full time in September of 2019. I put my house, you know, I rented my house and

packed up all my belongings and quit my nice, secure job. So it was very scary, but it was the right thing to do. Yeah. It's interesting how when we're, when I heard a great quote, I think it was something along the lines of. And the day came when the bud, when being in the shape of the bud was much more painful than becoming the flower that blossoms. I totally butchered it, but it was something along those lines. I know that. Yeah. Yeah.

I have never regretted that decision, even though it was challenging at times for sure. Yeah, you know, maybe if we take it back a little bit, I am fascinated by language. And it seems to me the words we use are that which describe us. They describe our environment, both in. internal and external. And for someone like yourself who has this rich background, and maybe we can start off with poetry. Like, doesn't it seem that poetry is like this pure form of communication when you speak to me using the proper forms and the right ways in which and the diacopoe and like all these literary devices, I can get goosebumps or my face will flush. You know, it just seems like

it's a more raw form of communication. What do you think about language and poetry? Oh, and absolutely. it taps into something deep within us. And it's interesting that when there are occasions that move us, that so much that ordinary language no longer applies at the birth of a child, the death of a loved one, I'm also thinking of 9-11, how people turn to poetry to express, deeper feelings. And that's why poetry and psychedelics go hand in hand. And I found using poetry to bring people into a contemplative mood to allow them to look inward, look beneath the meaning of things.

hungry for that. I found that working the retreat. You know, you'd get people who seemed a very left brain and analytical. And I think, oh, if I read a poem before the dose, might not go off well, but honestly, everyone's just hungry for that kind of meaning and words and experience. and artwork and being in nature, things that move us and resonate deeply. We don't have enough of that in our society. Yeah, it seems like, it almost seems like there is this relationship between spirituality and poetic language or metaphor. And in the West, it seems we've just been devoid of that. Like we have this, like you said, this left brain analytical scalpel that's constantly trying to cut out all.

of the things that it can't measure. And when you do that, you're just left with so little. Yep. It's very dry. And, yeah, this is it. This is all that meets the eyes. Yeah. It's not working for us.

Not at all. Not at all. And it seems to be a symptom of the sickness that plagues us. If you look at PTSD or if you look at traumatic brain injury or even the modern medical model of medicine. like SSRIs or addiction. It's, hey, we can't measure that. Let's not even put it in the model. Let's not even talk about anything subjective because I can't measure that and I can't put it into a profit model so it doesn't go into this formula right here. It's really kind of sad to think

about. Well, it is and it's not working. Yes. That's clear. That's clear. But just back to poetry, even before psychedelics came into my realm of existence, I was always drawn to the mystical poets, like Rumi and Blake. And I was always attracted to the mystical saints, you know, to St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross. So these are things that were swirling around in my consciousness long before I came to psilocybin. And you're a published poet people should know. They can they can look and read. You've written tons of poems and had them published in lots of places. How does that feel? It must be pretty awesome. Yeah, it's a big part of my life. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I think it speaks volumes of why you're, why you're able to reinvent yourself, why you're able to be good with people and why you're so passionate about helping is the language we use, which kind of moves us into this idea of hypnosis. What, like, what, is hypnosis a meditation? Is it a higher state of consciousness? Is it a relationship between both? Like, what is hypnosis? Hypnosis is a naturally occurring,

altered state of consciousness. And we're in a trance. We're in hypnosis, about one-third of our day. Now, children are in trance. and we call it daydreaming, right? So it has a pleasant effect to them. As adults, we too often fall into this negative trance, a trance of the future,

which usually shows up as anxiety and worst case scenario or a trance of the past, which is chewing on every, bad thing that ever happened to us, what someone said at the supermarket. And we're so rarely in our present moment, right? We're in the future or in the past. And we have power in neither of both places. So hypnosis is like in a therapy, therapeutic hypnosis, you know, all

hypnosis is self-hypnosis. You're just teaching the client to utilize their natural-born tendency to drop into an altered state of consciousness. And in where the brainwaves, you know, slow down. And that's where we can access the contents of our unconscious mind. And that's where the goodies are. You know, we, we tend to be afraid of our unconscious mind, right, where the boogeyman is. And we like to think that we're captains of our ship. But anyone who's ever fallen into road rage should own that maybe we're not so in control as we think. So when I came to hypnosis, it was incredibly empowering for me. It just unlocked this notion that, ooh, I could use my thoughts for healing rather than harm.

And we all have this capability. And it was so profound in my own healing that I just said, oh, I have to learn how to do this. And so I did. I went to school for it and I started my own business. And it was really, really meaningful. And I started to work with people who were suffering from chronic pain, maybe in conjunction with cancer. And my brother got to cancer and when he was in his last months I was able to help him with his pain through hypnosis and that felt so so meaningful to me so when he passed away that was when I said oh I can do this let me turn my grief into something positive and then I started to work more actively with people with cancer. I worked at Gilda's Club.

I'm not sure if you're familiar with that. I don't think it's called Gildes Club anymore, but that was after Gilda Radner from Saturday Night Live, who died of ovarian cancer, I believe. But I started to work with cancer survivors at Gildes Club. And then I started to work in hospice as a volunteer. And using hypnosis as a means to provide healing, physical, mental, and spiritual. So those were great tools for me to bring later to the psychedelic space.

That, thank you for sharing that. I'm sorry to hear about your brother, but I'm thankful to hear about all the people that that relationship allowed you to help. And if we just talk about hospice for a minute, like it seems that it can be very rewarding to help people, but it also seems like it could be very taxing to be in that situation all the time, to be surrounded by people in their last few days or maybe a grieving family. Did you find it to be taxing as well as helpful? I would say it was as difficult as it was rewarding. Well, said. You know, nothing concentrates a person as the hangman's noose. I believe that's Dostoevsky. But when you're facing your own demise, you're all the all the window dressing goes away right you're you're in it it's in intensity and that appeals to me and because I was able to do it with my brother I knew I would be able to sit

with other people um it's it's not for everyone um It's not depressing. It's, but it's just real. And you can either do it or you can't. There's a certain kind of person who can sit in that space. But it's just the other, the other phase of midwifing. Right? You can midwife a baby into this world and you can midwife,

someone out of this world. And I just was able to hold that space, probably because I'd gone through it with my brother. And poetry was so helpful for me and my own spiritual work in being able to stay grounded. and to remain kind of afloat in these very choppy waters, where you're dealing with very possibly distressing emotions from both the individual who's dying and family members.

So, you know, how can you create, how can you remain buoyant in those waters and provide something for these people to hold to hold on to. It just it just was right for me. I never planned it, but I was able to do it. And I'm so grateful for those years that I did that work. And that's why I moved into social work because I thought I was going to become a hospice social worker. And that was my first internship, but it just didn't work out that way. Yeah, it's so fascinating to me.

I was speaking with a friend of mine a while back, and her mentor was a death dula. And she had mentioned that it's interesting. to see that the look of ecstasy is eerily similar to the look of agony. And when you sit with someone, I'm paraphrasing here, but when you sit with someone, she spoke at times of being in holding their hand and being able to see on some people the unrealized dreams of their life. And it reminds me of what you said of, you know, in the end of times, the window dressings fall away and then there is only you. Maybe could you speak to that a little bit? Well, the dying aren't talking about, you know, going to Costco or, you know, getting a Tesla.

So that's where life becomes interesting for me when people are authentic and talking about matters that feel meaningful to me. and those values aren't often the values that are held up in our society, right? Right. Achievements. What we own, how many likes we have on, well, I age myself, right, Facebook or whatever, TikTok or Twitter or whatever, whatever we're looking for. to kind of give us that little dopamine height, you know. I've just been with so many people who died too young,

and when you're on that deathbed, you're really not thinking about what accolades you got, what kind of car you drive. You're really thinking about what kind of relationships you created. What's the mark you left on the world? And I've always thought about that my entire life. My parents did instill that in me, to whom much is given, much is expected. So it's always been really important for me to do meaningful work.

So, you know, you meet people doing meaningful inner work at the end of life and in the therapeutic room, right? Yeah. And certainly in the psychedelic space. I mean, that's where it gets down and dirty. And that's where I like to be. That's my kind of girl. I like it.

It's so raw in that format. You know, and it seems to me that there's a certain sort of attraction between somebody who has made it through a really big tragedy and someone who may be going through a similar type of tragedy. Have you found that to be? Oh, yeah, without a doubt. I don't think that I could have done any of that work early in my career. It was just as I got older and more resilient. And I had done a lot of my own inner work, not through psychedelics, but through other means of healing. And then having to, survive some fairly significant losses in my own life. I just always believe, well, how can I turn this poison into medicine? Medicine for myself, medicine for others. And it did really come

together in a beautiful, meaningful way when I worked with groups in the psychedelic space. Yeah, it's, you know, I see this Ariadne thread that you're weaving through some of your stories, and one of it is this idea of turning poison into medicine. And prior to that, it was the idea of taking this tragedy and finding something grateful in it. Was that something your parents instilled in you, or where does that come from? Hmm. Well, we certainly were always taught as to count our blessings. Yeah. I mean, my parents grew. up in the depression and struggled. So one of the things that my father would always say is, you know,

count your good fortune, count your good fortune. So I did learn, okay, let's shine your light over here. Right. But then I also had this upbringing. My mother was from Ireland, heavy Catholic influence. which was something that did sustain me, but it's also something aspects that I had to overcome in my work. But I think that resilience, I saw without a doubt, in my parents.

And I think, especially on the female side, I have a lot of really strong women from both, lineages. Yeah. And I've called on that strength at times in my life. And again, the poetry has been such a source of wisdom and comfort for me. Yeah. Yeah, it's beautiful. I'm really thankful. Thanks for sharing that. It's so fascinating to me to get to hear people talk about the very foundation on which they built their framework. Because I think it speaks volumes of your ability to help people. So many people are lacking that idea of resilience.

Or maybe they just need to re-remember it. Maybe they've had it and they've lost it because of a heartbreak or a tragedy or a lost one. Do you think that's a symptom of some of the broken people in our society is this absence of resilience? Well, look at how the medical model. tweets are suffering. Normal human suffering. Okay. If we are human, we are going to suffer.

That's not all that's going to happen. But yeah, there will be periods of suffering. That's just a given. But, you know, Western medicine, we put every natural bit of life into the DSM so we can medicate it, so we can pathologize it. Okay. So I do think that promotes a population that feels disempowered, and they're encouraged not to invite their,

suffering in, but to keep it at arm's length, to, like I said, pop a pill for it, and not use it as an invitation of entering in more deeply to heal more deeply, right? And that's why I think psychedelics are such a paradigm shift, because they do promote acceptance of one's suffering, if you will, and resilience. Because, boy, if you can get through some of those challenging psychedelic trips, everything else is just chunk change, right? Yeah. Yeah.

We've become a society that's very, it just doesn't, you know, we're always triggered. We can't be we can't be poked. Right? So I think that's unfortunate. And we can't walk through life

bubble wrapped. You know? Life's going to happen. And if you bubble wrap yourself against the difficult stuff, then the good, juicy life-affirmed thing, stuff is not going to come through, right? Yeah, it's desensitizing the, the sense of touch. Like, you know,

it may feel be, it may get hurt to have someone touch you, but the passion and the love and the caressing and the caring and the deep-hearted movement of someone that really touches you is, man, it gives me goosebumps to think about. It's the language in poetry. It's the smile of a warm stranger. But if you do bubble wrap yourself, if you find yourself looking through the catalog that is the DSM and picking something out, now you've got this cool thing that you could put in a box and you can share with people, but it's off limits. You never integrated into yourself. And in doing so, you probably get rid of one of your most unique things about you. Like, just the language we use for disease and stigma. Like, it's just so, it's sad to me. And I do agree. I think that the world of

psychedelics is changing that, and I'm hopeful that we'll continue to do it. Are you, it's really unfolding really fast. And in this world of psychedelics, there seems to be an explosion of people that want to help. And that's a really good thing. But as you and I were talking previously about this new article that came out, there does seem to be a lot of, it's messy. I'll say it this way. It's very messy in some ways.

Are you hopeful that, is that just a symptom of what's happening because it's so fast, or should we be a little bit worried about the mess that's? that people are making? Well, I don't think we should be worried about it, but I think we should be observant, be realistic. Right. And tweak our approach so we can move along in a more optimal fashion. We are moving quickly.

I think that that is a symptom. that we have this vacuum to be filled, right? There's just, we're, if you haven't noticed, we're in kind of a predicament. Right? Yeah, so, yeah, people are suffering, oops. People are suffering. Yeah.

And the world is suffering. You know, the globe is in great distress. So we need something. And yeah, that's why I think we're grasping. Anything is going to be messy if humans are involved. I'm not being cynical, but, you know, what we'd love to maintain an ideal but we're all fallible.

I'm very hopeful, but we have to be really honest about where we're not stepping up to the plate. Yeah, whenever I think about this particular topic, I'm reminded of our good friend Aldous Huxley and all his literature that he wrote. And on one hand, you have Brave New World

where they use Soma, as a disassociate for people to go about their days and use this particular substance to, you know, just escape for a little bit. And then you have the island where they use this Moksham medicine and they can have ceremony and they have rights of passage. And it's interesting if you just pan back maybe

and look at the world that's moving forward. I can see kind of both camps there. Can you see both camps happen in there? The dystopia and the, Yep, that's it. And the idealized. On the idealized one. That's it, yep.

Well, we probably have to fall somewhere in the middle. Agreed. It's going to take a lot of tweaking because I think we need to be shaken up in the Western world. Even the way we approach these medicines, these sacred substances, right? It's a very, it can be a very inter-transactional experience. What can this substance do for me rather than how can we work together to promote healing both internally externally, right? There's no power differential here. You know, humans, we have this hierarchy in the West that, you know, everything else is below us,

and that certainly includes plant medicines. So how can we use you for healing? So it's going to take a real sea change. to use these medicines respectfully. And I see a tremendous amount of good work happening all over in the research space, in education, in the retreat space. But I am concerned about when we are bringing the capitalist model. which we need, but can it be tempered with some humanity?

Yeah. First off, thank you for that. That's the first time I think I have heard someone explain it the way. As soon as you said, it seems that the message is, what can this do for me? As soon as you said that, I went, yes, that does seem to be like a big part of the message that's out there right now. And maybe not the message from everybody. There's tons of really amazing people that are doing great work.

But it seems on the, like on the front page, it seems you're seeing headlines like, you know, psilocybin cures PTSD. And that does give the idea of what this message or what this medicine does for you. But I like what you said about having a relationship and having no real, you know, having an equalized sort of eye to eye look at it. That does seem like a great first step in actualizing what's actually happening because it seems to me that the real therapy is the person working with the medicine to solve their own problems and become more of a whole, more of a holistic approach instead of a layered, you know, capitalist top down. This works for me. I'm the boss of this. Well, yeah, good luck to you if you're in a five-gram cellocybin session. Exactly. Exactly.

I'm the boss of you. That's not going to end well. Yeah. But yeah, it's interesting because sometimes on the retreat where I worked, we'd get in one particular group, perhaps there would be people who just very much like, well, I want my mystical experience. I came to have my default mode network reset. And, you know, I want this.

And I just say, well, you may get that. But this isn't, you know, the psilocybin vending machine. Well, what have you done to prepare the soil for these experiences? And then once you have them, how will you bring them into your everyday life? Not only to promote your well-being, but the well-being of your loved ones, the well-being of your community to the world at large, right? That's a piece that's equally important. because once we do this work, we are responsible for it. And that's sometimes we can be called to, you know, make changes in our life that are quite challenging.

That's been one of the big messages to me from the mushroom is, you know, step up to the plate because the world needs people who are doing this work, not just for their own, to feed their own egos, or to have a really cool story to trot out at the next cocktail party. but what are you going to do with this once you've had it? There's a deep responsibility there that those of us who are called to do this work, we feel profoundly. I mean, I certainly do. and some of the ways that psychedelics are being marketed, some of the hype,

is forgetting that you have responsibility here. There's no casual encounter with a psychedelic in my book. It must be entered into with purpose and with awe. There's some real, there's some real noticeability. Or maybe I'll say awareness of the self when you begin to interact with, with in theogens or psychedelics. And I really like the way you said when people are called to it, because you can become the best version of yourself.

And you can do it, I think you can fast track it if you begin to have a healthy relationship, or some people can with psychedelics. But for me, what I've noticed is that it helps present me with a case for courage to do the right thing instead of doing things right. In fact, doing things right, when someone tells you, hey, just do what I told you to do. Like, all of a sudden, like, what I have noticed with my relationship is that it's fundamentally change the way I respond to language. And it makes me want to, first off, respond to the voice inside, the language that I have. It's like, hey, George, you make it, maybe you can make a lot of

money here, but it feels like you're dying inside, man, you know, and then that voice keeps getting louder, and then I would do some work with the medicine, and it, it just gets to a point we're like, okay, this is really frightening for me. I'm going to walk away from all of this. What about my family? What about this? What, and then all these what ifs come into play. If you continue to look inside yourself, all of a sudden you find that higher self, that voice, it's like, now is the time. What else do you want me to say? Right. And that capital S self.

Yes. Thank you. Well done. Yeah. That we always have in us. Yes. Right? I think James Hillman, the Jungian analyst, calls it our acorn self.

this is the part that's within us, right? And we're born with it, that divine spark, if you will, right? That's unique to us. And if we're lucky, we have caregivers who see our acorn self, and they foster it. And maybe you're lucky and you're in a school that fosters it. and you're in a society that fosters it. But very often we have to start putting on masks to function in the world, and we lose that voice, right?

That is always there. And so psilocybin and other psychedelics can bring us back to that voice, that poor self. And that core self doesn't necessarily care about your physical or financial comfort. Right. Right. So it may require you to make changes that are not so comfortable. Yep.

Right? Yeah. And what I would like to see is that we set up. more structures, more systems in our society for people who are going through this work, right? So there can be a container where these changes can be maintained and fostered, right? We need our tribe. And so many times people do this work, and yet they go, right? back into their old circumstances and that that ember just dies out. So we need to provide,

you know, as I said, systems that will help people maintain their benefits. And it can be challenging in our society. Yeah, that is really well said. It's, what would one of those systems look like? I guess like Aldous Huxley's Island. Yes, yeah. Maybe it would look like the world we live in today, emerging. Yeah. Well, we can set up little islands, right?

We can know ourselves and listen to that inner voice and set up these. like way stations, you know, in nature, in our own spiritual practices, and in community. So it's going to look different for every person. I mean, I know what I've tried to create, and it's, it is in nature, in nature, in community. with my tribe. I mean, through that the New Jersey's psychedelic therapy association, I'm trying to create a community, a community of support for therapists who are doing this work and to educate the public and providers to do this work. So that's kind of extending the tribe.

It's just going to look differently for everyone. Thank you for doing that. I think it's a beautiful thing. In some ways, if I think about it for a moment, I love the way you describe the person getting in contact with their capital S self as beginning to have the ember burn inside them. And it kind of reminds me of the rites of passage or the people that would keep the fire. And it seems to me that people that are,

that go through this transformation. And maybe you're feeling, maybe you're being called to it now, or maybe you've gotten the spark and it's beginning to glow. But at that point in time, I would welcome people to start seeing themselves as someone who is keeping the fire.

And the longer you keep that fire alive, the more opportunity you have to inspire the flame in somebody else. And if you begin to think about it like that, it helps your own imber grow brighter. And then you can find your tribe because then you can see that spark in other people or people see it in you.

And when yours is about to die, this person that you may have ran into six months ago comes by and it's like, hey, thank you. And then all of a sudden it blows back up together, you know, and I often think of Alan Watts has a, was it Alan Watts? Maybe it was, I forgot where I heard the quote, but it was something along the lines of the flame that kindles many candles is the same flame in all the candles. You know, and so we are finding our tribe in that way. But it's really well said. It must be because you have such a beautiful, background in poetry and hypnosis that you have all this insight? I don't know. I don't know. It's, I don't know what it is. But sometimes it fails me.

And that's when I do need the warmth of another fire. Yeah. Right. And that's where the blessing of family and coworkers. and friends resides, because we can't do it alone. And that's one thing that I learned living in another country, you know, without my peeps, even though I was doing really, really meaningful work. And I did have, you know, great relationships.

And I met so many new people all over the world with the clients. But I did miss my peeps back at home. And it's important, yeah, that was one of my biggest lessons, is that we do need our tribe. We can't do it alone. And right in this country, we have such a myth about independence. Yeah. born, plunk them in their own room in another crib, you know, you know, make them resilient,

make them independent. But we're really interdependent beings, aren't we? And I think this myth that we need to be able to go it alone. I mean, isn't that feeding our epidemic of depression, loneliness, anxiety, and, you know, how clear could it have been during the pandemic? But I don't know what we've learned since then. Have we increased our community? Have we increased our connection with others? I don't know. I hope so.

I like to think that it was a wake-up call for lots of people. to just stopping what you're doing for a little bit and taking a moment to look around your life and be like, is this really what I want? Do I really want to sit in traffic for three hours every day commuting? Do I really want to go see my mom at the care home, drop my kid off at school and then go to work? Like, what kind of life is this? Like, what the heck am I doing? I think that I'm hopeful that it was a wake up call for people. And it saddens me to see the myth of the you know, independent individual. I see it for what it is and it's a, it's an epidemic of obedient workers. It's an epidemic of people being held down by authority. It seems to me, and not their own authority, authority that's been conditioned into them. So is that too much? Is that too crazy? No, no, no, no. I'm right. I'm right there with you. I'm right there with yeah. I mean, that's the proverbial midlife crisis, right? Is that, you? Is that, you know, is that. that we're on this, we're on this hamster wheel pretty young.

It starts pretty young in life, you know. Well, you've got to get good grades. And by the way, this is going on your permanent record. Whatever that is. Yeah. And then because you've got to get into a good college. And then because you've got to get a good job. And then, of course, you're going to get married.

And you're going to have children. And we're sort of sold this illusion that that is what will bring us happiness. And that's our cultural myth. So then people wake up in their 30s or 40s with that nagging voice that they've never listened to because they've, they've been conditioned. And James, James Hollis writes about this a lot. Like the first task of life is we're learning how to work within these constraints of society. And then the second half of life, we're kind of shedding.

those masks we've had to take on to survive in this world. And that's why, like the second half of life, if you will, can be so rich and so rewarding because you're kind of finding your way back to that acorn self. And a lot of people who would come on retreat, you know, when they were retiring, because they just knew, and they'd had happy lives, you know, happy lives, but they just knew that something was missing. Life didn't have the juice, that they knew at some level it should.

And they turned to psychedelics because they wanted to kind of get through the layers of what was repressed, so they could ascend into perhaps a truer way of being that then they'd been existing in. Perhaps they'd lost it during college, or even younger than that, in the case of significant childhood trauma.

Yeah. I'm going to have to read about my James Hollis. It's fascinating. think about like yeah what what role do you think demographics plays and let me let me try to streamline that question a little better it seems to me that there's a large people large portion of our society that is you know octogenarians and getting older and that has to happen when when such a large part of our body our collective body is moving on like that has to have to have Like that has to have an effect on all of society.

Do you think that that's accurate? Oh, yeah. I think that that's one of the messages that we receive with psychedelics, right? That we're not just containing our own biography, our postnatal biography. We're carrying the collective unconscious. and we're also carrying intergenerational information. So absolutely, how can it not inform us? Look at the levels of anxiety that spiked during the pandemic.

And look at how children and young adults were affected. so much during that time because they're just soaking up this energy that's kind of free floating. And we don't give enough credence to, well, what is floating out there? And I know this sounds very, you know, woo-woo and airy-fairy, but we are picking up on information. from the collective, right? Right. Look who we were in the aftermath of 9-11. Look who we were as a nation during the pandemic globally.

Of course, we're soaking all that in. And we don't understand it. But it's certainly something that comes up a lot in the psychedelic space. And people do this work and they say, wow, this is way too big. I know I'm hitting intergenerational trauma. I'm carrying maybe trauma for all of women or the collective. So we may think that we are this ego encapsulated skin, but we're much more connected than we know.

Yeah, that's beautiful. I'm hopeful that that is something that more people begin to recognize is that there's this non-locality about the mind and it's everywhere. And you can. I think that on some, level the same way the mycelium grows under the ground. So too are we kind of growing together and making these connections. And just talking to you, I'm like, well, this person, Denise is amazing. I love talking to her. And you can feel these connections when you talk to people. And I think

everybody can do it. If you have a genuine conversation where you just try to clear your mind of all the filler or in the conversation, just speak your truth. Like, hey, I notice, I really like that color on you or say something that's honest to this other person. And you'll be able to feel that. the exchange between you. People are hungry for it. Yes, they are starving. Yes, and that was one of the beautiful, the most beautiful aspects of working at a psilocybin retreat.

And even without the psychedelic, you get 10 people who were just randomly plunked, seemingly randomly plunked down in this space. And they're strangers, but they're being authentic. They're being vulnerable. And it creates this beautiful web of connection in which they begin to trust. And they don't feel so isolated because people are talking about what is real. Oh, that's fun. my father was an alcoholic too. That's funny. I had a miscarriage. And so within a few hours,

you get this connection, this web between total strangers only because they're being authentic. Okay. And that's all it is. That's before you add in the psychedelic. So what if we had real conversations? What if we really met people and connected at a meaningful level? And I think that's why I loved doing that work is because, there wasn't time for BS, right? Yeah, true. Yeah. And that's where the magic happens when you're meeting, if you will, soul to soul.

Yeah, I love that. That's such a beautiful way to think about, I guess, what William Blake calls, the divine imagination, like what can be if we're willing to just, be honest with ourselves and take a few moments to think about it. Denise, I love talking to you. This is really fun. I can't believe an hour has gone by already.

It's just like, neither. It's amazing. Before I let you go, Denise, I would love you to come back because it went way too fast. But before I let you go, where can people find you? What do you have coming up and what are you excited about? I'm in New, I'm in Central New Jersey.

Come and find me, knock on my doorbell doesn't work. Ding, ding, ding. I have a website imaginatively named Deniseruh.com. I'm on LinkedIn. Where can you find me? I don't know. Yeah, and I do want to promote my organization. We don't even have a website up.

There's about 11 of us who came to the first meeting because when I came back from Jamaica, and I hadn't lived here for over three years, and I just like, I got to find my tribe. So I was like, oh my God, and I came out of the shower and I'm like, whoa, what am I going to do? And I just went on meet up and I started a group, you know, New Jersey Psychedelic Therapy Association. And, you know, and then, you know, people came. And we're just in the very early stages, but we do have a couple of speaking engagements lined up,

and we're meeting with New Jersey representative regarding the psilocybin Behavioral Health Access Services Act that was introduced about a year ago. so hoping to get that on board. So we're going to get our website up or working on that. But certainly if you're in New Jersey, please find us. If you're a therapist, if you're a professional or even if you're just a human being who's interested in doing this work,

yeah, that's where I am. Nice. Yeah. Well, I'm hopeful that everybody who listens to this or watches this will go into the show notes and check out the links in there for your page. I hope that they do check out the New Jersey Psychedelic Therapy Association. And I love the idea of language and poetry. It's such a beautiful combination of poetry, hypnosis, and psychedelic therapy. And I want to say thank you for doing it, Denise.

There's no doubt in my mind why people say the kind words about you. and I'm so thankful for the work you're doing. It's really beautiful, so thank you for that. Thank you, George. Thank you for finding me. Yeah, the pleasure's all mine. Like I said, you're the only person I know that I've talked to that has those three particular avenues,

and it's just such a beautiful combination. It's like Neapolitan ice cream. Yeah, yeah, add a banana and some chopped almonds, and we're gold. And what pretty? Yeah. Yeah. I've been incredibly fortunate in my life to pursue all those things that I loved, for sure.

And I think you have an amazing view and an amazing strategy to incorporate, to transform. It's almost alchemical to transform tragedy into a form of therapy. You know, and that's so beautiful to me. I'm really thankful. Hang on one second. I'm going to talk to you after this. I'm going to let our audience go for a moment. So ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for spending time with us.

Go check out the show notes. Check out Denise. Take some time to think about poetry, hypnosis, and psychedelic therapy. And do yourself to say something kind to everyone around you today. That's all we got. Aloha.