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PTSD And Psychosis: How They Interact
As an organization that interacts with mostly people that have experienced extreme trauma, PTSD, and C-PTSD, I feel it’s important to dive deep on this
July 1, 2025
Integration: The Sacred Bridge Between Vision and Transformation
In the sacred space of plant medicine ceremony, we are often gifted glimpses beyond the veil—into the roots of our suffering, the truth of our soul, and the infinite intelligence of the cosmos. These moments can be life-changing, awe-inspiring, and deeply humbling. But the ceremony itself is only one piece of the journey.
Integration is the sacred bridge that brings the medicine home.
It’s in the days, weeks, and months after the ceremony that we begin to weave those visions into the fabric of our lives. Without this tending, what was revealed can fade like a dream or cause inner chaos rather than clarity.
Why Integration Support Is Essential:
Holding the Sacred Fire – After the ceremony ends, the spiritual fire still burns. Integration provides the container to protect, nurture, and feed that fire until it becomes a steady light guiding you forward.
Anchoring Soul Truths – In ceremony, we may receive divine insights, ancestral messages, or a powerful remembrance of who we truly are. Integration helps anchor those truths into the body and the daily rhythm of life.
Navigating the Shadow – Plant medicines often illuminate not only our light but our shadows—old wounds, trauma, ego patterns. Integration offers spiritual companionship and guidance as you walk through the underworld and return renewed.
Opening the Heart – When the heart opens in ceremony, it can be beautiful and it can be overwhelming. Without support, the rawness can feel like too much. With love and care, it becomes a portal for deep connection, forgiveness, and grace.
Staying in Right Relationship – Integration teaches us how to walk in right relationship with the medicine, with ourselves, with others, and with the Earth. It helps prevent the misuse of sacred tools and honors the integrity of the path.
Without Integration, the Soul Can Get Lost in the Wilderness.
When someone steps back into the world without support, the spiritual energy opened in ceremony can feel confusing, destabilizing, or even frightening. Unprocessed revelations can lead to emotional overwhelm, disconnection from loved ones, or the temptation to return to old numbing behaviors.
Some lose trust in the process. Others begin to chase the next ceremony without embodying the last one. The medicine becomes a loop instead of a ladder.
Because your healing matters. Your soul’s truth matters.
And the world needs the medicine that only you can bring forward—fully integrated, fully alive, fully you.
With lots of love…..Audra
As an organization that interacts with mostly people that have experienced extreme trauma, PTSD, and C-PTSD, I feel it’s important to dive deep on this topic to bring awareness to our community, so if someone you know and love is experiencing this, they can be met with informed care. While it’s not super common, it does happen.
PTSD AND PSYCHOSIS: HOW THEY INTERACT
When someone lives with PTSD, especially complex or long-standing trauma, their nervous system and perception of reality can become chronically dysregulated. Add psychotic symptoms, and the person may not only feel unsafe within themselves, but also unsafe to you. They may believe they’re in active danger, even when they’re not. They may experience grandiose delusions.
KEY POINTS OF INTERACTION
Flashbacks can feel like hallucinations – The mind replays trauma so vividly, it may seem like it’s happening again, right now.
Hypervigilance can evolve into paranoia – Always being on guard can tip into believing others are watching, tracking, or targeting them.
Dissociation can blur reality – A person may feel disconnected from their body, surroundings, or even their identity.
Unprocessed emotions can fuel delusions – Especially around betrayal, shame, guilt, or fear.
So while PTSD is based on real experiences, psychosis is often a symbolic extension of that trauma. The brain is trying to process what was overwhelming — but it does so through distorted perception.
CAN THE PERSON SEE IT’S HAPPENING?
Often times: No. And that’s not because they’re in denial or being stubborn — it’s because:
Their brain believes the threat is real.
The survival system (fight, flight, freeze) overrides reasoning. It feels real, so it is real to them.
Self-awareness is impaired.
This is called “lack of insight” or anosognosia in psychiatric terms. It’s not a character flaw — it’s a symptom.
Trust is shattered.
People with PTSD + psychosis often expect betrayal or danger. They may mistrust helpers, systems, or even loved ones, fearing they’re part of the threat.
Shame and fear of stigma can also cause someone to hide what they’re experiencing, even from themselves.
HOW LOVED ONES CAN HELP
Support from others is crucial — but it must be gentle, grounded, and respectful of the person’s inner experience.
DON’T TRY TO “CORRECT” THEIR REALITY
Telling someone they’re wrong or “crazy” only deepens fear and mistrust.
PRIORITIZE SAFETY NOT CONTROL
Focus on helping the person feel safe in their body and space, rather than arguing about what’s real.
STAY CALM, EVEN WHEN THEY’RE NOT
Your nervous system can co-regulate theirs. Speak slowly, softly. Keep your tone warm but steady. Your calmness becomes an anchor.
RESPECT THEIR AUTONOMY, BUT KNOW WHEN TO INTERVENE
If someone is a danger to themselves or others, intervention is necessary — but force should be a last resort, and always trauma-informed.
If possible, involve them in decisions.
GET SUPPORT FOR YOURSELF
Caring for someone with PTSD + psychosis is emotionally intense. You need your own outlet, too — a therapist, a friend, a group that understands trauma caregiving.
The Deeper Truth
Sometimes what looks like madness…
…is actually someone drowning in pain that has never had space to be seen, held, or healed.
Psychosis can be a spiritual emergency — a crisis of meaning, identity, and soul — erupting from trauma that was never safe to feel. People in this state don’t need to be “fixed.” They need to be witnessed with compassion.
With lots of love…..Audra
This is a big one that doesn’t get talked about much, or at least in depth, in the spiritual/medicine community. It’s very real and we all go through it in some variation at some point, maybe at several points. It can be MESSY and lonely and from the outside, it can look like crises. And you know what? It is!
THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL
It’s not just a poetic metaphor—it’s a profound, sacred, and often crushing experience that marks a deep spiritual initiation. It’s not something you choose. It chooses you. It comes uninvited, unannounced, and unrelenting.
At its core, it is the sacred unraveling of everything that is not your true self.
What It Feels Like
Let’s not sugarcoat it. The Dark Night doesn’t feel poetic. It can feel like:
Absolute crises
A crushing loss of meaning.
Deep spiritual abandonment—as if God, Spirit, your guides,whatever you want to call it, have all gone silent.
Emptiness, even in things that once brought joy.
The collapse of identity—roles, beliefs, relationships, even your spiritual path.
A feeling that your soul is being wrung out, and your inner and sometimes your outer world is turning to ash.
You may feel like and look like you’re going crazy. Or worse, like you’ve lost yourself and may never find your way back. Even spiritual practices that once sustained you may now feel hollow or pointless. You may scream into the void and hear nothing back. The silence can feel cruel.
But underneath all of that?
Something is dying—yes.
But something sacred is being born.
It’s not depression, although it may look like it from the outside.
It’s not a punishment, and you’re not broken.
It’s a soul initiation.
This is the moment when the false self—the ego, the protective layers, the coping mechanisms—begins to dissolve. What’s being stripped away are the illusions, attachments, and identities that once kept you feeling safe… but are now keeping you small and often times in victim mentality.
Your soul is leading you into the fire—not to destroy you, but to purify you.
The seed must break open in the dark earth before it grows.
The caterpillar must dissolve into formless goo before becoming a butterfly.
The mystic must walk through silence before hearing the Divine in a new way.
The Stages of the Dark Night
While this process isn’t always linear, it often moves in waves or stages:
1. Dismantling – Your outer life or inner identity or both begins to collapse. Hot mess express!
2. Despair & Emptiness – You feel lost, numb, disconnected.
3.Stillness & Silence – A spiritual void. Old tools stop working. You feel abandoned.
4.Deep Inner Listening – You begin hearing the faint whispers of your soul again.
5.Breakthrough & Rebirth – You rise, not as who you were, but as who you truly are.
6.Reintegration – You return to life more rooted, wise, and aligned than before.
Sounds like The Hero’s Journey doesn’t it?
How to Survive (and Soften) It
There is no shortcut through the Dark Night. But you can walk it with sacredness and with as much grace as you can muster.
Surrender – Stop trying to fix, force, or escape. Let yourself fall apart.
Feel Everything – Rage, cry, grieve. Let your emotions move through you.
Call on Support – loved ones, therapists, or soul companions.
Ritualize – Create small sacred acts: light a candle, write to your soul, walk barefoot.
Rest – This is soul-labor. You need time, space, and gentleness.
Trust the Process – Even when you feel nothing, something is happening deep below the surface.
What’s On the Other Side?
Eventually—whether in weeks, months, or years—you’ll feel it:
A flicker of light.
A new truth rising from the ashes.
A deeper knowing of who you are—not who the world told you to be.
You begin to walk not from ego, but from soul.
Not to prove, but to embody.
Not for approval, but in deep alignment.
And the beautiful irony is this:
You were never abandoned.
You were being prepared.
The silence wasn’t punishment—it was sacred recalibration. Spirit never left.
You just needed to descend far enough to hear Her differently.
And if you are an outsider to someone going through this deep, and often times, messy metamorphosis?
Try not to turn away.
Hold space for them. I know it can be challenging, but try.
Be their non judgmental witness.
Send them love and have some hope for them. This is a time when our brothers and sisters need us the most.
With lots of love…..Audra
As an organization that interacts with mostly people that have experienced extreme trauma, PTSD, and C-PTSD, I feel it’s important to dive deep on this
