5 Things Clinicians Need to Unlearn to Step Into Psychedelic Therapy Training

Co-written by Shannon Hughes, PhD, LSW – Program Director of Elemental Psychedelics and cofounder of The Nowak Society, Dori Lewis, LPC, LMHC – Clinical Director of Elemental Psychedelics and Owner-Operator of Reflective Healing Center

Are you a clinician getting more inquiries about psychedelics? Curious about alternative therapies and this emerging therapeutic tool? Wanting to learn how to become a psychedelic therapist to expand your practice? 

Although clinical work and psychedelic-assisted therapies share significant overlap in practitioner backgrounds and core skills, clinicians often must unlearn more rigid medicalized approaches to accommodate the unpredictable and non-linear nature of psychedelic work.

Elemental Psychedelic’s psilocybin mushroom facilitator training and ketamine-assisted therapy training both aim to bridge conventional clinical paradigms and practice with safe, ethical, and respectful psychospiritual psychedelic work.

If you are just learning about psychedelic training for therapists, or you’ve been working in this area for years, it is always good to check yourself and be aware of what you might be missing in your helping practice. This blog is relevant for clinical professionals working with psilocybin mushrooms or ketamine and also may be interesting for non-clinical wellness practitioners working with psilocybin mushrooms. 

Here are the 5 things clinicians often have to unlearn to step into psychedelic therapy training:

1. Needing To Control the Medicine Experience

One of the biggest challenges that clinicians face at our psychedelic facilitator training is learning how to do less. During our training program at Elemental Psychedelics, many clinicians have expressed that they equate their value with their ability to help, offer good insights, and provide solid tools. There’s often an attachment to feeling useful in some way.

However, working with psychedelics – particularly ketamine and psilocybin mushrooms – invites therapists to step back. They don’t need to be as actively involved in what unfolds during the sessions, as the guiding force is really the client’s inner healing intelligence. For example, if you break your arm, a doctor could operate or provide a cast or sling to create the conditions necessary for healing. Then, once that proper support is in place, the body responds with its innate healing mechanisms. The doctor doesn’t need to instruct every platelet, inflammatory response, or stage of bone repair. And emotional healing can work in a similar way.

Starting out with psychedelics, clinicians may feel that this new practice makes them a little unnerved. It’s easy to want your client to have a positive experience or to take away their distress. But as we’ve mentioned before, checking in too frequently, intensely watching your client, trying to point them in a particular direction you wish they would go, or offering interpretation during sessions may actually interrupt an experience that they need to navigate on their own terms.

A psychedelic therapist’s role is really to cultivate the conditions for a budding relationship between the client, their own inner healing intelligence and the medicine they're working with. 

2. Overlooking Preparation and Integration 

There are, however, still areas where you can be more hands-on and even get your talking quota in for the day. Creating the appropriate set and setting for psychological safety is vital. Preparation gives facilitators the ability to allow the session to unfold safely without unnecessary intervention. Leveraging traditional clinical therapy skills, clinicians should speak to their clients beforehand about possible experiences, contraindications, clinical assessments, dosing, grounding practices and start to build a trusting relationship. 

For example, have you seen the videos of people about to skydive or parachute? In the seconds beforehand, the instructor may say: “I’m not going to push you,” “you’ve got this,” “you don’t need to look if you don’t want to,” and more. As well as the safety brief, they help navigate the nerves beforehand, like you’d do before jumping into the void of a psilocybin mushroom or ketamine journey. But notice what they do during the rest of the flight…they step back and let the client move through a flood of emotions and the unfolding experience. 

Intentional integration after psychedelic therapy is equally vital, especially as clients may feel disorientated, but also because what follows is a period of neuroplasticity where shifts can occur. We encourage clinicians to guide their clients to have practices in place to discern and incorporate the insights and emotions that arise in altered states – whether transformational, powerful, unsettling, or challenging. This may involve talk therapy, somatic integration (like dance or yoga), healthy habits (like journaling, meditation, connecting with nature and community), dream analysis, and building a supportive network. 

Compared to traditional therapy, integration after psychedelic experiences involves a wider toolbox. MAPS is a useful source for psychedelic integration education too.

3. Dismissing Mystical and Spiritual Experiences 

Some compare the effects of psychedelics to religious or spiritual transcendence. Psychedelic-assisted therapies are known to activate Spiritual, Existential, Religious, and Theological Components (SERT) and “yet, integration of these elements into the clinical setting is lagging,” according to a study from 2023 from professors from Emory University in Atlanta. 

Symbolic and nonlinear psychedelic experiences – perhaps involving interconnectedness, transcendence, or spirituality – might not fit into conventional clinical models that can separate spirituality from clinical care. Your clinical training might have even encouraged you, explicitly or implicitly, to disown or not fully engage the spiritual experiences of your clients. Psychedelics can expand the ways individuals perceive reality, often bringing attention to experiences that extend beyond purely logical or rational frameworks, and clinicians need to be open to working with this material with care.

The Emory faculty argue that this type of integration is essential for culturally competent and high-quality clinical care. Yet, they believe there is little guidance on how to address SERT experiences after psychedelic-assisted therapy. It is important to appreciate the sacred and spiritual nature of this work as well as its scientific basis. So, during our trainings at Elemental Psychedelics, we encourage the development of a sense of respect for the awe, mystery, and animate forces that natural medicine work is held within.

4. Thinking You Don’t Need Psychedelic Therapy Yourself

It is really important to focus on your own personal relationship with psilocybin mushrooms or ketamine as a foundation for developing your unique gifts to work with others. Several clinicians have wanted to join our trainings without direct experience with psychedelics. But the more clinicians understand the way a medicine works from their own experiences, they can learn to drop into a trusting relationship with these medicines. 

In other words, it is vital that you do more psychedelics if you are wanting to provide psychedelic-assisted therapy. And we’re not just talking about taking psychedelics on your own or even recreationally; that doesn’t offer the same container. The emphasis here is on encouraging clinicians to undergo a longer arc of the therapeutic process, guided by other experienced clinicians or practitioners, to integrate their own findings. 

When clinicians know that the medicine works in mysterious ways, when they themselves have had the opportunity to connect with their inner healing intelligence, it can allow them to trust the unfolding process – despite it looking messy or confusing on the onset.

5. Following a Traditional Top-Down Relationship 

Have you noticed that in psychedelic therapy, we often don’t use the word patient, opting for the word client instead, or sometimes even just journeyer. This may seem a minor change, but it reflects a more collaborative relationship, shifts away from the clinician-as-expert model and aligns with a client-led healing process. 

A key mindset shift is needed in psychedelic healing journeys: A move away from being the “expert” toward becoming a trusted guide. In fact, the required mindset is one of humility: “I don't actually know what healing looks like for you, but we're going to be on this journey together.”

Some clinicians may be overreliant on standardized treatment models that have a structured curriculum or pointed direction about where you want the client to go with you through a therapeutic process. But when no two people have the same healing journey, we believe it is not a clinician’s job to know what the healing path looks like exactly. Instead, we are curious participants, accompanying a client in the mystery. 

It's not a traditional top-down relationship, where the therapist or clinician has a clear treatment plan for what's going to happen. That’s because, when profound breakthroughs occur, clients may attribute those experiences to the facilitator rather than to their own inner wisdom. The risk is that the facilitator becomes an “authoritative figure,” reinforcing a dynamic that psychedelic work aims to move away from.

Psychedelic Therapy Training Colorado:  How Our Programs Prepare Clinicians for This Work

Something we often say at Elemental Psychedelics is that we hope that people leave with more

questions than answers. Critical thinking and a curious mind is what we want to encourage clinicians to develop. Our trainings are for people inspired by the awe of this medicine work and prepared to honor the mystery and surrender to paradox.

Our hope is that through mentorship, supervision groups and consult groups, we continue to

invite people into this “not knowing,” cultivating the humility to recognize that guiding psychedelic-assisted therapy does not require having every answer nor knowing exactly what the client needs. Instead, the work becomes about supporting the client’s inner healing intelligence, whether that emerges during the sessions or afterward. 

Our ketamine-assisted therapy training is open to clinical professionals from counseling, psychology, social work, health or mental health backgrounds who want to expand their practice. Elemental's mushroom journey facilitator program is a DORA Approved Facilitator Natural Medicine Training Program open to non-clinical wellness practitioners or clinical applicants. We also have offerings like Elemental’s practicum, which provides students with supervised practice to experience, observe, and/or co-facilitate natural medicines sessions in a safe and supportive environment. 

Frequently Asked Questions: How To Become a Psychedelic Therapist and Find Psychedelic Therapy Training

How can I become a psychedelic therapist in Colorado?

Clinicians typically need a licensed mental health background (e.g., LPC, LCSW, psychologist) and specialized psychedelic therapy training. This also depends on which medicine you’ll be working with (as psilocybin mushrooms don’t require a clinical background) – so, stay updated on Colorado’s legal frameworks.

However, beyond credentials, one of the most critical steps is unlearning some traditional clinician habits — such as over-directing sessions and prioritizing diagnosis over experience. Psychedelic therapy emphasizes non-directive support, preparation and integration, and trust in the client’s inner healing intelligence.

What are the top skills of a psychedelic therapist?

The top psychedelic therapist skills differ significantly from conventional therapy competencies, as they support clients in altered states of consciousness. Clinicians must often unlearn previous approaches and develop deeper intuitive capacities.

Core skills include:

• Holding space without directing

• Strong set and setting facilitation

• Deep listening and presence over interpretation

• Expertise in psychedelic integration, with a diverse toolbox of practices

• Comfort with uncertainty and non-linear healing processes

How can I choose the best psychedelic therapy training for me?

Choosing the best psychedelic therapy training involves looking for programs that align with your background, learning style, and emphasize safe, ethical psychedelic-assisted therapy practice, including preparation, dosing support, and integration. Strong trainings should also cover trauma-informed care and non-directive facilitation.

Importantly, the best programs help clinicians move beyond traditional “expert-led” models and develop skills in presence, humility, and client-led healing. Look for training that includes experiential learning, somatic approaches, and support for real-world application through supervision or community.

What are the benefits of psychedelic training for therapists?

Psychedelic training for therapists offers both professional and personal transformation. Key benefits include:

• Expanded ability to support conditions like PTSD, depression, anxiety

• Increased competence in integration 

• Greater flexibility beyond traditional talk therapy models

• Enhanced understanding of consciousness and trauma healing

• Merging of clinical and psychospiritual approaches that honor our full humanity