I experienced this in two occasions. First, when I was going to therapy, and somehow managed to reach these traumas, the second is in deep meditation, which Japanese call "meeting with the ghosts".
Traumas stay fresh until you face them again, and acknowledge them. The moment you accept that they have happened, you have the chance to heal them.
This doesn't mean the process is smooth, painless or easy. It's neither, but it's very possible.
> the paper is trying to explain what psychedelics do to the brain. It theorizes that they weaken high-level priors (in this case, you can think of these as the tendency to fit everything to an existing narrative), allowing things to be seen more as they are
> A corollary of relaxing high-level priors or beliefs under psychedelics is that ascending prediction errors from lower levels of the system (that are ordinarily unable to update beliefs due to the top-down suppressive influence of heavily-weighted priors) can find freer register in conscious experience
In the context of trauma, the trauma-induced unhealthy belief systems would be the high-level priors that have lodged themselves in strongly, and the effect of the psychedelics would help the person actually process and validate them against real world evidence (beyond the traumatic ones). I can imagine that actually having to do that - seeing all your trauma-based narratives and how they have shaped your view of things, and confronting how they clash with reality - being a pretty rough ride.
[1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/11/26/mental-mountains/ [2] REBUS And The Anarchic Brain: Toward A Unified Model Of The Brain Action Of Psychedelics
Just because something feels true doesn't make it so.
First off, the scientific method only finds things that are less wrong, there's never anything even close to certainty and finality. Your entire life's work could be entirely replaced by an Einstein.
Secondly, there's an enormous volume of trade, industry and commercial knowledge that has exactly zero published studies but sufficient less-wrong "scientific" testing to be knowledge.
And yet that's how things should be done, based on decades and centuries of craftsmanship, apprenticeships, and corporate knowledge.
Your opinion is exactly why I posted what I posted. The scientific method is powerful, but it's extremely slow to propagate.
Maybe a very concrete way to ask would be: what's the difference between someone who undergoes the ayahuasca experience and successfully "processes" a trauma, vs someone who does not? Is there such a thing?
Is there a difference between this and doing it another way? Hard to say. If the process resonates with you I think it can be done a lot faster and more completely this way. Some people can make little to no progress in therapy for years, dancing around the issue and constantly hitting defense mechanisms (often the memories of these things are blocked out and very hard to access under normal circumstances). A strong ayahuasca experience will put it front and center so you have no other choice than to deal with it. It's not easy, not some magic pill, and takes courage and willingness to go into it head on and do the work. It's absolutely not for everyone. I really love this modality so probably a bit biased- like asking a heart surgeon to heal your broken leg might get you a couple stents installed ;) it's very versatile but not always the best option.
In peru?