Two Trauma Therapists: One Hour with Low-5

A first-person account by Jamie, a licensed therapist and PSIP practitioner, reflecting on a guided StepWise Low-5 session facilitated by Bree.

By Jamie M., LCSW

Please note: Names have been changed to protect confidentiality

In my own healing work, I’d been circling the same loop for years. No matter what modality I tried, energy would rise inside me and then hit something flat and lifeless. I called it the Grey World.

The Grey World feels like dead air. Not numbness exactly, but a heavy stillness where vitality stops. Every time I came close to feeling alive, everything would dissolve into that blank space.

I met my colleague Bree, also a trauma therapist, during PSIP training at the Psychedelic Somatic Institute. PSIP is a relational, body-led trauma approach where the therapist participates as an attuned presence while the client’s nervous system renegotiates stuck protective responses. As much as I appreciated PSIP, it hadn’t helped me let go of my looping.

The plan was simple: I would self-administer low-dose 5-MeO-DMT from different potency vape pens, in gradually increasing strengths while Bree held the space.

I had never used this medicine before. My baseline that day was calm, reflective, and somewhat discouraged by the stagnation I’d been feeling. I didn’t know what would happen. I just hoped something in me might finally move.

Beginning the Session

We began quietly, grounding and setting intention.

I started with the low-dose pen. A small inhale held for a few seconds, then exhaled. The effect was mild warmth and a slight expansion — like a door opening a crack.

After a few more breaths, I switched to the medium-dose pen. The feeling deepened. My body tingled with a faint current, and I felt a subtle sense of possibility.

The medicine came in waves that were gentle and easy to ride.

First High-Dose Wave

When I moved to the higher-dose Low-5 vape pen, everything shifted. Within seconds, nausea rose from deep in my gut. My body tightened, released, then tightened again. I sensed something old trying to move.

After a few minutes, the nausea passed, replaced by a surge of warmth. Energy flooded upward through my chest and head. I felt alive, light, and open, as though life itself was moving through me, filling every cell. The sensation was joyful, radiant, and clean.

Usually, with psychedelics, I crave physical contact or reassurance. I didn’t this time. I just stayed with the current. I felt steady and self-contained.

The Grey World Returns

Then the light began to fade, and the old landscape returned. The Grey World: dense, airless, unmoving.

Inside it, something darker began to take form. The word that came was Satan. A feeling like how somebody can turn on you in a completely cold-blooded, heartless way. I just felt like if I kept my attention over there, that ice-cold energy could turn on me. As that energy arose, my whole body contracted. I asked Bree for her hand. She reached over and held it, and that small gesture helped me stay connected and not get lost in the coldness.

The effects of the Low-5 faded very quickly. And so, every few minutes, I’d take from the vape pen, hoping for a breakthrough. But there was no return to the light I’d been experiencing earlier. The Grey World and this dark force felt intertwined — the life force meeting something that refused to move.

Going to the Limit

It became clear that staying cautious would keep me looping. After a brief discussion, I picked up the high-dose pen and took the deepest inhale I could. My lungs burned, my chest trembled. Then something inside broke open.

Purge

The purge came fast and violently. My stomach convulsed, and I vomited into the container in front of me, retching until nothing remained. It was raw, physical, and strangely clean.

In that moment, I thought I wanted to purge the dead, Grey World out of me.

When it was over, I curled on my side under the blanket, trembling but calm.

Later, Bree described the moment as “a full discharge, the body finally completing what it had been holding for decades.”

Re-experiencing the Infant Memory

As I lay curled up, a most painful memory surfaced — from when I was two years old, abandoned in the car by my mother in the freezing cold of winter. The biting cold, the long stretch of being alone were terrifying. I thought I had been left for dead.

But this time, there was no panic. The scene unfolded without terror. I could see that small child, still and waiting, and I felt compassion for my mom. She wasn’t leaving me to die. And I didn’t die. The memory stayed real, but it was no longer alive in my body as fear.

Integration in Real Time

After several minutes, my body began to settle. My breath slowed, my awareness cleared. There was no confusion or difficulty re-orienting.

I shared with Bree the feeling of the healing power expanding in me and hitting the Grey World, the experience of Satan, the purge, and the healing I’d felt. I was amazed that not much more than an hour had passed.

I felt like I’d had a tremendous breakthrough. At the same time, I’m not religious, so the experience of Satan shook me. It felt entirely real. I was struggling to fit it into a psychological framework. I felt as though I’d glimpsed a layer of existence that wasn’t supposed to be seen.

Talking it through with Bree helped. She listened, grounded, and didn’t try to explain it away. Naming what I’d felt and staying with it helped my system integrate. By the end of our debrief, I felt clear again — tired, raw, but steady.

2 Weeks Later

Two weeks later, the shift remained. The fragility that had always lived under my surface was gone. In its place was a foundation in my core.

When conflict arises now, anger comes up, but it feels healthy and grounded. It doesn’t mix with fear or self-blame. It moves through cleanly and resolves.

Bree summed it up simply: “Not just catharsis in the moment, but a change in the baseline.”

---

Share the Work

Gathering reports like Jamie’s takes time, and your sharing of her story really helps our cause. Thanks for sharing.