“Some healing strengthens the self. Some healing dissolves it.
Wisdom is knowing which one your nervous system can hold.” – Lisa Watson
There’s a surge right now toward psychedelics, ego death, and spiritual awakening.
It’s not fringe anymore — it’s showing up in professional circles, therapeutic spaces, and leadership conversations.
I understand the pull.
Many people have done years of therapy. They’ve learned the language. They’ve built awareness. They’ve gained insight and yet something still feels incomplete. So they reach for something bigger, faster, more expansive.
But here’s what I see again and again:
People aren’t failing at healing.
They’re applying the wrong model to the wrong stage of the journey
Western psychotherapy is one of the most compassionate systems we’ve ever created. At its best, therapy helps people:
The underlying assumption is simple and useful:
there is a self that can be understood, strengthened, and supported.
For many people — especially those who grew up without safety — this work is essential. Therapy often provides the first experience of being met without judgment. It helps build coherence where there was once fragmentation.
But therapy has a natural ceiling.
When the focus stays only on managing, coping, or taming the self, the deeper programming underneath often remains untouched. Insight increases, but the same emotional loops keep running.
This doesn’t mean therapy failed.
It means it did what it was designed to do — and no more.
Spiritual traditions take a very different approach.
Rather than strengthening identity, they question it altogether.
Across wisdom traditions, the core insight is similar:
suffering comes from identification with the self — the story, the role, the “me.”
Psychedelics often amplify this lens. They loosen identity, soften boundaries, and reveal perspectives beyond the familiar sense of self.
When held well, this can be deeply liberating.
But here’s where things go wrong:
Many people enter these spaces with a nervous system that is still organized around survival — and then attempt transcendence.
When spiritual work skips the inner child and jumps straight to “no self,” the body doesn’t experience freedom.
It experiences abandonment.
The part that hears “you are not real” is often not the higher self. It’s the younger self.
And that part doesn’t want transcendence. It wants safety.
This is why some people leave powerful experiences feeling disoriented, destabilized, or unable to integrate what they saw. The insight wasn’t wrong, the sequence was.
This is where my METHOD lives.
In my work, I teach the Five Selves:
Healing isn’t about eliminating any of them.
It’s about restoring the right leadership inside.
Most modern healing approaches make the same mistake from opposite directions:
Integration means:
Nothing gets erased. Everything gets repositioned.
Psychedelics don’t teach you who you are. They amplify whatever system you bring into the experience.
If the inner child is still running the show, they get amplified.
If the ego dominant, it gets amplified.
If the ME self is present and regulated, insight has a place to land.
This is why I always start with the nervous system.
You don’t dissolve a self that’s still protecting itself.
You don’t transcend parts that haven’t been met.
Without integration, insight becomes a moment.
With integration, insight becomes embodiment.
The goal isn’t ego death. The goal is ego maturity.
Healing isn’t about becoming no one.
It’s about becoming whole.
When the inner child feels safe, the body settles.
When the adult self leads, identity relaxes.
And from there, the higher self isn’t something you chase — it’s something you remember.
If therapy has helped but feels incomplete…
If spiritual teachings feel true but destabilizing…
If you’re sensing that something deeper is asking to emerge…
It may not be that you need more insight.
You may simply need the right order.
And when the order is right, healing stops feeling like a battle and starts feeling like coming home to yourself.
If this perspective resonates and you’re sensing it’s time to bring clarity, regulation, and right leadership into how you’re operating, I offer a Leadership Re-Boot Diagnostic for leaders and founders.
This is not coaching or therapy. It’s a strategic diagnostic designed to identify the underlying patterns shaping your leadership, nervous system, and decision-making — and what needs recalibration next.
📩 Email: [email protected]
🗓️ Schedule a Leadership Re-Boot Diagnostic:
https://cal.com/reparentyourself/leadership-re-boot-diagnostic
© 2025 LISA WATSON, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED