The Spectrum of Selves Model for Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy – ACT and IFS combined

From Psychedelic Insight to Lasting Behaviour Change

The Spectrum of Selves Model for Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy – a 2 day introduction

Psychedelic experiences can produce profound insight, emotional release and new perspectives on the self. But insight alone does not always lead to lasting change.

Clients may leave a session with clarity and hope, only to find that old patterns return: avoidance, shame, inner criticism, protective shutdown, relational conflict, addictive behaviour, loss of motivation, or disconnection from values.

This two-day training teaches a practical framework for helping clients turn psychedelic openings into sustained values-based behaviour change.

Using the Spectrum of Selves model, participants will learn how to integrate Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Contextual Behavioural Science, parts work and somatic practice across the three phases of psychedelic-assisted therapy: preparation, journey support and integration.

The approach is especially useful when clients encounter multiple self-states: the part that wants change, the part that is terrified of change, the part that protects through avoidance, the inner critic, the wounded younger self, the spiritually expanded self, and the everyday self that must return to life, relationships and action.

This training will help you

• Prepare clients for psychedelic work using ACT-consistent methods of openness, willingness, values and psychological flexibility
• Work with parts, protectors, critics, shame, younger self-states and inner conflict
• Use somatic and Somatic IFS-informed methods to help clients contact feeling in the body, within an ACT-consistent framework
• Support intense material during psychedelic experiences without becoming either passive or overly directive
• Understand when “the obstacle is the way” and when “stillness is the key”
• Use perspective-switching exercises to help clients move beyond polarised self-states
• Support psychedelic-assisted group therapy and integration through structured group processes
• Reinforce new behavioural repertoires that emerge from psychedelic insights
• Coach clients toward greater alignment between insight, values and daily life

What is included

Participants receive scripts, worksheets, diagrams, intervention maps and a training manual. The training includes teaching, demonstrations, dyad practice, role play and applied exercises designed to help participants use the methods immediately.

Post-training peer supervision is available for those who want further support integrating the model into their work.

Influences and foundations

This training draws on ACT, Contextual Behavioural Science, parts work, Somatic IFS-informed principles, and Henry Whitfield’s Spectrum of Selves approach to psychedelic-assisted therapy.

It is influenced by IFS and by Susan McConnell’s Somatic IFS, while remaining an independent training with no official IFS affiliation.

The model is grounded in Henry Whitfield’s published paper, “The Spectrum of Selves: A Contextual Behavioural Science Approach to Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy,” and in retreat/practice data. Forthcoming findings from Whitfield et al., Trajectories of Psychedelic-Assisted Change (in press), report significant change across all measures at long-term follow-up in work using this approach.

Who should attend

This training is for psychedelic therapists, ketamine clinicians, ACT therapists, IFS and parts-work therapists, retreat integration therapists, coaches, facilitators and practitioners who want a structured way to integrate ACT and parts work throughout psychedelic preparation, session support and integration.

It is also highly relevant for non-psychedelic psychotherapy where clients are working with entrenched avoidance, trauma, shame, inner conflict, somatic disconnection and long-term behaviour change.

Learning outcome

By the end of the training, participants will have a practical intervention map for helping clients move from insight to embodied, values-based action — and will be able to begin using the methods with clients immediately.

This training is educational and psychotherapeutic in focus. It does not authorise participants to administer psychedelic substances or practise outside the law or outside their professional scope.