Dr Bianca Sebben
Dr. Bianca is a Clinical Psychologist with a special interest in complex trauma, dissociative disorders including Dissociative Identity Disorder, and working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Bianca completed her PhD in Indigenous Psychology with communities in Australia and Mexico, looking at barriers to service use and access, and incorporating traditional methods of healing to increase cultural safety and accessibility in Western medical systems. Bianca works from a trauma-informed perspective with therapies such as EMDR, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy and therapies for Structural Dissociation. 
Bianca is a co-founder and Director of Indigenous Psychedelic Assisted Therapies (IPAT), who have developed a model of PAT informed by Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing to enhance cultural safety and provide cultural consultation in the psychedelic space. Bianca is a founding board member of the Australian Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Practitioners (AMAPP) where she led a subcommittee developing proposed credentialling guidelines for psychedelic therapists. She has a special interest in 5 MeO DMT harm reduction and is a lecturer for the FIVE- 5 MeO Information and Vital Education platform. 
Bianca provides training and supervision to therapists working with complex trauma and dissociation, as well as therapists who support people to integrate non-ordinary state work. Bianca is currently a therapist on two clinical trials with psilocybin for depression and prolonged grief.
Workshop/Presentation
Psychedelic Integration and "Bad Trips:" Trauma-informed integration for managing acute and prolonged distress
Following the 'psychedelic renaissance' of the mid 2000s, there has been a significant increase in people seeking out psychedelics in order to treat mental health conditions. This presents various challenges in the western context, where these medicines were not intended for treating mental health conditions, and where the West does not have the established cultural container for these medicines that are woven into the social and cultural fabric of various Indigenous cultures.
Whilst many people report positive experiences, some struggle to maintain the benefits long term and ultimately return to baseline, whilst others can have challenging experiences that they struggle to integrate in the aftermath. Even when supportive and attentive space-holding has occurred, many people report distress and difficulty following a psychedelic experience where the facilitator has not provided adequate preparation or integration support.
This presentation will discuss the various domains of integration including the emotional, somatic and transpersonal, and the importance of integration for maximising benefits and recovering from potentially harmful experiences. The presentation will look at working with recovered traumatic memories and de-stablising dissociative responses such as depersonalisation and derealisation, as well as the challenges and risks of not integrating psychedelic experiences including integration including avoidance, ego inflation and spiritual bypass through repeated experiences.
