“De-armour to Harbor Your Safe Haven”
Psychedelics, Ketamine and the Softening of the Defended Body
"Love, work and knowledge are the wellsprings of our life. They should also govern it."
— Wilhelm Reich
The Armored Body: Among the somatic visionaries of the twentieth century, there was none more fiercely than the doctor and psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich. He saw the body as an “archive” where our experiences and memories are built into our muscles, fascia and facial expressions. It’s our strengths but also our defenses, that we’ve built to survive what otherwise might have been intolerable. This he calls armoring — a response to shame, fear, rejection, trauma and cultural conditioning. It is both psychological and physical. A person, once a child, who repeatedly had to suppress their emotions begins to hold their breath, tighten the pelvis, narrow the gaze. Over time these tensions become identities, “the calm one,” “the good one,” “the self-controlled,” “the rational mind”, etc. When these defenses no longer serve us, but rather block us from experiencing our full potential, our relationship to ourselves and others, the world — it gets dysfunctional. What we are armored against doesn’t disappear, it simply goes under radar or shadow place.
Reich’s radical proposition was that healing must happen through the body, not just with words. But with breath, touch, movement, expression, tears, trembling, rage, laughter. A breakthrough through an outburst, then a softening of the armor. The risk in de-armoring is that one might loosen those defenses too quickly without sufficient holding, and this can lead to overwhelm. You want to work beyond the comfort zone, but not pass the resilient edge and go into (re-)trauma state. That’s why this work requires safe containers, the co-called set & setting, required for a good trauma release, known to any trauma therapist, tripsitter and psychedelic facilitator. This includes anything that make you feel safe and supported, that be the person, location, lighting, sound and your general intention and mental and physical health.
Safety is not stillness, it is movement without fear: Tools like ketamine and psychedelics may be uniquely suited to de-armour us because of the way they pierce the ego’s protective structures, loosen the grip of narrative, and grant access to what is preverbal, embodied, dreamlike. When a setting feels safe with someone you can trust to facilitate and support your process, not interrupt or direct it based on their own biases or fears, this can be a metabolising and healing process. For a facilitator or therapist this requeires a good amount of “grace under pressure”, tolerating strong affect from the person undergoing a de-armouring, a trip or experience. To “de-armour to harbor your safe haven” is a radical act of trust — not just in a therapist or the medicine, but in the body’s own intelligence, that being you.
De-armoring is not a one-time process, it’s an ongoing process, a life’s work. But through it, we return to something Reich called the life force, a vibrant erotic current, the spark that makes you feel alive, feel purpose and presens. The point is not to be in constant bliss, but to to inhabit yourself, be your own safe harbor, so you can return to the sea of adventures without drowning or forever be “sittin’ on the dock of the bay, wastin’ time, watching the tide roll away”, as Otis Redding fearfully sings after trauma and injustice.
Ketamin and psychedelics are not the only answer, but they may be effective keys to unlock the doors we forgot we`ve even locked. And behind those doors there might be wild and tender terrain, making you feel like you want to be here, in your body, this life and lived experience — but the harbor you carry within gives a place to land, to return, a homecoming.
