Episode Details
Back to Episodes#27: Ted Riskin - Befriending Anger, Moving the Cat, and the Healing Power of IFS Group Ketamine Retreats.
Description
In this episode, I sit down with Ted Riskin — social worker, IFS expert, and pioneer of group ketamine retreats — after spending a week at his beautiful home in Asheville, North Carolina participating in one of his experiences. From his unusual path as a computer programmer living in an Ashram to becoming one of the leading voices in ketamine-assisted IFS group therapy, we explore how to work with protectors, why anger deserves more respect than our culture gives it, and how group healing unlocks something individual therapy often can't reach. Plus: why meaning isn't something you find — it's something you create.
In this episode
- What exiles and protectors are and how they shape our inner world
- Why healing means becoming whole — and how IFS gets you there
- From computer programming to debugging the psyche
- How breathwork and non-ordinary states bypass the thinking brain
- Anger as a healthy boundary-setting force — and why suppressing it breeds judgment
- The three ways to work with a protector: push, invite, or pick up the cat
- Why ketamine works like holotropic breathwork — and why Ted combined it with groups
- How group healing reaches wounds that one-on-one therapy often misses
- Outcomes data: what actually changes after a group ketamine IFS retreat
- Meaning as something you generate — not something you find
Timestamps
3:42 - Meeting Ted And His Setting
5:35 - Self Energy And Finding Balance
8:20 - Exiles Protectors And Healing Wholeness
14:00 - From Programmer To Therapist
19:35 - Breathwork And Non Ordinary States
27:43 - Core Energetics And Working With Anger
36:18 - Discovering IFS Through Hypnosis
42:26 - Ketamine As A Path Past Protectors
47:15 - Building The Group Ketamine Model
52:31 - Outcomes Data And What Changes Last
53:49 - Meaning Connection And Modern Life
57:00 - Creating Meaning From A Blank Slate
59:52 - Rapid Fire Questions And Art
1:03:58 - A Depolarizing Message And Where To Find Ted
1:07:06 - What Comes Next On The Podcast
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