Daily Inspiration: Meet Jinica Torrez

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jinica Torrez.

Thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, how did you get started?
I am an adult survivor of chronic childhood sexual abuse. I had a turbulent upbringing, with an ACE (Adverse Childhood Experience) score of 8 out of 10. My step-grandfather, whom I lived with, abused me from when I was three until I was 13. My parents divorced when I was just shy of 2 years old, and my mother moved my brother and me into my grandmother and step-grandfather’s home in Goleta, California. My mother worked multiple jobs and put herself through university in an attempt to provide for us, but because of this, she wasn’t around much and depended greatly on my grandparents to watch and take care of us kids. Due to the abuse, I was experiencing, I would act out and be labeled “the bad kid.” Everyone thought I was a bad kid because of the divorce and overlooked the signs of sexual abuse. Throughout the years, nobody believed me when I tried to speak about this because they thought I was a liar and troublemaker. My abuse stopped at 13 because I was caught shoplifting. The police got involved and told me they would drop the charges if I agreed to counsel. As part of the intake process for counseling, there was a list of questions, one being “Have you ever been sexually abused?” To which I answered, Yes. I’d love to say it was all downhill from there, but getting the adults to, believe me, was quite the process. It was up to me, at 13, with the assistance of police, to get incriminating evidence of my abuse before I was finally believed. It would be another two years before he was sentenced to jail. He was sentenced to 7 years and served only 3. Released on good behavior. Thank you, California.

This is the pinnacle of who I am and what I’m trying to do with my life: to heal. My life has been a series of ups and downs, and over time I have noticed the cyclical nature of my healing journey. Before I became aware of this pattern, it felt as though my life was chaotic and out of control, constantly overshadowed or haunted by the trauma I had experienced in my youth. I lived through repeated trauma re-enactments, addictions, and toxic relationships until I reached my first rock bottom moment when I was 25. At this point, I had been in and out of therapy and seeing medical professionals. I felt as though nothing could help me with my debilitating anxiety and depression and the feeling of having a split personality with a side of me that was solely focused on destroying me. Around this time, I started to hear about psychedelic medicine and ayahuasca and how these had the potential to help heal mental wounds. While researching this potential, I came across the psychedelic medicine known as Iboga, derived from the root bark of an African shrub. How this medicine was described led me to believe this was the medicine I sought. I took out a loan and booked a trip to Costa Rica for a week-long retreat and partake in this medicine.

Iboga, hands down, changed my life. I categorize my life as before and after Iboga. It is not an easy experience; they say Iboga is one of the most intense psychedelic experiences, and the active period of being influenced is up to 12 hours. During this retreat, we were able to experience Iboga twice. After this experience, I felt like I could look into the world and see its beauty for the first time. It was the first time I felt like a complete person and the first time I felt I could look at my life and see how everything made sense. It gifted me a sense of purpose and also gifted me my spirituality. I also experienced a lot of religious trauma in my upbringing and swore off God when I was 14 years old. I became agnostic and a believer in science and logic. I believe my disdain towards “God” was a catalyst for my being stuck “in hell” and hit rock bottom. I still don’t believe in organized religious beliefs. Still, I have formed my spirituality through my experiences and gathered different teachings from many world religions that ring true to me. Experiencing Iboga felt like I had undergone 20 years of therapy within a week. I was no longer the person I was when I left for the retreat.

I was so transformed by this medical experience that I decided I wanted to dedicate my life to teaching others about it and supporting others in discovering this healing potential. The retreat I had attended invited me to join them on their inaugural trip to Gabon, Africa, where Iboga is native, to learn more about the culture that it came from and become initiated to work with this medicine. I spent six weeks in Gabon, and during this time, we traveled deep into the jungles of Gabon and visited many different villages and tribes. I was invited to partake in an iboga initiation ceremony, a three-day, four-night experience in which I was welcomed into the Bwiti community and blessed to work with this medicine from the indigenous who cared for this plant. Unfortunately, while on this trip, the Shaman I was traveling with overstepped the student-teacher boundary and started a sexual relationship with me that I didn’t know how to say no to while I was under the influence of Iboga, essentially raping me. What he did was sneaky, dirty, and manipulative, and I felt targeted as he knew my history of sexual abuse. When I came home from his experience, I felt shattered as I knew I did not want anything to do with him, but he was the only connection between Iboga and the Western world. I also knew that I needed to focus on my healing so I would no longer be placed into situations where I felt pressured into sexual encounters I did not want to have.

I felt lost after returning from Africa and spiraled back into my anxiety and depressive ways. I returned to my old job and career path before and tried to pretend that Africa didn’t happen. I went on a journey to find holistic healing methods that did not require psychedelics. I started working with energy workers, massage therapists, and yoga. I started feeling disheartened in the animal field I was working in and wanted to change, but I didn’t know what direction to take. Nothing was pulling at me in a way that felt sustainable. It wasn’t until I had spent a year with the coaching container “Fit for Service” with Aubrey Marcus that I discovered the strength and resilience of my story. People in that container helped me see that I have strong potential to help others by sharing my story and my journey with those suffering similarly. I knew I didn’t want to be another life coach out there, and because of my experiences, I take the safety of the container seriously. I finally had the strength and motivation to return to school, and I started the journey of becoming a licensed therapist with the hopes of becoming a legal psychedelic therapist and helping those with complex PTSD and sexual trauma to return to wholeness. I am still in the middle of this story as I am 9 months away from completing graduate school with Pacifica Graduate Institute with my Master’s in Counseling Psychology. Once that is completed, I will be doing additional training to become a psychedelic therapist and gathering certifications for modalities I feel best suited for this work.

It wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
It has not been a smooth road. From where I am currently, I can see how all the different twists and turns of my life have served me for the best and how I can use that knowledge and experience in my current practice of helping others to heal. But when I was “in it,” it felt like my life was a shit show. My biggest struggles are myself and my self-sabotage tendencies through my insatiable self-hatred from childhood sexual trauma. These forces are powerful and all-consuming, and it takes a lot of strength to notice your part in them and pull yourself out of these tendencies. It would be easy to point fingers and blame others or situations for my setbacks, but when it comes down to it, taking radical acceptance and responsibility for your life is how you find the road to freedom. Some of the most significant troubles have been financial and finding the means to finance the different aspects of my healing journey. It feels as though I have been given a life sentence because this abuse occurred, and yet my perpetrator never had to pay or help me financially to heal. I can see how this has ultimately given me resilience. Still, it is not lost on me how overwhelming it is to try to heal while maintaining your adult responsibilities of paying the bills and taking care of yourself.

Thanks for sharing that. So, you could tell us a bit more about your work.
I am a yoga instructor with The Study in Lake Havasu City, a full-time graduate student, working part-time as an integration coach for people who have recently gone through a psychedelic experience or spiritual awakening. I specialize in working through a trauma-informed lens with my yoga practice and coaching and leading people to learn how to trust themselves and their bodies and integrate the knowledge they’ve gained from their recent transformative experiences into their day-to-day lives. I teach emotional regulation skills, mindfulness practices, and cognitive behavioral techniques for changing behaviors and patterns present in people’s lives. I can teach from a “top-down” and “bottom-up” perspective and mold my teachings according to who I am speaking to. I am most proud of myself for being alive and not giving up on myself. I am proud of making it through school Summa Cum Laude for my undergrad at Arizona State University after telling myself I was too stupid for school. I am proud of myself for maintaining a 3.9 GPA in my graduate program and completing a challenging 9-month contract with The Meadows Ranch clinical internship program. Someone once described me as a practitioner “unicorn,” as I have experience with psychedelic medicines, sexual trauma, complex PTSD, nutrition, and physical health. I consider the whole person when assessing aliments as I feel we are a whole system, and when parts of us become unbalanced, the whole system is thrown off. Unlike the Western medical model, which focuses on treating the symptoms, I try to understand the symptoms and listen to what the symptoms tell us about what is going on within the whole system.

In terms of your work and the industry, what are some changes you expect to see over the next five to ten years?
Currently, psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy is not entirely legal, especially in the capacity I see myself working. You can receive this therapy in a few states, such as Colorado, Washington, or Oregon. But hopefully, psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy will be approved through the FDA in the next 5-10 years. Until then, I see myself continuing this work without the use of psychedelics through psychoeducation and working as a trauma therapist working with modalities such as neuro affective, relational model (NARM), eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), and internal family systems (IFS). I also want to take Layla Martin’s VITA coaching course to offer sex, love, and relationship coaching. She is a holistic sex and wellness coach who also had a childhood sexual abuse background and spent her life traveling to India to heal and learn holistic practices to return to wholeness. The current trend of exposing the potential of psychedelic healing is remarkable, and I never thought I would see it move in the direction it is heading. Even though this is exciting to witness and be a part of, I think it is equally important to understand that psychedelics are just a tool for healing. The psychedelic is not a miracle cure; work is required to integrate the experience into your daily life and create lasting change. It seems that this is an integral part of the conversation that is currently being overlooked or bypassed. Also, not all practitioners are created equal, and it is important to know who you are working with when it comes to psychedelics. When you are under the influence of psychedelics, you are incredibly vulnerable and can easily be taken advantage of. Do your research, and don’t just trust anybody because you are eager for the healing psychedelics offer.

Pricing:

• Free 15-30 minute introductory consultation
• $50 for a 30-minute coaching call
• $85 for a 60-minute coaching call

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.unravelingfern.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the.unraveling.fern/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/the.unraveling.fern/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jinica-torrez-06a71a69/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@unravelingfern4961

Image Credits
Alex Ruiz, Kenny Cox, & Kimberly Mufferi