Brian Welling, BA, MA
Registered Psychologist
Edmonton AB
When a person is considering or has already had a psychedelic experience, it is often helpful to have a guide to alert the person to potential risks and benefits, and to assist them in integrating profound new insights (or challenging experiences) into existing patterns of thought, feelings, and behaviour. A person’s psychological history (including trauma, psychosis, and other mental health factors) has great bearing on the way that these experiences may be interpreted and integrated or not integrated. Brian Welling is a psychologist with special training and interest in this area.
At Welling Centre, we do not advocate or endorse the illicit use of substances. We do, however, have an interest and responsibility to promote harm reduction. Our approach is to act within legal and ethical bounds to guide and support people who choose to make use of these substances by providing access to information and therapy in order to reduce the potential for harm and to promote mental and spiritual health and well being. We do not currently offer psychedelic-assisted therapy, but will, within the scope of our practice, help people to prepare for and consider their rationale for future psychedelic experiences, and help them to integrate past psychedelic experiences. We will not give medical advice and our psychological services are not a substitute for the medical care of physicians or nurses or the spiritual care of shamans with years of dedicated specialized training and practice in the traditional ceremonial use of sacred medicines.
Brian is a registered psychologist and former instructor at both MacEwan University, where he taught psychology to undergraduates, and at St. Stephen’s College, where he trained practicum students enrolled in graduate programs in the Department of Psychotherapy and Spirituality. He has worked in community clinics, specialized multi-disciplinary teams in the inner city, and as a mental health consultant and trainer for front-line staff in programs funded by Children’s Services. Brian received his MA in Counselling Psychology at the Adler School of Professional Psychology in Vancouver. He also has training in psychodrama, Brain Spotting, hypnotherapy, psychedelic integration, and EMDR. He is certified as an instructor in Mental Health First Aid, and as a peer-coach in Motivational Interviewing. Brian specializes in trauma treatment and addictions counselling, but also treats a variety of concerns.
Brian has been significantly influenced by the depth psychology theories of Carl Jung and Alfred Adler, and has a special interest in spiritual growth and personal development, including the use of entheogens. Part of his own spiritual development involved working intensively with shamans in Peru.
Brian is the driving force behind the Welling Centre. He views the human psyche as striving for balance, wholeness and growth. In his own pursuit of this, Brian enjoys spending time with his family, loves animals, music, movies, and is passionate about mythology, shamanism, and mysticism.