Healing with Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy

If you’ve found your way here, you might be wondering if Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy could help you. Maybe you’ve been in therapy for years and feel like you keep circling the same terrain without reaching the deeper layers. Maybe you live with chronic pain or illness, and your body feels like it’s holding years of effort, exhaustion, and unspoken emotion. Or perhaps you simply sense that healing wants to happen differently, one that includes not just your mind, but your whole being.

KAP is not a quick fix or a shortcut around pain. It is a carefully supported process that helps you meet what’s here with more spaciousness, safety, and compassion. It brings together low-dose ketamine, prescribed and medically monitored, with relational and somatic therapy before, during, and after the medicine session. Ketamine works by supporting neuroplasticity (the brain’s ability to form new pathways) which can interrupt cycles of depression, anxiety, or trauma responses. In this softened state, the rigid stories of the mind often relax, and the body’s deeper truths begin to surface.

When approached with care and attunement, the medicine can help you access states of awareness that allow emotional material to move through rather than remain frozen. Many people describe a sense of remembering: not of specific memories, but of their own wholeness, the part of themselves that has always been intact beneath the struggle.

What Happens During Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy

In KAP, the medicine is not the therapy. It is a catalyst that works within a supportive therapeutic relationship. Ketamine itself opens the door, but it’s the presence, safety, and trust within the session that help you walk through it.

A KAP process unfolds in three stages: preparation, medicine sessions, and integration.

In preparation, we spend time orienting both your body and mind to what’s ahead. We talk about your intentions for the work, what safety feels like for you, establish some resources for supporting you before, during, and after, and how we’ll communicate during the session if you need support. This phase allows your nervous system to begin settling before the medicine is introduced. Naming intentions and building trust in this stage helps to bring a sense of grounding and readiness for the experience.

During a medicine session, you’ll take a prescribed dose of ketamine, typically in lozenge form, which dissolves under the tongue. The effects begin within about ten to fifteen minutes and usually last forty-five to sixty minutes. The session is typically 3 hours for time to land and process before and after dosing.

At lower or psycholytic doses, you remain aware of the room and can usually speak if needed, though your attention turns inward. The mind often quiets, allowing feelings, memories, and imagery to arise more freely. You might notice sensations of warmth, tingling, or lightness, or a gentle feeling of floating. Breathing may slow, and your sense of time may shift. Visuals can become soft or dreamlike, with colors or shapes moving behind closed eyes. Some people describe feeling waves of emotion or a peaceful detachment that makes it easier to view their experiences from a compassionate distance. Psycholytic doses are great for maintaining contact with the therapist and processing during.

At moderate or non-psycholytic doses, awareness can shift more deeply. You may feel as though you’ve stepped beyond ordinary consciousness, observing your life from afar or entering a symbolic or imaginal realm. The body might feel distant or dissolve altogether, replaced by a sense of spaciousness, unity, or profound stillness. Some describe sensations of expansion, connection to something larger, or moments of timelessness. Others experience memories surfacing, archetypal imagery, or emotional release. These states can be powerful, sometimes tender, sometimes illuminating.

Physiologically, ketamine temporarily quiets the brain’s default mode network, which is the area responsible for self-referential thinking and looping thoughts, while increasing glutamate activity and enhancing neuroplasticity. This allows new pathways of connection to form and creates a break from habitual mental and emotional patterns. For many, this shift brings a sense of relief from chronic rumination or despair and opens space for new insight and perspective.

While these experiences can range from gentle to immersive, they are time-limited and generally safe in a supported therapeutic environment. I remain present throughout, tracking your breathing, body cues, and energetic rhythms. If fear, disorientation, or strong emotion arises, we slow down together and return to grounding. Nothing is pushed or forced. The process is guided by your body’s own intelligence and capacity.

As the medicine fades, awareness gradually returns. Some people open their eyes feeling quiet, tender, or curious. Others feel clear, spacious, or emotionally raw in a way that feels cleansing. We spend time processing and grounding before closing the session, sipping water, eating a snack, feeling the body’s weight, orienting to the room, and gently beginning to articulate what you experienced. Sometimes we speak; other times, we sit in stillness, allowing the experience to settle.

Each session is unique. Some unfold in subtle, body-centered ways. Others feel vast and visionary. All are equally valuable when approached with curiosity and integration. The medicine opens a window; therapy and presence help you walk through it.

Integration and Lasting Change

The days and weeks after a medicine session are when the experience becomes anchored. Integration is not an afterthought; it is the work itself during all stages. This is where we explore how what you encountered wants to move into your life, into your relationships, your daily rhythms, your creative expression, and the way you meet your own pain or joy.

From a neurobiological perspective, ketamine opens a window of enhanced plasticity for up to a couple of weeks following a session but peaks in the first 72 hours. During this time, new patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior can form more readily. Therapy and mindfulness practices within this window help stabilize these changes. We might explore how it feels to set boundaries, receive care, or speak from authenticity, and the real-world expressions of the inner work you began in session. In Ketamine-Facilitated Psychotherapy for Trauma, Anxiety, and Depression, trauma specialists explain that ketamine can help clients “approach memories without being overwhelmed by them,” making it possible to revisit trauma safely. But it is the psychotherapy, the meaning-making, and relational presence afterward, that allows those memories to be reframed and integrated. Without that step, the insights can fade like a dream

Research supports this process. A 2018 study by Saligan and colleagues found that ketamine reduced fatigue and improved vitality in individuals with treatment-resistant depression. A 2020 pilot study on KAP for chronic pain and comorbid depression found participants experienced significant improvements in both pain levels and mood regulation when psychotherapy was combined with dosing. Integrative clinicians such as Dr. Erica Zelfand have emphasized that ketamine’s effects are most profound when paired with compassionate presence and meaning-making - when the nervous system, psyche, and spirit are all invited into the process of healing.

In our work together, integration sessions are spacious and collaborative. Sometimes we unpack vivid imagery or sensations from your session. Other times, we focus on what’s unfolding now - how you’re sleeping, relating, or caring for yourself. We track how your body responds to the shifts and give language to what was previously wordless. The goal is not to hold onto the altered state, but to learn from it and to let its wisdom weave into your daily life.

Integration, to me, is ultimately about relationships. Relationship to your body, to your emotions, to the parts of you that have been waiting to be seen. It’s where the medicine meets the real work: living differently, one moment at a time.

My Experience and What I’ve Seen in Others

In my own life, KAP helped my ego soften enough for deeper integration. Living with chronic illness, I had learned to navigate pain by tightening around it, by trying to control it. Ketamine created just enough space for me to meet my body differently. For a time, my pain eased, but what mattered more was how my relationship to it changed. I began to listen to my illness rather than fight it. Even when symptoms returned, they no longer felt like failure, and they became part of a conversation that included kindness and curiosity.

Clients often describe similar shifts. Some feel a physical lightness, like the body is exhaling after years of tension. Others notice the return of color, joy, or connection to things that once felt distant. For many, the experience helps bridge parts of themselves that had been disconnected - the rational mind and the emotional body, the protector and the child, the suffering and the soul. Healing, in this sense, is not about perfection but about remembering how to be in relationship with all of yourself.

If You’re Considering This Path

Healing asks for courage, and sometimes the first brave act is simply allowing yourself to consider something new.
If you’re reading this, something in you might already be reaching toward healing, even if another part feels unsure.

KAP is tender, powerful, and deeply personal. It’s not a quick fix, and it’s not about erasing what’s hard. It’s about creating the conditions where your own healing intelligence can begin to move again. Where you can meet your pain, your body, and your history with more space, compassion, and understanding.

In this work, you’re not being led somewhere you’ve never been. You’re being guided back to yourself. The medicine simply quiets the noise long enough for you to hear what’s been waiting underneath. Sometimes that’s relief, or clarity, or an old grief that finally gets to breathe. Sometimes it’s a subtle inner shift that changes everything; the first spark of self-trust, or the sense that your life belongs to you again.

If we decide to work together, we begin slowly. Every step is collaborative. You’ll have time to ask questions, discuss what feels right for your nervous system, and move at a pace that feels grounded. I’ll walk beside you through the preparation, the medicine experience, and the integration that follows. You won’t have to make meaning out of it alone.

KAP does not require a particular kind of experience. Some sessions are expansive and filled with imagery; others are quiet and body-centered. All are valid. Healing happens not because of what you see or feel, but because of how gently you learn to stay with yourself through it.

For those living with trauma, chronic illness, or emotional exhaustion, KAP can offer something rare - a sense of possibility. A reminder that change is still possible even when pain has been part of your story for a long time. That your nervous system can reorganize. That softness and strength can exist together. That healing doesn’t have to mean fighting.

If something in this speaks to you, I welcome you to reach out for a consultation. We’ll talk about your goals, your medical history, and what you’re hoping to explore or transform. Together, we can discern whether this work feels aligned with where you are right now.

You don’t have to know the whole path. You only need to take the next step toward it, gently, intentionally, and with care.