Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy
How Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy Works
Ketamine has therapeutic effects of its own and has been studied most extensively for depression and chronic pain, with growing research exploring its use for anxiety, PTSD, and other mental health concerns. It can also temporarily increase neuroplasticity - the brain's capacity to change and adapt - creating a period of greater flexibility that therapy can intentionally work with.
Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP) brings ketamine and therapy together through preparation, the medicine experience, and integration afterward. During a KAP session, people may experience shifts in perception, perspective, emotional access, and their usual ways of thinking.
For many, this creates more space around familiar patterns and allows them to encounter emotions, experiences, or ways of responding differently.
Preparation and integration are an important part of this process. Before the medicine session, we explore what you're bringing into the work, your intentions and goals, and how you want to approach the experience. Afterward, we work with what emerged and how it may translate into your life, including concrete ways of supporting the changes you want, making therapeutic use of the increased flexibility that can accompany and follow the ketamine experience.
I offer the therapeutic portion of KAP and I partner with Humboldt Center For New Growth, whose medical team supports you on all medical aspects.
Their support includes determining eligibility, developing a custom treatment plan, prescribing the medicine, and monitoring outcomes.
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The Center for New Growth (CNG) is an integrative medicine and mental health practice based in Humboldt County and providing telehealth ketamine assisted medical and psychiatric support services to like-minded psychotherapists' practices across California. Their practitioners have been providing KAP since 2021 and they practice in alignment with their mission: transforming trauma and suffering into wholeness
What a KAP Session Is Like
The medicine session itself is spacious - typically about three hours - giving you time to settle in, turn your attention inward, and follow the experience without needing to rush or make sense of it as it's happening. My role is to stay present with you, attend to what is unfolding, and accompany the process without deciding where it needs to go.
I approach these sessions with intention, respect, and a sense of reverence. We may begin by opening the space together through a guided practice, asking permission of ourselves and inviting support from whatever feels authentic to you - your inner resources and parts, the land, those who came before us, or other sources of wisdom and connection you wish to include. This doesn't require any particular spiritual belief; it's simply a way of entering with humility and openness to whatever may emerge.
During the medicine experience, you're generally encouraged to turn inward and allow yourself to surrender to what unfolds, rather than trying to direct, analyze, or make sense of it as it's happening. I remain attentive and responsive to you throughout. At times that may mean simply giving you space; at others, offering relational or somatic guidance when it's helpful. There is no expectation that you talk or explain what you're experiencing while you're in it.
As the session draws toward a close, there is time to return gradually. If you'd like, I may use singing bowls and chimes to support that transition. We may also close the space through a brief guided practice, offering gratitude to what we invited at the beginning and marking the completion of our time together. These elements are always invitations, never requirements.
Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy FAQs