In-Office Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy

I'm a provider of Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP), and I've experienced the breakthrough impact it has for clients struggling with depression, anxiety, PTSD, life transitions, grief, OCD, spiritual questions, and other mental health challenges. Offering KAP in my practice has truly transformed my clinical work. If you are feeling stuck in life, a heaviness that is hard to shake, a difficulty in truly accessing emotional intimacy with others, or some sort of impasse that you just keep hitting in your therapeutic work, KAP may be right for you.

I work with a prescribing partner in collaborative care, ensuring a thorough intake processes, ongoing medical support, and safety protocols. I deliver the therapy component via preparation, dosing, and integration sessions. This approach supports long-term outcomes for clients, and is much different than doing psychedelics recreationally without the safe container and integration work that is provided through therapeutic psychedelics. Ketamine has a decades long and heavily researched safety protocol, and is a highly safe and effective mental health treatment. It tends to be very approachable, even for clients with no previous experience with psychedelics/plant medicine.

Some clients perfer to interweave KAP with their regular therapy sessions, and I also have clients who feel that after years of talk therapy, they are at a dead end or ready to try an alternative style of treatment. As a clinician, I have a deep acknowledgment and humble understanding of the limits of traditional talk therapy, and KAP has been an incredible “breakthrough” for long-term clients of mine where we both feel stuck in the work in some way.

If seeing a therapist weekly isn’t feeling right for you or turns into a “catch-up” or primarily intellectual process, monthly or bimonthly KAP sessions may be a better fit and is generally the same annual cost as weekly sessions, with a deep return on your mental health.

Steps of Ketamine Assisted Therapy:

1) Call me for a phone consultation and set up an initial intake to determine whether KAP is right for your needs.

2) Schedule First Medical Consultation: Meet with my medical partner to assess your health history and determine your eligibility for Ketamine Therapy This is a $250 fee + cost of prescription (~$50) with enough medication to last you 4-8 dosing sessions. For some, this is an entire year’s worth of KAP treatment depending on cadence of treatment.

3) Receive Your Personalized Treatment Plan: Get your tailored treatment plan and Ketamine prescription delivered to your doorstep.

4) Prepare for your Dosing Session via psychotherapy prep sessions. This is typically one therapy session to discuss expectations, set intentions, etc. If you are already an existing client of mine, this is your normal weekly therapy session.

5) Experience Ketamine Therapy in the safety of my office. This is a 3 hour scheduled appointment, with 1 hour scheduled for discussion, meditation, and preparation, approximately 1-1.5 hours for the Ketamine Journey, and the remaining time to discuss what emerged and begin integrating the experience.

6) Receive ongoing therapeutic support, as well as ongoing Ketamine Therapy if desired.

Ketamine-Assisted Therapy FAQ’s:

1. How would you describe the outcome of Ketamine Assisted Therapy?
   Although every client gains something slightly different from Ketamine Assisted Therapy depending on what they’re working on therapeutically, I always describe a seemingly universal outcome as “a lightening and an opening.” The lightening is truly a lightened load on the things we carry throughout life, even if the load remains the same. For example, clients with estranged family members, lifelong challenging family dynamics due to mental illness or addiction in their families, etc. report walking out of Ketamine Therapy sessions feeling that the burden of what they’ve always carried - the grief of their family - simply feels easier to hold. For clients with chronic or Treatment Resistant Depression, they sometimes describe the lightening as the warmth of the sun finally coming through the clouds, or finally understanding what those without depression are able to feel in terms of lightness, buoyancy, and an ability for heaviness to not “stick” to them anymore.
   
   The “opening” often looks like a greater capacity to hold intimacy of all types - to let connection and closeness come near without a subtle turning away from. A common theme that emerges for clients from Ketamine Assisted Therapy sessions is a deep recognition of who in their lives truly sees them, and then an ease and opening in the ability to truly be seen. If you’ve struggled with the ability to be vulnerable with others, let others truly see you and show up for you, ask for help and support, or find your soul people in this lifetime, you may feel this “opening” from Ketamine Assisted Therapy.

2. What will the session feel like?

   The Ketamine Therapy sessions are three hours long, which as a clinician, I love! It allows us to really drop into the space. If you’ve ever taken a 50 minute therapy session virtually, sandwiched between 2 Zoom calls for work, this is essentially the opposite of that feeling! My clients report it feeling like a “mini retreat” or “mini spa day” in some ways. You are still doing the therapeutic work of healing, but for many, the Ketamine journey is actually a lighter experience than their usual way of processing their deeper therapeutic work. You can expect candles, meditation, beautiful music (I create each playlist and absolutely love this part of the process - some of my clients joke that they come just for the good music!) and ample time on both sides of the journey to process and reflect. Rather than the brief, small-talk style answering of “How are you?” you will have the time and space to truly consider, “How am I these days, really? How am I doing on a deeper level, in this season of my life?”

3. What if I don’t have “serious” mental health issues? Is it still worth it to try Ketamine Assisted Therapy?

   Although the remarkable impact of Ketamine Assisted Therapy on conditions like Treatment Resistant Depression, PTSD, etc. are ones you may most often hear about, I’ve also seen beautiful shifts occur in clients who are using KAP as more of a holistic tool for self-discovery and growth. In other words, Ketamine Therapy is proven to be helpful for healing what ails, but it also has a remarkable impact on sparking new growth. If you’re having a mid-life reckoning, feel stuck in a career or a marriage but are unsure of how to make a change, hoping to explore your spiritual connection, or reconcile with the notion that your loved ones will someday pass on from this life, Ketamine Therapy may help you explore these themes with more lightness and opening. For example, I’ve seen clients finally gain closure or peace around the death of a loved one that occurred years ago, gain clarity around how to deepen their friendships and sense of community, and finally release fears that are holding them back in relationships. I’ve also seen creatives feel a spark that got lost along the way to begin creating again. Even if your issue is more existential than concrete, Ketamine Assisted Therapy may be able to help you dive into the parts that feel murky or reignite passion and depth in your life. If you feel like you’ve been “coasting” in any way, KAP may be able to support the jumpstart.

4. Why Ketamine Assisted Therapy vs. other methods of healing?

   My clients know that in addition to Ketamine Assisted Therapy, I am also trained in and utilize EMDR and Jungian Sandplay therapy in my practice, and often hear me say that remarkably, all three seem to bring clients to similar deep and unconscious places that have been hiding in the shadows of their psyche. After 10+ years working with clients, it is undeniable to me that traditional talk therapy has its limitations, and I have felt that in my own therapeutic work at times over the years as well. However, I’m fascinated that there are multiple routes that can lead to the same material, in that KAP, EMDR, and Sandplay therapy are very different therapeutic modalities, but I often see similarities in the healing outcomes and “ability to go deeper” from all three. This feels important to note as some place psychedelic therapies on a pedestal. While they have immense capacity for healing, I am always quick to share that many alternative therapies do! So if you’re feeling stuck or in some sort of a life rut, Ketamine Assisted Therapy may be right for you as a tool, but luckily isn’t the only one in the toolbox. And perhaps most importantly, I have seen with experience time and time again that it’s what the client does with their exploration work that really makes the difference. Ketamine Assisted Therapy has a beautiful way of unfurling a roadmap that was always within you, but it is then your work to go forth and walk the road.

5. How would you describe the outcome of Ketamine Assisted Therapy in one sentence?

   Simply put, Ketamine Assisted Therapy often shows us how we’re meant to be living.