Legal psychedelic assisted therapy with ketamine

Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy

Encounter a novel treatment approach here in Holland, MI that involves the use of the legal psychedelic medicine ketamine in combination with therapy. Ketamine-assisted psychotherapy (KAP) has been shown to produce rapid improvements in symptoms of depression, anxiety, and PTSD. Ketamine has a demonstrated ability to increase neuroplasticity, which promotes an enhanced capacity in the brain to alter rigid congitive, emotional, and behavioral patterns that can keep us stuck and disempowered. This neuroplastic window typically lasts 48 hours following a KAP session. We are currently the only provider of KAP in Holland, MI and one of only a small handful of therapists in West Michigan offering it at this time.

The fifth wave of psychotherapy is here

Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy uses ketamine as a catalyst for the therapeutic process. Before the medicine session, a process of preparation takes place to help the client learn about the medicine and its neurobiological and phenomenological effects, set an intention, and ensure sufficient inner resourcing. Integration following the ketamine dosing sessions help translate the insights, lessons, and experience into adaptive, positive change in everyday life. Integration work may also assist in strengthening new synaptic connections catalyzed by the medicine.

Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy also emphasizes something known as set and setting. Set refers to a person’s mental, emotional, and physiological state, including mood, intentions, and expectations. Setting involves the environment in which the session takes place. In our case, this involves a comfortable, safe, therapeutic and relational holding environment. Preparation, set & setting, and integration are vitally important in working with expanded states of consciousness, including those generated by ketamine.

Where the neurobiological and the numinous dance

During the KAP session, clients have a deeply introspective experience while being supported by the therapist. Many clients have profound mystical experiences during KAP sessions, while others experience gentle but powerful encounters with their unconscious and unresolved traumatic experience during a heart-opening inner journey. Each session is different. As the saying goes, you get the session you need, not necessarily the session you want.

Clients often find that KAP work generates insights into themselves and their relationships. Doing therapy while in an expanded state of consciousness promotes restructuring of the unconscious mind, recalibrating old, unhelpful patterns, and provides access to a seemingly hidden intrapsychic world that had previously seemed inaccessible. Clients often report having transpersonal experiences, spiritual insights, and encountering parts of themselves and their story that they were unaware of. Also, ketamine has a demonstrated ability to shut down the brain’s default mode network (DMN), associated with rumination and habitual negative thinking patterns, offering a respite from the chronic mental noise which is especially prevalent with depression and anxiety.

Expand the window of tolerance. Open the window of plasticity.

The brain is the central organ for adapting to trauma and stressful experiences. Adaptation results in changes to neural architecture as well as to other systems including the autonomic nervous system (ANS) and neuroendocrine system. As these systems are altered, they create more changes in brain function and structure, which impacts our psychological health, mood, emotions, and the ability to regulate. While the brain and body are profoundly resilient, accumulated trauma and stress can eventually push the brain and body beyond capacity. When this happens, interventions such as KAP can be effective in restoring homeostasis to the system. We can can modulate and modify neural architecture away from the promotion of chaos and rigidity and towards being more flexible, adaptive, coherent, energized, and stable. We can also expand the window of tolerance and open the window of plasticity with Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy.

Ryan began therapeutic use of ketamine in 2021 for treatment resistant depression and has personally experienced 30+ sessions. He not only has training in KAP but also experiential knowledge of ketamine and the non-ordinary states it induces. He completed a certificate in Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy from Polaris Insight Center and has further training in group KAP and psychedelic integration. Besides mystical experiences induced by ketamine, Ryan also has extensive personal experience with expanded states of consciousness not mediated by medicine but through prayer, contemplation, breath work and other practices.

Group Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy

Group KAP offers a unique opportunity to heal within a safe, supportive container comprised of 3-6 participants. The intentional group process provides the context in which you can release old narratives and begin embodying new more adaptive and empowering patterns. With group KAP, the amplifier of the group and the amplifer of ketamine synergistically coalesce, promoting connection, belonging, and cohesion. The relational and somatic holding environment provided by group KAP is extraordinary in promoting transformation, integration, and wholeness.

Group Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy in Holland, MI includes:

  • Individual 30 min intake session

  • Three 90 minute virtual group preparation sessions

  • Three 3 hour in-person group ketamine sessions

  • Three 90 minute ketamine group integration sessions (one following each medicine session)

  • A one month group follow-up to further solidify and integrate the KAP experience (90 min)

Investment: $1,600 (includes 17 hours of therapy)

Note: Medical evaluation/ and prescription are additional

 FAQs

  • Ketamine infusions involve IV ketamine in a medical setting. There is no therapeutic support, nor is there a process of preparation, integration or focus on set and setting.

  • The preparation stage of the KAP process provides ample space & opportunity to explore your questions with me as a clinician, spiritual director, and theologically trained professional. I don’t have all the answers but I’d be honored to journey into the questions alongside you.

  • Challenging experiences can occur with ketamine. However, it is generally considered to be a gentle medicine. Dosing is also a crucial aspect of a client’s experience and this is something you can discuss with the prescribing physician.

  • KAP sessions last approximately 2.5 hours which is why the price is significantly more than a standard 50 minute therapy session. However, KAP may ultimately be a money saving investment in the long term due to its potentiation of the psychotherapy process. Clients who use KAP may find, for example, that they can do more in 6 weeks of KAP than 6 months of weekly therapy. Of course everyone is different and no results or outcomes are guaranteed.