How I Found Ketamine – Assisted Therapy
When the pandemic hit in 2020, I was living my life at 100 mile per hour pace. I had been building a business for 3 years, working 90 hour weeks and watching all of the habits I had worked so hard to build for my physical and mental wellbeing slip away. Every minute of my time was either filled with actual work or thinking about work. The painted sign in my house that said “hustle is my middle name” captured the vibe of that season of my life. It was grind or die. Make money and make my mark. “I’ll get all the sleep I need when I’m dead” is what I would recite to myself waking up at 5am everyday with barely 6 hours of sleep for another 14 hour day.
I was 43 at the time, and had closed my private therapy practice to start a brick and mortar business. Up until this point in my life, I would have been proud to say that if people who knew me were to describe me, they would choose the words “hard worker” first. My identity was completely wrapped up in my achievements and my subconscious was driving me to work non stop, all the time, and once a goal was achieved to move on to the next one.
When the challenges of trying to keep a business afloat that was shut down during the pandemic began to overwhelm me, I was faced with a number of hard choices. My lease was up, the state continued to keep us shut down after 3 months with no end in sight, and my employees were disappearing one by one. I was looking at starting from scratch, rebuilding everything that took me three years to create all over again.
It would be easier to say that my business closed because of the pandemic, but that isn’t true. I made the decision to let my business go, for the sake of saving myself. I was drowning mentally, depressed and overwhelmed and 35 pounds heavier than I was when I started the business. I made the difficult choices that needed to be made, and I stepped into even more work to close the business down.
Once I handed over the keys, there was nothing left to do but grieve, so that is what I did. I gave myself two months to just process this loss and try to recover before I needed to re-start my private practice. I spent most of the days after the closing of my business crying. I was overcome with sadness, not because I made the wrong choice, but because I made the right one and it still hurt like hell. I gave myself the time and space to feel, I stopped running at a blinding pace, and I stepped fully into walking through the terrible grief I was feeling.
A year went by and even though I was no longer crying all day every day, the sadness that had settled into me was not shifting or moving – despite all the talk therapy and other healing work I was showing up for. My grief had turned into depression, which I am no stranger to. It is something I have struggled with since I was 16. But this time it was so much bigger, so much more consuming than I had ever experienced.
I confided in a friend and healer about my difficulty moving on and the state of my mental health, and she asked me if I had ever heard of Ketamine – Assisted Therapy (KAT). I had not, and as she began to tell me about it, I sat in shock that this is my field and I didn’t have any idea that work with this medicine was happening. How did I not know this?
I began to explore KAT and my curiosity grew. Having had recreational experiences with psychedelics in my youth, this wasn’t a totally foreign land to me, but working with psychedelics for healing? Well this was a brave new world. I connected with the local provider my friend recommended and then began a long 6 month wait to be able to access services. During that time, I continued to learn all that I could about Ketamine and KAT, as well as other psychedelics. I read books and research and listened to podcasts and immersed myself in learning. I became more excited about the possibility of having some real help with my depression that traditional talk therapy had not been able to give me.
My Experience
Once I started treatment, a couple of things became crystal clear. First, this was going to be very hard and uncomfortable work. I was going to have to face some pain from my past with a willingness to emotionally process it. The only way out was through. I felt the weight of this intensely, but I was ready to commit to the work. I was sick of suffering with no end in sight.
Second, this was going to help me heal what was underneath my depression that was triggered by a significant loss. The therapists I worked with pointed out that It wasn’t losing my business that was keeping me stuck, it was the unresolved trauma that it activated in my system. I wasn’t getting better because I wasn’t healing what needed to be healed. Prolonged stress and significant losses can do that – they can activate old wounds that we may not be consciously aware of. We cannot heal something if we aren’t aware that it is there. Ketamine can bring those things into our conscious mind.
That is the gift of Ketamine – Assisted Therapy. It helps you get to the root of your suffering, to see what really needs time and attention so that you can feel it and be freed from it. It moves your protective ego aside, so you can access what is underneath and gives you an opportunity to see it. Trauma impacts us but what really does the most damage is when we are not able to emotionally process trauma appropriately. It gets stuck in our system and our subconscious and prolongs our suffering. Ketamine helps to create space for feeling things in an altered state of consciousness that we may be unable to access through our conscious mind and it makes it easier to tolerate those feelings.
I worked intensely for 8 weeks doing Ketamine – Assisted Therapy and began to feel less depressed after about 4 weeks, despite all of the heavy emotional material I was working through. The medicine experiences combined with the thoughtful support and guidance I received in therapy shifted many things in my mental health and in my life. It was incredibly rewarding work, but I showed up for it. KAT does not help if you don’t truly show up for it. I had to make changes in how I lived my daily life to support what I was learning and realizing in my sessions. I had to have hard conversations in important relationships and change how I was showing up for those relationships. I had to make more time for quiet and connecting with myself, and I had to slow down. I had to shift habits, I had to spend more time in self reflection and in nature, and I had to make time to stretch and move and take care of my body differently. I had to re-evaluate everything about how I was living my life and then be willing to do something to change it.
The experience was just as I expected – hard work, but it came with gifts all along the way. Although the progress I made in those first few weeks was incredible, it was not the end of my work. It was really, just the beginning, but I was feeling tremendous relief from my suffering. My overall mood steadily improved. I was able to feel gratitude and notice beauty more easily, I felt compassion for others more easily, my interest in things began to return, my energy level improved, and I started to really know myself in this stage of my life. I continued to work with Ketamine with the support of my providers after that. This incredible healing experience also led to me pursuing certification to be able to provide this treatment, which I have been offering in my private practice since January 2023.
What to Consider if you are Interested in This Work
If you are looking for a quick fix, Ketamine – Assisted Therapy is not for you. If you want to take a medicine and have it make you feel better and not have to change anything about how you are living, this medicine is not for you. If you want to get better without facing your wounds and healing them, Ketamine – Assisted Therapy is not for you.
Although Ketamine can make chemical changes in the brain that help with mental health symptoms, it will not necessarily just make symptoms go away forever. Ketamine – Assisted Therapy is focused on utilizing psychedelic level doses of Ketamine to explore the subconscious, heal trauma, and develop personal insight and awareness that leads to growth and behavior change. The medicine, the experiences in altered states of consciousness, and the therapeutic work combined are what make it so effective. It requires you to create space and time in your life for the treatments, to develop habits that support stillness and presence, to make self reflection and self awareness top priorities in your life, and a willingness to feel things that you have probably been avoiding feeling for a long time.
It is a big ask, all of these things. But the potential reward is so incredible, I can tell you from my personal experience that it is worth it, if you are ready to do the work.
My Approach to Ketamine – Assisted Therapy
As a Therapist who is not only trained in this modality but has done the actual deep work of Ketamine – Assisted Therapy to heal depression, I know intimately what the experience is like, how it feels, and what it takes to make it effective and meaningful. Navigating altered states of consciousness more comfortably requires a knowledge and skill base that I work with my patients to build during the preparatory work for KAT. Collaborating with the Ketamine prescriber, we work to develop their comfort with Ketamine slowly and intentionally, so that they can go into deeper experiences with confidence. In addition, my personal experiences with this medicine allow me to show up for my patients with a deeper knowing that enhances how I am able to support them in their healing work.
If you feel like Ketamine – Assisted Therapy may be for you but you have concerns or questions, reach out to schedule a phone call and we can talk more about this life changing work and whether it is right for you. It is free and there are no obligations.
I am forever indebted to this medicine and the providers that supported me in my own healing. I am so grateful to be able to offer this opportunity to others who have not been able to experience relief with traditional treatment methods. I hope that hearing my story has helped someone who may need it open up to the idea of an alternative treatment to help them heal their mental health.
FMI, Email me at rachael@therapyuntethered .com or call 207-939-3295
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