KETAMINE-ASSISTED PSYCHOTHERAPY
Ketamine is a prescription medication that can temporarily change how you experience your body, mind, emotions, and sense of self. It’s technically classified as a dissociative anesthetic—a confusing term that basically means it can create some distance from your usual way of perceiving your body and mind, your surroundings, or what’s happening in the moment.
Therapeutically, people are often drawn to ketamine for its psychedelic effects. It can shift consciousness into a state that feels spacious, dreamlike, inward, or simply different from your usual way of being. Experiences vary from person to person—and even from one session to the next—but that shift can sometimes create more space around familiar stories, defenses, or ways of holding yourself together, making it easier to see something from a different angle.
WHO THIS WORK IS FOR
You may be considering KAP because you’ve already done a lot of therapy, reflection, or healing work and still feel caught in the same patterns. Maybe depression, anxiety, or the effects of trauma keep pulling you back into familiar loops. Maybe you feel numb, braced, disconnected, or tired of understanding yourself intellectually without feeling much movement underneath it.
Or maybe there’s simply curiosity—a sense that another state of consciousness might help you experience yourself, your pain, or your possibilities in a new way.
Ketamine has the strongest evidence for depression, especially when other treatments haven’t helped enough, with growing research around anxiety and PTSD. KAP may be a good fit for people who are looking for something beyond insight alone and are open to exploring what can emerge when familiar patterns loosen for a while.
MY APPROACH TO KAP
I approach KAP as a carefully held therapeutic process, not just a medicine session. We prepare together, get clear on your intentions, pay attention to what your body and nervous system are doing, and make room for whatever the experience actually brings—without forcing meaning, chasing a breakthrough, or trying to make the journey look a certain way.
The relationship matters here. I stay with you throughout the ketamine session, and we come back together afterward to help the experience settle into everyday life. Integration is where we help the experience land: noticing what feels newly available, experimenting with different ways of responding, and giving emerging insights or shifts a chance to become part of how you actually live rather than just something interesting that happened during a ketamine session.
Ketamine may also temporarily increase neuroplasticity—the brain’s ability to form and strengthen new connections—which is one reason the days and weeks after a session can matter so much.
KAP sessions happen in person at my NW Portland office, so this part of the work isn’t available by teletherapy. I work in coordination with a licensed medical provider who handles the medical side of things, including prescribing and overseeing the ketamine. I don’t prescribe or provide the medication myself.
GETTING STARTED
If you’re curious about Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy, I invite you to reach out for a free 20-minute consultation. We can discuss what draws you to this work, answer any questions you have, and determine whether it feels like a good fit for you.