Ketamine Assisted Therapy
Accelerate your growth and evolution with medically administered Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP)
Ketamine is a psychoactive drug that was first synthesized in 1962 and has been used in the U.S. as an anesthetic in medical settings since 1970. Ketamine has been used off-label in sub-anesthetic doses for the past 20 years to treat chronic pain, depression, and a variety of other mental health concerns. Ketamine has been shown to have a cumulative effect, alleviating symptoms in 30-60% of adults with treatment-resistant depression and other conditions.
KAP is a therapeutic method to address many mental health conditions, including depression, PTSD, chronic pain, addiction, and anxiety. In low doses, Ketamine can serve as a powerful tool and adjunct to psychotherapy, as it allows for a temporary softening of psychological defenses, allowing for more profound processing.
Dr. Gilman is passionate about the facilitation and integration of KAP with couples and individuals. She completed KAP training through Sapience in Greenfield, MA, and has witnessed the incredible healing that Ketamine can provide. Dr. Gilman integrates strategies from several models, including Internal Family Systems, Gestalt, mindfulness-based techniques, and the integration of spirituality counseling in KAP sessions with individuals.
KAP allows individuals to reduce trauma response, increase self-awareness, and improve affect regulation. KAP sessions generally take three hours. Individuals are required to have their own ongoing psychotherapist. Three sessions are generally recommended over a period of several weeks.
Ketamine Assisted Therapy for Couples
Using low-dose Ketamine with couples work has the powerful potential to create deeper and more rapid growth and healing for those couples who have been gridlocked for some time. Sometimes described as a “lubricant” for the release of defensiveness and anxiety, Ketamine is a tool that can provide a stepping stone toward shifts that might otherwise take years to achieve.
KAP allows couples to support one another through a transformative healing process that can interrupt negative reactive patterns, eliminate gridlock, increase personal accountability, and enhance emotional and sexual intimacy in their partnership.
Through KAP, couples can learn to navigate the complex, vulnerable, and transformative terrain of emotional and sexual intimacy issues.
The Developmental Model of Couples Therapy is a powerful accompaniment to the facilitation of KAP. The model incorporates three main pillars: differentiation theory, attachment theory, and neuroscience. The aim of the Developmental Model is to help each partner understand the way that attachment, level of differentiation, and hardwired conditioning are showing up in the ways they relate to each other, both in the bedroom and outside of it.
By learning more adaptive defense strategies and flexing new emotional muscle around vulnerability, truth-telling, and boundary setting, many of the destructive cycles that create, exacerbate, or maintain sexual difficulties, emotional separation, and suffering are diminished. Clients will learn to experience and express emotionally complex desires and feelings and hold space for their partners to do the same, enhancing the vitality of their sexual encounters and emotional connection.
The Developmental Model, coupled with medically administered Ketamine, allows for each partner to more fully self-define, including assessing to what degree each partner is living in alignment with his/her/their own values; become more vulnerable in the expression of their wants, needs, and desires; learn to emotionally accept and manage differences, set and maintain boundaries, identify defenses, lower their reactivity, regulate their anxiety, and choose more adaptive coping strategies in order to face his/her/their own and their partner's feelings.
Ketamine Assisted Therapy Couples Retreats
KAP private and group retreats are for couples who:
Wish to integrate the use of low-dose Ketamine with the Developmental Model
Want to address long-standing unresolved impasses
Undertake honest confrontation of self and develop curiosity toward partner
Move through inner blocks and give up well-rehearsed projections
Surrender from the “I’ll change when you change” game
Transcend current narratives about what is possible for “us”
Grow new emotional muscle and empathy
Create and sustain greater intimacy
Learn to manage differences
Couple’s KAP Retreats are 1-3 days of interactive and experiential work. Through didactic and experiential modules, couples will learn to navigate the complex, vulnerable, and transformative terrain of emotional and sexual intimacy issues. Private intensives are customized for the specific goals of each couple, while group intensives include a focus on wellness, connection, and group integration.
Testimonials
“The Ketamine Couple's Retreat has been one of the top transformative experiences I have ever had. Bhavya, Donna and Karen coordinated their expertise and style to provide our group of couples with a comfortable and uplifting environment that felt safe and assuring at all times. They were artful in how they integrated couples' work with the use of Ketamine, and with opportunities for integration that were broad and thoughtful. My partner's and I simultaneous experience with Ketamine was truly special and is having a lasting impact in our relationship. The experience gave us access to an expanded well of love, care and understanding that we were not aware of which has already enhanced our day to day interactions and commitment to support each other as we grow together as individuals and as a couple. At a personal level, I gained insights that have strengthened my sense of identity, how I feel as a relational being, and my overall sense of connectedness with nature, which is very dear to me. I am forever grateful for this experience and recommend it to anyone who feels ready to follow their curiosity about experiencing the gifts that our complex human condition has to offer.” - Anonymous woman of color
“Working with Dr. Gilman, Dr. Scott, and Dr. Rajanna in this retreat setting was like being held in a safe space with sharp minds and warm hearts. While they hold excess knowledge in couples work and psychedelic work, they make it about you and your partner's process, offering support as needed along the way. The psychedelic experience offers insight you did not know you were seeking, and the couples framework allows that insight to land in a container that you can take home with you and continue to implement in your everyday life. Thank you to these women for creating and implementing this special space!” - H.E.
"The couples Ketamine retreat was a great experience for my wife and I. The combination of Ketamine with ideas and strategies from couples therapy worked really well. The Ketamine gave us a sense of openness and warmth which made it much easier to benefit from the various strategies and exercises. It was wonderful to see peoples’ defenses melt over the course of the weekend as the more vulnerable parts of themselves were revealed. I was moved several times to tears (and I don’t often cry!) as I witnessed people have such powerful experiences and breakthroughs.
The MD’s, couples therapy expert and sitters were present the entire weekend. Bhatya Rajanna and Karen Scott, the MD’s, were quite careful about proper dosing, they explained things thoroughly and their competence eased most of the anxiety about using Ketamine for the first time. The sitters were all very kind, attentive and soothing presences enhancing the whole experience. Dr. Donna Gilman, the Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Couples Center of the Pioneer Valley ably guided us through the exercises and couples therapy approaches which were very helpful in moving our relationship in a positive direction. We felt like we were in very capable hands the entire weekend.
My wife and I felt very close to each other and experienced an almost childlike curiosity, happiness, warmth and friendship helped along by the medicine. I am writing this about a week after the retreat and the benefits have continued since the retreat weekend. Our relationship has been lighter and more playful. My mood also seems lighter, and I have been less fretful about various matters.
I highly recommend the Ketamine assisted couples retreat. It was truly a fantastic experience.” - Mike