This is the second post in our series of posts on integration. To read the first post, click here.
Deepening your understanding of your ketamine experience is an important step in your healing process. “Deepening” begins with revisiting the thoughts, feelings, and sensations that you experienced during your ketamine sessions. It is important to allow yourself to feel whatever comes up, knowing that you can handle it and it will pass. Stay with these feelings as long as it takes for them to subside on their own. Once they have subsided, pause and reflect. This type of emotional processing can clear a path to self-knowledge. For example, you may then realize that a core need of your's isn’t being met in your current life, or you may clarify or remember your deepest-held values.
This won’t always happen all at once, or even the same day or same week, and that’s okay. It’s an ongoing process. At Propel Therapeutics, some of the strategies that we incorporate to assist you in the deepening process include:
Journaling. Your treatment team at Propel Therapeutics will provide you with specific journal prompts to get the most out of your ketamine sessions and deepening your understanding of your experiences.
Individual therapy. At Propel therapeutics, each client receives individual ketamine-assisted psychotherapy with each treatment with one of our board-certified psychiatrists (Dr. Christopher Fischer and Dr. Katharine Marder). The ketamine-assisted psychotherapy process includes both preparation and intention setting before each treatment as well as integration following each ketamine treatment.
Group therapy. At Propel Therapeutics, we offer group integration sessions once weekly for active clients. Clients may attend one group session for every ketamine treatment session they attend. This is a safe space to process your experiences with other people who face similar challenges and who are going through the same treatment process. Our group integration sessions are lead by a highly experienced ketamine integration therapist (Andreina Cheema) who can guide you through the steps of integration.
Listening to music. Ketamine can help you access powerful emotions from your subconscious that are often rooted in early childhood experiences, before you developed the ability to speak. Because of this, it can sometimes feel impossible to put these feelings and experiences into words. As a non-verbal form of expression, music can help you to revisit and process these experiences. At Propel Therapeutics, during each ketamine treatment session you will be provided with eye-shades and comfortable noice-cancelling headphones which will play specifically selected music for the ketamine treatments. All of the music is curated by our psychiatrist, Dr. Christopher Fischer, specifically for ketamine treatment sessions to provide optimal treatment effects. At Propel Therapeutics we will guide you on listening practices to help extend out further the effects of your sessions and draw from your experiences during the ketamine sessions.
Reading. During ketamine treatment, your brain is forming new connections and is more flexible and open to new information than usual. Reading can help you apply new information and ideas to your own life. At Propel Therapeutics, we can provide you specific reading resources related to trauma, healing, and ways to promote resilience.