Optimizing Trauma Healing with Ketamine: Insights on Treatment Process and Integration

Using Ketamine Treatment to Change Your Brain To Change Your Life

As of today, science has identified two ways to change the brain: mindfulness and psychedelic medicines. These both actually physically reshape the brain, meaning real structural changes resulting in functional improvement in your feeling state and quality of life. Here in New York, as in most states currently, the available treatment option is ketamine. It works as all psychedelic medicines do because the brain is moldable, not fixed and static.

We all come out of childhood with a “wired-in,” conditioned psychological way of being in the world. We experience this through our internal stream of thinking and the background feelings those thoughts produce, and this is what we identify as who we are. This is largely in place by the age of four, often before our first memory. The only thing that can change this significantly after early childhood is trauma.

Ketamine creates a non-ordinary or "peak" state of consciousness in which people have incredible experiences that have the profound potential for healing.

The system in the brain responsible for this is called the “Default Mode Network” (DMN). This is the pattern of signaling between groups of brain cells in different parts of the brain that is active when one is at rest. This is perhaps most recognizable when we first wake, when many people are sadly greeted by a rush of distressing thoughts.

When this automatic system is the primary thing that determines a person’s psychological experience in life, it is, as Thoreau said, one of quiet desperation for most.

How Ketamine Works

Ketamine is not a true psychedelic, but rather a dissociative agent. The medicine opens up a window of neuroplasticity that allows one to change one’s Default Mode Network activity and, as a result, one’s psychological way of being in the world. Plainly speaking, ketamine allows you to change how you think and feel when at rest. You still feel like yourself, simply with more effective thinking and less distressing feelings. Things that used to trigger you and cause distress come to do so to a much lesser degree. When you are triggered, you are able to get out of the distressing emotional state more easily.

People who go through ketamine treatment consistently report feeling a sense of calm they have never felt before. The changes that occur last for approximately two weeks, as that is how long the window of neuroplasticity persists after treatment before your Default Mode Network returns to its prior state. Engaging in a process of integration is where the opportunity lies, as with this, the changes can become permanent.

Ketamine treatment has the potential to create lasting changes in one's psychological way of being in the world when one actively engages in the process of integration after the infusions.

The Process of Ketamine Treatment

The medicine works by creating a non-ordinary or “peak” state of consciousness (what is typically referred to as a “high” in our society, as with any substance). The optimal form of ketamine treatment, in my clinical experience, is via infusion. This consists of having an IV placed and undergoing an infusion lasting approximately 50 minutes. The most effective approach is to wear an eye mask and listen to music to optimize one’s experience in the peak state. One is closely monitored throughout, and the treatment can be stopped at any time simply by asking the clinician to turn off the infusion, if need be. There is then a post-infusion period when you gently return to your normal state of consciousness. There are many wonderful ketamine infusion treatment centers available for this. I encourage you to find one that focuses on incorporating healing elements beyond the medical procedure.

The optimal infusion process for trauma healing includes the use of an eye mask and music as one is monitored.

Intentions and Integration

Setting Intentions

I have the great privilege of helping individuals prepare for their infusions and integrate their healing experiences, as this can be a life-changing experience. As with any psychedelic medicine, the keys to healing are “Set” and “Setting.” Attending to the latter allows one to feel secure so that they can focus on having an open, curious perspective toward what unfolds. Via infusion, this is inherently in place, as the treatment occurs at an infusion center.

The “Set” stands for mindset. This is where my expertise lies in helping to optimize the healing one can experience with ketamine. Mindset refers to one’s intentions. The first and most important, i.e., primary intention is identifying the feeling state one wants to experience. Perception is reality. The primary thing that colors one’s perception is one’s feeling state. By clarifying and cultivating one’s intended feeling state, one literally can change their perception of reality.

Determining One’s Primary Intention

The core feelings one experiences in trauma are fear, powerlessness, confusion, and disconnect. Cultivating the feelings one wants to replace these with is central to healing. Most people identify calm and secure as the core new feelings they are interested in.

I have found that almost everyone benefits from identifying a third intended feeling to be used as a type of mantra (“mantra” meaning “mind protector” in Sanskrit). Some options are:

• Calm, Secure, Love

• Calm, Secure, Empowered

• Calm, Secure, Connected

• Calm, Secure, Joy

Or one specific to you…

Calm, Secure, ______

Your primary intention, along with actively remembering that you are breathing, serves as a grounding anchor to which you can return throughout the infusion, as during parts of some infusions one can experience the feelings of fear, powerlessness, confusion, and disconnect stemming from trauma. It is optimal to go into the infusions with an open, curious perspective. There are endless possibilities of what one could experience in the non-ordinary state of consciousness. Having very specific or rigid intentions of what one wants to happen can actually limit the healing power of the treatment.

Feel free to select your primary intention right now. Put your attention on it, along with remembering that you are breathing, as this approach is effective in all states of consciousness.

Integration Strategies

Per above, ketamine takes oneself outside of their regular pattern of thoughts and feelings, otherwise known as one’s conditioned psychological way of being in the world, or “ego structure.” Most people report feeling a sense of calm they have not felt before in their life through much of each infusion. This is often described as feeling like they are calmly floating. This feeling is the key to making the effects of ketamine last. To integrate this, I encourage one to put their attention on this felt sense of calm and actively “store” or “imprint” it into their body and conscious memory.

In the future, they can then “travel back” to this sense of calm in their body whenever they choose. It can serve as a powerful intervention when in distress. Once one has experienced this feeling state, it is part of their reality forever; it becomes part of their perception. The more often one directs their attention to returning to the felt sense of calm, the greater access they will have to it. It is a “medicine” they carry with them always that they can access to address feelings of anxiety or fear. This is a very empowering experience, which can allow one to feel more secure in the world overall.

In the integration sessions following ketamine, complex healing experiences occur for most. In the peak state during the infusions, any experience is possible. People can travel through the universe, visit loved ones who have passed, spend time with younger versions of themselves, or re-experience past traumatic events. The thoughts and feelings related to these are typically experienced with a different quality than when they occur uninvited in daily life. Typically, when one experiences distressing feelings due to intrusive thoughts about trauma, there is an urge to get away from them. This is the “flight” reaction in the “fight or flight” reflex that is the default system that steps in to address post-traumatic symptoms.

Integration allows one to update one's background patters of thoughts and feelings.

After ketamine, people describe feeling as if there is “more space” around their traumatic memories and feelings. This allows them to experience greater self-compassion and not feel as reactive or compelled to get away from them. This is part of what allows for a type of reprocessing of prior traumas.

As people talk about their peak states in the integration sessions that follow the infusions, new realizations often emerge, with people “connecting the dots” in a way that allows them to understand and experience their traumas in a new way. It is almost as if they are outside of the trauma, which allows them to experience it with much less distress. They are able to have more perspective and, at times, come to see how the trauma has led them to evolve in ways that have actually enriched their lives.

As always, actively engaging in self-compassion, as discussed in various other posts here on my site (https://www.drjonslaughter.com/post/the-power-of-self-compassion-in-treating-ptsd-depression-and-anxiety), will optimize the healing one experiences. Doing so during the two-week window of neuroplasticity, in effect, supercharges the healing possible through ketamine.

Begin Your Healing Journey

I encourage you to research and learn about ketamine treatment for trauma. Awareness of how the medication works and others’ healing experiences is the start of the healing that is possible for you. The Ketamine Research Foundation (https://ketamineresearchfoundation.org/) is an excellent source of information.

To explore the possibility of starting treatment with me, please fill out the contact form here on my site so that we can find a time to speak and determine if moving forward with a consultation could be of benefit to you.