Why Ketamine + Therapy May Help Where Talk Therapy Alone Struggles
PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) often develops after a single traumatic event such as an accident, assault, or natural disaster.
CPTSD (Complex PTSD) results from prolonged or repeated trauma—often in childhood or within relationships—and can involve deeper disturbances in self-identity and emotional regulation.
While both can include flashbacks, nightmares, hypervigilance, and avoidance, CPTSD often adds layers of shame, emotional numbing, difficulty trusting others, and a sense of disconnection from self.
For many trauma survivors, traditional talk therapy alone can be overwhelming or dysregulating. Revisiting trauma without adequate regulation can trigger dissociation, panic, or shutdown. Sometimes it can re-traumatize. The nervous system, wired for survival, can make it nearly impossible to engage in processing safely. This can cause the therapy progress to stall or slow, or people may avoid revisiting deeper trauma altogether.
Ketamine-assisted psychotherapy (KAP) offers a unique bridge: in the more malleable state induced by ketamine, the brain’s window of tolerance expands, giving clients more “room” to access traumatic memories or emotional material without being flooded. By calming the body’s threat response and quieting self-protective defenses, ketamine helps patients access deeper emotional insight without becoming overwhelmed. In this state, trauma processing becomes more possible, and the integration afterward has a stronger impact — the insights can stick, and the symptom relief can be deeper and more durable.
Put another way:
In this state, trauma processing becomes gentler and more accessible. This doesn’t mean ketamine “heals” PTSD on its own — the real healing happens in the combined synergy of the pharmacological shift + therapeutic work + integration. Combined with skilled psychotherapy, KAP allows the brain to form new associations, soften fear-based patterns, and restore a sense of safety and connection, often where other therapies have stalled.
You may be a candidate for KAP for PTSD if:
We treat both standard PTSD and complex PTSD (CPTSD) at Transcend.
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Your peace of mind is worth the time.
Ketamine Infusion Therapy/Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy is ideal for people suffering from treatment resistant depression, anxiety, suicidal ideations, OCD, PTSD and chronic pain conditions with no relief from other medications or therapeutic interventions.
Ketamine is a very short acting medication. Generally speaking, any side effect experienced from Ketamine will be short-term and will subside after the infusion has stopped. It can be normal to have slight increases in blood pressure and heart rate during an infusion. A small percentage of patients do experience some nausea during or right after the infusion. Nausea, elevated blood pressure and heart rate are easily managed through IV medications during the session should these arise. Most patients who do not eat for three hours prior to the session, and keep their eyes closed or use eyeshades during the session, will not experience any nausea.
In high doses and/or with very frequent administration Ketamine can be irritating to the bladder. For the purposes of facilitating KAP, doses of ketamine are low and most patients will only do one or two sessions per week. In this dosing and frequency there is an extremely low risk of developing bladder irritation caused by the administration of Ketamine. We have never had a patient develop bladder issues from this treatment at our clinic.
During your medical intake, we will determine if you need to alter your medication regimen prior to treatment. There are only a few medications that should be altered prior to initiating treatment. For instance, stimulant medications, benzodiazepines, and medications like Lamictal may need to be held or adjusted prior to treatment.
We request that you don't eat a meal within 3 hours of the start of your appointment time.
After receiving a ketamine infusion, it is normal to feel slightly tired or loopy for several hours. It would be unsafe to drive after a session so we do require that you arrange a family/friend to pick you up or utilize a taxi or other ride service.
It is best to provide time to fully process the therapeutic content that may have been worked through in the session. We encourage our clients to journal and integrate in the time following the session.
At Transcend, it is our goal to have this treatment be a highly transformative, short term intervention for you.
One of the reasons to undergo the KAP process with a therapist vs. receiving Ketamine infusion or injection-only is because most people are able to avoid needing maintenance treatment long-term with KAP. When symptom reduction has occurred through the chemical effects of ketamine only, there is often a need to re-administer ketamine every 20-30 days to keep symptoms at bay. With KAP, symptom reduction is more often secondary to therapeutic progress which does not dwindle in time, and therefore maintenance treatments are often not required.
The majority of our clients will reach sub-clinical levels of distress after an average of 6-10 sessions. Most of our clients will discharge from our care after these sessions and won't need any form of maintenance therapy. Some people do benefit from revisiting KAP intermittently throughout the year following the initial series as needed to continue therapeutic progress but this is not the most common treatment plan at Transcend.
For chronic pain treatment, it is more difficult to keep baseline pain levels down and flare-ups without maintenance infusions ongoing. The majority of patients with chronic pain will do sessions every 30-90 days to keep the baseline pain levels reduced.
You can expect to be at the clinic for approximately 2 hours. There are many factors that influence the length of the infusion but most patients will receive a 35-50 minute ketamine infusion. Your Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy trained therapist and a registered nurse will be by your side throughout your entire time during the infusion. Your therapist will be with you before to help set goals for the session, during for guidance and processing, and after for continued therapy, integration, and reflection.
Have another question? Don't hesitate to reach out to us.
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