Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy: A Transformational Approach to Healing Deep Trauma and Depression
You've tried everything else. The years of talk therapy that circled the same stories without breaking through. The medications that dulled the edges but never touched the core. The self-help books, the mindfulness apps, the wellness retreats that offered temporary relief before the weight settled back in. You're successful on paper, maybe even enviable to others, but carrying wounds so deep that traditional approaches can't seem to reach them.
If you're reading this, you're likely at a crossroads. You're done with surface fixes and ready for something that actually transforms rather than merely manages. You're seeking a guide who understands both the clinical science of trauma and the deeper passages of healing that extend beyond symptom checklists.
That's where ketamine-assisted psychotherapy enters the conversation. Not as another quick fix, but as a doorway into the kind of healing work that changes you at a fundamental level.
What Makes Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy Different
Ketamine-assisted psychotherapy represents a radical departure from conventional treatment approaches for trauma and depression. While traditional therapy relies primarily on cognitive processing and behavioral modification, and psychiatric medications work by gradually adjusting neurotransmitter levels over weeks or months, ketamine operates through an entirely different mechanism.
At a neurological level, ketamine works as an NMDA receptor antagonist, creating what researchers call "synaptic plasticity." Essentially, your brain's ability to form new neural connections becomes dramatically enhanced. This isn't just biochemical jargon. It's the difference between trying to reshape a hardened clay pot versus working with clay that's suddenly malleable again.
But here's what makes my approach to ketamine-assisted psychotherapy truly distinct: I don't view the medicine as the healer. The medicine is a catalyst that opens a window. What happens in that window, how we work together to explore the terrain that becomes visible, and how we integrate those insights into lasting transformation is where the real work lives.
In my practice serving clients across Santa Fe, Sedona, and Pagosa Springs, I've witnessed how ketamine creates a temporary softening of the rigid defenses that trauma builds. Those defenses served a purpose once. They kept you functional, kept you moving forward when stopping felt impossible. But they've also kept you separate from parts of yourself that hold vital information about who you are beyond your wounds.
The Neuroscience of Transformation
Depression and trauma don't just live in your thoughts. They reshape your brain's architecture. Chronic stress and trauma actually cause certain neural pathways to atrophy while strengthening others, particularly those involved in threat detection and self-protection. Your brain becomes extraordinarily efficient at scanning for danger, ruminating on past failures, and reinforcing narratives of hopelessness or unworthiness.
Traditional antidepressants work gradually to adjust serotonin or norepinephrine levels, often requiring weeks or months to show effects. And for many people, particularly those with treatment-resistant depression or complex trauma, they simply don't work. The brain's entrenched patterns remain largely unchanged.
Ketamine intervenes differently. Research shows it can promote neuroplasticity within hours, not weeks. It helps restore connections in the prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain involved in executive function, emotional regulation, and sense of self. Simultaneously, it reduces activity in the default mode network, that internal narrator that can become stuck in loops of self-criticism and traumatic memory.
This neurological shift creates what I think of as a therapeutic window. A state where you can observe your thoughts and emotions with less attachment, where traumatic memories can be touched without overwhelming activation, where new perspectives become genuinely accessible rather than intellectually understood but emotionally unreachable.
Beyond Symptom Management: The Transformational Model
Most conventional approaches to depression and trauma focus on symptom reduction. Can we get your depression score lower on a standardized assessment? Can we help you manage anxiety enough to function at work? These aren't unworthy goals, but they're not transformation.
Transformation means something deeper. It means shifting your relationship to your pain, your past, your sense of who you are. It means moving from "I am broken and need to be fixed" to "I am wounded and capable of profound healing." It means discovering that the parts of yourself you've been trying to eliminate or override often hold the keys to your wholeness.
In my two decades as a therapist, seven of those running an award-winning practice, I've learned that the most profound healing doesn't come from trying to erase trauma or eliminate depression. It comes from learning to be with these experiences differently, to integrate them into a larger story of resilience and meaning.
Ketamine-assisted psychotherapy, when practiced with both clinical rigor and soul-centered presence, creates conditions for this kind of transformational work. The medicine doesn't do the healing for you. It opens a doorway you've been standing in front of, unable to see, let alone walk through.
How Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy Works in My Practice
My approach to ketamine-assisted psychotherapy is intentionally not a "ketamine mill." Those high-volume clinics where you're one of many people cycling through in a day, receiving medicine with minimal preparation or integration support. What I offer through Canyon Passages is boutique, personalized, and deeply invested in your unique journey.
The Preparation Phase
Before any medicine session, we invest significant time in preparation. This typically includes three to five sessions where we:
Build a comprehensive understanding of your trauma history, attachment patterns, and what you've already tried
Establish safety protocols and ensure there are no medical contraindications
Explore your intentions, what you're genuinely seeking from this work, beyond symptom relief
Address your relationship with expanded states of consciousness, whether you're completely new to this territory or have previous experience
Create a roadmap that makes sense for your specific situation
This preparation isn't bureaucratic busy-work. It's essential foundation. Ketamine opens doors, but you need to know what you're looking for behind those doors, and you need a guide who understands the terrain.
My background as an EMDR consultant means I bring sophisticated trauma-processing tools into our preparation work. We might begin gentle EMDR protocols before any ketamine session, creating neural pathways that will be further enhanced when the medicine amplifies your brain's natural healing capacity.
The Medicine Journey
The ketamine session itself typically lasts two to three hours in a carefully prepared setting. I offer both in-person sessions at my locations and, when appropriate, remote sessions for established clients who have demonstrated readiness.
During the session, you'll receive a carefully calibrated dose of pharmaceutical-grade ketamine. The dosing is personalized based on your body weight, sensitivity, previous experiences with expanded states, and therapeutic goals. This isn't a one-size-fits-all protocol.
As the medicine takes effect, you'll move into what many describe as a dissociative state. Not dissociation in the traumatic sense, but a temporary loosening of your ordinary identity and thought patterns. Some people describe it as viewing their life from a different vantage point. Others experience profound emotional releases. Some encounter symbolic imagery or insights that feel simultaneously strange and deeply true.
Throughout this process, I remain present. Not directing your experience but holding space, offering guidance when needed, ensuring your safety, and helping you stay oriented toward your therapeutic intentions rather than getting lost in the experience itself.
My training in shamanic practice informs how I hold ceremonial space while my clinical expertise ensures we stay grounded in trauma-informed care. This combination of soul-centered presence and clinical rigor is rare, and it's essential for the kind of deep work that ketamine can facilitate.
Integration: Where Transformation Takes Root
Here's what many ketamine providers miss: the medicine session is not the healing. The medicine session opens possibilities. Integration is where those possibilities become actual transformation.
After your ketamine journey, we meet for multiple integration sessions. This is where we work with what emerged. Processing insights, working through emotional material that surfaced, using EMDR or Internal Family Systems approaches to help reorganize your internal landscape based on what you discovered.
Integration might mean revisiting a childhood wound you glimpsed during the journey and finally allowing yourself to grieve it fully. It might mean practicing new ways of relating to yourself that felt accessible in the expanded state but require conscious cultivation to maintain. It might mean shifting long-held narratives about your worth, your capacity, your place in the world.
This is also where my clinical sexologist training becomes relevant for many clients. Trauma and depression often profoundly impact intimacy, sexuality, and relationship patterns. Ketamine can open awareness of these connections. Integration sessions create space to work with them therapeutically.
Who Benefits from Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy
Ketamine-assisted psychotherapy isn't for everyone, and I'm committed to honest assessment of fit rather than convincing anyone this is their right path.
You might be an ideal candidate if you:
Have tried multiple traditional therapies and medications without achieving the depth of healing you're seeking
Carry complex trauma, particularly early developmental trauma or relational wounds that feel resistant to conventional talk therapy
Experience treatment-resistant depression that hasn't responded adequately to SSRIs or other standard pharmaceutical approaches
Feel stuck in patterns of self-protection that you intellectually understand but can't seem to shift
Are at a life transition (midlife, identity shift, loss, spiritual emergence) and seeking more than symptom management
Value a boutique, highly personalized therapeutic relationship over a clinical, protocol-driven approach
Are financially able to invest in premium, transformational care
Are open to expanded states of consciousness and interested in approaches that blend clinical credibility with deeper, soul-level healing
This work is particularly powerful for high-achieving professionals and creatives who carry the paradox of outward success and inner suffering. You've accomplished much, perhaps even helped many others, but your own wounds remain largely untouched. You need a guide who understands that your healing journey won't be about teaching you productivity strategies or simple coping skills. It will be about encountering and transforming the deepest layers of your pain.
Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy for Trauma
Trauma lives in the body and the nervous system as much as it lives in memory. Traditional talk therapy often keeps trauma processing primarily cognitive, which can leave the somatic and emotional dimensions of trauma unchanged.
Ketamine creates a unique opportunity for trauma work because it temporarily reduces the overwhelming activation that traumatic memories typically trigger. In this softened state, you can approach material that would normally send your nervous system into protective shutdown or hyperarousal.
Combined with EMDR (a modality I've practiced for over 20 years and now teach as an EMDR consultant), ketamine can dramatically accelerate trauma processing. The bilateral stimulation of EMDR helps reprocess traumatic memories while ketamine enhances neuroplasticity and reduces defensive barriers.
For clients in Santa Fe, Sedona, and Pagosa Springs dealing with complex PTSD, developmental trauma, or wounds from profound loss, this combination can offer breakthrough experiences that years of conventional therapy couldn't touch. I've witnessed clients finally access and release grief they've carried for decades, integrate fragmented parts of themselves that split off during trauma, and discover resilience they didn't know they possessed.
Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy for Treatment-Resistant Depression
If you've tried three or more antidepressants without significant improvement, you fall into the category of treatment-resistant depression. This doesn't mean you're resistant. It means the standard approaches aren't addressing what's actually happening in your unique system.
Research on ketamine for treatment-resistant depression shows remarkable results. Often rapid improvements in mood and effects that can be sustained with proper integration and maintenance. But the research focuses primarily on symptom scores. My interest goes deeper.
Depression often carries important information. It can be your psyche's way of saying "the life you're living doesn't match who you actually are" or "there's grief you haven't allowed yourself to feel" or "the strategies that got you through childhood are no longer serving you."
Ketamine can help you access that information. Instead of just dampening the depression, it can help you understand what the depression has been trying to communicate. From that understanding, real transformation becomes possible. Not just feeling less depressed, but restructuring your life around what's actually true for you.
For clients who've spent years or decades managing depression with limited success, this approach can feel like finally having someone understand that you're not looking for another bandaid. You're ready to actually heal the wound.
The Canyon Passages Difference
My practice is intentionally boutique. I work with a limited number of clients at a time because this work requires deep presence and personalized attention. You're not a case number or a protocol. You're a unique human being with a unique history, unique wounds, and unique wisdom that will inform your path to healing.
What you can expect when working with me:
Clinical Expertise Meeting Spiritual Depth: I hold both licenses and lineages. I'm a trauma therapist with advanced EMDR training and clinical sexologist credentials, and I've also trained in shamanic practice and somatic approaches to healing. I don't see these as separate. They're integrated in how I understand human suffering and transformation.
Truly Personalized Care: Your treatment plan isn't pulled from a manual. It's co-created based on your specific needs, readiness, resources, and goals. Some clients need more preparation, some need longer integration, some benefit from coupling ketamine work with ongoing EMDR or couples therapy using Gottman Method and Internal Family Systems.
Three Location Advantage: Whether you're in Santa Fe, Sedona, or Pagosa Springs, or you're drawn to one of these locations for in-person intensive work, I offer the flexibility of both online and in-person sessions. Many clients begin online and then travel for in-person medicine journeys in settings that support deep healing work.
Transformation, Not Symptom Relief: I'm not interested in helping you manage your trauma just well enough to keep functioning in a life that doesn't actually fit you. I'm interested in supporting genuine transformation. The kind that might mean significant life changes, identity shifts, spiritual awakenings, and profound reorganization of how you understand yourself and your place in the world.
Premium Investment, Premium Care: This is not insurance-based care, and that's intentional. The clients I work with understand that profound healing is their next great investment. In return, they receive the kind of attention, expertise, and commitment that insurance-driven models simply cannot provide.
Safety and Contraindications
While ketamine has demonstrated remarkable safety in clinical settings, it's not appropriate for everyone. Medical screening is essential to rule out contraindications including:
Active psychosis or poorly managed bipolar disorder
Uncontrolled hypertension or serious cardiovascular conditions
Pregnancy or nursing
Active substance use disorders (though ketamine can sometimes be part of addiction treatment in specialized contexts)
During our initial consultations and intake process, I conduct thorough medical history and mental health screening. Safety is non-negotiable, even as we work with expanded states that require courage to enter.
Integration with Other Modalities
Ketamine-assisted psychotherapy doesn't exist in isolation in my practice. Depending on your needs, we might also incorporate:
EMDR Therapy: Often alternating with or following ketamine sessions to process traumatic material that surfaces
Couples Work: For partners working through shared trauma, relationship wounds, or intimacy challenges, ketamine can sometimes be part of a broader therapeutic arc that includes Gottman Method and Internal Family Systems couples therapy
Psilocybin-Assisted Therapy: For clients who develop readiness for deeper psychedelic work, psilocybin might become part of your journey after ketamine has helped establish foundation and trust in expanded states
Ongoing Integration: Between medicine sessions, regular therapy sessions help you sustain insights, work through resistance, and make the life changes that your healing asks of you
The Investment of Transformation
I don't publish specific pricing because each client's journey is unique. A typical ketamine-assisted psychotherapy process might involve:
Initial consultation and intake
3-5 preparation sessions
Medicine journey session(s)
3-5 integration sessions
Ongoing support as needed
Some clients work intensively for several months and then transition to periodic maintenance. Others develop a longer-term therapeutic relationship that evolves over time.
What I can tell you is that clients who choose this work see it as an investment in transformation, not an expense to minimize. If you're accustomed to premium services in other areas of your life (whether that's executive coaching, specialized medical care, or high-level creative guidance), you'll recognize the value of boutique, expert-level care in your healing journey.
For current pricing and scheduling information, I invite you to reach out directly.
Taking the First Step
If you've read this far, something in you recognizes that you're ready for more than conventional approaches can offer. You're done surviving your trauma. You're ready to transform it. You're finished with symptom management. You're seeking actual healing.
The first step is a brief consultation where we explore whether this work is right for you at this time. I'll ask about your history, what you've already tried, what you're genuinely seeking. You'll get a sense of my approach and whether we feel like a good fit for the profound work ahead.
This consultation isn't about convincing you to work with me. It's about honest assessment of readiness and fit. Ketamine-assisted psychotherapy is powerful medicine, and powerful medicine requires the right timing, the right guide, and the right commitment.
From Santa Fe's high desert clarity to Sedona's red rock transformation to Pagosa Springs' healing waters, the locations where I practice hold their own medicine. Whether you work with me online or travel for in-person intensive sessions, you're entering a container intentionally created for depth work.
You've Tried Everything Else. Now Try Transformation.
The conventional mental health system offers important services, and traditional therapy helps many people. But if you're reading this, you've likely already discovered that conventional approaches aren't touching what you're actually carrying.
You don't need another therapist who's going to teach you breathing exercises and send you home with a worksheet. You need a guide who understands that your healing journey will ask you to encounter the deepest parts of yourself. The parts that hold your wounds, yes, but also the parts that hold your wisdom, your resilience, your capacity for profound transformation.
Ketamine-assisted psychotherapy, practiced with clinical expertise and soul-centered presence, can be that doorway. Not a magic bullet, not a quick fix, but a catalyst for the kind of healing work that actually changes who you are.
The passage through is rarely comfortable. Transformation asks something of you: courage, commitment, willingness to let go of familiar suffering in exchange for unknown wholeness. But on the other side of that passage, clients consistently tell me they've found something they'd stopped believing possible. Genuine hope, access to joy they thought trauma had stolen, capacity for intimacy they'd protected themselves from for decades, and a sense of coming home to themselves.
If you're ready to stop surviving and start transforming, reach out. Let's have a conversation about whether this is your time, whether I'm your guide, and what your passage through might look like.
Your healing is possible. Not healing that makes you acceptable to others, but healing that makes you whole to yourself. That's the work we do here.
Canyon Passages offers ketamine-assisted psychotherapy, EMDR therapy, psilocybin-assisted therapy, and couples counseling for individuals and couples in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Sedona, Arizona, and Pagosa Springs, Colorado. Both online and in-person sessions available. Contact us to learn more about personalized, transformational trauma and depression treatment.
