George and Martha had been married for over 10 years, yet like many couples, they found themselves stuck in patterns of disconnection. Though they loved each other, they struggled to communicate and often found themselves locked in the same frustrating arguments, feeling distant and misunderstood. Despite their efforts in Emotionally Focused Therapy with me, their old habits seemed impossible to break.
They were intrigued when I suggested that Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love could be enriched and deepened with Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy and agreed to do two Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy sessions using sublingual Ketamine. In the first session, Martha was on the medicine wearing eye shades, George was seated beside her, both listened to music Martha had chosen earlier from a play list and I sat in the room with them serving as a supportive witness.
In the second session a week later, George was on the medicine wearing eye shades, Martha was seated next to him, both listening to music George had chosen earlier and I sat in the room with them again serving as a supportive witness.
George and Martha used these two sessions to work on their Demon Dialogs: The Protest Polka, Find the Bad Guy and Freeze and Flee from Sue Johnson’s Emotionally Focused Therapy . The dissociative effects of ketamine allowed them to step back from their raw spots and take in the larger landscape of their fights without defensiveness or blame. Martha was able to see how her eruptions were fueled by her feeling emotionally deprived of George and he was able to see how her anger triggered the deeper fears that fueled his zone outs.
They went on to do more Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy sessions to work on finding their raw spots, showing their vulnerabilities, forgiving injuries, deepening their sexual intimacy, exploring new ways to express their love for each other and reaching out to the other in times of need which has always been much harder for George.
In a recent therapy session with George and Martha without Ketamine, I used a scene from the film Far From the Madding Crowd as a metaphor. In the scene, Gabriel Oak, the loyal, hardworking shepherd who toils for Bathsheba Everdeen and has seen her through all sorts of trials and tribulations as she struggled to manage the farm she inherited, tells Bathsheba that he’s leaving for America because he’s given up all hope of her ever marrying him. Bathsheba answers: Gabriel, you never ask!
Pondering the scene, George reached out to Martha and let her hold him in his arms.
