How No Bad Parts Family Systems Psychotherapy from Richard Schwartz can be enriched and deepened by Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy.
One evening while watching a PBS newscast with his wife that showed heart wrenching images of tiny children, little more than skeletons starving in Gaza, John suddenly stood up, went to the kitchen and returned with bag of popcorn that he wolfed down without tasting the popcorn.
John is a good example of someone jumping into Firefighter mode. The painful feelings stirred up in him by the images of those hollow-eyed children, their bones sticking out of their bodies, were too much for him to bear so he had to cut off his pain. Would John have responded differently to that heart wrenching news cast if he’d been in Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy that encouraged him to feel the pain of his Exile and share it with his wife?
Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy can dramatically enhance and enrich Internal Family Systems Therapy by making it easier for you to feel your Manger, Firefighter and Exile parts. This can happen in at least four ways:
- Because of its dissociative properties, Ketamine weakens your emotional blocks, allowing you to access the hidden parts of yourself. It becomes easier for you to peel through your Manager and Firefighter parts and feel the pain of your Exile parts.
- Ketamine helps you reach a state of calmness and curiosity in which you feel more expansive, compassionate and connected to the world. In this state, it’s easier for you to get to the pain of your Exile without feeling overwhelmed.
- The altered state of consciousness induced by ketamine can make it easier for you to imagine new possibilities for your life by peeling away your Manager, Firefighter and Exile parts and discovering who you really are deep down, your hidden beauty buried beneath the parts.
- Above all, the dissociative aspects of ketamine can make it easier for you to feel more compassion for yourself and others in everyday life.
In the case of John wolfing down popcorn next to his wife, after a few Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy sessions, he was able to tell her: Now when we watch these horrible scenes on PBS, I’m beginning to feel a bit more like a sour optimist and a happy pessimist. For me, that’s a big deal.
