From Stuckness to Loving Connection: How Ketamine-Assisted Couples Therapy Creates New Possibilities for Therapeutic Change

Workshop Description

A growing body of research on psychedelic-assisted therapy is opening new possibilities for therapeutic change. But what might become possible when these approaches move beyond the individual and into the relational space of couple therapy?

In this workshop, I will introduce ketamine-assisted couples therapy (Couple KAP) through the interweaving of emerging research, systemic and attachment-based thinking, including Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), clinical practice, and my own lived experience of the transformative potential of psychedelic-assisted therapy.

My interest in this field has been shaped by my personal experience of the capacity of psychedelic states to loosen deeply held patterns, create access to previously suppressed emotional material, and open possibilities for greater connection with self and others.

I will position ketamine as an adjunct to existing couple therapy models — a treatment amplifier, rather than the therapy itself. Drawing on emerging research, I will explore how ketamine, through its effects on neuroplasticity, brain connectivity, cognitive and emotional processing, and alterations in the sense of self,  creates conditions in which rigid patterns of thinking, feeling and relating become more flexible; habitual defences soften; and greater access to vulnerability and emotional connection becomes possible.

I will explore how, within this therapeutic window, partners can gain new perspectives on themselves, each other and the relational patterns in which they have become stuck. In this way, ketamine-assisted couple therapy creates new possibilities for therapeutic change, particularly where entrenched relational patterns have proved difficult to shift through conventional couple therapy approaches alone.

Participants will be introduced to:

• some of the psychological and neurobiological processes associated with psychedelic-assisted therapy;

• some of the wider social and political context surrounding the current re-emergence of psychedelic-assisted therapies;

• the structure and process of Couple KAP;

• specific conditions created by ketamine that support the therapeutic process across key domains of change: cognition, emotion and behaviour;

• working with relational intentions within Couple KAP;

• key ethical considerations when bringing altered states into relational work; and

• some considerations for the integration process following ketamine-assisted couple sessions.

The workshop will encourage active participant engagement through small-group and paired exploration of selected components of the Couple KAP process.