Ketamine Intentions: How to Make the Most of your Ketamine Healing Journey

IV Ketamine Therapy is a powerful treatment for resistant depression, anxiety, PTSD, addiction, and chronic pain. Even though most patients will have symptom relief from their Ketamine therapy, I want my patients to achieve the longest lasting relief from their IV Ketamine infusions. To achieve lasting results, my patients need to prepare their mindset and set an intention. Here is my guide to intention setting for my patients receiving IV Ketamine infusion therapy.

What Mindset Should You Have for Ketamine Therapy?

Most patients cannot, and should not, try to control their Ketamine journey. This is very similar to our dreaming at night: most of us can't control what we do in our dreams. It shouldn't be frightening, but it should encourage us to surrender to the experience. Just like how you can't "force yourself to sleep," you can't "force" the ketamine experience, either. Trying to force, or fight, the experience may sometimes lead to distressing dreams (or distressing Ketamine experiences).

Enforcing a flexible mindset is therefore very important before starting the Ketamine healing experience. Your intention plays a powerful role here.

Powerful Intention Examples for Ketamine Infusions

An intention should be flexible and obtainable. It should emphasize non-judgment, especially removing thoughts of "good or bad." The greater the non-judgement, the greater the anti-depressant benefit of the Ketamine. Examples of flexible and non-judgmental intentions include:

• "Open heart, open mind"
• “Be peaceful”
• "Gratitude"
• "Acceptance"
• "New beginnings"
• "Self-compassion"
• “Surrender to the experience”
• “Love and kindness"

Non-judgement is the path to acceptance. Acceptance is key to moving forward. Healing is moving forward to become "unstuck."

These experiences will often arise organically during the Ketamine journey itself! The better prepared you are to receive them, the more easily they will "fall into place." In fact, these were described over 100 years ago by William James!

Improving Ketamine Effectiveness: Mindfulness and Acceptance

Being mindful means being aware without judgement. Acceptance is a natural byproduct of mindfulness, because it allows us to move forward by accepting past and future events. Healing is fundamentally in the future, and mindfulness and acceptance facilitate us to "heal forward" instead of stay stuck in the past.

What Should NOT be in Your Ketamine Intention

While mindfulness should be emphasized because it correlates with anti-depressive effects, the following concepts can produce the opposite effect:

• Inflexible thoughts ("I'll be happy once my pain goes away")
• If-then intentions ("If I relax my depression will pass")
• Overly prescriptive intentions ("I want to fix my marriage, I want my children to love me, I want a promotion, etc. etc.")
• Intentions dependent on things beyond your control ("I want my partner to love me again")

You want your intention to be flexible and within your control. Otherwise, we risk disappointment, feelings of failure, and shame if we "set ourselves up for failure" at the start of our Ketamine infusion.

You Deserve Sustained Healing

Your comfort with your doctor providing IV Ketamine is critical to how effective your therapy is. You deserve to find your healing potential. Schedule a free consultation with Clarus Health to learn if IV Ketamine Therapy may be effective in uncovering your healing capacity.