A Ketamine Journey for Moms

This past weekend, my colleague Julia Pinsky, LMFT and I held a Group KAP (ketamine-assisted psychotherapy) for Moms gathering here in Santa Cruz, California. We started by getting together online a couple of times to get to know each other and to develop our individual and shared intentions for this unique endeavor. Our prep sessions were designed around a Mom Parts Salon that guided the participants toward noticing and identifying the Mom Parts that were feeling activated or triggered by mom-life. The question underneath our conversations was: what are you coming here to learn more about and to heal? Together we moved closer to those emerging parts, listening to their stories, hearing the truths they were telling and beginning to touch their grief and shame. If you've attended a Mom Parts Salon, you know that we work with 29 common and familiar Mom Parts that show up predictably in moms' inner worlds. As the moms in the KAP group began to share about their parts, there was collective resonance around two common Mom Parts: Wanting and Controller. These two types of parts became a shared focus in the room as moms moved into exploring their pain points and their longings.

We talked about how Wanting parts get so silenced in motherhood, pushed to the backburner and then forgotten, creating a void. Who am I now? Does what I want matter? Can I trust my desire and let myself feel longing and still be a good mom?

Controller parts help keep small children regulated and safe in the early months and years, and then become stifling and paralyzing for mom and her family a little further down the road. I want things to go a certain way. When shit gets messy, I feel exposed and anxious. That's why I grip so hard.

Both parts ache and feel neglected, like they've sacrificed so much and received very little in return. How can we help these parts get what they're needing?

Internal Family Systems (IFS) is all about encouraging us to turn toward our parts with openness and curiosity. IFS is built on the belief that we are fundamentally trustworthy. Even though we may behave in ways we aren't proud of and we may feel things that frighten us, IFS maintains that our reactivity makes sense and is here to try to help us. This is such wonderful news for moms. We've been steeped in a medical model that sees symptoms as indications of disorder and sickness, which can make us feel frightened of ourselves. We may be hurt and in need of care, but instead of tending to our parts with curiosity and respect we just want to fix what's broken as quickly and privately as possible, and move on like it never happened.

Participating in a KAP Group for Moms is a bold and courageous move. When we add ketamine into a healing circle, we access a deeper dimension of both injury and safety; exiles and Self. Ketamine is a nonspecific amplifier that moves us into a non-ordinary state where our protectors are inclined (sometimes persuaded) to step aside, clearing a direct path to our exiles and our Inner Babies. And while this experience can be incredibly intense and sometimes completely earth-shaking, it can also feel really delightful, clarifying and stabilizing. KAP gives us more access to the resources that exist inside and all around us. Moms can locate and tap into abundant self-compassion. They can feel connected with the other moms in the room who are adventuring just as courageously. They can feel new inspiration to go farther than they’ve gone before into the mystery of their own strengths and wounds.

By the time we got to our in-person journey day, we'd built some safety together online - each mom demonstrating her sincere desire to feel more connected to herself as well as her sincere desire to support the other moms in the group with compassion and respect. On journey day, Julia and I witnessed some tectonic shifts and some gorgeous openings into new self-trust. These moms traveled a very long distance together, in just a handful of hours, installing new possibilities into the maternal zeitgeist.

As we walk through the untamed wilderness of motherhood, we don’t know what we will encounter. Every one of us is surprised by the ferocity, brutality, anguish, longing, joy and pride that we discover, and yet so many of us feel completely alone and lost in the hugeness of it all. I created Mom Parts to support moms in moving closer to their wholeness, inclusive of their grief and shame; this is the most meaningful work I can imagine doing. IFS gave me language and inspiration for helping moms make their way through their own scared and protective structures so that they can access the incredible resources they (we all) have inside - and finally tend to the wounds that have been waiting. Ketamine doesn’t change our parts or who we are. It just pulls a protective layer off and helps us move closer to our vulnerability, while keeping a foot in wholeness/wellness/connectedness/oneness. Every journey is a mystery and a revelation. 

My conviction that mothering is the heart of our humanity is further affirmed by witnessing these moms and how they held vulnerability and met it with incredible courage. But that's what moms do, isn't it?

If you could benefit from doing this kind of internal work, let's talk.