The 3 Tools You Need To Help Your Patients During A Ketamine Experience

During a ketamine infusion, your patient can feel lost or confused by their Non-Ordinary Experience. They may be seeing or feeling things that could trigger painful memories. This is why it’s important to support your patient by encouraging them to have a supportive mindset before and incorporate helpful strategies to keep them focused. In this blog, we’re going to share with you three tools to help your patient navigate their ketamine experience.

Encourage your patient to simply observe rather than react. They will be more likely to process their ketamine experience in a more positive manner.

Tool #1: Encourage witnessing the experience 

Witnessing what they are seeing or feeling creates some space for the patient. This means they become the observer of whatever is coming up for them during their infusion. They don't need to get entangled with the experience, but simply be a witness to it. Remind them that ketamine is a dissociative anesthetic. Tell them they are going to have a non-ordinary state of consciousness that can be new, exciting, and or challenging. When they feel it is all too much, encourage them to simply observe and witness.

Learn more about the different types of experiences your patients can have at our blog post on The 4 Types of Non-Ordinary Experiences Your Ketamine Patients Can Have.

Supporting your patient to focus on slow deep breaths will help calm them via activating their parasympathetic nervous system.

Tool #2: Remind them to breathe

Another important and often underestimated tool is breathing. As you know, slow deep breaths help your patient be calm by activating their parasympathetic nervous system. We’re here to remind you to remind your patients to breathe. Whenever something unpleasant comes up or they are having a challenging ketamine experience, remind them to take a few deep breaths. In fact, why don’t you take a deep breath right now? 

To explore more on the topic of how to help your patient navigate a challenging ketamine infusion experience, check out How To Help Your Patients Through Challenging Ketamine Infusion Experiences.

When there are things your patient doesn’t understand during their ketamine experience, suggest surrendering and accepting the experience as it is.

Tool #3: Recommend surrendering to the experience

The third and final tool is to recommend surrendering to the experience. This means having your patient letting go of trying to control their ketamine experience, allowing and accepting whatever comes up. “Surrender" doesn’t mean your patient needs to give up. Surrendering is allowing and accepting whatever may unfold in their mind during their psychedelic experience. Encourage your patient to trust that the ketamine is going to work for them. Trust that their unconscious mind will take them wherever they need to go. Remind them to simply be and experience whatever is happening, and know that whatever happens is going to be what’s best serves them. Also you can reiterate to them that you are there to make sure they are safe throughout!.

Learning to surrender is not easy. We want everything to be under our control, especially us physicians! Your patient wants to heal as quickly as possible. Some will want to only have happy or beautiful experiences. Some will want to feel a certain way during and after. Sometimes patients don’t get the experience they were hoping for.  We believe you may not always get the experience you want, but you will always get the experience you need for your growth and transformation.

Letting go isn’t just for your patient, but also for you too. Explore this more at Power Of Letting Go When Starting A Ketamine Clinic.

By encouraging your patient to learn to witness, breathe, and surrender, they will be able to keep a calm and relaxed state of mind.

What To Do With The Ketamine Navigation Tools

As physicians, we are all primed to make sure our patients are physically and medically safe. All those years of training have ingrained this into us. However, using ketamine to provide a transformational treatment for mood and pain disorders is outside what we were taught. 

Often our treatments are given and the patient leaves. With ketamine infusions, part of the treatment is the experience itself. So you simply need to share the above three tools with your patients. Talk about them with your patient before their infusions. Remind them during the infusion if they express fear. Discuss how they could use these same tools in their everyday life after and between infusions. 

Remember, it’s not just ketamine that will make them better, they get to play a part in this too.

Ready to learn more about ketamine infusions? Join our email list and be notified about the next free webinar and open registration for Ketamine StartUp.

If you enjoyed this blog, here are a few other blogs you might like to read!

4 Things to Let Your Ketamine Patients Know To Expect During An Infusion

Your patients will experience a lot of emotions before and during their ketamine infusion. There are a few things that you, as their doctor, should reassure them about so that they know what to expect. Read this blog post to learn what are the 4 things that you should let them know about. 

6 Things To Tell Your Ketamine Patients To Expect After Their Infusion

Your patients may feel intimidated or concerned about what happens after the infusion. In this blog post, we share with you the things that you must tell your ketamine patients in order to set the right expectations and not worry them.

Why Your Patients Should Set An Intention Before Their Infusion

Did you know that there was a study conducted that found that tea intentionally treated by Buddhist monks actually had a positive impact on those who drank the tea? Just like tea, you should also encourage your patients to set an intention before their infusion. Read our blog to learn more. 

Part of our patient’s treatment is the psychedelic ketamine experience itself. Going through the entire treatment can be quite a journey for your patients; a journey supported by you. In this blog, we talk about what YOU can do to help your ketamine patients in this transformative journey.

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