By Jocelyn Kate | JustJocelynThings – Nurturing Minds, Bodies, and Imaginations

This year, my career took a meaningful turn. I joined Still — a functional psychiatry office focused on integrative, root-cause healing — as the Integrative Health & Expressive Arts Practitioner and Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy facilitator. Still isn’t the type of place where you sit in therapy for ten years and talk in circles. Here, we look for what’s underneath. We use neuroscience, nervous system regulation, expressive arts, movement, and medicine-assisted therapy to help the body finally heal rather than just cope.

Ketamine is a big part of that work. It’s one of the only medicines clinically shown to rapidly shift depression, anxiety, trauma-related physiology, and rigid thought patterns — not by numbing symptoms, but by opening a neurobiological window where real change can happen. It lowers the defenses that keep pain buried, increases neuroplasticity for days afterward, and helps people access healing in ways talk therapy alone often can’t. It’s not a band-aid; it’s a reset.

And as someone who has spent years frustrated with the “here’s a prescription and see you in six months” model of mental health care, I’ve always felt drawn to psychedelic-assisted therapy. I wrote papers on psilocybin in undergrad, researched trauma and brain rewiring, and knew at some point I would step into this world professionally. So when Dr.Dina asked if I wanted to facilitate ketamine sessions, every part of me said yes.

But… before I ever guide someone into that space, I needed to truly understand the medicine. Not academically. Not through research papers. In my own body.

Because even though my life felt aligned, my nervous system was telling a different story. I was holding my breath without noticing. My chest stayed tight. I felt reactive and moody in ways that didn’t feel like me. My protector parts were running the show — anxious, controlling, bracing for something that wasn’t there. And to be completely honest, I had pushed myself to the bottom of my priority list. Between finishing grad school, completing multiple certifications, and juggling work responsibilities, I stopped tending to my own needs. Writing — something that usually helps me express, ground, and heal — became “something I’ll get to later,” and later never came.

Trauma is sneaky like that. It doesn’t always show up as breakdowns or panic. Sometimes it shows up as over-functioning — doing everything for everyone else while ignoring yourself, until the body finally whispers, “We still haven’t healed.”

So I decided to stop ignoring that whisper. If I’m going to sit beside someone as they let their guard down, I need to know what surrender feels like too. If I’m going to help people release what their bodies have been holding, then I need to release what mine still is.

That’s why I said yes to my first ketamine journey — not out of crisis, but out of readiness. Because I want my body to feel as aligned as my career finally does.

This… is the beginning of that healing.

Preparing to Let Go (and Why Ketamine Felt Safe This Time)

My first psychedelic experience earlier this year was Ayahuasca in Peru, and it honestly left me terrified of psychedelics for a while. It was long, intense, unpredictable, and overwhelming for my nervous system. I learned a lot from it, but it showed me what happens when a body that has learned to survive through control is suddenly thrown into the deep end with no anchor.

Ketamine felt different from the very beginning.

Instead of 6–8 hours of intensity, ketamine journeys typically last 25–45 minutes. I wasn’t alone in an unfamiliar place — I was in the clinic where I now work, a space that already feels safe to my nervous system. And the most important difference: I would be supported the entire time.

A trained clinician was seated right next to me, watching over me the entire session — not just emotionally, but medically. My blood pressure, heart rate, and oxygenation were monitored before, throughout, and after the experience. She checked in with me regularly, reminded me to breathe when tension crept up, and made sure my body stayed grounded while my mind went inward. Knowing I would never drift too far away made it possible for me to even consider surrender.

I also got to choose my sensory environment. We listened to the entire playlist ahead of time — song by song — so nothing would catch me off guard. The music would guide me, not surprise me. That made all the difference.

Even with all of that, I was nervous in the days leading up to the session. My protector parts — the ones who survived childhood by anticipating everything — did not want to surrender. Ketamine works by temporarily lowering those defenses, and that’s exactly what those parts feared.

Before we began, my therapist and I spent time talking to those parts using IFS language. We acknowledged the anxious protector that believes it must always be in control, the shame-based protector that hides vulnerability, and the hyper-independent part that would rather handle everything alone than risk being misunderstood. We thanked them for their service… and gently asked them to step aside.

For dosing, I chose subcutaneous administration — a tiny injection under the skin. It takes about 8 minutes to begin, so instead of being launched into an altered state, I could ease into it. We also chose a dose right in between psycholytic and psychedelic:

• Psycholytic: clearer connection to the room and therapist, easier to process emotions verbally
• Psychedelic: deeper internal experience, more surrender, less orientation to the outside world

Somewhere in the middle felt right for me — enough depth to go where I needed to go, but not so deep that I’d feel lost or overwhelmed.

And then came the intention — the compass for where the medicine energy flows:

Show me what needs healing and what I’m ready to release.

Intentions matter, not just spiritually, but neurologically. Ketamine increases neuroplasticity — the brain becomes more receptive to shifts in belief, behavior, and emotional patterning. What you focus on becomes what your brain reorganizes around.

In that moment, before any medicine took effect, I could feel two versions of me present in the room:

• the clinician-me who has studied this medicine, believes in it, and can hold space for others
• the younger parts who survived by gripping tightly, bracing, expecting something to go wrong

Those younger parts were afraid — but they were finally willing.

Between the gentle onset, the familiar space, the monitored vitals, and the therapist grounding me physically and emotionally, I felt safe enough to do something I have avoided for years:

I let go.

The Experience: What My Body Finally Said Out Loud

As the medicine slowly began to take effect, there were no visuals or trippy distortions — nothing that made me feel disconnected from reality. It was subtle at first, so subtle that part of me wondered if anything was happening at all. And then it did. Not in my mind, but in my body.

The first thing I noticed was my throat. It tightened — that familiar lump you feel when you’re holding back tears. Except this time, I wasn’t trying to hold anything back. It felt like years of swallowed emotion finally had permission to move. Tears began to fall, quietly and steadily — not painful tears, but relief tears. My throat kept releasing, softening with every breath.

Then my chest — the place where I didn’t even realize I’d been living in a state of constant bracing — began to open. It was like an invisible weight was being lifted, layer by layer. I could actually feel my lungs expanding into space that had been locked up for years. My breath wasn’t shallow or tight anymore… it flowed all the way down into me.

What surprised me most was the emotion that came through. It wasn’t fear or sadness — it was love. I thought of my dog, my partner, the people I love deeply. And I cried because my heart felt so full. There was no storyline, no trauma flashback. Just pure, safe release.

But underneath that love, a deeper knowing surfaced — the grief I’ve been carrying isn’t entirely mine. I could feel the weight of my family’s unprocessed grief, the kind that gets passed through generations when no one quite knows how to actually mourn.

In my family, grief is often bypassed with coping mechanisms like, “It’s okay, we can talk to them through the medium.” It’s like we’ve convinced ourselves that staying close to the dead means we don’t have to feel the pain of losing them. But connection is not the same as grieving. And in that moment, something inside me finally recognized the difference.

A clear, grounded message came through:

Honor the ones you’ve lost.
But stop being afraid to let them go.
You don’t have to carry everyone’s grief.

That realization alone felt like a release that my body has been waiting for — a heaviness lifting right off my chest. I didn’t have to intellectualize anything. My body just knew.

Throughout the session, my therapist stayed right beside me — checking my heart rate, tracking my breathing, reminding me to inhale fully when she noticed me slipping back into old patterns. She spoke to me softly when I needed grounding, and without saying a word, I could feel that she understood what was happening inside me.

I didn’t want to talk, but when she asked how I was doing, I could answer clearly. I was fully aware, but deeply inward. There was an entire internal conversation happening — a calm, loving dialogue between the parts of me that have protected for so long and the parts that were finally allowed to feel.

It didn’t feel like I was somewhere else.
It felt like I was in my body for the first time in years.

There were no visuals, no alternate dimensions — just the truth of my nervous system unclenching. A surrender I didn’t know how to access before.

At one point, I remember thinking:

“This is what healing feels like — safe, gentle, and finally mine.”

Time felt slower, but in a comforting way — like my body was catching up on breaths it had been missing. The medicine eventually started to fade, but the openness remained. My chest still felt spacious. My throat still felt soft. My breath still felt real.

And for the first time in a very long time…
I felt like myself — without my protectors leading.

When the session ended, my vital signs were checked again, grounding me fully back into the room. But emotionally, I was already there — present, connected, lighter.

I didn’t come out with a psychedelic story.
I came out with my breath.

And that was more than enough.

Integration: Where the Real Healing Happens

Something that gets overlooked in psychedelic medicine is that the session isn’t the healing — it’s the doorway to it. The real work happens afterward, during a period known as the neuroplasticity window. For 7–14 days after ketamine, the brain becomes more flexible and open to forming new neural connections. Old patterns loosen their grip, and new ones become easier to build. It’s like wet clay — you can reshape what has been hardened for years.

So I’ve been treating this time with intention.

Right after my session, I felt genuinely happy, in a way that didn’t feel forced or conditional. My body felt lighter, my chest open, and I was full of pure love energy — giddy even. I wasn’t thinking my way into happiness… I was embodying it. It felt like a weight had slid off and my emotions finally had room to exist without pressure behind them.

But healing is rarely a straight line.
I also experienced a headache for a couple of days afterward, and I noticed myself feeling a bit irritated here and there. That’s actually very common with ketamine — as the brain resets and receptors shift, the nervous system can feel temporarily sensitive. The difference was: I was aware of it. Instead of spiraling in reactivity, I could catch irritation before it took over. It felt like I was watching the reaction rather than becoming it.

And the biggest change has been in my chest — the tightness I was so used to living with has softened. I’ve been checking in with myself throughout the day:
Am I breathing? Am I bracing? Am I listening to what my body needs?
Simply noticing — and responding — has felt like medicine in itself.

I’m paying attention now when my breath gets stuck, when my shoulders rise, when my heart starts to close. Instead of pushing through discomfort, I pause. I stretch. I place a hand on my chest. I intentionally take full belly breaths. I honor what my body is saying rather than overriding it.

That has changed everything.

Ketamine helped turn down the protectors and open a channel to what my body has been holding. But integration is what has been teaching me how to stay open:

• More gentle mornings
• More stretching and movement
• More time offline and outside
• More listening before acting
• More softness toward myself
• More breath — always breath

I am noticing myself become less reactive, not because the triggers disappeared, but because I am different. There is a moment of space now — a beat — where I can choose how to respond. That is the sign of a nervous system healing: capacity instead of collapse.

Even the irritability and headaches were teachers. They reminded me that healing isn’t about perfect emotional regulation — it’s about awareness. Ketamine gave me access to parts of myself I had been ignoring. Integration is teaching me how to care for them.

This whole experience has reinforced something I already knew, but needed to feel:

The body doesn’t heal when we have time — it heals when we finally make ourselves a priority.

Ketamine didn’t magically fix me.
It helped my body remember what safety feels like.
And I am choosing to continue listening.

A New Kind of Healing (and Why the World Needs It)

This first ketamine journey didn’t erase my past or magically make everything easy. What it did was something more powerful and real: it helped my body remember what safety feels like. It gave me access to softness I didn’t realize I had lost. It reminded me that healing isn’t something that happens in our heads — it happens in the places where our bodies have been silently holding on.

And that is why Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy matters.

For decades, the mainstream mental health system has been built on symptom management:
medications that mute what hurts, therapy that talks around what the body won’t release. People spend 5, 10, 20 years in treatment and still feel like they’re just surviving their own nervous systems. We aren’t meant to cope forever. We are meant to heal.

Ketamine creates a window for actual change — not just feeling better for a moment, but rewiring the stress patterns, fear responses, and protective strategies the brain built during hard times. It reaches the places that talk therapy alone can’t touch. It helps people open, soften, and feel — sometimes for the first time in years.

I feel grateful to be part of this work at Still — but this is bigger than one clinic. This is a shift humanity has been waiting for. A new era of mental health care where the goal is freedom, not lifelong dependence. Where healing is measured in breaths that expand the chest, not pills that suppress pain.

Everyone deserves access to this kind of support. Not just those who live near a progressive clinic. Not just those who already know someone who’s tried it. KAP should be available far and wide — because there are millions of people whose bodies are still bracing for a past that is long over.

After my session, I felt lighter, happier, and less reactive — not because life suddenly became perfect, but because I was finally connected back to myself. My chest softened. My breath deepened. My body trusted me. And now, I find myself choosing differently — pausing before reacting, listening to what my body needs, and putting myself at the top of the list instead of the bottom.

Ketamine didn’t change who I am.
It helped me return to who I’ve always been under the armor.

This was just my first session… and already, I feel more alive in my own skin. More curious. More open. More here.

I want that for everyone.

Healing doesn’t have to be dramatic. It doesn’t have to be painful. It can be gentle. It can look like tears falling quietly while your body, finally, feels safe. It can sound like the first full breath you’ve taken in years.

This is only the beginning of my journey.
But it is also the beginning of something bigger — a movement toward healing that honors the body, the nervous system, and the truth we carry inside.

I am safe.
I can let go.
I can breathe.

And I believe the world deserves to feel that too.