“It was rough, but I came to realize that this life is here and now and being yourself is the most important thing you can be”
The above is the start of my 4th journal entry and part of one of the hardest sessions I’ve experienced since starting Ketamine. I knew not every session going into this would be easy or fun, but I wasn’t prepared for this one. This isn’t meant to scare you off from taking the plunge into Ketamine therapy, its meant to show you that despite having harder experience’s during sessions sometimes, most of them will be good, most of them will be happy, and no matter what, all of them will be helpful in one way or another.
As I settled in for my session, I found myself in a state of open exploration, uncertain of what precisely I wanted to focus on that day. While I harbored a multitude of aspirations, there was no singular objective guiding me. It was a departure from my usual approach, a deliberate surrender to my mind.
As the effects of ketamine began to envelop me, I descended deeper into my subconscious. Amidst the haze, a vivid image materialized: a large tree, stripped of leaves, its branches stretching wide. Bathed in an ethereal white light, it oscillated between luminosity and shadow, pulsing with an enigmatic energy. Adjacent to this arboreal spectacle hovered an orb, or perhaps a spectral presence, emanating whispers of growth and evolution.
In that moment, I was entranced by the pulsating tree and the enigmatic presence beside it. It was as though the universe had orchestrated this encounter to impart a message of profound significance.
As I continued on my session, I found myself confronting this thought I kept having, this lie I’ve told pretty much my whole adult life. I’ll spare the details of it, but it was something that shaped who I was to other people. It was something that I lied about for so long that it became part of me, all of me. I felt so ashamed by it but It had gone on for so long that, I didn’t feel I could break free from it because to do so, would mean I would have to be who I really was and I have never felt happy or ok with the “real” me.
I remember trying to dismiss this thought over and over, trying to re-bury it in my brain so I didn’t have to address it, but Ketamine doesn’t allow this to happen and the harder I tried in that moment to push it away, the harder it surfaced. I was in tears at this point with the most uneasy feeling, the feeling you get when you know you have done something wrong and you have to come clean about it, but something much deeper than that. I also was struggling with the fact that to me, this secret shaped who I currently was, so who will I be once I come clean? It was all very emotional and hard to process. It was also extremely difficult for me because my past sessions were all positive and about love. Little did I know, this session would be the most positive one I’ve had to date.
Even though I was terrified of how coming clean would go, about accepting my true self and loving that version of me. I felt a small sense of peace that despite what happens, Ill be the real me and I can learn to love that part of me despite what others may feel. I was willing to risk losing what I loved the most, because it meant I would be free of this lingering cloud.
All I could think about the rest of this session was that I had to come clean and I had to accept myself for who I really was. That I owed it to the inner child in me, the past “me’s” of my life, the future me as well. I owed it to them all to be me, no matter how good or bad I felt about it. I kept seeing this tree that I mentioned before, and really started to think about its meaning. Perhaps it was a sign of growth to come, a large dead tree missing its leaves, having to prune the branches so that new life, new growth can happen. Perhaps it was a representation of a unsightly growth that I had let my current self become, that wasn’t easy to look at and even harder to confront. Whatever It was, I knew that after this session ended I had to be 100% me forever.
The evening after my therapy session, I brought my partner into the room and opened up about my experience. I confessed to them that I had been lying my entire life and that some of those lies had affected them too. This confession prompted some difficult questions from my partner, such as “why did you feel the need to fabricate stories like that?” and “where did the need to lie like that come from?” At first, I didn’t have a good answer, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that my lies stemmed from a deep-seated fear of being seen for who I really was. From childhood, I had always been made to feel ashamed of myself, and I never wanted to reveal my true self. So instead, I made up stories about my life to make myself seem more interesting, fun, or exciting. This led to a lot of anxiety and stress building up inside me, not only from having to keep up with the lies but also from denying who I really was. Now, I am on a journey to accept and love myself for who I truly am. This therapy session was one of the most impactful experiences of my life, and I will always remember the lessons I learned that day.