Why Art Therapies and Ketamine Work So Well Together
Here's what makes this combination so powerful: both ketamine and creative expression tap into the same non-ordinary states of consciousness. Both can bypass our usual mental defenses, such as those parts that are often dominated by analyzing, judging, and trying to make everything make sense.
During ketamine sessions, our defenses are often lowered, and we access parts of ourselves that aren't available during the day-to-day. This experience parallels what can happen when we’re engaged in a fulfilling creative process.
For example, someone may have a picture, image, or dream-like experience come up during a ketamine journey. Say someone had the imagery or feeling of being underwater, unable to reach the surface. Rather than limiting this to verbal processing, that person could begin sculpting with clay, creating figures breaking free from the water, or a cocoon, or any other object that symbolizes the water. With each piece, this person isn’t just remembering their session; they are also continuing the work their psyche had begun, and they are finding a strength-based action (figures breaking free) to what very well may have been a difficult journey. Perhaps this then leads the person to discuss how their body feels when they create figures breaking free, thus continuing the work of integrating and making new meaning. This process also helps us establish an ongoing relationship with ourselves and our healing process, which we can access independently.
The Neuroscience That Backs This Up
Recent neuroimaging studies give us some fascinating insights. Ketamine primarily works on the brain's default mode network—that's the area responsible for rumination, self-criticism, and those repetitive thought patterns many of us are familiar with. When ketamine quiets that network down, space opens up for new neural connections.
At the same time, expressive arts therapy activates the brain's creative networks—the right hemisphere's visual-spatial centers and the corpus callosum, which facilitates communication between both sides of the brain. Dr. Michael Mithoefer refers to this as "bilateral integration," which means that we're not just thinking differently—we're experiencing ourselves and life differently; much deeper work than just thinking.
When you combine these approaches, you're essentially giving those new neural pathways formed during ketamine sessions a means to strengthen and remain intact. Instead of insights fading back into old patterns, they become embodied, visual, and tangible.
How This Actually Works in Practice
Based on clinical experience, here's what tends to be effective in ketamine-arts integration:
Capturing What Can't Be Said People often emerge from their ketamine journey with profound realizations that are beyond words (ineffable). They commonly express frustration with the limitations of language when trying to convey their experience. Art becomes their way of preserving those wordless knowings—the feelings, the body sensations, the sudden understanding that lives deeper, or beyond, language.
Building Their Personal Healing Map The imagery and symbols that appear during ketamine sessions typically aren't random occurrences. They often represent communications from the unconscious, pointing toward what needs attention in the healing process. When we create art or find ways to express the information, we are essentially building our own roadmap for integration. Noticing what comes up when we engage in an art process can deepen the ketamine experience.
Making Sense of the Difficult Sessions Not every ketamine experience feels positive or enlightening. People do encounter painful memories, difficult emotions, or confusing material. Creative practices provide a way to be with these challenging sessions without the immediate pressure to understand or resolve them. With a trained art therapist, there are creative processes that can calm people if they are very dysregulated coming out of the ketamine journey. And often, what initially seemed negative or unhelpful reveals its therapeutic value through the creative process. Engaging in a creative activity with a trained therapist can increase feelings of safety, balance, and regulation after a difficult journey.
Getting Past Creative Resistance It’s very common to be hesitant to engage in a creative activity, often due to past experiences where someone was told they weren't artistic or they got the messaging that creativity wasn't valuable or as important as other things. These beliefs can create resistance to anything non-linear or intuitive. Interestingly, ketamine naturally softens these limiting beliefs, making treatment an optimal time to reconnect with innate creative capacities.
Working with Whatever Therapy Model You Use Arts integration adapts well to various therapeutic approaches. Whether you're also engaging in IFS, ACT, CBT, or other modalities, creative elements can be woven into existing frameworks. Art becomes a bridge that connects ketamine insights with the existing therapeutic approach.
Practical Guidance
Research suggests that timing plays a significant role in integration work effectiveness. Here's what tends to work well:
Before the Session Gentle, opening activities work best—perhaps going for a walk and picking objects that you like, and playing around with placing this objects in different places to enjoy looking at—and perhaps writing down why these objects ‘called’ to you. Is it the smoothness of a stone that is comforting? The leaf that had a beautiful shape that is engaging to look at? This sensory and creative activity is designed to engage you in a way that feels safe and bypasses the need for words or logic, allowing you to open up to the present moment.
Right After the Journey: This is when we are still in the liminal space. In my office, I have collage materials, including lots of magazines, calendars, and other images cut out, which clients can look at and choose from. They may select some pictures that express the journey; they may also choose an image that symbolizes how they are feeling in that moment. They may pick an image that will support them over the next few days. This form of externalizing what is internal can serve as an anchor as they go back home to their lives.
Continued Integration: Depending on the individual's needs and preferences, I may offer guided imagery, ritual, writing, drawing, movement, or sound activities to help them continue processing the content that emerged during the journey and work on any other themes, issues, or goals they have.
Ongoing Practice: Even brief periods of creative engagement can help maintain active neural pathways. Many clients develop their own rituals—drawing while listening to music, keeping a visual journal alongside regular journaling, creating poetry, the ideas are endless!
Matching Methods to the person
People process information in various ways, and meeting people where they are is incredibly important.
For visual processors: Painting, drawing, collage, photography.
For kinesthetic learners: Movement, dance, working with clay, sculpture. If ketamine helped someone feel more connected to their body, these approaches can help anchor that embodied awareness.
For auditory processors: Music, sound exploration, creating playlists. Some people develop enhanced musical sensitivity during treatment—exploring sound as a healing tool can be especially meaningful.
For verbal processors: Creative writing, poetry, storytelling. This bridges someone’s comfort with words and the more symbolic, metaphorical material that often emerges during sessions.
Working Through Creative Resistance
Resistance to creative activities is extremely common, with many expressing that they're not artistic. This resistance often stems from childhood experiences where creativity was criticized or devalued compared to academic subjects. These experiences can create the same kind of mental rigidity that contributes to depression and anxiety patterns.
Ketamine therapy can help to start breaking up limiting beliefs. The inner critic that usually evaluates creative attempts as inadequate may become quieter during and after treatment. The perfectionism that would normally shut down creative exploration may becomes less dominant. This makes ketamine treatment an opportune time to reconnect with natural creative capacities that existed before external criticism took hold.
Expressive art therapy isn't aboutcreating aesthetically pleasing art—a product. Rather, it's about honoring the communications emerging from the unconscious mind—a process. A simple scribble, drawing or sketch that captures how someone felt during a session has significantly more therapeutic value than any technically perfect piece that doesn't connect to their inner experience.
What Success Actually Looks Like
Traditional therapy metrics don't always capture what happens when ketamine is integrated with arts therapy. Different markers tend to be more relevant:
Peopl often develop an enhanced ability to access and name emotions that previously felt overwhelming or vague. They typically begin treating themselves—and their creative expressions—with increased kindness and less self-criticism. When difficult feelings arise during art-making, many develop improved capacity to stay present with the experience rather than shutting down or becoming avoidant. Having a trained arts therapist is vital to guide and support a person engaged in any form of art therapy.
Perhaps most importantly, there's often evidence of what could be called "sustained neuroplasticity"—insights from sessions continue to evolve and deepen through ongoing creative practice.
Moving Forward
If you're already working with ketamine therapy or considering engaging with this medicine, I'd encourage you to think about integration as seriously as you think about the sessions themselves. Every ketamine experience without proper integration is a missed opportunity to help you maximize the healing potential.
The combination isn't just additive—it's exponential. When clients give their insights form through creative expression, they're not just remembering their healing; they're continuing to live it, develop it, and let it transform how they move through the world.
Ready to Explore This Integration?
I'd love to talk with you about how expressive arts therapy might fit into your ketamine therapy. Whether you're curious about it, want to discuss specific challenges you are having, or are wondering how to incorporate this modality into your current preparation or integration.
Your experiences deserve to be honored, preserved, and woven into the life your are living, or the life you want to live.
Let's connect: Contact me to learn more.
Because healing isn't just about getting back to where you were—it's also about re-discovering who you are.