KAP Training at Polaris Insight Center with Veronika Gold, LMFT

Ketamine-assisted psychotherapy (KAP) is a powerful mental health treatment. Veronika Gold, LMFT, co-founder of Polaris Insight Center, and her team focus on offering high-quality KAP training to a growing community of therapists. Join Veronika as we learn more about their mission.

Getting to Know Veronika Gold, LMFT

Veronika Gold, a Czech Republic native, made the Bay Area her home in 2003. She has been interested in the exploration of consciousness and the healing potential of psychedelics since her teenage years. With expertise in trauma treatment, she helps clients prepare for and integrate psychedelic experiences. She also works with them on personal growth and relationship issues. Veronika is a co-founder of Polaris Insight Center, which provides Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP) as well as KAP training for therapists. She is also Sub-Investigator, therapist, and supervisor on MAPS MDMA-Assisted Therapy for the treatment of PTSD. Veronika has also served as a consultant and facilitator in trainings for EMDR and Organic Intelligence.

Co-Founding Polaris Insight Center

“My journey started long before I started working for MAPS. I had a lifelong interest in working with non-ordinary states of consciousness and the possibility of healing. In 2016, I entered the MAPS training program and started to work on the Phase Two study [with MDMA]. Ketamine was one of the medicines that was legally available, and I had colleagues who were working with ketamine at the time. I started working at an infusion clinic, and I’ve learned so much from seeing patients working with the medicine, but I saw the limits of working in that setting.

Talking with my colleagues at MAPS, we decided to start Polaris Insight Center [to work with ketamine]. Five of us began to plan the clinic in 2017, which started in 2018 and has been growing since then. We now have many more therapists who’ve joined us and have developed an online and in-person KAP training program.”

Exploring Different Paradigms of KAP

“There are different paradigms of working with ketamine. Many people know about the studies using ketamine for the treatment of depression. Almost all of those studies are from the use of IV [intravenous] ketamine [in the medical paradigm], and their focus is really on alleviating the symptoms – that’s what they’re measuring. People also use ketamine in the psychological paradigm, where it lubricates psychotherapy, lowers or relaxes defenses, and loosens boundaries and internal structures so that people have more access to (and an easier time working with) material they need to bring in and work through. Then we have the psychedelic or transpersonal paradigm (also termed phenomenological in some academic/research settings), where the healing happens through the transpersonal or psychedelic experience (itself). And, we could say there is a shamanic paradigm, where the guide or therapist will work together with the transpersonal experience in the process.”

“At Polaris Insight Center, we combine those four models to work with them. Of course, with all of these paradigms, the client is benefiting from the significant biochemical effect of ketamine and the support of psychotherapy. The focus is on processing underlying psychological material. However, we also consider the transpersonal psychedelic states as crucial for healing. The goal of KAP is to help people not only experience symptom reduction but also to help them have a better quality of life and address underlying issues. Sometimes the treatment focus involves looking at dynamics and events that happened in their life, and sometimes the therapy process goes deeper to transgenerational trauma.”

KAP Training with Polaris Insight Center

“We’re expanding the way we think about consciousness, the way to healing, and what our KAP training program focuses on. We provide a general overview of the different ways people work with ketamine. [In the KAP training program], we cover various topics and strategies of treatment, but also what the psychedelic experience is, what can come up, and how to work with it. It wasn’t our plan to have a KAP training program [originally], but it organically developed as we offered trainings for the students at CIIS. We started offering trainings for the therapists in our community to help them understand what clients are/would be going through with ketamine-assisted therapy processes and how we can work together to support the treatment process.

Overview of the KAP Training Program

Now, [the KAP training program] is quite extensive. We have ten modules. The first five modules are the introduction and focus on ketamine-assisted psychotherapy. Advanced modules 6 and 7 dig into more complex topics and in-depth case presentations. We then have a module on working with the Self of the therapist because we see how different it is to be a therapist working with non-ordinary states compared to traditional talk therapy. We highlight how the therapist can care for themselves when doing this work and how to help them process the material and carry it forward from session to session.

There is a medical module for medical providers (and others interested in an in-depth understanding of the biological and neuropsychological factors). We have a module on understanding the role of music, which includes creating playlists for ketamine-assisted sessions. We have an intensive, immersive, experiential KAP training where clinicians are learning to work with the medicine [directly]. Additionally, we provide consultation groups (for clinicians developing their practices and learning creative, grounded, and innovative ways to work in this field). All of these steps are part of becoming a competent, conscientious ketamine-assisted psychotherapist.”

Comprehensive Curriculum and Interactive Learning

“We [specifically] structured the modules to bring in many different topics. The broadest perspective on ketamine-assisted psychotherapy—and, in fact, all psychedelic-assisted therapy—includes looking at the historical perspective and the Indigenous roots [and methods] of working with non-ordinary states of consciousness and truly learning and honoring [them]. And then, we’re working somatically with touch and discussing transference and countertransference, as well as different integration challenges – not just how integration looks but also the struggles we encounter along the way. 

We also discuss working with trauma, addictions, and attachment issues and dive into topics of transpersonal psychology. Throughout, as much as possible, we are also doing breakout groups, where people get to process what they have been learning with each other. There are also Q&A sessions and a chat where people can ask questions throughout. We also have a module devoted to practice focused on preparation, integration, therapeutic interaction, working with non-ordinary states of consciousness (NOSCs), and working with music we use in session.

In module 2, there is an hour-and-a-half experiential in which we guide participants through a session where they go inward with eyeshades and music and then have an integration group – without the medicine. We’re introducing people to understand and practice cultivating their set and setting with an understanding of the session’s ritual or ceremonial elements. And in module 5, there’s a practice session where we ask people to work with something that’s real for them. Often, that’s the module people feel most nervous about ahead of time; at the end of the day, it’s their favorite module. So, there are a lot of different interactive and engaging elements to the KAP training program.”

The Journey of Becoming a KAP Therapist

“You know, the journey to becoming a skillful KAP therapist is not based on taking just one or even ten webinars. It truly is a journey of ‘becoming’ – continuous learning, self-reflection, consultation, and self-experience. There are things that people can learn themselves by reading books or watching webinars and presentations. Still, it’s also important to have interactive training and then put it into practice. In module 5, people practice with each other without the medicine to really learn the principles of ketamine-assisted psychotherapy and non-ordinary states. Once you finish the KAP training and have your own experience with the medicine, it is so important to continue with peer consultation.”

The Experiential Retreat & KAP Training

“The experiential retreat is a controversial topic in the field for different reasons. What if people don’t want to have an experience with the medicine (for various reasons)? We think you can work with the medicine without (direct) experience. Still, it really brings a different level of insight and understanding if the therapist has an experience with the medicine they’re working with.”

“We are providing the retreats in collaboration with Rainfall Medicine in Portland, [Oregon]. This immersive KAP training retreat is a collaboration of Polaris Insight Center and Rainfall (that takes place) over five days. We want the practitioner to learn through their own experience, start to create a relationship with the medicine they’re going to be working with, and also open the possibility to see a lot of different sessions because people respond to ketamine very differently. When they come to the retreat, each person will have two sessions as a client – one session with a sublingual lozenge of ketamine, and one session with the intramuscular ketamine.”

A Hands-On Approach to Learning

“People have the opportunity to be both the therapist and the client. Each person works with two different people over the week and switches roles. When they’re in the role of the therapist, they support their client. At the same time, they’re seeing the integration process for other people in the group and hearing about their journey. The retreats have 20-24 participants, and so when people come out of the retreat, they have heard or witnessed about 40 or 50 ketamine experiences.

We introduce different kinds of preparation and integration methods and activities, and we see that it is crucial in creating the setting and space to integrate the material. We bring together art therapy, movement, yoga, meditation, and sound journeys. Additionally, we do various activities together and teach different somatic techniques that people can do in sessions with clients. We talk in detail about a constant process and help people stay with the process and go deeper. We also improvise based on what comes from the questions that arise in the retreat setting. Together, this combination of experiences can properly foster more confidence in starting to work with clients.”

Building Community and Professional Support

“It’s really beautiful to see how many people have genuinely taken the experience into their practices and communities and then became more capable of having more trust and understanding of working with the medicine. KAP is something that is hard to learn just from webinars or videos. It’s also about a felt sense of the experience and trust of working with the medicine they can bring to their teams and build community.

I think community in psychedelic work is so important because it’s a new field, and some people are in areas where…they might be the only person providing this type of work. These retreats have the potential for people to create real alliances and build professional support networks. We’ve seen that people continue to meet afterward, create peer consultation and peer support groups, and start their own clinics. For us, [the community] has been most important in doing this work – from our team to the other clinics we’re fortunate to know – there’s been so much collaboration and support, and that’s incredibly crucial and beautiful.”

The Future with Ketamine and MDMA Therapy

“We live in such an exciting time, with so much change and potential. My orientation has been working with trauma and helping people with PTSD. Being able to work with MAPS and the MDMA-assisted psychotherapy trial has been so beautiful and life-changing – offering different treatments to help people resolve some parts of their trauma. I am so looking forward to this therapy being available. I imagine that there will be combinations in the future where people might be working with MDMA and ketamine together so that there will be more possibilities for healing… I’m excited about the possibility of providing this treatment, as well as MDMA treatment, in retreat settings, where someone can take a few days off before and after and have even more time to be with what is unfolding – to hold them and go even deeper into the process.”

The Importance of Co-Therapy and Collaboration

“We provide the MDMA therapy in co-therapy pairs, which is something that’s not so common, but it’s really wonderful to work with another clinician. It has been a great gift for me. I’ve been so grateful for the co-therapists I have worked with. I think we were able to give more to the participants in the study than we would have been able to provide just by ourselves.

We are looking forward to this model of having co-therapy teams providing the MDMA therapy and being able to…see the goals of the client and create treatment plans. This kind of collaboration, care, and support is what we provide for the clients. I think it’s really important to stay connected to our values as we are doing the work – why we are doing this – and to increase our training, get help, [and] cultivate community. I’ve learned so much about what this work requires of us and how much self-care we need to be able to do it well.”

Connecting with Polaris Insight Center

Veronika and the team at Polaris Insight Center would love to connect with you! “Please visit the website to find all the information. We have a newsletter that people can sign up for. Feel free to email any of us at Polaris Insight Center, and we’ll be happy to answer any questions or provide consultation.”