Brian Henderson, AMFT
Associate Marriage and Family Therapist
San Francisco CA
Trauma takes many forms — it can be an accident, a loss, a violent act, a long pattern of mistreatment, or a life lived within white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism, or all of the above. It can be what happened to us and it can be something we don't know we didn't get, but deserved. No matter the origin, trauma has the effect of disconnecting us from parts of ourselves and from each other. Very often, what we lose contact with first is our bodies and the immediacy of our emotions. A vital part of the process of integrating trauma is finding a way home to the body — only then can we start reconnecting with others and building a more vibrant life.
Ketamine can be a useful medicine for understanding where our life force has gotten stuck. Through a Western psychological lens, ketamine’s dissociative effect can be understood as interrupting the habitual brain pathways along which we travel in relation to traumatic experiences. In disorganizing the way we are accustomed to experiencing the present, it offers the opportunity for new emotions, sensations, and thoughts to occur in relation to those experiences and make new perspectives on them possible.
We can thank indigenous traditions for preserving a more ritual or ceremonial framework, in which ketamine can be imagined as one of many portals available to us through which we can meet a more expansive version of ourselves, connect with the ancestral memories held in our bodies, make contact with divine presence, and rediscover the inherent magic of the world around us. I tend to hold these paradigms as being simultaneously true.
We heal in the presence of other humans. I’m a human too, it turns out, and my humanity will be in the room with us.
I am a therapist. I am also a writer, a swimmer, and a lover of queer dancefloors and music. To inform our work, I will call on my experience as a gay man who has grappled with unlocking his own life force and on my decade-long relationship with chronic pain. I will also reference my formal UC training as an ecologist and the inspiration I've received from Taoism to point out the ways that our healing journeys so often mirror processes in the natural world. Our souls go through seasons and weather patterns, just like the earth.
I believe that the body and what we feel in the present moment carry some of the most important information for our work. I also know that the history and health of the land we live on has so much to teach us about how to heal. I am a white cis man living on unceded Ohlone land. Part of my own journey toward wholeness involves consciousness of the ways that I embody forces that routinely rob people of their lives, loved ones, and land. We don't heal in isolation; we heal as a societal body. If our healing comes at the expense of folx on the margins, it is not true healing.
I look forward to meeting you and starting down a shared road.
I offer Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy and weekly ongoing psychedelic integration coaching, in addition to traditional psychotherapy. I work with couples and individuals, and specialize in working with the LGBTQ+ community and with folx suffering from chronic pain and illness. Visit my website for information on pricing, location, and contact info.