Jim Matto-Shepard, PhD
Psychologist
Petaluma CA
At our core, each of us has an intrinsic aspect of ourselves that is devoted to transformation and development: a desire to find our place, manifest our capacities, and live freely. To consciously access this “inner healer” and align our efforts, we must integrate traumatic memories, bring awareness to unconscious safety strategies and develop practices that support conscious living. This requires a safe relationship, practices that allow the unconscious aspects of our personality into awareness, and strategies for working with them as they show up.
Together we can create a safe container to help clarify your heart’s longing, identify unconscious complexes that are blocking your fulfillment and employ practices to create more enduring awareness. I have studied and thus employ practices from Somatic and relational psychology, ritual and meditation; how that unfolds is based on deep listening and an assessment of what is right in any given moment.
I have been involved in the psychedelic world since the early 1970s. I have experience with all of the usual psychedelics used for psychotherapy and transformation. I have been working in mental health in one way or the other since 1978 and received my psychologist license in 1997.
My specializations over the past twenty years have been somatic psychotherapy, couples work and group psychotherapy. I have also studied several of the most cutting edge techniques of psychotherapy (i.e., AEDP, NARM & ISP), have a great deal of experience with ritual and am a long time meditator.
In addition, I am a Soul Motion conscious dance teacher. I am a graduate of the CIIS certificate program for research with psychedelic assisted psychotherapy and I’m part of the MAPS program. Along with with three colleagues, I have opened a ketamine clinic in Petaluma, California where we do Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy. We offer integration counseling for groups and individuals and also expect to be participating in the MAPS expanded access program providing MDMA to people with diagnoses of severe PTSD when the FDA approves the protocol.