In the helping professions, the desire to care for others is a calling and can also feel heavy at times. Therapists, physicians, and other caregivers often carry the emotional weight of their clients’ and patients’ struggles, navigating a constant stream of suffering, loss, and uncertainty. Over time, this exposure can lead to therapist burnout and vicarious trauma, depleting mental and emotional reserves.
While traditional self-care practices like mindfulness, therapy, and rest are important, they may not always reach the depths of healing needed for those who spend their lives holding space for others. This is where Group Ketamine Therapy (G-KAT or G-KAP) offers a unique and transformative approach, providing a powerful reset for caregivers struggling with emotional exhaustion, burnout prevention, and secondary trauma.
Understanding Burnout and Vicarious Trauma
Burnout in therapists, physicians, and healthcare professionals often presents as emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and a diminished sense of accomplishment. It can feel like an unrelenting depletion of energy, compassion, and connection. Closely tied to burnout, vicarious trauma occurs when helping professionals absorb the emotional pain and distress of those they help, gradually altering their sense of safety, trust, and perspective.
Burnout and vicarious trauma recovery is crucial, as prolonged exposure to others’ suffering can reshape a caregiver’s worldview, leading to feelings of hopelessness, numbness, or emotional overwhelm. Without deliberate efforts to heal and restore balance, both vicarious trauma and burnout can erode a caregiver’s ability to connect, find purpose in their work, and maintain their own emotional well-being.
These conditions are not simply personal failures to manage stress—they are systemic issues that arise when professionals are consistently asked to do too much with too few resources. Many mental health professionals are seeking effective treatments beyond traditional methods, and psychedelic-assisted therapy for burnout is emerging as a promising avenue for healing.
How Ketamine-Assisted Therapy Helps
Ketamine therapy for burnout works on multiple levels:
A Reset for the Nervous System:
Ketamine disrupts default patterns of overthinking and emotional constriction, creating a sense of calm and spaciousness.
Access to Deeper Awareness:
Participants describe ketamine sessions as opening a doorway to previously inaccessible emotions or perspectives, enabling them to process grief, anger, or fatigue in a safe, supported way.
Reconnection to Meaning and Purpose:
Psychedelic therapy for healthcare professionals can help individuals reconnect to their sense of purpose and compassion, reigniting their motivation for caregiving.
Why Group Work Is So Powerful
While individual ketamine therapy can be profoundly healing, the group ketamine therapy process enhances these effects by creating a supportive community of like-minded professionals.
The group setting offers:
Shared Understanding:
Participants bond over the common challenges of caregiving, finding solace in knowing they are not alone.
Collective Insight:
The integration process allows participants to learn from one another’s experiences, deepening their own healing.
Reconnection to Community:
Burnout often creates feelings of isolation, but the ketamine-assisted group therapy experience restores a sense of belonging and shared humanity.
The Group Ketamine Therapy Process
Group Ketamine-Assisted Therapy is designed to provide therapists and physicians with a safe, structured environment for deep healing and connection. This process blends medical safety, therapeutic support, and integration to help professionals overcome physician burnout recovery and empathy fatigue.
Medical Intake
Each participant undergoes an individual medical screening to ensure ketamine therapy for burnout is safe and appropriate. This includes reviewing medical history, current medications, and overall mental health.
Two Preparation Sessions (as a Group)
Before beginning the group ketamine therapy, participants meet for two preparation sessions led by experienced therapists. These sessions focus on:
- Building trust among group members
- Exploring each participant’s intentions for the experience
- Setting expectations for the ketamine-assisted therapy process
- Learning grounding techniques to create a sense of safety
These sessions ensure participants feel supported and connected before embarking on their ketamine therapy for emotional exhaustion.
Four Ketamine Experiential Sessions (as a Group)
Participants gather in a comfortable, therapeutic space to receive ketamine-assisted therapy for healthcare workers. The sessions include:
- A calming environment with soft lighting and music to support introspection
- Individual journeys experienced in the shared presence of others
- Quiet support and monitoring from facilitators
- Contemplation and gentle processing at the close of the experience
During these sessions, many professionals experience profound insights, emotional release, and a sense of connection to themselves and others. The group ketamine therapy benefits include collective healing, reduced isolation, and the opportunity to process trauma in a supportive setting.
Healing Burnout and Vicarious Trauma
The helping professions require an extraordinary capacity for empathy, resilience, and compassion. Without intentional self-care, therapists and physicians risk losing connection to the very qualities that make their work possible. Group Ketamine-Assisted Therapy offers a path to healing that goes beyond traditional approaches, addressing the deep wounds of burnout, emotional exhaustion, and vicarious trauma.
This work is not just about relief from symptoms—it’s about creating space to process the grief, exhaustion, and overwhelm that come from holding so much for others. It’s about reconnecting to purpose, meaning, and the joy of serving, so that therapists and physicians can continue to do their work—not from a place of depletion, but from a place of wholeness.
A Call to Care for the Caregivers
Burnout and vicarious trauma are not personal failings—they are reflections of systems that ask too much from those who give so much. Group Ketamine-Assisted Therapy offers an innovative, compassionate way to address these challenges, reminding caregivers that they, too, are worthy of care.
If you’re a therapist, physician, or caregiver struggling with burnout or vicarious trauma, consider taking this step toward healing—not just for yourself, but for the countless lives you touch. Because when you heal, your light can illuminate the path for others.
About the Author
Erin Jacklin, PsyD, LCP
Dr. Erin Jacklin, CEO and founder of The Catalyst Center is passionate about psychedelic assisted therapy, assessing and celebrating neurodiversity, and depth supervision. A longtime meditator and keen observer of human patterns of behavior, Erin blends a calm centered presence with her deep knowledge base. She is not currenting taking new weekly therapy clients, but remains available for supervision, assessment, psychedelic assisted therapy, and business consulting.
Interested in Learning More?
Learn more about our Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy and Group Ketamine Therapy at The Catalyst Center
If you are interested in connecting with support, our specialized team is here to help. You are not alone. Call 720-675-7123 or contact us below.