A Deep Dive Into the Clinical Process of Psychedelic Psychotherapy

Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy is a powerful modality for healing trauma, deepening self-awareness, and fostering emotional transformation. Yet, it requires profound therapeutic relationships, boundaries, and integration. What does it take to facilitate psychological healing with psychedelic therapy?

Psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Gita Vaid takes a relational and process-oriented approach to psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. Ketamine-assisted psychotherapy can reactivate emotional connection, surface suppressed trauma, and promote personal growth when guided by an attuned therapeutic relationship. Gita emphasizes the value of clinician self-development, stating that true transformation occurs when the therapist and patient engage in a co-healing process. She advises practitioners to trust the unfolding nature of psychedelic work, listen carefully to their clients’ inner narratives, and prioritize building safety and intimacy throughout treatment.

In this episode of Living Medicine, Dr. Sandy Newes interviews Gita Vaid, MD, Co-founder and Medical Director at the Center for Natural Intelligence, about the clinical and relational depth of psychedelic-assisted therapy. Gita discusses attachment repair, the shift from trauma identity to well-being, and how music and innovation can enhance the healing process.

This episode is brought to you by the Living Medicine Institute.

LMI is a training, resource, and membership program educating providers about the legal and safe use of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy.

To learn more or participate, visit https://livingmedicineinstitute.com.

Intro 0:00

Welcome to the Living Medicine Podcast, where we talk about ethical medical use of psychedelic psychotherapy, teaching skills, examining the issues and interviewing interesting people. Now let’s start today’s show.

Dr. Sandy Newes 0:16

Hello everyone. I am Dr. Sandy, newest with Living Medicine Institute. Living Medicine Institute is a business that provides resources and training and content and community for professionals, clinical and medical professionals, and interested folks who are interested in this psychedelic assisted psychotherapy and the practice of that. And I’m really honored today to have Dr. Gita Vaid, who I met at a retreat that she was helping to co lead through ketamine Training Center. And that’s how I know her. And then I have since seen you speak at conferences, and I’ve seen YouTube videos and this and that, and I’m really honored to have Dr. Vaid here, and so I’ll give you her formal bio first, which is, she is a board certified psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, which is something that we’re going to talk some about, I hope, practicing ketamine assisted psychotherapy in New York City. She is co founder of the Center for Natural Intelligence, which is a multi disciplinary laboratory dedicated to psychedelic psychotherapy, innovation and clinical practice. She’s on the faculty at NYU Medical Center and a psychoanalytic training at the Psychoanalytic Association of New York. She’s trained in lots of many, many different things. And I also know, I believe, right, that you are one of the trainers with the mind med program as well, which is an international program teaching about psychedelic assisted psychotherapy. So so that’s the formal. Is there anything that I missed in there that you want to add, that people want to know about you on the kind of what you do in the world side? No,

Gita Vaid, MD 1:53

I think you pretty much covered everything. And thank you for having me on the podcast. It’s a pleasure to be with you.

Dr. Sandy Newes 2:00

Well, I am really thrilled to be here. And as you know, I have always just been very impressed by your ability to articulate the complex clinical process that is really found in psychedelic assisted psychotherapy. And you know, many people you know are like, aren’t you just kind of like hanging out, and hopefully we’re past that as a field, but there are still many people who think that that’s just what we’re doing. So So for the people who are listening, I My hope is that we’ll be weaving that in just some some discussions of the more kind of complex clinical processes and also innovation that can be found in this. But I want to start just because I always love to start with this is like, you know, kind of, how did you make your way to the psychedelic field, and what draws you and what keeps you there? Like, what excites you? Like, how did you find yourself, like, on this path, like, committed to this well,

Gita Vaid, MD 2:53

actually, the way I got into it is an interesting story. And in hindsight, I think that, you know, oftentimes I think people who get into this work, feel like, you know, there’s sort of an unfolding that happens which very much mirrors, I think, the psychedelic process healing itself. I was in private practice for quite a long time, already a psychiatrist and a psychoanalyst and really enjoying clinical work, doing psychodynamic psychotherapy predominantly, and also psychopharm for, usually for colleagues who I would not really work with, individuals who just wanted to dampen symptoms, but to manage symptoms. For my my own patients who were interested in the deeper process, or colleagues who were psychotherapists. I was really interested in pharmacology too. And one of my close colleagues who I admire, was an older psychoanalyst who had the privilege of working with Dr. Humphrey Osmond back and Dr. Humphrey Osmond, as many people might know, was the psychiatrist who worked with alcoholism a lot in Canada, yeah, and he coined the term psychedelics, actually, because he was Using LSD psychotherapy at that point. So my colleague told me all about his experiences. And in those days, you could write to Sandoz and get a vial of LSD for research.

Dr. Sandy Newes 4:09

Excuse me, can I get some of that? Please? Sure. There you go.

Gita Vaid, MD 4:14

Did this and with his, with his young therapy friends, they explored and experimented, and he talked so much, but how it changed his life. So I heard all about a lot about this from people who are back in the earlier wave of psychedelics, and it was beyond fascinating. And I just thought, well, that’s not happening in my life and in my career, but I was on faculty at NYU, so I did wind up with him, connecting with the group, with Steven Steve Ross’s group, who were doing a lot of work with psilocybin at the time, with life anxiety and and depression, with also Dr. Gus. And I was really interested in the research that was coming out. But actually I think what really galvanized my own personal journey was I was working with a gentleman. I would only meet with twice a year for psychopharm Follow up just to refill his sleeping meds, his as needed meds. He was doing great, and he came in for a follow up visit, and the experience of sitting with him was incredibly different. So I kept on borrowing around, asking what was different in his life and in terms of his everyday life, nothing had changed. Wow, interesting. And so I finally asked him, like, he’s like, What are you trying to get at? And I said, I’m trying to understand. I just leveled with him, yeah, it’s so different sitting with you. And he said, what’s so different? And I said, I can have emotional connection with you like I’ve never experienced before. Yeah, trying. I’m scratching my head, wondering what’s different, and your relationship is the same. Your life, work, life and work is the same. And he said, is it that noticeable? And it was interesting. And the one who told me he was working with an underground facilitator, not because he had end of life cancer and anxiety, but because he was in his 80s, and he figured, I’m dealing with mortality and it’s permanent than when I was younger, and this underground therapist has changed my life. Yeah, I asked him, would you ask that therapist if he’d be interested and open to have a conversation with me? And that’s really where I got much more intrigued, because that person, who’s now become a friend, mentor, colleague, he really spoke my language as a psychoanalyst, and really showed me, with this one person, how this was possible. And really in my own experience, I saw the access it allowed one to have, and the healing potential became very apparent to me, and that starts sparked my journey. So

Dr. Sandy Newes 6:37

it was kind of through the research side you’re getting exposed to that. You’re kind of in New York City, in that hotbed of psychoanalysis, and, you know, and then you see this, this patient who’s just, like, remarkably different. Oh, how interesting my mind, right? And good for you for noticing that of it. He was like, What would so then you went on and, you know, started to do this clinically. I know you’re still involved in research, and, you know, kind of very interested.

Gita Vaid, MD 7:06

Then I felt I need to know what’s going on in the field. And I started, you know, getting involved with maps, becoming a Maps therapist, and really learning everything, working with a lot of underground facilitators to learn everything I could about it. At that point, it was early in the second wave, so people were very accessible and excited and open. And I saw Dr. Phil Wolfson talking at a bunch of conferences, and thought he was brilliant, and was starting to run ketamine and read about it. And then when he announced his first training in ketamine assisted psychotherapy, I pretty much bombarded him with emails, because he was never getting back to me, saying, I want to be part of this. And he finally said, Stop writing to me. You’re on the list. Calm down. Okay, go to the training and got very excited about it. He invited me to teach at the ketamine Training Center, and really transformed my practice, because here was the medicine that was available, short acting and very much user friendly right now. Good, great. So let’s

Dr. Sandy Newes 8:04

just, just to give a little context, we don’t need to get in all the differences of routes of administration and stuff, but in your clinical practice, so just so that people have contacts, like, what route of administration do you use? And you know, do you have, like, a large practice, small practice, medium practice, and then, do you have a clinical specialty? So I want to get into the clinical process next, but I just want to make sure that people have context. Yeah, I have a

Gita Vaid, MD 8:28

small private practice in New York City. It hasn’t really changed in a way that much from when I first started off in terms of my interest. Everything has changed because I’m now a psychedelic psychotherapist, but I work in my practice, and I work with ketamine, I use the intramuscular administration. So that’s pretty much what I use for a variety of reasons. I was using lozenges and intramuscular but there’s a lot of issues with me getting lozenges these days because of, really, because of the businesses, you know, these distribute. I lose my ability to get the im if I use it, it’s a whole complicated thing that many people are aware of. So I work with the im and I would say I my practice has always been, even when I was a psychotherapist, is if someone was in crisis, I might would stabilize them. But really, I was interested in doing the deeper process to get to the underpinnings of healing and seeing how much plasticity there was to get to the deeper layers of why someone is depressed or anxious or not feeling their best or thriving. And the same is true with psychedelic psychotherapy. If someone is in deep despair or suicidal, I might advise them to actually go to an IV clinic to get stable and less stable. They might come back to me to do the deeper process of now, let’s try. And now your head is above water. Let’s get work. And when someone’s drowning, it’s hard to do the deeper work because the issue stabilizing. But I’m really much more into it, so I, you know, really work with people doing three hour sessions to try and get to the deeper process and activate, you know, their own healing.

Dr. Sandy Newes 9:57

Nice, all right. So let’s talk about that. So, you know, let’s, we can just start general. I know that I have heard you talk about psychodynamic psychotherapy, or a psychoanalyst, I also, you know, was trained in psychodynamic with a real focus on the use of the relationship in the present moment. And so, you know, those are some things you know, that really captured my attention. So just in thinking about that, like, you know, if you consider yourself to be a psychodynamic or, you know, psychoanalytic therapist using ketamine, like, what does that look like? What does what is your like? Tell me about your clinical approach.

Gita Vaid, MD 10:35

Well, I would say a lot of the pieces of how I work, which is fairly similar to you, I think, in terms of being very interested in the relationship, using a relationship, being in the present moment, using transference, all of that is applicable. So a lot of my skills that I honed as a psychoanalyst or a psychodynamic psychotherapist are still incredibly relevant and applicable. And so what I do in my office, I really would say, is really psychedelic psychotherapy, because I think even though the some of the tenants are the same, the application is different. Yeah, highly relational. I think one of the big shifts that I like to think about is with psychodynamic psychotherapy. It’s very much focused on, how is the past affecting moment? How are these, yeah, interjects or dynamics that are patterns that we hold in our mind and in our body. How do they play out in the present moment, in one’s everyday life? Yeah, oftentimes, a lot of the work is trying to elucidate those kind of parallels, and, more importantly, seeing them in the transference, in the room right there. So in that kind of crucible, in the transference, you can kind of have a chance of work through working through them.

Dr. Sandy Newes 11:43

And can you give an example of that? Like, I think a lot of times people throw around those terms, but people are kind of hungry, you know, like, like, I do a whole extensive developmental history during preparation, which is not something that everybody does, but I can’t really work without it. And I would assume that you do some of that as well. And then I’m also just curious how it shows up in the session then, well, I

Gita Vaid, MD 12:06

was gonna say that’s more for what I do with psychodynamic stuff, with the with the psychedelic psychotherapy, it’s a little bit different for me. I like to understand those patterns, and I assume they’re playing out. But more I’m interested in, let’s try and elucidate them, not to kind of labor over it, as I would have done in exhaustive detail as a psychic psychotherapist, more to realize, okay, so now you and I are up to speed. They’re probably playing out in present moment, and that’s your prison and how. And also, it’s not in your prison, it’s your cage, but it’s also solving a lot of underlying problems to allow you to be safe and be in the world safely and thriving. How do we actually fix the underlying problems, which allow you to break out of that box and actually flourish into ways that have previously not been available or established? So it really shifts it from backward focusing to actually future thinking. So I think that’s a big pivot that I really appreciate with with this work, to your point of, how does that look in the room? I would say it plays out in many different ways. A lot of it has to do with deep listening, of trying to listen to what’s happening following the person’s process. A lot of it is providing, I think, certain capacities that the person hasn’t been able to receive, or even if they have, they’re not in such an open state where they can actually absorb the feelings or the or the information. In some ways, it’s like almost upgrading the operating system in this crucible, because under psychedelic says, you know, the mind and body is prime for transformation, and we can really take in new stimuli. And you know, has to be accurate, otherwise it’s not going to resonate. But in that moment, someone is really able to hear and see and be reflected back and understand what’s happening. And I’ll say what happens. Oftentimes, a common thing that happens is when I will share things I’m noticing the person session, they will say, oh my goodness, Dr. page, you’re brilliant. And actually, everything I said is what you said. I’m very good at listening and reflecting back. Nonetheless, I didn’t say, You know what, you’re right, but never remembered it or been able to see it. Had you not been able to hold it up for me, and I would say it’s a very different and then there’s other subtleties that come with it, but I think that that’s a big piece of the corrective experience that’s possible, and filling in some of these foundational deficits that we all hold. And then I think from that almost following what’s happening, and how do we kind of keep that going so the person can move forward in their life.

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