Group Details:

Healing from Spiritual Trauma 12 Week Group: April 22th - July 8st

Facilitators: Dr Hillary McBride and Ryan Newman

Location: in person sessions will be at Upstream Medical - 2276 Clearbrook Rd, Abbotsford BC

Online Weekly Groups: Wednesdays: April 22 - July 8 (7:30 - 9:30 pm)

In-person KAT sessions: May 22 (2:30-6:30pm), May 29 (4:30-8:30pm), & June 5 (2:30-6:30pm)

Program Cost: $4250 (payment options available: two installments of $2125 or one time payment)

**please note if this group is not full then we will cancel 2 weeks prior and you will be fully refunded

Each group is facilitated by a practitioner holding a license or registration in good standing. The larger team includes a medical doctor, nurse practitioner, registered psychologist, and registered clinical counsellors.

Therapists on the team have training in a variety of areas and interventions including: MAPS, Therapsil, Roots to Thrive in the psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, Psychedelic Somatic Integrative Psychotherapy (PSIP), AEDP and IFS, Therapsil, EMDR, and somatic trauma work.

We are inherently relational beings: relationship is the landscape within which our identity develops, and we come to know who we are and how to be human. Relationships are also the place where so much of our wounding happens. We learn through our relationships, especially those early in development, what will compromise our ability to belong to others, what we must face alone, and what overwhelms the ones we love. As a result, we learn to turn away from the pain inside of ourselves, the way that others turned away from it. This means that experiences that were difficult were also often lonely, and went unprocessed. 



Katalyst is designed to utilize two medicines: the medicine of relationship, and the medicine of Ketamine. Both help cultivate healing, support, and more possibility of turning towards what lives unprocessed within us and has been unbearable to be with on the inside. Both these medicines also help us have greater access to our core essence that holds the wisdom of our own personal healing journey.

The content offered in the sessions will focus on:

• Learning about the strategies we develop which contribute to unhelpful patterns internally and relationally

• The defenses we use which help us manage but keep us from a life of presence and connectedness

• The process of emotions

• How trauma is manifested and articulated in the sensations and movement of the body

• How we can begin to set down the defensive strategies we no longer need

• What it is like to feel good in the here and now

We will practice taking risks to first meet, and then share part of ourselves we had to learn to hide, all within the container of the group relationships, where each person can be compassionately witnessed by other group members.

All group session facilitators will be introduced in our first session together. Our group sizes are capped at a maximum of 8 participants.

In addition to the 12 weekly group meetings, 3 in-person ketamine sessions with your group will occur on 3 separate weekends throughout the program. The ketamine-assisted therapy (KAT) session will be approximately 4 hours, from entering the space to when you have someone pick you up.

The therapeutic ketamine sessions will be overseen and accompanied by a physician or nurse practitioner, nurse, your two group facilitators and one other therapeutic support person. Our priority is that you are safe, and you feel supported leading up to, during, and coming out of the session. 

Ketamine will be administered to you sublingually (under the tongue) for your first session and intramuscularly (injection) for the second and third sessions. 

Please note you will need to arrange a ride home from the KAT session. 

Ketamine is a commonly used medication in our hospitals across Canada for anesthesia, and it has anxiolytic, antidepressant, and psychedelic effects. Its dissociative properties allow you to be disconnected from the typical way you think about and experience your life, which helps you gain new insights into your inner world. Things that were hard or intolerable to understand, feel, or remember become more accessible or clear, making it easier to process and resolve them.

Ketamine, when used alongside therapy, has been shown to be effective in the treatment of anxiety disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, treatment-resistant depression and substance use disorder. 

The clinical impact of Ketamine therapy begins during the treatment session, but continues for a number of weeks following the session due to chemical changes in the brain which make structural changes, learning, and growth even more possible.

Currently, our services are offered to people experiencing anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and/or substance use disorder. You will be asked to have a reading of baseline vitals from a walk in clinic or your doctor’s office during the medical screening process. You will then meet with our medical team for a consult.



We want you to be as supported as possible while trying this approach to treatment. This means, we require you to have a support person outside of the group, who knows you will be participating in this program, who you can connect with at any point during the group, especially following ketamine treatments, should you find yourself needing more support. This person could be a family member, parent, partner, friend, or colleague, and who you know has your best interest in mind and can listen to you if you want to share with them about what you are learning and the things that feel challenging or hopeful. At the intake appointment, we will ask you to identify if you have a person selected, if you’ve spoken with them about playing this role, and if they agree to being your extra support person should you need it. 



We also require each participant to be working with their own personal psychotherapist at least once a month over the course of the group. It’s important to us that each participant has a large therapeutic net of relationships to draw from in this process. If you are not currently working with a therapist we have a team to refer you to who has options for affordable counseling. If you experience an increase in suicidality over the course of the group, we will expect you to inform your physician, your therapist, your Katalyst group facilitators, and ask you to contact the crisis line at any point if you are in crisis by phoning 1-800-784-2433 or by chat through www.crisiscentrechat.ca 

Exclusion criteria includes allergic reaction to ketamine, presence of psychotic symptoms, severe liver disease, and kidney disease. Ketamine may increase your heart rate and blood pressure during the session. For this reason, if you have uncontrolled hypertension or cardiovascular disease, it is essential you speak to your healthcare provider or the physician on our medical team on how best to manage your condition before starting this treatment. Please note that your blood pressure will be checked during the KAT session to ensure your wellbeing. Certain medication may interact with ketamine so it is imperative that you inform the medical team of all medication you are currently using.

Although using ketamine therapeutically has the potential for positive outcomes, there are also some potential risks. You may experience a temporary elevated heart rate or blood pressure. The most common side-effect is mild nausea/vomiting; we will have anti nausea medication available to you before the start of the session if needed. 

Ketamine impacts each person differently, which means some people may experience more psychedelic features of the medication than others. It is possible that while using Ketamine therapeutically, that a person will encounter challenging psychological material, including difficult or previously unexplored memories or emotions. 

Therapists will be present to support individuals process these memories and emotions, and it is important to let someone know during or after a session if you need some support. Even though the medicine session typically itself lasts 1-2 hours, you may still experience some effects of the ketamine so you are not to operate any heavy machinery including an automobile until the following day. 

$3800.00 (Includes: physician and psychological consult, 12 week group program, 3 KAT sessions and your prescription medication)

Payment options:

• Option 1 - Full payment at time of registration 

• Option 2 - Payments in 2 installments. At time of registration, the first payment of $1,900.00 will be processed.

Full payment has to be received by the program start date. If a participant needs to withdraw from the program, please be advised these are our guidelines:

Withdrawal 61 days before the start date: Full refund

Withdrawal 45 - 60 days before the start date: Full refund minus any cost of intake appointments already completed

Withdrawal 3 weeks before program start: 50%

**Please note - if the group is not full 2 weeks before the program start date then it will be cancelled and a full refund will be issued.

Inspired by the innovative work of Roots To Thrive (RTT), Katalyst groups are designed to combine the process elements of psychodynamic group and non-hierarchical consciousness raising group work with psychoeducational components and experiential interventions informed by Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP), Internal Family Systems Theory (IFS), Relational Cultural Theory/ Therapy, Polyvagal theory, Relational/cultural therapy, Somatic parts work, and Somatic trauma work.

The teaching explores defenses/protective and managing parts of us, the development of internal working models and inhibition of emotions, our core emotions themselves that have often been exiled and unfelt, emotions as bodily and relational processes that have a natural and experiential arc to them, and the way back to our core self through feeling and connection.

In addition, we will explore the impact of attachment trauma and how that is communicated and processed through bodily and relational experiences. We will learn to work with the body’s natural messaging systems (Autonomic nervous system activation, movement, emotion, and sensation) to understand what experiences and emotions need to be processed and how to move through them in effective and connected ways. 

Through working with the body and relationships, we learn to make space for what has been unbearable to be with and bring us back to our core unwavering wise self.