Facing the Inner Critic: What Ketamine Can Teach Us About Self-Compassion

There’s a voice inside many of us that never seems to rest. It questions, judges, compares. It can be sharp, familiar, and exhausting. The inner critic isn’t just a passing thought—it’s often a deeply embedded pattern shaped by trauma, culture, and survival strategies we’ve long outgrown.

Ketamine-assisted therapy can help shift how we relate to that voice. Not by silencing it forcefully, but by softening its grip—and perhaps, finally hearing what lies beneath it.

Meeting the Inner Critic in the Session

In ketamine work, especially when supported by somatic therapy, people often encounter their inner critic in a visceral way. It’s no longer just an idea or a habit of thought—it can feel like a presence, a posture in the body, even a weight in the chest. In this altered state of consciousness, there’s space to observe it with more distance. That separation is powerful. For many, it’s the first time they can see the critic clearly without being consumed by it.

What’s Underneath the Criticism?

The inner critic often tries to protect us—from shame, from rejection, from failure. In the ketamine state, the protective layers sometimes fall away, revealing the fear, grief, or unmet need beneath. When we stop fighting the critic and instead become curious, it changes. It softens.

This is where self-compassion begins—not by forcefully replacing judgment with affirmation, but by witnessing ourselves with tenderness and honesty. Sometimes that happens in words, other times through sensation or emotion rising in the body.

Rewiring Through Neuroplasticity

One of the remarkable things about ketamine is how it supports neuroplasticity—our brain’s ability to form new connections. That means when we begin to relate to ourselves differently during a session, we’re not just having an emotional insight. We’re laying down new neural pathways. We’re practicing what it feels like to respond with curiosity instead of criticism, with care instead of contempt.

Why Somatic Therapy Matters

Because this work is embodied, it’s not enough to just talk about the critic—we need to feel our way through the experience. Somatic therapy helps anchor the insights that come through ketamine. It helps translate the emotional and energetic shifts into something sustainable. The body holds the memory of both the wound and the healing. We want to engage both.

Learning a New Inner Language

Over time, ketamine can help us learn a new inner language. Not one of perfectionism or punishment, but of presence. A language that says: I see you. I hear you. You’re allowed to exist without having to prove or improve.

It’s not about becoming endlessly kind to ourselves overnight. It’s about building a relationship with ourselves that’s rooted in trust, not fear. That’s the deeper gift this medicine can offer when held in a therapeutic space.