Synopsis: Explore how ketamine therapy can catalyze the formation of beneficial habits and the elimination of negative ones. This blog delves into practical strategies for leveraging neuroplasticity post-therapy to create lasting positive changes in your life.
This blog is an adapted transcript of our Making New Habits After Ketamine Therapy video.
How Can Ketamine Therapy Enhance Habit Formation?
I'm currently reading "Atomic Habits" by James Clear. He discusses how to create and break habits by making them obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying.
During ketamine therapy, you can experience a flow state, but it's afterward that the real changes can begin. Thanks to the neuroplastic effects of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), new neurons will be generated and synaptic connections will be formed.
To leverage this, you should aim to establish new habits using Clear's four pillars: making them obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying.
According to James Clear, there are four easy steps to breakdown the creation of new habits and make it more attainable.
What Are the Steps to Creating New Habits After Therapy?
Let’s break these steps down into an example. For instance, if you decide to start exercising after your latest ketamine treatment, make it obvious by placing your dumbbells right in the middle of your living room. This visibility acts as a constant reminder.
To make the habit attractive, understand and articulate your reasons for exercising—this motivation makes the activity appealing.
To make the process easy, keep workout equipment at home to eliminate travel time to a gym.
Finally, ensure the activity is satisfying by rewarding yourself post-workout, perhaps with a piece of chocolate or a celebratory selfie. These rewards help maintain the habit long-term.
How Can You Effectively Break Bad Habits?
Conversely, if you aim to break a habit, you should make it invisible, unattractive, difficult, and unsatisfying. For example, if you want to use your cellphone less in the morning, store it in another room. To make quitting smoking unattractive, collect cigarette butts in a jar and leave it where you can smell the unpleasant odor. Increase the effort required to engage in unwanted behaviors, such as deleting social media apps from your phone to make access harder. Link the habit you wish to break with negative consequences to make it unsatisfying.
How Does Ketamine Therapy Facilitate Habit Change?
Ketamine infusions don’t fix everything. However, for many people, they can serve as a catalyst for breaking bad habits and fostering positive ones.
By applying the principles of making habits obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying—or their opposites for breaking habits—you can harness the neuroplastic benefits of ketamine therapy to transform your life. Ready to make some changes?
If you enjoyed this blog, check these out too:
Why You Have To Take Action After Your Ketamine Treatment
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How Ketamine Therapy Works: Importance Of Integration
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The Wheel of Life: A Tool To Integrate Your Ketamine Experience
Use this tool to help integrate a ketamine therapy treatment experience or even to evaluate and reflect on the different areas of life and then take action. Learn more about the wheel at our blog.
Explore how ketamine therapy can catalyze the formation of beneficial habits and the elimination of negative ones. This blog delves into practical strategies for leveraging neuroplasticity post-therapy to create lasting positive changes in your life.
