psychotherapy+ Ketamine STUDIO
Depth-Oriented Clinical Care for Adults, Couples & Families
Higher Ground is a psychotherapy and ketamine studio built for people who have adapted well, and at a cost. We offer individual therapy, couples therapy, ketamine-assisted psychotherapy, and therapy intensives from two Connecticut studios. Our work is clinical, unhurried, and built around what is actually driving the patterns, not just managing them.
For adults navigating anxiety, trauma, burnout, OCD, and the emotional weight of holding everything together. Depth-oriented work that goes beneath coping.
Attachment-based work for partners caught in disconnection, conflict cycles, or the quiet distance that builds over time. Weekly sessions and private multi-day intensives available.
A clinically guided process using ketamine to open a neuroplastic window where therapy can go deeper and change can consolidate more quickly. Therapy-driven, not infusion-only.
High-touch clinical guidance for complexity, privacy, or urgency. Therapy that moves alongside real life rather than existing in a separate weekly hour.
What Brings People to Higher Ground
Most people who come to us from Stamford have already tried something. What they have not found is work that reaches the depth of what is actually happening.
The people who come to us here are not failing. They are functioning at a level most people would call successful, and they are exhausted in a way that rest does not fix. Our work in this domain includes:
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Burnout and emotional shutdown
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Anxiety and OCD
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Perfectionism and chronic overperformance
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Depression and emotional flatness
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The disconnection that builds quietly underneath a life that looks fine on the outside
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Trauma does not always look like a single event. It lives in patterns of shutdown, hypervigilance, emotional unavailability, and the ways the body learned to survive situations it could not escape. Our work in this domain includes:
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Complex and relational trauma
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PTSD
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Somatic approaches for what talk therapy has not been able to reach
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Addiction understood as a story about pain, rather than a failure of will
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Beneath most relationship conflict is a nervous system trying to protect itself. We work with the cycle beneath the argument, not just the argument itself, and with the entire family system rather than the identified patient alone. Our work in this domain includes:
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Couples in disconnection, conflict, or crisis
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Betrayal and trust ruptures
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High-conflict family dynamics
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Post-residential and treatment transition support
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Families navigating neurodivergence
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For those navigating the gap between where they are and where they thought they would be. This work belongs to young adults and to anyone at a moment of genuine reckoning with what comes next. Our work in this domain includes:
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College-age identity strain and failure to launch
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Neurodivergence in teens and young adults
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The aftermath of residential or wilderness programs
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Midlife transitions and questions of meaning and purpose
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Ketamine-assisted psychotherapy is not an infusion. It is a clinically guided process that uses ketamine to open a neuroplastic window, where therapeutic work can go deeper and change can consolidate more quickly than in traditional weekly therapy. Our work in this domain includes:
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Individual KAP series for depression, trauma, and persistent anxiety
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Couples KAP sessions and relational integration work
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Half-day and weekend Reset intensives
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Structured integration following every dosing session
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Samantha Tramuta, LCSW, LAC
Founder & Psychotherapist
Sam founded Higher Ground for people who appear successful on paper yet feel profoundly disconnected beneath the surface. Her work focuses on couples in disconnection, complex trauma, ketamine-assisted psychotherapy, and high-achieving adults navigating burnout and emotional shutdown. Known for clinical precision, radical honesty, and the willingness to go where the work actually needs to go.
Will Culpepper, LMFT
Psychotherapist & KAP Lead Clinician
Will leads Higher Ground's ketamine-assisted psychotherapy program and specializes in OCD and Exposure and Response Prevention therapy, men's mental health, and existential and spiritual depth work rooted in Jungian psychology. He works with people who feel trapped by their own minds, and with those who have spent years succeeding while quietly losing touch with what matters most
Ashley Guerrera, MAATC, LPC, ATR
Psychotherapist & Trauma Specialist
Ashley works with people who have run out of words, and with those who have never had them. Through somatic trauma processing, Accelerated Resolution Therapy, and art therapy as a clinical tool, she reaches what years of talk therapy sometimes cannot. Her work centers on trauma, addiction, grief, and the chronic stress patterns that form when the nervous system has been on alert for too long. LGBTQIA+ affirming care.
Ray Demers, LCSW
Psychotherapist & Family Consultant
Ray specializes in families navigating neurodivergence, behavioral challenges, and the critical transitions that determine whether treatment gains hold or regression sets in. He works with the entire system, not just the identified patient, coordinating with schools, psychiatrists, and treatment teams to create sustainable change where it has not been possible before.
Our Clinical Team
Higher Ground's clinicians bring advanced training, deep specialization, and a shared commitment to work that goes beneath the surface.