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Psychedelic & Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy

Therapy isn’t about escaping, it’s about turning toward what’s true. Using Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP) and other evidence-based psychedelic approaches, I help clients face what they’ve avoided, see patterns from a new vantage point, and translate insight into meaningful change.


This work supports those moving through complex trauma, PTSD, depression, anxiety, and addiction, guided by preparation, intention, and careful integration.


Each experience is designed to feel safe, grounded, and transformative-rooted in neuroscience, attachment, and lived wisdom.

Couples Therapy & Relationship Intensives

Most couples don’t need another communication trick- they need to understand the emotional blueprints driving their distance. I help partners slow down, see the patterns they built to protect themselves, and learn to reach for each other instead of retreat.


Through private couples intensives, powerful retreats and ongoing therapy, we focus on what’s beneath the surface: attachment, vulnerability, and the courage to stay open when it matters most.The goal isn’t perfection- it’s honesty, repair, and connection.

Family Consulting & Attachment-Based Family Intensives

Every family has its own ecosystem. And sometimes, it needs an outside perspective to restore balance. My approach to family consulting is assertive, comprehensive, and deeply involved. I often work with blended or high-profile families and systems in crisis or transition who feel they need a calm and assertive voice at the helm.

Through attachment-based family intensives, I help members understand one another’s wiring, rebuild safety, and create new patterns of trust and communication. Families come to me when they need structure, steady leadership, and a clear plan forward.


Men’s Therapy & Emotional Expression

I work with men who have spent years excelling, providing, and staying composed- yet quietly feeling disconnected. Whether success has replaced fulfillment or anger has replaced vulnerability, this work creates space to understand emotion without judgment or pressure.


I help men explore identity, relationships, intimacy, purpose, and recovery with honesty and humor. Clients describe the process as equal parts challenge and relief: a chance to finally talk, feel, and show up differently- in their marriages, careers, and lives.

Complex Trauma & Dissociation

Some people survive by staying strong, surrounding themselves in chaos or adrenaline, others survive by disappearing. I work with clients who have learned to disconnect, run away, shut down, or hold it all together for too long. Many of my clients grew up around conflict, survived high-tension divorce or institutional trauma, or are still unlearning what it means to feel safe.

In therapy, we rebuild the ability to feel: safely, gradually, and without losing control. This work blends trauma-informed psychotherapy, somatic awareness, and sometimes psychedelic-assisted sessions to help clients return to a sense of wholeness after years of fragmentation.

High-Achieving Professionals & Integration Work

I work with people who look successful on paper but feel detached from their own lives. Together, we unravel burnout, perfectionism, workaholism, process addictions, and emotional numbness and start to deconstruct the chaos of busyness that often surrounds the success to make space for purpose and presence again.


This work often includes performance psychology, nervous-system reset, or integration therapy after psychedelic experiences or major life transitions. It’s for those ready to trade control for clarity.

Addiction & Recovery Integration

Addiction work is personal for me. I blend relational depth, neuroscience, and lived experience to help clients understand what drives their escape routes- and how to replace them with connection.

Whether you’re maintaining recovery, rebuilding after relapse, or exploring psychedelic-assisted healing in sobriety, I bring equal parts accountability and compassion. Think old-school recovery meets new-school science.


Specialties

Portrait of Samantha Tramuta, LCSW

Founder & Psychotherapist

Sam Tramuta

LCSW, LAC

Depth-oriented work with emotional avoidance, complex trauma, addiction, and relational repair

Sam works with people who've never really clicked with traditional therapy. High-achievers, over-functioners, and deeply independent clients who need someone radically honest, grounded, and willing to laugh at the absurdity of it all.

Sam founded Higher Ground to create a different kind of therapy practice—one for people who look successful on paper but feel disconnected from their lives. Her clients are often chronically over-functioning. They've relied on independence, perfectionism, emotional shutdown, or achievement to get through life. Traditional therapy hasn't worked because they don't need another coping strategy. They need to actually heal what's driving all of it.

Sam's approach blends clinical excellence with radical honesty. She helps clients face what they've avoided, understand the patterns keeping them stuck, and rebuild connection to themselves and others. Her work includes psychedelic-assisted therapy, intensive couples work, and family consulting for high-profile or high-conflict systems.

Known for helping clients face hard truths with compassion and courage, Sam doesn't do surface-level therapy. Her work is equal parts science and soul—informed by DBT, EFT, Attachment Theory, and advanced psychedelic therapy training, all grounded in honest human connection.

If you've tried therapy before and it felt too soft or too slow, Sam might be the right fit. She balances accountability with empathy, structure with flexibility, and clinical precision with real warmth.

Photo of Sam Tramuta working

By honoring emotional experiences, we challenge old patterns, reach untapped potential, and face reality with clarity.

Sam Tramuta, LCSW

Professional Experience

Samantha brings a rare mix of clinical depth and real-world leadership to her work at Higher Ground. Over the past decade, she has built and accredited detox, residential, and intensive outpatient programs across the country, guiding teams of clinicians and healthcare leaders toward excellence in care. Her leadership style is grounded, direct, and relationship-driven- focused on integrity, quality, and outcomes that last.

Before founding Higher Ground, Samantha worked across the full continuum of mental-health and addiction treatment. She has served as a clinical and executive director, therapist and crisis clinician, treating everything from substance use and trauma to complex mood and personality disorders.

Her experience includes working with first responders, dual-diagnosis offenders, and individuals navigating high-intensity environments where stability and trust are essential.

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Clinical Social Work

Licensed clinical social worker in Connecticut. Licensed Clinical Social Worker in Colorado.

Addictions Counseling

Licensed Addictions Counselor in Colorado. Advanced training in Motivational Interviewing, biology of substance abuse, tolerance and withdrawal, assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of substance use disorders.

Psychedelic Assisted Therapy

Certified in Psychedelic Therapy and Integration and advanced certification in Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy Training in Applied Mindfulness for Psychedelic Therapists Trauma-Informed Psychedelic Therapy Psychedelic Harm Reduction and Integration Intoxication and Dissociation in Psychedelic Therapy MDMA-Assisted Therapy Research and Psilocybin Assisted Therapy Research

Advanced Training

Advanced training and competence in: Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Risk Assessment and Crisis Management Differential Diagnosis of Mental Health Disorders Attachment Based Family Therapy Structural and Strategic Family Therapy Cognitive Enhancement Therapy Seeking Safety

Clinical Supervision

Samantha has trained, mentored and provided clinical supervision to LCSW and LPC candidates in Colorado and Connecticut. She has supervised and trained Licensed Addictions Counselors in Colorado. She has supervised and mentored behavioral and nursing staff in residential, detox and outpatient levels of care.

Group Work

Graduated with concentration in group work from UCONN School of Social Work. Developed, designed, workshopped, and implemented dynamic group curriculum for adult and adolescent mental health and substance use disorders. Expert in group facilitation and creative distress tolerance interventions.

Education

Master of Social Work, The University of Connecticut. Group Work Concentration Bachelor of Arts in Political Science, The University of Connecticut


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