Trust Yourself First: What a Gentle Ayahuasca Ceremony Taught Me About Attachment Wounds

Psychedelics

Aug 15

A few weeks ago I posted a line that landed for more people than I expected: "Trust isn't a prerequisite for the work. It's something the work builds." The replies and DMs told me it needed more room than a caption gives. So here's where that line actually came from—and why it matters for anyone doing this work with attachment wounds or a shaky relationship with trust, not just people drinking plant medicine.

Why Was My Ayahuasca Ceremony So Gentle?

I was sitting on my mat, two cups of Ayahuasca in, secretly panicking that nothing much was happening. Why is this medicine so gentle? Did I do something wrong? I went around the loop for a while — not enough preparation, being punished for not doing enough integration, this is what resistance looks like, and isn't resistance the most unspiritual thing a person can bring into a ceremony? Next to me, a woman was waving her arms through the air. Somewhere behind me, a man was making sounds without any self-consciousness at all. I felt myself start to close off—from the group, from the icaros, from my own process. Withdrawing into a familiar story: I am wrong.

And then, underneath it, another thought: what if this slower journey is here to support you?

The Fear I Didn't Want to Look At

Once I stopped arguing with my experience, I found fear. Part of me wasn't sure I should be there at all, afraid of what I might uncover. Another part feared losing my mind. Another was afraid of being taken over—of the intensity being more than I could hold. Once I could see the fear clearly, the pace made sense. The gentleness wasn't a verdict. It was more like a hand on my back: you're safe here; you won't be asked to step into anything before you're ready.

The Pattern I Recognized From My Relationships

That's when I recognized the shape of it — the same pattern I carry into intimate relationships. A fear of being taken over, my boundaries moved without my consent, my openness used against me. I meet that fear the ways I learnt to survive: I fawn, or I freeze. But here, in this particular relationship — because that's what it is, a relationship, with a plant being who was sitting inside me — she was moving at a pace my nervous system could actually stay present for. I wanted the fireworks, to wave my hands with celestial beings. What I got instead was the slower work of building something rooted in integrity, agency, safety, trust. You don't get to skip to the end of that.

Most of my journeys have circled some version of this — attachment wounding, relational bruising, the fear that the medicine would punish me for not being a good enough student. And every time, without exception, I've been met with the same message: you're exactly where you need to be, and you already know what you need to do.

Why "Just Trust the Medicine" Doesn't Work for Everyone

Here's the part I actually want to say, though: "trust the medicine" is not useful advice for someone with attachment wounds or a trust problem. The medicine is a being too, and whatever you carry into your family or your partnerships shows up with the plants. Trusting it flippantly because a facilitator told you to can subtly build the exact pattern you're trying to heal — waiting to be fixed by someone else, playing the one who gets rescued. For someone who has struggled to sit in the driver's seat of her own life, the shift from trusting the medicine to trusting myself first was not a short trip.

What Trusting Yourself Actually Requires

Trusting myself has meant taking care of myself well enough to hear my inner guidance—knowing a yes from a no, knowing when to move toward something and when to move away, and believing that what I feel is real and worth listening to. Only once that foundation is in place can I risk the vulnerability of trusting another being, because I know I won't lose myself in the letting-in. I still get to stay me. I get to choose what changes I meet another in my softness. Opening up to the harder-to-reach places in ourselves—into me I see—takes real trust. But change stops being so frightening once you know exactly where you're standing.

Maybe that's the medicine these times are actually asking for: not the ceremony kind, necessarily, but the discipline of trusting our own knowing enough to follow it, and of trusting our own timing of transformation.

Ready to Build That Trust With Support?

If you recognized yourself anywhere in this—trusting everyone and everything before you trust yourself—this is the exact work I do 1:1. My coaching weaves psychedelic integration together with eating disorder recovery support, so you can build that foundation of self-trust and body trust at a pace your nervous system can actually stay present for.

Book a Discovery Call for 1:1 Psychedelic + ED Coaching