The importance of welcoming and qualified therapeutic support for those who make ritualistic use of Ayahuasca

Dealing with the profound and striking experiences of the ceremonies

Anyone who has ever taken part in an Ayahuasca or Santo Daime ceremony knows how extremely powerful, profound and transformative the experience can be. Many images and insights emerge quickly and significantly. Encounters with dead ancestors, life situations that appear as striking scenes, spirits from different religious contexts, as well as contact with power animals and entities.

In the course of all this, people finish the ceremonies surprised and quite affected. In some cases, they share it with friends and people who have also taken part in the ritual, but in general they are left with what they have processed for themselves.

But how do you deal with this amount of information? How do you incorporate the insights and resolutions that emerged during the ceremonies into your daily life? How can what is experienced be brought in line with the person's life?

And in the case of difficult, dark and challenging experiences, who can you count on to deal with the multitude of insights?

The importance of therapeutic support for people who have experiences with Ayahuasca

I want to share with you some personal situations and how they made me realize the importance of therapeutic support with a professional who understands the subject.

I've been participating in Ayahuasca rituals since 2013 and along the way I've had some very deep experiences. In fact, ayahuasca rituals have an immense therapeutic and transformative potential and I've experienced this first-hand.

I remember, for example, how many times I took to sessions questions about my relationship with my parents. At every dive, this was dissolved, revisited and observed. Images would emerge, events from the past would come to life, giving me the chance to process them in new ways and with new perspectives. Difficult questions often emerged and I wondered how to deal with it all.

I'm bringing up this example of the relationship with my parents, because it was a subject that stayed with me for a long time, but there were several other themes involving love life, work, study, health issues and also religious crises and reflections.

But something I noticed was that, at least for me, the rituals were bringing up a lot of situations, but I was finding it difficult to integrate the experiences into my life and I realized how important therapy would be in this journey.

Is therapeutic support enough? The importance of having a professional who understands the subject

In 2017, after many years of Santo Daime consecration, I started going to therapeutic sessions. This came together with the process of a relationship break-up and I felt it was important to have professional support.

Therapy was helping in many ways, but when I brought up my experiences with Ayahuasca, I felt a certain lack of understanding. I didn't really understand whether it was ignorance or prejudice, but there is a maxim within psychology: “the therapist can only take the patient as far as they have already gone”. This doesn't mean that the psychotherapist has to have been through all kinds of experiences, but it is important to study and also to have a warm and attentive openness in order to understand and delve into each patient's belief system, and this is something I try to apply in my day-to-day therapeutic sessions.

However, there I felt that many issues were not being covered in all their depth. My analyst at the time hadn't participated in Ayahuasca rituals, nor was he open to it, and I often found myself in a situation where I couldn't explore important issues in my own therapy.

For several sessions I made an effort to immerse myself in the images, but I felt a certain resistance and decided that I needed to look for someone who had a worldview more aligned with my own.

When therapy fits the need: The importance of being with someone who listens in a welcoming and qualified way

In 2018 I changed therapists and started analysis with a professional who also had experience with Ayahuasca rituals, and everything made a lot more sense. In these meetings, I was able to bring up imaginary, fantastic, mythological and religious experiences with a more respectful and understanding eye. With this, I was able to understand many of the perceptions that arose and it also helped me to incorporate them into my daily life. With the therapeutic combination of Ayahuasca rituals and therapy with an experienced professional, I found a greater understanding of the inner significance and I feel that my life began to flow with much more meaning and purpose.

That's why I insist on the importance of having therapeutic support for those who use forest medicines, but especially with someone who has had this kind of experience.

If you take part in rituals and ceremonies with the Ayahuasca, and are looking for someone who can welcome you and help you on your therapeutic journey of integrating the contents you've experienced, know that I'm here for you to talk to.

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