Have you ever reacted to something way bigger than the moment called for? Someone doesn't text back and your whole body goes cold. A tone of voice shuts you down before you even know why. You're a grown adult, and some part of you is responding like you're five.
I've been thinking about that a lot since I had my third baby. I watch my boys on the playground and I can almost see the moments happen. A kid says no, you can't play, and I wonder… is that one going to stick? Will he carry it for thirty years without knowing it's there?
Dr. Jeff McNairy has spent more than 25 years working with trauma, addiction and acute mental health. He's the Chief Medical Officer at Rythmia, an ayahuasca center in Costa Rica, and he explained something I'd felt in my own plant medicine experiences but never understood. Ayahuasca seems to reach the fear we filed away as kids, the stuff talk therapy can circle for years without touching.
What Does Ayahuasca Actually Show You?
Jeff didn't come to this looking for it. He was running Passages Malibu, a high-end rehab, when a client came in who the staff wanted to send home. Jeff took him on personally, then kept seeing him in private practice after he left. He did therapy with him for five years.
“Nothing worked,” Jeff told me. “Nothing that I had learned, none of my protocols, none of the schooling.”
Then that client went to Costa Rica, sat with a shaman, and came back a different person. Jeff figured it was the pink cloud, that happy newly sober glow that usually ends in relapse. It didn't end. So in 2014 Jeff flew down to try it himself, fully convinced he didn't need it. He was the psychologist. He was fine.
In ceremony he saw himself at six years old, walking alone through his East LA neighborhood in 1976. He asked little Jeffrey if there was anything he needed to know. The boy looked up at him and said, “I am scared. I'm very scared.”
That was it. And it made sense of everything. Growing up where he did, showing fear meant danger, so he held it in his whole life. He became slippery and chameleon-like, able to disappear from any situation. It kept him safe as a kid. As an adult it made real closeness really hard.
How Does Ayahuasca Work in the Brain?
I didn't realize ayahuasca was two plants until Jeff explained it. The vine is an MAOI, a monoamine oxidase inhibitor. The leaf, which varies by region and tradition, is high in DMT. On its own, your stomach would break the DMT down before it did anything. The vine blocks that enzyme so the DMT can actually get absorbed.
Then there's what happens with fear. When something scary happens, your body pushes the emotion aside so you can survive the moment. Ideally that feeling comes back up later and moves through you. Most of us never let it. Jeff describes those unfelt emotions sitting in the amygdala, the part of the brain that fires first when we're scared or triggered.
The way he explained it, the DMT in ayahuasca activates something called the sigma-1 receptor, and that helps connect the amygdala to the prefrontal cortex, the conscious, rational part of you. So the old emotion finally comes up where you can feel it. Sometimes it leaves through a purge. That can mean throwing up, but it can also be crying, yelling, shaking or even yawning. Sometimes it comes up as a clear memory. Either way it's moving.
He gave an example I keep coming back to. Say you got bit by a pit bull as a little kid. Now you're an adult and you just aren't a dog person. That bite built a rigid pathway in your brain: dogs mean pain. If you go into ceremony with the intention of getting past it, the old fear surfaces, you let it out, and the brain has a window where a new pattern can form. Researchers call that plasticity. Jeff says intention is what points it somewhere.
“Plant medicine without intention is sort of pointless,” he said. Then he walked it back a little, because he's seen people have breakthroughs with no intention at all. But going in with something you actually want to heal changes what happens.
Can Ayahuasca Heal Trauma You Don't Remember?
This was the part of our conversation I needed most.
A lot of people carry trauma they have no memory of. Jeff says in ceremony, what usually comes up for those people is the emotion, not the memory. And they're okay with that at Rythmia, because the memory was never what was holding someone back. We can't change what happened. What we can release is the emotional weight that's been attached to it and added onto for decades.
He also told me visions and memories aren't the same thing. He used a car accident in the middle of a busy New York intersection. Ask a hundred witnesses what happened and you'll get a hundred versions. Ask them how they felt and they'll all say the same thing. Scared. Worried. The feeling is the reliable part.
His wife is a good example. As a little girl she had an irrational fear her parents would abandon her. Nothing ever happened. She outgrew it and forgot it. When she drank ayahuasca, that fear came up, and what she saw was spiders everywhere. She's terrified of spiders. The vision was just the vehicle to get the fear out.
He was also honest that it isn't always tidy. Sometimes something surfaces that a person really wishes they didn't know. That's why he says the screening and the support during and after matter so much. For me, it helped to remember that becoming aware of something doesn't mean it just started affecting you. It was already there.
What Is Empath Burnout?
Jeff described a pattern I think a lot of you will recognize.
When you grow up needing to stay alert for safety, you learn to read people. You pull in their emotional energy so you know who's safe and who isn't. It's an incredibly accurate skill. But because you learned it as a kid, you never learned what to do with everything you absorb. So you just hold it. For years.
Eventually you max out. Jeff says it tends to hit somewhere between the late 30s and mid 40s. The signs are isolating when that isn't normally you, drinking more or wanting to, and feeling lost or unsure of yourself in a way that doesn't make sense. That's the moment a lot of people realize they've lost touch with themselves.
Who Should Not Take Ayahuasca?
Because of the MAOI in the vine, ayahuasca has more contraindications than most psychedelics. Jeff said people with bipolar I aren't allowed to drink it at Rythmia, because the serotonin surge can push someone into mania. Bipolar II is handled differently, because it tends to look more like depression.
If you take antidepressants or other medications, this matters for you too. MAOIs can interact dangerously with a lot of meds, SSRIs included. Please talk to your prescriber before making any changes, and only work with places that screen you seriously. This isn't something to figure out on your own.
What Happens After an Ayahuasca Ceremony?
I've watched a lot of people go through plant medicine over the last decade, especially back in LA. Some of them had huge experiences and then kind of attached to the medicine itself. They weren't really here anymore. The breakthrough is where the work starts.
Jeff agreed. He says follow-up is everything, and he learned that in the rehab world. About 30% of Rythmia guests come back at some point, but he's a fan of “one and done.” Come, do the work, then go live with the new tools.
At Rythmia they teach three intentions. First, show me who I've become. That means seeing what you've been showing the world that isn't really you. Second, merge me back with my soul at all costs, which can be scary if you haven't been yourself since you were little. Third, heal my heart. That's where the forgiveness and groundedness come in.
What struck me is what he said happens next. If you've built your whole identity around a diagnosis or an addiction and that falls away, you're kind of a blank slate. You get to choose who you are now. That's exciting and terrifying, and it's why community and real integration matter so much.
How to Tell If You're Absorbing Other People's Emotions
You don't need a cup of ayahuasca for this one. Jeff gave this as his challenge for the week.
Before you walk into a social situation, a work meeting or a family dinner, check in with yourself. Notice how you feel emotionally right then. Then once you're around other people, if something shows up that wasn't there before, or it suddenly feels louder, pause and ask: is this mine or theirs?
That simple question starts to separate what's yours to hold from what isn't. We'll hold our kids' pain all day long. But holding everyone's pain doesn't help them, and it definitely doesn't help you.
Come Do This Work With Us
This is exactly the kind of thing we practice in the Mind Love Collective. Noticing what's yours and what isn't sounds simple until you're in a room with your family. It's easier with people doing it right alongside you. Join us at mindlove.com/join.
Resources From This Episode
- Rythmia: Jeff's center in Costa Rica. Search Rythmia Costa Rica or find them on YouTube at @Rythmia
- Dr. Jeff McNairy: Chief Medical Officer at Rythmia and former director of Passages Malibu
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