research from brain development and attachment theory was applied to psychotherapy, I realized that I was distinguishing whether or not the client had a secure attachment. This develops during early childhood when we learn that we can count on our parents to meet our needs in kind, caring ways. It’s estimated that about 55 percent of people have a secure attachment.1 The other 45 percent experience three other categories of attachment: anxious attachment, which develops when our caretakers sometimes meet our needs and sometimes don’t, so we never know what to expect; avoidant attachment, in which we give up on getting our needs met; and, worst of all, disorganized attachment, in which our caretakers are cruel or abusive.
The issue of whether or not someone has a secure attachment or felt loved as a child is not the same as self-esteem, which the California legislature attempted to “fix” with a self-esteem initiative telling parents and teachers to heap praise on children.2 That program was not based on psychological research. We know that empty praise does nothing for a child’s sense of self except inflate their ego and distort expectations about how the world will greet them. Better to encourage old-fashioned hard work and perseverance: “You really kept at that problem until you got it solved!”
The pervasive problem of feeling unlovable was the issue a group of American psychologists and meditation teachers presented to the Dalai Lama during the third Mind and Life Institute conference in Dharamsala, India, in 1991. When Sharon Salzberg asked His Holiness, “So when we teach loving-kindness and compassion, should we talk very specifically about loving yourself?” The Dalai Lama entered into a long exchange with his Tibetan translator, who eventually explained that the concept was alien to His Holiness. The Westerners described how people suffer with their inner critics. The Dalai Lama admitted, “I thought I had a very good acquaintance with the mind, but now I feel quite ignorant. I find this very, very strange and I wonder where it comes from.”3 Evidently, in Tibetan culture, children are responded to quickly and kindly, and I imagine they have a higher percentage of securely attached adults than we do.
One of the most common healing experiences during ayahuasca ceremonies is a sense of being flooded with love. This sensation ranges from the comfort of a warm bath to ecstatic heights of feeling loved as a child of the universe. Greater compassion for oneself and self-acceptance are mentioned the most frequently. One man said, “You can hear something one thousand times and still not get it. With ayahuasca, the message [of being loved] drops down into the cellular level, and all of a sudden you know it in your bones.” Some people attributed the source of love to Grandmother Ayahuasca. One wrote, “I am more and more seeing how I am supported and loved by her.”
Years ago, as a slightly cynical psychotherapist, I would’ve said this sounds like a spiritual bypass. Feeling cosmic love is a way to avoid dealing with parents who weren’t kind and loving. Get thee to a therapist and work on family-of-origin issues, I would think. Now I’m not so sure.
In the sharing circle one morning after a ceremony I attended, a thirty-something guy exclaimed with all the emotional enthusiasm of a religious epiphany how he now felt loved — “truly loved!” Then he reflected, “I wonder why I didn’t feel loved before.” I sat nearby using all my energy to keep my mouth shut. I had met his mother, knew his family story. It was all I could do not to say to him, and by that I mean shout at him, “You didn’t feel loved because your mother is a narcissist and your father abandoned you!” Perhaps this impatience is why I’ve retired from private practice.
Sitting in the circle, I wondered if maybe it didn’t matter that this guy didn’t understand why he didn’t feel loved before. Maybe the only thing that mattered was that he felt so well-loved now. I know how intense that feeling of being loved can be under the full sway of the medicine. Perhaps that works as a “corrective experience,” which is therapy jargon for one of those spontaneous healing moments that happen in therapy between client and therapist when they look directly into each other’s eyes and something powerful and unspoken happens.4 The current theory of interpersonal neurobiology says that the therapist’s brain connects with the client’s in a way that rewrites the client’s life narrative.5 This opens the possibility of learning something new, as in, “I’m lovable!”
The ceremonial situation is different — everyone sits in the dark, and there’s no direct interaction or eye-to-eye contact. Possibly the reprogramming of the brain happens in a biochemical way with the medicine lowering one’s usual pattern of filters and defenses, allowing the brain to experience something new — “I’m lovable!” — just as the man exclaimed in the sharing circle the morning after.6
A few weeks after this ceremony, I was sitting in a spiritual direction session with a monk who’d been living silently for over fifty years at the New Camaldoli Hermitage in California (www.contemplation.com). I had to explain to him what “spiritual bypass” meant, and he understood the concept immediately. He said he “believed that sometimes the spiritual experience of feeling loved changed everything for a person,” and then he paused. I waited. He spoke again: “And sometimes it didn’t.” We sat together in silent agreement.
Relationships
The old saw that you have to love yourself before you can truly love another fits perfectly with attachment theory. People who feel loved, people with secure attachment, assume the best from their loved ones. In fact, they select for those capacities, quickly eliminating someone who crosses lines of good behavior. A securely attached young woman refused to go on a second date with a presumably very eligible bachelor. When I asked her why, she replied, “He told me I had too much makeup on.” That simple. The guy was critical on the first date. No point making a second date. Since then, she’s been married for thirty-five years to a very kind, serious medical researcher who wouldn’t dream of criticizing his wife’s appearance.
People with secure attachment know how to be married. This doesn’t mean that they’re perfect. They hurt each other’s feelings, but they listen to their partner with empathy and then apologize. They forgive and let go of the hurt feelings, which means that they don’t bring up the kitchen sink when they fight. They celebrate each other’s successes and are happy to make the other person happy. In short, they “get” each other, and they’re there for each other.
In this study, people reported feeling more accepting, loving, and compassionate toward themselves after drinking ayahuasca. Many also said they felt the same way toward those closest to them. For those who reported an improvement in their relationships, there was a clear trend toward more honest, direct, and open communication with deeper connections. One college professor succinctly described his changes: “Better marriage. Better relationships with students and colleagues.” We don’t know if one thing led to the other, if feeling better about themselves allowed them to feel better about their relationships. We don’t know if there’s a causal relationship, even though it would make clinical sense.
How relationships change as a result of an ayahuasca experience is qualitatively different from reporting on internal states — feelings and attitudes toward oneself. Changes in relationships depend not only on how the person feels but on how that person behaves. Relationships raise the issue of integration. A more specific way to phrase this question is “How does the ayahuasca experience change how you behave on a daily basis in your relationships?” It’s one thing to be flooded with love during a ceremony and another thing altogether to behave in loving ways upon the return home.
A fifty-two-year-old businessman described his personal evolution regarding sex and relationships after two dozen experiences with ayahuasca over a fifteen-year period. He wrote that he “broke a powerful sexual addiction. Now I’m drawn to looking for relationships. Sex for sex’s sake doesn’t do it for me.”
People’s responses showed a trend toward having more patience and tolerance in family relationships. Many of
