Ayahuasca and Emotional Reactivity: How Old Patterns Can Change
Why We Get Triggered: The Brain's Threat Response
Most of us are familiar with having our buttons pushed, or getting triggered: a moment of powerful emotional reaction that an outside observer might consider out of proportion to what actually happened. We might be a person who is usually calm and deliberate in how we respond, yet in certain situations we regularly can't muster the same level of emotional regulation. Some people struggle with this much more than others, and it can be a source of shame, or a sense that "there is something wrong with me." A bit of reframing of this phenomenon can reduce that shame and start the journey toward having greater choice in how we respond.
Emotional reactivity is increasingly understood by neuroscience. Humans evolved in a high-threat environment where physical safety was a primary concern. People worried about whether the village or tribe would have enough food to get through the winter, or even the next week. Social acceptance could be the difference between living a comfortable life in the community and living a marginal existence. In more extreme circumstances, it could be the difference between life and death.
Our brains and neural processing developed to keep us alive. As information about the world around us comes in, the brain automatically begins a process of analysis and prediction based on our past experience. It is heavily biased toward physical safety. Being startled, jumping away from a sound in the bush, and feeling embarrassed about it is a much better outcome than ignoring it and being bitten by a poisonous snake. The brain analyzes social cues such as facial expressions, body posture, and tone of voice primarily to answer the question "Am I under threat?" and to respond quickly and defensively if it calculates that the answer is yes. This happens very fast, within hundreds of milliseconds, and usually before we have any conscious sense of evaluating the situation.
So there is nothing wrong with us. The brain is doing exactly what it evolved to do: keeping us safe from a perceived threat. And it reacts not only to the event itself, but to the meaning our brain assigns to it based on our past, often subconscious, experience. We may simply be living from patterns our nervous system learned a long time ago, patterns that may be poorly matched to the present. The good news is that learned patterns can be changed.
Research on emotion regulation suggests that all of the following may help a person become less emotionally reactive: noticing early bodily activation, creating a pause before acting, reducing physiological arousal, questioning our first interpretation, avoiding rumination (overthinking the event), rehearsing and visualizing alternative responses, practicing across many situations, and reviewing our reactions without shame [1].
How Can Ayahuasca Help Develop These Skills?
What Science Can Tell Us
Brain scans show that ayahuasca doesn't just turn the brain "up." Instead, it seems to temporarily change how different parts of the brain work together and communicate with each other.
One of the most consistent findings involves the default mode network, a set of brain areas that is busy when we think about ourselves, replay our life story, and hold onto a steady sense of who we are. Under ayahuasca, activity and communication in this network tend to drop [2]. This may help explain why people often describe feeling their sense of self loosen or dissolve, stepping back from familiar thought patterns, or seeing their life from a fresh point of view.
At the same time, other parts of the brain become more active, especially those involved in mental imagery, emotion, memory, and awareness of the body. In one study, the visual areas of the brain lit up strongly when people imagined images with their eyes closed, almost as much as when they looked at real pictures with their eyes open. The same study found increased activity in areas involved in recalling memories and processing context [3].
More broadly, research on psychedelics suggests that brain networks that normally work fairly separately start to overlap and connect more, and that the brain's usual "top-down" assumptions and beliefs are held less tightly for a while [4]. Areas tied to vision, memory, emotion, and sense of self may communicate in unusual ways. This could help explain why people make unexpected connections, relive memories with strong feeling, gain new perspectives, and find that their usual mental habits feel less fixed.
Some long-term brain scan studies have found differences in the brains of people who drink ayahuasca regularly [5]. However, these studies look at people at a single point in time, so they can't show whether ayahuasca actually caused those differences.
Overall, the strongest evidence suggests that ayahuasca creates a temporary state in which the brain becomes more flexible and organized differently than usual. This may give people a chance to experience deep-seated emotional and mental patterns in a new way. What research hasn't yet shown is how often these short-term changes lead to lasting psychological benefits.
What People Say About How Ayahuasca Helped
Old Memories Resurface
Many people report recalling something they haven't thought about in 10 or 20 years. Sometimes these are memories of traumatic events that had been suppressed, and remembering them can help people understand why they have had specific struggles in their lives.
A Detailed Life Review
Many people report an experience of reviewing their lives, often beginning in early childhood and moving forward through the years. They say there is a clarity and presence in the experience that is different from simply thinking about the past, and difficult to describe. Sometimes they say they clearly saw how an event that didn't seem significant at the time ended up shaping much of their future. The common outcome of these experiences is an understanding of the patterns in their lives and how those patterns influence who they are today.
Reviewing the Same Event From Multiple Perspectives
Occasionally people say they reviewed the same event multiple times, each time making a different choice and seeing how it played out and led to different outcomes. There is a sense of practicing new behaviors and feeling the results. Less frequently, and usually with much more impact, people experience the event from the perspective of another person who was there, even feeling that person's emotions. The outcome of these journeys is a different understanding of the event and a change in the "emotional charge" around it, usually moving toward greater compassion for self and others.
A New, Lived Experience
Ayahuasca can take us into a deeply immersive experience that feels very real. Just as in everyday life, we may face challenges, feel strong emotions, make choices, and gain insights and realizations. We have all had the experience of the light bulb coming on, when we suddenly understand something in a new way and our perception shifts. Research on memory shows that emotionally charged experiences are more strongly encoded and more lastingly remembered than neutral ones [6]. This is another way ayahuasca helps teach us: through a lived experience, with strong emotions and sudden insights.
From Insight to Lasting Change
The experiences people describe in ceremony line up closely with the skills research says reduce emotional reactivity. Revisiting an event and choosing differently is a form of rehearsal. Seeing a situation through another person's eyes is a deep way of questioning our first interpretation. And the compassion many people come away with is exactly the kind of shame-free review that helps old patterns loosen their grip.
Ayahuasca doesn't do all of the work, though. Some of these skills, like noticing the first signs of activation in the body and creating a pause before we react, are built through practice in everyday life, one situation at a time. A ceremony can show us where a pattern came from and let us feel what a different response is like. The weeks and months afterward are where that new response becomes a habit. This is why integration matters so much: journaling, meditation or breathwork, talking through insights with someone who understands the work, and gently noticing old reactions when they show up again, without judging ourselves for it.
It also helps to keep expectations grounded. Not every ceremony brings a dramatic breakthrough, and change is often gradual. Many people notice it first in small moments. A comment that used to set them off now barely registers, or they catch themselves mid-reaction and choose something different.
If emotional reactivity has been a source of struggle or shame for you, the most important message is the one this article started with: nothing is wrong with you. Your nervous system learned to protect you, and what was learned can be relearned. For some people, ayahuasca, approached with careful preparation, proper screening, and a commitment to integration, can be a powerful part of that process.
References
- Gross JJ. Emotion regulation: current status and future prospects. Psychological Inquiry. 2015;26(1):1–26. doi:10.1080/1047840X.2014.940781
- Palhano-Fontes F, Andrade KC, Tofoli LF, Santos AC, Crippa JAS, Hallak JEC, Ribeiro S, de Araujo DB. The psychedelic state induced by ayahuasca modulates the activity and connectivity of the default mode network. PLoS ONE. 2015;10(2):e0118143. PMC4334486
- de Araujo DB, Ribeiro S, Cecchi GA, Carvalho FM, Sanchez TA, Pinto JP, de Martinis BS, Crippa JA, Hallak JE, Santos AC. Seeing with the eyes shut: neural basis of enhanced imagery following ayahuasca ingestion. Human Brain Mapping. 2012;33(11):2550–2560. PMC6870240
- Carhart-Harris RL, Friston KJ. REBUS and the anarchic brain: toward a unified model of the brain action of psychedelics. Pharmacological Reviews. 2019;71(3):316–344. PMC6588209
- Bouso JC, Palhano-Fontes F, Rodríguez-Fornells A, Ribeiro S, Sanches R, Crippa JAS, Hallak JEC, de Araujo DB, Riba J. Long-term use of psychedelic drugs is associated with differences in brain structure and personality in humans. European Neuropsychopharmacology. 2015;25(4):483–492. doi:10.1016/j.euroneuro.2015.01.008
- McGaugh JL. Making lasting memories: remembering the significant. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2013;110(Suppl 2):10402–10407. PMC3690616
- Callaway JC, Grob CS. Ayahuasca preparations and serotonin reuptake inhibitors: a potential combination for severe adverse interactions. Journal of Psychoactive Drugs. 1998;30(4):367–369. PMID:9924842