When Sacred Becomes Unsafe

Toxic leadership in psychedelic and ceremony communities

In the last article, I explored how toxic leadership shows up in spiritual communities. Today I want to talk about something that's become so widespread but rarely discussed honestly: what happens when these same dynamics play out in psychedelic and ceremony spaces.

A facilitator talks about healing and unconditional love, then judges or shames participants for their experiences or emotions.

Someone speaks about serving the medicine with humility, but becomes completely defensive when offered any feedback or shows no openness to different perspectives.

Leaders talk about sacred community and reciprocity, but create clear hierarchies where some people matter more than others.

There's often this huge gap between what's said or prayed and what's actually happening. And because these are "sacred spaces," it becomes incredibly difficult to name or address.

The Sacred Untouchable

Here's what I've noticed in ceremony communities: there's this unspoken rule that you don't question the shaman, the medicine woman, the facilitator, the chief.

They hold the medicine. They know the traditions. They've been blessed to do this work. Who are we to question their methods or behavior?

This creates a dynamic where facilitators can become untouchable. Their parts - the ones that need control, validation, or power - get free rein because questioning them feels like questioning the sacred work itself.

The sacred framing makes it almost impossible to trust your own gut when something doesn't feel right.

When We're Most Vulnerable

There's something about being in ceremony that makes us particularly susceptible to this kind of dynamic.

We come to these spaces carrying our deepest wounds, hoping for healing that we haven't found anywhere else. We're willing to be uncomfortable, to surrender control, to trust completely.

And when we're in altered states, our usual boundaries and critical thinking often go offline. We're open in ways we're not in regular life.

This combination - our hope for healing plus our diminished capacity to protect ourselves - creates the perfect conditions for someone's burdened parts to take advantage.

Not necessarily in dramatic ways. More often in subtle ways that leave us confused about what actually happened.

The Dissonance

What troubles me most is the disconnect between the beautiful intentions that get spoken and the actual behavior that follows.

The facilitator who talks about peace in all our relations but can't handle any feedback about their own approach.

The shaman who prays about serving the plant spirits but gets defensive when participants have experiences that don't fit their framework.

The medicine woman who speaks about community and healing but clearly has favorites and treats others as less important.

It's not that these people are intentionally deceiving anyone. I think their parts genuinely believe they're doing sacred work. But other parts are running behaviors that contradict everything they're saying they stand for.

The Integration Confusion

One of the hardest parts about problematic ceremony experiences is making sense of them afterward.

Maybe you had profound insights or healing during the ceremony, but the facilitator's behavior left you feeling confused or uncomfortable. How do you hold both of those realities?

Maybe you felt something was off, but everyone else seems to think the facilitator is amazing. Are you just being judgmental? Are you missing something?

Maybe you want to talk about your concerns, but the community culture makes it clear that criticizing the facilitator isn't welcome.

This is where the spiritual bypassing gets really thick. Any concerns get reframed as your ego, your resistance, your unhealed trauma projecting.

The Community Silence

What makes these dynamics particularly sticky is how difficult they are to discuss.

In ceremony communities, there's often this pressure to frame everything as perfect divine order. If something felt wrong, well, that was just your medicine. If the facilitator's behavior troubled you, that's your stuff to work on.

People who try to have honest conversations about problematic dynamics often get labeled as troublemakers, as people who "aren't ready" for the work, as folks whose ego is getting in the way of their healing.

This creates communities where genuine accountability becomes almost impossible because any attempt at it gets spiritualized away.

The Complicated Loyalty

Here's another layer that makes this so challenging: many people do receive genuine healing in these spaces, even when the facilitator's behavior is problematic.

The medicine itself can be profoundly helpful regardless of who's facilitating. People have real breakthroughs, authentic insights, meaningful healing experiences.

This creates enormous loyalty and gratitude that makes it even harder to address concerns about the facilitator's conduct.

How do you criticize someone who facilitated an experience that changed your life?

How do you hold both the gratitude for your healing and the discomfort with their behavior?

Our Own Parts in the Mix

I also want to acknowledge that our own parts play a role in these dynamics.

The parts of us that want to be special, chosen, seen by someone we perceive as powerful or wise.

The parts that learned early that accommodating problematic behavior was the price of belonging or love.

The parts that would rather minimize concerns than face the disruption of leaving a community we've invested in.

The parts that need to believe our leaders are enlightened because questioning them means questioning our own spiritual path.

Understanding our own parts doesn't excuse facilitator misconduct, but it helps us see why these dynamics are so common and so difficult to address.

What Actually Helps

The most helpful thing I've learned is to trust my internal guidance, even in sacred space. Especially in sacred space.

If something feels off, it probably is. The sacred nature of the work doesn't mean your boundaries should disappear or your discernment should go offline.

If a facilitator's behavior doesn't match their words, that's information worth paying attention to.

If you're not allowed to question or have concerns, that's actually a red flag, not a sign of spiritual maturity.

If everything gets reframed as your projection or resistance, you might be dealing with someone whose parts can't handle feedback.

The Responsibility We Share

I think we all have a role to play in creating healthier ceremony communities.

Facilitators have the responsibility to do their own inner work and maintain appropriate boundaries, especially given the power differential involved in this work.

But participants also have a responsibility to stay connected to their own internal guidance and speak up when something doesn't feel right.

Communities have a responsibility to create space for honest dialogue about these dynamics instead of spiritualizing away every concern.

This isn't about becoming suspicious or closed off. It's about bringing the same awareness we'd use in any other important relationship to our ceremony experiences.

This Week's Reflection

If you're involved in ceremony communities, notice:

How comfortable do you feel questioning or having concerns about facilitators? What happens when people in your community raise concerns?

Have you experienced a gap between what's said and what's actually done in ceremony spaces? How did you make sense of that?

What parts of you might be invested in seeing facilitators as perfect or beyond criticism? What would those parts need to feel safe staying discerning?

How do you hold both gratitude for healing and honest assessment of facilitator behavior?

Remember: the medicine's power doesn't require us to surrender our discernment. Sacred work actually deserves higher standards, not lower ones.

What's Coming Next

In the next article in this series, I'll explore what empowered, accountable ceremony communities could look like - and how we can all contribute to creating them.

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In gratitude,
Anna

Transformational IFS Coach @ www.annamilaeva.com & Co-founder @ www.fino.website - Incubator for Self-leadership.

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