Recognizing Facilitator Harm & Abuse ft. Mikaela de la Myco

Shedding the Old Ways: The Evolution Toward Communicative Culture

Authoritarian parenting styles were commonplace in the United States in the early 20th century and by no means representative of a healthy, communicative culture. Growing up, many children were told to be “seen not heard,” and to never question adults. 

We can see the inherent power dynamic that this method of parenting creates and how it can be the perfect breeding ground for harm and silenced abuse. 

Not only that, but studies have proven that “authoritarian parenting style always has a negative effect on self esteem, it destroys self-confidence and increases insecurity and inferiority” (Jadon & Tripathi, 2017).

As time has gone on, we’ve opened up as a society with each generation and have been shedding the old ways to make room for open communication, working to give everyone a voice. 

This change doesn’t happen all at once, and will certainly be more prevalent in some areas than others, but we have to start somewhere, right?

Each individual has a duty to foster open communication and a supportive environment within their spheres of influence, wherever that may be in society.

Mikaela de la Myco’s Sphere of Influence

Harm reduction is an overarching, widespread concept in psychedelic work that can mean many different things and take on many forms.

Testing your substances is one form of harm reduction, while fostering supportive facilitator-client relationships is another entirely. All forms of harm reduction are important to the process and can vary greatly. 

Harm can happen in the most unsuspecting scenarios, it’s just an inherent risk of being alive. The possibility of harm goes up with vulnerability, so it’s no surprise that more often than not it can come from those in caretaker positions, i.e. psychedelic facilitators. 

Mikaela de la Myco finds her place in spaces that try to reduce harm when it comes to practitioner-journeyer relationships and focuses on unbalanced power dynamics, recognizing a definite need to define and enact harm reduction practices in the space (Chwyl et al, 2025). 

As a survivor herself, her lived experience of overcoming her trauma is living proof that it’s possible, and her experience of living and overcoming it helps her help others in a meaningful way.

Unethical practices in psychedelic spheres could mean anything from unconsensual touch, monetarily overcharging, and cult-like dynamics, to more nuanced situations that may be harder to see, especially for newcomers. 

Not only does she teach psychedelic newcomers about red flags, but she shares the qualities you should look for in a facilitator too. 

Like us, she believes in empowering the individual with knowledge so that individuals can make informed decisions when it comes to their care. One of the best resources she shares with newcomers is the Psychedelic Safety Flags document created by EPIC.

Too Much, Too Fast, Too Strong

Mikaela speaks very openly about the experiences that she has had as a young person, and we recognize that people are at varying degrees of comfort with their own survivorship stories. 

So while you read, remember this is coming from someone who has had to live, relive, and work through their trauma, and now are at a place where they can freely talk about it in hopes that it helps those who are still working through their own content.

“What’s happened to you in your life has really powerfully informed the way that you serve.” — Mikaela de la Myco

A common principle in harm reduction and benefit maximization is that harm happens when things are too much, too fast, too strong. And as a practitioner, Mikaela de la Myco likes to take a very soft approach, recognizing that moving too fast is one of the conditions where traumatization can occur.

Mikaela de la Myco’s Survivor Story

Mikaela de la Myco is an advocate because she was once a victim herself. As a survivor of childhood molestation, sadly a very common story in today’s world and throughout history, she has used her story to spread awareness and inform her own outreach and advocacy. 

After admitting her abuse to her therapist (a mandated reporter) at 11 years old, she was thrust into the legal system at the innocent age of 14, being questioned at police stations and talking with detectives before finally having to appear in front of a judge to explain what her grandfather had done to her. 

For a newcomer to life, someone who had just gained the courage to tell adults of her abuse in the first place, the trauma of coming forward and all that it entails is no walk in the park, and can very much be too much, too fast, too strong.

However, de la Myco describes that as only the beginning in her healing journey. She was able to find the silver lining of that experience, realizing it sparked her interest in the healing process, especially dealing with sexual trauma. 

Little did she know she would suffer at the hands of more abuse as she entered her adulthood at the age of 19. She had entered into a “new age” spiritual community around Western Tantra and started working on her sexual trauma with a practitioner.

Looking back now, she realizes her experience with this teacher was “riddled with power dynamics” and did nothing but re-traumatize in a way that she now can clearly see as a major red flag.

From there, the practitioner and teacher that was supposed to usher her out or her trauma, dragged her back into it and the person who was supposed to safeguard her instead pimped her out and prolonged her trauma.

Recommended Reading: Navigating Power Dynamics in Psychedelic Therapy

After trying to reach out to law enforcement, she found that there aren’t that many readily available resources for people in her shoes, and she was determined to change that. 

That’s when she found ayahuasca and psilocybin-containing mushrooms, and that’s where real positive transformation began to unfold. 

It was in those spaces that she was able to finally “untie the knot” and unravel the complex internal workings of her trauma and how it affected her. 

After years of trying to expel the effects her trauma had on her with lackluster results, she finally found someone who was truly able to create a safe container and offer modalities for her to engage in her story and expel the negative effects her trauma had on her. 

That someone was Starlily sister Nova Birch who’s a Yoni STEAM and Womb Care Practitioner. She introduced Mikaela to herbal medicine, cultural philosophy, Ma’at, and a general sense of support that allowed Mikaela to truly engage in her content in a safe and meaningful way.

Using Survivorship to Enact Change

When Mikaela de la Myco started hearing stories of sexual trauma happening in psychedelic space, it enraged her because that was her safe place, the place she came to “untie the knot” and here people were blatantly abusing the healing modality that truly became her solace.

“This is not just a unique issue in the wellness and psychedelic community. I believe it’s presenting itself here because the problem is systemic in our whole culture. Sexual assault is very common and very prevalent in our whole society. So it’s just finding its way in here as an inevitability and not just an inherent consequence of our space.” — Mikaela de la Myco

In the current political environment right now, there’s this thing we like to call the psychedelic halo effect, in other terms, a sort of psychedelic cheerleaderism where people may be afraid to talk about the negative aspect of psychedelic healing for fear that it undermines the push for legalization. 

Psychedelics also find themselves in this legal gray area, where they’re decriminalized in some places, and still criminalized in others. Not only do these conditions make it difficult for someone to come forward about abuse, it also creates more opportunities for abuse to happen. 

Because of this, we have to be especially aware when discussing the benefits of psychedelic healing and be careful not to overshadow things like facilitator ethics.

What makes it even more unique of a situation, ingesting psychedelics results in altered states of consciousness, which can make a person second guess what happened and if their opinion of what happened is true or not. 

That leaves a lot of potential for people to second guess themselves or make it harder to discern what’s actually okay and what is uncomfortable, especially with more nuanced abuse. 

While it may be hard to discern what or how something is making you uncomfortable, if it feels too much, too fast, too strong, that is a good indicator that something needs to change. 

It’s also important to note that abuse happens in a more “slow burn” as well, as was the case with Mikaela and her teacher/practitioner.

Having been through trauma herself, Mikaela has become the facilitator she wished for herself, and describes the power of survivors helping survivors. 

“There’s nothing more like that softens my heart more than when I’m doing an intake with someone who’s going to sit down before the journey and they disclose their survivorship. And I’m like, hey, me too, I’m a survivor too. And the softness and the understanding that happens when that is said and the way that the container is built, like for survivors, it means we have a place to go.” — Mikaela de la Myco

We’ve seen abuse go both ways, clients and facilitators alike are susceptible to abuse whether it’s intentional or not, but what’s important to note is that facilitators have a higher level of duty, being in the position of “expert” or “professional.” 

What Does Facilitator Abuse Look Like?

Psychedelics are powerful medicines that then can render you more vulnerable. Your judgment changes, your susceptibility to coercion changes, and a facilitator’s words have a certain specialness to them because they’re a part of the experience.

As we’ve seen, psychedelic healing isn’t about masking problems, it’s about coming into relationship with yourself, giving an honest review of your actions and beliefs, and possibly altering them accordingly. 

Abuse doesn’t just happen under the influence of the medicine, but can absolutely happen in caretaker positions like psychedelic facilitation. If a client voices something that made them uncomfortable, it’s your duty as a facilitator to take an honest review of your behavior. 

Sex workers deal with a similar legal gray area that psychedelic facilitators do, that can make it hard or uncomfortable to come forward with tales of abuse. 

Mikaela de la Myco shares that she partook in the Equitable Care Certification, a course taught by sex workers to offer sex-work affirming therapists a chance to support sex workers. Their values are:

• Abolition— challenging carceral mental health practices such as mandated reporting and involuntary hospitalization, and transitioning from punishment to aligned consequences, facilitated by impacted communities.
• Decriminalization— Total liberation and committed to dismantling societal stigmas surrounding sex work.
• Decolonization— The resistance of marginalized people, including acts of armed resistance and liberatory violence. Supporting the sovereignty of Indigenous peoples and people in the African diaspora.
• Anti-Oppression— Educate mental health professionals on systems of oppression, as these are often overlooked in professional training and graduate programs. This means directly calling out power & privilege with little concern around causing “discomfort.”
• Resistance— Direct action and fighting for the abolition of systems of oppression, even at the expense of personal power and status. Resistance means rejecting the idea that you “must”  comply with or “respect” authority.

I hope this shows that legality does not equal moral high ground, and freedom is a privilege, not a right. It’s an unfortunate reality that we have to fight to gain and maintain freedom, and that cultural beliefs don’t equal human rights. 

An unhealthy relationship starts to transition into abuse when there is an inherent power dynamic at play and the harm is repetitive, enforcing the dynamic. 

How an Abusive Dynamic Can Perpetuate in Psychedelic Facilitation 

The initial harm happens when a client or journeyer expresses reservation about say, a dosage (“I feel not sure I want to have that much”), but the practitioner overrides their autonomy by insisting they “just trust me,” often using spiritual language like “creator told me it’s for your healing” and framing the client’s boundary as “resistance” to healing.

The resulting confusion being that the client may still find the difficult experience “meaningful” despite the boundary violation, which makes the situation hard to integrate for them.

When the client finally gathers the courage to voice their feeling of harm and asks for “repair” (e.g., “I think that was hurtful,” “I didn’t need that much medicine”), the practitioner dismisses their concerns. 

The practitioner then gaslights the client by saying they are “not willing to do the work” or questioning “how dare you question what the creator told me to give to you.”

This pattern of a client’s autonomy being overridden and then their resulting complaint being dismissed and blamed on them is a common abusive dynamic occurring daily in the psychedelic space.

Repairing a Broken Facilitator-Journeyer Relationship

A sign of a high-quality facilitator is that they have a sense of their own ethical standards. It’s not the journeyers’ full responsibility to be able to discern unethical or abusive behavior.

It’s also important to note that there’s probably more unintentional harm being done than there are people who are purposefully insidious.

With that being said, having a foundation of trust between the journeyer and their facilitator can allow for open communication without fear of a negative response.

Part of the importance of a preparation phase is building a relationship with your facilitator so that you would feel comfortable bringing up things that may have made you uncomfortable.

Another sign of a high-quality facilitator is being able to take in constructive criticism open-heartedly, in a way that allows them not only to show up better for you, but to show up better as a facilitator in the future. 

Conflict is Generative

A restorative conversation, where one party is able to voice their qualms to a receptive second party, can actually greatly strengthen the relationship.

Conflict is generative, it’s a unique opportunity to breed intimacy, and bring understanding when there’s a commitment to listening, engaging in real change, and realizing we are all imperfect humans.

“Practitioners are servants to the people that are, you know, exchanging with them to hold space. So if there’s any time you feel like you’ve been harmed or wronged, it’s important and vital that they are made aware of the ways that they’ve harmed you. A practitioner is simply that a therapist, a helper, an ally, not a God, not a guru, not someone more important or more spiritually adept, they are human, just like you.” — Mikaela de la Myco

A teacher of Mikaela’s, Brittany Jade Wilson, warns that practitioners whose main source of income is psychedelic facilitation must be wary of the trail they leave behind. 

When it’s your full time job, how do you stop? Because if a facilitator causes harm, it’s almost an unspoken requirement to take a break from your practice and turn your focus inward to readjust your practice. 

But in capitalist America, it’s easy for facilitators to cause harm, not repair the relationship, and continue on to the next without any adjustment or self-inquiry. 

Seeing this emergent pattern is why we have to engage in this topic and hold facilitators accountable for how they serve. By talking about it we can normalize constructive criticism in the psychedelic space and in turn generate more healing.

How to Cultivate Open Communication in Psychedelic Spaces

First, we want to warn against “cancel culture”, because ruining someone’s reputation doesn’t automatically enact change, they easily can change their name, move to a new city, and continue facilitating for people who have never heard of them.

So then how do we approach facilitator abuse in a way that actually makes a difference? It starts with sharing your story, and keeping the conversation going. Mikaela de la Myco exemplifies this in her letter, An Open Apology to Survivors and Helpers in the Wellness Community.

It details her experiences in the psychedelic space, how to advocate for survivors, and what to expect as a survivor coming out about their story. 

It’s true that sharing your story perpetuates change, we see it with the Tapped Out Coalition when they came out about an organization failing to pay an individual that did a lot of work for them. 

To everyone’s surprise, when the story broke, others came forward about sexual abuse in the same very well-known psychedelic organization under the guise of a BIPOC safe haven. 

Speaking out doesn’t have to be public either, a private conversation with someone you trust is often the first step in coming forward about your survivorship. Therefore, the conversation can be “what do you need right now to make this situation better,” before addressing anything else.

Maybe you need initial funding so you can move out of that person’s place, maybe you need a witness to be with you while you address your issues with them. Each person’s story of survivorship is different and will require different needs for each survivor to find restoration in their experience.

Mikaela de la Myco does notice a need for an anonymous, neutral reporting platform. Not only does this add accessibility for survivors but it can highlight the extent of harm happening, which allows us to work on the right solutions.

It also gives the opportunity to ask facilitators and organizations if they are open to a restorative conversation about allegations brought against them.

The plus side is there has been a growing number of advocates in this space communicating with each other, so you may not know it but there is a web of people dedicated to meeting survivors where they are and giving aid in whatever way is needed.

The restorative justice people like Mikaela seek for survivors can be extremely varied, from grief circles to fundraising, they are determined to help survivors free themselves from their trauma in any way they can.

An important aspect of being an advocate is letting survivors lead their own healing journey. Remember too much, too fast, too strong? The same applies to helping survivors, we have to be careful not to push their healing. 

Education is Liberation

We’ve said it before, we’ll say it again. Learning from those who have walked the path before us can help ensure safety and benefit maximization moving forward. 

• Want to read more about Mikaela de la Myco’s work? Read about the research she spearheaded crowdsourced psychedelic research for pregnant and breastfeeding mothers as well as womanhood, fertility, & menopause.

•  Awaken Your Inner Child: Growing up doesn’t mean shutting down. The things we leave behind as we grow might be the key to true healing.

• The Technological Revolution and its Benefits: How do we embrace technology in a way that allows us to better interact with psychedelics?
• Privilege, Accessibility & Ethical Responsibility: See for yourself how living your truth can mean many different things, but that there are parallels hidden in each unique story where we can all find common ground.
• Not Sure How to Approach Your Doctor?: Not everyone will talk to their primary care doctor about intentional psychedelic use, but if you should need to, we have compiled all you need to know to feel confident moving forward.
• Ways To Interact With Psychedelics: Take a journey with Jake Winke as he discusses the most common types of ceremonies.
• Involving Friends or Family: Discover how to ask for support, and the pros and cons to having a friend or family member, or even a pet attend your ceremony.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. How are past cultural attitudes, like “seen not heard,” relevant to modern psychedelic abuse?

The article argues that the inherent power dynamic created by past authoritarian culture (where questioning adults was forbidden) creates the perfect breeding ground for harm in vulnerable spaces like psychedelic healing. This dynamic allows facilitators, who are often seen as “experts” or “gurus,” to silence clients and perpetuate abuse without immediate challenge.

2. What is the key indicator that harm is happening, even in subtle situations?

A common principle in harm reduction is that harm often occurs when an experience is “too much, too fast, too strong.” This phrase serves as a reliable internal red flag. If a client feels overwhelmed, rushed, or pushed beyond their capacity—whether physically, emotionally, or spiritually—it signals that boundaries are being violated and change is necessary.

3. What is the fundamental pattern of abusive dynamics in psychedelic facilitation?

The pattern begins when a practitioner overrides a client’s autonomy (e.g., insisting on a dosage despite client reservation) and then, when the client seeks repair, the practitioner gaslights them by dismissing their concerns as a lack of willingness “to do the work” or “resistance” to healing. This perpetuates the harm and enforces the power dynamic.

4. Why is it so difficult for survivors of facilitator abuse to come forward?

Multiple factors silence survivors: 1) Altered Consciousness: Psychedelics can make people second-guess their perceptions of what happened. 2) Psychedelic Halo Effect: Fear of undermining the push for legalization (cheerleaderism) discourages critical discussion. 3) Legal Gray Area: The semi-legal status of psychedelics leaves clients with few safe, official reporting resources.

5. What is one of the most effective ways to address and resolve facilitator harm?

Instead of relying on “cancel culture” (which doesn’t ensure change), the most effective way to improve standards is through restorative conversation and accountability. High-quality facilitators must be open-hearted, take constructive criticism seriously, and remember that they are human servants to the people, not a guru or a God.

References

Chwyl, C., Wilson-Poe, A. R., Hoffman, K. A., Bazinet, A., Pertl, K., Luoma, J. B., des Jarlais, D., Bielavitz, S., & Korthuis, P. T. (2025). Building standards of psychedelic care: Qualitative examination of expert perspectives on safety, inclusion, and accountability. International Journal of Drug Policy, 104938. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugpo.2025.104938

Jadon, P. S., & Tripathi, S. (2017). Effect of authoritarian parenting style on self esteem of the child: A systematic review. International Journal of Advance Research and Innovative Ideas in Education, 3(3), 909-913.