I’ve led thousands of ceremonies at this point.
Different faces. Different stories. Different reasons people walk through the door.
But one pattern shows up more than almost any other, and it’s rarely what people expect. It’s not trauma from a single event. It’s not even grief, most of the time. It’s watching someone get right to the edge of something good, something they’ve wanted for years, and pull back at the exact moment it becomes real.
They call it self-sabotage. I’ve stopped calling it that.
What Looks Like Sabotage Is Usually Protection
Picture someone finally getting close to the relationship they wanted, and suddenly they pick a fight over nothing. Or someone on the edge of a career change that could actually work, and they miss the deadline that would have made it real.
From the outside, it looks like they’re wrecking their own life.
From the inside, their nervous system is doing exactly what it was trained to do. It’s protecting them from a version of hope that once got crushed. If reaching for something good has ever led to loss, disappointment, or humiliation, some part of you learns a brutal lesson. Don’t get too close. It’s safer to fail on your own terms than to be blindsided again.
That’s not a weakness. That’s a nervous system doing its job with outdated information.
Why Willpower Doesn’t Fix It
Most people try to out-discipline this pattern. More accountability. More systems. More pressure to just follow through this time.
It rarely works, and here’s why. You’re trying to override a protective response with logic, and protective responses don’t answer to logic. They answer to safety.
The part of you that sabotages isn’t trying to ruin your life. It’s trying to keep you alive in the only way it knows how, based on something that happened long before you had the tools to handle it differently.
What I’ve Seen Change This
The shift I’ve watched happen again and again in ceremony isn’t about trying harder. It’s about the moment someone finally sees what the sabotage was protecting them from.
Once you can name the original wound, whether it’s a betrayal, a failure, a time you were humiliated for wanting something, the sabotage often starts to loosen on its own. Not because you decided to stop doing it. Because the part of you doing it doesn’t need to anymore.
You can’t think your way out of a pattern your body built to survive something. You have to show that part of you the danger has passed.
A Question Worth Sitting With
Where in your life have you gotten close to something good, only to find a reason to walk away or blow it up?
Don’t judge it yet. Just notice it.
That pattern is not proof that you don’t deserve the thing. It’s proof that somewhere along the way, wanting something openly cost you more than you could afford at the time.
How Working with Plant Medicine Opens This
Kambo purges at a level deeper than willpower can reach. People often report that after working with Kambo, the compulsion to sabotage something good loses its grip, not because they fought it, but because whatever was driving it got physically released.
Bufo takes this further. In the space it opens, the identity built around “I always ruin good things” can dissolve entirely, even if only for a moment. That moment is often enough to show someone the pattern was never who they are. It was just something they picked up along the way.
Something to Listen To This Week
“The Chain” by Fleetwood Mac. A song about the pull between wanting connection and running from it.
Action Prompt
Think of one good thing currently in your life, a relationship, an opportunity, a piece of momentum.
Write down one way you’ve felt the urge to undermine it recently, even in a small way.
Then ask what that urge might be protecting. Don’t fix it yet. Just name it.
Now We Want to Hear From You
Have you ever caught yourself sabotaging something good, right as it started to work?
This pattern is far more common than most people realize, and naming it out loud is often the first thing that loosens it.
See you next Monday.
