1
00:00:00,120 --> 00:00:01,880
Speaker 1: If you have your own story of being in a

2
00:00:01,960 --> 00:00:03,720
Speaker 1: cult or a high control group.

3
00:00:03,640 --> 00:00:06,760
Speaker 2: Or if you've had experience with manipulation or abusive power

4
00:00:06,760 --> 00:00:07,840
Speaker 2: that you'd like to share.

5
00:00:07,680 --> 00:00:10,039
Speaker 1: Leave us a message on our hotline number at three

6
00:00:10,080 --> 00:00:12,520
Speaker 1: four seven eight six trust that's.

7
00:00:12,400 --> 00:00:16,079
Speaker 2: Three four seven eight six eight seven eight seven eight.

8
00:00:16,200 --> 00:00:18,480
Speaker 1: Or shoot us an email at trust Me pod at

9
00:00:18,520 --> 00:00:19,920
Speaker 1: gmail dot com.

10
00:00:20,320 --> 00:00:23,279
Speaker 3: Trust me, trust me, trust me.

11
00:00:23,600 --> 00:00:25,000
Speaker 4: I'm like a swat person.

12
00:00:25,320 --> 00:00:26,160
Speaker 3: I've never lived.

13
00:00:26,160 --> 00:00:28,280
Speaker 4: To you, I've never had a live.

14
00:00:28,680 --> 00:00:31,600
Speaker 3: Do you think that one person has all the answers?

15
00:00:31,800 --> 00:00:32,440
Speaker 5: Don't?

16
00:00:32,800 --> 00:00:36,200
Speaker 2: Welcome to trust Me the podcast about cults, extreme belief

17
00:00:36,280 --> 00:00:40,280
Speaker 2: and manipulation from two reputable non medical professionals who've actually

18
00:00:40,280 --> 00:00:40,879
Speaker 2: experienced it.

19
00:00:40,920 --> 00:00:43,519
Speaker 3: I'm Lo La Blanc and I'm Megan Elizabeth. It's a

20
00:00:43,520 --> 00:00:44,760
Speaker 3: lot of syllables today.

21
00:00:44,800 --> 00:00:47,800
Speaker 2: Our guests are doctor Mark Feldman, professor of psychology and

22
00:00:47,880 --> 00:00:51,360
Speaker 2: expert in Munchausen by proxy, and Jordan Hope, a survivor

23
00:00:51,440 --> 00:00:52,519
Speaker 2: of Munchhausen by proxy.

24
00:00:52,560 --> 00:00:54,040
Speaker 3: There's so much information in this interview.

25
00:00:54,120 --> 00:00:55,960
Speaker 2: We all Doctor Feldman's going to talk to us about

26
00:00:55,960 --> 00:00:58,880
Speaker 2: the language around this disorder and why he actually prefers

27
00:00:58,880 --> 00:01:01,840
Speaker 2: the term medical child abuse. What medical child abuse looks like,

28
00:01:01,920 --> 00:01:04,080
Speaker 2: and some of the more extreme cases he's seen, some

29
00:01:04,160 --> 00:01:05,840
Speaker 2: of the red flags that he looks out for, and

30
00:01:05,880 --> 00:01:08,920
Speaker 2: how people get doctors to believe the fictional illnesses they

31
00:01:08,920 --> 00:01:09,760
Speaker 2: say their children have.

32
00:01:09,959 --> 00:01:12,600
Speaker 1: This is one of the most fascinating conversations I've ever

33
00:01:12,640 --> 00:01:13,240
Speaker 1: been a part of.

34
00:01:13,480 --> 00:01:14,080
Speaker 4: I agree.

35
00:01:14,200 --> 00:01:17,319
Speaker 1: Jordan will tell us about their experience being medicated by

36
00:01:17,360 --> 00:01:20,360
Speaker 1: their mother throughout their childhood and taken to doctors for

37
00:01:20,440 --> 00:01:23,920
Speaker 1: surgery for illnesses they later learned they never had, how

38
00:01:23,959 --> 00:01:26,240
Speaker 1: they began to suspect that they were a victim of

39
00:01:26,319 --> 00:01:29,520
Speaker 1: medical child abuse once they learned about it from a professor,

40
00:01:29,600 --> 00:01:32,120
Speaker 1: and what it was like going back through their medical

41
00:01:32,240 --> 00:01:35,480
Speaker 1: history and seeing it all on record and discovering that

42
00:01:35,560 --> 00:01:38,440
Speaker 1: a doctor actually knew what was going on and had

43
00:01:38,480 --> 00:01:39,200
Speaker 1: tried to help.

44
00:01:39,360 --> 00:01:42,240
Speaker 2: We'll also discuss whether those who commit medical child abuse

45
00:01:42,280 --> 00:01:44,360
Speaker 2: can be treated, whether it can be passed down, and

46
00:01:44,440 --> 00:01:47,040
Speaker 2: how to tell the difference between a hypochondriac or someone

47
00:01:47,040 --> 00:01:50,680
Speaker 2: who's a bit obsessive and someone who's intentionally harming their child.

48
00:01:50,520 --> 00:01:52,760
Speaker 1: Plus why survivors have to learn how to listen to

49
00:01:52,800 --> 00:01:56,120
Speaker 1: their own bodies and instincts, and resources for people who've

50
00:01:56,120 --> 00:01:59,560
Speaker 1: experienced medical child abuse wooh so much.

51
00:01:59,640 --> 00:02:02,880
Speaker 2: Jampas here. I love this interview. I cannot wait to

52
00:02:02,880 --> 00:02:05,320
Speaker 2: get into it. Before we get in, tell me your

53
00:02:05,360 --> 00:02:06,320
Speaker 2: cultiest thing please.

54
00:02:06,480 --> 00:02:07,040
Speaker 5: Okay.

55
00:02:07,400 --> 00:02:10,680
Speaker 1: So this is just an interesting theory that's being floated

56
00:02:10,720 --> 00:02:13,400
Speaker 1: out into the universe right now. The good doctor we

57
00:02:13,520 --> 00:02:15,880
Speaker 1: interviewed today might have a different take on it, but

58
00:02:15,880 --> 00:02:18,560
Speaker 1: I'm gonna throw it out there because it's happening right now.

59
00:02:18,800 --> 00:02:22,519
Speaker 1: A nurse in the UK, her name is Lucy let Be.

60
00:02:23,200 --> 00:02:27,840
Speaker 1: She just received a life sentence for murdering seven babies

61
00:02:28,040 --> 00:02:30,440
Speaker 1: and trying to murder several more.

62
00:02:30,800 --> 00:02:32,560
Speaker 5: She was a nurse in the ICU.

63
00:02:33,240 --> 00:02:35,880
Speaker 1: So the detective who led the case, his name is

64
00:02:36,080 --> 00:02:41,639
Speaker 1: Superintendent Paul Hughes, said quote, she clearly loves the attention

65
00:02:42,240 --> 00:02:46,360
Speaker 1: and likened it to Munchausen by proxy. Then a criminologist,

66
00:02:46,560 --> 00:02:50,680
Speaker 1: David Wilson also agreed, and he said let Be's desire

67
00:02:50,760 --> 00:02:53,280
Speaker 1: to be at the center of a crisis was also

68
00:02:53,440 --> 00:02:57,160
Speaker 1: indicative of the disorder. Then they say, and this is creepy.

69
00:02:57,520 --> 00:03:01,240
Speaker 1: It was a bonus if she could help bereaeve parents

70
00:03:01,320 --> 00:03:05,359
Speaker 1: by preparing a memory box for them, hand in footprints

71
00:03:05,360 --> 00:03:09,520
Speaker 1: of their lost baby, a photograph of two dead twins

72
00:03:09,600 --> 00:03:14,320
Speaker 1: laid out in moses basket, a condolence card for another baby,

73
00:03:14,680 --> 00:03:15,840
Speaker 1: and time for the funeral.

74
00:03:15,960 --> 00:03:16,360
Speaker 6: Wow.

75
00:03:16,400 --> 00:03:22,040
Speaker 1: So she was creating these deaths, these illnesses while she

76
00:03:22,240 --> 00:03:27,080
Speaker 1: was on staff to get the attention, and some of

77
00:03:27,120 --> 00:03:30,320
Speaker 1: these people are labeling it Munchausen by proxy.

78
00:03:30,560 --> 00:03:33,840
Speaker 2: That is, first of all, the most devastating, horrific thing

79
00:03:33,880 --> 00:03:34,639
Speaker 2: I've ever heard.

80
00:03:35,280 --> 00:03:35,960
Speaker 5: Horrifying.

81
00:03:36,280 --> 00:03:39,920
Speaker 2: Also just like it's so interesting because it's like, you're

82
00:03:39,960 --> 00:03:42,440
Speaker 2: the nurse. So it almost seems like what made her

83
00:03:42,480 --> 00:03:47,480
Speaker 2: feel good was consoling, yes, this grieving family more so

84
00:03:47,560 --> 00:03:48,720
Speaker 2: than people consoling her.

85
00:03:49,280 --> 00:03:53,680
Speaker 1: While she liked the people were always like, oh my gosh,

86
00:03:53,720 --> 00:03:57,840
Speaker 1: you're poor. You you're always on staff at the worst times,

87
00:03:58,800 --> 00:04:02,640
Speaker 1: like you have to see the worst things, like your

88
00:04:02,840 --> 00:04:05,280
Speaker 1: patient was sick, your patient died.

89
00:04:05,440 --> 00:04:07,120
Speaker 5: Oh, you must be devastated.

90
00:04:07,840 --> 00:04:12,480
Speaker 1: So it seems again from what I've read, that she

91
00:04:12,720 --> 00:04:17,040
Speaker 1: was getting off on these being clients and her care

92
00:04:17,240 --> 00:04:21,760
Speaker 1: oh that were somehow tied to her emotionally and getting

93
00:04:21,800 --> 00:04:22,720
Speaker 1: sympathy for it.

94
00:04:22,839 --> 00:04:24,440
Speaker 2: That is the worst thing I've ever heard. And I

95
00:04:24,480 --> 00:04:28,440
Speaker 2: won't ask you more details because they're probably very disturbing. Yeah,

96
00:04:28,440 --> 00:04:31,080
Speaker 2: but I'm glad she got caught.

97
00:04:30,960 --> 00:04:35,599
Speaker 1: This disorder is fascinating, and I'm curious to see how

98
00:04:36,279 --> 00:04:39,839
Speaker 1: the field will grow and if there's more definitions of

99
00:04:39,839 --> 00:04:43,320
Speaker 1: it that have yet to be discovered yet. Totally, what's yours?

100
00:04:43,320 --> 00:04:44,800
Speaker 1: What's your cultist thing of the week?

101
00:04:45,320 --> 00:04:49,320
Speaker 2: My cultiest thing is that I've been going on TikTok

102
00:04:49,400 --> 00:04:52,280
Speaker 2: more because I'm trying to promote my song whatever. So

103
00:04:52,400 --> 00:04:55,039
Speaker 2: I've been seeing like the posts of people I know,

104
00:04:55,800 --> 00:05:00,000
Speaker 2: and there's a contact in my phone who I wrote

105
00:05:00,240 --> 00:05:03,400
Speaker 2: a song with, like probably five or six years ago.

106
00:05:04,320 --> 00:05:08,719
Speaker 2: He was super nice, really liked him. I remember at

107
00:05:08,720 --> 00:05:10,599
Speaker 2: the time there were like a few people kind of

108
00:05:10,640 --> 00:05:15,120
Speaker 2: milling around the studio and someone mentioned offhand like I

109
00:05:15,120 --> 00:05:19,160
Speaker 2: can't remember if they said like pastor or prophet, but

110
00:05:19,360 --> 00:05:21,880
Speaker 2: I remember at the time because we're like writing a

111
00:05:22,320 --> 00:05:26,040
Speaker 2: pop hip hop song. This is like not a religious environment.

112
00:05:26,480 --> 00:05:29,039
Speaker 2: I was like, oh ha, they must be joking or something.

113
00:05:29,680 --> 00:05:30,479
Speaker 3: I log onto.

114
00:05:30,360 --> 00:05:33,720
Speaker 2: TikTok these last few weeks, I have seen now multiple

115
00:05:33,760 --> 00:05:39,599
Speaker 2: videos uploaded by this man. He literally calls himself a prophet.

116
00:05:39,800 --> 00:05:44,799
Speaker 2: He has tons of followers, tons of likes and comments

117
00:05:44,839 --> 00:05:48,720
Speaker 2: of people asking him to bless them and to heal

118
00:05:48,760 --> 00:05:50,080
Speaker 2: them and to perform miracles.

119
00:05:50,080 --> 00:05:50,480
Speaker 5: On him.

120
00:05:50,760 --> 00:05:53,239
Speaker 2: All of these videos are of him at these huge

121
00:05:54,000 --> 00:05:59,359
Speaker 2: megachurches performing in strong quotation marks miracles and telling people

122
00:06:00,279 --> 00:06:05,120
Speaker 2: like giving them prophecies and like psychic revelations and healings

123
00:06:05,160 --> 00:06:08,920
Speaker 2: and stuff. I cannot believe I know this person. I'm

124
00:06:08,960 --> 00:06:10,360
Speaker 2: like so shook by this.

125
00:06:10,920 --> 00:06:11,240
Speaker 5: WHOA.

126
00:06:11,960 --> 00:06:13,680
Speaker 3: I don't want to say his name. I don't know.

127
00:06:13,760 --> 00:06:16,720
Speaker 2: It just seems weird to call more attention to that

128
00:06:16,760 --> 00:06:17,760
Speaker 2: person or whatever.

129
00:06:17,880 --> 00:06:22,120
Speaker 3: But like, it's so upsetting to me that he's doing that.

130
00:06:22,080 --> 00:06:25,400
Speaker 2: You get, I'm like, no, that's just a songwriter, right,

131
00:06:25,800 --> 00:06:27,080
Speaker 2: I'm a superducer like that.

132
00:06:27,200 --> 00:06:29,240
Speaker 3: It is not no, you guys, he's not.

133
00:06:29,200 --> 00:06:29,760
Speaker 5: Going to heal you.

134
00:06:29,800 --> 00:06:31,920
Speaker 2: And when you look him up online, there's he has

135
00:06:32,080 --> 00:06:35,440
Speaker 2: so many followers and so many people who really really

136
00:06:35,440 --> 00:06:37,480
Speaker 2: think he's doing this, and it makes me very sad.

137
00:06:37,480 --> 00:06:39,440
Speaker 2: And I don't really know what the move is. Like,

138
00:06:39,640 --> 00:06:40,760
Speaker 2: I'm not going to convince anyone.

139
00:06:40,760 --> 00:06:45,440
Speaker 1: He's not real interesting that he's amassing this many followers.

140
00:06:45,520 --> 00:06:48,359
Speaker 5: I wonder what his take on all of it is.

141
00:06:48,839 --> 00:06:52,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's very clear to me that this

142
00:06:52,839 --> 00:06:54,400
Speaker 2: person is not legitimate.

143
00:06:54,560 --> 00:06:54,719
Speaker 7: You know.

144
00:06:54,800 --> 00:06:57,800
Speaker 2: I also feel very strongly that things without evidence cannot

145
00:06:57,839 --> 00:07:00,880
Speaker 2: be taken seriously, just because somebody says they're real, right

146
00:07:01,160 --> 00:07:03,680
Speaker 2: he Actually it reminds me of Jim Jones the way

147
00:07:03,839 --> 00:07:07,960
Speaker 2: he's conducting the healings and miracles, Like it feels like

148
00:07:08,000 --> 00:07:10,080
Speaker 2: that same sort of thing where he's like in front

149
00:07:10,120 --> 00:07:11,320
Speaker 2: of everyone and it's very.

150
00:07:11,280 --> 00:07:13,000
Speaker 3: There's a lot of spectacle, for sure.

151
00:07:13,040 --> 00:07:15,280
Speaker 2: These people are giving him money, you know, of course,

152
00:07:15,680 --> 00:07:16,680
Speaker 2: probably a lot of it.

153
00:07:16,800 --> 00:07:18,080
Speaker 3: Oh that makes me sad.

154
00:07:18,280 --> 00:07:21,560
Speaker 2: They're treating him like Jesus. They're saying, please heal me profit.

155
00:07:21,720 --> 00:07:24,880
Speaker 2: Like it's really sad, and it's just so frickin weird.

156
00:07:24,920 --> 00:07:27,080
Speaker 2: I'm like, don't I know enough cult leaders already? Like

157
00:07:27,160 --> 00:07:29,600
Speaker 2: this is Yeah, why, this is a bit much. At

158
00:07:29,640 --> 00:07:32,000
Speaker 2: this point, it feels like you've had your felt.

159
00:07:32,000 --> 00:07:33,120
Speaker 3: But I think I'm done.

160
00:07:33,200 --> 00:07:38,000
Speaker 2: I think no more cult leaders, self proclaimed profits, alleged

161
00:07:38,360 --> 00:07:40,360
Speaker 2: miracle workers, none of these.

162
00:07:40,760 --> 00:07:41,440
Speaker 3: I'm done with them.

163
00:07:41,600 --> 00:07:43,880
Speaker 5: Yeah. Same, I think you've had.

164
00:07:43,760 --> 00:07:47,920
Speaker 2: Your felt true true true? Should we talk to doctor

165
00:07:47,920 --> 00:07:49,600
Speaker 2: Feldman and Jordan Hope?

166
00:07:49,600 --> 00:07:49,800
Speaker 7: Now?

167
00:07:50,000 --> 00:07:52,280
Speaker 5: Yes, I'm so excited for this conversation.

168
00:08:02,960 --> 00:08:05,440
Speaker 2: Welcome doctor Mark Feldman and Jordan Hope. Thank you so

169
00:08:05,520 --> 00:08:06,920
Speaker 2: much for being with us today.

170
00:08:07,200 --> 00:08:10,000
Speaker 7: I'm glad to be here. I suspect jordan Istue.

171
00:08:10,280 --> 00:08:11,480
Speaker 4: Yes, very awesome.

172
00:08:11,520 --> 00:08:13,920
Speaker 2: So before we get into it, Mark, I just want

173
00:08:13,960 --> 00:08:19,080
Speaker 2: to ask you what is the correct terminology for what colloquially.

174
00:08:18,440 --> 00:08:20,800
Speaker 3: We all know as munchausen by proxy.

175
00:08:21,160 --> 00:08:24,520
Speaker 7: Well, that could use up the next hour, because there

176
00:08:24,560 --> 00:08:27,320
Speaker 7: are so many terms that have been used to refer

177
00:08:27,440 --> 00:08:32,480
Speaker 7: to what most people know as munchasm by proxy. That

178
00:08:32,720 --> 00:08:37,520
Speaker 7: term was developed back in nineteen seventy seven and it

179
00:08:37,679 --> 00:08:40,600
Speaker 7: stuck so most of the time when I see even

180
00:08:40,679 --> 00:08:45,480
Speaker 7: now or professional articles dealing with the topic, they call

181
00:08:45,520 --> 00:08:49,040
Speaker 7: it munchasm by proxy. But I'd prefer to call it

182
00:08:49,120 --> 00:08:54,320
Speaker 7: medical child abuse because that puts the focus on the

183
00:08:54,440 --> 00:08:58,760
Speaker 7: child and the fact that this is abuse. It's not

184
00:08:59,040 --> 00:09:04,559
Speaker 7: simply a mental illness that the perpetrator is the helpless

185
00:09:04,640 --> 00:09:09,240
Speaker 7: victim of right. It involves deliberate deceptions. So medical child

186
00:09:09,280 --> 00:09:13,080
Speaker 7: abuse makes that clearer. But to murky the waters even more,

187
00:09:13,640 --> 00:09:20,040
Speaker 7: the American Psychiatric Association refers to it as factitious disorder

188
00:09:20,200 --> 00:09:24,440
Speaker 7: imposed on another, which is a long, clunky title that

189
00:09:24,600 --> 00:09:27,720
Speaker 7: I don't like too much, and that's why again I've

190
00:09:27,720 --> 00:09:31,559
Speaker 7: defaulted to medical child abuse. That's not a mental illness,

191
00:09:31,600 --> 00:09:34,600
Speaker 7: it's a behavior that's abusive to children and others.

192
00:09:34,840 --> 00:09:37,200
Speaker 2: I think that's a really important point because when I

193
00:09:37,200 --> 00:09:41,479
Speaker 2: hear munchausm by proxy, it almost sounds like, oh, dissociative

194
00:09:41,559 --> 00:09:44,600
Speaker 2: identity disorder, Like what a weird thing this person has,

195
00:09:44,720 --> 00:09:49,400
Speaker 2: versus like centering the victim who's actually experienced abuse at

196
00:09:49,400 --> 00:09:50,280
Speaker 2: the hands of the person.

197
00:09:50,559 --> 00:09:53,319
Speaker 7: That's so true. What I tend to see in articles,

198
00:09:53,360 --> 00:09:57,080
Speaker 7: even as recently as a day or two ago, is

199
00:09:57,559 --> 00:10:01,920
Speaker 7: the mother suffered from munchasm by pri Oh yeah, And

200
00:10:02,160 --> 00:10:05,599
Speaker 7: I don't like that, and I correct that every opportunity

201
00:10:05,679 --> 00:10:08,640
Speaker 7: I get, because it implies that she's the victim. It's

202
00:10:08,679 --> 00:10:09,920
Speaker 7: just not the case at all.

203
00:10:10,120 --> 00:10:13,240
Speaker 1: If it's Munchausen's, they're affecting themselves. Do you have a

204
00:10:13,240 --> 00:10:15,720
Speaker 1: little bit more sympathy for that. It's when it starts

205
00:10:15,720 --> 00:10:18,839
Speaker 1: affecting the child that it gets into weirder territory.

206
00:10:19,640 --> 00:10:23,959
Speaker 7: Yes, we call that, or the American Psychiatric Association calls

207
00:10:24,000 --> 00:10:27,880
Speaker 7: that factitious disorder impost on self. It used to be

208
00:10:27,960 --> 00:10:32,080
Speaker 7: called Munchausen syndrome. Again, that's the term most people know of,

209
00:10:32,480 --> 00:10:37,520
Speaker 7: and that's where somebody fans exaggerates or actually self induces

210
00:10:37,640 --> 00:10:41,760
Speaker 7: illness in themselves because it gives them some kind of

211
00:10:41,800 --> 00:10:47,840
Speaker 7: emotional gratification. They may get emotional gratifications from medical child abuse,

212
00:10:48,559 --> 00:10:53,960
Speaker 7: but it is a criminal behavior inherently, and that's when

213
00:10:54,000 --> 00:10:57,840
Speaker 7: the police have to get involved, hopefully and chop protect

214
00:10:57,880 --> 00:11:01,360
Speaker 7: the services as well, if you can get them to

215
00:11:01,400 --> 00:11:05,480
Speaker 7: do a proper investigation, which is always an uphill battle, right.

216
00:11:05,800 --> 00:11:08,080
Speaker 2: I knew a girl who was roommates with a couple

217
00:11:08,120 --> 00:11:11,760
Speaker 2: of my friends who was pretending to have cancer, and

218
00:11:11,800 --> 00:11:14,120
Speaker 2: they kind of suspected and then figured out that she

219
00:11:14,160 --> 00:11:17,320
Speaker 2: didn't have cancer, And it was like very upsetting, but

220
00:11:17,480 --> 00:11:19,920
Speaker 2: like there was no crime committed, you know, the only person.

221
00:11:20,040 --> 00:11:21,680
Speaker 2: It was only like feelings that were hurt.

222
00:11:21,720 --> 00:11:24,000
Speaker 1: She didn't collect any money because like then the money

223
00:11:24,000 --> 00:11:25,040
Speaker 1: thing becomes a crime.

224
00:11:25,360 --> 00:11:25,880
Speaker 3: She didn't.

225
00:11:25,920 --> 00:11:29,240
Speaker 1: She just wanted sympathy, right, So if there's collections of money,

226
00:11:29,760 --> 00:11:31,920
Speaker 1: or you're hurting a child. I was also shocked to

227
00:11:32,040 --> 00:11:34,480
Speaker 1: read that you said that this can also affect pets

228
00:11:34,520 --> 00:11:37,080
Speaker 1: like people can have Oh yes, can you say just

229
00:11:37,120 --> 00:11:38,240
Speaker 1: a second about that.

230
00:11:38,559 --> 00:11:41,760
Speaker 7: In my last book, Dying to Be Ill, we wrote

231
00:11:42,080 --> 00:11:46,760
Speaker 7: a whole chapter about what I called Munchausen by animal proxy.

232
00:11:47,400 --> 00:11:50,320
Speaker 7: There and for those who don't have easy access to

233
00:11:50,360 --> 00:11:53,960
Speaker 7: a child but still have the same psychological needs and

234
00:11:54,080 --> 00:11:58,240
Speaker 7: same pathology. They may victimize their pets. And this occurs

235
00:11:58,280 --> 00:12:02,120
Speaker 7: more than veteran air and themselves like to talk about.

236
00:12:02,760 --> 00:12:06,040
Speaker 7: But I have over the years received a lot of

237
00:12:06,080 --> 00:12:08,840
Speaker 7: emails from vets and others who say they don't know

238
00:12:08,880 --> 00:12:14,320
Speaker 7: what to do. The owner might use whatever medications are

239
00:12:14,400 --> 00:12:18,679
Speaker 7: prescribed for themselves, so they may say my pet is

240
00:12:18,880 --> 00:12:23,680
Speaker 7: really anxious and need some kind of tranquilizer, and they're

241
00:12:23,679 --> 00:12:26,440
Speaker 7: doing it because they want it for themselves, and that

242
00:12:26,880 --> 00:12:29,520
Speaker 7: crosses the line into what we call them a lingering,

243
00:12:29,920 --> 00:12:34,680
Speaker 7: where somebody is after tangible gain, but for others. I

244
00:12:34,760 --> 00:12:40,120
Speaker 7: know of a case where the human fell in love

245
00:12:40,160 --> 00:12:43,280
Speaker 7: with her veterinarian and one way to stay connected with

246
00:12:43,440 --> 00:12:47,560
Speaker 7: him was to keep her dog always sick and always

247
00:12:47,559 --> 00:12:50,160
Speaker 7: in need of another visit, and he didn't know what

248
00:12:50,240 --> 00:12:53,679
Speaker 7: to do. He recognized the dynamics, but she also had

249
00:12:53,720 --> 00:12:56,000
Speaker 7: a big mouth, and he said, she's going to go

250
00:12:56,120 --> 00:13:00,040
Speaker 7: everywhere in town and everywhere online and say I'm the

251
00:13:00,080 --> 00:13:03,240
Speaker 7: worst doctor in the world if I confront her. So

252
00:13:03,600 --> 00:13:06,480
Speaker 7: I don't know whatever happened in the end, but I

253
00:13:06,480 --> 00:13:10,160
Speaker 7: think his ambivalence won out, and he never really did

254
00:13:10,320 --> 00:13:11,320
Speaker 7: anything about it.

255
00:13:11,400 --> 00:13:13,640
Speaker 2: Well to just give people a little more contacts for

256
00:13:13,679 --> 00:13:16,120
Speaker 2: who you are and what your qualifications are. Can you

257
00:13:16,160 --> 00:13:18,600
Speaker 2: tell us well, first of all, how you became interested

258
00:13:18,760 --> 00:13:21,400
Speaker 2: in studying this and what your background is.

259
00:13:21,640 --> 00:13:26,360
Speaker 7: Yeah. I'm currently a clinical professor of psychiatry and adjunct

260
00:13:26,440 --> 00:13:31,040
Speaker 7: Professor of psychology at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.

261
00:13:31,840 --> 00:13:36,520
Speaker 7: I am much older than Joe is a man. I'm

262
00:13:36,520 --> 00:13:39,360
Speaker 7: going to date myself here. But I encountered my first

263
00:13:39,440 --> 00:13:43,160
Speaker 7: case of a person making her cel sic and feigning

264
00:13:43,240 --> 00:13:47,920
Speaker 7: cancer back in nineteen eighty nine, and I became fascinated

265
00:13:48,000 --> 00:13:51,320
Speaker 7: right away. She ended up doing really well when we

266
00:13:51,440 --> 00:13:56,720
Speaker 7: treated her underlying depression, and that removed the impulse she

267
00:13:56,920 --> 00:14:00,920
Speaker 7: had to try to gain attention in pathological way. I

268
00:14:00,960 --> 00:14:04,839
Speaker 7: wrote up that case for a medical journal. Somehow the

269
00:14:04,960 --> 00:14:07,600
Speaker 7: Associated Press picked up on it, and the next thing

270
00:14:07,600 --> 00:14:09,560
Speaker 7: I knew, I had a book deal. And as I

271
00:14:09,679 --> 00:14:13,160
Speaker 7: was researching the book, I came across this thing called

272
00:14:13,600 --> 00:14:17,959
Speaker 7: Munchausen by proxy. I had absolutely no idea what it was,

273
00:14:18,320 --> 00:14:22,720
Speaker 7: but decided I needed to include a chapter about it

274
00:14:22,800 --> 00:14:25,800
Speaker 7: because there were a lot of papers about it, and

275
00:14:26,120 --> 00:14:30,520
Speaker 7: I've been interested in that subject really both subjects ever since.

276
00:14:30,560 --> 00:14:35,560
Speaker 7: So it's been over thirty years of making medical deception

277
00:14:35,920 --> 00:14:40,440
Speaker 7: my primary and almost exclusive research interest.

278
00:14:40,680 --> 00:14:44,280
Speaker 1: Why is it called Munchausen by was doctor Munchausen the

279
00:14:44,280 --> 00:14:45,600
Speaker 1: one who discovered it or something?

280
00:14:45,600 --> 00:14:46,360
Speaker 5: Why is it called that.

281
00:14:47,000 --> 00:14:50,600
Speaker 7: There was a person named Baron Munchausen in the seventeen hundred.

282
00:14:50,600 --> 00:14:54,120
Speaker 7: It's a real person who was known for the colorful

283
00:14:54,240 --> 00:14:57,920
Speaker 7: stories he would tell about his military exploits. Somebody took

284
00:14:57,960 --> 00:15:01,400
Speaker 7: his name and applied it to a British book of

285
00:15:01,680 --> 00:15:06,480
Speaker 7: outlandish stories, as if they were attributed to him. They were,

286
00:15:06,480 --> 00:15:10,400
Speaker 7: in fact stories he had never made up. They're so ridiculous.

287
00:15:10,960 --> 00:15:14,160
Speaker 7: Ever since that first book came out using his name,

288
00:15:14,240 --> 00:15:18,640
Speaker 7: it's never been out of print since seventeen eighty five.

289
00:15:18,760 --> 00:15:22,400
Speaker 7: I think it's captured the public's imagination. A lot of

290
00:15:22,480 --> 00:15:28,120
Speaker 7: children read the Adventures of Baron Munchausen, and then British physician,

291
00:15:28,680 --> 00:15:32,480
Speaker 7: when he encountered the first case of Munchausen syndrome, decided

292
00:15:32,520 --> 00:15:35,560
Speaker 7: to apply the Baron's name to that syndrome as well.

293
00:15:35,600 --> 00:15:39,160
Speaker 7: And that was people who would go from hospital to hospital,

294
00:15:39,240 --> 00:15:42,720
Speaker 7: getting themselves admitted and even having surgery they knew they

295
00:15:42,720 --> 00:15:46,600
Speaker 7: didn't really need. And we sometimes call a polysurgical addiction

296
00:15:47,120 --> 00:15:51,560
Speaker 7: which just medicalizes is what we all have seen, those

297
00:15:51,600 --> 00:15:54,760
Speaker 7: of us in the field. Some people are in love

298
00:15:55,280 --> 00:16:01,000
Speaker 7: with having surgery, being incapacitated for a while, getting pain meds,

299
00:16:01,080 --> 00:16:05,080
Speaker 7: but also getting the attention of high status professionals like

300
00:16:05,600 --> 00:16:10,360
Speaker 7: nurses and doctors, and controlling other people. They get people

301
00:16:10,400 --> 00:16:13,640
Speaker 7: to visit them, to care about them, things that they

302
00:16:13,720 --> 00:16:16,800
Speaker 7: feel again unable to get in any healthy ways.

303
00:16:17,080 --> 00:16:19,720
Speaker 1: I've gotten plastic surgery before and it was one of

304
00:16:19,760 --> 00:16:22,520
Speaker 1: my favorite vacations of my life, So I get it

305
00:16:22,560 --> 00:16:24,160
Speaker 1: why it would stick for people.

306
00:16:24,520 --> 00:16:26,920
Speaker 7: Yes, for some people it does. It really does.

307
00:16:27,240 --> 00:16:30,640
Speaker 2: So can you give us just a little overview of

308
00:16:30,680 --> 00:16:35,000
Speaker 2: what mue Chausen biproxy or medical child abuse NCA.

309
00:16:35,400 --> 00:16:36,400
Speaker 5: What is it?

310
00:16:36,400 --> 00:16:40,520
Speaker 7: It's a form of maltreatment in which a person, usually

311
00:16:40,680 --> 00:16:46,560
Speaker 7: a caregiver and usually the mother of the victim, feigns, exaggerates,

312
00:16:46,640 --> 00:16:50,200
Speaker 7: or induces illness in her child. And it may be

313
00:16:50,280 --> 00:16:54,800
Speaker 7: a psychological illness like feigning autism or complaining that he

314
00:16:54,920 --> 00:16:59,960
Speaker 7: is autism when he doesn't, or developmental disabilities or suicidal thing,

315
00:17:01,040 --> 00:17:04,840
Speaker 7: or it may be a medical issue and sometimes it's

316
00:17:04,920 --> 00:17:08,760
Speaker 7: based on false reports to doctors and others. But at

317
00:17:08,800 --> 00:17:13,640
Speaker 7: other times we even have videos of mothers injecting their

318
00:17:13,720 --> 00:17:19,800
Speaker 7: children with bacteria, or tampering with intravenous lines, or suffocating

319
00:17:19,840 --> 00:17:23,359
Speaker 7: the child just so the child will lose consciousness, but

320
00:17:23,520 --> 00:17:26,520
Speaker 7: not long enough to kill the child. They hope they

321
00:17:26,600 --> 00:17:30,600
Speaker 7: do it because it's gratifying, They find it satisfying. It

322
00:17:30,640 --> 00:17:34,119
Speaker 7: may be almost compulsive or addictive in some cases, or

323
00:17:34,160 --> 00:17:38,520
Speaker 7: at least that's the terminology some of these perpetrators use.

324
00:17:38,880 --> 00:17:42,119
Speaker 2: Do we know much about the psychological profile of people

325
00:17:42,160 --> 00:17:44,280
Speaker 2: who commit this kind of abuse.

326
00:17:44,880 --> 00:17:49,720
Speaker 7: Most of them have severe personality disorders, such as borderline

327
00:17:49,760 --> 00:17:53,399
Speaker 7: personality disorder, and that may have become evident at a

328
00:17:53,520 --> 00:17:56,439
Speaker 7: very young age. And what that means is they have

329
00:17:56,600 --> 00:18:00,960
Speaker 7: long term, unhealthy ways of trying to get their needs met,

330
00:18:01,720 --> 00:18:08,000
Speaker 7: and those ways are often self defeating in that their

331
00:18:08,040 --> 00:18:10,880
Speaker 7: behavior can be exposed and the whole thing can explode

332
00:18:10,920 --> 00:18:14,199
Speaker 7: in their faces. So we try, when we have the

333
00:18:14,240 --> 00:18:18,600
Speaker 7: opportunity to treat a muchasm patient or a munchasm by

334
00:18:18,720 --> 00:18:23,280
Speaker 7: proxy perpetrator, to get them to understand how to use

335
00:18:23,359 --> 00:18:27,320
Speaker 7: words instead of harmful actions to get what they're looking

336
00:18:27,400 --> 00:18:28,360
Speaker 7: for Emotionally.

337
00:18:28,720 --> 00:18:30,800
Speaker 3: Are adults ever, victims.

338
00:18:30,600 --> 00:18:34,840
Speaker 7: Yes, especially dependent adults or the elderly, and that can

339
00:18:34,880 --> 00:18:38,879
Speaker 7: be really hard to detect, especially in the elderly, because

340
00:18:38,920 --> 00:18:42,040
Speaker 7: we expect them to have some medical problems, and so

341
00:18:42,320 --> 00:18:47,879
Speaker 7: when there's an overlay of manufactured illness on top of

342
00:18:48,000 --> 00:18:52,960
Speaker 7: dementia or other kinds of infirmity, we may be unable

343
00:18:53,040 --> 00:18:57,000
Speaker 7: to tease apart what's really going on. It's not nearly

344
00:18:57,040 --> 00:19:00,840
Speaker 7: as common as cases in which a child it's the victim,

345
00:19:00,880 --> 00:19:04,800
Speaker 7: and it's usually a pre verbal child or early verbal child,

346
00:19:05,359 --> 00:19:09,160
Speaker 7: but it does certainly occur and is like medical child

347
00:19:09,160 --> 00:19:11,439
Speaker 7: abuse in general, under reported.

348
00:19:11,840 --> 00:19:14,199
Speaker 1: I feel like this is kind of out of pocket,

349
00:19:14,240 --> 00:19:16,959
Speaker 1: but like I feel like there's an opposite disease. So

350
00:19:17,200 --> 00:19:20,200
Speaker 1: if your parents are in the medical field, they never

351
00:19:20,240 --> 00:19:22,320
Speaker 1: bring you to the doctor. My dad's a doctor, my

352
00:19:22,359 --> 00:19:24,959
Speaker 1: mom's a nurse, and everybody I know whose parents are doctors,

353
00:19:25,000 --> 00:19:27,760
Speaker 1: they're like, yeah, we just never got taken to the doctor.

354
00:19:27,960 --> 00:19:29,960
Speaker 5: And I think it's like a reverse wow.

355
00:19:30,000 --> 00:19:34,080
Speaker 2: That's like they don't They're like we know.

356
00:19:34,240 --> 00:19:36,720
Speaker 1: They're like you're fine, You're always fine, and like the

357
00:19:36,760 --> 00:19:38,879
Speaker 1: biggest fear is that you'd be taken to the doctor

358
00:19:39,119 --> 00:19:40,080
Speaker 1: without you needing to.

359
00:19:40,200 --> 00:19:42,239
Speaker 5: I don't know, it's just Strange's.

360
00:19:41,920 --> 00:19:46,560
Speaker 7: Denial of illness. It's the opposite, and people have researched that,

361
00:19:46,680 --> 00:19:51,359
Speaker 7: but not nearly as much as medical child abuse. But

362
00:19:51,840 --> 00:19:54,640
Speaker 7: a friend of mine is keenly interested in that subject

363
00:19:54,680 --> 00:19:57,840
Speaker 7: why people deny illness or don't get medical care when

364
00:19:57,880 --> 00:20:02,119
Speaker 7: they really need it, And some articles have just appeared

365
00:20:02,680 --> 00:20:07,840
Speaker 7: that I forwarded to her on this very subject.

366
00:20:09,160 --> 00:20:11,600
Speaker 6: So, Jordan, should we call you Joe? Which do you

367
00:20:11,640 --> 00:20:15,280
Speaker 6: prefer either? It's totally okay. I go by both pretty interchangeably.

368
00:20:15,400 --> 00:20:16,399
Speaker 5: Okay, I like Joe.

369
00:20:16,560 --> 00:20:18,679
Speaker 2: I'd love to start getting into some of the specifics

370
00:20:18,680 --> 00:20:21,680
Speaker 2: of your story just to kind of show people what

371
00:20:21,720 --> 00:20:22,800
Speaker 2: this can actually look like.

372
00:20:23,520 --> 00:20:26,080
Speaker 3: So can you just tell us a little bit about

373
00:20:26,080 --> 00:20:29,800
Speaker 3: your childhood and what diseases you believed that you had.

374
00:20:30,200 --> 00:20:34,520
Speaker 6: Yeah, So, I was born in nineteen ninety five. I

375
00:20:34,600 --> 00:20:37,960
Speaker 6: was a PREMI, which is a very common occurrence within

376
00:20:38,040 --> 00:20:41,399
Speaker 6: these cases. We see that very often. So I was

377
00:20:41,440 --> 00:20:44,760
Speaker 6: supposedly born two and a half months early. I was

378
00:20:45,320 --> 00:20:49,040
Speaker 6: four pounds, seven ounces and seventeen inches long. Once I

379
00:20:49,040 --> 00:20:51,919
Speaker 6: got out of the hospital is when stuff pretty much

380
00:20:51,920 --> 00:20:55,639
Speaker 6: started happening right away. My mom claims, right when we

381
00:20:55,720 --> 00:20:59,359
Speaker 6: left the hospital, I stopped breathing and turned purple, so

382
00:20:59,400 --> 00:21:01,119
Speaker 6: she had to turn around and go back.

383
00:21:01,800 --> 00:21:02,000
Speaker 2: Yeah.

384
00:21:02,000 --> 00:21:06,440
Speaker 6: I spent most of my infancy and very young childhood

385
00:21:06,440 --> 00:21:11,400
Speaker 6: in the hospital. My mom claimed that I had nutropenia,

386
00:21:11,840 --> 00:21:14,359
Speaker 6: which is a rare blood disease that affects the white

387
00:21:14,359 --> 00:21:18,560
Speaker 6: blood cells. She would say I had syclic mutropenia, and

388
00:21:18,640 --> 00:21:22,040
Speaker 6: she would say that's why I was always sick. Many doctors,

389
00:21:22,240 --> 00:21:27,199
Speaker 6: many reports have showed that I never had syclic nutropenia,

390
00:21:27,359 --> 00:21:30,320
Speaker 6: and they knew that the entire time pretty much, but

391
00:21:30,400 --> 00:21:32,480
Speaker 6: they did the testing and did like the blood work

392
00:21:32,560 --> 00:21:34,680
Speaker 6: and stuff to kind of keep trying to figure that out.

393
00:21:35,080 --> 00:21:39,760
Speaker 6: My mom also claimed I had severe asthma.

394
00:21:38,840 --> 00:21:42,400
Speaker 4: And so I was on like nebulizers.

395
00:21:41,760 --> 00:21:46,840
Speaker 6: And inhalers and all of these steroids and different meds

396
00:21:46,880 --> 00:21:50,160
Speaker 6: and stuff for that, which once again I very recently

397
00:21:50,160 --> 00:21:52,400
Speaker 6: in the past few months learned I never had asthma

398
00:21:52,480 --> 00:21:52,840
Speaker 6: at all.

399
00:21:53,000 --> 00:21:53,560
Speaker 1: Wow.

400
00:21:54,800 --> 00:21:57,280
Speaker 6: Yeah, So I spent my whole childhood pretty sick with

401
00:21:57,480 --> 00:21:58,560
Speaker 6: all these different things.

402
00:21:58,600 --> 00:22:00,919
Speaker 4: I often had feeding.

403
00:22:00,560 --> 00:22:05,240
Speaker 6: Tubes as a baby because I supposedly my mom would

404
00:22:05,240 --> 00:22:06,440
Speaker 6: claim that I wouldn't eat.

405
00:22:07,080 --> 00:22:08,920
Speaker 4: They did have video surveillance.

406
00:22:08,960 --> 00:22:13,080
Speaker 6: At one point they suspected Munchausen by proxy at a

407
00:22:13,160 --> 00:22:16,960
Speaker 6: very young age, and they had video surveillance of her

408
00:22:17,200 --> 00:22:22,719
Speaker 6: over reporting and possibly inducing vomiting on me, but nothing

409
00:22:22,800 --> 00:22:25,399
Speaker 6: ever came about any of those reports.

410
00:22:25,720 --> 00:22:27,560
Speaker 5: Were you her first child?

411
00:22:27,960 --> 00:22:30,400
Speaker 6: I'm the second. There's only two of us, but yes,

412
00:22:30,480 --> 00:22:32,920
Speaker 6: I was a second. Did my sister is twelve years older?

413
00:22:32,960 --> 00:22:35,760
Speaker 1: And did your mom display any symptoms with your sister?

414
00:22:35,920 --> 00:22:38,399
Speaker 1: Do you think that you being born premature as like

415
00:22:38,480 --> 00:22:39,240
Speaker 1: triggered her?

416
00:22:39,400 --> 00:22:41,720
Speaker 3: And two no, she did this with your sister as well.

417
00:22:41,880 --> 00:22:41,960
Speaker 7: No.

418
00:22:42,160 --> 00:22:45,159
Speaker 6: Yeah, so my mom has Munchausen's as well, got it.

419
00:22:45,800 --> 00:22:49,600
Speaker 6: So she's been doing this to herself for I mean

420
00:22:50,000 --> 00:22:52,320
Speaker 6: for a very very long time, since she was decently

421
00:22:52,480 --> 00:22:56,640
Speaker 6: a lot younger, probably in her teens. Then with my sister,

422
00:22:56,880 --> 00:23:00,040
Speaker 6: there were a lot of things that happened that I

423
00:22:59,760 --> 00:23:04,440
Speaker 6: would say were related to the Munchausen by proxy. My sister, though,

424
00:23:04,600 --> 00:23:07,640
Speaker 6: had my grandparents and my aunts and uncles kind of

425
00:23:07,720 --> 00:23:11,159
Speaker 6: took her in more and helped her kind of stay safe,

426
00:23:11,280 --> 00:23:14,439
Speaker 6: whereas when I was born twelve years later, my mom,

427
00:23:14,920 --> 00:23:18,040
Speaker 6: I guess, blackmailed my family and told them all essentially

428
00:23:18,040 --> 00:23:20,239
Speaker 6: that they had to stay away from me. And so

429
00:23:20,480 --> 00:23:22,440
Speaker 6: I was kind of it was just like me and mom.

430
00:23:22,680 --> 00:23:23,960
Speaker 6: A family member.

431
00:23:24,119 --> 00:23:26,439
Speaker 4: Said that I was like the sacrificial lamb of the

432
00:23:26,480 --> 00:23:30,520
Speaker 4: family in order to keep our family together.

433
00:23:31,160 --> 00:23:34,399
Speaker 2: So they knew what was going on with your sister

434
00:23:35,000 --> 00:23:38,320
Speaker 2: and kind of intervened with her and just didn't with you.

435
00:23:38,359 --> 00:23:42,120
Speaker 6: Basically, yeah, that is what I would say happening. And

436
00:23:42,200 --> 00:23:45,480
Speaker 6: my mom's also an alcoholic. So I think there's always

437
00:23:45,480 --> 00:23:48,080
Speaker 6: been a lot going on in the home, and I

438
00:23:48,080 --> 00:23:51,040
Speaker 6: think everyone in the family was pretty aware of it.

439
00:23:51,119 --> 00:23:53,480
Speaker 6: I think outside of the family though, I mean, until

440
00:23:53,520 --> 00:23:57,400
Speaker 6: I was a teenager, my mom was well respected.

441
00:23:57,600 --> 00:23:58,879
Speaker 4: She had a.

442
00:23:58,920 --> 00:24:03,159
Speaker 6: Daycare, she co gymnastics, she coached cheerleading, like, she was

443
00:24:03,200 --> 00:24:07,919
Speaker 6: always around kids and was always charming and had like

444
00:24:08,000 --> 00:24:11,399
Speaker 6: all these different things going on. So while my family

445
00:24:11,440 --> 00:24:12,920
Speaker 6: knew what was going on, I don't think a lot

446
00:24:12,920 --> 00:24:13,359
Speaker 6: of other.

447
00:24:13,240 --> 00:24:14,639
Speaker 4: People did for quite a while.

448
00:24:15,000 --> 00:24:18,720
Speaker 1: But doctor Mark, so somebody can work in a field

449
00:24:18,720 --> 00:24:21,800
Speaker 1: with children, being a teacher or a coach, and it

450
00:24:21,880 --> 00:24:24,959
Speaker 1: doesn't come out and that like, she's not making up

451
00:24:25,040 --> 00:24:27,159
Speaker 1: fake gymnastics injuries.

452
00:24:27,320 --> 00:24:28,720
Speaker 5: It's just with your children.

453
00:24:29,200 --> 00:24:34,320
Speaker 7: No, not necessarily, while the perpetrator is the child's mother.

454
00:24:34,440 --> 00:24:39,000
Speaker 7: In about ninety six percent of cases, there are lots

455
00:24:39,040 --> 00:24:45,000
Speaker 7: of cases involving daycare providers, others who interact with children.

456
00:24:45,600 --> 00:24:50,960
Speaker 7: It can be grandparents. It tends to be women overwhelmingly,

457
00:24:51,040 --> 00:24:55,720
Speaker 7: and I'm not entirely clear on why that's the case,

458
00:24:55,760 --> 00:25:00,400
Speaker 7: except that perhaps medical child abuse is crime of opportunitynity,

459
00:25:00,520 --> 00:25:04,560
Speaker 7: and women tend to be the primary caregivers and show

460
00:25:04,600 --> 00:25:08,439
Speaker 7: up in emergency rooms, often without the dad. The dads

461
00:25:08,480 --> 00:25:10,840
Speaker 7: also tend to have jobs that require them to be

462
00:25:10,920 --> 00:25:14,840
Speaker 7: away for very long periods of time, or they're used

463
00:25:14,880 --> 00:25:19,679
Speaker 7: to living with a woman with borderline personality disorder and

464
00:25:19,800 --> 00:25:23,720
Speaker 7: just have learned to shut up and not intervene. Or

465
00:25:23,760 --> 00:25:27,080
Speaker 7: they can be very traditional and feel like anything that

466
00:25:27,200 --> 00:25:31,119
Speaker 7: happens with the children is the responsibility of mom and

467
00:25:31,160 --> 00:25:35,080
Speaker 7: I'm not going to interfere. So it can be others,

468
00:25:35,280 --> 00:25:40,280
Speaker 7: and other children, besides, the biological offspring can be victimized.

469
00:25:40,400 --> 00:25:45,199
Speaker 7: I've written actually five books about medical decession, and that

470
00:25:45,320 --> 00:25:47,760
Speaker 7: speaks to how fascinating it can be, and there's always

471
00:25:47,840 --> 00:25:52,600
Speaker 7: new information to impart. People ask me all the time

472
00:25:52,680 --> 00:25:54,680
Speaker 7: when I say I've written a new book or I've

473
00:25:54,760 --> 00:25:58,400
Speaker 7: published a new article in a medical journal, what's it about?

474
00:25:58,480 --> 00:26:03,280
Speaker 7: And I kind of have to laugh. Always about factitious disorders,

475
00:26:03,400 --> 00:26:08,679
Speaker 7: Munchezin syndrome, munchesm biproxy, because it's a topic that just

476
00:26:08,920 --> 00:26:13,560
Speaker 7: grabs me, especially the medical child abuse angle. Yeah, and

477
00:26:13,720 --> 00:26:17,199
Speaker 7: I'll never be satisfied that I fully understand it so

478
00:26:17,359 --> 00:26:21,479
Speaker 7: well I can move on. So even in retirement, I

479
00:26:21,600 --> 00:26:25,480
Speaker 7: know I'll continue to do this research and also consult

480
00:26:25,520 --> 00:26:31,960
Speaker 7: in legal cases to support child protective services, and even

481
00:26:32,000 --> 00:26:35,920
Speaker 7: as sometimes happens falsely accused parents.

482
00:26:37,440 --> 00:26:39,919
Speaker 1: That oh yeah, woman just killed herself because she was

483
00:26:39,920 --> 00:26:40,720
Speaker 1: falsely accused.

484
00:26:40,760 --> 00:26:41,640
Speaker 3: I don't know, oh wow.

485
00:26:41,800 --> 00:26:42,240
Speaker 5: Yeah.

486
00:26:42,640 --> 00:26:45,480
Speaker 2: One of the most insidious parts about it to me

487
00:26:45,720 --> 00:26:50,440
Speaker 2: seems to be that it seems like incredibly difficult to detect,

488
00:26:50,560 --> 00:26:52,919
Speaker 2: and like it could go on for years, and the

489
00:26:53,000 --> 00:26:56,000
Speaker 2: victim and also the people around the victim. I could

490
00:26:56,000 --> 00:26:59,320
Speaker 2: just see how confusing it would be and how it

491
00:26:59,359 --> 00:27:02,080
Speaker 2: would seem like maybe I'm the crazy one, you know, Like,

492
00:27:02,240 --> 00:27:04,120
Speaker 2: can you speak to that a little bit at Joe,

493
00:27:04,200 --> 00:27:05,080
Speaker 2: maybe you.

494
00:27:05,119 --> 00:27:09,560
Speaker 6: Start yeah, yeah, So I Before doing this podcast, I've

495
00:27:09,600 --> 00:27:13,520
Speaker 6: been thinking a lot about the relationship with like cults

496
00:27:13,560 --> 00:27:16,879
Speaker 6: and Munchausen by proxy and like medical child abuse and

497
00:27:16,880 --> 00:27:19,520
Speaker 6: all of that, and it's been really fascinating to kind

498
00:27:19,600 --> 00:27:22,000
Speaker 6: of think about and like even just like looking back

499
00:27:22,040 --> 00:27:25,240
Speaker 6: at my own history and like that deception, how there's

500
00:27:25,280 --> 00:27:29,840
Speaker 6: the coersion and the control and the leader of it,

501
00:27:30,040 --> 00:27:35,679
Speaker 6: who has the charismatic features and things like that. And

502
00:27:35,800 --> 00:27:38,880
Speaker 6: I know, you know, in my own situation, I did.

503
00:27:39,000 --> 00:27:41,159
Speaker 6: I thought I was sick. I thought that I was

504
00:27:41,400 --> 00:27:45,000
Speaker 6: dying my whole life. At fifteen, I had an unnecessary

505
00:27:45,800 --> 00:27:49,160
Speaker 6: back surgery and I have two rods and four screws

506
00:27:49,200 --> 00:27:52,199
Speaker 6: in my back that never needed to happen. And I

507
00:27:52,240 --> 00:27:55,520
Speaker 6: was at fifteen, right, So you would think by being

508
00:27:55,560 --> 00:27:59,240
Speaker 6: a teenager, I would have had the ability to say, no,

509
00:27:59,320 --> 00:28:03,040
Speaker 6: I'm not sick, No, nothing's wrong. And there were times, right,

510
00:28:03,080 --> 00:28:05,240
Speaker 6: there was a lot of people at that point that

511
00:28:05,359 --> 00:28:08,000
Speaker 6: told me, don't do the surgery, you don't need it.

512
00:28:08,480 --> 00:28:11,040
Speaker 4: I mean, the first doctor we went to wouldn't do it.

513
00:28:11,600 --> 00:28:17,040
Speaker 6: But I had back pain, and I my mom told

514
00:28:17,040 --> 00:28:19,040
Speaker 6: me I could barely walk and that I was having

515
00:28:19,040 --> 00:28:21,679
Speaker 6: all these issues, and I don't know, I guess I

516
00:28:21,720 --> 00:28:24,320
Speaker 6: started to kind of just like fall into like believing that.

517
00:28:24,440 --> 00:28:29,000
Speaker 6: And I think at times I would also exaggerate my pain,

518
00:28:29,320 --> 00:28:32,639
Speaker 6: not because I was trying to get attention or be

519
00:28:32,760 --> 00:28:36,520
Speaker 6: manipulative or anything, but because I thought, if I exaggerate

520
00:28:36,560 --> 00:28:39,520
Speaker 6: my pain, these people will actually see what's wrong and

521
00:28:39,520 --> 00:28:42,840
Speaker 6: they'll be able to help me. Oh wow, And so yeah,

522
00:28:42,880 --> 00:28:44,560
Speaker 6: I went on for a long time. I didn't find

523
00:28:44,560 --> 00:28:48,160
Speaker 6: out about that any of this happened until I was

524
00:28:48,240 --> 00:28:52,720
Speaker 6: twenty three, I believe, so very recently is when I

525
00:28:52,800 --> 00:28:55,800
Speaker 6: even like just randomly kind of found out and put

526
00:28:55,800 --> 00:28:58,280
Speaker 6: all the pieces together. And I just a few months ago,

527
00:28:58,320 --> 00:28:59,920
Speaker 6: you know, I found out that I didn't have asthma's.

528
00:29:00,040 --> 00:29:04,360
Speaker 6: It's like, I'm still worry what's real and what's not,

529
00:29:04,680 --> 00:29:06,680
Speaker 6: because how am I supposed to know?

530
00:29:06,920 --> 00:29:12,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, it seems so easy to be manipulated in that way,

531
00:29:12,320 --> 00:29:16,320
Speaker 2: because like when you hyper fixate on a particular part

532
00:29:16,320 --> 00:29:17,800
Speaker 2: of your body or sensation, and if.

533
00:29:17,680 --> 00:29:19,960
Speaker 1: Your mom's telling you it hurts, I would be like,

534
00:29:20,080 --> 00:29:21,920
Speaker 1: yeah it does then, and then I'd be hype.

535
00:29:21,960 --> 00:29:24,360
Speaker 3: I'd be like paying so much attention. It's like I've

536
00:29:24,360 --> 00:29:26,240
Speaker 3: done that. It's a perfect storm.

537
00:29:26,440 --> 00:29:26,680
Speaker 6: Yeah.

538
00:29:26,720 --> 00:29:29,400
Speaker 2: And then also the other thing I just can imagine

539
00:29:29,480 --> 00:29:31,360
Speaker 2: is like the only example I have this is going

540
00:29:31,440 --> 00:29:32,120
Speaker 2: to be a little TMI.

541
00:29:32,240 --> 00:29:32,480
Speaker 5: Y'all.

542
00:29:32,760 --> 00:29:33,640
Speaker 4: I had a really.

543
00:29:33,440 --> 00:29:36,400
Speaker 2: Bad uti that kept going on, and this one doctor

544
00:29:36,480 --> 00:29:38,160
Speaker 2: basically scared the shit out of me and told me

545
00:29:38,200 --> 00:29:40,840
Speaker 2: that if this third antibiotic didn't work, then I would

546
00:29:40,840 --> 00:29:43,720
Speaker 2: have to be hospitalized. And it turns out I'd no

547
00:29:43,800 --> 00:29:46,960
Speaker 2: longer had the infection, but I didn't know that yet.

548
00:29:46,960 --> 00:29:49,480
Speaker 2: So I went into the er and I'm walking the

549
00:29:49,720 --> 00:29:51,520
Speaker 2: r and I s pooped myself.

550
00:29:52,120 --> 00:29:56,040
Speaker 3: But I thought that I was just so sick. Oh

551
00:29:56,080 --> 00:29:56,640
Speaker 3: my god.

552
00:29:57,000 --> 00:29:58,320
Speaker 2: I thought I was like, I was like, oh my gosh,

553
00:29:58,360 --> 00:30:00,800
Speaker 2: it's spread to my kidneys, like I'm dying. But it

554
00:30:00,840 --> 00:30:02,200
Speaker 2: turned out it was just that I was on a

555
00:30:02,560 --> 00:30:06,240
Speaker 2: horrifically strong antibiotic that has been removed from shelves under

556
00:30:06,320 --> 00:30:09,959
Speaker 2: the actual original brand name, and the medication itself was

557
00:30:09,960 --> 00:30:11,800
Speaker 2: making me sick. But at the time, I was like,

558
00:30:12,000 --> 00:30:13,560
Speaker 2: I'm dying because I have weightness.

559
00:30:13,560 --> 00:30:16,200
Speaker 5: Could a doctor have munchausen? Does that ever happen?

560
00:30:17,680 --> 00:30:22,160
Speaker 7: It does happen. It's pretty rare, okay, because doctors get

561
00:30:22,360 --> 00:30:27,040
Speaker 7: the attention and control over others and praise just by

562
00:30:27,120 --> 00:30:28,280
Speaker 7: virtue of being doctors.

563
00:30:28,760 --> 00:30:29,240
Speaker 5: Right, So.

564
00:30:31,760 --> 00:30:35,200
Speaker 7: I think medical school weeds out people who are very

565
00:30:35,280 --> 00:30:38,400
Speaker 7: personality disordered, or at least I hope it does. The

566
00:30:38,440 --> 00:30:42,320
Speaker 7: bigger problem is that they seem to do almost anything

567
00:30:42,360 --> 00:30:47,920
Speaker 7: they can to avoid being aware that medical child abuse

568
00:30:48,240 --> 00:30:52,960
Speaker 7: or even Munchuzen syndrome is taking place. Part of it

569
00:30:53,000 --> 00:30:56,000
Speaker 7: has to do with our current health system, where they're

570
00:30:56,080 --> 00:30:59,320
Speaker 7: lucky to be able to spend fifteen minutes with a patient.

571
00:30:59,360 --> 00:31:02,720
Speaker 7: That would be a lot, and they certainly don't get

572
00:31:02,760 --> 00:31:06,920
Speaker 7: to compensated for sitting down with ten thousand pages of

573
00:31:07,000 --> 00:31:10,160
Speaker 7: documents and going through them to try to put together

574
00:31:10,280 --> 00:31:14,280
Speaker 7: the clues. So the biggest problem in the field is

575
00:31:14,320 --> 00:31:19,800
Speaker 7: healthcare professionals and others just not considering the diagnosis, or

576
00:31:19,840 --> 00:31:22,600
Speaker 7: if they consider it, they don't make reports to JOLD

577
00:31:22,600 --> 00:31:26,240
Speaker 7: Protective Services, which is a violation of the law in

578
00:31:26,280 --> 00:31:30,959
Speaker 7: all fifty states. If a healthcare professional and other mandated

579
00:31:31,040 --> 00:31:35,720
Speaker 7: reporters have a reasonable suspicion that a child is being abused,

580
00:31:36,120 --> 00:31:38,840
Speaker 7: they are compelled by law, with the risk of a

581
00:31:38,880 --> 00:31:42,600
Speaker 7: misdemeanor or a felony, to make a report to the authorities,

582
00:31:43,040 --> 00:31:44,720
Speaker 7: and I find they rarely do.

583
00:31:45,120 --> 00:31:47,080
Speaker 2: And it seems like this is why it's so important

584
00:31:47,080 --> 00:31:49,320
Speaker 2: for you both to be talking about it, because it

585
00:31:49,400 --> 00:31:52,440
Speaker 2: doesn't seem like culturally we really view it as child

586
00:31:52,440 --> 00:31:55,880
Speaker 2: abuse yet to the extent that we need to right

587
00:31:56,200 --> 00:31:56,800
Speaker 2: we were used to.

588
00:31:56,800 --> 00:32:01,480
Speaker 7: Seeing broken bones and bruises and bleeding we think of abuse.

589
00:32:02,040 --> 00:32:05,280
Speaker 7: None of that is usually present in a case of

590
00:32:05,360 --> 00:32:08,600
Speaker 7: medical child abuse. It's much more subtle, and the whole

591
00:32:08,640 --> 00:32:13,320
Speaker 7: phenomenon is counterintuitive. I mean, we think of mothers as

592
00:32:13,920 --> 00:32:19,400
Speaker 7: endless repositories of love and care. It takes such a

593
00:32:19,520 --> 00:32:23,520
Speaker 7: leap to think that someone who appears on the surface

594
00:32:23,600 --> 00:32:29,640
Speaker 7: to be normal and loving can in fact be deliberately deceptive, devious,

595
00:32:30,040 --> 00:32:33,760
Speaker 7: and maybe even lie in other aspects of her life.

596
00:32:34,240 --> 00:32:38,280
Speaker 7: Gratuitous lion. So but you know, I had a case

597
00:32:38,400 --> 00:32:41,800
Speaker 7: not too long ago of a little girl who was

598
00:32:41,880 --> 00:32:45,320
Speaker 7: not permitted to take anything by mouth. Think about that,

599
00:32:45,880 --> 00:32:50,440
Speaker 7: not able to eat anything for seven years because her

600
00:32:50,480 --> 00:32:55,280
Speaker 7: mother claimed that she had an allergy to essentially every

601
00:32:55,360 --> 00:33:00,640
Speaker 7: formula and food there was out there. Had a feeding

602
00:33:00,680 --> 00:33:05,440
Speaker 7: tube and that's how she was fed elemental liquid products

603
00:33:05,440 --> 00:33:11,960
Speaker 7: for children with an intolerance to essentially all foods. Fortunately,

604
00:33:12,040 --> 00:33:17,240
Speaker 7: and astute doctor finally after the seven years, got her

605
00:33:17,760 --> 00:33:22,720
Speaker 7: admitted to the hospital, got the mom restricted from visiting

606
00:33:22,800 --> 00:33:26,400
Speaker 7: it all, and the child was eating pizza and doing

607
00:33:26,400 --> 00:33:29,440
Speaker 7: perfectly well. The only thing she might have been allergic

608
00:33:29,520 --> 00:33:34,040
Speaker 7: to was a mild allergy to strawberries that gradually reintroduced

609
00:33:34,320 --> 00:33:37,560
Speaker 7: all foods and she did well. So then the mother

610
00:33:37,600 --> 00:33:40,360
Speaker 7: also claimed that she had such severe pain she needed

611
00:33:40,440 --> 00:33:44,080
Speaker 7: leg braces. Well, they took the braces off, and the

612
00:33:44,160 --> 00:33:47,480
Speaker 7: quote was she's hopping around the unit in like a kangaroo.

613
00:33:47,720 --> 00:33:49,840
Speaker 7: I mean, she was fine. She never had any pain.

614
00:33:50,280 --> 00:33:54,160
Speaker 7: So even I, having dealt with probably two thousand of

615
00:33:54,240 --> 00:33:57,320
Speaker 7: these cases, get shocked from time to time, and that

616
00:33:57,440 --> 00:34:01,360
Speaker 7: was certainly one that shocked me. Got a slap on

617
00:34:01,440 --> 00:34:06,000
Speaker 7: the wrist. She was put on probation briefly that will

618
00:34:06,000 --> 00:34:11,640
Speaker 7: be expunged if she satisizes the conditions of the probation satisfactorily.

619
00:34:12,160 --> 00:34:17,279
Speaker 7: No jail, no criminal consequences beyond that. And that's what

620
00:34:17,320 --> 00:34:19,759
Speaker 7: we tend to see in these cases. Joe certainly knows

621
00:34:19,800 --> 00:34:20,160
Speaker 7: that too.

622
00:34:20,200 --> 00:34:23,080
Speaker 3: It's so sad. The piece I can't wrap my head

623
00:34:23,080 --> 00:34:23,640
Speaker 3: around is.

624
00:34:23,600 --> 00:34:29,880
Speaker 2: Like, how do these parents get doctors to do the surgeries,

625
00:34:29,880 --> 00:34:32,319
Speaker 2: to give the medications, well, how do they get them

626
00:34:32,320 --> 00:34:34,279
Speaker 2: to buy into it when there's no evidence for it.

627
00:34:34,920 --> 00:34:38,680
Speaker 7: When I was in medical school, admittedly forty years ago,

628
00:34:39,320 --> 00:34:41,839
Speaker 7: but I don't think situation has really changed, we were

629
00:34:41,840 --> 00:34:46,080
Speaker 7: taught nothing about medical deception. I never heard the term

630
00:34:46,480 --> 00:34:51,960
Speaker 7: factitious or Munchausen until well after I was done with

631
00:34:52,040 --> 00:34:54,640
Speaker 7: my training and it was a faculty member at Duke.

632
00:34:56,320 --> 00:35:00,160
Speaker 7: So we're taught instead to trust what we're told, and

633
00:35:00,200 --> 00:35:03,239
Speaker 7: in fact, I remember being told to medical school the

634
00:35:03,320 --> 00:35:06,960
Speaker 7: single best indicator of what's going wrong with a patient

635
00:35:07,560 --> 00:35:11,040
Speaker 7: is what the family or the patient tells you, not

636
00:35:11,120 --> 00:35:15,840
Speaker 7: necessarily even the physical exam. It's the history that should

637
00:35:15,880 --> 00:35:19,160
Speaker 7: guide you at all times, and we don't question that.

638
00:35:19,200 --> 00:35:22,440
Speaker 7: We try to be what the kind of good doctor

639
00:35:22,520 --> 00:35:25,960
Speaker 7: we were taught to be. Only sometimes in cases like

640
00:35:26,000 --> 00:35:28,480
Speaker 7: this it backfires badly, and.

641
00:35:28,320 --> 00:35:31,000
Speaker 2: It's like, most of the time doctors probably don't do

642
00:35:31,040 --> 00:35:33,520
Speaker 2: that enough. For example, when they're examining women and women

643
00:35:33,640 --> 00:35:36,440
Speaker 2: are describing their symptoms and they're like, you're just anxious,

644
00:35:36,480 --> 00:35:38,120
Speaker 2: you know, Like it seems like a.

645
00:35:38,080 --> 00:35:40,320
Speaker 4: Good general policy, but in the case.

646
00:35:40,120 --> 00:35:43,880
Speaker 2: Of parents who are saying their children are chronically ill,

647
00:35:44,520 --> 00:35:46,440
Speaker 2: obviously the whole picture needs to.

648
00:35:46,440 --> 00:35:47,040
Speaker 3: Be looked at.

649
00:35:47,400 --> 00:35:50,640
Speaker 7: Sometimes it's really distressing to see how many red flags

650
00:35:50,680 --> 00:35:54,840
Speaker 7: there were, Yes, there may have. I use a list

651
00:35:54,880 --> 00:35:58,759
Speaker 7: of about twenty red flags when I review records and

652
00:35:58,840 --> 00:36:01,239
Speaker 7: see the extent to wait which they're present in a

653
00:36:01,280 --> 00:36:06,239
Speaker 7: given case. Sometimes essentially all twenty are there and nobody's

654
00:36:06,280 --> 00:36:11,360
Speaker 7: made a report. It's very it could be very dispiriting

655
00:36:11,920 --> 00:36:15,239
Speaker 7: if it weren't for the fact that I do have

656
00:36:15,320 --> 00:36:19,759
Speaker 7: opportunities to provide public education, and very early in my

657
00:36:19,960 --> 00:36:21,960
Speaker 7: career decided that's what I would do.

658
00:36:22,239 --> 00:36:24,080
Speaker 3: What are some of those red flags?

659
00:36:25,120 --> 00:36:29,520
Speaker 7: I think number one is inconsistencies and the information you're given,

660
00:36:30,239 --> 00:36:34,400
Speaker 7: or a lack of consistency between the child's appearance and

661
00:36:34,520 --> 00:36:38,040
Speaker 7: what parent in medical child abuse cases is telling you

662
00:36:38,120 --> 00:36:41,960
Speaker 7: about the child. Also, if other children in the family

663
00:36:42,480 --> 00:36:46,880
Speaker 7: have had unexplained illnesses or died for reasons that are unclear,

664
00:36:48,080 --> 00:36:50,480
Speaker 7: you have to ask yourself how many times is lightning

665
00:36:50,560 --> 00:36:54,640
Speaker 7: striking the same family. I've got to look at other possibilities.

666
00:36:55,200 --> 00:36:58,000
Speaker 7: And then the gold standard is what we sometimes call

667
00:36:58,080 --> 00:37:03,200
Speaker 7: the separation test. We try to find an opportunity to

668
00:37:03,320 --> 00:37:07,920
Speaker 7: separate mom and child, say over a long weekend or something,

669
00:37:08,080 --> 00:37:13,080
Speaker 7: and the child miraculously improves. In many cases, mom returns

670
00:37:13,120 --> 00:37:16,600
Speaker 7: on Monday or Tuesday and the child is suddenly sick again.

671
00:37:17,160 --> 00:37:21,799
Speaker 7: So it's not proof positive to have one indicator, but

672
00:37:22,040 --> 00:37:25,520
Speaker 7: if you've got several, even if you don't have all twenty,

673
00:37:26,000 --> 00:37:33,359
Speaker 7: we can make the diagnosis with a fair degree of certainty.

674
00:37:33,560 --> 00:37:37,960
Speaker 2: Joe, you sort of dug into your medical record history

675
00:37:38,480 --> 00:37:41,239
Speaker 2: and you saw some of this like in plain sight.

676
00:37:41,360 --> 00:37:43,879
Speaker 2: Can you talk about some of the discoveries that you made.

677
00:37:44,160 --> 00:37:44,640
Speaker 4: Yeah.

678
00:37:44,719 --> 00:37:49,800
Speaker 6: So, once I was sitting in a psychology class and

679
00:37:50,440 --> 00:37:53,839
Speaker 6: when I was twenty three ish and our professors started

680
00:37:53,840 --> 00:37:56,839
Speaker 6: talking about Munchausen and Munchausen by proxy is just a

681
00:37:56,880 --> 00:38:00,200
Speaker 6: normal day. And suddenly I was just like flooded with

682
00:38:00,239 --> 00:38:03,120
Speaker 6: all of these memories. And I had remembered a family

683
00:38:03,120 --> 00:38:05,799
Speaker 6: member saying like, oh, your mom would bring you from

684
00:38:05,840 --> 00:38:08,960
Speaker 6: doctor to doctor until she got the diagnosis she wanted.

685
00:38:09,320 --> 00:38:12,520
Speaker 6: And just like all these things just started flooding me,

686
00:38:12,680 --> 00:38:14,680
Speaker 6: and I was like, oh my goodness, Like I think

687
00:38:14,680 --> 00:38:16,360
Speaker 6: I'm a victim on child's and by proxy.

688
00:38:16,400 --> 00:38:17,799
Speaker 4: And I actually reached.

689
00:38:17,560 --> 00:38:19,960
Speaker 6: Out to doctor Feldman was like the first person that

690
00:38:20,000 --> 00:38:23,560
Speaker 6: I found online, and I sent some sort of desperate email,

691
00:38:23,640 --> 00:38:26,879
Speaker 6: which now, being someone who receives those like, we get

692
00:38:26,880 --> 00:38:29,720
Speaker 6: them all the time, because no, there's not many people

693
00:38:29,719 --> 00:38:32,719
Speaker 6: that work in this field. And so I sent my

694
00:38:32,800 --> 00:38:35,719
Speaker 6: desperate email, not knowing what to do, and I ended

695
00:38:35,800 --> 00:38:39,000
Speaker 6: up getting my I went back to eating disorder treatment

696
00:38:39,120 --> 00:38:42,319
Speaker 6: I was struggling pretty badly at the time, and I

697
00:38:42,360 --> 00:38:44,439
Speaker 6: got my record sent to me while I was there,

698
00:38:44,520 --> 00:38:46,960
Speaker 6: and it was like the very very thick stack just

699
00:38:47,000 --> 00:38:51,799
Speaker 6: from one hospital and page after page the doctor had

700
00:38:51,800 --> 00:38:54,839
Speaker 6: made it very clear. She would write things like mother

701
00:38:54,960 --> 00:38:59,840
Speaker 6: appears very cheerful in the office. She would write how

702
00:39:00,560 --> 00:39:03,400
Speaker 6: I would look over to my mom whenever I was

703
00:39:03,440 --> 00:39:06,400
Speaker 6: asked a question before I would answer, and I would

704
00:39:06,440 --> 00:39:10,560
Speaker 6: halfheartedly do what my mom told me to do. She

705
00:39:11,040 --> 00:39:13,000
Speaker 6: talked a lot about how my mom would take me in,

706
00:39:13,120 --> 00:39:15,800
Speaker 6: saying I had fevers up to one hundred and seven,

707
00:39:16,280 --> 00:39:19,400
Speaker 6: but when they would take my temperature be about ninety nine,

708
00:39:20,360 --> 00:39:23,840
Speaker 6: she would bring her own thermometer as well to the hospital,

709
00:39:23,920 --> 00:39:25,920
Speaker 6: so then if I was admitted, she would like make

710
00:39:25,960 --> 00:39:30,360
Speaker 6: her own reports about what my temperature was independently.

711
00:39:29,680 --> 00:39:30,839
Speaker 4: Of what they saw.

712
00:39:31,160 --> 00:39:32,240
Speaker 5: It's like a horror movie.

713
00:39:32,440 --> 00:39:35,080
Speaker 1: I mean, in that moment, you must have your whole

714
00:39:35,080 --> 00:39:37,720
Speaker 1: psyche must have just been like cracking.

715
00:39:38,600 --> 00:39:39,480
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was.

716
00:39:40,120 --> 00:39:43,440
Speaker 6: Once I specifically opened to the page that showed the

717
00:39:43,520 --> 00:39:47,480
Speaker 6: Munchausen by proxy report that was made, it was just

718
00:39:47,600 --> 00:39:52,400
Speaker 6: like the most intense and like unraveling of my entire being,

719
00:39:52,560 --> 00:39:55,920
Speaker 6: because up until that point I was telling myself like,

720
00:39:55,960 --> 00:39:58,359
Speaker 6: oh no, like this couldn't have really been this, Like

721
00:39:58,719 --> 00:40:01,440
Speaker 6: maybe I really was sick, maybe there were these things

722
00:40:01,520 --> 00:40:03,440
Speaker 6: and all this stuff. And then to see that it

723
00:40:03,560 --> 00:40:06,200
Speaker 6: was like, oh my gosh, I wasn't. I'm not the

724
00:40:06,200 --> 00:40:08,560
Speaker 6: only one that thinks this. A lot of people knew

725
00:40:09,640 --> 00:40:12,279
Speaker 6: and I did. I actually I made an appointment with

726
00:40:12,360 --> 00:40:16,680
Speaker 6: my pediatrician that had written all those notes, and I

727
00:40:16,760 --> 00:40:19,239
Speaker 6: went in to see her thinking I was going to

728
00:40:19,320 --> 00:40:22,720
Speaker 6: be like reprimanding her and telling her like, hey, I'm alive,

729
00:40:22,880 --> 00:40:25,560
Speaker 6: but like it's not things to you, like you didn't

730
00:40:25,560 --> 00:40:28,520
Speaker 6: do your job. And when I sat down to talk

731
00:40:28,600 --> 00:40:30,880
Speaker 6: to her, I learned.

732
00:40:30,640 --> 00:40:31,680
Speaker 5: That she did.

733
00:40:31,840 --> 00:40:34,799
Speaker 6: She did what she could, She made the reports, She

734
00:40:34,960 --> 00:40:38,760
Speaker 6: made it very clear in her all of her notes

735
00:40:38,800 --> 00:40:41,840
Speaker 6: and things like that, like she did all that she

736
00:40:41,920 --> 00:40:45,839
Speaker 6: could do at the time. And I mean she literally said,

737
00:40:45,840 --> 00:40:47,680
Speaker 6: it would have been better if my mom had been

738
00:40:47,719 --> 00:40:50,640
Speaker 6: like breaking my bones, because maybe they could have gotten

739
00:40:50,640 --> 00:40:51,040
Speaker 6: me out.

740
00:40:51,080 --> 00:40:53,520
Speaker 4: But she was shocked.

741
00:40:53,120 --> 00:40:56,160
Speaker 6: By my bravery to come in and talk to her,

742
00:40:56,239 --> 00:40:59,520
Speaker 6: and she was also shocked that I was alive, and

743
00:40:59,600 --> 00:41:02,560
Speaker 6: more than that, I wasn't addicted to drugs myself since

744
00:41:02,600 --> 00:41:04,680
Speaker 6: i'd been a narcotic since I was a teenager.

745
00:41:04,920 --> 00:41:05,879
Speaker 3: I really wow.

746
00:41:06,239 --> 00:41:09,520
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people probably have more knowledge

747
00:41:09,520 --> 00:41:12,839
Speaker 1: about this from that documentary Mommy, Dad, and Dearest, where

748
00:41:13,040 --> 00:41:16,200
Speaker 1: Gypsy Rose kills her mom. I guess that goes back

749
00:41:16,239 --> 00:41:18,960
Speaker 1: to the abuse. But you're defending yourself.

750
00:41:19,120 --> 00:41:25,799
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's actually in that HBO documentary. Yeah, briefly, but

751
00:41:26,480 --> 00:41:30,200
Speaker 7: I wave to you and it gets you didn't notice. Yeah,

752
00:41:30,239 --> 00:41:34,520
Speaker 7: but that's probably the most famous much asm by proxy

753
00:41:34,560 --> 00:41:40,440
Speaker 7: case because Gypsy Rose was around nineteen years old when

754
00:41:40,480 --> 00:41:46,120
Speaker 7: she became fully cognizant of the extent of the abuse

755
00:41:46,200 --> 00:41:50,000
Speaker 7: and lies to which she had been subjected by her mother.

756
00:41:50,480 --> 00:41:53,520
Speaker 7: She actually arranged for her online boyfriend to come to

757
00:41:53,520 --> 00:41:57,920
Speaker 7: town and kill her mother for her, and she's got

758
00:41:58,120 --> 00:42:01,480
Speaker 7: She was sentenced to ten years in prison for second

759
00:42:01,480 --> 00:42:05,520
Speaker 7: degree murder, which was the lowest sentence that could be given,

760
00:42:05,560 --> 00:42:09,359
Speaker 7: and she's eligible for parole, if not this year, then

761
00:42:09,440 --> 00:42:13,680
Speaker 7: next year, and she may get out. She has said

762
00:42:14,239 --> 00:42:16,680
Speaker 7: that she feels more free in prison than she ever

763
00:42:16,760 --> 00:42:17,839
Speaker 7: did in her mother's home.

764
00:42:18,040 --> 00:42:20,680
Speaker 1: Honestly, I mean, but like you're saying, it would be

765
00:42:20,680 --> 00:42:24,480
Speaker 1: better to get a broken bone, because ultimately you might

766
00:42:24,760 --> 00:42:27,560
Speaker 1: die from this person that happens.

767
00:42:28,120 --> 00:42:33,360
Speaker 7: Among published reports, between six and nine percent of victims

768
00:42:33,760 --> 00:42:38,120
Speaker 7: actually die as a result of Munchausen by proxy abuse,

769
00:42:38,520 --> 00:42:41,799
Speaker 7: which may make it one of the most if not

770
00:42:41,960 --> 00:42:46,120
Speaker 7: the most lethal forms of child abuse, and yet it's

771
00:42:46,200 --> 00:42:53,320
Speaker 7: going unrecognized. Sometimes it's recognized very commonly. It's recognized only

772
00:42:53,719 --> 00:42:58,200
Speaker 7: because some other child in the family dies and then

773
00:42:58,239 --> 00:43:02,160
Speaker 7: the mother presents the new child with the very same

774
00:43:03,160 --> 00:43:09,000
Speaker 7: story and perhaps to the same doctors, and that strikes

775
00:43:09,040 --> 00:43:11,839
Speaker 7: them as chilling and unlikely absolutely hard.

776
00:43:11,960 --> 00:43:15,600
Speaker 6: Yeah, and then it's like, even if the child doesn't

777
00:43:15,640 --> 00:43:21,000
Speaker 6: die and the child survives, they have all of these

778
00:43:21,000 --> 00:43:23,760
Speaker 6: different struggles that they then have to like figure out

779
00:43:23,800 --> 00:43:26,439
Speaker 6: how to eventually get help for if they ever even

780
00:43:26,560 --> 00:43:29,600
Speaker 6: realize that this is what's been going on and that

781
00:43:29,680 --> 00:43:30,520
Speaker 6: they're not sick.

782
00:43:30,640 --> 00:43:33,040
Speaker 4: And at this point, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong,

783
00:43:33,080 --> 00:43:33,760
Speaker 4: doctor Feldman.

784
00:43:33,840 --> 00:43:39,080
Speaker 6: But there's not really any research on munchasby proxy survivors

785
00:43:39,400 --> 00:43:43,600
Speaker 6: and the long term effects or the struggles that we

786
00:43:43,760 --> 00:43:47,040
Speaker 6: face and have to like work through or anything like that.

787
00:43:47,480 --> 00:43:51,279
Speaker 7: Joe has been spearheading that along with some others. That's

788
00:43:51,320 --> 00:43:54,960
Speaker 7: been a major knowledge deficit, like how do survivors do

789
00:43:55,080 --> 00:44:00,000
Speaker 7: long term and Joe is modest, but she's done fantastic

790
00:44:00,280 --> 00:44:07,360
Speaker 7: work with survivors through online support groups and by collaborating

791
00:44:07,480 --> 00:44:12,120
Speaker 7: with others who have a personal connection to Munchesa by proxy,

792
00:44:12,200 --> 00:44:14,480
Speaker 7: and it's really instructing us a whole lot.

793
00:44:14,719 --> 00:44:17,120
Speaker 2: Joe, I want to know more about, like the actual

794
00:44:17,239 --> 00:44:21,600
Speaker 2: experience of it, because I just want to hear a

795
00:44:21,600 --> 00:44:25,880
Speaker 2: little bit about what that felt like when your mother's

796
00:44:25,920 --> 00:44:29,000
Speaker 2: statements weren't matching with how you felt, and how did

797
00:44:29,000 --> 00:44:30,440
Speaker 2: that impact you socially?

798
00:44:31,160 --> 00:44:33,120
Speaker 3: What was that experience actually.

799
00:44:32,880 --> 00:44:37,200
Speaker 4: Like, Yeah, I think you know, I.

800
00:44:36,840 --> 00:44:39,520
Speaker 6: For the most part, I trusted my mom.

801
00:44:40,000 --> 00:44:41,279
Speaker 4: Why wouldn't I.

802
00:44:41,360 --> 00:44:44,080
Speaker 6: My mom taught me from a very I mean, she

803
00:44:44,200 --> 00:44:49,120
Speaker 6: alienated me from everyone, right, my dad, she the dad

804
00:44:49,160 --> 00:44:50,360
Speaker 6: that's on my birth certificate.

805
00:44:50,560 --> 00:44:51,800
Speaker 4: That's a whole separate situation.

806
00:44:52,000 --> 00:44:55,840
Speaker 6: But the dad on my birth certificate, she by the

807
00:44:55,880 --> 00:44:58,200
Speaker 6: age of four, claimed that he was sectually assaulting me

808
00:44:58,400 --> 00:45:00,600
Speaker 6: to get him out of the house away from me,

809
00:45:01,200 --> 00:45:02,879
Speaker 6: So it was really just.

810
00:45:03,080 --> 00:45:03,840
Speaker 4: Me and my mom.

811
00:45:04,280 --> 00:45:06,400
Speaker 6: And I mean, as I learned, it was like I

812
00:45:06,400 --> 00:45:08,200
Speaker 6: thought it was me and my mom against the world.

813
00:45:08,360 --> 00:45:11,319
Speaker 6: I thought that she was the only safe person. She

814
00:45:11,400 --> 00:45:14,200
Speaker 6: taught me that the world was dangerous, that people were

815
00:45:14,200 --> 00:45:16,239
Speaker 6: going to try to kill me or people were going

816
00:45:16,320 --> 00:45:21,200
Speaker 6: to hurt me, which literally probably July tenth, I kind

817
00:45:21,200 --> 00:45:23,560
Speaker 6: of had this whole I don't know, there's a whole

818
00:45:23,600 --> 00:45:26,680
Speaker 6: like spiritual awakening, I guess in realization, but I wasn't

819
00:45:26,760 --> 00:45:29,560
Speaker 6: until just within the past month that I like realized

820
00:45:29,640 --> 00:45:32,000
Speaker 6: that I can actually be in the world and that

821
00:45:32,040 --> 00:45:33,080
Speaker 6: the world's safe enough.

822
00:45:33,920 --> 00:45:36,719
Speaker 4: So I carried that a long long time, but I

823
00:45:37,480 --> 00:45:39,600
Speaker 4: didn't really question much. Like I said, there were.

824
00:45:39,520 --> 00:45:43,200
Speaker 6: Times where my mom claimed, like I had a broken

825
00:45:43,239 --> 00:45:46,759
Speaker 6: ankle and I had a brace, and I knew my

826
00:45:46,760 --> 00:45:49,640
Speaker 6: ankle wasn't hurting too much, and people at school were

827
00:45:49,640 --> 00:45:51,520
Speaker 6: saying I was faking it, and so.

828
00:45:51,680 --> 00:45:54,000
Speaker 4: I would try to like hurt it more.

829
00:45:54,040 --> 00:45:56,279
Speaker 6: I would step on it in weird ways to try

830
00:45:56,320 --> 00:45:59,440
Speaker 6: to like make the pain worse once again, not because

831
00:45:59,440 --> 00:46:01,480
Speaker 6: I thought that I was faking it, but because I

832
00:46:01,520 --> 00:46:04,399
Speaker 6: wanted people to believe me so that then I could

833
00:46:04,440 --> 00:46:05,000
Speaker 6: get help.

834
00:46:05,320 --> 00:46:08,759
Speaker 4: So yeah, I just I never really questioned too much.

835
00:46:08,800 --> 00:46:10,520
Speaker 6: I know, you know, I did get taken out of

836
00:46:10,560 --> 00:46:13,200
Speaker 6: my house when I was fourteen, nothing to do with

837
00:46:13,200 --> 00:46:14,960
Speaker 6: the munch as in my proxy, it was because of

838
00:46:15,000 --> 00:46:19,920
Speaker 6: the alcoholism, and at that point my asthma, So just

839
00:46:20,000 --> 00:46:25,080
Speaker 6: like shockingly got a lot better, and I just thought like, oh,

840
00:46:25,160 --> 00:46:27,840
Speaker 6: like I'm so strong, like I know how to like

841
00:46:27,920 --> 00:46:30,520
Speaker 6: push through pain. And that's kind of the story I

842
00:46:30,600 --> 00:46:33,120
Speaker 6: carried with me, I think since I was a child,

843
00:46:33,320 --> 00:46:35,359
Speaker 6: was like, Oh, I just have a really high pain

844
00:46:35,520 --> 00:46:39,359
Speaker 6: tolerance and I know how to push through things and

845
00:46:39,680 --> 00:46:42,600
Speaker 6: do all these different things when in reality, like there

846
00:46:42,600 --> 00:46:45,400
Speaker 6: probably just wasn't that much pain there. But when your

847
00:46:45,440 --> 00:46:49,360
Speaker 6: mom's telling you you're dying and drugging you with medications

848
00:46:49,440 --> 00:46:52,040
Speaker 6: and stuff like that, I just thought I was really

849
00:46:52,040 --> 00:46:54,640
Speaker 6: really strong, which I was. Ye was kind of that

850
00:46:54,800 --> 00:46:57,520
Speaker 6: way than I thought exactly, Yeah, how would you.

851
00:46:57,520 --> 00:46:58,640
Speaker 5: Make your asthma bad?

852
00:46:59,239 --> 00:47:02,800
Speaker 6: So what I learned actually, like I said just a

853
00:47:02,920 --> 00:47:05,759
Speaker 6: couple months ago, is that I do have something called

854
00:47:05,840 --> 00:47:10,080
Speaker 6: vocal cord dysfunction. And now I'm aware that that's all

855
00:47:10,120 --> 00:47:12,920
Speaker 6: it was the entire time. That and panic attacks I'm

856
00:47:12,920 --> 00:47:17,600
Speaker 6: sure was a big part of it, but essentially from

857
00:47:17,800 --> 00:47:21,200
Speaker 6: my mom inducing vomiting on me as a baby and

858
00:47:21,239 --> 00:47:23,319
Speaker 6: then combining that with by the time I was one

859
00:47:23,360 --> 00:47:27,120
Speaker 6: and a half, I would induce vomiting on myself. That's

860
00:47:27,120 --> 00:47:30,200
Speaker 6: what my medical records stated, which is not normal for

861
00:47:30,239 --> 00:47:32,320
Speaker 6: a baby to do. That would very much be a

862
00:47:32,400 --> 00:47:36,600
Speaker 6: learned behavior. But be of that, I had acid reflux

863
00:47:36,680 --> 00:47:40,360
Speaker 6: and things like that, and that can cause vocal cord dysfunction,

864
00:47:41,800 --> 00:47:46,359
Speaker 6: which can mimic asthma type symptoms. A big difference is

865
00:47:46,960 --> 00:47:49,680
Speaker 6: I would have issues breathing in, whereas I guess people

866
00:47:49,719 --> 00:47:52,520
Speaker 6: with asthma the issues more when they try to breathe out,

867
00:47:53,000 --> 00:47:56,239
Speaker 6: and my symptoms would be kind of sporadic, like I

868
00:47:56,280 --> 00:47:58,880
Speaker 6: would just suddenly have symptoms or things like that.

869
00:47:59,320 --> 00:48:01,640
Speaker 4: But I thought I just I.

870
00:48:01,640 --> 00:48:04,759
Speaker 6: Never knew the difference, of course, And so I would

871
00:48:04,840 --> 00:48:07,840
Speaker 6: go running to run the half mile in elementary school,

872
00:48:08,080 --> 00:48:11,800
Speaker 6: and I would have what I thought was an asthma

873
00:48:11,840 --> 00:48:15,240
Speaker 6: attack and go to the nurse, and the nurse instead

874
00:48:15,239 --> 00:48:19,280
Speaker 6: of calling nine one one for this severe asthma attack

875
00:48:19,280 --> 00:48:21,279
Speaker 6: I thought I was having, would call my mom and

876
00:48:21,320 --> 00:48:25,560
Speaker 6: have her just come pick me up. And so that

877
00:48:25,680 --> 00:48:28,520
Speaker 6: was kind of that. Like said, I still have like

878
00:48:28,600 --> 00:48:32,000
Speaker 6: asthmatic symptoms, which is really just from the vocal cord

879
00:48:32,080 --> 00:48:36,120
Speaker 6: dysfunction mixed with I think there is some like psychosomatic

880
00:48:36,480 --> 00:48:39,600
Speaker 6: sort of struggles that I definitely still have that I

881
00:48:39,640 --> 00:48:43,280
Speaker 6: have to just constantly try to remind myself, you don't

882
00:48:43,320 --> 00:48:47,760
Speaker 6: have asthma. We can breathe and doing like different exercises

883
00:48:48,000 --> 00:48:49,799
Speaker 6: all the time to try to like help with that.

884
00:48:50,040 --> 00:48:52,960
Speaker 6: But yeah, I would do nebulizers and my mom would

885
00:48:53,000 --> 00:48:54,640
Speaker 6: have me do them until I would throw up and

886
00:48:54,680 --> 00:48:57,200
Speaker 6: be super shaky and things like that.

887
00:48:57,400 --> 00:48:59,360
Speaker 3: What is a nebulizer.

888
00:48:58,960 --> 00:49:02,280
Speaker 6: A nebulizer, it's like a way to get like albuterol,

889
00:49:02,560 --> 00:49:06,279
Speaker 6: I think is what would normally be in it, or

890
00:49:06,320 --> 00:49:09,319
Speaker 6: some sort of It's like sometimes you'll have like the

891
00:49:09,400 --> 00:49:12,640
Speaker 6: masks like on like babies or younger children, or it'll

892
00:49:12,680 --> 00:49:16,160
Speaker 6: be this like machine. It's a really loud machine, and

893
00:49:16,320 --> 00:49:19,080
Speaker 6: you would like breathe in the medicine and like breathe

894
00:49:19,120 --> 00:49:22,040
Speaker 6: in and out and it would give you some sort

895
00:49:22,080 --> 00:49:24,319
Speaker 6: of medicine. But the medicine would always, like I said,

896
00:49:24,360 --> 00:49:27,400
Speaker 6: make me really shaky or make me throw up or

897
00:49:27,440 --> 00:49:30,360
Speaker 6: things like that, which I don't know if that happens

898
00:49:30,360 --> 00:49:31,720
Speaker 6: to everyone, or.

899
00:49:32,360 --> 00:49:36,840
Speaker 7: The shakiness does the shaking, especially if the dose is

900
00:49:36,880 --> 00:49:39,680
Speaker 7: too high. And after all it was too high because

901
00:49:40,000 --> 00:49:43,040
Speaker 7: you didn't really need it right, so all you got

902
00:49:43,200 --> 00:49:45,640
Speaker 7: were the side effects without getting any benefit.

903
00:49:46,239 --> 00:49:48,680
Speaker 2: It seems like, at least until we have the actual

904
00:49:48,760 --> 00:49:51,320
Speaker 2: numbers and research. Anecdotally, it seems like there are a

905
00:49:51,360 --> 00:49:56,000
Speaker 2: lot of cases of addiction that arise out of being

906
00:49:56,000 --> 00:49:59,719
Speaker 2: a victim of this because you're being put on like

907
00:50:00,120 --> 00:50:01,839
Speaker 2: pain killers from a very young age.

908
00:50:01,880 --> 00:50:03,399
Speaker 3: Can you speak to that a little bit?

909
00:50:03,880 --> 00:50:07,439
Speaker 7: You know, I'm not that aware of it. I've used

910
00:50:07,440 --> 00:50:13,040
Speaker 7: the metaphor of addiction to describe the behavior itself. That is,

911
00:50:13,680 --> 00:50:18,239
Speaker 7: a lot of people describe, at least when they're confronted

912
00:50:18,280 --> 00:50:22,200
Speaker 7: with their medical child abuse behaviors, that it was an

913
00:50:22,280 --> 00:50:26,560
Speaker 7: addiction or it was a compulsion. They use that terminology

914
00:50:26,719 --> 00:50:31,759
Speaker 7: even though we don't recognize it formally as such. But

915
00:50:31,880 --> 00:50:34,160
Speaker 7: Joe might be in a better position to answer that

916
00:50:34,239 --> 00:50:39,879
Speaker 7: question than I am. She has not only the personal experience,

917
00:50:40,239 --> 00:50:42,239
Speaker 7: but has talked to more survivors than I have.

918
00:50:42,640 --> 00:50:44,680
Speaker 2: I just mean, when you're given drugs from a very

919
00:50:44,719 --> 00:50:47,880
Speaker 2: young age, do you see that having long term effects?

920
00:50:47,880 --> 00:50:51,239
Speaker 7: At least so far, I haven't seen tons of that,

921
00:50:52,760 --> 00:50:56,000
Speaker 7: But of course I'm hearing from people who recognize that

922
00:50:56,040 --> 00:51:00,400
Speaker 7: they were victimized. There may be a huge proportion of

923
00:51:00,440 --> 00:51:04,320
Speaker 7: people out there who never come to munchausen dot com,

924
00:51:04,400 --> 00:51:12,120
Speaker 7: my website, or Munchausensupport dot com Joe's website who have

925
00:51:12,320 --> 00:51:17,200
Speaker 7: addiction problems that they simultaneously want to address because they

926
00:51:17,239 --> 00:51:20,279
Speaker 7: also recognize their victims of medical child abuse.

927
00:51:20,560 --> 00:51:21,520
Speaker 3: Joe have abusing.

928
00:51:21,920 --> 00:51:26,680
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think that that's a very interesting question. And

929
00:51:26,760 --> 00:51:28,880
Speaker 6: I mean, like I said, my pediatrician even to me,

930
00:51:29,040 --> 00:51:33,000
Speaker 6: was like, I'm surprised that you're not addicted to drugs

931
00:51:33,040 --> 00:51:35,399
Speaker 6: and things like that after being on them for so long.

932
00:51:35,480 --> 00:51:41,319
Speaker 6: And I've seen more like people coping that they've been

933
00:51:41,400 --> 00:51:45,400
Speaker 6: through and the trauma through drugs or alcohol or writing

934
00:51:45,440 --> 00:51:52,279
Speaker 6: disorders or things like that, versus necessarily becoming like addicted

935
00:51:52,440 --> 00:51:53,480
Speaker 6: to them because of it.

936
00:51:54,400 --> 00:51:55,920
Speaker 4: But interesting, I'm.

937
00:51:55,760 --> 00:51:58,440
Speaker 6: Sure that that does happen, and I feel, like doctor

938
00:51:58,480 --> 00:52:01,560
Speaker 6: Feldman said, there's probably just less of those people that

939
00:52:02,120 --> 00:52:04,960
Speaker 6: are able to reach out or have that accessibility or

940
00:52:05,040 --> 00:52:08,160
Speaker 6: know about it to be able to ask for help

941
00:52:08,280 --> 00:52:10,799
Speaker 6: or feel safe enough to get help or things like

942
00:52:10,840 --> 00:52:13,440
Speaker 6: that with you know, Sigma and all of those things too.

943
00:52:13,520 --> 00:52:17,600
Speaker 6: But there are a lot of like physical damage that

944
00:52:17,719 --> 00:52:19,440
Speaker 6: can happen from this abuse.

945
00:52:19,520 --> 00:52:21,920
Speaker 4: That's life long for sure.

946
00:52:22,280 --> 00:52:24,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, and emotional, like I need to go to a

947
00:52:24,280 --> 00:52:28,359
Speaker 1: rage room after this conversation. I'm so great, I'm so

948
00:52:28,600 --> 00:52:31,520
Speaker 1: angry and I can see being like I'm gonna pap

949
00:52:31,520 --> 00:52:34,239
Speaker 1: a xanax because my mom did this, and like I

950
00:52:34,280 --> 00:52:37,400
Speaker 1: need to chill out and getting addicted to a whole

951
00:52:37,480 --> 00:52:38,440
Speaker 1: I mean, I've done that.

952
00:52:38,400 --> 00:52:39,200
Speaker 5: For lesser things.

953
00:52:39,239 --> 00:52:42,480
Speaker 1: So I have a question that came from something you

954
00:52:42,480 --> 00:52:44,879
Speaker 1: said a little bit earlier about going to the school nurse,

955
00:52:44,920 --> 00:52:45,719
Speaker 1: et cetera, Like.

956
00:52:45,920 --> 00:52:47,440
Speaker 5: I'm surprised your mom sent you to school.

957
00:52:47,600 --> 00:52:51,799
Speaker 1: Do people usually homeschool or is sending their kids out

958
00:52:51,800 --> 00:52:54,279
Speaker 1: into the normal world a usual thing.

959
00:52:55,560 --> 00:52:59,239
Speaker 4: I think that there's a mix. There is. We've seen

960
00:52:59,320 --> 00:53:03,040
Speaker 4: a lot more people using schools to.

961
00:53:04,160 --> 00:53:06,200
Speaker 6: Do them on childs and by proxy or the medical

962
00:53:06,280 --> 00:53:09,880
Speaker 6: child abuse within saying like my child needs an IEP

963
00:53:10,320 --> 00:53:13,560
Speaker 6: for these different reasons or has to have all these

964
00:53:13,600 --> 00:53:17,800
Speaker 6: different special the special care for all of these different things,

965
00:53:17,840 --> 00:53:20,400
Speaker 6: where the teachers will see something completely different.

966
00:53:20,840 --> 00:53:21,799
Speaker 4: But I think at.

967
00:53:21,840 --> 00:53:25,120
Speaker 6: Least what I've seen is a mix of I just

968
00:53:25,160 --> 00:53:28,160
Speaker 6: talked to someone the other day where the child in

969
00:53:28,239 --> 00:53:31,200
Speaker 6: question isn't able to go to school because of their

970
00:53:31,239 --> 00:53:37,319
Speaker 6: supposed ailments and illnesses and things like that. And I know, personally,

971
00:53:37,480 --> 00:53:39,799
Speaker 6: I know of a lot of people that did go

972
00:53:39,880 --> 00:53:42,520
Speaker 6: to like public schools and things like that. And I

973
00:53:42,719 --> 00:53:46,719
Speaker 6: see schools as hopefully an early intervention or a way

974
00:53:46,760 --> 00:53:50,560
Speaker 6: to spot abous because most kids are going to be

975
00:53:50,600 --> 00:53:51,040
Speaker 6: in school.

976
00:53:52,040 --> 00:53:55,319
Speaker 7: I actually have encountered a surprising number of cases of

977
00:53:55,360 --> 00:54:02,120
Speaker 7: home schooling, Especially a suspicions start to arise, the parents

978
00:54:02,680 --> 00:54:05,840
Speaker 7: or the mother if she doesn't have a partner, decide

979
00:54:05,960 --> 00:54:12,440
Speaker 7: to homeschool because inquiring minds are not directed at them,

980
00:54:13,239 --> 00:54:18,120
Speaker 7: and as a result, these children often have educational deprivation.

981
00:54:18,840 --> 00:54:23,320
Speaker 7: Because I had one case where there was no teaching

982
00:54:23,440 --> 00:54:27,479
Speaker 7: going on that the math teaching involved taking the child

983
00:54:27,560 --> 00:54:32,000
Speaker 7: once the Dayta McDonald's, ordering something and then verifying as

984
00:54:32,080 --> 00:54:37,000
Speaker 7: the change was correct, that was it. So these children

985
00:54:37,040 --> 00:54:43,720
Speaker 7: also have social deprivation, and that suits the perpetrator really well.

986
00:54:44,040 --> 00:54:49,560
Speaker 7: There's less chance of a slip up and revealing something

987
00:54:49,600 --> 00:54:53,880
Speaker 7: that mom doesn't want exposed. For example, with the Gypsy

988
00:54:53,960 --> 00:54:59,120
Speaker 7: Rose Blanchard case we talked about, mom wasn't visualizing Gypsy

989
00:54:59,239 --> 00:55:03,200
Speaker 7: Rose one time, and Gypsey rosekin on a trampoline and

990
00:55:03,360 --> 00:55:06,840
Speaker 7: started to play and bounce up and down, which is

991
00:55:06,880 --> 00:55:09,440
Speaker 7: something she wasn't supposed to be able to do. She

992
00:55:09,600 --> 00:55:12,359
Speaker 7: was wheelchair band for no good reason, and when her

993
00:55:12,400 --> 00:55:15,160
Speaker 7: mom came outside and saw what she did. She suddenly

994
00:55:15,200 --> 00:55:19,920
Speaker 7: collapsed to the ground and crawled to her wheelchair because

995
00:55:19,960 --> 00:55:24,680
Speaker 7: she knew the penalties that could befall her if she

996
00:55:25,480 --> 00:55:29,120
Speaker 7: managed to be a lively happy child.

997
00:55:29,800 --> 00:55:32,480
Speaker 2: Oh my god, have you guys seen an uptick in

998
00:55:32,520 --> 00:55:37,000
Speaker 2: people reaching out to you after the Gypsy Rose series

999
00:55:37,120 --> 00:55:41,680
Speaker 2: and doc and stuff have come out. I so, through

1000
00:55:41,960 --> 00:55:46,160
Speaker 2: Andrew Dunlopp's organization Munchaus and support, I've seen more of

1001
00:55:46,200 --> 00:55:46,800
Speaker 2: an uptick.

1002
00:55:46,960 --> 00:55:48,319
Speaker 4: So she created a.

1003
00:55:48,320 --> 00:55:52,480
Speaker 6: Podcast called Nobody Should Believe Me, which has two seasons

1004
00:55:52,520 --> 00:55:56,240
Speaker 6: now and it's all about medical child abuse cases. Doctor

1005
00:55:56,280 --> 00:55:59,080
Speaker 6: Feldman and I are on some of those episodes. And

1006
00:55:59,280 --> 00:56:03,200
Speaker 6: ever since that came out, I mean, the amount of

1007
00:56:03,239 --> 00:56:07,600
Speaker 6: inquiries to us at least has tripled, and so that

1008
00:56:07,880 --> 00:56:11,239
Speaker 6: has shown a huge uptick. I just read I've been

1009
00:56:11,280 --> 00:56:15,520
Speaker 6: involved with this field only for a year and a

1010
00:56:16,160 --> 00:56:19,360
Speaker 6: year and a half ish, I believe, so I wouldn't

1011
00:56:19,880 --> 00:56:20,680
Speaker 6: know that.

1012
00:56:21,239 --> 00:56:28,000
Speaker 7: Yeah, I've noticed since people became so aware of the

1013
00:56:28,080 --> 00:56:31,799
Speaker 7: Gypsy Rose Blanchard case, at least in the immediate aftermath,

1014
00:56:31,880 --> 00:56:34,960
Speaker 7: I was getting lots of emails. Now, there's a case

1015
00:56:35,000 --> 00:56:38,680
Speaker 7: in Florida, the Kowalski case, that was on the cover

1016
00:56:38,800 --> 00:56:42,759
Speaker 7: of People magazine, where they're trying to say that the

1017
00:56:42,920 --> 00:56:46,439
Speaker 7: child was not a victim of medical child abuse and

1018
00:56:46,880 --> 00:56:51,600
Speaker 7: the false accusation led directly to her mother's suicide. I've

1019
00:56:51,640 --> 00:56:54,600
Speaker 7: read all that. I've read all the records in that case.

1020
00:56:54,640 --> 00:56:56,600
Speaker 7: I'm not going to be testifying, but it was a

1021
00:56:56,640 --> 00:56:59,399
Speaker 7: consulting expert, so I have to be careful. But there

1022
00:56:59,400 --> 00:57:03,640
Speaker 7: are two to this story, and only one has been presented.

1023
00:57:03,920 --> 00:57:07,120
Speaker 7: So I'm getting a lot of emails saying you're doing

1024
00:57:07,120 --> 00:57:11,920
Speaker 7: a disservice. People are obviously killing themselves because of false

1025
00:57:11,960 --> 00:57:17,600
Speaker 7: accusations or destroying your destroying their lives. But that pales

1026
00:57:17,600 --> 00:57:21,560
Speaker 7: in comparison to the emails I get from survivors who

1027
00:57:21,600 --> 00:57:23,920
Speaker 7: say thank you so much for the work you're doing.

1028
00:57:24,120 --> 00:57:26,920
Speaker 7: I've noticed a big increase in those lately. I'm not

1029
00:57:26,960 --> 00:57:29,520
Speaker 7: sure why, but I think actually doing podcasts like this

1030
00:57:30,080 --> 00:57:31,200
Speaker 7: makes quite a difference.

1031
00:57:31,520 --> 00:57:35,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, it just seems like it must be so isolating

1032
00:57:35,280 --> 00:57:39,200
Speaker 2: for so many people prior to their being more cultural

1033
00:57:39,240 --> 00:57:44,520
Speaker 2: awareness about this problem. I can't imagine how lonely that

1034
00:57:44,920 --> 00:57:47,080
Speaker 2: must have felt for so many people, and probably still

1035
00:57:47,160 --> 00:57:48,000
Speaker 2: for so many people.

1036
00:57:48,840 --> 00:57:54,160
Speaker 6: Absolutely, I think first there's like it is so lonely,

1037
00:57:54,400 --> 00:57:56,400
Speaker 6: and so then when you're so lonely, there's that like

1038
00:57:56,600 --> 00:57:59,959
Speaker 6: desperation when you finally do hear a podcast where someone

1039
00:58:00,080 --> 00:58:02,840
Speaker 6: talks about it, or with some of these different things

1040
00:58:02,880 --> 00:58:05,400
Speaker 6: that have kind of come out in the media, it's like, oh,

1041
00:58:05,400 --> 00:58:08,120
Speaker 6: my gosh, maybe I'm not the only one. And I know,

1042
00:58:08,680 --> 00:58:12,160
Speaker 6: I do a lot of consults with survivors, and a

1043
00:58:12,160 --> 00:58:15,720
Speaker 6: lot of times I'm the first survivor that they've ever

1044
00:58:16,040 --> 00:58:19,000
Speaker 6: spoken to, and they will be like in tears within

1045
00:58:19,080 --> 00:58:23,440
Speaker 6: five minutes of talking because they've been searching and searching

1046
00:58:23,600 --> 00:58:28,440
Speaker 6: for somebody that understands and feeling so so alone and

1047
00:58:28,800 --> 00:58:32,560
Speaker 6: there was just nothing until I mean very recently. But

1048
00:58:32,640 --> 00:58:35,560
Speaker 6: there's also on the flip side, with all of the

1049
00:58:36,120 --> 00:58:39,760
Speaker 6: media coverage through places like Netflix or Hulu or things

1050
00:58:39,800 --> 00:58:43,720
Speaker 6: like that, it's dramatized in a lot of ways. And

1051
00:58:43,800 --> 00:58:46,280
Speaker 6: so I mean, I can't even tell you the amount

1052
00:58:46,280 --> 00:58:49,080
Speaker 6: of times that if I tell someone I'm a survivor,

1053
00:58:49,280 --> 00:58:51,280
Speaker 6: they'll be like, oh, well, at least it wasn't as

1054
00:58:51,280 --> 00:58:55,200
Speaker 6: bad as Gypsy Rose, And I'm like, oh, you're right,

1055
00:58:55,280 --> 00:58:58,160
Speaker 6: I didn't kill my mom, right, Okay, Okay. I don't

1056
00:58:58,240 --> 00:59:01,480
Speaker 6: know how to respond to that. Just so interesting. A

1057
00:59:01,480 --> 00:59:04,920
Speaker 6: lot of times it's like, oh, if it wasn't this serious,

1058
00:59:05,000 --> 00:59:08,160
Speaker 6: serious bad thing where you were fully in a wheelchair

1059
00:59:08,280 --> 00:59:11,240
Speaker 6: for a long time, or all these different things, but

1060
00:59:11,400 --> 00:59:15,960
Speaker 6: there's all this other damage. It's just somehow gets compared

1061
00:59:16,000 --> 00:59:18,160
Speaker 6: and minimized and compared trauma.

1062
00:59:18,440 --> 00:59:20,520
Speaker 1: Right at the end of the day, like comparing trauma

1063
00:59:20,600 --> 00:59:25,920
Speaker 1: just never ever works. Has anyone ever recovered from having lunchausen?

1064
00:59:26,120 --> 00:59:27,000
Speaker 3: I wondered that too.

1065
00:59:27,680 --> 00:59:32,200
Speaker 7: You're talking about the perpetrators, you know, again, I viewed

1066
00:59:32,240 --> 00:59:35,120
Speaker 7: as a form of abuse and un a mental illness.

1067
00:59:35,240 --> 00:59:41,120
Speaker 7: So there are people who reduce their behavior, there's some

1068
00:59:41,240 --> 00:59:45,760
Speaker 7: who stop, but generally they're in such denial that it's

1069
00:59:45,800 --> 00:59:48,840
Speaker 7: hard to move forward in any kind of treatment. They

1070
00:59:49,240 --> 00:59:53,720
Speaker 7: refuse to admit to what they've done. We've shown videotapes,

1071
00:59:54,040 --> 00:59:58,760
Speaker 7: for instance, in the hospital of a mother injecting bacteria

1072
00:59:58,840 --> 01:00:03,400
Speaker 7: into a few tube or suffocating the child with a

1073
01:00:03,440 --> 01:00:06,240
Speaker 7: piece of sellifhane, and they'll deny that they did it.

1074
01:00:06,640 --> 01:00:09,880
Speaker 7: We're showing them a videotape and they're saying they make

1075
01:00:09,960 --> 01:00:13,440
Speaker 7: up ridiculous excuses like I was just trying to clear

1076
01:00:14,000 --> 01:00:18,080
Speaker 7: the tube line, or in one case where the mother

1077
01:00:18,120 --> 01:00:21,000
Speaker 7: suffocated the child for a while. She said, I was

1078
01:00:21,080 --> 01:00:24,440
Speaker 7: just tickling his mouth. I mean, patently false, but we

1079
01:00:24,560 --> 01:00:27,760
Speaker 7: get that kind of denial, and if you're in such

1080
01:00:27,920 --> 01:00:31,840
Speaker 7: denial to begin with, it's really hard to sit down

1081
01:00:32,440 --> 01:00:37,280
Speaker 7: with these people therapeutically. You can't establish what we call

1082
01:00:37,320 --> 01:00:41,120
Speaker 7: a therapeutic alliance because you're disagreeing about the very reason

1083
01:00:41,120 --> 01:00:44,240
Speaker 7: they're in the room to begin with. So I would

1084
01:00:44,240 --> 01:00:48,320
Speaker 7: say we have to focus more on criminal justice interventions.

1085
01:00:48,600 --> 01:00:52,520
Speaker 7: Sometimes we can offer a treatment within the criminal justice system,

1086
01:00:52,520 --> 01:00:56,600
Speaker 7: but that's pretty rare. All people with mental health issues

1087
01:00:56,640 --> 01:01:01,440
Speaker 7: don't get adequate treatment in jails, with very rare exception,

1088
01:01:01,640 --> 01:01:06,080
Speaker 7: so I'm not again. In my last book, Dying to

1089
01:01:06,120 --> 01:01:10,040
Speaker 7: Be Ill, I talk about one case where there was

1090
01:01:10,200 --> 01:01:15,960
Speaker 7: resolution and I could recommend reunification between child and mom.

1091
01:01:16,480 --> 01:01:20,680
Speaker 7: But that's from fifteen or twenty years ago, and it

1092
01:01:20,760 --> 01:01:23,160
Speaker 7: sticks out because it was the one that I could

1093
01:01:23,240 --> 01:01:27,760
Speaker 7: recommend that for. Otherwise, child protection is what it's all

1094
01:01:27,800 --> 01:01:31,400
Speaker 7: about in my world. Family court judges tend to focus

1095
01:01:31,440 --> 01:01:36,080
Speaker 7: on reunification, and so we have a conflict. Their mission

1096
01:01:36,160 --> 01:01:38,760
Speaker 7: is different from mine. I want to keep the child safe.

1097
01:01:39,360 --> 01:01:47,600
Speaker 7: They do have an explicit bias and instructions to reunify families,

1098
01:01:47,720 --> 01:01:54,520
Speaker 7: and so I've been disappointed in case after case by reunification,

1099
01:01:54,680 --> 01:01:58,160
Speaker 7: even when we have that kind of videotape evidence.

1100
01:01:57,920 --> 01:02:01,840
Speaker 6: Which that I think is often like a macro levels

1101
01:02:02,400 --> 01:02:06,040
Speaker 6: issue within like systems, because I know, even in my situation,

1102
01:02:06,320 --> 01:02:10,240
Speaker 6: when my mom followed got the rehab and did whatever

1103
01:02:10,400 --> 01:02:14,920
Speaker 6: for the alcoholism and I was reunified, I vividly remember

1104
01:02:15,120 --> 01:02:17,280
Speaker 6: being in the car with the social worker who was

1105
01:02:17,360 --> 01:02:19,920
Speaker 6: driving me back to my mom's house a year later,

1106
01:02:20,600 --> 01:02:23,280
Speaker 6: and I said, I don't want to go home. I

1107
01:02:23,360 --> 01:02:26,440
Speaker 6: know my mom's still drinking, and the social worker was like,

1108
01:02:26,960 --> 01:02:29,840
Speaker 6: I know, Like I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do,

1109
01:02:30,400 --> 01:02:32,959
Speaker 6: and she I mean, she told me, if you want,

1110
01:02:33,040 --> 01:02:35,320
Speaker 6: like you can leave again and just go with your dad.

1111
01:02:35,400 --> 01:02:39,520
Speaker 6: But there was like nothing more that social services could do.

1112
01:02:39,720 --> 01:02:42,880
Speaker 6: So I mean, I'm still in contact with her at times,

1113
01:02:42,920 --> 01:02:46,880
Speaker 6: but once again, it's like her hands were completely tied.

1114
01:02:47,360 --> 01:02:52,840
Speaker 2: Like just the systemic failings, the medical system failings, the

1115
01:02:53,000 --> 01:02:55,440
Speaker 2: familial failings, that there's so many failings here.

1116
01:02:55,720 --> 01:02:58,800
Speaker 7: I think it may be the minority, but I also

1117
01:02:58,880 --> 01:03:05,840
Speaker 7: know some huge cases of success where, for example, there's

1118
01:03:06,240 --> 01:03:11,840
Speaker 7: a victim who has come forward in various media who

1119
01:03:12,120 --> 01:03:16,440
Speaker 7: was instructed or told by her mother that she had

1120
01:03:16,520 --> 01:03:20,280
Speaker 7: terminal cancer and believed it. Her mother shaved her head,

1121
01:03:20,880 --> 01:03:24,440
Speaker 7: said the chemotherapy would work better if she were bald.

1122
01:03:24,760 --> 01:03:26,640
Speaker 7: I mean, can you believe this kind of thing. A

1123
01:03:26,680 --> 01:03:28,840
Speaker 7: little girl is going to believe what her mom says.

1124
01:03:29,360 --> 01:03:33,480
Speaker 7: She also took the child weekly to the local hospital

1125
01:03:34,520 --> 01:03:37,240
Speaker 7: for what was supposed to be chemotherapy, but she drugged

1126
01:03:37,280 --> 01:03:40,680
Speaker 7: the child and when the child was awake, said, you

1127
01:03:40,800 --> 01:03:44,320
Speaker 7: had your treatment, you just don't remember because you slept

1128
01:03:44,640 --> 01:03:49,640
Speaker 7: through it. She even introduced her daughter in front of

1129
01:03:49,680 --> 01:03:53,800
Speaker 7: the first grade class and said, my daughter, unfortunately is

1130
01:03:53,840 --> 01:03:55,320
Speaker 7: not going to be here at the end of your

1131
01:03:55,360 --> 01:04:00,480
Speaker 7: school year. None of this was true. And yet this

1132
01:04:00,600 --> 01:04:04,600
Speaker 7: young woman who is now the mom of two, I

1133
01:04:04,640 --> 01:04:07,080
Speaker 7: think she's the greatest mother in the world. She has

1134
01:04:07,120 --> 01:04:12,440
Speaker 7: a beautiful marriage. She's an upbeat and successful person. She

1135
01:04:13,120 --> 01:04:15,040
Speaker 7: used to live in the same town as her mother

1136
01:04:15,400 --> 01:04:19,480
Speaker 7: and see her mother almost every day. They never interacted.

1137
01:04:19,560 --> 01:04:24,280
Speaker 7: Her mother spent six years in jail, but she finally

1138
01:04:24,320 --> 01:04:27,160
Speaker 7: moved across the country, which I think was a healthy step.

1139
01:04:27,680 --> 01:04:30,200
Speaker 7: And we're Facebook friends, so I keep up with her

1140
01:04:30,280 --> 01:04:34,200
Speaker 7: family or since birthday was yesterday and it's a beautiful outcome.

1141
01:04:34,560 --> 01:04:35,120
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1142
01:04:35,120 --> 01:04:38,040
Speaker 7: Thank goodness, it was recognized for what it was, though

1143
01:04:38,040 --> 01:04:38,760
Speaker 7: it took years.

1144
01:04:39,000 --> 01:04:41,880
Speaker 1: Right ye, I mean, Jan, how do you trust again?

1145
01:04:42,520 --> 01:04:44,880
Speaker 1: I mean you're probably working on that right now. But

1146
01:04:45,800 --> 01:04:48,640
Speaker 1: doctor Fellman, I mean, do you see, like you said,

1147
01:04:48,640 --> 01:04:52,840
Speaker 1: this woman created a beautiful life for herself, had children

1148
01:04:52,920 --> 01:04:56,800
Speaker 1: and it is thriving, so it's possible to trust again.

1149
01:04:57,160 --> 01:04:57,360
Speaker 5: Yeah?

1150
01:04:57,600 --> 01:05:00,480
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, yeah, I think. I I think in my

1151
01:05:00,520 --> 01:05:02,800
Speaker 4: own situation, it's.

1152
01:05:02,600 --> 01:05:06,600
Speaker 6: Like so weird because I was, like you guys mentioned,

1153
01:05:06,640 --> 01:05:09,240
Speaker 6: I was hurt and failed time and time again, not

1154
01:05:09,280 --> 01:05:12,080
Speaker 6: only by my mom but by the dad on my

1155
01:05:12,120 --> 01:05:15,880
Speaker 6: birth certificate and my family and the medical system and

1156
01:05:15,960 --> 01:05:18,960
Speaker 6: social services and all the systems that there possibly were.

1157
01:05:19,640 --> 01:05:23,920
Speaker 6: And yet somehow, within like all the different types of

1158
01:05:23,960 --> 01:05:27,080
Speaker 6: abuse I endured and the things I went through, I've

1159
01:05:27,120 --> 01:05:31,400
Speaker 6: like still am so quick to trust, and it's almost

1160
01:05:31,480 --> 01:05:34,520
Speaker 6: like I have to be very careful, Like I am

1161
01:05:34,680 --> 01:05:39,080
Speaker 6: very aware that if somebody that is usually it's someone

1162
01:05:39,120 --> 01:05:44,440
Speaker 6: that's younger and seemingly charming, or just in general, if

1163
01:05:44,480 --> 01:05:47,800
Speaker 6: somebody tells me that they care about me, or that

1164
01:05:47,880 --> 01:05:53,000
Speaker 6: they like see me, or they validate me in any way, I.

1165
01:05:52,240 --> 01:05:55,280
Speaker 4: I'm like, Okay, cool, I trust this person. I will

1166
01:05:55,320 --> 01:05:56,600
Speaker 4: like worship.

1167
01:05:56,200 --> 01:05:59,040
Speaker 6: You and do whatever you tell me, which recently got

1168
01:05:59,040 --> 01:06:02,400
Speaker 6: me into trouble with in doing some like athletic sort

1169
01:06:02,400 --> 01:06:05,200
Speaker 6: of stuff I was doing, where then I just kind

1170
01:06:05,200 --> 01:06:08,280
Speaker 6: of got stuck back in a system of being used

1171
01:06:08,360 --> 01:06:12,280
Speaker 6: in inappropriate ways. And I'm aware.

1172
01:06:12,360 --> 01:06:15,600
Speaker 4: Of this struggle, but it's still all. I think.

1173
01:06:15,640 --> 01:06:18,040
Speaker 6: All I've wanted right in life is since I was

1174
01:06:18,120 --> 01:06:21,600
Speaker 6: a little kid was to be believed. And so the

1175
01:06:21,640 --> 01:06:25,520
Speaker 6: second that I feel like somebody sees me, I want

1176
01:06:25,520 --> 01:06:28,880
Speaker 6: to latch on because of those just attachment wounds and

1177
01:06:28,920 --> 01:06:32,840
Speaker 6: things like that. So trusting isn't it's not necessarily an

1178
01:06:32,840 --> 01:06:38,080
Speaker 6: issue with trusting, but it's more trying to decipher what's

1179
01:06:38,360 --> 01:06:45,720
Speaker 6: healthy and who's actually safe versus what's manipulation or different

1180
01:06:46,160 --> 01:06:47,840
Speaker 6: types of abuse or things like that.

1181
01:06:48,000 --> 01:06:50,480
Speaker 1: Right, Well, we see a lot with people who leave

1182
01:06:50,560 --> 01:06:54,400
Speaker 1: cults that they join another cult. Yeah, so if we're

1183
01:06:54,440 --> 01:06:58,120
Speaker 1: looking at cults through relationships, that makes total sense. Is

1184
01:06:58,160 --> 01:07:01,560
Speaker 1: there a part of you that missus the just safety

1185
01:07:01,920 --> 01:07:05,480
Speaker 1: and smallness of this world your mom provided.

1186
01:07:05,440 --> 01:07:08,400
Speaker 3: Like she answer, she knows what to do.

1187
01:07:09,000 --> 01:07:12,880
Speaker 6: Yeah, absolutely, And I think so there was the stuff

1188
01:07:13,320 --> 01:07:16,000
Speaker 6: with my mom and like that like cult.

1189
01:07:15,800 --> 01:07:18,200
Speaker 4: Like atmosphere that I often missed.

1190
01:07:18,240 --> 01:07:22,640
Speaker 6: I mean, whenever something happens in my life, good or bad,

1191
01:07:22,760 --> 01:07:26,880
Speaker 6: I still want to call my mom. My mom is

1192
01:07:27,000 --> 01:07:31,760
Speaker 6: like actually very physically ill at this point, and after

1193
01:07:32,080 --> 01:07:36,200
Speaker 6: a very near death situation, I found closure with that

1194
01:07:36,320 --> 01:07:40,840
Speaker 6: relationship and haven't contacted her since then since March, but

1195
01:07:41,720 --> 01:07:44,440
Speaker 6: I still have those urges or those desires to like

1196
01:07:45,000 --> 01:07:47,400
Speaker 6: have that. And then once I did get away from her,

1197
01:07:47,840 --> 01:07:52,120
Speaker 6: I got very involved with Christianity, and for me that

1198
01:07:52,240 --> 01:07:55,240
Speaker 6: was a very very cult like experience and there was

1199
01:07:55,280 --> 01:07:58,120
Speaker 6: a lot of abuse within that power as well in

1200
01:07:58,160 --> 01:08:01,840
Speaker 6: those people I was involved with. And so that's now

1201
01:08:02,280 --> 01:08:05,680
Speaker 6: between that and the medical system, there's a lot of

1202
01:08:05,760 --> 01:08:10,880
Speaker 6: like missing feeling like that's where community would be or

1203
01:08:10,920 --> 01:08:14,560
Speaker 6: that's how I could get that care or get different

1204
01:08:14,640 --> 01:08:16,880
Speaker 6: needs met in things like that, and in my life

1205
01:08:16,920 --> 01:08:20,519
Speaker 6: I've found ways. I have a great support system, I

1206
01:08:20,560 --> 01:08:23,960
Speaker 6: have great people in my life. I absolutely love the

1207
01:08:24,040 --> 01:08:26,240
Speaker 6: jobs and the careers that I'm getting to do in

1208
01:08:26,560 --> 01:08:29,640
Speaker 6: school and just the life I've created, like I'm absolutely

1209
01:08:29,640 --> 01:08:33,599
Speaker 6: in love with. And when I get triggered or when

1210
01:08:33,640 --> 01:08:39,160
Speaker 6: something happens, I do still miss the church or sometimes

1211
01:08:39,200 --> 01:08:42,040
Speaker 6: will if I get sick, be like, oh I wish

1212
01:08:42,120 --> 01:08:44,200
Speaker 6: I was in the hospital where someone could take care

1213
01:08:44,240 --> 01:08:48,240
Speaker 6: of me, versus laying here on my bed alone terrified,

1214
01:08:48,360 --> 01:08:51,640
Speaker 6: because for me, a simple cold brings me back to

1215
01:08:51,680 --> 01:08:54,439
Speaker 6: thinking that I'm dying and something really bad's happening. And

1216
01:08:54,479 --> 01:08:57,720
Speaker 6: since that's like the programming and the messaging that I've

1217
01:08:57,760 --> 01:08:58,720
Speaker 6: gotten since I was.

1218
01:08:58,760 --> 01:09:02,160
Speaker 3: Very little self awareness is staggering.

1219
01:09:02,640 --> 01:09:09,160
Speaker 2: Honestly, you have identified exactly what's going on, exactly what

1220
01:09:09,200 --> 01:09:09,840
Speaker 2: you're working on.

1221
01:09:10,240 --> 01:09:10,880
Speaker 3: Amazing.

1222
01:09:12,800 --> 01:09:16,920
Speaker 2: That made me wonder, doctor, does is it common for

1223
01:09:16,960 --> 01:09:20,840
Speaker 2: someone who's been a victim of medical child abuse? Is

1224
01:09:20,840 --> 01:09:24,400
Speaker 2: it common for them to then develop Munchausen and then

1225
01:09:24,920 --> 01:09:27,120
Speaker 2: they want to make themselves sick because that's how they

1226
01:09:27,120 --> 01:09:28,400
Speaker 2: feel comfortable.

1227
01:09:28,160 --> 01:09:31,759
Speaker 7: Some of them do. That's actually very insightful, very limited

1228
01:09:31,800 --> 01:09:35,320
Speaker 7: research on the subject, but it seems to me that

1229
01:09:36,000 --> 01:09:40,120
Speaker 7: some people seek to master the trauma of what they

1230
01:09:40,560 --> 01:09:45,080
Speaker 7: went through in childhood by making it their own behavior

1231
01:09:45,160 --> 01:09:49,480
Speaker 7: later in life. What we also see is the exact opposite,

1232
01:09:50,200 --> 01:09:55,000
Speaker 7: and that is that victims grow up and avoid even

1233
01:09:55,120 --> 01:09:59,080
Speaker 7: medically essential care because it reminds them of the trauma

1234
01:09:59,120 --> 01:10:04,880
Speaker 7: they have gone. So we tend to see those two possibilities,

1235
01:10:05,960 --> 01:10:09,840
Speaker 7: and one of the goals of working with survivors is

1236
01:10:09,920 --> 01:10:15,560
Speaker 7: helping them, if at all possible, to trust their judgment

1237
01:10:16,439 --> 01:10:25,559
Speaker 7: and also become sensitive to authentic physical cues that care

1238
01:10:25,880 --> 01:10:31,000
Speaker 7: is needed and isn't necessarily excessive just because they've accessed it.

1239
01:10:31,720 --> 01:10:33,520
Speaker 7: So we see both polls.

1240
01:10:33,280 --> 01:10:37,800
Speaker 6: Right, and that's completely what I see is missing so

1241
01:10:38,000 --> 01:10:39,040
Speaker 6: far for survivors.

1242
01:10:39,080 --> 01:10:40,240
Speaker 4: I've been very lucky.

1243
01:10:40,400 --> 01:10:43,480
Speaker 6: I had a friend of mine that was a cheerleader

1244
01:10:43,640 --> 01:10:46,640
Speaker 6: growing up when we were younger, who her dad was

1245
01:10:46,680 --> 01:10:49,599
Speaker 6: a doctor, and over the years before I had any

1246
01:10:49,640 --> 01:10:52,000
Speaker 6: idea about the munch old and my proxy stuff, I

1247
01:10:52,080 --> 01:10:55,320
Speaker 6: would reach out to him all the time about medical questions,

1248
01:10:55,400 --> 01:10:57,639
Speaker 6: and he was someone that I reached out to even

1249
01:10:57,680 --> 01:11:00,760
Speaker 6: in adulthood. And now I have a friend who's a

1250
01:11:00,840 --> 01:11:04,479
Speaker 6: nurse practitioner who I like still to this day. I'll

1251
01:11:04,479 --> 01:11:06,559
Speaker 6: probably reach out to her every couple of weeks with

1252
01:11:06,640 --> 01:11:09,719
Speaker 6: some sort of Hey, this weird thing's happening in my body,

1253
01:11:09,840 --> 01:11:11,960
Speaker 6: Like should I be nervous, do I need to go

1254
01:11:12,000 --> 01:11:14,759
Speaker 6: to a doctor, or like what do I do? Because

1255
01:11:14,800 --> 01:11:17,240
Speaker 6: I don't I don't know, But a lot of people,

1256
01:11:17,320 --> 01:11:20,840
Speaker 6: a lot of survivors like don't have access to that

1257
01:11:20,960 --> 01:11:25,519
Speaker 6: help because if we go into a doctor's office and say, Hi,

1258
01:11:25,600 --> 01:11:29,200
Speaker 6: I'm a survivor of bunchasen Bay proxy, that gets put

1259
01:11:29,240 --> 01:11:31,720
Speaker 6: in our charts and suddenly we're the ones that are

1260
01:11:31,720 --> 01:11:33,240
Speaker 6: making ourselves sick and.

1261
01:11:33,160 --> 01:11:34,320
Speaker 5: We're treated like.

1262
01:11:35,800 --> 01:11:38,680
Speaker 4: Literally start screaming, Yeah.

1263
01:11:38,439 --> 01:11:42,400
Speaker 6: It's it's really really something. My My big goal in

1264
01:11:42,400 --> 01:11:45,600
Speaker 6: my life is to create a term for survivors a

1265
01:11:45,640 --> 01:11:49,479
Speaker 6: medical child abuse, so that's widely recognized, so that then

1266
01:11:49,520 --> 01:11:52,639
Speaker 6: we can create like research and have a treatment plan

1267
01:11:52,760 --> 01:11:55,599
Speaker 6: and things like that, so that there can be like

1268
01:11:55,680 --> 01:11:59,000
Speaker 6: a doctor that I could go see. Maybe it starts

1269
01:11:59,000 --> 01:12:01,040
Speaker 6: off with weekly I go in and I see this

1270
01:12:01,160 --> 01:12:04,400
Speaker 6: doctor who's able to help me figure out what's real,

1271
01:12:05,200 --> 01:12:09,599
Speaker 6: what psychosomatic, what's just normal body pains that I never

1272
01:12:09,680 --> 01:12:13,360
Speaker 6: knew were normal, And then eventually like trickle down those

1273
01:12:13,400 --> 01:12:17,040
Speaker 6: appointments to the point where the person's healthy enough to

1274
01:12:17,160 --> 01:12:20,000
Speaker 6: just be normally living in the world.

1275
01:12:20,880 --> 01:12:23,080
Speaker 4: But sadly that's just not we're not.

1276
01:12:23,360 --> 01:12:26,760
Speaker 2: I obviously cannot relate on a fundamental level because this

1277
01:12:26,800 --> 01:12:28,920
Speaker 2: did not happen to me, But I just liken it

1278
01:12:28,960 --> 01:12:33,800
Speaker 2: to some experience that I had with OCD, where you

1279
01:12:34,160 --> 01:12:38,080
Speaker 2: get like hyper tuned, like I was saying earlier, to sensations,

1280
01:12:38,200 --> 01:12:40,920
Speaker 2: and you start thinking that every little thing is a

1281
01:12:41,000 --> 01:12:44,920
Speaker 2: symptom of a horrible illness and like become obsessive about that.

1282
01:12:45,320 --> 01:12:47,240
Speaker 2: And that's just like my own brain doing that to me.

1283
01:12:47,439 --> 01:12:50,559
Speaker 2: That's like without a whole childhood of somebody like telling

1284
01:12:50,560 --> 01:12:51,679
Speaker 2: me my instincts are wrong.

1285
01:12:51,840 --> 01:12:53,000
Speaker 3: This is what this just.

1286
01:12:52,960 --> 01:12:53,519
Speaker 5: Made me think of.

1287
01:12:53,560 --> 01:12:55,479
Speaker 1: And I've never thought of it like this before. But

1288
01:12:56,160 --> 01:12:59,320
Speaker 1: in the cult I was raised in, sorrow.

1289
01:12:59,200 --> 01:13:01,880
Speaker 5: Was worshiped, fear was worshiped.

1290
01:13:02,080 --> 01:13:05,120
Speaker 1: So is when I feel really sorrowful or when I

1291
01:13:05,120 --> 01:13:07,080
Speaker 1: feel really fearful, is it even mine?

1292
01:13:09,200 --> 01:13:17,000
Speaker 2: Because you, yeah, spiritual Munchausenes because you feel comfortable in

1293
01:13:17,000 --> 01:13:18,880
Speaker 2: that space because you were taught that that was like

1294
01:13:18,920 --> 01:13:20,559
Speaker 2: the correct way to feel. Yeah.

1295
01:13:20,640 --> 01:13:25,920
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, that's it's it's it's hard to decipher. Yeah,

1296
01:13:25,960 --> 01:13:30,320
Speaker 6: And it's what doctor Feldman said too.

1297
01:13:30,400 --> 01:13:33,440
Speaker 4: It's like hard for survivors.

1298
01:13:33,479 --> 01:13:36,240
Speaker 6: I mean, I know a lot of people personally that

1299
01:13:36,360 --> 01:13:40,160
Speaker 6: have survived that they still do fake illnesses, but not

1300
01:13:40,840 --> 01:13:42,840
Speaker 6: I wouldn't say that some of the people I know,

1301
01:13:42,880 --> 01:13:46,960
Speaker 6: I wouldn't say have Munchausen's because it's not for attention,

1302
01:13:47,240 --> 01:13:50,080
Speaker 6: but because they genuinely do think that they're still sick

1303
01:13:50,200 --> 01:13:53,400
Speaker 6: or don't know what's wrong. But to the outside world

1304
01:13:53,400 --> 01:13:57,680
Speaker 6: they would appear very Munchausen like because they're going to

1305
01:13:57,720 --> 01:14:00,519
Speaker 6: the doctor all the time and the different symptoms are there. Yeah,

1306
01:14:00,520 --> 01:14:05,679
Speaker 6: but there's the reasoning and the intent is very, very different.

1307
01:14:05,760 --> 01:14:07,719
Speaker 6: So there's a lot of different moving pieces.

1308
01:14:07,880 --> 01:14:08,160
Speaker 5: Yeah.

1309
01:14:08,439 --> 01:14:10,840
Speaker 2: When you know, people who come out of cults, they

1310
01:14:11,000 --> 01:14:13,880
Speaker 2: have to relearn how to trust their intuition in terms

1311
01:14:13,920 --> 01:14:17,439
Speaker 2: of everything else in their lives, their feelings, their thoughts,

1312
01:14:17,479 --> 01:14:18,360
Speaker 2: their behaviors.

1313
01:14:18,960 --> 01:14:21,599
Speaker 3: It's just kind of the same thing. Or someone has.

1314
01:14:21,439 --> 01:14:23,680
Speaker 2: Told you what you think, what you feel, told you

1315
01:14:23,720 --> 01:14:26,160
Speaker 2: what to think, told you what's real, and so you

1316
01:14:26,240 --> 01:14:30,120
Speaker 2: have to like reconstruct your entire reality and learn how

1317
01:14:30,120 --> 01:14:32,240
Speaker 2: to listen to your body in an entirely new way.

1318
01:14:32,520 --> 01:14:33,879
Speaker 3: And if that's been happening since.

1319
01:14:33,720 --> 01:14:37,280
Speaker 2: You were a baby, I mean, just that is I

1320
01:14:37,320 --> 01:14:41,320
Speaker 2: cannot imagine that challenge, and it's incredible that you are

1321
01:14:41,360 --> 01:14:44,599
Speaker 2: overcoming that actively and that the people that you speak

1322
01:14:44,640 --> 01:14:47,040
Speaker 2: to are because I just like cannot imagine how difficult

1323
01:14:47,040 --> 01:14:47,519
Speaker 2: that must be.

1324
01:14:47,920 --> 01:14:50,759
Speaker 6: That's what I see a lot And as I spoke

1325
01:14:50,760 --> 01:14:53,519
Speaker 6: about that, like spiritual awakening and sort of moment that

1326
01:14:53,560 --> 01:14:56,320
Speaker 6: I had but I was doing I do play therapy

1327
01:14:56,680 --> 01:14:58,519
Speaker 6: is to try to do something a little bit different

1328
01:14:58,560 --> 01:15:02,559
Speaker 6: than just talk therapy. And it was a simple like prompt.

1329
01:15:02,600 --> 01:15:04,680
Speaker 6: I don't even remember what it was. It it was

1330
01:15:04,800 --> 01:15:07,439
Speaker 6: like do on a sand tray. I was justs to

1331
01:15:07,439 --> 01:15:10,000
Speaker 6: like put objects on a sand tray to represent like

1332
01:15:10,600 --> 01:15:13,839
Speaker 6: what it means to me, what like bad or evil means,

1333
01:15:13,920 --> 01:15:17,200
Speaker 6: because I've held this deep thing that I'm bad and

1334
01:15:17,240 --> 01:15:18,200
Speaker 6: evil at my core.

1335
01:15:18,960 --> 01:15:20,240
Speaker 4: And when I.

1336
01:15:20,160 --> 01:15:22,439
Speaker 6: Did it, I ended up putting a dragon on and

1337
01:15:22,479 --> 01:15:25,320
Speaker 6: that was it. And the dragon has always represented my

1338
01:15:25,400 --> 01:15:29,320
Speaker 6: mom whenever I've done this, And in that moment, which

1339
01:15:29,360 --> 01:15:31,920
Speaker 6: is like less than a month ago, I like it

1340
01:15:32,120 --> 01:15:34,960
Speaker 6: hit me like, oh my gosh, like my feelings of

1341
01:15:35,000 --> 01:15:38,640
Speaker 6: being bad and evil it's my mom's. It's none of

1342
01:15:38,640 --> 01:15:41,839
Speaker 6: it is actually me, Like it's just I've been holding

1343
01:15:41,920 --> 01:15:43,320
Speaker 6: this from my mom.

1344
01:15:43,600 --> 01:15:46,000
Speaker 4: And so, like I said, in that moment, like.

1345
01:15:46,040 --> 01:15:50,080
Speaker 6: My whole entire life just changed, Like I've been traveling

1346
01:15:50,240 --> 01:15:53,120
Speaker 6: now and like just able to like be confident in

1347
01:15:53,160 --> 01:15:56,400
Speaker 6: the world and have like those listening to my intuition

1348
01:15:56,560 --> 01:15:59,960
Speaker 6: and my body in such like a vastly different way.

1349
01:16:00,120 --> 01:16:01,439
Speaker 4: And sure there's been a.

1350
01:16:01,320 --> 01:16:05,479
Speaker 6: Lot of work over the past decade that has led

1351
01:16:05,520 --> 01:16:08,920
Speaker 6: me to this point. You know, I think until we're open,

1352
01:16:09,000 --> 01:16:11,840
Speaker 6: we have to have such an openness to like receive that,

1353
01:16:12,040 --> 01:16:15,559
Speaker 6: and there's all these seeds that are planted until that

1354
01:16:15,680 --> 01:16:19,200
Speaker 6: openness is there, and then we can have those realizations.

1355
01:16:19,320 --> 01:16:21,960
Speaker 6: But a lot of clients I work with are still

1356
01:16:21,960 --> 01:16:24,639
Speaker 6: holding those things, and they'll have moments they might even

1357
01:16:24,680 --> 01:16:28,360
Speaker 6: have like the intellect side of it of this isn't

1358
01:16:28,400 --> 01:16:31,560
Speaker 6: mind to hold, I'm not sick, But then all of

1359
01:16:31,600 --> 01:16:36,200
Speaker 6: a sudden they're really really really struggling with psychosomatic things

1360
01:16:36,520 --> 01:16:40,240
Speaker 6: or with whatever it is, because it's this back and

1361
01:16:40,280 --> 01:16:43,679
Speaker 6: forth thing until like body, mind, soul are all able

1362
01:16:43,720 --> 01:16:47,320
Speaker 6: to kind of open up and like hold this truth

1363
01:16:47,360 --> 01:16:49,720
Speaker 6: because it's we have to be ready for it.

1364
01:16:49,760 --> 01:16:53,240
Speaker 4: And there's so much deep grief.

1365
01:16:53,520 --> 01:16:57,360
Speaker 6: To accept that my mom essentially tried to kill me

1366
01:16:57,439 --> 01:17:01,920
Speaker 6: my entire life in order to get attention and to

1367
01:17:02,000 --> 01:17:05,160
Speaker 6: meet her own needs. Like I don't think my mom

1368
01:17:05,200 --> 01:17:11,160
Speaker 6: ever was capable of love. I've never seen genuine, authentic

1369
01:17:11,200 --> 01:17:14,480
Speaker 6: emotion from her, only manipulation.

1370
01:17:15,360 --> 01:17:19,120
Speaker 4: And how does how does a child ever hold that

1371
01:17:19,400 --> 01:17:20,120
Speaker 4: about their mother?

1372
01:17:20,640 --> 01:17:26,640
Speaker 7: Yeah, And that's what makes treatment of perpetrators so difficult,

1373
01:17:26,680 --> 01:17:31,360
Speaker 7: if not impossible. In most cases, they're so flawed and

1374
01:17:31,439 --> 01:17:37,800
Speaker 7: yet complacent about their flaws. So I, as a psychotherapist,

1375
01:17:39,320 --> 01:17:43,599
Speaker 7: find there's nothing much I can offer them, And as

1376
01:17:43,600 --> 01:17:47,040
Speaker 7: I said before, I just redouble my efforts on protecting

1377
01:17:47,080 --> 01:17:47,719
Speaker 7: the victims.

1378
01:17:47,920 --> 01:17:50,160
Speaker 2: Right, if they don't want to be treated, there's nothing

1379
01:17:50,160 --> 01:17:51,719
Speaker 2: that we can do to treat them.

1380
01:17:51,680 --> 01:17:55,080
Speaker 1: Or if they don't think that they need to be treated, Yeah.

1381
01:17:54,240 --> 01:17:58,679
Speaker 4: Exactly, yeah, exactly, doctor.

1382
01:17:58,720 --> 01:18:03,960
Speaker 2: How how do we tell the difference between like someone

1383
01:18:04,040 --> 01:18:07,080
Speaker 2: whose parent is like a hypochondriac on behalf of their

1384
01:18:07,160 --> 01:18:09,960
Speaker 2: child and someone who's actively trying to make them sick.

1385
01:18:10,680 --> 01:18:15,519
Speaker 7: There are certainly over anxious patient family members. They tend

1386
01:18:15,600 --> 01:18:19,559
Speaker 7: to be relieved when they get normal results for their child.

1387
01:18:20,000 --> 01:18:24,080
Speaker 7: And they also don't lie. They tell the truth. Again,

1388
01:18:24,160 --> 01:18:27,120
Speaker 7: it may be hard to settle them down and convince

1389
01:18:27,160 --> 01:18:31,360
Speaker 7: them that the child is really well, but the truthfulness

1390
01:18:31,439 --> 01:18:36,799
Speaker 7: is there. It's manifest. It's not evident that they're simply

1391
01:18:36,840 --> 01:18:40,320
Speaker 7: saying things to be manipulative. They may do things like

1392
01:18:40,479 --> 01:18:44,120
Speaker 7: say a fever of one hundred point one is a

1393
01:18:44,120 --> 01:18:47,720
Speaker 7: fever of one hundred point nine, but usually that's to

1394
01:18:47,800 --> 01:18:51,879
Speaker 7: get their child's care prioritized. It doesn't represent a pattern

1395
01:18:52,400 --> 01:18:56,040
Speaker 7: of behavior, it's not enduring. But I also have to

1396
01:18:56,120 --> 01:18:59,559
Speaker 7: say it can still be medical child abuse even if

1397
01:18:59,560 --> 01:19:06,160
Speaker 7: it's not based in conscious deception and manipulation. The result

1398
01:19:06,240 --> 01:19:08,400
Speaker 7: on the child can be the same. Too many tests,

1399
01:19:08,400 --> 01:19:13,120
Speaker 7: too many doctors, too many hospitalizations, too many surgeries, and

1400
01:19:13,479 --> 01:19:16,000
Speaker 7: so I take those cases seriously too.

1401
01:19:16,439 --> 01:19:22,120
Speaker 1: I guess it's a spectrum, yes, absolutely, But the treatment

1402
01:19:22,280 --> 01:19:25,240
Speaker 1: I think is like what's oftentimes different.

1403
01:19:25,280 --> 01:19:27,280
Speaker 6: I think there still needs to be obviously it's like

1404
01:19:27,360 --> 01:19:31,040
Speaker 6: make sure everyone's safe, but then like how the person

1405
01:19:31,080 --> 01:19:34,600
Speaker 6: that's perpetrating the abuse, like how that treatment goes is

1406
01:19:34,720 --> 01:19:36,920
Speaker 6: most likely going to be a bit different. I know,

1407
01:19:36,960 --> 01:19:39,400
Speaker 6: I consulted on a case I think last year with

1408
01:19:40,080 --> 01:19:44,719
Speaker 6: someone who was really afraid that their wife was committing

1409
01:19:44,840 --> 01:19:49,400
Speaker 6: on medical child abuse, and as we talked about the case,

1410
01:19:49,479 --> 01:19:52,360
Speaker 6: it was clear that the mom had like really severe

1411
01:19:52,520 --> 01:19:56,880
Speaker 6: OCD sort of things going on, and but like doctor

1412
01:19:56,920 --> 01:19:59,920
Speaker 6: Feldman said, the results on the kid are still detri

1413
01:20:00,439 --> 01:20:02,600
Speaker 6: I mean, there's I can't remember where I learned this,

1414
01:20:02,680 --> 01:20:06,960
Speaker 6: but there's research that shows that like medical child abuse, uh,

1415
01:20:07,040 --> 01:20:09,960
Speaker 6: the way that it affects the body is very similar

1416
01:20:10,080 --> 01:20:13,320
Speaker 6: and the mind is very similar to sexual abuse because

1417
01:20:13,360 --> 01:20:19,080
Speaker 6: it's unwanted. Oftentimes it's painful, force like there you don't

1418
01:20:19,080 --> 01:20:23,200
Speaker 6: know what's going on, and so like it's very serious,

1419
01:20:23,360 --> 01:20:28,280
Speaker 6: even seemingly like little procedures or things like that, like

1420
01:20:28,520 --> 01:20:30,280
Speaker 6: can have really long term effects.

1421
01:20:30,479 --> 01:20:30,599
Speaker 7: Right.

1422
01:20:30,760 --> 01:20:32,439
Speaker 2: The only thing I want to add on behalf of

1423
01:20:32,640 --> 01:20:35,559
Speaker 2: OCD people with OCD, because I am in an OCD group,

1424
01:20:36,120 --> 01:20:37,439
Speaker 2: is that OCD is treatable.

1425
01:20:37,880 --> 01:20:40,200
Speaker 3: You don't have to act on those behaviors.

1426
01:20:40,200 --> 01:20:43,040
Speaker 2: So if you do discover you've gone too far, like,

1427
01:20:43,120 --> 01:20:45,599
Speaker 2: you can get treatment for that, whereas someone who is

1428
01:20:45,640 --> 01:20:50,320
Speaker 2: doing it for attention or you know, more malicious reasons

1429
01:20:50,360 --> 01:20:54,000
Speaker 2: that that is totally different, right, which a little more unreachable. Yeah,

1430
01:20:54,360 --> 01:20:57,519
Speaker 2: I just want to know if someone is listening who

1431
01:20:58,040 --> 01:21:02,520
Speaker 2: believes maybe they've experienced this, what would you starting.

1432
01:21:02,240 --> 01:21:04,759
Speaker 3: With you, Joe, I guess what would you say to them?

1433
01:21:05,320 --> 01:21:06,880
Speaker 3: Where can they go? How you know?

1434
01:21:07,520 --> 01:21:07,840
Speaker 4: Yeah?

1435
01:21:07,920 --> 01:21:12,439
Speaker 6: So, as I said, Andrea Dunlop created Munchausen Support, So

1436
01:21:12,520 --> 01:21:17,000
Speaker 6: going to munchausensupport dot Com, there's a contact form that

1437
01:21:17,040 --> 01:21:19,760
Speaker 6: can be filled out and that goes to me. I

1438
01:21:19,800 --> 01:21:24,400
Speaker 6: read those, but then I usually talk to doctor Feldman.

1439
01:21:24,840 --> 01:21:28,799
Speaker 6: Or detective Mike Weber or Beatrice Yorker or different people

1440
01:21:29,000 --> 01:21:32,759
Speaker 6: that are experts in the field to help find whatever

1441
01:21:32,800 --> 01:21:34,839
Speaker 6: it is I would be the best support. We also,

1442
01:21:35,400 --> 01:21:40,519
Speaker 6: within Munchausen Support we created, I've been facilitating support groups,

1443
01:21:40,840 --> 01:21:44,920
Speaker 6: pure led support groups for survivors of medical child abuse

1444
01:21:44,960 --> 01:21:48,120
Speaker 6: FRO Munchausen by proxy. So we have that as a

1445
01:21:48,160 --> 01:21:51,519
Speaker 6: free option, which currently is really the only thing that

1446
01:21:51,600 --> 01:21:54,680
Speaker 6: I know of that for survivors to be able to

1447
01:21:55,040 --> 01:21:59,240
Speaker 6: get any sort of help or care after realizing that

1448
01:21:59,280 --> 01:22:02,200
Speaker 6: this is what they've done and through and Beatrice Yorker

1449
01:22:02,880 --> 01:22:07,240
Speaker 6: has actually started facilitating and helping non offending families, So

1450
01:22:07,360 --> 01:22:12,400
Speaker 6: not just survivors, but the dads or other non offending

1451
01:22:12,479 --> 01:22:16,800
Speaker 6: family members that have been affected and impacted deeply by this.

1452
01:22:17,000 --> 01:22:20,400
Speaker 6: We help with that or helping to find that legal

1453
01:22:21,040 --> 01:22:23,960
Speaker 6: care if this abuse is currently going on, and things

1454
01:22:24,000 --> 01:22:24,400
Speaker 6: like that.

1455
01:22:24,840 --> 01:22:26,800
Speaker 3: Are you in school? You said you're in school right now?

1456
01:22:27,280 --> 01:22:30,639
Speaker 6: Yeah, So I am in school. I actually am going

1457
01:22:30,680 --> 01:22:35,080
Speaker 6: to do colleges simultaneously doing this. I'm doing an accelerated program,

1458
01:22:35,120 --> 01:22:37,720
Speaker 6: so I'm working on my bachelor's and social work and

1459
01:22:37,760 --> 01:22:40,320
Speaker 6: my master's in social work good simultaneously.

1460
01:22:40,600 --> 01:22:41,400
Speaker 4: So I'll get my.

1461
01:22:42,880 --> 01:22:45,240
Speaker 6: Yeah, I'll get my bachelors in May, and then i'll

1462
01:22:45,280 --> 01:22:49,160
Speaker 6: get my master's December of that same year, so next year.

1463
01:22:49,439 --> 01:22:54,240
Speaker 3: That's awesome, which is very exciting. Yeah, yeah, we do

1464
01:22:54,320 --> 01:22:57,639
Speaker 3: need you. I'm so glad you're doing this, and doctor

1465
01:22:57,760 --> 01:22:57,840
Speaker 3: do you.

1466
01:22:57,920 --> 01:23:01,479
Speaker 2: I'm very grateful you have anything that you would say

1467
01:23:01,520 --> 01:23:05,240
Speaker 2: to someone who is interested in learning more, maybe has

1468
01:23:05,240 --> 01:23:05,840
Speaker 2: experienced ones.

1469
01:23:06,080 --> 01:23:08,840
Speaker 7: Well, I have my own website that I've actually had

1470
01:23:08,880 --> 01:23:14,200
Speaker 7: again dating myself, since nineteen ninety six. It's been updated

1471
01:23:14,240 --> 01:23:16,720
Speaker 7: you'll be glad to know since then. Okay, but it's

1472
01:23:17,200 --> 01:23:22,240
Speaker 7: munchausend dot com. Munchausend dot com, and it has tons

1473
01:23:22,280 --> 01:23:26,559
Speaker 7: and tons of information, including the red flags the warning

1474
01:23:26,600 --> 01:23:29,719
Speaker 7: signs that I talked about earlier, all twenty of them.

1475
01:23:29,920 --> 01:23:32,439
Speaker 7: And people can reach me through that website as well,

1476
01:23:32,520 --> 01:23:36,240
Speaker 7: though lately I've gotten so many that my response isn't

1477
01:23:36,479 --> 01:23:39,080
Speaker 7: as I usually aim for within twenty four hours. It

1478
01:23:39,080 --> 01:23:41,639
Speaker 7: may be a bit delayed, but I'm doing the best

1479
01:23:41,760 --> 01:23:42,280
Speaker 7: I can.

1480
01:23:42,479 --> 01:23:46,080
Speaker 3: Y'all are superheroes. Honestly, thank you so much for talking

1481
01:23:46,120 --> 01:23:46,400
Speaker 3: to us.

1482
01:23:46,400 --> 01:23:48,720
Speaker 2: This has been such an incredible conversation and I'm sure

1483
01:23:48,720 --> 01:23:51,600
Speaker 2: it will be very enlightening for our listeners, So thank ye,

1484
01:23:51,680 --> 01:23:52,760
Speaker 2: I appreciate you coming on.

1485
01:23:53,040 --> 01:23:56,280
Speaker 4: Thank you, thank you. Wow Wow.

1486
01:23:56,439 --> 01:24:00,120
Speaker 2: Indeed that is our interview, folks. There's so much there.

1487
01:24:00,240 --> 01:24:01,559
Speaker 2: I feel like we could have talked to them for

1488
01:24:01,600 --> 01:24:04,360
Speaker 2: like three more hours, to be honest, truly, before we

1489
01:24:04,360 --> 01:24:08,040
Speaker 2: started recording this intro today, you and I were kind

1490
01:24:08,080 --> 01:24:10,720
Speaker 2: of discussing all of the different facets of this.

1491
01:24:10,840 --> 01:24:12,640
Speaker 3: Then I would love to kind of touch on some

1492
01:24:12,720 --> 01:24:13,240
Speaker 3: of that again.

1493
01:24:13,479 --> 01:24:15,599
Speaker 2: I think we started out by talking about how there's

1494
01:24:15,640 --> 01:24:17,760
Speaker 2: a documentary right now which I've not seen yet, called

1495
01:24:17,800 --> 01:24:20,400
Speaker 2: Take Care of Maya, and we kind of reference this

1496
01:24:20,439 --> 01:24:20,960
Speaker 2: in the interview.

1497
01:24:21,000 --> 01:24:22,519
Speaker 3: It's about a mother who.

1498
01:24:22,360 --> 01:24:27,000
Speaker 2: Is accused of Munchausen bi proxy and ended up killing herself.

1499
01:24:27,040 --> 01:24:28,200
Speaker 3: In The argument is that her.

1500
01:24:28,160 --> 01:24:31,679
Speaker 2: Daughter had a real illness and she was just trying

1501
01:24:31,720 --> 01:24:32,280
Speaker 2: to help her.

1502
01:24:33,280 --> 01:24:34,120
Speaker 3: And if that's.

1503
01:24:33,960 --> 01:24:37,479
Speaker 2: True, that's obviously also incredibly fucking sad. It's like, on

1504
01:24:37,520 --> 01:24:40,160
Speaker 2: the one hand, you have this like genuine form of

1505
01:24:40,479 --> 01:24:44,640
Speaker 2: very dangerous child abuse that is happening. Granted it's not

1506
01:24:44,840 --> 01:24:46,960
Speaker 2: that common, but it does happen. And then on the

1507
01:24:46,960 --> 01:24:50,000
Speaker 2: flip side, even more rarely, there may be incidents of

1508
01:24:50,080 --> 01:24:52,080
Speaker 2: mother being accused of this. So we're just trying to

1509
01:24:52,080 --> 01:24:55,120
Speaker 2: figure out what's wrong with their child. So like, how

1510
01:24:55,120 --> 01:24:58,520
Speaker 2: do we be mindful and considered anytime a suspicion arises?

1511
01:24:58,720 --> 01:25:03,759
Speaker 2: Can there be instances and can this occur in areas

1512
01:25:03,800 --> 01:25:07,040
Speaker 2: besides just the medical world, can occur emotionally, you know,

1513
01:25:07,200 --> 01:25:09,040
Speaker 2: on both sides of that, Like, what are your thoughts?

1514
01:25:09,200 --> 01:25:11,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I was just kind of thinking out

1515
01:25:11,320 --> 01:25:13,439
Speaker 1: loud before, and I think I mentioned this in the

1516
01:25:13,479 --> 01:25:17,639
Speaker 1: episode too, But I definitely have seen and been handed

1517
01:25:18,240 --> 01:25:23,800
Speaker 1: depression or I think that there's emotional disorders you can

1518
01:25:24,160 --> 01:25:28,000
Speaker 1: get from your mother or told you have from your

1519
01:25:28,000 --> 01:25:31,559
Speaker 1: mother that maybe you wouldn't have with a different mother.

1520
01:25:31,880 --> 01:25:34,840
Speaker 1: And I was talking about how I once read about

1521
01:25:34,880 --> 01:25:37,120
Speaker 1: this litter of puppies that were born and the mom

1522
01:25:37,240 --> 01:25:39,280
Speaker 1: had a limp, she had like a messed up leg,

1523
01:25:39,360 --> 01:25:42,120
Speaker 1: and all the puppies learned to walk with a limp

1524
01:25:42,320 --> 01:25:46,000
Speaker 1: because they are learning from their mother, their copying their mother,

1525
01:25:46,240 --> 01:25:51,439
Speaker 1: and so even unconsciously, just these quote un quote limitations

1526
01:25:51,520 --> 01:25:54,240
Speaker 1: that we can acquire. And of course this is an

1527
01:25:54,439 --> 01:25:58,480
Speaker 1: entirely different conversation, but an interesting discussion.

1528
01:25:58,560 --> 01:26:01,080
Speaker 5: Nonetheless, what do we.

1529
01:26:01,000 --> 01:26:04,960
Speaker 1: Think about ourselves as true that maybe is just generational?

1530
01:26:05,280 --> 01:26:08,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, how much how much can we transmit to our children,

1531
01:26:09,640 --> 01:26:13,600
Speaker 2: whether intentionally or totally accidentally. I think inevitably we're all

1532
01:26:13,600 --> 01:26:15,680
Speaker 2: going to fuck up our children, at least a little bit.

1533
01:26:15,760 --> 01:26:17,240
Speaker 3: There's just no avoiding it.

1534
01:26:17,240 --> 01:26:17,960
Speaker 5: It's part of it.

1535
01:26:19,040 --> 01:26:21,599
Speaker 2: And whatever your baggage is, like, your child will pick

1536
01:26:21,680 --> 01:26:23,960
Speaker 2: up on it to some extent. So it's like, we

1537
01:26:24,040 --> 01:26:26,679
Speaker 2: want to be mindful about that without getting hyper vigilant

1538
01:26:26,920 --> 01:26:29,840
Speaker 2: about trying to be perfect all the time, because that

1539
01:26:29,880 --> 01:26:30,719
Speaker 2: doesn't work either.

1540
01:26:31,160 --> 01:26:31,360
Speaker 7: You know.

1541
01:26:31,520 --> 01:26:35,040
Speaker 1: Lola just brings us back to the old adage that

1542
01:26:35,360 --> 01:26:39,679
Speaker 1: everything is nuanced and you can only do good enough.

1543
01:26:40,520 --> 01:26:42,120
Speaker 3: It's true. I don't know.

1544
01:26:42,040 --> 01:26:44,839
Speaker 2: Where this statistic comes from, but there's this therapist podcast

1545
01:26:44,880 --> 01:26:47,000
Speaker 2: I was listening to for a while called Therapist on

1546
01:26:47,040 --> 01:26:50,120
Speaker 2: centored to therapists talking about psych stuff, and so I

1547
01:26:50,120 --> 01:26:52,240
Speaker 2: don't know where this stat comes from, but they were saying,

1548
01:26:52,280 --> 01:26:54,200
Speaker 2: you just have to be a good parent seventy percent

1549
01:26:54,280 --> 01:26:54,679
Speaker 2: of the time.

1550
01:26:54,800 --> 01:26:55,840
Speaker 3: Oh, if you fuck up.

1551
01:26:55,760 --> 01:26:57,760
Speaker 2: Thirty percent of the time, you're not going to fuck

1552
01:26:57,840 --> 01:27:01,080
Speaker 2: up your kid too much. I don't know where that

1553
01:27:01,120 --> 01:27:03,960
Speaker 2: came from, but that's what I heard. So I'm repeating it,

1554
01:27:04,200 --> 01:27:06,760
Speaker 2: and I like that idea. In theory in life, like,

1555
01:27:06,880 --> 01:27:08,640
Speaker 2: just try to do a good job most of the

1556
01:27:08,720 --> 01:27:10,120
Speaker 2: time and you're probably fine.

1557
01:27:10,400 --> 01:27:13,439
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's impossible to be on more than

1558
01:27:13,479 --> 01:27:15,800
Speaker 1: seventy percent of the time in my opinion, without going

1559
01:27:15,800 --> 01:27:19,559
Speaker 1: the other way and being completely neurotic. So yeah, again,

1560
01:27:19,680 --> 01:27:23,320
Speaker 1: these are made up numbers, and all of the things

1561
01:27:23,360 --> 01:27:27,400
Speaker 1: we're discussing in this outro are different than Munchausen. But

1562
01:27:28,240 --> 01:27:30,920
Speaker 1: I'm curious, like we spoke about in the intro with

1563
01:27:31,000 --> 01:27:34,080
Speaker 1: the nurse, and like you're speaking about in the documentary

1564
01:27:34,120 --> 01:27:37,120
Speaker 1: about the mother who might have been falsely accused, where

1565
01:27:37,160 --> 01:27:39,360
Speaker 1: all of this will lead us and how the conversation

1566
01:27:39,400 --> 01:27:43,400
Speaker 1: will evolve, because it's truly just one of the oddest

1567
01:27:43,400 --> 01:27:45,040
Speaker 1: phenomenons I've ever heard of.

1568
01:27:45,479 --> 01:27:46,679
Speaker 3: There's much more to learn.

1569
01:27:46,920 --> 01:27:49,719
Speaker 2: I can't wait to learn more as more research comes out,

1570
01:27:50,120 --> 01:27:53,280
Speaker 2: and maybe we'll do another episode one day in the future.

1571
01:27:53,360 --> 01:27:56,040
Speaker 1: Thank you so much to Jordan for coming on and

1572
01:27:56,120 --> 01:27:58,599
Speaker 1: to being literally one of the strongest people I've ever

1573
01:27:58,640 --> 01:28:01,080
Speaker 1: spoken to in my life, who's like doing therapy at

1574
01:28:01,160 --> 01:28:05,479
Speaker 1: quadruple speed processing this all. Anyone who's had a mother

1575
01:28:05,560 --> 01:28:08,160
Speaker 1: who's done this to them, We are thinking of you,

1576
01:28:08,360 --> 01:28:13,040
Speaker 1: our hearts with you, and wow, truly Jordan is one

1577
01:28:13,080 --> 01:28:13,719
Speaker 1: of my heroes.

1578
01:28:14,000 --> 01:28:15,759
Speaker 4: Agreed, well, we can't wait.

1579
01:28:15,600 --> 01:28:17,200
Speaker 5: To see y'all here again next week.

1580
01:28:17,479 --> 01:28:20,880
Speaker 1: Enjoy your week and as always, remember to follow your gut,

1581
01:28:21,040 --> 01:28:24,840
Speaker 1: watch out for red flats, and never ever trust me.

1582
01:28:25,280 --> 01:28:27,080
Speaker 3: Bye bye.

1583
01:28:30,120 --> 01:28:32,800
Speaker 2: Trust Me is produced by Kirsten Woodward, Gabby Rapp and

1584
01:28:32,840 --> 01:28:34,240
Speaker 2: Steve Delemator.

1585
01:28:33,800 --> 01:28:35,759
Speaker 1: With special thanks to Stacy Para.

1586
01:28:35,640 --> 01:28:38,080
Speaker 3: And our theme song was composed by Holly amber Church.

1587
01:28:38,320 --> 01:28:41,200
Speaker 1: You can find us on Instagram at trust Me Podcast,

1588
01:28:41,360 --> 01:28:44,720
Speaker 1: Twitter at trust Me Cult pod, or on TikTok at

1589
01:28:44,800 --> 01:28:46,440
Speaker 1: trust Me Cult Podcast.

1590
01:28:46,640 --> 01:28:50,000
Speaker 2: I'm Ula Lola on Instagram and Ola Lola on Twitter.

1591
01:28:49,720 --> 01:28:53,280
Speaker 1: And I am Megan Elizabeth eleven on Instagram and Babraham

1592
01:28:53,439 --> 01:28:54,479
Speaker 1: Hicks on Twitter.

1593
01:28:54,640 --> 01:29:02,040
Speaker 2: Remember to rate and review and spread the word.