Speaker 1: This podcast should not be used as a substitute for
Speaker 1: medical or mental health advice. Individuals are advised to seek
Speaker 1: independent medical advice, counseling, and or therapy from a healthcare
Speaker 1: professional with respect to any medical condition, mental health issue,
Speaker 1: or health inquiry, including matters discussed on this podcast. This
Speaker 1: episode discusses abuse, which may be triggering to some people.
Speaker 1: The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the
Speaker 1: podcast author or individuals participating in the podcast, and do
Speaker 1: not represent the opinions of Red Table Talk productions, I
Speaker 1: Heart Media, or their employees. There's been various pieces around
Speaker 1: that to the point where we get to now with
Speaker 1: a vow. What you see is me slowly forgiving Lauren
Speaker 1: because I came to understand what had been done to her,
Speaker 1: and that ultimately freed any anger that I held towards
Speaker 1: her as I could see that she didn't have a
Speaker 1: chance because she came into when she was eighteen. I
Speaker 1: came in was in with twenty seven. I was a
Speaker 1: little more formed, I think, as a person. So there
Speaker 1: are things that I just distanced myself from that I
Speaker 1: just refused to do. I didn't know that I was
Speaker 1: doing that, but I just didn't where she was giving
Speaker 1: everything that she could to this man who she thought
Speaker 1: was essentially God. Sometimes the best of ourselves, our hopes
Speaker 1: and our belief and others and ourselves can get us
Speaker 1: to the worst places. In our last conversation with Sarah Edmondson,
Speaker 1: we learned how she became a part of Nexium through
Speaker 1: programs such as Executive Success Programs because she believed in
Speaker 1: their message of self growth and potential. Sarah believed in
Speaker 1: her friendships within this organization, in their mentorship and the
Speaker 1: possibility of what she was teaching and learning. In this episode,
Speaker 1: we are going to hear about what happened when the
Speaker 1: abuses persisted and Sarah's relationships within the organization and the
Speaker 1: system itself fell apart. Sarah had been recruited to a
Speaker 1: subgroup of women within the organization called Doss by her
Speaker 1: close friend and mentor, Laurence Saltzman. This once valued friendship
Speaker 1: was now characterized by coercion control and was taking Sarah
Speaker 1: to a traumatic, destructive place. However, in this episode, we
Speaker 1: will also hear Sarah's process of healing and whether it
Speaker 1: is healing from being in a toxic cult or toxic relationship.
Speaker 1: The top notes are similar. Let's hear about Sarah's experience
Speaker 1: of the fall of Nexium and her process of loss, fear, grief,
Speaker 1: and healing. What did that look like, this master slave
Speaker 1: being mentored her by her daily There's what it started
Speaker 1: as and then what it grew to become. And it
Speaker 1: was very short because I didn't stay there long. But
Speaker 1: before I get into let me tell the other things
Speaker 1: I committed to. So I committed to the obedience. I
Speaker 1: committed the master slave. And that's when she told me
Speaker 1: that I'd be getting this initiation ceremony and that I
Speaker 1: was getting a really pretty too. It's really gorgeous design.
Speaker 1: It was really special, and she testified that. She told
Speaker 1: me that it was a brand. I remember her saying
Speaker 1: tattoo because that was my sticking point because I'm Jewish,
Speaker 1: I don't have any tattoos and blah blah blah, and
Speaker 1: she would eam me on that, which she did later.
Speaker 1: But those were the commitments. So then after I had
Speaker 1: heard it all, I had to give a final piece
Speaker 1: of collateral to have me fully collateralized, to seal the deal.
Speaker 1: That's when I gave a nude photo. Okay, the nude
Speaker 1: photo became the second second collateral. The term later became
Speaker 1: fully collateralized, as collateral to hear about it and collateral
Speaker 1: to say yes, so I say yes. The initial master's
Speaker 1: relationship is similar to everything we've been doing up until now,
Speaker 1: as it has built over the patch of ball of years.
Speaker 1: Consider this, from day one, I've checked in with my
Speaker 1: coach every day, persistency done. At some points I was
Speaker 1: doing five persistencies. That persistency was a term of like
Speaker 1: five minutes of Spanish, or like ten minutes of doing
Speaker 1: my taxes or half an hour workout. People were committing
Speaker 1: to daily commitments for themselves with things they were doing
Speaker 1: for themselves flossing your teeth, doing ab crunches, and the
Speaker 1: coach was an accountability accountability. One thing that's so insidious
Speaker 1: about Nexium is that they were basically repurposing rather fundamental
Speaker 1: coaching and therapy concepts. For example, slowly build a new
Speaker 1: habit by doing it a few minutes a day, but
Speaker 1: packaging it under new terminology and harnessing it into a
Speaker 1: larger system of day to day control. Cult and toxic
Speaker 1: indoctrination are a long game, small changes that happened so
Speaker 1: gradually that they feel imperceptible and then fully overtake you.
Speaker 1: So I've already been doing that, I've already been given collateral.
Speaker 1: I've already been doing all these things. So all these
Speaker 1: things were so normalized, makes me think Keith had planned.
Speaker 1: He loves the long game, and it says even a
Speaker 1: class he taught us about sociopaths and how like, you know,
Speaker 1: a bad person might be jealous of their neighbor and
Speaker 1: key their car, but a sociopath will wait for months
Speaker 1: and is in the neighbor's dog over time and just
Speaker 1: enjoy watching their neighbor suffer about their dying dog. He
Speaker 1: taught us that, I totally believe he long game planned
Speaker 1: this out. It's like first time I introduced this concept
Speaker 1: and this and then I'm gonna introduce this concept. At
Speaker 1: the time they get there, they won't even know. And
Speaker 1: I think that's true. In addition to the women that
Speaker 1: he had in their front line, they were also malnourished,
Speaker 1: They weren't eating properly, they weren't sleeping properly, their phones
Speaker 1: were on at all hours to be available to him,
Speaker 1: and they were already as slaves, right, So the kind
Speaker 1: of obedience that these women were showing to him was
Speaker 1: already sort of in place, and it's the metaphor of
Speaker 1: the of an emaciated woman isn't lost on me, right,
Speaker 1: because it's something that almost becomes girl like about her,
Speaker 1: you know, breasts become smaller, it's just a shrink and
Speaker 1: that's what he wanted, the small woman he could dominate.
Speaker 1: Then that's not unusual for folks who have that kind
Speaker 1: of megalomania behind them. So now you're still working with
Speaker 1: Lauren he is, I don't know anything about it. In fact,
Speaker 1: one of the main things that I was when I
Speaker 1: was pitched this program is that it was women only.
Speaker 1: It was a women's empowerment group. No men were involved,
Speaker 1: nothing to do with Next time, I asked her straight up,
Speaker 1: this Keith know about this? And she's straight up wide
Speaker 1: to me and said, no, this is part of the
Speaker 1: whole betrayal. You know what I had to deal with later.
Speaker 1: But so many questions she would answer, and the rest
Speaker 1: she would say, this is part of your commitment. Because
Speaker 1: I'll keep in mind my whole twelve years I'm working
Speaker 1: on my control issues. This is the ultimate surrender for
Speaker 1: me to not totally know everything that's going on and
Speaker 1: to surrender to the process and to give my vow
Speaker 1: of obedience to her, and she's going to mentor me
Speaker 1: through this, and I have to trust the process. So
Speaker 1: it's basically a formalized way of getting you to do
Speaker 1: things without consent exactly exactly. And that's sort of they
Speaker 1: mental gymnastics that the loyalists are saying now is they
Speaker 1: didn't have to tell people that it was Keith initials
Speaker 1: because they were consenting to not consent. They were consenting
Speaker 1: to not know what was going on. So that's how
Speaker 1: they're that's how they've justified it in their mind that
Speaker 1: it's okay to lie to their friends that they're going
Speaker 1: to put Keith initials on with these bodies without knowing.
Speaker 1: Sarah has said a few times that one of the
Speaker 1: things that the folks and Nexium we're trying to do
Speaker 1: was to push her to address her control issues. Well
Speaker 1: that's a bit of projection, now, isn't it. Well, Sarah
Speaker 1: was having this happen in a culti organizational structure. This
Speaker 1: happens in narcissistic families and relationships all the time. Gaslighting
Speaker 1: a person who is simply just trying to set healthy
Speaker 1: boundaries or maintain their individualtion is often labeled as controlling
Speaker 1: behavior as a means for the narcissistic person or the
Speaker 1: system itself to control the person. This kind of projective
Speaker 1: shape shifting and reality alteration is a hallmark of any toxic, antagonistic,
Speaker 1: and coercive person or system. What else was Lauren asking
Speaker 1: from you in this relationship? It started as as just
Speaker 1: checking in and she gave me a couple of assignments.
Speaker 1: One assignment stuck out as being like actually helpful, which
Speaker 1: was basically she was helping me with some something that
Speaker 1: was going on with Nippie and I and asked me
Speaker 1: to like not ask him for anything, just to like
Speaker 1: she was trying to teach me my own self that
Speaker 1: I could handle everything myself because nip he was feeling
Speaker 1: like I was nagging him or whatever. Like it was
Speaker 1: to help us and that it that was helpful. First
Speaker 1: big red flag within DOSS other than the things I
Speaker 1: just mentioned, is then she said I need to send
Speaker 1: more collateral and that I'd be sending monthly collateral. Now
Speaker 1: keep in mind this is a lifetime vow of obedience,
Speaker 1: Like I need to send collateral every month. This is
Speaker 1: when I was like Okay, I have to figure out
Speaker 1: how to get out of this. And I thought I
Speaker 1: was going to try to get out of doss. I
Speaker 1: wasn't thinking I was trying to get out of next Um.
Speaker 1: I just like, this is crazy, It's not what I
Speaker 1: signed up for. I fantasized about writing a letter to
Speaker 1: Nancy anonymously to try to blow it out that way,
Speaker 1: and then she asked me. She said, as like, what
Speaker 1: else collateral can I give you? And she suggested the
Speaker 1: deed to my condo, my home in Vancouver. I know.
Speaker 1: And this is at this point is when I was
Speaker 1: I was starting to actively be away that I was
Speaker 1: being obedient, but I was starting to lie. I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: I'll look into that. Let me talk. I don't know
Speaker 1: how to get that to you in America because I
Speaker 1: talked to a notary, talked to a lawyer, like what
Speaker 1: do I do? How do I how do I do that?
Speaker 1: Just give you the paperwork, you know. Part of that
Speaker 1: commitment was the check ins. And I knew that I
Speaker 1: had other daw sisters that I hadn't met yet until
Speaker 1: we were branded. Won't get to that in a second,
Speaker 1: and we had to check in at a certain time
Speaker 1: and to respond at a certain time, and I can
Speaker 1: keep my phone off at night. That was another big problem.
Speaker 1: I was already sleep deprived with my little one who
Speaker 1: wasn't sleeping through the night, and now I kep my
Speaker 1: phone on and Nippy was like, why are we turning
Speaker 1: your phone off? And we were fighting about that. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm doing this exercise with the with the greens. He
Speaker 1: thought it was a green sash thing like he thought
Speaker 1: it was people who are quite high. So your phone
Speaker 1: was on. I've read this, so if you get explained,
Speaker 1: because it's really to me, this is actually horrifying what
Speaker 1: was expected of you. So your phone had to be
Speaker 1: on all the time and I need to respond within
Speaker 1: a minute that they'd send a question mark and to
Speaker 1: respond ready. So it was readiness drills. Again, this has
Speaker 1: been happening for three or four years. Readiness drills already
Speaker 1: s OP that was part of s OP engine, asas
Speaker 1: that we were in teams. Yeah, so all of this
Speaker 1: was again so normalized. It was normally so you didn't
Speaker 1: so even back in these other sub subgroups s O, P, S, Genesis, whatever,
Speaker 1: that there was this kind of like question mark ready.
Speaker 1: So it was just showing that it was it was again,
Speaker 1: it was almost like trying to stop people from being
Speaker 1: defectors and in keeping this top of mind, creating a
Speaker 1: hyper vigilance. Like I said, it's it's so reminiscent to
Speaker 1: me of the hyper vigilance we see in people who
Speaker 1: are from toxic family systems. Here it was so codified.
Speaker 1: We can send you this question mark ready. So it's
Speaker 1: like a thing, but in a in a toxic family system,
Speaker 1: it's how do I not upset the parent? And how
Speaker 1: do I? How do I? How do I? And you'll
Speaker 1: see kids who grow up like this are wide eyed
Speaker 1: and always on the edge of their seat wondering how
Speaker 1: do I keep the parents from fighting? How do I
Speaker 1: not get into trouble? How do we make sure the
Speaker 1: parent is soothed? So they were creating that context all
Speaker 1: under the pretext of like when I was in it,
Speaker 1: I didn't like it, but I made myself like it
Speaker 1: to the point where I'd be like, this is creating team.
Speaker 1: Like if one of our team members wasn't we couldn't
Speaker 1: find them, we'd like call our spouse or their work
Speaker 1: and be like, Okay, now everyone's accounted for. And we
Speaker 1: thought we were learning how to be, you know, how
Speaker 1: accountable and have each other's back, and we you know,
Speaker 1: there were times when this system of readiness before even Doss,
Speaker 1: where we were able to do things in the world
Speaker 1: because of our network, Like someone's parents went missing in
Speaker 1: Germany and we were able to contact someone and like
Speaker 1: use the network to do things that seemed heroic because
Speaker 1: of our little tree of readiness. And so I was
Speaker 1: proud of it, just like you know later, before I
Speaker 1: knew I was CA's initials, I was proud of the
Speaker 1: brand when I first got it. My session with Sarah
Speaker 1: will continue after this break. I'll tell you when I
Speaker 1: read that part of your book about someone sending you
Speaker 1: a question mark and you had to respond within sixty seconds,
Speaker 1: and if you didn't respond within sixty seconds, you were
Speaker 1: either being suppressive or entitled, or we're going to publish
Speaker 1: naked pictures of you in the New York Times. I mean,
Speaker 1: like it was heaven knows what they were going to do.
Speaker 1: So I felt very tense when I read that part
Speaker 1: of the book. It was very stressful. And I'm thinking
Speaker 1: of you with a new baby, and you're saying here,
Speaker 1: I am trying to balance engaging with my family, running
Speaker 1: my center, raising my child, being in a marriage, and
Speaker 1: you would have to constantly break out of those things
Speaker 1: to respond. I felt so abusive. I still to this
Speaker 1: day have trouble putting, like, for example, in that context,
Speaker 1: the only time I couldn't not be available as if
Speaker 1: I was going to be in the swimming pool, like
Speaker 1: where you can't bring your phone, or in an airplane
Speaker 1: without service, So that was the only time, and you
Speaker 1: had to say, I'm going dark. I'm going to be
Speaker 1: in a plane for five hours and I'm landing at
Speaker 1: this time. Then I'll be not dark. If I went
Speaker 1: but I went into my elevator, I lose service, so
Speaker 1: I would always be like dark in the elevator. Lauren
Speaker 1: wanted me to not be dark while driving. She wanted
Speaker 1: to be and I that's that was a boundary for me,
Speaker 1: and like that's illegal. I'm not going to do that.
Speaker 1: But they really pushed hard on that one for example,
Speaker 1: like dangerous and that right there. You know, we talked
Speaker 1: about this in malignant narcissistic relationships or abuse of narcissistic
Speaker 1: relationships that are more severe. We see people are in
Speaker 1: a relationship who's very controlling, where are you, what are
Speaker 1: you doing? Who are you with? Why aren't you responding?
Speaker 1: Why aren't you answering my calls? The person might be
Speaker 1: at work, person might be in the bathroom, person might
Speaker 1: just left her phone in a different room, and it
Speaker 1: can really escalate to a hundred tax d and twenty texts.
Speaker 1: This reminds me of that a sort of toxic partner
Speaker 1: saying to the partner saying, I bought you a phone.
Speaker 1: You will respond whenever I tell you it had that flare.
Speaker 1: And it's so interesting that they were able to morphit
Speaker 1: into an accountability community building exercise. It shows the power
Speaker 1: of manipulation and another example of the next time of
Speaker 1: like the good we thought it was and then what
Speaker 1: it actually was, and I just said exactly what it
Speaker 1: wasn't even to this day, like even coming to this interview,
Speaker 1: I have to tell my husband and like my my
Speaker 1: producer and partner, I'm going to be dark for a
Speaker 1: couple of hours. I still feel in a need to
Speaker 1: let people know I'm not going to be available. It's
Speaker 1: deeply rooted in. Oh, It's very much rooted in and
Speaker 1: anyone who's been in a relationship like that, we'll find
Speaker 1: it nerve racking, and I've worked with clients and therapy
Speaker 1: where that's not normal. And twenty years ago, we didn't
Speaker 1: have text, and we weren't calling people all the time
Speaker 1: saying I'm going to do this click oh, and now
Speaker 1: I'm not doing this anymore. I mean, these technologies have
Speaker 1: actually allowed controlling people to become so malevolent and so menacing.
Speaker 1: This system of having to be available twenty four hours
Speaker 1: a day to face penalties if she did not respond
Speaker 1: to a text within sixty seconds of having her sleep
Speaker 1: disrupted and her movement day and night needing to be
Speaker 1: accounted for, all with the specter of fear hanging over
Speaker 1: her that her collateral would be released. This is coercive control.
Speaker 1: Evans Stark captures it well when he says that coercive
Speaker 1: control results in confusion, contradiction, and fear. This is what
Speaker 1: we see in abusive relationships, malignant, narcissistic or psychopathic partners.
Speaker 1: And this is what Doss has set up here. It's
Speaker 1: coercive control and it is a dangerous and destructive pattern.
Speaker 1: What was happening in Dass again, anyone if they only
Speaker 1: read that without a context, would say, what the heck?
Speaker 1: But now that we understand this has been what has
Speaker 1: been happening in Nexium for years. You're going along just
Speaker 1: so I have sort of an understanding holistically of what's happening.
Speaker 1: Was it before DOSS or after? Now you're already in
Speaker 1: Doss that you started meeting with other members of next
Speaker 1: Um and ESP saying something doesn't seem quite right here.
Speaker 1: Did that revelation happen at what point? Because I'm trying
Speaker 1: to understand like where you were starting to her dissenting voices.
Speaker 1: So it's really if you look at my last six
Speaker 1: months January to June. January was when Lauren brought me
Speaker 1: to DOS and that was also the months that Bonnie left. Okay,
Speaker 1: So Bonnie, who's Mark's Wife's wife, Yes, left and she left.
Speaker 1: I tie into that in terms of this whole thing,
Speaker 1: is that she left and she's writes this lovely letter,
Speaker 1: you know, thank you everything. I'm going to go back
Speaker 1: to l A. I'm pursue acting inside. I'm going fabulous.
Speaker 1: I'm so happy for Bonnie. I want people to go
Speaker 1: pursue their goals in my inner real self, not my
Speaker 1: proctor Edmondson self. Is now I've been sent to go
Speaker 1: find out why Bonnie hasn't signed the exit paperwork, which
Speaker 1: is to say it is basically a gag order, like
Speaker 1: I'm leaving on good terms that I'm never going to
Speaker 1: see the company and I'll never tell anyone what happened
Speaker 1: the next years your constitutional rights basically. And I've been saying,
Speaker 1: because I her like upline even though marks her husband,
Speaker 1: I'm her upline like superior in the ranking system, so
Speaker 1: that's my job. And she doesn't get back to me.
Speaker 1: And I think that's weird. And Lauren's like, in my ears,
Speaker 1: saying terrible things about Bonnie, terrible, Why is she going
Speaker 1: to l A She's just being like indulgent in pursuing her,
Speaker 1: like just awful things, and in some way that's like
Speaker 1: I want her to do those things. One sign of
Speaker 1: a toxic organization, this pervasive triangulation and defaming any so
Speaker 1: called defectors Bonny, and this becomes more clear in the vow.
Speaker 1: Bonny was what we often call a truth teller in
Speaker 1: a narcissistic system, and she left when a toxic family
Speaker 1: workplace and obviously called senses there is descent. They go
Speaker 1: into full triangulation mode, talking badly about anyone who leaves,
Speaker 1: devaluing them. This was a dissonant experience for Sarah, who
Speaker 1: actually was committed to the larger goal of people becoming
Speaker 1: their best selves. But she was slowly finding out that
Speaker 1: despite what Nexium preached, they weren't about growth. They were
Speaker 1: about diminishment. But if you are in a system of
Speaker 1: any kind, big or small, where the tendency is lots
Speaker 1: of fractious gossip or cruel criticism of people who left,
Speaker 1: that is a sign of a toxic organization. So that's happening.
Speaker 1: I get hooked into dass. I don't get branded til March,
Speaker 1: so I have about, I guess, six weeks of just
Speaker 1: texting and being mentored by Lauren. The initiation ceremony happens
Speaker 1: in March. All those details are in the vow and
Speaker 1: in the book, and we can whatever. So I get
Speaker 1: so the branding happens. The branding itself doesn't wake me up.
Speaker 1: In fact, it empowers me to be that I have
Speaker 1: the secret with these other women, and I pushed through
Speaker 1: the hard thing. The details of that. Again, like I
Speaker 1: just to triggering sometimes to go into. But the point
Speaker 1: of it is that I didn't wake up until Mark
Speaker 1: in the end of May is leaving and at this time,
Speaker 1: also my lease is up in Vancouver and I've been
Speaker 1: looking at new spaces. That's now twenty dollars a month.
Speaker 1: The leases are expensive. I need to find a new space.
Speaker 1: Mark my business partner, and I'm trying to get Marked
Speaker 1: to come up and look at the space with me
Speaker 1: so we can sign a new lease. And he's like
Speaker 1: being weird. He's being weird until he eventually signs a
Speaker 1: sense of letter just like Bonnie did, saying he's leaving,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, you know what is going on? So
Speaker 1: he doesn't tell me why he's leaving until I signed
Speaker 1: an NDA with him. There's lots of details of this
Speaker 1: the last few months, but the key part of it
Speaker 1: that I think is important is that we finally have
Speaker 1: an honest conversation and he tells me one of the
Speaker 1: reasons why he's leaving is because there's this secret women's
Speaker 1: group that he's become aware of, an Albany, and part
Speaker 1: of the group is that women have been tasked to
Speaker 1: have sex with Keith, which I didn't know about. I
Speaker 1: didn't know about sex, and he didn't know about the branding.
Speaker 1: I told him what I knew and he told me
Speaker 1: what he knew, and he thinks that Keith's a sociopath.
Speaker 1: And that's that's where everything makes sense. Everything that never
Speaker 1: made sense throughout all the years, like Keith being surrounded
Speaker 1: by women, why we were never able to grow past
Speaker 1: a certain point where certain projects got thwarted, why I
Speaker 1: wasn't getting paid, Like all these things were like, oh
Speaker 1: he's a con man, Oh okay, And and my world,
Speaker 1: my world fell apart. But it also everything made sense,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Like it was it was
Speaker 1: both with the upside down world flipped. I felt like
Speaker 1: the rug up pulled out from underneathe me and shortly
Speaker 1: Actually I don't even remember the timeline. I have to
Speaker 1: read my own book. But I showed one of the
Speaker 1: women that had brought in as one of my slaves,
Speaker 1: who I basically just coached and never get branded. But
Speaker 1: I showed her my brand when I woke up. There
Speaker 1: is a moment in every relationship with an antagonistic person,
Speaker 1: whether that is a narcissist, sociopaths, psychopath, or just a
Speaker 1: mix of antagonism. There is a moment for most people
Speaker 1: when the pieces fall into place. Maybe it is a
Speaker 1: conversation with a friend, a therapist, reading a book, watching
Speaker 1: a video, and then you finally get it. What Sarah
Speaker 1: shares here is the experience of many. It isn't this
Speaker 1: beautiful moment of clarity and the angels sing. Quite the contrary. Yes,
Speaker 1: there is an almost surreal moment of clarity, and then,
Speaker 1: as she put it, the upside down world everything you
Speaker 1: know does flip and things you had pinned hopes and
Speaker 1: beliefs on start crumbling. For this reason, many survivors within
Speaker 1: these relationships sometimes don't want to know. It is too
Speaker 1: painful and destabilizing. But once you see it, it's not
Speaker 1: something you can unsee. And she saw Keith initials when
Speaker 1: she looked at it. She's the one who was like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, there's a canon or which I hadn't
Speaker 1: seen because it's on the side. So then I went
Speaker 1: from betrayal to anger too. And then you know, so
Speaker 1: many things happen after that, where Mark and I had
Speaker 1: Mark Tellneby because I'm still afraid of my collateral being released,
Speaker 1: and together we hatched a plan to first it was
Speaker 1: just to escape, and then it was escape and eventually
Speaker 1: to dismantle, but we didn't know that at first. It
Speaker 1: was like it happened in stages. It is a remarkable
Speaker 1: story because we think of you escaping, you know, they're
Speaker 1: bringing it down. It really was an escape and you
Speaker 1: really were in harm's way. Yeah, that wasn't an illusion.
Speaker 1: And I've said this to Mark, I'll say to you,
Speaker 1: I've never thank God met Keith Nieri. Based on all
Speaker 1: the behavior and everything seen, he's the psychopath. You know,
Speaker 1: sociopaths tend to be a bit more impulsive and reactive.
Speaker 1: They're messier, they're less planning because the thing he didn't
Speaker 1: know what the hell he was talking about. He didn't
Speaker 1: even know what a sociopath was. And in fact, the
Speaker 1: psychopath is a little better able to play a long
Speaker 1: game because they're more regulated because they don't get his anxious.
Speaker 1: It was a pathetic, vulnerable element to Keith. That was
Speaker 1: the only piece that might pull for sociopath. But it
Speaker 1: could actually have been like a little bit of top
Speaker 1: note of a vulnerable narcissism. But the psychopathy around the
Speaker 1: absolute lack of remorse, that to me was the ringer.
Speaker 1: A narcissistic person actually will feel remorse, still feel ashamed,
Speaker 1: they'll shift blame. But you can see the guilt. It's
Speaker 1: written all over their face because they're afraid they're going
Speaker 1: to lose status and supply. But for a psychopathic person,
Speaker 1: it's just they really they just they hold to that delusion.
Speaker 1: It's really delusional. So then we get to see what happens,
Speaker 1: and the vow has been memorialized everywhere what you went through.
Speaker 1: And I don't think people quite understand what you went
Speaker 1: through because now we see it's done. He's in four
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty years, he'll die in prison. But for
Speaker 1: years you have to live with the likelihood and decent
Speaker 1: likelihood that he would have faced nothing. And ultimately, were
Speaker 1: it not for the child pornography and the child endangerment charges,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be honest with you, I think he'd be
Speaker 1: walking around amongst us right now. Yeah, I really do so,
Speaker 1: after experiencing this betrayal, and frankly, I think the branding
Speaker 1: was a physical harm because it was not consensual. All
Speaker 1: these things have piled up and you're still a mom
Speaker 1: and a wife and and all these things are happening simultaneously,
Speaker 1: and you're still having to live in this constant fear
Speaker 1: that's something bad may happen to you because there's a
Speaker 1: decent probability that he will not go to prison. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a very very stressful time. I can't imagine. I
Speaker 1: still I still look over my shoulder. I still don't
Speaker 1: post on Instagram until the day after I'm out of
Speaker 1: a location nights, not even so much because of him,
Speaker 1: because of Phi flying monkeys and what they're willing to do.
Speaker 1: My session with Sarah will continue after this break. So
Speaker 1: now the Vow Part two is out, and I've read
Speaker 1: your book, and this is the part of the story
Speaker 1: that I think that not everyone has really gotten to
Speaker 1: here and reflect on, because I think unfortunately everybody got
Speaker 1: so caught up in the salacious elements of the story
Speaker 1: that's always been I think, what has damned this story?
Speaker 1: Oh blah blah blah, sex cult? Like, now there's something
Speaker 1: else happening here that to me was almost like a
Speaker 1: little bit of a red herring that in the sense
Speaker 1: of yes, that was a problematic piece of it, but
Speaker 1: you had this. It was a seventeen thousand people are
Speaker 1: some vast number of people who have participated in these
Speaker 1: esp programs really came in to learn something, got in,
Speaker 1: got out, And so when that many people are doing
Speaker 1: something it's legitimized, basically, and so now you have let
Speaker 1: me let me give you sort of a first person
Speaker 1: reactions i'd like to hear. After I saw The Vow
Speaker 1: part one, I was horrified, obviously by Keith, but not
Speaker 1: surprised those personalities do what they do. I was angry, angry,
Speaker 1: deeply angry about the Allison Max and the lawns and
Speaker 1: the Nancy's, especially Nancy. You know, she was given a
Speaker 1: position of trust and she betrayed that. I really resented
Speaker 1: it as a therapist because as it is, I think
Speaker 1: therapy still as although it's getting more normalized, it has
Speaker 1: this bad name. And then you see this person and
Speaker 1: like you said, cheesy videos and taking advantage of this
Speaker 1: and giggling like a school girl with Keith, and I
Speaker 1: was disgusted and horrified. And with that mindset I did
Speaker 1: things like read your book and go into the Vow
Speaker 1: season two. And in The Vow season two, it took
Speaker 1: us on a psychological ride. I cannot tip my hat
Speaker 1: to these filmmakers more. I don't think something has taken
Speaker 1: me on as big as psychological ride as that did.
Speaker 1: Because after episode one, I was beyond enrage, Like I
Speaker 1: actually I was. I was pacing my house like like
Speaker 1: an angry animal. And then by the time it came
Speaker 1: to a close and the Vow Part two ended, the
Speaker 1: complicated feelings I had for Nancy and Laura. I mean
Speaker 1: they overwhelmed me, how complicated they were weally and in fact,
Speaker 1: I was watched that last episode and I went back
Speaker 1: and read your book and I got great Lauren, But
Speaker 1: I'm like, wait, that's me as an outsider. He does
Speaker 1: not know these people from Adam and just we got
Speaker 1: immersed in a story you lived it. How did you
Speaker 1: sort through the wreckage of betrayal by a friend, betrayal
Speaker 1: by someone you valued as a teacher in Nancy, betrayal
Speaker 1: and ongoing if you will, betrayal by people who remain
Speaker 1: loyal to somebody who harmed so many How are you
Speaker 1: walking through this wreckage and healing? Because I think here,
Speaker 1: Sarah is where the audience of navigating narcissism, who is
Speaker 1: focused on healing, is like, how do you walk through
Speaker 1: this and how do you make sense of this? That's
Speaker 1: a great question. It's well, it's been a five year
Speaker 1: journey and five years out and it's it's still happening,
Speaker 1: and It's happened in layers and pieces. I think the
Speaker 1: biggest thing for me has been therapy with a call expert.
Speaker 1: And the first, the very first thing was understanding. And
Speaker 1: I remember it was Dan Shaw who taught me right
Speaker 1: love Dan Shaw. He taught me that there's you know,
Speaker 1: there's the if your listeners can picture a vertical line
Speaker 1: and a horizontal line, the vertical line is where the
Speaker 1: loyalty to the ranks, and that when you're bought into
Speaker 1: a system like nex hum, any member will throw their
Speaker 1: own friend or partner or whatever under the bus for
Speaker 1: the approval of the rank above them. So understanding that
Speaker 1: was the first thing that that that made sense to me,
Speaker 1: and because I was so hurt, it was so betrayed,
Speaker 1: and Dan was like, imagine that they're sick, they have
Speaker 1: a mental illness. That helped me. That was a big
Speaker 1: nugget of understanding that it wasn't that they're trying to
Speaker 1: betray you, hurt me or whatever, but they were choosing
Speaker 1: what they needed to do for their upper rank. Right.
Speaker 1: And there's been very various pieces around that to the
Speaker 1: point where we get to now with the vow. What
Speaker 1: you see is me slowly forgiving Lauren because I came
Speaker 1: to understand what had been done to her, and that
Speaker 1: ultimately freed any anger that I held towards her, because
Speaker 1: I I could see that she didn't have a chance.
Speaker 1: Because she came into she was eighteen. I came in
Speaker 1: was that was twenty seven. I was a little more formed,
Speaker 1: I think, as a person. So there were things that
Speaker 1: I just distanced myself from that I just refused to do.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that I was doing that, but I
Speaker 1: just didn't where she was giving everything that she could
Speaker 1: to this man who she thought was essentially God, you know.
Speaker 1: And so part of me also has you know, because
Speaker 1: I was in that system and could see how I mean,
Speaker 1: I thought I was doing good. So I know that
Speaker 1: they thought they were doing good. They didn't. They weren't.
Speaker 1: Lauren didn't do those things to hurt me. She really
Speaker 1: didn't think that she was trying to help me. And
Speaker 1: I understand how she justified it for herself and what
Speaker 1: she was going for, and I have empathy for that.
Speaker 1: I don't take that personally. I was a collateral damage
Speaker 1: to her abuse. Yeah, Seriously, I'm still kind of reconciling
Speaker 1: Nancy because I haven't had that contact with her. I did.
Speaker 1: One thing that's not shown in the vow is that
Speaker 1: Lauren sent me a letter, yeah, through our lawyers, that
Speaker 1: apologize deeply and profusely and from the bottom of our heart.
Speaker 1: And I accepted that. And I don't have that from Nancy.
Speaker 1: But the vow season two is the closest I've got.
Speaker 1: I'd like to go see her and hear it from her,
Speaker 1: and and I don't know. My parents have always taught
Speaker 1: me like that, you heal ruptures. And that's ultimately been
Speaker 1: the hardest part of the last five years, is that
Speaker 1: I couldn't have closure with anybody. It was being shunned,
Speaker 1: and then there was legal stuff and I wasn't allowed
Speaker 1: to talk to them, and so I was like processing
Speaker 1: in my dreams and in my writing and writing about
Speaker 1: it and journaling and poetry and all of my dreams.
Speaker 1: And I still have. Probably the dream person I dream
Speaker 1: about the most is actually Nikki, and it's a reoccurring
Speaker 1: dream where I see her and we're hugging and we're
Speaker 1: laughing about how we used to be an a cult
Speaker 1: and and in the dream I tell her, my God, Nikki,
Speaker 1: I've I've dreamed about this so many times, and now
Speaker 1: it's finally. It was finally, like you're awake and we
Speaker 1: laugh and we and then I wake up and it's
Speaker 1: a dream again. But it's so real every time, and
Speaker 1: I just OK, I can see the pain. Like that's
Speaker 1: the hardest thing for me right now, like Nancy and Lauren,
Speaker 1: but like I've brought in Nikki, you know, I brought
Speaker 1: her in and then she she moved there and she
Speaker 1: was with him and she's ruined her life. And like,
Speaker 1: I won't stop doing this until everybody is awake if
Speaker 1: you feel comfortable, and don't if you don't, because I did.
Speaker 1: I sat with that and and I when I recognized
Speaker 1: you did bring Nikki in and she remains loyal this
Speaker 1: and you're right, she has she's ruined her life. How
Speaker 1: did you cope with that recognition that you brought Nikki
Speaker 1: into this space? Well there's been a lot of therapy
Speaker 1: about that too, um because as you know, the tenants,
Speaker 1: even next team is to is to beat oneself up
Speaker 1: for that. And so I did that for a while,
Speaker 1: and now I had to recognize that, like I brought
Speaker 1: her to something that was good, and then she made
Speaker 1: choices that I didn't make, and I can't be responsible
Speaker 1: for that. I know that intellectually, Yes, no, I am sure.
Speaker 1: If you've talked to me, Dan shot to me is
Speaker 1: actually one of the most it's one of the foremost
Speaker 1: voices in this space. I I respect his writing and
Speaker 1: his intellect in this it's unparalleled. But when we look
Speaker 1: at dance work, we look at other work in the
Speaker 1: area and this stuff. I don't know if anyone ever
Speaker 1: talked to you about moral injury. Yeah, I mean that's
Speaker 1: a lot of what this is, this concept that the
Speaker 1: leaning into this idea I did. I did something bad,
Speaker 1: and I'm aware I did something bad, and I did
Speaker 1: something bad in the midst of what I thought was
Speaker 1: going to be good, or in the midst of doing
Speaker 1: a job. For example, a soldier who kills someone in battle,
Speaker 1: it was in the name of the war, but in
Speaker 1: the way the soldiers are are symbols of something larger,
Speaker 1: and that might have just been an innocent kid that
Speaker 1: was getting shot, and the soldiers deal not just post
Speaker 1: traumatic stress, but also a moral injury, which is separate
Speaker 1: and it's and we actually don't even have treatment protocols
Speaker 1: or anything from more injury. It's that sort of unique
Speaker 1: space and I wondered about that people who were recruiting
Speaker 1: people in and then recognize what they had brought them into,
Speaker 1: and like many people left did their classes and left,
Speaker 1: but the ones who are who stayed on, like like Nikki, I,
Speaker 1: I thank you for sharing that, because I couldn't that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I can't imagine how much of the last
Speaker 1: five years. It's a deep pain that moral injury. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And I actually learned that from me on your Lolledge
Speaker 1: and your Lolledge's book her her book was a big
Speaker 1: part of my of my healing and reconciling that Nippy
Speaker 1: and I both are moral injuries were different because he
Speaker 1: wasn't a recruiter. Is this this is different? But it's
Speaker 1: it's it's such a tricky thing because so much of
Speaker 1: what we learned in terms of like the ethical breach
Speaker 1: as well, is like you clean up your mass. So
Speaker 1: I'm still trying to clean up my mass and also
Speaker 1: trying to recognize there some things that I can't control.
Speaker 1: And another person told me that I was leaving, you're
Speaker 1: if you're leaving in this way, you're also going to
Speaker 1: be stepping over bodies and you can't bring everyone with you,
Speaker 1: and I brought a lot of people with me, but
Speaker 1: I left some people behind and that's just it's just hard.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know how to reconcile that
Speaker 1: you may not reconcile it, and that becomes sort of
Speaker 1: an existential wound and in some ways holding space for
Speaker 1: the idea that you may not reconcile. It actually becomes
Speaker 1: the healing. And much as you had a scar on
Speaker 1: your body once that wouldn't heal well, this becomes one
Speaker 1: of those psychological scars that doesn't heal well, it doesn't
Speaker 1: and you know, then that becomes also a profound, you know,
Speaker 1: a profound part of this process and that you can
Speaker 1: actually engage in the self compassion of Okay, I can't
Speaker 1: reconcile this, and I can still move forward. Thank you
Speaker 1: for saying that it's Sarah. It's a relief to hear that.
Speaker 1: And I think also I need to because I feel
Speaker 1: like the more that I try to get them out,
Speaker 1: the more that they say, how dare you correct? How
Speaker 1: dare you tell me what I need to do? And
Speaker 1: I'm aware of that there is a radical acceptance there
Speaker 1: and that you you can see them from a place
Speaker 1: of grace I I would get angry when I would
Speaker 1: watch The Loyalist. I think that the Loyalist piece of
Speaker 1: this second season is one of the more powerful and
Speaker 1: frankly unsettling elements of it, because what it's showing us
Speaker 1: in real time is the willing denial that they have
Speaker 1: of other people's pain. My feeling is, you have your process,
Speaker 1: and you even can adhere to his teachings. I understand
Speaker 1: that there's multiple things that can be true, you still
Speaker 1: believe that, But the unwillingness to recognize the pain of
Speaker 1: another human being, I can't ever get behind that. I
Speaker 1: know people always say like, is there too much of
Speaker 1: a platform for them? And I don't think so, because
Speaker 1: it shows how that type of indoctrination works, and it's
Speaker 1: it's educational. I don't think anyone's going to watch that
Speaker 1: and go, oh, yeah, maybe Keith is misunderstood and Brandy
Speaker 1: is a really good way to teach people in empowerment.
Speaker 1: I don't think that. I think it's it's And I
Speaker 1: also still also think that the filmmakers did a real
Speaker 1: service to all of us showing dignity and all of
Speaker 1: our journeys. Absolutely, you had a very very powerful part
Speaker 1: of the story where the individuals who are helped so
Speaker 1: significantly with Tourette's disorder a tick disorder. What's interesting is
Speaker 1: a lot of what the teachings of ESP and Exium
Speaker 1: were were cognitive behavioral models, and we know that the
Speaker 1: strongest evidence base out there exists in the literature for
Speaker 1: Tourette's is cognitive behavioral therapy. So they were merely doing
Speaker 1: what was already out in the literature, but sort of
Speaker 1: packaging it is in this miracle cure kind of way.
Speaker 1: And I can understand how a person who was living
Speaker 1: with a debilitating condition then has this moment where they
Speaker 1: do some work and it gets better. More than some work,
Speaker 1: they actually do the work and it improves and their
Speaker 1: lives improve. But I think that all toxic relationships, all
Speaker 1: narcissistic relationships, and even a severer story as the one
Speaker 1: you went through with this, with this organization, with this cult,
Speaker 1: is that many things can be true at the same time,
Speaker 1: and that what makes these relationships so unique and why
Speaker 1: I think so many people are struggling with understanding them,
Speaker 1: is in the midst of this abuse, this trauma, this desolation,
Speaker 1: and this dehumanization, where real people, real friendships truly good experiences,
Speaker 1: real learning, and I think the naivete is like, Nope,
Speaker 1: these terrible things happen, so that all goes away. It
Speaker 1: doesn't all go away. Those things were real. It's no
Speaker 1: different than a person who is married to a malignant
Speaker 1: narcissist and says, however, I still remember that moment in
Speaker 1: the delivery room and it was real. I remember a honeymoon,
Speaker 1: it was real. There was a moment we took a
Speaker 1: walk on a beach and it was real. And those
Speaker 1: multiple truths that those things were real and this person
Speaker 1: abused you. That is the most difficult healing journey a
Speaker 1: person can go through. You couldn't agree more as you're saying,
Speaker 1: I'm like slashbacks are coming back in the good times. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: even market I don't even agree. But he's more throw
Speaker 1: the baby out with the bath water in terms of
Speaker 1: the tech, and I'm more like, well, there's this good
Speaker 1: thing and that good thing, but I've had to go
Speaker 1: those good things. Those tools that I still use are
Speaker 1: not Keith. That's CBT and that's Buddhism and that's you know,
Speaker 1: seven habits of highly effective people or whatever. That's how
Speaker 1: I've I didn't want to throw out twelve years of
Speaker 1: my really hard work. I just couldn't do it too
Speaker 1: efficiency oriented and everyone approaches this different and so I
Speaker 1: can respect Mars need to throw all of it away,
Speaker 1: and I can also respect someone saying I need to
Speaker 1: find a balance. But what sort of the counterweight to
Speaker 1: throwing it all away that Mark did is the loyalists
Speaker 1: sort of still saying it is all completely true and
Speaker 1: having no empathy and no recognition for the experience of others.
Speaker 1: So they've now really taken on the characteristics of the leader.
Speaker 1: Use yes, exactly. So you said one thing you turned
Speaker 1: to was poetry, and I would love if you could
Speaker 1: give the listeners of this podcast in your voice, an
Speaker 1: opportunity to hear a poem that you wrote. It's in
Speaker 1: your book, and if you would read it to us,
Speaker 1: because it's it's really stunning, Not only were the producers
Speaker 1: of this show really profoundly affected by it. I've read
Speaker 1: it several times and I read it again last night
Speaker 1: w I saw the show. And so if you would
Speaker 1: read it to us, I think it would have so
Speaker 1: much more me coming in your own voice. I'd love
Speaker 1: to and also tribute to my mom who brought me
Speaker 1: into her creative writing class as I was fresh out,
Speaker 1: and it was a great I thought just a distraction,
Speaker 1: but ended up being the seeds of this book and
Speaker 1: this this I wrote in that class. Oh wow, well
Speaker 1: it's really beautiful. Thank thank you for sharing it with us.
Speaker 1: My pleasure. I'm aching to purge, to find the wise
Speaker 1: woman within me, and to perform a ritual of exorcism,
Speaker 1: to wrestle out the wiring, to twist out the hooks
Speaker 1: of the angry chords stretching so far from Albany, to
Speaker 1: keep me wittingly engaged. I've grown to hate these people,
Speaker 1: friends I once trusted with my life, my secrets, my dreams.
Speaker 1: They become shadows, soulless and mean, punishing, gossiping, lying trolls,
Speaker 1: empty shells of who they once were. And I'm out here, stranded,
Speaker 1: violently trying to assemble my life back together. I'm harvesting normalcy, safety, security, warmth, kindness, connection,
Speaker 1: owning them, standing up and announcing proudly, this is what
Speaker 1: I want, this is who I am. I'm harvesting myself.
Speaker 1: I'm mending all the broken shards of my soul back
Speaker 1: into a whole person and with every recovery, I'm gently
Speaker 1: reminded that I never was actually broken, I was never deficient.
Speaker 1: I was always whole and complete. I'm making the time,
Speaker 1: carving out space to extract the voice that I put
Speaker 1: aside for twelve years, and finding my creative outlet and
Speaker 1: time for me. Finally, I'm harvesting my joy, authentic joy,
Speaker 1: not robotic foe joy. I'm harvesting my forgotten freedom and
Speaker 1: play so I can join my son on the floor
Speaker 1: and it's lego masterpieces and get lost in the castle
Speaker 1: with monsters and thunderstorms. I will discover myself again, flushed
Speaker 1: and wrung out, hanging fresh and laundered, swaying off a
Speaker 1: clothes line in the backyard of a simple, burnt red
Speaker 1: farmhouse and wild green grass against bluebird sky and son,
Speaker 1: purifying the whole scene, but especially me. I'm clean again.
Speaker 1: I know that through this process, I will have forgiven
Speaker 1: those who betrayed me, who threw me under the bus,
Speaker 1: who gasolate me and scavenge my delicate, naive mind, to
Speaker 1: replace my beliefs with theirs. I will let go of
Speaker 1: the rage and just dance in the breeze with that
Speaker 1: closed line, swaying and calm. It will be me again
Speaker 1: one day, Mama Wife actress Yogi Smoothie Junkie. I'm grounded, rooted,
Speaker 1: and powerful. I will feel grateful for my journey. I
Speaker 1: will have told my story and can move on. I
Speaker 1: would lived the beginning, middle, and end of those chapters
Speaker 1: of my life. My entire thirties is done now. The
Speaker 1: pain will leave my body to form words and educational
Speaker 1: passages for others to find their way out of their
Speaker 1: own darkness, and map for the friends I left behind
Speaker 1: and even for those I never met. Together will mild
Speaker 1: back as a whole community once again, stronger, wiser, invincible.
Speaker 1: Like that. Thank you so much. Thank you for reading that,
Speaker 1: for sharing that, for writing that. I think there's two things.
Speaker 1: First of all, I'm going to give you like a
Speaker 1: little free psychology if you want to make you smile.
Speaker 1: There's a part of this where you read I will
Speaker 1: be me once again, Mama Wife actress, Yogi Smoothie Junkie.
Speaker 1: I am grounded, rooted. You said powerful. What did I
Speaker 1: say there? But in the book what you wrote was peaceful.
Speaker 1: Oh that's interesting that your mind went there, because I
Speaker 1: am wondering if you're peaceful? But that this has transcended
Speaker 1: into you actually finding a stronger voice in this because
Speaker 1: that word came right out of you. It is superseded
Speaker 1: the word fage. Wow. That's wild, It really is wild,
Speaker 1: because every other word you said as exactly as it was.
Speaker 1: But there you said powerful and that is something that again,
Speaker 1: the process of healing is finding your voice. And there's
Speaker 1: another piece here, which I feel is almost like a
Speaker 1: love letter to every survivor out there. I'm harvesting myself.
Speaker 1: I'm mending all the broken shards of my soul back
Speaker 1: into a whole person. I think after these relationships, cult, family,
Speaker 1: intimate relationship, it's the loss of the whole self that
Speaker 1: a person had to pawn and shave off bits of
Speaker 1: themselves to fit into what this other person was demanding,
Speaker 1: or to lose them or to feel like less of
Speaker 1: a person, or to be told you're entitled, you're suppressive,
Speaker 1: you're whatever is wrong with you. Anytime your real self
Speaker 1: shone through and then you say here, and with every recovery,
Speaker 1: I'm gently reminded that never was I actually broken, I
Speaker 1: was never deficient. I was always whole and complete. Most
Speaker 1: survivors of these relationships their mantra becomes I am not enough,
Speaker 1: I'm not enough, that they become diminished by these relationships.
Speaker 1: And many survivors walk around calling themselves broken or damaged
Speaker 1: or lacking. And that's the work that you're not broken.
Speaker 1: You're here, you're in front of us, you're showing up,
Speaker 1: you're getting up in the morning. That's why I tell
Speaker 1: my class you got out of bed today. Okay, it's
Speaker 1: a win. We're in a winter day, and it's but
Speaker 1: this language around this broken and damage. We end up
Speaker 1: and this is again using dan Shaw's language, we end
Speaker 1: up subjugated to them, subjugated to what they want of us.
Speaker 1: We we live into their distorted narrative of us, and
Speaker 1: we can always remain controlled. And so you capture that beautifully.
Speaker 1: And I think if every survivor could just repeat that
Speaker 1: part to themselves over and over again, it's actually a
Speaker 1: really important mantra that nobody's broken, we're deficient or less.
Speaker 1: Thank you and thanks for having me revisit that. I
Speaker 1: I forgot about that poem, and it's uh, I'm going
Speaker 1: to take that powerful note into my next stage of
Speaker 1: my life. It is interesting you wrote it as peaceful. However,
Speaker 1: many years ago you wrote it, and that's an evolution
Speaker 1: for you, because that's what healing is, right. It is
Speaker 1: a process of evolution, but it's also a process of
Speaker 1: return because before these experiences, as you said, you said
Speaker 1: it so beautifully, you called it, you're sort of delicate,
Speaker 1: naive mind that the sense of we often, I mean,
Speaker 1: these relationships are a loss and these experiences are a
Speaker 1: loss of innocence. We had a worldview, but it gets shattered.
Speaker 1: But there's a part of us that's willing to go
Speaker 1: back and actually find ourselves in this mess. It's like,
Speaker 1: you know, we're walking through like a burned out home,
Speaker 1: but we find these beautiful things, and that's us. And
Speaker 1: so it was a profound journey that had really brought in,
Speaker 1: especially after after watching how it all unfolded with the
Speaker 1: other players in the story, how complicated it was. We
Speaker 1: wanted Nancy and Lauren to be the We wanted to
Speaker 1: demonize them holy and even I as a as a therapist,
Speaker 1: as a person who talks about this all the time,
Speaker 1: who's been through it, I had to catch myself and say, slow,
Speaker 1: your role, Romeny, why did you need to see them
Speaker 1: as all bad? And why are you struggling with seeing
Speaker 1: their real suffering because ultimately this entire experience for I'm
Speaker 1: sure either of those individuals was They are now shattered
Speaker 1: and they're trying to make sense of this and how
Speaker 1: it could get there. The only person that's taking no
Speaker 1: accountability was the prime perpetrator, and that's that's how it
Speaker 1: always goes, and that was it's all from him, Like
Speaker 1: no one around him signed up for this. That's not nobody.
Speaker 1: So yes, I can forgive them, Yes, they still need
Speaker 1: to be held accountable in the way that the law decides. Right,
Speaker 1: would you ever be okay with not forgiving them? Uh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there's people I don't forgive, like Claire, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't. I mean it's more it's more like I
Speaker 1: don't I want to go visit Nazy now I want
Speaker 1: to go visit Laura, And I don't feel that way
Speaker 1: with Claire. Um, I see how she was manipulated also,
Speaker 1: But until people can this avowal Keith, I don't. It's yeah,
Speaker 1: I just don't feel that that need and you would
Speaker 1: also be able. I mean, if what's so stress challenging
Speaker 1: is this journey of forgiveness anyone else And I mean
Speaker 1: I'm sure that the whole range of experiences around forgiveness.
Speaker 1: Something I speak about, you know, very vehemently, is that
Speaker 1: there's no agenda around forgiveness. As someone chooses to forgive,
Speaker 1: that's their process. Of someone chooses not to forgive, that's
Speaker 1: their process. Nothing is more r tuous, nothing is less virtuous.
Speaker 1: But if the forgiveness is being made from the premise
Speaker 1: that this person is going to change, that's never gonna work.
Speaker 1: It's that in this case, it's to recognize perhaps that
Speaker 1: the coercion they experienced was every bit as bad, perhaps
Speaker 1: even worse than others did. Oh yeah, and worse than mine.
Speaker 1: That's that's I think the crazy part of this whole
Speaker 1: story is that. And also I think partly why I'm
Speaker 1: able to speak about it is because I wasn't My
Speaker 1: head wasn't as messed with as much. I didn't live
Speaker 1: there and didn't go to the day to day and
Speaker 1: popped in and out for trainings and then went back
Speaker 1: to my condo. I think, yeah, And honestly, what you
Speaker 1: had taken bet with you was what you considered to
Speaker 1: be the good parts of this. To actually do the
Speaker 1: piece of it that mattered, there's a piece, and this
Speaker 1: is a little bit of a strange aside, but I
Speaker 1: think it's worth mentioning. You had talked about a beloved
Speaker 1: mentor to you in this program called Barbed j Then
Speaker 1: there was another woman named Pam Kaye Fritz. These were
Speaker 1: people who got sick really fast and declined really quickly,
Speaker 1: and it seems like there might have been other people
Speaker 1: who did too, Sarah, that part of the story is
Speaker 1: not lost on me. To be around this much human poison,
Speaker 1: don't tell me that's not going to get a person
Speaker 1: physically ill. I actually think that there is that and
Speaker 1: actual poisoning wow, which is yet to be fully expressed.
Speaker 1: There was a documentary that touched on They did some
Speaker 1: sampling of Karen's hair in a really long hair and
Speaker 1: they found I don't remember the name of the chemical,
Speaker 1: but it's chemical found in rat poison broman no, not arsenic, No,
Speaker 1: I don't remember what it's called. But it is a
Speaker 1: documentary called Lost Women of Nexium and they did some testing,
Speaker 1: but it hasn't been fully investigated. First, I thought, because
Speaker 1: there was like ten or twelve women around Keith when
Speaker 1: I was in it, that I had different cancers. And
Speaker 1: then Pam and Barb died anyway, all of all of
Speaker 1: that to say, nothing would surprise me. And yeah, I
Speaker 1: believe he was poisoning the older woman to make room
Speaker 1: for the younger women. Wow, you know, because whatever was
Speaker 1: happening to people, that people were getting so devastatingly ill,
Speaker 1: and nothing was being done, and there was the callousness,
Speaker 1: you know, I think that the callousness and then the
Speaker 1: callousness being framed as almost a toughness and endurance. It's
Speaker 1: it was diabolical, and yet in exim we saw the
Speaker 1: top notes of everything we see in every toxic relationship. So, Sarah,
Speaker 1: I cannot thank you for coming in here for what
Speaker 1: was It wasn't easy, and I thank you for actually
Speaker 1: coming in here and being so vulnerable and trusting this
Speaker 1: process and me frankly, and I just I'm humbled. Just
Speaker 1: put it that way, I am too. It's so much
Speaker 1: better in person. I didn't know it would be like
Speaker 1: so emotional, and also the bonus therapy. So I mean words,
Speaker 1: you know, in that way, a funny way our words
Speaker 1: slip out. I always think that there's just sort of
Speaker 1: this greater nature of ours. It's often saying could you
Speaker 1: let me out? Because I see the best of you,
Speaker 1: and I you know, I hope you see that in yourself.
Speaker 1: And I think I think for many people, and like
Speaker 1: I said, I do believe motherhood in many ways was
Speaker 1: your salvation that sometimes for many of us, that how
Speaker 1: we actually loosened those mons is we wouldn't be willing
Speaker 1: to fight for ourselves, but we'd be willing to lay
Speaker 1: it all on the line for our children. So I
Speaker 1: think it's amazing And you're amazing mom, amazing person, and
Speaker 1: it's really been a joy getting to know you. Thank you.
Speaker 1: If you have a friend and alliance supporter in me
Speaker 1: is but he greatly respects your works so so much.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Here are my takeaways from this conversation with Sarah.
Speaker 1: In my first takeaway, when people finally do get clarity
Speaker 1: in these relationships, it can actually activate a tremendous amount
Speaker 1: of grief knowing that someone is narcissistic or psychopathic or sociopathic,
Speaker 1: no matter what the relationship is. While it can help
Speaker 1: things make sense, many survivors will share that they realized
Speaker 1: that they no longer have the life or the relationship
Speaker 1: they thought that they once did. It's as though everything
Speaker 1: becomes a lie overnight. It can be painful when others suggest, hey, well,
Speaker 1: aren't you relieved you doe to bullet when people find
Speaker 1: out about these personalities and how they played out in
Speaker 1: this relationship. Ultimately, yes, this knowledge will foster healing, but initially,
Speaker 1: not only do people not believe they dodged a bullet,
Speaker 1: they feel as though the bullet hit them in the heart.
Speaker 1: In this next takeaway, Sarah's experience of having to grieve
Speaker 1: her friendship with Lauren, which had been very important to her,
Speaker 1: required her to go through a series of steps. Once
Speaker 1: the picture became more clear to Sarah and she stepped
Speaker 1: away a combination of distancing and disengaging, gaining some perspective, safety,
Speaker 1: gaining more clarity, allowing her empathy to give her a
Speaker 1: more full perspective on the situation, and then acceptance unfolded
Speaker 1: for her. The challenge for many survivors is that they
Speaker 1: may not give themselves that space and time to recoalesce.
Speaker 1: If you don't give yourself some time and distance, it
Speaker 1: is very easy for empathy to turn into enabling. Sarah
Speaker 1: found her way to forgiveness, not everyone does, and there
Speaker 1: is no one path that is better or more righteous
Speaker 1: than the other. The danger from many survivors, especially those
Speaker 1: who are trauma bonded, is that their empathy can pull
Speaker 1: them quickly back into wanting to rationalize and justify and
Speaker 1: forgive before having done their own healing and perspective taking.
Speaker 1: In my next takeaway, many survivors of narcissistic relationships, especially
Speaker 1: those in which the narcissistic person's behavior resulted in a
Speaker 1: big splash zone of harm, people in cults, people in
Speaker 1: toxic family systems, people in workplaces they may struggle with
Speaker 1: survivor guilt or moral injury, will look back at the
Speaker 1: other person hurt by the narcissistic person and if they
Speaker 1: feel in any way responsible for what happened, for example,
Speaker 1: that they introduced the person to the narcissistic person, they
Speaker 1: are a parent that co parents with a narcissistic person,
Speaker 1: they hired someone into a company where there was a
Speaker 1: really vicious boss. That not only are they recovering from
Speaker 1: the harm they personally experienced, but the far more painful
Speaker 1: experience of feeling responsible for the pain that others underwent
Speaker 1: To push through, this can often be a complex therapeutic process,
Speaker 1: involving trauma therapy, grief work, and self compassion and for
Speaker 1: many survivors, echoes of this grief, guilt, and moral injury
Speaker 1: will persist for a lifetime. In our next takeaway, Sarah's
Speaker 1: pursuits such as creative writing and poetry are a reminder
Speaker 1: of how important creativity can be as a part of
Speaker 1: healing from these relationships and situations. Creativity offers an opportunity
Speaker 1: to express feelings in a different way, and that can
Speaker 1: even be shared with others, to humanize these struggles and
Speaker 1: let others know that they are not alone. Whatever the medium, writing, painting, music, cooking, drawing, sculpture,
Speaker 1: it's something that can bring a greater depth and mindfulness
Speaker 1: to healing and In our last takeaway, Sarah found many
Speaker 1: elements of what she learned in Nexium to be useful,
Speaker 1: that the teachings she resonated with that she taught to
Speaker 1: others were and are useful to her. But she shared
Speaker 1: a conversation that she had with someone else who had
Speaker 1: been in Nexium who said he is shoot all of it.
Speaker 1: Grief is very personal. Some people want to fully distance,
Speaker 1: while others may want to hold on to the parts
Speaker 1: that were good or helpful. Again, there are no right paths. Ideally,
Speaker 1: there are authentic ones. Some folks sometimes feel a bit
Speaker 1: of shame if they pull lessons or acknowledge they glean
Speaker 1: something from the experience. It feels easier to just say
Speaker 1: it was all bad, But her story and the different
Speaker 1: stories of others teach us that there is no single
Speaker 1: path forward, and some people find that there were some
Speaker 1: things they learned that they don't want to let go of.
Speaker 1: The key is to be able to retain a kinder
Speaker 1: and gentler way of being with yourself after experiencing invalidation
Speaker 1: and manipulation and the subsequent self blame and confusion. A
Speaker 1: big thank you to our executive producers Jada Pinkett Smith,
Speaker 1: Valen Jethro Ellen Rakaton, and Dr Romeney de Vassila. And
Speaker 1: thank you to our producer Matthew Jones, associate producer Mara
Speaker 1: Dela Rosa, and consultant Kelly Ebling. And finally, thank you
Speaker 1: to our editors and sound engineers Devin Donnaghe and Calvin Bailiff.
Speaker 1: Do Do