1
00:00:00,080 --> 00:00:01,640
Speaker 1: If you have your own story of being in a

2
00:00:01,720 --> 00:00:03,800
Speaker 1: cult or a high control group, or if you've had

3
00:00:03,840 --> 00:00:06,160
Speaker 1: an experience with manipulation or abuse of power you'd like

4
00:00:06,200 --> 00:00:08,039
Speaker 1: to share, leave us a message on our hotline number

5
00:00:08,080 --> 00:00:11,200
Speaker 1: at five one three nine hundred two nine five five.

6
00:00:11,240 --> 00:00:13,480
Speaker 2: Or shoot us an email at trust Me pod at

7
00:00:13,520 --> 00:00:15,040
Speaker 2: gmail dot com.

8
00:00:15,400 --> 00:00:18,320
Speaker 3: Trust Me, Trust trust Me.

9
00:00:18,720 --> 00:00:21,400
Speaker 4: I'm like a swat person. I've never lied to.

10
00:00:21,400 --> 00:00:24,200
Speaker 1: You, and we never have a live If you think

11
00:00:24,239 --> 00:00:28,840
Speaker 1: that one person has all the answers, don't Welcome, Welcome,

12
00:00:28,960 --> 00:00:32,040
Speaker 1: Welcome to trust Me, the podcast about cults, extreme belief

13
00:00:32,040 --> 00:00:35,479
Speaker 1: and the abusive power from two straight shooters.

14
00:00:35,120 --> 00:00:38,000
Speaker 3: Who've actually experienced it. I am Lola Blanc.

15
00:00:37,840 --> 00:00:39,160
Speaker 5: And I am Megan Elizabeth.

16
00:00:39,240 --> 00:00:41,600
Speaker 2: I love that when you say straight shooters, it's like

17
00:00:41,760 --> 00:00:43,879
Speaker 2: a little bit of a Southern twang on it.

18
00:00:44,159 --> 00:00:45,160
Speaker 3: Straight shooters.

19
00:00:45,680 --> 00:00:48,800
Speaker 2: And I would know because we've done this introduction fifteen times.

20
00:00:49,000 --> 00:00:51,360
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I will be upset if we have

21
00:00:51,440 --> 00:00:52,040
Speaker 1: to do this again.

22
00:00:52,080 --> 00:00:54,480
Speaker 3: This one's the one. It's gonna work. We've had every

23
00:00:54,520 --> 00:00:59,240
Speaker 3: technical difficulty, no matter what happens, this is it today.

24
00:00:59,360 --> 00:01:04,120
Speaker 1: Our guest is the indubitably charming Natasha Mallin. She's the

25
00:01:04,160 --> 00:01:06,559
Speaker 1: author of a new book called The First Fifty about

26
00:01:06,600 --> 00:01:09,840
Speaker 1: her first fifty sexual encounters, and she is a survivor

27
00:01:09,880 --> 00:01:12,560
Speaker 1: of a group she calls a therapy cult. In part

28
00:01:12,600 --> 00:01:14,560
Speaker 1: one this week of our two part interview with her,

29
00:01:14,600 --> 00:01:16,640
Speaker 1: she's going to tell us about how, in a vulnerable

30
00:01:16,680 --> 00:01:18,160
Speaker 1: period of her life, she was dealing with a lot

31
00:01:18,160 --> 00:01:20,720
Speaker 1: of trauma, a lot going on. She went from working

32
00:01:20,800 --> 00:01:25,000
Speaker 1: at Cafe Gratitude to attending a Landmark Forum weekend and

33
00:01:25,120 --> 00:01:28,640
Speaker 1: leaving because she realized it was bullshit, to then meeting Stan,

34
00:01:28,920 --> 00:01:30,520
Speaker 1: the leader of the group. She would spend the next

35
00:01:30,560 --> 00:01:33,880
Speaker 1: several years of her life being deeply involved with. You know,

36
00:01:34,640 --> 00:01:37,560
Speaker 1: I used to have an aspiration myself to write a

37
00:01:37,560 --> 00:01:40,319
Speaker 1: book about my own sexual encounters, which I.

38
00:01:40,240 --> 00:01:41,480
Speaker 3: Mean, I'm glad that she did it.

39
00:01:41,520 --> 00:01:43,600
Speaker 1: I feel like this is a thing for some reason

40
00:01:43,640 --> 00:01:46,240
Speaker 1: that women feel this like inclination to do.

41
00:01:46,600 --> 00:01:48,840
Speaker 2: She did it, and she did it good. I bought

42
00:01:48,880 --> 00:01:50,840
Speaker 2: the book off Amazon. It came in the mail and

43
00:01:50,880 --> 00:01:53,280
Speaker 2: it is like David Sadara's Times ten.

44
00:01:53,560 --> 00:01:56,640
Speaker 3: It's really really yeah, that's amazing.

45
00:01:56,960 --> 00:01:59,960
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I mean I can only guess based on

46
00:02:00,120 --> 00:02:03,040
Speaker 1: how great she is at storytelling just verbally. Yeah, it's

47
00:02:03,160 --> 00:02:04,200
Speaker 1: very exciting and can't wait.

48
00:02:04,160 --> 00:02:04,520
Speaker 4: To read it.

49
00:02:04,800 --> 00:02:07,560
Speaker 1: Anyway, before we dive in with her. By the way,

50
00:02:07,600 --> 00:02:10,520
Speaker 1: that's no longer an aspiration of mine. Don't worry, guys,

51
00:02:11,280 --> 00:02:11,919
Speaker 1: I have other.

52
00:02:13,320 --> 00:02:16,280
Speaker 3: Things. This is Natasha's territory.

53
00:02:16,320 --> 00:02:19,040
Speaker 1: Okay, So before we dive in with her, Megan, can

54
00:02:19,040 --> 00:02:20,040
Speaker 1: you please tell me what.

55
00:02:20,000 --> 00:02:22,480
Speaker 3: The cultiest thing that's happened to you this week was?

56
00:02:22,800 --> 00:02:23,720
Speaker 5: Yes, I can la la.

57
00:02:24,360 --> 00:02:29,120
Speaker 2: So this week pretty much, nothing too extremely culty happened,

58
00:02:29,120 --> 00:02:30,200
Speaker 2: Like my cultiest thing.

59
00:02:30,040 --> 00:02:32,720
Speaker 5: In the week isn't that big of a deal. But

60
00:02:33,160 --> 00:02:34,359
Speaker 5: I'll tell you what happened.

61
00:02:34,480 --> 00:02:37,360
Speaker 2: Essentially, my friend is getting married and she asked for

62
00:02:37,440 --> 00:02:40,520
Speaker 2: a croquet set, so that's what I got her. And

63
00:02:40,560 --> 00:02:44,240
Speaker 2: then I went on Etsy and got her cute little

64
00:02:44,360 --> 00:02:48,520
Speaker 2: pin with like all the little Heathers girls legs. You know,

65
00:02:48,639 --> 00:02:51,000
Speaker 2: that's like we love croquet just from the movie Heathers

66
00:02:51,000 --> 00:02:54,600
Speaker 2: from the eighties. Anyway, I'm reading comments of people who

67
00:02:54,639 --> 00:02:58,120
Speaker 2: have also bought this pin, and there's a woman named

68
00:02:58,160 --> 00:03:02,920
Speaker 2: Heather who's like, I name both my daughter's Heather because

69
00:03:02,960 --> 00:03:04,520
Speaker 2: I love this movie so much.

70
00:03:05,200 --> 00:03:09,840
Speaker 3: No, she did not, yes, And who knows.

71
00:03:09,600 --> 00:03:11,919
Speaker 2: Maybe this is just a person with way too much

72
00:03:11,919 --> 00:03:14,000
Speaker 2: time making things up, But I do think there is

73
00:03:14,000 --> 00:03:17,840
Speaker 2: something to be said for that, like cult movie world,

74
00:03:17,880 --> 00:03:21,000
Speaker 2: where people just get obsessed with shit.

75
00:03:21,720 --> 00:03:26,280
Speaker 1: Oh totally yeah. I mean, look, I would never name

76
00:03:26,440 --> 00:03:27,880
Speaker 1: my daughters the same name.

77
00:03:28,560 --> 00:03:30,280
Speaker 5: I didn't even know you were allowed to do that.

78
00:03:30,639 --> 00:03:33,440
Speaker 1: I didn't either, because they have. But how does the

79
00:03:33,480 --> 00:03:37,440
Speaker 1: birth certificate? Who's the I hope they have different middle names,

80
00:03:38,480 --> 00:03:39,920
Speaker 1: and I hope they're both Winona.

81
00:03:41,720 --> 00:03:42,320
Speaker 4: How do you tell?

82
00:03:42,400 --> 00:03:45,920
Speaker 1: How do you distinguish which daughter you are referring to?

83
00:03:46,280 --> 00:03:47,840
Speaker 3: They're both gonna turn their heads.

84
00:03:47,880 --> 00:03:48,920
Speaker 5: It doesn't make sense.

85
00:03:49,960 --> 00:03:51,840
Speaker 1: Maybe she's like or maybe one of them goes by

86
00:03:51,960 --> 00:03:56,280
Speaker 1: like hev. Maybe one of them is what the fuck

87
00:03:56,400 --> 00:04:00,760
Speaker 1: nickname can you put to Heather? Even heavy Heather, Heather

88
00:04:00,840 --> 00:04:03,240
Speaker 1: and heir.

89
00:04:03,360 --> 00:04:03,760
Speaker 4: I don't know.

90
00:04:06,640 --> 00:04:10,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just it's crazy to think about fans, like

91
00:04:10,600 --> 00:04:14,160
Speaker 2: real hardcore fans. I haven't really looked at that part

92
00:04:14,200 --> 00:04:17,400
Speaker 2: of society in a minute, and it's always interesting.

93
00:04:17,680 --> 00:04:19,720
Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever really been strongly a part

94
00:04:19,760 --> 00:04:22,800
Speaker 1: of a fandom. I loved Harry Potter growing up, and

95
00:04:22,839 --> 00:04:25,599
Speaker 1: like still do. But you know, we all know JK.

96
00:04:25,720 --> 00:04:28,679
Speaker 1: Rowling's the worst now, but it's fine. Still love Harry

97
00:04:28,680 --> 00:04:32,640
Speaker 1: Potter but I've never, like, you know, I've never gone

98
00:04:32,640 --> 00:04:37,560
Speaker 1: to com con. Okay, the closest I've come was when

99
00:04:37,600 --> 00:04:39,960
Speaker 1: I was a kid. I loved Hanson and the Spice

100
00:04:40,000 --> 00:04:46,080
Speaker 1: Girls so much that my entire room was covered with

101
00:04:46,920 --> 00:04:50,159
Speaker 1: posters of them from those magazines. Bop, I want to say.

102
00:04:50,160 --> 00:04:52,960
Speaker 1: It was like Bop and beat It magazines or something.

103
00:04:53,640 --> 00:04:56,240
Speaker 5: It was Bob. Should you really name a magazine for

104
00:04:56,400 --> 00:04:57,560
Speaker 5: teenage girls? Beat it?

105
00:05:00,920 --> 00:05:01,200
Speaker 4: I mean?

106
00:05:01,400 --> 00:05:01,680
Speaker 1: Is that?

107
00:05:01,760 --> 00:05:02,000
Speaker 3: I mean?

108
00:05:02,040 --> 00:05:05,719
Speaker 1: Bob was definitely one, But wasn't Wasn't there one named

109
00:05:05,800 --> 00:05:06,280
Speaker 1: beat It?

110
00:05:06,600 --> 00:05:07,640
Speaker 3: I don't know, I'm.

111
00:05:09,640 --> 00:05:12,360
Speaker 1: Wasn't there one named beat your Meat? Wasn't there a

112
00:05:12,360 --> 00:05:15,040
Speaker 1: magazine called beat Off? It was just filled with hands

113
00:05:15,080 --> 00:05:20,800
Speaker 1: and images. I don't fucking know, but I know that

114
00:05:20,880 --> 00:05:23,000
Speaker 1: I loved it and they gave me great posters. But

115
00:05:23,040 --> 00:05:26,200
Speaker 1: other than that, you know, I have like horror movies

116
00:05:26,200 --> 00:05:29,039
Speaker 1: that I love, But that's about it. I've never, you know,

117
00:05:29,240 --> 00:05:30,839
Speaker 1: never been like a fangirl.

118
00:05:31,120 --> 00:05:31,720
Speaker 3: Especially.

119
00:05:32,000 --> 00:05:34,800
Speaker 2: I think once you enter that realm, it changes shit,

120
00:05:35,000 --> 00:05:36,840
Speaker 2: like you're officially a different person.

121
00:05:37,000 --> 00:05:41,279
Speaker 5: So just saying yeah, it's fun, why not? What about you?

122
00:05:41,360 --> 00:05:43,000
Speaker 5: What's the cultiest thing that happened to you?

123
00:05:43,279 --> 00:05:47,360
Speaker 1: The cultiest thing of the week for me, Well, I'm

124
00:05:47,400 --> 00:05:48,880
Speaker 1: just gonna go with an article I read.

125
00:05:49,040 --> 00:05:51,279
Speaker 3: Okay, you know, love a good article.

126
00:05:52,040 --> 00:05:58,120
Speaker 1: I read an article in Inverse or on inverse dot

127
00:05:58,160 --> 00:06:02,680
Speaker 1: com which is called are going Virtual But deepprogramming needs

128
00:06:02,720 --> 00:06:06,560
Speaker 1: one old school tactic, say experts. And of course these

129
00:06:06,600 --> 00:06:12,440
Speaker 1: experts lucky us. These experts that they interview for the article,

130
00:06:12,600 --> 00:06:14,800
Speaker 1: two of them have been on this podcast. Shout out

131
00:06:14,800 --> 00:06:17,040
Speaker 1: to Steve Hassen and shout out to Yanya Lalich.

132
00:06:17,520 --> 00:06:19,719
Speaker 3: But it was interesting. There were some interesting stuff in there.

133
00:06:20,160 --> 00:06:23,719
Speaker 1: One statistic that they throughout blew my mind, which said

134
00:06:23,760 --> 00:06:28,960
Speaker 1: that one studies claims that fifteen percent of Americans believe

135
00:06:29,000 --> 00:06:29,640
Speaker 1: in QAnon.

136
00:06:30,800 --> 00:06:35,320
Speaker 3: Fifteen percent. That is so upsetting.

137
00:06:36,080 --> 00:06:39,760
Speaker 1: I wonder what that covers, Like it does it just

138
00:06:39,839 --> 00:06:44,200
Speaker 1: mean that they're like skeptical about the government involvement with

139
00:06:44,279 --> 00:06:46,760
Speaker 1: vaccines or does that mean like full on think Donald

140
00:06:46,760 --> 00:06:51,240
Speaker 1: Trump is like saving the children in a wildly roundabout way.

141
00:06:51,320 --> 00:06:54,120
Speaker 3: I don't know, but that was one upsetting piece of it.

142
00:06:54,480 --> 00:06:55,680
Speaker 3: But then they talked about how.

143
00:06:55,560 --> 00:07:00,800
Speaker 1: Like colts in the modern era, so much the indoctrination

144
00:07:00,839 --> 00:07:03,480
Speaker 1: can happen online. You no longer need to be isolated

145
00:07:04,000 --> 00:07:07,680
Speaker 1: in like physically within a community that's like separated from

146
00:07:07,680 --> 00:07:10,280
Speaker 1: the world. That is definitely still happening, don't get me wrong,

147
00:07:10,680 --> 00:07:14,240
Speaker 1: but like we're all in these social media silos, we

148
00:07:14,280 --> 00:07:17,920
Speaker 1: all are just being you know, fed the same stuff

149
00:07:17,960 --> 00:07:20,600
Speaker 1: back to us thanks to algorithms and so on and

150
00:07:20,600 --> 00:07:24,280
Speaker 1: so forth, and so the process of indoctrination is different,

151
00:07:24,480 --> 00:07:27,960
Speaker 1: but like to come out of it is very similar

152
00:07:28,360 --> 00:07:30,920
Speaker 1: to the way that it used to be, except I

153
00:07:30,920 --> 00:07:33,520
Speaker 1: imagine it can also happen in a virtual space. So

154
00:07:34,080 --> 00:07:37,520
Speaker 1: fifty eight percent of former cult members in one study

155
00:07:37,920 --> 00:07:41,960
Speaker 1: reported that some social intervention like conversation with a friend

156
00:07:42,080 --> 00:07:44,480
Speaker 1: or a loved one, helped set them on the path

157
00:07:44,520 --> 00:07:46,600
Speaker 1: to leaving. I feel like this is a theme that

158
00:07:46,640 --> 00:07:49,440
Speaker 1: actually comes up in this episode. She talks about how

159
00:07:49,480 --> 00:07:51,560
Speaker 1: it was a conversation with her boyfriend at the time

160
00:07:51,800 --> 00:07:56,440
Speaker 1: that bothered her in one's instance, and an argument that

161
00:07:56,520 --> 00:08:00,000
Speaker 1: her friend witnessed with the leader in another instance.

162
00:08:00,400 --> 00:08:01,800
Speaker 3: It's like having.

163
00:08:01,480 --> 00:08:05,679
Speaker 1: That like outside perspective can be the thing to snap

164
00:08:05,720 --> 00:08:09,200
Speaker 1: you out of it. There are also three doubt generating

165
00:08:09,240 --> 00:08:12,840
Speaker 1: factors a study from the same university that can compel

166
00:08:12,920 --> 00:08:15,560
Speaker 1: people to leave their cults, and so basically, like people

167
00:08:16,000 --> 00:08:19,360
Speaker 1: don't leave because other people are telling them too. They

168
00:08:19,400 --> 00:08:22,880
Speaker 1: have to independently be experiencing doubt of some kind, and

169
00:08:22,920 --> 00:08:25,560
Speaker 1: then maybe somebody reflects that doubt back to them or

170
00:08:25,640 --> 00:08:28,400
Speaker 1: draws their attention to something that was already like secretly

171
00:08:28,440 --> 00:08:31,280
Speaker 1: like subconsciously nagging at them or whatever. But there are

172
00:08:31,640 --> 00:08:35,880
Speaker 1: three factors within the group that can like help independently

173
00:08:35,960 --> 00:08:38,080
Speaker 1: generate some of that doubt. So one of them is

174
00:08:38,720 --> 00:08:42,640
Speaker 1: becoming disillusioned with the leadership. If your cult leader is

175
00:08:42,800 --> 00:08:46,840
Speaker 1: like starting to get real weird, real paranoid, real abusive, whatever,

176
00:08:47,320 --> 00:08:50,000
Speaker 1: or you're realizing you're seeing like behind the curtain a

177
00:08:50,040 --> 00:08:52,600
Speaker 1: little bit and realizing that they're kind of a liar,

178
00:08:52,840 --> 00:08:55,079
Speaker 1: kind of just straight up lying. A lot of people

179
00:08:55,120 --> 00:08:58,439
Speaker 1: get to a certain level in the group, and that

180
00:08:58,520 --> 00:09:01,880
Speaker 1: status affords them the privilege of seeing that their leader's

181
00:09:01,920 --> 00:09:02,640
Speaker 1: kind of bullshitty.

182
00:09:02,800 --> 00:09:03,400
Speaker 3: So that's one.

183
00:09:04,400 --> 00:09:08,600
Speaker 1: Feeling abused is another makes sense, you know, if you

184
00:09:09,160 --> 00:09:12,360
Speaker 1: are not being treated fairly like that is gonna eventually

185
00:09:12,400 --> 00:09:14,559
Speaker 1: not you over time. And then the other one, which

186
00:09:14,600 --> 00:09:17,319
Speaker 1: I thought was really interesting, is losing status within the group.

187
00:09:17,920 --> 00:09:18,560
Speaker 3: Makes sense.

188
00:09:19,400 --> 00:09:22,000
Speaker 1: It can be a form of control to sort of

189
00:09:22,040 --> 00:09:25,720
Speaker 1: demote members, but that very thing can also be the

190
00:09:25,720 --> 00:09:30,559
Speaker 1: thing that sort of loosens their grip. Yeah, so if

191
00:09:30,600 --> 00:09:34,240
Speaker 1: you know somebody who's in a group, here are some

192
00:09:34,440 --> 00:09:36,800
Speaker 1: questions that you could possibly ask. A lot of the

193
00:09:36,800 --> 00:09:40,320
Speaker 1: stuff is coming from Steve Hassen shout out. Basically, you

194
00:09:40,360 --> 00:09:44,199
Speaker 1: want to reconnect them to their identity before the cult

195
00:09:44,480 --> 00:09:47,440
Speaker 1: came along. So remind them of who they were, remind

196
00:09:47,480 --> 00:09:49,839
Speaker 1: them of what they liked, remind them of how they

197
00:09:49,960 --> 00:09:53,800
Speaker 1: felt before this group, because that is the whole thing

198
00:09:53,800 --> 00:09:56,000
Speaker 1: about cult, right is we lose our identities and we

199
00:09:56,120 --> 00:10:02,400
Speaker 1: can't like remember who we are. H questions could include

200
00:10:02,440 --> 00:10:06,559
Speaker 1: something like, where was that person in their life when

201
00:10:06,559 --> 00:10:08,400
Speaker 1: they first heard about the group, what was going on

202
00:10:08,440 --> 00:10:10,960
Speaker 1: for them, what were they experiencing, what did they believe,

203
00:10:11,000 --> 00:10:11,520
Speaker 1: what did they like?

204
00:10:11,559 --> 00:10:12,200
Speaker 3: What were they doing?

205
00:10:12,760 --> 00:10:15,120
Speaker 1: And another one was did they always think that the

206
00:10:15,200 --> 00:10:19,400
Speaker 1: leader was supreme? Or were they initially skeptical like Natasha

207
00:10:19,480 --> 00:10:22,679
Speaker 1: in this episode was. You can't directly attack their beliefs.

208
00:10:22,679 --> 00:10:24,800
Speaker 1: We've talked about that a lot. That doesn't ever work.

209
00:10:25,240 --> 00:10:28,800
Speaker 1: It's just like asking curious questions and reminding people in

210
00:10:28,800 --> 00:10:32,840
Speaker 1: a very gentle, non threatening way of their identity from before,

211
00:10:33,200 --> 00:10:36,320
Speaker 1: and that can help plant the seed that like again,

212
00:10:36,480 --> 00:10:39,000
Speaker 1: helps them come to their own conclusion.

213
00:10:39,200 --> 00:10:40,560
Speaker 3: That they need to get out.

214
00:10:40,600 --> 00:10:44,600
Speaker 1: You can no longer kidnap people and like you know,

215
00:10:44,720 --> 00:10:47,200
Speaker 1: lock them in a motel room to deprogram them. You

216
00:10:47,320 --> 00:10:52,400
Speaker 1: have to just organically, gently, lovingly begin to plant some

217
00:10:52,400 --> 00:10:55,040
Speaker 1: seeds of doubt without attacking the belief system directly.

218
00:10:56,000 --> 00:10:58,840
Speaker 3: So that's my long winded article summary.

219
00:10:59,559 --> 00:11:02,880
Speaker 1: As my culty, I think it's cool this week.

220
00:11:03,440 --> 00:11:10,280
Speaker 3: I like information. I like to discuss information. So that's

221
00:11:10,480 --> 00:11:10,840
Speaker 3: that's that.

222
00:11:11,320 --> 00:11:11,480
Speaker 5: Well.

223
00:11:11,559 --> 00:11:13,439
Speaker 1: Fuck yeah, I feel like a lot of a lot

224
00:11:13,440 --> 00:11:15,079
Speaker 1: of stuff is going to actually come up in the

225
00:11:15,120 --> 00:11:15,760
Speaker 1: next episodes.

226
00:11:15,800 --> 00:11:19,320
Speaker 3: So should we start getting to the interview now, let's

227
00:11:19,360 --> 00:11:33,240
Speaker 3: do it. Welcome Natasha Mallen to the show. Thanks for coming,

228
00:11:33,800 --> 00:11:34,840
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me.

229
00:11:35,720 --> 00:11:38,480
Speaker 1: So we don't know your story, So this is the

230
00:11:38,480 --> 00:11:41,800
Speaker 1: first time we are learning everything about you. So can

231
00:11:41,840 --> 00:11:45,040
Speaker 1: you give us a little context for what your life

232
00:11:45,280 --> 00:11:49,480
Speaker 1: was like before you encountered your culty situation.

233
00:11:49,920 --> 00:11:51,559
Speaker 5: Sure, this is atal like.

234
00:11:51,559 --> 00:11:52,320
Speaker 6: The first time.

235
00:11:52,360 --> 00:11:56,360
Speaker 4: I'm also talking about it so candidly, So I just

236
00:11:56,400 --> 00:11:59,200
Speaker 4: wonder what you guys both know about that.

237
00:11:59,440 --> 00:12:00,600
Speaker 5: But thank you.

238
00:12:01,000 --> 00:12:08,880
Speaker 4: Yeah, I graduated college like right as the economy fell apart,

239
00:12:09,280 --> 00:12:13,480
Speaker 4: So yeah, I think that was the case for a

240
00:12:13,520 --> 00:12:17,600
Speaker 4: lot of folks of our generation. And you know, I

241
00:12:17,760 --> 00:12:21,880
Speaker 4: moved back to la from Oakland, where I had been

242
00:12:21,920 --> 00:12:28,640
Speaker 4: going to school and was wildly unemployed. And you know, also,

243
00:12:29,080 --> 00:12:32,400
Speaker 4: you know, mid twenties at that point, like early mid twenties,

244
00:12:33,040 --> 00:12:37,440
Speaker 4: hadn't really addressed any of the trauma in my life

245
00:12:37,520 --> 00:12:40,840
Speaker 4: leading up to that point. And so, you know, when

246
00:12:40,920 --> 00:12:46,000
Speaker 4: I first heard about the Intimacy Project, like any cult,

247
00:12:46,040 --> 00:12:49,200
Speaker 4: it's never described as such. It was sort of like

248
00:12:49,280 --> 00:12:53,520
Speaker 4: a place for intelligent, like minded people to get together

249
00:12:54,000 --> 00:12:59,120
Speaker 4: to address what was actual and that was like a

250
00:12:59,160 --> 00:13:03,640
Speaker 4: big were used often as opposed to you know, what

251
00:13:03,800 --> 00:13:09,120
Speaker 4: was conditioned inside of our minds for us about the

252
00:13:09,240 --> 00:13:11,200
Speaker 4: human experience, right.

253
00:13:11,040 --> 00:13:15,520
Speaker 1: Okay, Okay, so we have some jargon already, go on, Right.

254
00:13:15,679 --> 00:13:19,480
Speaker 4: So I was also primed to kind of be alert

255
00:13:19,520 --> 00:13:22,079
Speaker 4: to that sort of stuff because while I was going

256
00:13:22,120 --> 00:13:24,840
Speaker 4: to school at Mills College in the Bay, I was

257
00:13:24,880 --> 00:13:28,559
Speaker 4: working at Cafe Gratitude, which was like really early days

258
00:13:28,559 --> 00:13:33,840
Speaker 4: of Cafe Gratitude, and Cafe Gratitude is delightful in a

259
00:13:33,880 --> 00:13:36,320
Speaker 4: lot of ways. And one of the things that was

260
00:13:36,400 --> 00:13:42,040
Speaker 4: really strange and cool or whatever about Cafe Gratitude's policy was,

261
00:13:42,080 --> 00:13:45,080
Speaker 4: you know, they had sort of conceived of this restaurant

262
00:13:45,760 --> 00:13:50,760
Speaker 4: through their time, through their meeting one another, the two

263
00:13:50,800 --> 00:13:53,560
Speaker 4: owners at Landmark Forum.

264
00:13:54,400 --> 00:13:56,000
Speaker 3: Is that true? Wow?

265
00:13:56,120 --> 00:14:00,880
Speaker 4: Yeah, And so they would do these workshops for their

266
00:14:00,920 --> 00:14:06,360
Speaker 4: employees that were about various different things, relationships, money, all

267
00:14:06,440 --> 00:14:07,120
Speaker 4: kinds of things.

268
00:14:07,120 --> 00:14:07,959
Speaker 6: But they also.

269
00:14:07,840 --> 00:14:11,080
Speaker 4: Offered to their employees to pay I think it was

270
00:14:11,280 --> 00:14:14,000
Speaker 4: half of the fee for.

271
00:14:14,120 --> 00:14:15,880
Speaker 6: If you wanted to do Landmark for them.

272
00:14:16,400 --> 00:14:18,679
Speaker 4: Oh that my time was just called Landmark.

273
00:14:18,960 --> 00:14:21,120
Speaker 1: My roommate was just telling me about a restaurant she

274
00:14:21,160 --> 00:14:23,560
Speaker 1: worked at that did exactly the same thing with Landmark.

275
00:14:23,600 --> 00:14:24,400
Speaker 3: That's super interesting.

276
00:14:24,520 --> 00:14:26,680
Speaker 1: And for people who aren't like in California or maybe

277
00:14:26,680 --> 00:14:28,960
Speaker 1: don't have a Cafe Gratitude, can you just kind of

278
00:14:29,000 --> 00:14:31,000
Speaker 1: generally describe what Cafe Gratitude is.

279
00:14:31,320 --> 00:14:34,880
Speaker 4: Sure, so Cafe Gratitude now is a little bit different

280
00:14:34,920 --> 00:14:40,360
Speaker 4: than what it was conceived as. And initially Cafe Gratitude

281
00:14:40,520 --> 00:14:45,240
Speaker 4: was like a vegan raw food restaurant, but all of

282
00:14:45,280 --> 00:14:50,040
Speaker 4: their menu items were affirmation Like instead of ordering a

283
00:14:50,920 --> 00:14:55,120
Speaker 4: chocolate mint chip milkshake, you would say something.

284
00:14:54,840 --> 00:14:57,320
Speaker 6: Like I am elated.

285
00:14:57,440 --> 00:15:00,520
Speaker 4: I can't remember what those yeah, yeah that you know,

286
00:15:00,600 --> 00:15:01,480
Speaker 4: so it.

287
00:15:01,280 --> 00:15:04,280
Speaker 3: Was I am sharing I am nurturing or whatever.

288
00:15:04,400 --> 00:15:06,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, they make you say it, like if you're like

289
00:15:06,200 --> 00:15:08,680
Speaker 2: I'll take the chocolate cake, they're like, what does it say?

290
00:15:08,960 --> 00:15:11,200
Speaker 2: And you're like, I'll take the I am beautiful.

291
00:15:11,880 --> 00:15:12,120
Speaker 5: You know.

292
00:15:12,760 --> 00:15:17,840
Speaker 4: We weren't SCRAMed to make anybody do anything, but as employees,

293
00:15:18,320 --> 00:15:21,840
Speaker 4: we would announce whatever the affirmation was on the order,

294
00:15:21,960 --> 00:15:23,920
Speaker 4: you know, and so we would like if I because

295
00:15:23,920 --> 00:15:26,320
Speaker 4: I worked at the bar, so I would call out

296
00:15:26,360 --> 00:15:28,240
Speaker 4: to whoever the server was that would put it through,

297
00:15:28,280 --> 00:15:32,760
Speaker 4: and I'd say, you know, Suzanne, no one's name was Suzanne,

298
00:15:32,760 --> 00:15:36,360
Speaker 4: but Susan, you are beautiful, and she would know that's

299
00:15:36,400 --> 00:15:40,920
Speaker 4: like an orange creamsicle or something like this. Okay, but

300
00:15:41,240 --> 00:15:45,840
Speaker 4: you know, Cafe Gratitude was initially conceived as a game.

301
00:15:46,240 --> 00:15:46,560
Speaker 5: Hmmm.

302
00:15:47,000 --> 00:15:49,360
Speaker 4: It was a board game, and then from that board

303
00:15:49,400 --> 00:15:53,280
Speaker 4: game they created a restaurant and then blah blah blah

304
00:15:53,320 --> 00:15:54,000
Speaker 4: their story.

305
00:15:54,080 --> 00:15:54,480
Speaker 5: Whoa.

306
00:15:54,520 --> 00:15:59,120
Speaker 4: That's basically what it was, and it has morphed into

307
00:16:00,040 --> 00:16:05,520
Speaker 4: something adjacent too, but not exactly what it was back

308
00:16:05,560 --> 00:16:08,400
Speaker 4: in two thousand and I don't know, six or seven

309
00:16:08,440 --> 00:16:09,800
Speaker 4: when I started working there.

310
00:16:10,120 --> 00:16:14,240
Speaker 2: It's very hip here, like all the cool dates want

311
00:16:14,280 --> 00:16:16,800
Speaker 2: to go to Cafe Gratitude or you know, my dates.

312
00:16:16,840 --> 00:16:17,160
Speaker 5: I don't know.

313
00:16:17,240 --> 00:16:19,120
Speaker 3: I'm not going on Cafe Gratitude dates.

314
00:16:19,640 --> 00:16:20,000
Speaker 5: You know what.

315
00:16:20,120 --> 00:16:21,800
Speaker 2: As I was saying it, I was like, I should

316
00:16:21,840 --> 00:16:25,640
Speaker 2: repackage that as like a lot of cool girlfriend dates

317
00:16:25,800 --> 00:16:28,800
Speaker 2: of my life have been there, and a lot of

318
00:16:28,800 --> 00:16:32,880
Speaker 2: my girlfriends date like burning man type CEOs, who are

319
00:16:32,880 --> 00:16:34,720
Speaker 2: going to take them to Cafe Gratitude.

320
00:16:34,760 --> 00:16:35,840
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, hilarious.

321
00:16:36,040 --> 00:16:38,680
Speaker 5: That's what okay? When I think Cafe Gratitude, yeah, yeah.

322
00:16:38,800 --> 00:16:44,600
Speaker 4: Yeah, raw ish organic vegan ish food. I think they're

323
00:16:44,600 --> 00:16:48,360
Speaker 4: still vegan anyway, whatever, that's them. But I had jumped

324
00:16:48,360 --> 00:16:53,720
Speaker 4: into the Landmark experience with a lot of skepticism, and

325
00:16:54,120 --> 00:16:56,400
Speaker 4: at the time I was getting a degree in psychology,

326
00:16:56,480 --> 00:17:02,560
Speaker 4: so like had an but had enough social psychology under

327
00:17:02,600 --> 00:17:05,560
Speaker 4: my belt to sort of be alert to certain things

328
00:17:05,600 --> 00:17:07,560
Speaker 4: that I was being asked to do.

329
00:17:07,720 --> 00:17:09,760
Speaker 6: And I can't remember exactly.

330
00:17:09,320 --> 00:17:12,280
Speaker 4: What the language there was, but it was something to

331
00:17:12,320 --> 00:17:14,879
Speaker 4: the effect of like it wasn't suspend your belief. It

332
00:17:14,960 --> 00:17:19,560
Speaker 4: was like, you know, they're inviting you to essentially suspend

333
00:17:19,560 --> 00:17:22,440
Speaker 4: your belief. But it didn't last very long in Landmark.

334
00:17:22,480 --> 00:17:26,960
Speaker 4: I think by day two I was fuming and wrote

335
00:17:27,040 --> 00:17:30,800
Speaker 4: this whole manifesto about like how bullshit all of it

336
00:17:31,040 --> 00:17:35,480
Speaker 4: was whatever nice, and we of course didn't want to

337
00:17:35,480 --> 00:17:38,960
Speaker 4: give me any airtime, and so I walked out in

338
00:17:39,040 --> 00:17:43,600
Speaker 4: a big dramatic cuff and that appeased amazing trauma side.

339
00:17:43,880 --> 00:17:47,879
Speaker 4: But you know, whatever those problems were that I held

340
00:17:48,080 --> 00:17:51,320
Speaker 4: that led me to something like that are ultimately the

341
00:17:51,400 --> 00:17:54,640
Speaker 4: things that I walked into the Intimacy Project with of

342
00:17:54,720 --> 00:18:00,720
Speaker 4: like just really unresolved trauma and a lot of mental

343
00:18:00,840 --> 00:18:04,119
Speaker 4: emotional desperation because.

344
00:18:04,600 --> 00:18:07,080
Speaker 5: What was it about Landmark that had you being like gal?

345
00:18:08,080 --> 00:18:10,280
Speaker 4: For me, it was really like the whole process, it

346
00:18:10,359 --> 00:18:12,840
Speaker 4: was like, we're putting you in a basement room with

347
00:18:12,920 --> 00:18:16,080
Speaker 4: a bunch of other people and we're going to talk

348
00:18:16,200 --> 00:18:16,639
Speaker 4: to you.

349
00:18:16,800 --> 00:18:18,240
Speaker 6: For first of all.

350
00:18:18,119 --> 00:18:22,119
Speaker 4: We're going to monitor your time, like very closely. You

351
00:18:22,200 --> 00:18:25,040
Speaker 4: have to make a commitment or whatever to show up

352
00:18:25,080 --> 00:18:28,440
Speaker 4: on time. You have very small breaks where you can

353
00:18:28,480 --> 00:18:30,919
Speaker 4: barely get any food in We're waking up early in

354
00:18:31,000 --> 00:18:33,400
Speaker 4: order to get there on time. We're staying super late.

355
00:18:33,840 --> 00:18:37,080
Speaker 4: Anytime you felt like you needed a personal break, the

356
00:18:37,440 --> 00:18:41,359
Speaker 4: monitors would sort of swarm you immediately to kind of

357
00:18:41,440 --> 00:18:44,359
Speaker 4: talk about what's going on for you. So you didn't

358
00:18:44,400 --> 00:18:47,959
Speaker 4: have a thing, a moment alone to really feel what

359
00:18:48,040 --> 00:18:50,399
Speaker 4: you were feeling. And you're in a room full of

360
00:18:50,480 --> 00:18:54,399
Speaker 4: people who have paid, you know, hundreds of dollars or

361
00:18:54,520 --> 00:18:56,879
Speaker 4: thousands if you didn't get half of it paid for

362
00:18:57,040 --> 00:19:01,080
Speaker 4: by Cafe Gratitude who were all there, or the thing

363
00:19:01,240 --> 00:19:04,399
Speaker 4: that the guy in front is telling you is going

364
00:19:04,480 --> 00:19:07,119
Speaker 4: to happen to you. Right, You're going to have a breakthrough,

365
00:19:07,240 --> 00:19:10,479
Speaker 4: You're gonna things are going to start to change for you.

366
00:19:10,520 --> 00:19:13,320
Speaker 4: But it was like very apparent that it was all talk.

367
00:19:13,440 --> 00:19:15,560
Speaker 4: And what really started to do it for me was

368
00:19:15,880 --> 00:19:18,160
Speaker 4: when we would have our breaks. We had homework during

369
00:19:18,200 --> 00:19:20,680
Speaker 4: the breaks, and by the breaks, I mean like when

370
00:19:20,680 --> 00:19:25,320
Speaker 4: we would have fifteen minutes, right. The homework was call

371
00:19:25,400 --> 00:19:30,359
Speaker 4: everybody you know and let them know that something amazing

372
00:19:30,480 --> 00:19:31,280
Speaker 4: is happening.

373
00:19:31,520 --> 00:19:35,800
Speaker 1: Oh no, I can't, and it say no like a

374
00:19:35,960 --> 00:19:40,080
Speaker 1: tactic to get other people involved, right, And you.

375
00:19:40,000 --> 00:19:41,720
Speaker 4: Know, I think I asked the question, like, well, what

376
00:19:41,800 --> 00:19:45,480
Speaker 4: if nothing amazing has happened to you yet? The answer

377
00:19:45,760 --> 00:19:49,800
Speaker 4: was call them anyway and let them know something amazing

378
00:19:49,880 --> 00:19:50,879
Speaker 4: is happening for you.

379
00:19:50,960 --> 00:19:53,000
Speaker 6: And as soon as you start to do that, something

380
00:19:53,040 --> 00:19:54,760
Speaker 6: amazing is going to happen for you.

381
00:19:54,880 --> 00:19:59,240
Speaker 4: Right. So I'm in my absolute mania of no sleep,

382
00:19:59,320 --> 00:20:02,240
Speaker 4: no food, no sunshine. Landmark Forum.

383
00:20:03,480 --> 00:20:04,720
Speaker 5: That should be their motto.

384
00:20:06,960 --> 00:20:09,359
Speaker 6: Shining seven times and now.

385
00:20:09,240 --> 00:20:11,040
Speaker 3: It's no food, no sleep.

386
00:20:13,240 --> 00:20:16,240
Speaker 4: And I'm talking to my boyfriend at the time, who

387
00:20:17,119 --> 00:20:19,920
Speaker 4: was such an amazing human being, and I'm telling him

388
00:20:19,920 --> 00:20:20,920
Speaker 4: this stuff and I'm like.

389
00:20:20,840 --> 00:20:24,720
Speaker 7: Hey, you know, something really amazing is happening to me,

390
00:20:25,080 --> 00:20:28,080
Speaker 7: and you know, I just want you to know that, like,

391
00:20:29,119 --> 00:20:33,080
Speaker 7: I'm on my way to becoming like a really great person.

392
00:20:33,520 --> 00:20:37,760
Speaker 4: And he was like, whoa Tosh, who the fuck is

393
00:20:37,880 --> 00:20:39,959
Speaker 4: telling you you're not a great person?

394
00:20:41,720 --> 00:20:46,159
Speaker 8: And I was like full on like tunnel vision out

395
00:20:46,880 --> 00:20:50,920
Speaker 8: into what I was actually doing and involved in veil

396
00:20:51,119 --> 00:20:52,320
Speaker 8: fully lifted.

397
00:20:51,960 --> 00:20:56,040
Speaker 4: And I was like, oh, I know exactly what is.

398
00:20:57,800 --> 00:21:02,440
Speaker 6: Right every one to know around me, which they did

399
00:21:02,480 --> 00:21:03,000
Speaker 6: not liked.

400
00:21:03,160 --> 00:21:06,520
Speaker 1: No, they don't like that is what did you say

401
00:21:06,560 --> 00:21:07,800
Speaker 1: to the people around you?

402
00:21:09,080 --> 00:21:11,399
Speaker 4: Everything that I'm kind of saying to you, like but

403
00:21:11,640 --> 00:21:16,480
Speaker 4: with a lot of social psychology jargon, this fucking breadwood

404
00:21:16,600 --> 00:21:17,680
Speaker 4: group think blah.

405
00:21:17,560 --> 00:21:20,359
Speaker 6: Blah blah blah. And you know, there were some people

406
00:21:20,400 --> 00:21:20,880
Speaker 6: that were like.

407
00:21:20,880 --> 00:21:24,000
Speaker 4: Oh my god, I totally thought that at the beginning.

408
00:21:24,359 --> 00:21:27,960
Speaker 4: But things that are amazing are happening in my life

409
00:21:28,000 --> 00:21:29,600
Speaker 4: right now, and these are the people that I had

410
00:21:29,600 --> 00:21:33,960
Speaker 4: connected with that were in like a very similar state

411
00:21:34,000 --> 00:21:38,560
Speaker 4: of desperation, you know. And I think that that's one

412
00:21:38,600 --> 00:21:41,880
Speaker 4: of the things, unless you're born into it, that cults

413
00:21:41,920 --> 00:21:48,800
Speaker 4: really prey off of, is like people's varying degrees of desperation,

414
00:21:49,000 --> 00:21:52,520
Speaker 4: whether it's financial, emotional, whatever.

415
00:21:53,040 --> 00:21:56,080
Speaker 1: Totally can I ask, I mean, you don't have to

416
00:21:56,080 --> 00:21:59,240
Speaker 1: go into any detail at all, but the just like

417
00:21:59,359 --> 00:22:02,560
Speaker 1: general of the kind of trauma that you were dealing with.

418
00:22:03,119 --> 00:22:07,040
Speaker 4: Yeah, while I was at Mills College, they had this

419
00:22:07,200 --> 00:22:12,120
Speaker 4: amazing health program there where they would pair you with therapists,

420
00:22:12,600 --> 00:22:14,520
Speaker 4: and so it was kind of like the first time

421
00:22:14,680 --> 00:22:20,320
Speaker 4: that I recognized that I had been raped a bunch

422
00:22:21,359 --> 00:22:24,760
Speaker 4: in my teenage years. But like in the world that

423
00:22:24,840 --> 00:22:28,040
Speaker 4: I grew up in in Venice, Santa Monica, I never

424
00:22:28,160 --> 00:22:31,239
Speaker 4: thought of it as rape because it was just what

425
00:22:31,400 --> 00:22:35,320
Speaker 4: was happening, right, But you know, with an adult brain

426
00:22:35,760 --> 00:22:38,480
Speaker 4: and with a little bit of education, realized like, oh,

427
00:22:38,560 --> 00:22:41,760
Speaker 4: that was just me being date raped over and over

428
00:22:41,760 --> 00:22:45,040
Speaker 4: and over again. So I started to do a little

429
00:22:45,040 --> 00:22:48,480
Speaker 4: bit of work in university with a therapist who God

430
00:22:48,720 --> 00:22:51,840
Speaker 4: bless her, soul was just getting her hours to become one,

431
00:22:52,560 --> 00:22:53,720
Speaker 4: and I don't think.

432
00:22:53,520 --> 00:22:55,359
Speaker 6: That that was the right place for me.

433
00:22:56,160 --> 00:22:58,760
Speaker 4: She was the right pair, like as far as doing

434
00:22:58,840 --> 00:23:00,680
Speaker 4: all of that discovery right.

435
00:23:01,440 --> 00:23:03,520
Speaker 6: And so that was.

436
00:23:03,480 --> 00:23:07,560
Speaker 4: A lot of the emotional desperation, you know, of like

437
00:23:07,920 --> 00:23:11,320
Speaker 4: recognizing that this was a real thing that I was

438
00:23:11,400 --> 00:23:16,040
Speaker 4: carrying around, right, you know, Yeah, there's other things there,

439
00:23:16,440 --> 00:23:19,680
Speaker 4: you know, trauma based, but that was the major thing

440
00:23:19,760 --> 00:23:20,399
Speaker 4: at the time.

441
00:23:20,680 --> 00:23:24,080
Speaker 3: Got it, Okay, thank you for sharing. Sorry, can relate.

442
00:23:24,960 --> 00:23:25,360
Speaker 4: Go on.

443
00:23:28,080 --> 00:23:30,399
Speaker 2: So you're like telling the people at Landmark, some of

444
00:23:30,440 --> 00:23:32,359
Speaker 2: these people like this is kind of fucked up, and

445
00:23:32,400 --> 00:23:35,280
Speaker 2: you can see it just through little jargon words, and

446
00:23:35,280 --> 00:23:37,960
Speaker 2: you've already studied some psychology, you've been in some therapy,

447
00:23:38,040 --> 00:23:39,320
Speaker 2: and you're just like I get it.

448
00:23:39,400 --> 00:23:41,840
Speaker 5: I see what this is. And I'm out.

449
00:23:42,160 --> 00:23:44,960
Speaker 2: And people around you are like, no, it's actually pretty cool,

450
00:23:45,080 --> 00:23:46,720
Speaker 2: and you're still like, no, it's not.

451
00:23:46,840 --> 00:23:50,760
Speaker 4: I'm like, listen, go for it, whatever, stay and I'm out.

452
00:23:50,840 --> 00:23:52,960
Speaker 5: You know, Okay, do you finish the weekend or do

453
00:23:53,040 --> 00:23:53,320
Speaker 5: you just.

454
00:23:53,359 --> 00:23:55,359
Speaker 6: No, no, no, I leave, I leave.

455
00:23:55,680 --> 00:23:58,760
Speaker 4: But like with a lot of what do they call them,

456
00:23:58,800 --> 00:24:02,640
Speaker 4: It wasn't like mentor anyway whatever they're like coaches or

457
00:24:03,240 --> 00:24:06,800
Speaker 4: leaders or whatever trailing behind me to try to like

458
00:24:06,920 --> 00:24:09,800
Speaker 4: talk me out of it, you know. And wow, like

459
00:24:09,880 --> 00:24:13,399
Speaker 4: I had to be very very forceful in order to

460
00:24:14,040 --> 00:24:17,040
Speaker 4: just clean break, So I.

461
00:24:17,040 --> 00:24:19,000
Speaker 2: Might have been able to do that even if I

462
00:24:19,040 --> 00:24:20,560
Speaker 2: had your realization, I would have.

463
00:24:20,480 --> 00:24:21,680
Speaker 5: Been talked back into it.

464
00:24:22,000 --> 00:24:24,160
Speaker 2: And I think that's just a good point of like

465
00:24:24,760 --> 00:24:27,520
Speaker 2: how strong your personality is and how lucky it is

466
00:24:27,560 --> 00:24:28,720
Speaker 2: that you got it.

467
00:24:29,040 --> 00:24:33,240
Speaker 4: I mean, that's so generous of you to say thank you.

468
00:24:33,840 --> 00:24:38,040
Speaker 4: But then after my experience work, I was in an

469
00:24:38,080 --> 00:24:44,359
Speaker 4: actual cult for four years, so like thank you and.

470
00:24:43,400 --> 00:24:46,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, yeah, I love that though, because I feel

471
00:24:46,160 --> 00:24:49,320
Speaker 1: like it's really really common to like find that one's

472
00:24:49,359 --> 00:24:52,600
Speaker 1: not working and then just immediately jump right into another one.

473
00:24:52,640 --> 00:24:57,480
Speaker 4: Absolutely because whatever led me there initially, those are things

474
00:24:57,480 --> 00:25:01,439
Speaker 4: that I was still holding that hadn't been processed, you know,

475
00:25:01,640 --> 00:25:07,280
Speaker 4: and like I needed therapy. And when I found what

476
00:25:07,800 --> 00:25:12,879
Speaker 4: now I understand was a therapy cult, I felt like

477
00:25:13,000 --> 00:25:17,760
Speaker 4: I'd finally found the answer like what I've been looking

478
00:25:17,880 --> 00:25:19,480
Speaker 4: for for most of my life.

479
00:25:19,800 --> 00:25:22,320
Speaker 3: Wow, So tell us how you found them.

480
00:25:22,680 --> 00:25:25,679
Speaker 4: It was through a mutual friend kind of a new friend,

481
00:25:26,000 --> 00:25:30,240
Speaker 4: and she started going to these meetings before me, and

482
00:25:30,400 --> 00:25:33,040
Speaker 4: every time she would come back, she would say, Natasha,

483
00:25:33,600 --> 00:25:36,200
Speaker 4: you have to come to the Intimacy Project. These people

484
00:25:36,400 --> 00:25:39,919
Speaker 4: sound like you, like you belong here, you know. So

485
00:25:40,320 --> 00:25:46,359
Speaker 4: again super skeptical, you know, psychology background, whatever intelligence, it

486
00:25:46,400 --> 00:25:49,760
Speaker 4: turns out doesn't save you at all from joining cult.

487
00:25:49,840 --> 00:25:50,480
Speaker 4: It really doesn't.

488
00:25:51,400 --> 00:25:53,040
Speaker 3: Yeah.

489
00:25:54,320 --> 00:25:57,959
Speaker 4: I also have a good degree of curiosity right that

490
00:25:58,000 --> 00:26:00,359
Speaker 4: I carry around. So I was like, all right, you know,

491
00:26:00,400 --> 00:26:03,720
Speaker 4: I'll go check it out. And I met His name

492
00:26:03,800 --> 00:26:10,280
Speaker 4: was Stan and he was the quintessential charismatic leader. And

493
00:26:10,359 --> 00:26:12,800
Speaker 4: I met him at the first meeting, and he's talking

494
00:26:12,880 --> 00:26:15,760
Speaker 4: about things like social conditioning.

495
00:26:16,119 --> 00:26:17,480
Speaker 6: You're not your mind.

496
00:26:18,000 --> 00:26:21,359
Speaker 4: There's a true nature inside of you, your core erotic nature,

497
00:26:21,440 --> 00:26:24,560
Speaker 4: but you can't get to it because you've been conditioned

498
00:26:24,720 --> 00:26:28,000
Speaker 4: to live out the invention of humanity held.

499
00:26:27,800 --> 00:26:29,719
Speaker 3: On your core erotic nature.

500
00:26:30,240 --> 00:26:33,720
Speaker 4: Yeah, so that's not his concept. I don't actually know

501
00:26:33,760 --> 00:26:34,760
Speaker 4: whose concept it is.

502
00:26:34,840 --> 00:26:35,920
Speaker 6: But he's the sort of.

503
00:26:36,600 --> 00:26:39,720
Speaker 4: Really he was the sort of really well.

504
00:26:39,359 --> 00:26:43,640
Speaker 2: Read Yeah it sounds like like Tantric Fridian or something.

505
00:26:43,760 --> 00:26:47,480
Speaker 6: Something like that. He was a very well read sociopath.

506
00:26:47,640 --> 00:26:51,600
Speaker 4: So okay. He did was he would take all of

507
00:26:51,640 --> 00:26:55,600
Speaker 4: these different ideas whether it was from like Carlos Castaneda

508
00:26:55,760 --> 00:26:59,760
Speaker 4: or young or whoever, and sort of put them all

509
00:27:00,080 --> 00:27:05,439
Speaker 4: together to create a lexicon and a method, we'll say,

510
00:27:05,600 --> 00:27:12,800
Speaker 4: of helping people right release their social conditioning, erase their

511
00:27:12,840 --> 00:27:17,359
Speaker 4: personal history, and then live from their cororotic nature. And

512
00:27:17,400 --> 00:27:22,840
Speaker 4: that wasn't exactly a sexual thing, huh. It wasn't exactly

513
00:27:23,000 --> 00:27:26,720
Speaker 4: not a sexual thing, but like one's core erotic nature

514
00:27:26,800 --> 00:27:32,320
Speaker 4: is really one's essence. And whoever is the psychologist that

515
00:27:32,680 --> 00:27:33,679
Speaker 4: you know, coin that.

516
00:27:33,640 --> 00:27:36,000
Speaker 3: Term, it sounds very freud in.

517
00:27:37,560 --> 00:27:37,880
Speaker 4: I don't.

518
00:27:37,920 --> 00:27:39,800
Speaker 6: Yeah, it was, though, but you might be right.

519
00:27:39,840 --> 00:27:41,800
Speaker 5: He would just said we are whole Psyche is based

520
00:27:41,800 --> 00:27:42,280
Speaker 5: around sex.

521
00:27:42,359 --> 00:27:42,959
Speaker 3: Sexuality.

522
00:27:43,040 --> 00:27:47,000
Speaker 4: Yeah, but anyway, within this context, the way Stan reframed

523
00:27:47,040 --> 00:27:51,040
Speaker 4: it was like, it doesn't exclude sex, but it's not

524
00:27:51,160 --> 00:27:51,760
Speaker 4: our essence.

525
00:27:52,320 --> 00:27:52,600
Speaker 3: Cool.

526
00:27:52,720 --> 00:27:56,520
Speaker 4: Okay. So anyway, when he was saying all of this stuff,

527
00:27:57,080 --> 00:28:01,399
Speaker 4: it really spoke to me. And and what also spoke

528
00:28:01,440 --> 00:28:05,120
Speaker 4: to me was the really intense feeling that I had

529
00:28:05,160 --> 00:28:06,320
Speaker 4: in my gut to run.

530
00:28:07,560 --> 00:28:09,440
Speaker 6: But in this meeting, which was.

531
00:28:09,359 --> 00:28:13,760
Speaker 4: About six hours long, one of the things that we

532
00:28:13,880 --> 00:28:17,040
Speaker 4: talked about was being really intimate with one another and

533
00:28:17,160 --> 00:28:20,280
Speaker 4: really honest and open. And I am just that way

534
00:28:20,840 --> 00:28:24,680
Speaker 4: by nature. So when I started feeling all of these things,

535
00:28:25,119 --> 00:28:28,480
Speaker 4: I spoke up about them, you know, and I said, look,

536
00:28:28,600 --> 00:28:30,760
Speaker 4: I have to be really honest with you. I've got

537
00:28:30,760 --> 00:28:33,439
Speaker 4: one foot out of the fucking door here, you know,

538
00:28:33,560 --> 00:28:37,360
Speaker 4: and the other foot is here listening and getting its

539
00:28:37,440 --> 00:28:38,400
Speaker 4: little mind blown.

540
00:28:39,520 --> 00:28:42,560
Speaker 6: And there was an immediate.

541
00:28:42,120 --> 00:28:45,959
Speaker 4: Like at least what I felt or thought or imagined,

542
00:28:46,120 --> 00:28:50,680
Speaker 4: connection between the two of us, in the sense that like,

543
00:28:51,160 --> 00:28:53,760
Speaker 4: I think now that I'm far away from it. It

544
00:28:53,880 --> 00:28:58,200
Speaker 4: was like the sociopath recognizing the mpath and being like, oh,

545
00:28:58,240 --> 00:29:01,840
Speaker 4: I can work with this, you know. And from that

546
00:29:02,040 --> 00:29:07,560
Speaker 4: moment on, his response to that was like, listen, I

547
00:29:07,680 --> 00:29:12,320
Speaker 4: understand that you're afraid, and I want you to know

548
00:29:12,400 --> 00:29:17,520
Speaker 4: that that's your conditioning asking you to get right right.

549
00:29:19,240 --> 00:29:22,240
Speaker 1: So you're in a group setting when you like form

550
00:29:22,280 --> 00:29:23,200
Speaker 1: this connection with him.

551
00:29:23,600 --> 00:29:26,240
Speaker 4: Yeah. So at this point, these were like early early

552
00:29:26,360 --> 00:29:30,720
Speaker 4: days of intimacy project. It had just basically been formed.

553
00:29:31,440 --> 00:29:35,040
Speaker 4: We're still like deciding what it's actually going to be.

554
00:29:35,160 --> 00:29:37,640
Speaker 4: And at that point it wasn't a we situation. That

555
00:29:37,760 --> 00:29:40,520
Speaker 4: was my first meeting, but there had only been like

556
00:29:40,600 --> 00:29:44,160
Speaker 4: two meetings, so oh wow, And at that point I

557
00:29:44,160 --> 00:29:49,200
Speaker 4: think there was about fifteen or so people, and once

558
00:29:49,880 --> 00:29:54,600
Speaker 4: I committed wholeheartedly, which was actually in that meeting, to

559
00:29:55,280 --> 00:30:01,520
Speaker 4: involving myself in whatever capacity, I think because I also

560
00:30:01,640 --> 00:30:05,360
Speaker 4: can be like, really, for lack of a fucking better term, charismatic,

561
00:30:05,840 --> 00:30:08,160
Speaker 4: I think it had a real impact on some of

562
00:30:08,200 --> 00:30:12,720
Speaker 4: the other people that I knew who were already there.

563
00:30:13,360 --> 00:30:17,920
Speaker 4: And you know, there was this establishment, whether it was

564
00:30:18,000 --> 00:30:21,080
Speaker 4: that meeting or the meeting after, of like a core

565
00:30:21,160 --> 00:30:24,280
Speaker 4: group of people who were dedicated to quote unquote the

566
00:30:24,520 --> 00:30:29,440
Speaker 4: work right, which became another thing that was thrown around.

567
00:30:29,400 --> 00:30:34,400
Speaker 1: A lot, very commonly used term the work. It's always

568
00:30:34,440 --> 00:30:34,880
Speaker 1: the work.

569
00:30:35,320 --> 00:30:37,640
Speaker 3: Yeah, with a capital W.

570
00:30:38,320 --> 00:30:40,520
Speaker 5: Yeah. What did he look like? What was he like?

571
00:30:41,080 --> 00:30:44,120
Speaker 4: Oh God, I just want to say, I have this

572
00:30:44,160 --> 00:30:46,760
Speaker 4: thing inside of me that anytime I talk about him,

573
00:30:46,920 --> 00:30:50,040
Speaker 4: I'm so like angry. I never want to talk about it.

574
00:30:50,040 --> 00:30:54,160
Speaker 4: I want him to fucking fade into obscurity. But that's

575
00:30:54,200 --> 00:30:57,200
Speaker 4: not going to happen, So here we go. He looked

576
00:30:57,280 --> 00:31:01,800
Speaker 4: like Santa Claus. He was like a fat, old white

577
00:31:01,880 --> 00:31:04,640
Speaker 4: man from Tennessee. So he had a bit of a

578
00:31:04,680 --> 00:31:07,240
Speaker 4: Southern twing, but not super strong because he had lived

579
00:31:07,240 --> 00:31:12,200
Speaker 4: in la for decades. But yeah, that's what he looks like.

580
00:31:12,440 --> 00:31:13,480
Speaker 3: I am actually shocked.

581
00:31:13,520 --> 00:31:16,120
Speaker 1: I for sure was picturing like a thirty five year

582
00:31:16,160 --> 00:31:19,120
Speaker 1: old guy, you know, with some handsome charm.

583
00:31:19,200 --> 00:31:21,040
Speaker 3: This is we're talking Santa Claus.

584
00:31:20,800 --> 00:31:25,920
Speaker 4: Here Sena Clause like white hair, full white beard, big belly,

585
00:31:26,880 --> 00:31:32,240
Speaker 4: like very kind of grandfather energy, you know, very like

586
00:31:32,480 --> 00:31:34,960
Speaker 4: southern preacher, grandfather energy.

587
00:31:35,560 --> 00:31:38,440
Speaker 1: Did he have any credentials that you found compelling or

588
00:31:38,560 --> 00:31:39,600
Speaker 1: was it just like a guy.

589
00:31:40,000 --> 00:31:44,600
Speaker 4: I think all his credentials were fucking bullshit. M But

590
00:31:44,880 --> 00:31:48,520
Speaker 4: he liked to say that he had a lot of credentials.

591
00:31:48,600 --> 00:31:52,680
Speaker 4: He went to art school, he went to theology school,

592
00:31:52,680 --> 00:31:55,840
Speaker 4: so he got his like degree in theology and was

593
00:31:55,840 --> 00:31:59,440
Speaker 4: a preacher for a while. He said he went to

594
00:31:59,600 --> 00:32:04,000
Speaker 4: school for psychology, but I don't think that was actually true.

595
00:32:06,120 --> 00:32:09,239
Speaker 4: He said he had a lot of degrees. And then

596
00:32:09,320 --> 00:32:11,600
Speaker 4: the more I knew him, as the years went by,

597
00:32:11,880 --> 00:32:14,520
Speaker 4: it started to get qualified by like, oh, well, I

598
00:32:14,600 --> 00:32:18,080
Speaker 4: went to Shanart, but like I left after a couple

599
00:32:18,040 --> 00:32:20,680
Speaker 4: of years or whatever, or you know, I worked with

600
00:32:20,800 --> 00:32:25,600
Speaker 4: these psychologists or I used to teach psychology at whatever

601
00:32:25,640 --> 00:32:29,640
Speaker 4: the friggin' school in Pasadena is. But he never had

602
00:32:30,080 --> 00:32:35,120
Speaker 4: either a teaching credential or a degree in psychology, so like, hmmm,

603
00:32:35,640 --> 00:32:38,360
Speaker 4: the closer I got to him, the more I learned

604
00:32:38,440 --> 00:32:43,400
Speaker 4: what the truth was. But initially it was framed as

605
00:32:43,520 --> 00:32:48,600
Speaker 4: though these were actual credentials that he had, right, right,

606
00:32:48,960 --> 00:32:52,280
Speaker 4: And I think that he did that on purpose, because

607
00:32:52,320 --> 00:32:54,920
Speaker 4: if you ever called him on it, he would claim, well,

608
00:32:54,960 --> 00:32:56,920
Speaker 4: I never said that I had it, that I was

609
00:32:56,920 --> 00:33:01,480
Speaker 4: a therapist, or I never said that this the other Like,

610
00:33:01,680 --> 00:33:05,480
Speaker 4: just talking to him, there was no mistaking that he

611
00:33:05,680 --> 00:33:08,800
Speaker 4: was the smartest person in the room, right, Like one

612
00:33:08,840 --> 00:33:11,760
Speaker 4: of the most well read human beings I've ever met

613
00:33:11,760 --> 00:33:15,560
Speaker 4: in my life, could talk about literally any subject to

614
00:33:16,120 --> 00:33:17,280
Speaker 4: an expert degree.

615
00:33:17,680 --> 00:33:18,160
Speaker 5: Wow.

616
00:33:18,520 --> 00:33:21,520
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, and that was impressive enough for me, honestly.

617
00:33:21,720 --> 00:33:24,600
Speaker 1: Oh, I mean, I'd be sold just from that alone.

618
00:33:24,640 --> 00:33:26,760
Speaker 1: I'm just like drawn to people who know more than

619
00:33:26,840 --> 00:33:34,800
Speaker 1: I do know who smart I like smart. I just

620
00:33:34,800 --> 00:33:37,480
Speaker 1: want to note something that comes up a lot, which

621
00:33:37,520 --> 00:33:41,240
Speaker 1: is that like the feeling that you want to run away,

622
00:33:42,240 --> 00:33:45,680
Speaker 1: which is something we so often mistake for not being

623
00:33:45,720 --> 00:33:48,680
Speaker 1: evolved enough, or like running away from something that's good

624
00:33:48,720 --> 00:33:52,200
Speaker 1: for us, and a predator can see that and pray

625
00:33:52,360 --> 00:33:55,160
Speaker 1: on that. That's what they all fucking do and it's

626
00:33:55,200 --> 00:33:57,920
Speaker 1: such a good tactic because like for me, and I'm

627
00:33:58,000 --> 00:34:00,000
Speaker 1: guessing for you, like I'm someone who wants to challenge

628
00:34:00,160 --> 00:34:03,480
Speaker 1: myself absolutely and like run out of my comfort zone

629
00:34:03,520 --> 00:34:06,960
Speaker 1: and into things that scare me. But sometimes that little

630
00:34:07,040 --> 00:34:09,200
Speaker 1: voice is telling you to run away because you actually

631
00:34:09,239 --> 00:34:11,560
Speaker 1: should run away, and not just because you're like afraid

632
00:34:11,600 --> 00:34:13,400
Speaker 1: of it, you know, yep.

633
00:34:13,320 --> 00:34:20,239
Speaker 4: Yes, And if you haven't done trauma work to discover

634
00:34:20,800 --> 00:34:24,200
Speaker 4: what it is inside of you that runs away from

635
00:34:24,200 --> 00:34:27,360
Speaker 4: a challenge, you're not going to be able to discern

636
00:34:28,040 --> 00:34:32,080
Speaker 4: as clearly between like an instinctual run and like a

637
00:34:32,160 --> 00:34:33,520
Speaker 4: trauma response run.

638
00:34:33,960 --> 00:34:37,160
Speaker 3: Right, that's a really good point. Yeah, no, I think

639
00:34:37,200 --> 00:34:38,080
Speaker 3: that's really true.

640
00:34:38,360 --> 00:34:41,520
Speaker 4: But yeah, I mean a sociopath looks for that and

641
00:34:41,600 --> 00:34:42,520
Speaker 4: praise on that.

642
00:34:43,120 --> 00:34:47,080
Speaker 2: I actually just to interject something really quickly. I'm experiencing

643
00:34:47,120 --> 00:34:50,600
Speaker 2: the most interesting version of that right now, where my

644
00:34:50,680 --> 00:34:53,560
Speaker 2: girlfriend started talking to this guy who's a pretty big

645
00:34:53,600 --> 00:34:56,000
Speaker 2: stand up comedian, and you can tell he's just an

646
00:34:56,080 --> 00:34:59,960
Speaker 2: absolute sociopath. But at first he came out looking really smart,

647
00:35:00,200 --> 00:35:03,640
Speaker 2: cool and great, and he came and stayed with her

648
00:35:03,719 --> 00:35:05,719
Speaker 2: this last week and she was just like.

649
00:35:05,800 --> 00:35:07,120
Speaker 5: No, I see through it.

650
00:35:07,320 --> 00:35:10,440
Speaker 2: Get the fuck out he has gone so insane he

651
00:35:10,480 --> 00:35:15,719
Speaker 2: has sent her novels like mmm, he cannot believe a

652
00:35:15,760 --> 00:35:18,479
Speaker 2: woman has not fallen for it, and he's losing his shit.

653
00:35:18,680 --> 00:35:20,880
Speaker 3: Wow, comletely.

654
00:35:21,400 --> 00:35:23,200
Speaker 5: And I wish I could tell everybody who it is, but.

655
00:35:23,239 --> 00:35:25,160
Speaker 3: Please text us the name of who it is so

656
00:35:25,239 --> 00:35:26,400
Speaker 3: that we know, at least I'm.

657
00:35:26,320 --> 00:35:26,920
Speaker 5: Dying to know.

658
00:35:29,160 --> 00:35:32,680
Speaker 2: But it's just interesting to see that failing because he's

659
00:35:32,719 --> 00:35:36,360
Speaker 2: telling her, you don't like me right now because you're scared.

660
00:35:36,680 --> 00:35:39,759
Speaker 2: I'm bringing up all your intimacy issues and I'm here

661
00:35:39,800 --> 00:35:41,640
Speaker 2: to work them out with you, like we're meant to

662
00:35:41,640 --> 00:35:43,680
Speaker 2: be together, and she's like lol.

663
00:35:44,840 --> 00:35:47,040
Speaker 1: I literally had an ex boyfriend tell me that he

664
00:35:47,120 --> 00:35:50,640
Speaker 1: thought that my lack of attraction to him was because

665
00:35:50,680 --> 00:35:53,680
Speaker 1: I was afraid of intimacy. And fortunately he was not

666
00:35:53,760 --> 00:35:56,520
Speaker 1: a sociopath, and I think he really was well intentioned.

667
00:35:56,560 --> 00:35:57,799
Speaker 1: But I ended up in a year and a half

668
00:35:57,880 --> 00:36:00,400
Speaker 1: relationship with someone I did not want to up with

669
00:36:00,480 --> 00:36:02,920
Speaker 1: at all because he because he convinced me that that

670
00:36:03,000 --> 00:36:03,719
Speaker 1: was a possibility.

671
00:36:04,120 --> 00:36:09,960
Speaker 4: Wuck. Okay, so yeah wow. Also, I think sociopathy is

672
00:36:10,360 --> 00:36:13,640
Speaker 4: on a spectrum here for sure, for sure, a lot

673
00:36:13,640 --> 00:36:14,960
Speaker 4: of different versions.

674
00:36:15,000 --> 00:36:17,120
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, oh true, true, now, but this guy was

675
00:36:17,160 --> 00:36:20,120
Speaker 1: like crazy empathetic and was just desperately was just desperate.

676
00:36:20,120 --> 00:36:23,760
Speaker 1: But anyway, so after this first meeting, what happens.

677
00:36:24,239 --> 00:36:28,480
Speaker 4: So we continue to meet, and I think initially it

678
00:36:28,760 --> 00:36:32,799
Speaker 4: was every Sunday, and then I think we moved on

679
00:36:33,520 --> 00:36:39,800
Speaker 4: to every other Sunday. And then, you know, I'm a

680
00:36:39,960 --> 00:36:46,719
Speaker 4: pretty historically pretty zealous person, so I pushed for more meetings.

681
00:36:47,200 --> 00:36:49,400
Speaker 4: I pushed to go back to every Sunday, and I

682
00:36:49,440 --> 00:36:51,960
Speaker 4: also pushed to like, let's do Thursdays.

683
00:36:52,040 --> 00:36:52,799
Speaker 6: Let's do it.

684
00:36:54,040 --> 00:36:58,480
Speaker 4: So I started meeting with you privately Tuesday mornings in

685
00:36:58,520 --> 00:37:04,200
Speaker 4: addition to the group. And that was an interesting experience

686
00:37:04,560 --> 00:37:08,200
Speaker 4: because you know, the stand that I would get privately

687
00:37:08,320 --> 00:37:11,319
Speaker 4: on Tuesday mornings and the stand that I would get

688
00:37:11,360 --> 00:37:15,200
Speaker 4: in the group sometimes were really two different people. Oh wow,

689
00:37:15,480 --> 00:37:17,280
Speaker 4: to the point where I would look at him sometimes

690
00:37:17,320 --> 00:37:19,279
Speaker 4: in the group when he was talking to me, and

691
00:37:19,320 --> 00:37:21,759
Speaker 4: I would want to be like, hey, remember it's me,

692
00:37:22,120 --> 00:37:26,879
Speaker 4: Like we just talked about literally this on Tuesday, and

693
00:37:26,920 --> 00:37:28,239
Speaker 4: you told me to bring it up in the group,

694
00:37:28,320 --> 00:37:30,520
Speaker 4: and now you're shaming me for bringing it up in

695
00:37:30,520 --> 00:37:31,680
Speaker 4: the group, Like I'm whoa.

696
00:37:33,320 --> 00:37:36,399
Speaker 1: So your private meetings were like therapy sessions, Like what

697
00:37:36,440 --> 00:37:37,040
Speaker 1: was the vibe?

698
00:37:37,239 --> 00:37:38,280
Speaker 6: Yeah, that was sort of the vibe.

699
00:37:38,280 --> 00:37:44,279
Speaker 4: He had a lot of clients, like personal clients, whether coaching, right,

700
00:37:44,360 --> 00:37:46,840
Speaker 4: whether they were in the group or not. And actually

701
00:37:46,880 --> 00:37:50,719
Speaker 4: he made most of his money meeting with people privately,

702
00:37:50,920 --> 00:37:54,160
Speaker 4: m right, kind of word of mouth sort of situation

703
00:37:54,239 --> 00:38:00,000
Speaker 4: because again no credentials, right, and so yeah, they were

704
00:38:00,120 --> 00:38:03,719
Speaker 4: sort of therapy sessions, but you know, because of the

705
00:38:03,760 --> 00:38:06,040
Speaker 4: work we were doing in the group, they were specifically

706
00:38:06,080 --> 00:38:12,520
Speaker 4: geared toward this concept called erasing your personal history, which

707
00:38:12,560 --> 00:38:16,920
Speaker 4: is like a very Carlos Castaneda sort of concept. And

708
00:38:17,000 --> 00:38:19,080
Speaker 4: at that point I had already read like a bunch

709
00:38:19,120 --> 00:38:22,919
Speaker 4: of Castinaeda, super intrigued and like you know, spent most

710
00:38:22,920 --> 00:38:27,200
Speaker 4: of my teenage and early adult years reading Carlos Casteneda

711
00:38:27,239 --> 00:38:33,919
Speaker 4: and like really looking for that Don Juan, like Don

712
00:38:34,000 --> 00:38:37,960
Speaker 4: Gennaro character in my life that could be my teacher.

713
00:38:38,080 --> 00:38:41,360
Speaker 4: And when I found Stan who was so well versed

714
00:38:41,360 --> 00:38:44,480
Speaker 4: in that, who used to like claim that he was

715
00:38:44,560 --> 00:38:49,560
Speaker 4: somehow related to that school of thought, I was like, great,

716
00:38:50,320 --> 00:38:51,520
Speaker 4: sounds that's it.

717
00:38:51,640 --> 00:38:53,279
Speaker 6: I don't I don't even need to know.

718
00:38:53,200 --> 00:38:55,080
Speaker 4: How, Like you're the one for me?

719
00:38:55,400 --> 00:38:57,000
Speaker 3: Who is Carlos Castaneda.

720
00:38:57,080 --> 00:39:04,720
Speaker 4: Carlos Castaneda was an andthropologist I believe, who did work

721
00:39:04,920 --> 00:39:09,560
Speaker 4: with the Yaqui Indians. I'm pretty sure I'm getting that right.

722
00:39:10,760 --> 00:39:14,680
Speaker 4: And he wrote a series of books about his time

723
00:39:15,040 --> 00:39:20,799
Speaker 4: specifically with this character called Don Juan and this other

724
00:39:20,920 --> 00:39:24,680
Speaker 4: character called Don Gennaro, where they were basically like teaching

725
00:39:24,760 --> 00:39:30,160
Speaker 4: him how to have a relationship with power. So there's

726
00:39:30,280 --> 00:39:34,320
Speaker 4: this series of books out there about his time with them. Okay.

727
00:39:34,400 --> 00:39:37,040
Speaker 2: All I remember from those books is like him falling

728
00:39:37,080 --> 00:39:39,520
Speaker 2: asleep and waking up next to a coyote and him

729
00:39:39,520 --> 00:39:41,359
Speaker 2: being like, I'm so peaceful now.

730
00:39:41,360 --> 00:39:42,400
Speaker 5: The coyotes are.

731
00:39:42,280 --> 00:39:44,040
Speaker 2: Like taking me in or something, and I was like,

732
00:39:44,120 --> 00:39:45,840
Speaker 2: oh my god, I want to do that.

733
00:39:47,680 --> 00:39:50,080
Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean, I think he initially went and tried

734
00:39:50,120 --> 00:39:53,600
Speaker 4: to find these people because coming from an anthropology background, like,

735
00:39:53,640 --> 00:39:57,719
Speaker 4: he was really curious about their work with peyote, this

736
00:39:58,000 --> 00:40:03,520
Speaker 4: tribe of indigenous folks, And when he found them, they

737
00:40:03,680 --> 00:40:06,920
Speaker 4: were saying like, there's absolutely no way we're going to

738
00:40:07,000 --> 00:40:12,360
Speaker 4: do peyote ceremony with you. You're in moron, but you

739
00:40:12,400 --> 00:40:16,960
Speaker 4: know we're willing to teach you just how much of

740
00:40:17,000 --> 00:40:21,480
Speaker 4: a fucking moron you are without drugs, you know, so

741
00:40:21,640 --> 00:40:24,759
Speaker 4: he started this whole thing with them. A lot of

742
00:40:24,800 --> 00:40:28,440
Speaker 4: the stuff that's come out about Carlos Castaneda after his

743
00:40:28,600 --> 00:40:32,520
Speaker 4: death like really calls into question a lot of what

744
00:40:32,840 --> 00:40:36,840
Speaker 4: his version of this story was, primarily from some of

745
00:40:36,840 --> 00:40:40,200
Speaker 4: the women who were involved in these groups and them

746
00:40:40,280 --> 00:40:42,840
Speaker 4: kind of just pulling out being like, ah, I'm pretty

747
00:40:42,880 --> 00:40:45,080
Speaker 4: sure it was all bullshit or a lot of it was.

748
00:40:45,360 --> 00:40:50,160
Speaker 4: And you know, that was a cult in its own right. Interesting,

749
00:40:50,239 --> 00:40:53,880
Speaker 4: you know, but these books, to my understanding, got like

750
00:40:54,040 --> 00:40:58,440
Speaker 4: really popular with the like baby Boom generation, you know,

751
00:40:58,760 --> 00:41:02,120
Speaker 4: or like the Quintus Metal beginning the journey for like

752
00:41:02,200 --> 00:41:03,920
Speaker 4: self actualization.

753
00:41:03,800 --> 00:41:07,040
Speaker 3: Right right, all right, So this guy what's his name again,

754
00:41:07,480 --> 00:41:08,600
Speaker 3: San Stan?

755
00:41:08,800 --> 00:41:15,240
Speaker 1: Of course Stan? So Stan is your Carlos Castaneda. He's here, Yeah, okay,

756
00:41:15,800 --> 00:41:24,000
Speaker 1: he's my don one, like right, okay, yeah, go on.

757
00:41:24,440 --> 00:41:30,560
Speaker 4: So anything that he said about me, I believed him,

758
00:41:30,920 --> 00:41:34,680
Speaker 4: and you know, like a lot of sociopaths, he was

759
00:41:35,239 --> 00:41:39,120
Speaker 4: a really fucking good listener, and he was a really

760
00:41:39,160 --> 00:41:43,160
Speaker 4: good learner, and he learned things about me because I

761
00:41:43,239 --> 00:41:46,719
Speaker 4: was also really candid about shit. I would tell him

762
00:41:46,760 --> 00:41:50,920
Speaker 4: anything and everything, and he really strategically listened and then

763
00:41:51,000 --> 00:41:56,799
Speaker 4: really strategically used everything that I said against me, right right.

764
00:41:56,880 --> 00:41:59,640
Speaker 4: But at the time, I thought, well, this is great

765
00:41:59,719 --> 00:42:04,400
Speaker 4: because because I'm breaking down this like conditioned version of

766
00:42:04,520 --> 00:42:11,520
Speaker 4: Natasha in order to emerge as the true essence of me,

767
00:42:11,960 --> 00:42:15,480
Speaker 4: you know. And so these meetings were brutal. I would

768
00:42:15,520 --> 00:42:18,600
Speaker 4: like drive out to Pasadena, be there by seven thirty

769
00:42:18,640 --> 00:42:21,560
Speaker 4: in the morning, and sometimes I would be out there

770
00:42:21,600 --> 00:42:26,240
Speaker 4: with him until like noon. O wow, calling my fucking

771
00:42:26,320 --> 00:42:30,960
Speaker 4: eyes out the whole time. Him a horrendous person, I am, but.

772
00:42:30,880 --> 00:42:33,359
Speaker 3: Oh my god, be can fix it.

773
00:42:33,480 --> 00:42:35,480
Speaker 4: We're here to do the work, you know. And then

774
00:42:35,520 --> 00:42:38,200
Speaker 4: I would do this again on Sundays. And then we

775
00:42:38,239 --> 00:42:42,719
Speaker 4: started this like annex meeting in Pasadena at this French

776
00:42:43,120 --> 00:42:46,560
Speaker 4: restaurant where we would all basically just get drunk and

777
00:42:46,719 --> 00:42:50,440
Speaker 4: do a version of this because he was also spoiler alert,

778
00:42:50,719 --> 00:42:52,400
Speaker 4: an alcoholic.

779
00:42:51,920 --> 00:42:57,000
Speaker 3: A what a combo?

780
00:42:57,719 --> 00:43:04,480
Speaker 2: So yeah, fuck, okay, okay, So does he ever try

781
00:43:04,560 --> 00:43:06,399
Speaker 2: hitting on you or anything like that?

782
00:43:06,760 --> 00:43:07,040
Speaker 4: Okay?

783
00:43:07,400 --> 00:43:09,360
Speaker 6: Absolutely not? So okay.

784
00:43:09,600 --> 00:43:12,600
Speaker 4: You know, I'm sure you guys have encountered this a

785
00:43:12,680 --> 00:43:16,400
Speaker 4: million times over doing the podcast. But you know, sex

786
00:43:16,480 --> 00:43:20,839
Speaker 4: is one of the ways that cults sort of keep

787
00:43:20,960 --> 00:43:24,759
Speaker 4: control over you and whether it's specifically a sex cult

788
00:43:24,800 --> 00:43:27,879
Speaker 4: where you're having sex with the leader or being told

789
00:43:27,920 --> 00:43:29,520
Speaker 4: who to have sex with and who not to have

790
00:43:29,560 --> 00:43:34,640
Speaker 4: sex with. There's also like the abstinence side of that.

791
00:43:35,239 --> 00:43:38,880
Speaker 6: So he really preached.

792
00:43:38,680 --> 00:43:47,240
Speaker 4: Abstinence as a way of maintaining your energy. And again

793
00:43:47,360 --> 00:43:51,680
Speaker 4: another Carlos Castaneda term like closing the hole in your

794
00:43:51,840 --> 00:43:57,839
Speaker 4: dreaming womb. And this is like one of your creative center, right,

795
00:43:58,200 --> 00:44:02,799
Speaker 4: how you can envision and the world outside of you,

796
00:44:02,880 --> 00:44:05,000
Speaker 4: how you can create the world outside of you.

797
00:44:05,600 --> 00:44:07,720
Speaker 3: So sexuality is a whole.

798
00:44:08,160 --> 00:44:11,359
Speaker 4: What do you mean you said, closing the hole in

799
00:44:11,400 --> 00:44:13,439
Speaker 4: your dreaming womb.

800
00:44:13,600 --> 00:44:17,040
Speaker 5: Like the portal kind of right, like the void?

801
00:44:17,640 --> 00:44:19,720
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, it was such a whore.

802
00:44:20,560 --> 00:44:22,960
Speaker 6: I had huge void and.

803
00:44:22,840 --> 00:44:26,640
Speaker 4: Because of the sexual trauma et sip okay. So he

804
00:44:26,719 --> 00:44:30,600
Speaker 4: really preached abstinence kind of to all of us, mineus,

805
00:44:30,680 --> 00:44:33,319
Speaker 4: the kind of definitely to all of us. I was

806
00:44:33,360 --> 00:44:38,920
Speaker 4: not very good at that one, but it was like

807
00:44:39,560 --> 00:44:44,319
Speaker 4: the prescription, We'll say to how I could kind of

808
00:44:44,360 --> 00:44:46,719
Speaker 4: get right with the world and stop blowing out my

809
00:44:46,960 --> 00:44:50,240
Speaker 4: energy all over town his words, Oh my god.

810
00:44:50,400 --> 00:44:52,319
Speaker 5: It But then you.

811
00:44:52,280 --> 00:44:54,319
Speaker 6: Know, because I am the way that I am, and

812
00:44:54,400 --> 00:44:55,040
Speaker 6: I'm a like.

813
00:44:55,120 --> 00:45:01,000
Speaker 4: Naturally very promiscuous person and I wasn't really great abstinence,

814
00:45:01,080 --> 00:45:06,800
Speaker 4: so he morphed that into us having an agreement about

815
00:45:07,000 --> 00:45:12,560
Speaker 4: me disclosing all of my sexual encounters and relationships.

816
00:45:13,000 --> 00:45:17,160
Speaker 3: Oh wow, yeah, that's not a control move at all.

817
00:45:17,680 --> 00:45:22,400
Speaker 2: No, no, you said you didn't do that.

818
00:45:22,760 --> 00:45:27,480
Speaker 4: Oh no, I disclosed, Okay, I wasn't graded abstinence, and

819
00:45:27,560 --> 00:45:30,600
Speaker 4: like when the grails started to lift was when I

820
00:45:30,719 --> 00:45:34,200
Speaker 4: decided to stop disclosing, gotchacha.

821
00:45:34,400 --> 00:45:37,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, don't forget to buy her book, you guys,

822
00:45:38,000 --> 00:45:39,520
Speaker 1: the first fifty.

823
00:45:39,440 --> 00:45:40,600
Speaker 3: I cannot wait to read it.

824
00:45:40,600 --> 00:45:45,640
Speaker 1: I am sure it's absolutely mesmerizing. Megan, Yes, what do

825
00:45:45,680 --> 00:45:49,960
Speaker 1: you think if you were in Natasha's position and you

826
00:45:50,040 --> 00:45:53,799
Speaker 1: met this charismatic Santa who actually seemed to be helping you,

827
00:45:54,160 --> 00:45:55,880
Speaker 1: what do you think would you join the group?

828
00:45:56,040 --> 00:45:56,279
Speaker 5: Yes?

829
00:45:56,880 --> 00:46:02,000
Speaker 2: One, yeah, I would with bells and whistles of blaring,

830
00:46:02,080 --> 00:46:05,040
Speaker 2: would love it. Would probably still be in it, and

831
00:46:05,840 --> 00:46:09,520
Speaker 2: I totally understand each step of her journey and why

832
00:46:09,719 --> 00:46:10,360
Speaker 2: it happened.

833
00:46:10,800 --> 00:46:15,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I would normally say no to this kind

834
00:46:15,560 --> 00:46:19,480
Speaker 1: of group, but I feel like it might be yes

835
00:46:19,520 --> 00:46:23,279
Speaker 1: for me too, because you know, it's the whole therapy thing,

836
00:46:23,400 --> 00:46:24,840
Speaker 1: like I love fucking therapy.

837
00:46:25,040 --> 00:46:27,320
Speaker 3: I love working on my shit.

838
00:46:27,600 --> 00:46:30,680
Speaker 1: I love getting better and if I find something that

839
00:46:30,760 --> 00:46:33,680
Speaker 1: seems like it's making me better. Case in point, these

840
00:46:33,760 --> 00:46:36,279
Speaker 1: last two months me doing like everything under the sun

841
00:46:36,360 --> 00:46:40,600
Speaker 1: for this anxiety. Like right, I'm there, Like I'm sold

842
00:46:40,640 --> 00:46:43,200
Speaker 1: on this fucking dare app you know, like the guy

843
00:46:43,239 --> 00:46:48,160
Speaker 1: who created that wrote that book, I'm like whatever he says, Yeah,

844
00:46:48,320 --> 00:46:54,560
Speaker 1: I'm this bitch is susceptible to a therapy cult for sure.

845
00:46:57,440 --> 00:46:59,720
Speaker 3: Literally, wow, my boys crying.

846
00:47:00,120 --> 00:47:02,080
Speaker 1: I was telling my boyfriend Jack last week.

847
00:47:02,160 --> 00:47:04,000
Speaker 3: I was like, oh, we just interviewed this girl. He

848
00:47:04,080 --> 00:47:04,839
Speaker 3: was like, what was her group?

849
00:47:04,840 --> 00:47:06,200
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh, it was a therapy cult

850
00:47:06,239 --> 00:47:10,319
Speaker 1: and he was like, oh, so you interviewed yourself. I

851
00:47:10,400 --> 00:47:12,399
Speaker 1: was like, she's a writer who joined a therapy cult.

852
00:47:12,400 --> 00:47:14,120
Speaker 1: He's like, are you talking about yourself?

853
00:47:14,200 --> 00:47:17,520
Speaker 3: Because that is you.

854
00:47:17,560 --> 00:47:19,480
Speaker 5: No Jack, I'm not.

855
00:47:19,680 --> 00:47:26,120
Speaker 3: No Jack, but kind of we gotta be her best friend.

856
00:47:26,160 --> 00:47:29,680
Speaker 1: Okay, So yeah, I guess that's that. Like, yeah, we're

857
00:47:29,680 --> 00:47:33,359
Speaker 1: all susceptible to therapy cults. And that's okay because we

858
00:47:33,400 --> 00:47:38,040
Speaker 1: are living in awareness and we are looking out for

859
00:47:38,239 --> 00:47:40,160
Speaker 1: the signs and we know what to look for and

860
00:47:40,200 --> 00:47:41,480
Speaker 1: we will hold each other accountable.

861
00:47:41,520 --> 00:47:41,960
Speaker 4: Am I right?

862
00:47:42,320 --> 00:47:43,279
Speaker 5: I mean, you are right?

863
00:47:43,400 --> 00:47:45,960
Speaker 2: And please tune in next week to see what more

864
00:47:46,000 --> 00:47:48,200
Speaker 2: of it looks like because I feel like she gives

865
00:47:48,200 --> 00:47:54,479
Speaker 2: even more great information next week. Absolutely okay, guys, thank

866
00:47:54,520 --> 00:47:55,320
Speaker 2: you for listening.

867
00:47:55,400 --> 00:47:57,080
Speaker 5: We can't wait to talk to you again.

868
00:47:57,280 --> 00:48:01,800
Speaker 2: Remember to follow your gut, watch up red flags, and never.

869
00:48:02,040 --> 00:48:11,479
Speaker 3: Ever trust me. Bye mm hmm