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Speaker 1: professional with respect to any medical condition, mental health issue,
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Speaker 1: The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the
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Speaker 1: not represent the opinions of Red Table Talk productions, I
Speaker 1: Heart Media, or their employees. They studied me very carefully.
Speaker 1: They listened to every television interview, everything had written every interview.
Speaker 1: They knew what I wanted. They knew I wanted to
Speaker 1: make the world better, and they knew I was looking
Speaker 1: for better ways to do it, better ways to make films.
Speaker 1: So when they finally met me, they told me everything
Speaker 1: I wanted to hear. Nexium was a self proclaimed self
Speaker 1: development organization that claimed to foster personal growth and help
Speaker 1: people quote experience more joy in their lives end quote.
Speaker 1: The master manipulator behind all of this was Keith Ranieri,
Speaker 1: who was called Vanguard by the students in Nexium grandiose much.
Speaker 1: Raneery and his confederates employed the standard cult playbook of manipulation, coercion, abuse,
Speaker 1: and exploitation to control people in the organization, especially those
Speaker 1: who dared to speak out against the organization or the curriculum.
Speaker 1: Over time, however, what really caught the attention of the
Speaker 1: world was the recruitment, sexual grooming, trafficking, and abuse of
Speaker 1: girls and women that took place within Nexium and sub
Speaker 1: groups within it. Girls and women were coerced to have
Speaker 1: sex with Raineery and some women subjected to being branded
Speaker 1: with Raine's initials. Media reports have variously characterized Nexium as
Speaker 1: a pyramid scheme, a sex trafficking operation, and occult. Everything
Speaker 1: that happened in Nexium, from that charismatic, creepy and enigmatic
Speaker 1: leader to the gas lighting to the manipulation and abuse,
Speaker 1: are congruent with the architecture of a narcissistic relationship and
Speaker 1: of a cult. And there ain't no such thing as
Speaker 1: a good cult. Today. I have the pleasure of talking
Speaker 1: with Mark Vicente, an author, speaker, whistle blower, and award
Speaker 1: winning director. His defection from the Nexium cult was chronicled
Speaker 1: in the HBO series The vow, Mark and other courageous
Speaker 1: whistleblowers exposed the criminal activity us of this organization, resulting
Speaker 1: in multiple arrests and indictments. In this episode, we are
Speaker 1: going to hear what led him to make this bold move,
Speaker 1: how he got wrapped up in cults, and how it
Speaker 1: can happen to anyone. We'll talk with him on what
Speaker 1: he learned about narcissism by surviving a cult, and what
Speaker 1: he is working on now to expose narcissists and to
Speaker 1: help more people heal. Mark welcome. It's such a pleasure.
Speaker 1: I mean, this has been such sort of an unexpected
Speaker 1: friendship that I got out of this and so I'm
Speaker 1: just it's just a pleasure to get to see you
Speaker 1: and also have this incredibly important conversation with somebody who
Speaker 1: I have to say in the times we have met,
Speaker 1: that you get it in such a unique way and
Speaker 1: with such depths. So this is really it's an honor
Speaker 1: and a pleasure to have you here to talk about
Speaker 1: all this. So thank you. So let's start with I'm
Speaker 1: going to start at the top of the story, you know,
Speaker 1: which is what hooked you into next Um and what
Speaker 1: did you think you were signing up for Oh my God,
Speaker 1: when I start, I have to go further back. It's
Speaker 1: like when I was a kid. I think I was
Speaker 1: yearning for goodness. Like I grew up in South Africa.
Speaker 1: You know, I saw a lot of bad things when
Speaker 1: I was a kid. I knew a party, it was
Speaker 1: a problem, and I was just thinking to myself, there
Speaker 1: has to be a better world, a better way than this.
Speaker 1: People kill other people because of the color of the skin.
Speaker 1: They don't care that something's not right. So I became
Speaker 1: obsessed with I have to find this better world. I
Speaker 1: have to find this goodness. I had the impression that
Speaker 1: the goodness I was seeking I didn't have interesting. I
Speaker 1: think part of it was I grew up around I
Speaker 1: was raised by a woman mostly at different times as
Speaker 1: a child, and I sort of got the message and
Speaker 1: men are assholes. So I was thinking, Okay, men are assholes.
Speaker 1: And then I got the message from the more enlightened
Speaker 1: people in my family. White people are bad. So white guy,
Speaker 1: that means I'm screwed, so double jeopardy. They're right, Okay,
Speaker 1: so I'm I must be part of the problem. I
Speaker 1: have to find goodness. I have to do whatever I can,
Speaker 1: and it became obsessed with it. That obsession led me
Speaker 1: to all kinds of spiritual pursuits for decades, and basically
Speaker 1: what it was a religious impulse that just kept on
Speaker 1: going again and again and again. So when I sort
Speaker 1: of got introduced to Nixium, I was being introduced to honor,
Speaker 1: you know, these beautiful values and making the world better.
Speaker 1: And I thought, well, maybe this is the thing, because
Speaker 1: everything I've done thus far I always found problems with.
Speaker 1: Maybe this is the thing. This is what will help
Speaker 1: make me a better human being that can then make
Speaker 1: better film projects to make the world better. That was
Speaker 1: the hook for me. Let me ask you this and Mark,
Speaker 1: would you argue then that your vulnerability to an organization
Speaker 1: like Nexium was not seeing the goodness in yourself? Absolutely
Speaker 1: absolutely correct, because now many years later, I feel it's
Speaker 1: very clear to me that the goodness I was looking
Speaker 1: for was always here. That's how I knew what to
Speaker 1: look for. It was this incredible project to frame that
Speaker 1: I was using with the lack of awareness that it
Speaker 1: was my frame. I didn't know that. Now I'm very
Speaker 1: clear on that my obsession was using media to make
Speaker 1: the world better. We were operating with the government, was heineous.
Speaker 1: I mean it was a huge problem, and so there
Speaker 1: was a group of us, I mean, amazing people I
Speaker 1: worked with creating these anti apartheid films. Of course they
Speaker 1: all got banned, you know, South African. Eventually they came out.
Speaker 1: But my obsession was using media to make the world better. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, So you want to make the world better
Speaker 1: and from this place of I'm not I'm not good enough, right,
Speaker 1: which is the ultimate vulnerability. Yet it sounds like you were,
Speaker 1: in some ways in kind of a good place when
Speaker 1: you came to next. I'm like, you enjoyed making films,
Speaker 1: and like, professionally, I was in a very good place.
Speaker 1: That's the thing. Sometimes people say, oh, it's a it's
Speaker 1: a transition, you're going through your like it's some terrible
Speaker 1: point in your life. Not necessarily. You just have to
Speaker 1: have the right sales person to know what you want.
Speaker 1: And what I learned later, probably I learned this in
Speaker 1: two thousand seventeen when I spoke to earlier defectors. They
Speaker 1: studied me very carefully. They listened to every television interview,
Speaker 1: everything I had written, every review interview. They knew what
Speaker 1: I wanted, They knew I wanted to make the world better,
Speaker 1: and they knew I was looking for better ways to
Speaker 1: do it, better ways to make films. So when they
Speaker 1: finally met me, they told me everything I wanted to hear.
Speaker 1: So were you targeted by next year? Where did you
Speaker 1: find that I was targeted? So what happened is so
Speaker 1: back in two thousand four, the film What to Believe
Speaker 1: Do We Know? Which I directed? They saw that film
Speaker 1: and they were like, this guy, we think, this guy
Speaker 1: gets it, gets our mission. So they began studying everything
Speaker 1: about me, and then it was Nancy Salzman and somebody
Speaker 1: else reached out to me and invited me to a
Speaker 1: symposium with all these amazing scientists and metaphysicians and whatever,
Speaker 1: and of course I was like, oh, that sounds amazing.
Speaker 1: So I met them and I had one of the
Speaker 1: most interesting conversations I've ever had in my life. Nancy
Speaker 1: Salzman was very good at what she did, which was
Speaker 1: understanding how to leverage everything I wanted and everything I
Speaker 1: was concerned about and afraid of to get me to
Speaker 1: pay attention to what she was saying and what she
Speaker 1: was offering was basically everything that I said I wanted.
Speaker 1: I want to change the world. I want to make
Speaker 1: the world better. And what she said is, she said,
Speaker 1: but we need to work on you. And then she
Speaker 1: began the thing of all my problems and all my issues,
Speaker 1: and all my vulnerabilities and all my fears and all
Speaker 1: my angers and all the things that had to be
Speaker 1: dealt with. So my first intensive when I went was
Speaker 1: basically them data mining by insecurities. You know, which, by
Speaker 1: the way, as we know, that's the same thing that
Speaker 1: happens in a narcissistic relationship. I didn't know any of this.
Speaker 1: Then it's data mining. It is data mining. I love
Speaker 1: how you put that. That needs to go on a
Speaker 1: T shirt, data mining your insecurities, because that's really sort
Speaker 1: of an interesting way to frame love bombing, because that's
Speaker 1: what was happening. It was I mean, they were picking
Speaker 1: me up in lear jets, flying me everywhere, saying we
Speaker 1: can finance the films you want to make. I was
Speaker 1: in heaven because it wasn't so much about me being
Speaker 1: a big deal. It was about what I could create
Speaker 1: with these resources and with these people. So they offered
Speaker 1: me the world. It's so interesting as I hear you
Speaker 1: say this, because if we were to really use a
Speaker 1: love bombing almost like a relational framework for this they
Speaker 1: in two thousand four or certainly pretender and all of that,
Speaker 1: if you want to look at it that way. They
Speaker 1: went online, they learned all about you as one would,
Speaker 1: and maybe even a dating profile, and nowadays, they figured
Speaker 1: out what you were about, and just as a love
Speaker 1: bomber would, they told you exactly what you wanted to
Speaker 1: hear based on what they learned about you, and then
Speaker 1: what they heard from you. That's precisely what a narcissistic
Speaker 1: person does. Early on, they promised things like we're going
Speaker 1: to have a family, and we're going to travel here,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to support you when you pursue that.
Speaker 1: That's all future faking, yeah, and but it's compelling. And
Speaker 1: the thing is, and this I only learned much later
Speaker 1: in two thousand seventeen, once I started studying narcissism, I realized, oh,
Speaker 1: that's what I've been involved. And I've been in a
Speaker 1: relationship with a narcissist being ra nearing and then all
Speaker 1: the flying monkeys which were behaving exactly like him. That's
Speaker 1: when I began to piece together what had happened, But
Speaker 1: at the time I didn't know. And also there were
Speaker 1: red flags. I mean, my very first intense of I
Speaker 1: remember around about day two, I thought to myself, something's
Speaker 1: not right. These people are so nice. They're kissing my
Speaker 1: ask so much. And I walked into Nancy Salzman's office
Speaker 1: and I said, I don't entirely trust what's happening here.
Speaker 1: And she said, what do you mean? And I said,
Speaker 1: I think you have some multerarious motive. I just don't
Speaker 1: know what it is. And she just nodded her head,
Speaker 1: so like, well, why don't you just continue the curriculum
Speaker 1: and we'll discuss it again tomorrow. The next day they
Speaker 1: started teaching us projection, and basically what they had me
Speaker 1: understand or believe was that all these things that I
Speaker 1: was seeing in them were just my own projections of
Speaker 1: my own bad intent. Day three, I go back to
Speaker 1: her office and I'm just mortified, because I'm like, is
Speaker 1: that what I was doing? She says, well, what do
Speaker 1: you think? And of course I came to the conclusion
Speaker 1: maybe that's true. And that was one of the That's
Speaker 1: what I call codified gas lining. The entire curriculum had
Speaker 1: baked into it this idea that whatever you were upset
Speaker 1: at was actually you. I would even say that that's
Speaker 1: in that case, it was quotified who was built into
Speaker 1: a curriculum. But that's every narcissistic relationship right. Constantly, the
Speaker 1: person's bent back, and that's what starts to slow indoctrination
Speaker 1: into self blame and self doubt, which ends up becoming
Speaker 1: the cement and the glue of why people stay in
Speaker 1: narcissistic relationships. They really do believe it's them, they're convinced
Speaker 1: of it. That's exactly right. And also, if you're an
Speaker 1: earnest seeker of understanding, which I was, I spent all
Speaker 1: this time thinking, oh, I need to root out all
Speaker 1: these problems in me, all these projections that I'm doing,
Speaker 1: all this bad intent that I have, I need to
Speaker 1: root it all out. And I became obsessed with trying
Speaker 1: to understand what are my limitations, How am I holding
Speaker 1: myself back? How am I seeing the world that's inaccurate?
Speaker 1: And it's this weird thing you turn in on yourself.
Speaker 1: You learn to literally gaslight yourself constantly, every thought you have,
Speaker 1: every impulse, you start questioning what if I'm wrong? What
Speaker 1: if it's not them, if it's me. But by doing
Speaker 1: that you get to stay in the group, and the
Speaker 1: group had a value to it. You learned pretty soon
Speaker 1: what's okay not okay because you're watching very carefully as well,
Speaker 1: and you say something and you see eyebrows rise or
Speaker 1: this happens, when that happens, and there's this weird thing
Speaker 1: of like, oh, that's not right in this environment, that's
Speaker 1: all right, that's all right, which later I learned is
Speaker 1: the same thing that happens in a in an abusive
Speaker 1: relationship with a narcissist, the person that's being abused is
Speaker 1: mapping the other person's mind very carefully to try to
Speaker 1: figure out what's okay and not okay, And pretty soon
Speaker 1: you are so lost in the self gas lighting and
Speaker 1: the gas lighting they're doing. And all the time what
Speaker 1: they're saying is in order to become this kind of person,
Speaker 1: you need to examine this in yourself and this in yourself.
Speaker 1: So the carrots constantly there. You don't want to throw
Speaker 1: it away at that point because you want to be
Speaker 1: that person, right, you want to be that person or
Speaker 1: I mean, and again in this case, it was very aspirational.
Speaker 1: You believed in the ideals that this organization was putting
Speaker 1: out there. It was about personal development at this time,
Speaker 1: and I think that's something that people need to understand.
Speaker 1: Mark Like nobody says, oh, today I'm going to sign
Speaker 1: up for a sex cult. That's not what anybody says.
Speaker 1: You signed up for a professional personal development kind of
Speaker 1: a program. I thought I was signing up for joining
Speaker 1: the Star Trek Federation. Oh this is great, you know,
Speaker 1: fairness and rights and ethics and values and nobility and morality.
Speaker 1: This is good stuff. But that idea that it's good
Speaker 1: stuff and it was in a professional space, I actually
Speaker 1: think put you at greater risk in a strange way,
Speaker 1: because I think in the intimate relationship people will also
Speaker 1: own up to yeah, okay, it's my fairy tale. Sure,
Speaker 1: I wanted to be in love. This person came along.
Speaker 1: I devalued myself. And I think that there's almost more
Speaker 1: written about that, if you will. But I think in
Speaker 1: this case, the professional piece, the idea that it's a
Speaker 1: part of growth, that it's cloaked in the seminar, that
Speaker 1: all feels it almost feels as though it's, like you said,
Speaker 1: use the word codified. I think that really nails it.
Speaker 1: I think that puts people, makes people very vulnerable. Next thing,
Speaker 1: I just ended up blowing up is a big story.
Speaker 1: I think that there's small stories like this playing out
Speaker 1: as we've seen so many, so many You met people
Speaker 1: in there that were like powerful people, successful people. They
Speaker 1: seem legitimate, and I realized later that's what they used
Speaker 1: me for as well. They used me to legitimize him
Speaker 1: and the entire thing exactly. I think that the legitimization
Speaker 1: of a cult leader or a leader we don't even
Speaker 1: know that they're a cult leader yet per se, but
Speaker 1: that legitimization through other people, it really sets up that
Speaker 1: recruitment pipeline. And honestly, that plays out in intimate relationships
Speaker 1: as well, because what happens is a person will say
Speaker 1: this person was their ex partner, and that person had
Speaker 1: a good job, or they're from a good family, or
Speaker 1: they're really attractive or whatever index they're using, and saying, well,
Speaker 1: if that person thought they were good, why wouldn't I.
Speaker 1: And it's a very similar mechanism. Yeah. Also, you're trapped
Speaker 1: by your own need to have that world exists. I
Speaker 1: wanted there to be goodness in the world. I wanted
Speaker 1: there to be a place that I could go and
Speaker 1: other people could come, that we can learn about ourselves
Speaker 1: so we could behave in a better way, so the
Speaker 1: world will be better. And the problem is, if you
Speaker 1: at that point early on, stay to yourself, when you're
Speaker 1: really enamored with what you're learning, this is all just
Speaker 1: full of shit. You have to give up that dream.
Speaker 1: Yes you do, Yes you do. We're very married to
Speaker 1: whatever it is, be it romantic partner, be that my dream,
Speaker 1: whatever it was. Giving that dream up launches you into
Speaker 1: an existential crisis you do not want to go into.
Speaker 1: But you know what nobody wants. That nobody wants that
Speaker 1: you're sort of forced into it because in my case,
Speaker 1: I saw things that were so morally reprehensible that I
Speaker 1: could not hold onto that dream. I had to just
Speaker 1: burn the entire thing to the ground, right, I had
Speaker 1: to and hopefully refashion it in a healthier way. That's you,
Speaker 1: not on other people. And I think that that's the
Speaker 1: real that's the real challenge too. So you use the
Speaker 1: term you said, okay, started becoming aware I was in
Speaker 1: a narcissistic relationship. How did you even become like, how
Speaker 1: did that term come into your purview? And when did
Speaker 1: you start using it and using that frame where you
Speaker 1: already out at that point where you need I was
Speaker 1: still in So what happened is Bonnie, my wife, had
Speaker 1: and out for a while, and she had been studying
Speaker 1: a lot, and she was working with an exit counselor
Speaker 1: and they were trying to figure out how do we
Speaker 1: help Mark. So there was a lot of strategy going on.
Speaker 1: One of the things that was interesting is I, for
Speaker 1: many years I had to call Rnary every single day.
Speaker 1: It was something I had to do, and if you didn't,
Speaker 1: it was a problem. So I had to report to
Speaker 1: a bunch of other people and groups that I hadn't
Speaker 1: done it for whatever reason. What was my weakness, what
Speaker 1: was my fear? What was my vulnerability? You know? What
Speaker 1: was my lack of character, what was my lack of vision?
Speaker 1: Whatever it was? So I was like very military in
Speaker 1: my calling every day. And at a certain point when
Speaker 1: I realized something was wrong, and it was round about
Speaker 1: March April two thousand seventeen, when I began to suspect
Speaker 1: that he might be lying. I started calling less and
Speaker 1: I knew he would know, And so I realized a
Speaker 1: week had gone by, I have to call him. And
Speaker 1: Bonnie said to me, I want you to read an
Speaker 1: article before you call him, and she gave me an
Speaker 1: article I don't remember who it was by, but it
Speaker 1: was about the twenty things and narciss will do in
Speaker 1: a relationship with you, and it was, you know, like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a circular car stations from hell, gas lighting, this, that,
Speaker 1: the other, a whole bunch of things and that we
Speaker 1: now understand. So I read the articles twenty things, I
Speaker 1: get on the phone with him, and the articles in
Speaker 1: my mind that we begin speaking and I sort of
Speaker 1: take off on my mind ten of those things, and
Speaker 1: when I hang up on the call, I realized I'm
Speaker 1: never speaking to him again. And I go to Bunny
Speaker 1: and I go he did ten of them, and then
Speaker 1: I realized, shit, is this guy a narcissist. It is
Speaker 1: just like some kind of spiritual psychopath. And she was
Speaker 1: very kind and she just sort of nodded gently, you know,
Speaker 1: And that was one of the things that began the unraveling.
Speaker 1: And then I began investigating a lot more and learning
Speaker 1: what he was actually doing with the woman, and I
Speaker 1: was just I was rageful. But before I knew what
Speaker 1: was going on, she was trying to show me a template,
Speaker 1: a pattern, what I was dealing with because I didn't know,
Speaker 1: and then I could talk to an exit counselor, and
Speaker 1: then I could start to listen because I was still
Speaker 1: so enamored with the idea. And this is a difficult
Speaker 1: thing to explain. Maybe it's not I thought he and
Speaker 1: I shared the same values. I thought. To turn against
Speaker 1: him was to learned against my own values. We were
Speaker 1: so married in my mind in that way. So for
Speaker 1: me to question him, for me to allow the thought
Speaker 1: into my mind, what if this guy is a bad dude?
Speaker 1: What if this is an evil mofa meant that I
Speaker 1: may have to dismantle everything I thought was good. And
Speaker 1: that's terrified, but I had to. That was the approached
Speaker 1: that question. I was completely suicidal, had all kinds of
Speaker 1: suicidal ideation going on a whole bunch of things. And
Speaker 1: thank goodness, a part of me that met a part
Speaker 1: of you that's watching everything. A part of me said, Mark,
Speaker 1: you've never thought about suicide ever. Something's wrong, And the
Speaker 1: other part of me goes, you're right, something's wrong, And
Speaker 1: that was the true crack. Thank goodness, you connected the
Speaker 1: dots in that way. You could easily see how it
Speaker 1: would go another way for somebody else, you know, because
Speaker 1: that what you did, that sort of walking away from
Speaker 1: a spiritual So it would be like somebody losing faith
Speaker 1: in an organized religion. They believed in something they no
Speaker 1: longer do and in a different way. It's when a
Speaker 1: person learns this. For example, their parent is like and
Speaker 1: the parent is someone that held in high esteem, in
Speaker 1: high regard, they loved the idea of family. They were
Speaker 1: devoted to that, and then one day the whole thing crumbles.
Speaker 1: That is quite a day, and you had that day.
Speaker 1: What is amazing, though, is that you were willing to
Speaker 1: take the article that Bonnie gave you and implemented into
Speaker 1: the conversation. That you had enough ego strength to actually
Speaker 1: allow that to happen, because some people would say, get
Speaker 1: this article away from you, don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: That you were willing to integrate. That was that flexibility
Speaker 1: which you may not have known you had ended up saying,
Speaker 1: did you know that? But also she was very smart.
Speaker 1: I learned later in talking to people and showing them articles,
Speaker 1: to never show them an article that had the word
Speaker 1: cult inists. Don't. She was careful in presenting me with
Speaker 1: things that wouldn't trigger me into defense posture. That was
Speaker 1: one of those things that seemed unrelated to me, so
Speaker 1: I said, okay, I'll read it. But then when I
Speaker 1: spoke to him, and I realized, this niggly feeling I've
Speaker 1: had for over a decade in our conversations. What if
Speaker 1: it's this thing that I just read? What if this?
Speaker 1: What if the circular conversation from Hell? Is this sor
Speaker 1: pular conversation from Hell? And is not that I just
Speaker 1: can't keep up with him. This guy might just be
Speaker 1: like a sociopathic more on, and I'm trying to make
Speaker 1: sense of it. In fact, I realized later as I
Speaker 1: tried to wake other people up, they were all trying
Speaker 1: to make sense of stuff that didn't make sense, thinking
Speaker 1: that they were the problem, that they didn't have the intellect,
Speaker 1: which is what I thought too. I thought I didn't
Speaker 1: have the intellect to understand genius ideas. They're not genius
Speaker 1: at all. In fact, some of them are just psychopathic hogwash.
Speaker 1: That's right. It was all a means of maintaining this
Speaker 1: incredible amount of control over all these people, and he
Speaker 1: got away with it. Now you know some of this,
Speaker 1: But I'd love to use this as a teaching point
Speaker 1: for everyone listening. Which are there are certain universal psychological
Speaker 1: dynamics that exist in cults. I would argue that these
Speaker 1: also exist in narcissistic relationships. Okay, so I'm going to
Speaker 1: just try these out on you and see if they fit. Okay,
Speaker 1: So this would be being tested by the leader. This
Speaker 1: might be through abuse that maybe through a demand for sacrifice,
Speaker 1: and that of people who were in the organization will
Speaker 1: attempt to show tremendous devotion or be perfect and recruit
Speaker 1: other people. When you said you had to call every
Speaker 1: day all of that, would you agree that that dynamic
Speaker 1: was there? Absolutely? What happened is you know, you're you're
Speaker 1: signing up for one thing, and then as time goes along,
Speaker 1: you're being asked to do things that might feel uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: And what they're doing is that basically testing your boundaries.
Speaker 1: How far can we go? And even if at first
Speaker 1: I was extremely defiant and they would say to me,
Speaker 1: you know, this defiance you have, this is a limitation
Speaker 1: because you're just saying no to everything without evaluation. You're
Speaker 1: not evaluating anything. And I was like, well, I don't
Speaker 1: want to be the kind of person that doesn't evaluate,
Speaker 1: so maybe I'll be a little less defiant. I wish
Speaker 1: I kept it came back later, but yes, constant boundary testing,
Speaker 1: you know, like the curriculum got more and more weird.
Speaker 1: Like later on there was a curriculum called Ethicist and
Speaker 1: something called s op engine as the birthplace of what
Speaker 1: would become Dost. This the secret underground thing, and there
Speaker 1: was talk about if you did something that went against
Speaker 1: your own values, then you had to do some kind
Speaker 1: of penance. More severe the penance was the better. And
Speaker 1: a part of me was like, this feels a lot
Speaker 1: like religion when I was a kid. Something's not right.
Speaker 1: But then you don't want to be the person that
Speaker 1: stands up and says, you guys are full of it,
Speaker 1: because that's not going to go well. And at that
Speaker 1: point I did know that anybody who had left previously
Speaker 1: that said anything was destroyed. Their legal team destroyed them.
Speaker 1: These people ended up being indicted for things, crimes were
Speaker 1: made up. They were destroyed financially to the point that
Speaker 1: when they went to court to file bankruptcy they were
Speaker 1: stopped by these people. They destroyed reputations, they destroyed a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of things. I was well aware later on
Speaker 1: that if I was the person that spoke out it
Speaker 1: was gonna be a huge problem now behind closed doors,
Speaker 1: starting in two thousand and fifteen, I was asking a
Speaker 1: lot of questions and I could see it wasn't going
Speaker 1: well because eventually he was going to handle me. But yes,
Speaker 1: the boundary testing is constant. It happens in all kinds
Speaker 1: of ways. It happens in the curriculum, the things you're
Speaker 1: asked to do, the things you're asked not to talk about.
Speaker 1: It's all there and exactly the same as a relationship
Speaker 1: ups It's the same thing. And this is the thing
Speaker 1: I desperately want people to understand. It is the same.
Speaker 1: They might be slight variations, but the pattern, if you
Speaker 1: can look at the mathematics underneath it, it is identical.
Speaker 1: I mean completely identical. And I think people don't recognize
Speaker 1: how much boundary they keep. It's your sovereign territories getting annexed.
Speaker 1: It's like a slow invasion and one day you look
Speaker 1: up and you're like, oh, I got swallowed up by
Speaker 1: this other country and you're no longer your own sovereign individual.
Speaker 1: You have completely come into their system, and you're almost
Speaker 1: like it's almost like you've become parasited, like now you
Speaker 1: can only serve the host. It's so true, that's exactly right.
Speaker 1: What's a great metaphor. And the problem is you don't
Speaker 1: have the strength anymore to fight the way you did
Speaker 1: before because part of you has been hollowed out, Oh
Speaker 1: absolutely hollowed out. And they count on that and that
Speaker 1: constant encroaching. But then that fear of whatever that unnamed
Speaker 1: fear would be, and I think a lot of it's primal.
Speaker 1: It's fear of abandonment, fear of being alone, fear of
Speaker 1: being an outsider. But the test and p this is
Speaker 1: where we get into this real problem I think and
Speaker 1: culture at large, is that we associate love with being tested,
Speaker 1: that I have to jump through these hoops to show
Speaker 1: my love, to show my devotion. That, unfortunately, is how
Speaker 1: love stories have often been crafted. And I think Calton
Speaker 1: Calton love stories share that is how can I show
Speaker 1: my love? How many love letters can I write? How
Speaker 1: many things can I do? Really, it's instead of simply
Speaker 1: being loved because you're you, it's is I guess it's
Speaker 1: it's it's that's time immemorial. One could argue that's also
Speaker 1: sort of a transactional relationship. So that's so good. And
Speaker 1: also like if if somebody's testing you, run right, Oh,
Speaker 1: always always run if you're being tested in a relationship,
Speaker 1: run But I think unfortunately a lot of people like
Speaker 1: the game and they almost like to think I've earned something.
Speaker 1: Not saying that's right, but I think that's the messaging.
Speaker 1: Because many children, especially those with narcissistic parents, felt that
Speaker 1: they had to win the parent over. That dynamic gets
Speaker 1: repeated in in relationships and adulthood. Another dynamic we see
Speaker 1: is the charismatic and exploitative leader. Clearly you saw that,
Speaker 1: would you have described Keith is charismatic? No, that's interest.
Speaker 1: That's what's so interesting to see now that I've spent
Speaker 1: a lot more time honestly studying some of your work
Speaker 1: and other people's work, understanding covert narcissism is so interesting
Speaker 1: because he is not overt, he's not grandiose. In fact,
Speaker 1: he talks about humility. He acts in a way that's
Speaker 1: very humble. He's constantly downplaying his accomplishments. He gets other
Speaker 1: people to sort of talk about them, but he downplays them.
Speaker 1: So I didn't see grandiose. What I saw was humility.
Speaker 1: But again, there was a lot of gas lighting going on,
Speaker 1: because I remember early on two thousand and six, I
Speaker 1: think I was at the gym with him and I
Speaker 1: saw him get really angry at something behind the counter,
Speaker 1: and I said to him, I've never seen you angry before.
Speaker 1: He says, I wasn't. Well, what were you doing? Is
Speaker 1: as I was just using a tone to match his tone,
Speaker 1: and part of me was like, oh, it seemed like
Speaker 1: all right, So there's all this gas lighting going on.
Speaker 1: But I believe the version that he was selling. And
Speaker 1: also what happens is if you questioned that version, everybody
Speaker 1: else around you says, really, that's so weird. Do you
Speaker 1: want to work on why you're perceiving that? A right? So,
Speaker 1: so it's always housing it back into the individuals to
Speaker 1: not call him out. Did you were you familiar with
Speaker 1: the term communal narcissism? As you were coming out you
Speaker 1: were not okay, So down the line you became familiar. Actually,
Speaker 1: I think I actually learned that from you, as I
Speaker 1: I remember thinking when I learned that term, I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's what we're dealing with here. My session with Mark
Speaker 1: will continue after this break. We have been hearing from
Speaker 1: Mark Vicente about his experience and Nexium, an abusive cult
Speaker 1: led by Keith Ranieri that proclaimed to be focused on
Speaker 1: self improvement. Nexium used all of the techniques that we
Speaker 1: see in a narcissistic relationship, including love ming by data mining,
Speaker 1: which is an intense attempt to learn about another person
Speaker 1: so you can learn their pressure points and manipulate them,
Speaker 1: as well as labeling any questioning of Nexium as a
Speaker 1: flaw within Mark or the other members. Then it turned
Speaker 1: to confusion and a slow erosion of boundaries and sense
Speaker 1: of self. Mark's story is a reminder that what happens
Speaker 1: within a cult like organization and with a cult leader
Speaker 1: is pretty damn similar to what happens in any narcissistic relationship,
Speaker 1: hijacking of the self, so communal narcissism. You know, for
Speaker 1: anyone listening. There's the technical term for it is agentic
Speaker 1: extro version. So what that means is extra version in
Speaker 1: the service of getting validation. And in his case, it
Speaker 1: was this, I'm going to draw all these people together,
Speaker 1: but it would be the sort of false humility because
Speaker 1: one who say, in the world can't be you know,
Speaker 1: can't be out there and acting like a sort of
Speaker 1: a car salesperson and sort of being pretentious and preening
Speaker 1: about so there would be this sort of false kind
Speaker 1: of almost like either way. He even presented himself kind
Speaker 1: of sloppily dressed in all of that. But it was
Speaker 1: all posturing because he actually thought he could save the world,
Speaker 1: which is incredibly grandiose. So all of that extroverted behavior,
Speaker 1: all of that bringing your group together, he was selling
Speaker 1: it as a means of saving the world, being a
Speaker 1: grand humanitarian, being better than everyone else. Exactly. It blew
Speaker 1: my mind because he had us bonded to each other,
Speaker 1: because it was difficult to bond to him because this
Speaker 1: is a truly weird individual. But also even to think
Speaker 1: he was weird, you realize, okay, there's something wrong with
Speaker 1: me that I think that. So he had us bond
Speaker 1: with each other, create very tight bonds. I mean, there
Speaker 1: were groups of us that committed to things, you know,
Speaker 1: with each other, and if any one of us failed,
Speaker 1: we all would do a penance. So everything was through pain,
Speaker 1: this idea of pain and love being intertwined. I really
Speaker 1: thought he was humble, but later I understood everything he
Speaker 1: was doing was for fuel. The grandiosity was very coverse.
Speaker 1: It was there because he wouldn't get necessarily personally upset
Speaker 1: at somebody. If he was there was an offense against him,
Speaker 1: he would get other people to get upset about it,
Speaker 1: so he would triangulate between everybody and get some and
Speaker 1: say to somebody else, you know, Mark doesn't seem to
Speaker 1: understand the value of what I've given him, and I
Speaker 1: think it's really a problem for him that he doesn't
Speaker 1: understand this. I think it might be worth having a
Speaker 1: discussion with him. What he wasn't saying is I feel
Speaker 1: slighted and not important, and I want you to go
Speaker 1: after Mark and break him down because he didn't give
Speaker 1: me the requisite praise. That's what I want. That was
Speaker 1: the truth. Yeah, but that triangulation we see that narcissistic
Speaker 1: family systems to the parent using siblings and the family
Speaker 1: other extended family members to get what they need from
Speaker 1: another member of the family, and then what happens is
Speaker 1: that person will relent. They may not agree with what
Speaker 1: the narcissist is asking for, but when you have that
Speaker 1: many people surrounding you, our human need to belong, especially
Speaker 1: in an organization like that. That's why everyone was coming together.
Speaker 1: Is it draws us to say, Okay, I'm going to
Speaker 1: give in, And it's a really big part of how
Speaker 1: whether in a cult or a family structure. And again
Speaker 1: I think a narcissistic family is really a cult a
Speaker 1: strong leader and then and or a manipulative leader totally.
Speaker 1: And the other thing that you raised that's important is
Speaker 1: that people often say, well, why didn't you just leave?
Speaker 1: But why didn't you speak out? The issue is you're
Speaker 1: in this dynamic, like be a family dynamic, be at
Speaker 1: a cult dynamic where if you say something there are costs,
Speaker 1: and there's this existential dread you constantly have and being
Speaker 1: thrown out of the tribe, and that's a big thing.
Speaker 1: It is belonging, but it's the terror of being cast
Speaker 1: out at night. And you've given up a lot in
Speaker 1: your life already, so these now are your bonds. Maybe
Speaker 1: this is the way you're making money. You don't have
Speaker 1: a lot of options anymore, and to go out into
Speaker 1: the forest at night alone, cast out of the tribe
Speaker 1: is like death. Well it was death for thousands and
Speaker 1: thousands of years for our species, and I think our
Speaker 1: reptilian brain hasn't let go of that fear, and so
Speaker 1: ostracism is probably right up there with death as a
Speaker 1: primary fear. So it's actually we would say, anyone who's
Speaker 1: actually that willing to walk away from the group, that's
Speaker 1: almost not even normative from a mental health spacing. I
Speaker 1: don't even care what anybody thinks. So people care, People
Speaker 1: care deeply. And also how the idea that you you
Speaker 1: would not feel you could speak about this person that
Speaker 1: everyone values so much. This becomes the emperor's clothes phenomenon
Speaker 1: that we see in narcissism all the time of people,
Speaker 1: whether it's a family member, matriarch, patriarch, head of a company,
Speaker 1: even a globally recognized religious leader, where people might look
Speaker 1: sideways and say, this doesn't feel right. But who's really
Speaker 1: going to be the one to say the beloved elderly
Speaker 1: grandmother is actually a monster? You know? And that and
Speaker 1: as you say, the risk of ostracism, and I would
Speaker 1: argue the risk that you could be wrong, yes, and
Speaker 1: the risk to your worldview that you're trying desperate in
Speaker 1: the hole together, which is a much bigger deal than
Speaker 1: people might realize. You're trying to keep your psyche glued
Speaker 1: together when you know on a very deep level something's
Speaker 1: not right. So all of what you're saying is just
Speaker 1: it's cult. One oh one, I'm not going to be
Speaker 1: labor it anymore because you just laid it all out.
Speaker 1: So one of the things, in terms of data mining,
Speaker 1: there was one particular intensive that they had us figure
Speaker 1: out what was the ways we were most afraid of dying,
Speaker 1: And they came up with like twelve different ways. Something
Speaker 1: that's eating you from the outside, something that's eating you
Speaker 1: from the inside, being being abandoned, being left alone, thinking
Speaker 1: you're crazy, nothing making sense. So all these things that
Speaker 1: they data mind about what are our worst terrors, and
Speaker 1: all of those things were used later on at some
Speaker 1: point the minute you decided this is my boundary, now
Speaker 1: I'm maintaining this boundary. That information was used. That information
Speaker 1: was used against me in course. I mean when I
Speaker 1: was facing up against Nay in courts and his defense
Speaker 1: counsel was coming after me, he was slipping them notes
Speaker 1: all the time because he knew me very very very
Speaker 1: well and so interesting. Every time he slipped the note,
Speaker 1: they come up with a question that was so targeted
Speaker 1: towards me, my worst fears, my hopes, my terrors. In
Speaker 1: any cult like mechanism, it's getting that information from people
Speaker 1: what could hurt them what could make them vulnerable happens
Speaker 1: in literally every narcissistic relationship. People say love bombing to
Speaker 1: them is private jets and dozens of roses and Champagne.
Speaker 1: I said, no, that's not the love bombing part. You
Speaker 1: need to be concerned with the love bombing part, which
Speaker 1: to me, getting all that intel on someone you're calling
Speaker 1: a data mining is when they lean in and look
Speaker 1: into your eyes and say, just tell me your greatest
Speaker 1: fear baby, I want to take care of you. And
Speaker 1: you just gave them the keys to the kingdom because
Speaker 1: that's going to be turned around and used against you.
Speaker 1: And the number of people, for example, who go through
Speaker 1: really contentious narcissistic divorces knowing that parent would literally take
Speaker 1: a bullet for those children. That's what they go for,
Speaker 1: not even that they wanted the kids in their house.
Speaker 1: They just simply know that this is how I could
Speaker 1: hurt them. So that weaponizing of your vulnerability is a
Speaker 1: classical part of any narcissistic relationship, whether it's an occult
Speaker 1: or a one on one relationship. I remember one of
Speaker 1: them one saying to me when I early days, when
Speaker 1: I when I was thinking this isn't right. Somebody said
Speaker 1: to me, I thought you wanted to be a noble man, Mark,
Speaker 1: and that to me is like m m m. That hurts.
Speaker 1: It absolutely hurts, and it's a gaslight because you are
Speaker 1: being a nobleman. So in essence by making that comments
Speaker 1: or denying that, I hear about people going through this
Speaker 1: all the time and underpaid positions and mental health and academia.
Speaker 1: And when the person pushes back and says I need
Speaker 1: a raise, well, don't you care about the populations we
Speaker 1: work with? And they're saying, yeah, I care about that,
Speaker 1: also care about my electricity. But that is gaslighting. And
Speaker 1: people don't even think of it that way. They think, oh, gosh,
Speaker 1: I'm just a mercenary awful person, or I'm not a
Speaker 1: noble person. So I think people don't even know these
Speaker 1: things are happening. And maybe it's because it's not taught,
Speaker 1: And maybe it's not taught because the systems and institutions
Speaker 1: in place benefit from the ability to absolutely absolutely benefit
Speaker 1: from us. Absolutely. We will be right back with this
Speaker 1: conversation with Mark. So I'd like to switch gears a
Speaker 1: little bit because people want to understand this a little
Speaker 1: bit and talk about the leader you you've hinted a
Speaker 1: little bit because I hate even putting it this way
Speaker 1: because he is such a horrible person. But what was
Speaker 1: compelling about him? You said he's not charismatic, you said
Speaker 1: he was vulnerable in his narcissistic presentation. So what was
Speaker 1: compelling to me? He leveraged our values and represented himself
Speaker 1: as being the gatekeeper of those values. Because I've spoken
Speaker 1: to a lot of women who said, no, he wasn't sexy,
Speaker 1: he wasn't kissed, Nobody wanted to sleep with him, nobody
Speaker 1: wanted to kiss him. He was a shlub. He really,
Speaker 1: he is a sub. He is a schlub. But but
Speaker 1: you see, this was part of the whole thing. The
Speaker 1: whole thing was that he said he was a renuncius,
Speaker 1: he'd given up old worldly things. Didn't matter what he wore,
Speaker 1: He wore the same. Sure he was smelly, is because
Speaker 1: material things were not important. This is matters of ethics
Speaker 1: and mind and consciousness and stuff, etcetera, etcetera. So so yeah,
Speaker 1: so to me, it was what he represented. He basically
Speaker 1: at the very beginning, my very first conversation with him
Speaker 1: was five hours long, a lot of data mining. He
Speaker 1: basically got me to believe that everything that he was
Speaker 1: doing was all I'd ever wanted. Now, once I understood
Speaker 1: later on a little bit more about NLP, this is interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I had a meeting with Nancy Salzman at a law
Speaker 1: firm in l A about some project. This was many
Speaker 1: years ago, and she went into that law firm and
Speaker 1: she was asking the lawyers a lot of questions, and
Speaker 1: she's writing things down and eventually they were getting missed
Speaker 1: by the way understandably, And eventually I said you when
Speaker 1: we left the meeting, what are you doing? She says,
Speaker 1: I'm making notes of keywords. They'll say something and I'll
Speaker 1: ask them a question. I'll dig down deeper on what
Speaker 1: the thing is that they're talking about until I can
Speaker 1: find a word that really moves them, because later I'm
Speaker 1: going to use that word again. So, for instance, what
Speaker 1: they would do and we're near He taught her this.
Speaker 1: I think. Let's say you say to me, I say
Speaker 1: what do you want? And you say, well, I want love?
Speaker 1: And when you say love, what do you mean, Well,
Speaker 1: I want let's say I want community. Okay, So when
Speaker 1: you say community, like, what is what is community to you?
Speaker 1: And you'd say something like togetherness and maybe togetherness, that
Speaker 1: that final word that it's hard for you to figure out,
Speaker 1: but that that word togetherness means something to you. Later on,
Speaker 1: I'd say, you know, Dr Romney, togetherness is as important
Speaker 1: to me as it is to you. And I'm firing
Speaker 1: that word in your mind again. That was the stuff
Speaker 1: that they were doing all the time, and that was
Speaker 1: a lot of n LP. And do you want to
Speaker 1: explain a little bit about what n LP is. The
Speaker 1: idea is that every word you use represents some deep
Speaker 1: unconscious thought object to you. Love is a whole package
Speaker 1: of things inside of you. It fires things inside of you,
Speaker 1: and if you can understand what that person's version of
Speaker 1: that word is and what it fires in them, you
Speaker 1: can then use that word to manipulate them into a
Speaker 1: certain behavior that, to me, in the most simple terms,
Speaker 1: is what it does. So what he was doing was
Speaker 1: he was doing that all the time, and then he
Speaker 1: would start use those words back, and that creates this
Speaker 1: kind of trance because you're hearing back everything that you
Speaker 1: believe and you start to think, this guy knows me
Speaker 1: better than my parents, because that's what they're trying to do.
Speaker 1: That's exactly right. The only difference is they know how
Speaker 1: to use this tech, so to speak, which your parents
Speaker 1: didn't correct and most people don't. But when it's brought
Speaker 1: into these kinds of spaces to be able to fully
Speaker 1: control someone, it is it's using language as the really
Speaker 1: all the hidden I love that you use the word
Speaker 1: trance because I think that's what it is. When people
Speaker 1: are using language and the way you are about things
Speaker 1: that matter to you, you really do go into a trance,
Speaker 1: to go into trans go into you know what they
Speaker 1: what they call deep structure and the whole. A lot
Speaker 1: of the tech that that was being used was to
Speaker 1: put a person into deep structure where things get very
Speaker 1: very fuzzy, and it is trans induction is what's going on.
Speaker 1: And we all learned to do it to different degrees.
Speaker 1: Once I realized what was going on, I was horrified.
Speaker 1: I was horrified that we learned this. I was horrified
Speaker 1: we were in this with other people. And I think
Speaker 1: the thing I always struggled with. In fact, I know
Speaker 1: that Bunny, myself, Sarah, Nippia, and a bunch of us
Speaker 1: really didn't like the way things were going because we
Speaker 1: felt sometimes once the person was in that state, you
Speaker 1: were then putting into their minds things that weren't theirs,
Speaker 1: and we hated doing that right, so we just thought,
Speaker 1: we'll screw We're just gonna figure out what they want,
Speaker 1: as opposed to trying to bend their will in some way.
Speaker 1: And so we were often, you know, given given shit
Speaker 1: about it or not being precise enough, you're not being
Speaker 1: this enough. But we knew something wasn't right. We just
Speaker 1: couldn't figure out what it was right. I'm coming back
Speaker 1: to your word trance because I've never thought of it
Speaker 1: in this realm, but I think about trance alongside trauma
Speaker 1: bonding because that's what trauma bonding is. So thank you, Mark,
Speaker 1: You're giving me quite a gift today just using that word,
Speaker 1: because when we think of what a trance is, and
Speaker 1: it's not quite hypnosis, but it's just sort of otherworldly,
Speaker 1: like it's a like that dancing snake in the Jungle
Speaker 1: Book kind of moves around like that's a trance. And
Speaker 1: I think that in the trauma bonded phase, there are
Speaker 1: times the person is doing exactly what you want them
Speaker 1: they are. You're they're doing everything, whether it's in line
Speaker 1: with values or fan to see or future or love.
Speaker 1: You're in that trance. Then the trance quickly gets stopped,
Speaker 1: and that is very destabilizing, in which a person wants
Speaker 1: to go back into that trance like state, and we'll
Speaker 1: do whatever they need to do to get back into
Speaker 1: that state, which usually means continuing to succomb and be
Speaker 1: subjugated by the narcissistic person. That's such a good point.
Speaker 1: I actually have a great example. When I started working
Speaker 1: with Roneria on this film project. I wrote a treatment
Speaker 1: for the project. He gave me the idea. I wrote
Speaker 1: the treatment, he read it, and then his right hand
Speaker 1: woman at that time, Pam Cafford, said to me, he
Speaker 1: really likes it. He thinks you're a really good writer.
Speaker 1: So I went to have a meeting with him that
Speaker 1: night and he says, this is really good. That was
Speaker 1: the last time he ever said anything I did was good.
Speaker 1: And I kept on holding on for maybe one day
Speaker 1: he'll think something I'm doing is good enough. That was
Speaker 1: a ten year hold on until eventually I was like,
Speaker 1: you're an idiot. You don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: I actually know what I'm talking about, but it took
Speaker 1: a while. It takes a while, but that idea that
Speaker 1: you're forever chasing that high of that moment when they
Speaker 1: told you you hung the moon and you'll never get
Speaker 1: it again. But that chase can keep people stuck for decades.
Speaker 1: And the other thing I learned recently, which I know
Speaker 1: you know about, is this this whole intimittent reinforcement things.
Speaker 1: It's just like you never know when the good stuff
Speaker 1: is coming, and you never know when the bad stuff
Speaker 1: is coming. And sometimes you today you do the thing
Speaker 1: that yesterday was good, but not today it's not anymore.
Speaker 1: You're like, what is going on? Right? And then you
Speaker 1: ask questions and they give you some weird explanation that
Speaker 1: doesn't totally make sense, but it must be you that
Speaker 1: can't understand. And I know that happens in narcissisic relationships
Speaker 1: well completely. It's in coercive controlled relationships. And any narcissistic
Speaker 1: relationship that up and down, in and out, constantly being
Speaker 1: destabilized and constantly trying to get back to that good
Speaker 1: moment means people give up more and more and more
Speaker 1: of themselves, boundaries, a sense of self, even their bodies
Speaker 1: to be able to keep it going because they want
Speaker 1: that so much. And it really does transfer to what
Speaker 1: happens early in life, especially, it was a narcissistic parent
Speaker 1: for the moment that narcissistic parent noticed you. The child
Speaker 1: spend their entire childhood fighting for those scraps, for those moments,
Speaker 1: and that's that's really the system that they're using there.
Speaker 1: So then Bonnie shows you the article. You know what
Speaker 1: you're dealing with at that moment that Penny dropped moment,
Speaker 1: the article that says the twenty things narcissists do, and
Speaker 1: he only did ten. I'm surprised. I bet the other
Speaker 1: ten were there, probably if I dug deeper. But I
Speaker 1: was in so much denials. You know, how did things
Speaker 1: change once you had a word for it. I no
Speaker 1: longer felt crazy because I felt crazy for twelve years.
Speaker 1: That's a long time to feel And suddenly I was like, wait,
Speaker 1: that's what's going on. And it was a kind of
Speaker 1: disbelief at first. I was like, so he's actually got
Speaker 1: a pathology. He's not wise. Maybe he doesn't have that
Speaker 1: I Q. Maybe he's not some enlightened version of something like,
Speaker 1: maybe he's just got some serious problems in his brain.
Speaker 1: That gave me so much foundation to finally put a
Speaker 1: little tippy toe on the ground and say, okay, let
Speaker 1: me explore this. And I couldn't cross this threshold until
Speaker 1: I had suicidal ideation. That was a threshold because everything
Speaker 1: money had been so smart. The Exit Council, she was
Speaker 1: working with them and I began working with was very
Speaker 1: smart and how they did everything very carefully. But once
Speaker 1: I realized like I was insane. When I say I
Speaker 1: was insane, the suicidal ideation to me was I'm insane.
Speaker 1: That was the moment I'm like, all right, you need
Speaker 1: to like make space now, because I was holding on
Speaker 1: so desperately to this worldview. And once I made space,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not going to say it was fun.
Speaker 1: It was terrible. It was like the world is over.
Speaker 1: And then I went into this rage. Okay, this guy
Speaker 1: is a narcissist. I just threw everything out. But I
Speaker 1: made space to start trying to figure out what had happened.
Speaker 1: And then the other thing I was dealing with as
Speaker 1: well was finally recognizing something had been done to me.
Speaker 1: I had been damaged. That recognition was very important because
Speaker 1: then I wasn't thinking to myself, I'm crazy, just oh,
Speaker 1: I've been damaged. Something's wrong with my perception. This has
Speaker 1: been done to me in a very precise way over
Speaker 1: period of time. And then I began reading about narcissism obsessively,
Speaker 1: looking to see what happens in narcissistic abuse. What are
Speaker 1: the symptoms. Oh, there's the PTSD, there's the complex PTSD,
Speaker 1: there's the like feeling unhinged from reality. There's all the
Speaker 1: panic attacks, all the stuff and everything that I went
Speaker 1: in for twelve years prior, like panic attacks with one
Speaker 1: of the things, I had terrible anxiety. It all came back.
Speaker 1: It all. It was just waiting for me because all
Speaker 1: that had happened was that all those things have been
Speaker 1: compartmentalized by shutting down your gut and having your gut
Speaker 1: shut down, and then you continue to shut it down.
Speaker 1: You compartmentalize normal things, normal outrages, normal upsets, normal like suspicions,
Speaker 1: and then all came, you know, all came back. And
Speaker 1: then once I realized what had happened to me, I
Speaker 1: was reading constantly, and I was watching videos constantly. I
Speaker 1: was on the Internet trying to learn. At that point,
Speaker 1: Bonnie was thrilled. She was like, well, here's this, and
Speaker 1: here's this, and here's this and here's that, and she
Speaker 1: created this incredible sort of exit list to read, and
Speaker 1: so I read it all, and then we began sharing
Speaker 1: with every shared it with Sarah and Nippy, and we
Speaker 1: began sharing with everybody not only about narcissism, but also
Speaker 1: about cults. Without speaking about cults, right, we had to
Speaker 1: speak about high conflict groups, you know, high control groups.
Speaker 1: We can talk about cults at that point. And we
Speaker 1: had to be careful with narcissism because if we talked
Speaker 1: about a spiritual narcissist, they got upset the people that
Speaker 1: we were trying to wake up. Because also what happened
Speaker 1: is every time any of us posted anything online the inside,
Speaker 1: we're working manically to try to sort of say it
Speaker 1: was disinformation basically, or we're just being victims. You know,
Speaker 1: we finally succumbed to our own victimhood. I mean, one
Speaker 1: of the things they said about me was, oh, Mark's
Speaker 1: just giving into his wife. He has no mind of
Speaker 1: his own. Well, no, I didn't give it. I just
Speaker 1: finally saw the light, right, I finally saw that she
Speaker 1: was right. But it's there's a desperation, you know, cult
Speaker 1: like organizations, when once they sense that the wagons are circling,
Speaker 1: there is a desperation. They move quicker and quicker and quicker,
Speaker 1: and there's an intensity that's all narcissistic relationships to. The
Speaker 1: intensity sort of starts to swing up once they sense
Speaker 1: that somebody is starting to see who they are. And
Speaker 1: the other thing. The smear campaign, Yes it's identical, Yes
Speaker 1: it's identical. It's dentical, I mean, and the smear campaign
Speaker 1: for a person going through any narcissistic relationship, many people
Speaker 1: will report that to be as, if not more traumatizing
Speaker 1: than the narcissistic relationship, because after a moment, you're like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this person is a narcissist and they're behaving as a
Speaker 1: narcissist would, but that they've recruited all these people I
Speaker 1: once believed had my back, And some of the folks
Speaker 1: recruited into the smear campaign aren't necessarily narcissistic themselves. They
Speaker 1: just are still so caught in that traumatically bonded kind
Speaker 1: of a situation. They're trying to keep it from being ostracized.
Speaker 1: They're trying to justify, they want it to be true,
Speaker 1: and so they are willing, they're willing to do this
Speaker 1: harm to someone else. That smear campaign model, I'll tell
Speaker 1: you the harm there is. Actually, I as a clinician
Speaker 1: struggle sometimes more with clients not around the narcissistic abuse piece,
Speaker 1: the one on one as much as the smear campaign
Speaker 1: and the utter devastation that comes out of that many
Speaker 1: people coming at them in that way. It's it's horrifically traumatic,
Speaker 1: interesting because that is the thing that still hurts. Yes, yes, him, him,
Speaker 1: I'm like whatever I faced him in courts you guys
Speaker 1: in prison for a long time, at whatever my friends
Speaker 1: or those I thought were my friends. That hurts. It
Speaker 1: hurts a lot, and in some ways there's still some
Speaker 1: good things there. You still saying this is not the
Speaker 1: person I saw manipulating and doing all this damage. It
Speaker 1: almost quadruples or quintupples the tragedy because you say, Okay,
Speaker 1: I see the game this person is playing, but now
Speaker 1: they literally turned this game back against me, and the
Speaker 1: collateral losses you're piling up are enormous. That betrayal trauma
Speaker 1: is very profound. It is we should talk about betrayal
Speaker 1: trauma for a minute, because trauma is such a it's
Speaker 1: such a multifaceted thing, right, the traumas we think of
Speaker 1: you get mugged on the street late at night, or assaulted,
Speaker 1: you get in a terrible car wreck, you watch some
Speaker 1: harm come to somebody goes through a tornado, those sorts
Speaker 1: of traumas the betrayal trauma starts going into a different
Speaker 1: space where there are such a fundamental breach of trust
Speaker 1: by somebody you may have trusted in an implicit way.
Speaker 1: That crash shows down your worldview. It gets a person
Speaker 1: in a way very differently than those other forms of trauma.
Speaker 1: But the problem, mark is is that a lot of
Speaker 1: people in the world don't recognize the betrayal trauma for
Speaker 1: how profound it is. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. People lie
Speaker 1: all the time. People's twist a knife in your back.
Speaker 1: Oh people cheat, And so it gets minimized, as though
Speaker 1: getting mugged in the street is a more valid form
Speaker 1: of trauma than betrayal. And yet again, and so shrink,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you, betrayal trauma actually twists a person's mind
Speaker 1: up and because what it also does, Yes, it's a
Speaker 1: person you trusted as a person maybe you love, that
Speaker 1: turns against you. But what happens is your concepts of
Speaker 1: goodness and trust get broken. That's exactly right. They are
Speaker 1: not easy to repair. You know, I still don't feel
Speaker 1: that trust is repaired. I am hyper vigilance still, and
Speaker 1: I even going into a situation where I say to myself,
Speaker 1: you can trust that you're going to be okay whatever happens.
Speaker 1: I'm not so sure if I can't trust that I'm okay.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if I can trust this person. So
Speaker 1: there's a constant dialogue going on about trusting about goodness,
Speaker 1: which there's the entire world, so goodness for me now,
Speaker 1: although I feel so much of it is more intact.
Speaker 1: I struggled to really I struggle when I'm dealing with
Speaker 1: people because I never want to say it's all good,
Speaker 1: and I don't want to say it's all bad, and
Speaker 1: then I feel a bit like I don't know, maybe
Speaker 1: I should just stay away. So many survivors of narcissistic
Speaker 1: abuse will say that, yeah, solely, but surely they come
Speaker 1: back online, they feel more normal, But that permanent revision
Speaker 1: of what trust is I am. My work with folks
Speaker 1: is to help them see that it's a new, more wise, richer,
Speaker 1: kind of different kind of take on the truth. It's
Speaker 1: not black and white, it's not that it's a loss
Speaker 1: of innocence once you've gone through betrayal, trauma and narcissistic
Speaker 1: abuse and the world, things have to be earned in
Speaker 1: a different way by people. People have to earn your
Speaker 1: trust and if they're not up for it, they say, well,
Speaker 1: you're very cynical. I'm like, go, then okay, that call
Speaker 1: me cynical. We're good. So this one doesn't hit me
Speaker 1: because I still feel this pain on my head on like, wow,
Speaker 1: that's still strong for me. Yes, it's very strong that
Speaker 1: because people really say I went through the world and
Speaker 1: I had a really good worldview and it forced collaborations
Speaker 1: and I got to talk to strangers, and as a
Speaker 1: fellow survivor, I'll tell you I'm very arms length. It
Speaker 1: takes it takes me a long time to warm up
Speaker 1: and gain trust, and I work with focusing and you
Speaker 1: accept that as part of you. You would even use
Speaker 1: the word damage before, and I would argue, you are
Speaker 1: not damage. You were harmed. I hate the word damaged
Speaker 1: because it reflects something as though you yourself have been
Speaker 1: you've become something less than whereas you were harmed and
Speaker 1: action was targeted towards you and you withstood it. But
Speaker 1: I don't think you're damaged. I don't think any survivor
Speaker 1: of this is so. Here are some takeaways from my
Speaker 1: conversation with Mark. First, every narcissistic relationship is basically a
Speaker 1: cult of two and the same manipulation techniques are at play.
Speaker 1: From Mark's story, we learned that a tool that narcissistic
Speaker 1: people use early on is data mining, learning your fears,
Speaker 1: your vulnerabilities, and showing an intense interest in you. That
Speaker 1: data ends up being something that will be used to
Speaker 1: manipulate you down the road. Take your time early in
Speaker 1: any new relationship, especially when someone is showing overwhelming interest
Speaker 1: in you. The cult leader that Mark described in his
Speaker 1: story defies the stereotype that many people have that all
Speaker 1: narcissists are grandiose narcissist. Narcissism has many faces, and the
Speaker 1: false humility of the vulnerable narcissist or the communal narcissistic type.
Speaker 1: Posturing of sort of spiritual guru types who claim to
Speaker 1: want to make the world a better place can be
Speaker 1: tricky if we only pay attention to arrogant and pretentious showoffs,
Speaker 1: pay attention to red flat, and don't get lost in
Speaker 1: a one size fits all conception of narcissism. Trauma. Bonding
Speaker 1: is how people get drawn to and stuck in narcissistic relationships.
Speaker 1: It's the constant push and pull. Days that feel great
Speaker 1: and you feel so understood, and then days that are
Speaker 1: confusing and dehumanizing. It becomes a constant state of trying
Speaker 1: to appease and win over the narcissist to keep the
Speaker 1: good days coming. Mark like in the back and forth
Speaker 1: of his relationship to a trance, and when we are
Speaker 1: in a trance, we are almost hypnotized. Remember that healthy
Speaker 1: relationships of any kind are stable. Ups and downs are
Speaker 1: not good for us, and if those ups and downs
Speaker 1: resemble the early relationships in our life, we may get
Speaker 1: caught in the same chaotic cycles. Getting out of a
Speaker 1: narcissistic relation fationship, whether it is a cult or any
Speaker 1: other kind of relationship, maybe more painful than just maintaining
Speaker 1: the toxic status quo. Once Mark and others decided to
Speaker 1: not play the game anymore or break ranks, that when
Speaker 1: they face the worst of it, smear campaigns, betrayal by
Speaker 1: people they believe to be their friends, and being blamed
Speaker 1: for what's happening. If you are going to step out
Speaker 1: of a narcissistic relationship, be prepared, have supports, seek out therapy,
Speaker 1: and have realistic expectations of what is to come. There
Speaker 1: is no easy way to escape the prison of toxic relationships.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to Part one of this interview with
Speaker 1: Mark Vicente. Make sure to check out the rest of
Speaker 1: this conversation in Part two. A big thank you to
Speaker 1: our executive producers Jada Pinkett Smith, Valan Jethrow, Ellen Racket
Speaker 1: and and Dr Rominey de Vassila. And thank you to
Speaker 1: our producer Matthew Jones, associate producer Mara Della Rosa, and
Speaker 1: consultant Kelly Ebling. And finally, thank you to our editors
Speaker 1: and sound engineers Devin Donnaghee and Calvin Bailiff.