PATREON REPLAY: A Chat with Jim Edmondson

[00:00:00] This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered legal, medical, or mental health advice. The views and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the podcast and are not intended to malign any religion group,

[00:00:12] club, organization, business, individual, anyone, or anything. Hi Dad! Hello! Hi Dad-in-law! Hi son-in-law! Welcome to A Little Bit Culty. This is a long time coming. Yeah, happy to be here. This is great. I hope... are you nervous?

[00:01:02] Half and half. Not really. So for those who don't know you, can you give us a little preamble of where you're from and what you do and what Jim Edmondson's all about?

[00:01:11] Whoa! That's a big question. Okay so to work from the now which is that now I'm a private practitioner and I assist my partner in her quest to bring her particular approach to psychotherapy

[00:01:24] to the world, which is cutting edge and relates to the top neuroscientists in the world and also to the creativity, imagination, and playfulness of the sand tray using a therapeutic model promoted

[00:01:39] by Virginia Satir which is systemic and experiential. And I love that work. It relates to my interest in theater and yeah, I'm originally from England, came to Canada in 1973 and brought up Sarah first

[00:01:56] of all in another marriage, brought up my son Devin and was a school teacher and then a school counselor for about 35 years and retired in 2015. You're also a very talented folk singer. That's partially true. The alter ego of Mr. Bojangles. Yes, as addictive as Mr. Bojangles

[00:02:18] in the best possible way but he's very good at the guitar, incredible with harmony and... Very good with our children. Incredible with our children. The best part, the reason he's here in Atlanta is that we're going to be in Boston on the speaking engagement and he's here to

[00:02:30] be with the kids and take them to him from school and baseball games and think of a better person to take care of our kids because when they are finished with him, they are happier. Their math

[00:02:41] is better. Their reading skills have improved. Their social emotional skills are sharpened and they're taller. Bigger, stronger, faster. And my dad will be the first to tell me what we need to work on as parents and how the kids are doing. They've been therapized, assessed,

[00:02:59] supported and loved deeply. So we're very happy to be here. Oh, it's so much fun that there are two great kids. Love being with them and so happy to be here. Well, the best part about the Patreon

[00:03:08] community is not a mere 20 minutes ago we posted that we were going to do this and we already have 10 comments and I thought I'd just ease you into this conversation with, this is from Heather

[00:03:18] Moss and she wants to know a funny story from you about when I was a little girl. She loves hilarious, precocious kid stories. So if you have anything off the top of your head... That's an easy one. Which one?

[00:03:30] You're two years old and we're visiting my parents in England and my parents are aristocrats and there's a long 12-foot table and there's food being delivered to the people around the

[00:03:46] table and the chairs have little sort of ears poking up at the back and the dish that's being delivered in this case slips out of the catches in the back of the what do you call those oven mitts

[00:04:02] and the dish sort of shoots out and lands on the lap of the person who they were serving. And Sarah's response was, fucking Jesus! Sorry to Eddie. Which is, you know, I mean my dad is an Anglican minister and my mom is very proper so

[00:04:23] I do completely the wrong thing and I drag her out of the room and scold her vociferously for saying this and for the rest of the holiday it was, fucking Jesus! Fuck it Jesus! Fuck it Jesus!

[00:04:34] Yes apparently when I was playing with my doll it's fucking Jesus! Fuck it Jesus! So that's a that's a famous Edmondson story for sure. I thought that would just warm you up a little

[00:04:43] bit dad. Easy peasy. Easy peasy. Do you want to ask this one? Tony Wormoldt, how does it feel to be the father and father-in-law to some of the coolest cats in town? All right all right all right all

[00:04:53] right all right. LOL hope you'll have a nice visit. Thank you Tony. So are you asking me something? The question was you might have to articulate a little more the question was how does it feel

[00:05:03] to be the father and father-in-law to some of the coolest cats in town? All right so every however often these podcasts come out I'm listening on a drive that I take to my partner's house just

[00:05:18] outside of Vancouver and we and I look forward to them. I'm totally engaged with them. I learn from them. I'm impressed with them. Thank you Jim. I'm so glad that this podcast has come out

[00:05:31] of this awful situation that you've been through both of you. Thank you Jim. So for those who don't know your history with NXM I'll do a little summary because we've got lots of other

[00:05:40] more sort of intricate questions after the fact but you watched me go through this. You saw me being very zealous at the beginning and tried to bring you in and you were hesitant at the beginning

[00:05:53] and then you didn't you took a five-day training five years later. What was that process like for you? In fact one of the questions was yeah what was it like for you to see me go through

[00:06:01] it? You have experience in the field. That was the thing that made me want to take it was watching what happened to you as you went through the program and how it benefited your you know just

[00:06:11] your way of dealing with life dealing with the trials and tribulations of being in a separated family situation of going growing up going to university. It just seemed like things were really coming together for you as a result of doing this program. Yeah and then what?

[00:06:27] And then at five years later you decided to do it. I think that's where I first met him. At his five-day? Yeah. You were at his first five-day training? I was five-day but I think

[00:06:36] I met him at the center. You did meet me at the center? Yeah and he was on a goal and had been on a goals program for a while I think when I first met you. What was your first five-day

[00:06:44] like? Yeah no it was impressive there was there was a bunch of things that made me feel pretty uncomfortable apart from the fact that my I had quite severe back pain throughout the entire

[00:06:55] experience. Did you end that? It's too much kneeling no just kidding it was uh yeah no it was it was impressive the way that that the program got you got me to examine myself my internal world

[00:07:11] and take a little look at it and see if I wanted to do some things better differently so it made me want to continue and so that's what I did. So Tracey Southall

[00:07:21] she wants to hear about your first impressions of Keith and Nancy and what did you think of V-week and any details that you can share? Right okay so my first impression of Nancy was

[00:07:34] this is the part of the program that was the first kind of big red flag was you know lots of discussion lots of good techniques for getting people to talk about stuff what is this what is

[00:07:45] that you know what is responsibility and what do you mean by that and all of that kind of participatory involvement and then Nancy comes on the screen and tells you what the answer is

[00:07:57] so that was my impression of Nancy. The working answer. The working answer. I use air quotes behind that. Yeah exactly. Well yeah this is the answer we're working with that's right but memorize it

[00:08:08] and we'll indoctrinate you with this. That's right there will be a test and there was a test and I failed twice miserably and my first impressions of Keith were I was disappointed

[00:08:18] actually yeah there were two impressions one was him sitting in the front of the group at the YMCA camp where they held V-week on the stage legs dangling over the stage answering any questions that anybody had for him and answering them very succinctly and smartly in my opinion

[00:08:38] so that was on the one hand on the other hand I thought of this idea that I thought would be impressive for him to look at how people undergo change and I you know I described to him this

[00:08:51] diagram with the two marbles one traveling down a 45 degree angle shoot a channel and the other going in a curve going straight down and then ending up at the same point as the

[00:09:01] one that went 45 degrees and the one that gets there first even though it looks like it's not going to is the marble going straight down and that's a mathematical phenomenon that's easily

[00:09:11] understood by people and could be easily demonstrated and shows you that if you don't make progress and you don't make progress and you don't make progress and you suddenly make a lot of progress and go

[00:09:21] shooting forward in your life and his response to that was yeah well that's good but and then he showed me a few diagrams drawing in air in the air about what else could be done it wasn't

[00:09:35] it wasn't the response of a leader it wasn't the response of somebody who is encouraging you know ideas I wasn't I wasn't impressed so knowing what you know now what do you think he was

[00:09:46] doing I think he was demonstrating that there's you know I've got more work to do and that I need to pay attention to what he's saying and and not promote my you know version of it right

[00:09:58] it's his but he put you in your place absolutely put me in my place 100% hmm wasn't thoughtful it wasn't generous it wasn't it's not not the behavior of a leader is what I said to myself

[00:10:09] at the time hmm it's the first I'm hearing that story yeah well he's in prison yeah I know I'm doing diagrams yeah he's been doing diagrams on the wall so let me back up for a second you did

[00:10:20] the five-day and then you did the 11 day so you finished your 16-day training and then you continued on with ethos and I remember you being a very good student you you came in

[00:10:29] with your sash and your binder I worked so hard I worked so hard you know I yeah I look at the binders that I wrote and and the work that I did and it's just the amount of time I put in was

[00:10:42] was phenomenal dad did all the homework did all the homework and that came out of something that I learned which was supremely valuable from the program which is the concept of effort work

[00:10:52] effort you know that's how you get forward in life as you put effort in and and there's no getting around that you know some people wonder what modality Keith stole that from we haven't we haven't figured that out yet I think they call that physics

[00:11:07] yeah it's a simple simple phenomenon really right and I think the value at least you know in that arena that we're in is you're not working unless you can measure tangible results yeah there's

[00:11:17] virtual work that distinction is valuable virtual work which is a physics term and then there's actual work where you have tangible results and being in a community of people that are helping you measure your results and not bullshit yourself was valuable for me and all

[00:11:31] stuff so you couldn't sell yourself the lie that you were you were working when you weren't yet through virtual work right exactly that was one of the things and if you had coaches that

[00:11:40] had really integrated that concept and could apply their acumen to how you are making decisions you can make not necessarily decisions that are making you work harder but work smarter yeah all of that because hard work doesn't necessarily ensure success no no no you know

[00:11:56] if you're working hard reality is going to tell you which direction to put that hard work which is smart work yeah and I think that's what I loved about the goals lab yeah all that other stuff in

[00:12:06] there yeah and you were also very diligent with your persistency those who don't remember it's something you commit to doing every day anything from flossing to 30 minutes of your taxes what were your persistencies do you remember uh the big one was managing my reactivity and

[00:12:21] that was done with a combination of skills which I learned from the program one of which was token gesture that that you do for yourself not for others but you you do some kind of movement

[00:12:32] with your hands or your body or whatever which steer you in the right direction so you're not so fucking reactive to things and you can you make considered decisions so I found that very helpful

[00:12:44] I'm just giving you a gold star yeah I mean you lose like 30 pounds you lost a lot of weight I did lose a lot of weight yeah I lost I lost 15 pounds at least yeah because you cut out

[00:12:54] carbs I think and you were being consistent eight less exercised more yeah I mean these are basic goals right well I mean everyone knows how to do it it's getting the principles behind why you'd want to do it and getting you emotionally connected to it yeah exactly

[00:13:11] and constant reminders will do that yeah and I recall you also had some things that were like made you uncomfortable or that were red flags along the way that you kind of dismissed because

[00:13:21] the good stuff was good what were some of the things that you didn't agree with in the in the dogma of the of the next year program hmm well behind the dogma I I'd heard that Keith was

[00:13:33] very much in favor of ayn Rand whose book Atlas shrugged I read as there was other being in the program and found actually quite interesting and there's some things about that that view of the world which is that humans are essentially creative imaginative and productive

[00:13:51] and inventive and anything that gets in the way of those those features of humanity should be you know not accepted by society but what she didn't and what the program didn't promote well I actually

[00:14:06] did talk about it but it didn't promote it really is the concept of interdependency which is that everybody actually matters I just find myself I get quite emotional around that point you know that

[00:14:18] it's it's all very well to be strongly independent and pushing your narrative and and making it work for you and that's of a great value in society and we have to do it bringing people along

[00:14:33] through our influence I think independence I think we talked about this a little bit is a misnomer I don't think there's people that are independent of society I think someone who's independent isn't seeing how they're an integral part of society does that make sense yeah it does

[00:14:48] make sense independence is someone's psychology someone who thinks they did they got where they are by their by themselves lacks gratitude lacks understanding of all the people that have a thumbprint on why they are good does that make sense yeah for sure because there's a couple

[00:15:02] people in my life that behave like that I'm like dude it would seem to me with your level of success there would be more gratitude and the acknowledgement of the people that got you to where you are

[00:15:13] and instead of an independent I did it on my own us against the world mentality I just think that's well that brings up another thought which is which is that there was a lot of

[00:15:22] stuff in the program that that in retrospect we can I realize now was was geared to having people fall into line with his under the table activities in the program namely he

[00:15:38] was the stuff that got him in prison it was an obedience club it was an obedience club exactly so his idea that that the definition of that he uses of independence which you succinctly redefined is one of those yeah so I know I'm skipping ahead like 12 years but

[00:15:56] did you ever have any concerns along the way that you shared with people I know that yeah all the time yeah and how did what was raised to you how how did you deal with it how'd I deal with their reaction their concerns were you ever concerned

[00:16:09] yeah I mean some of the the anerang thing was a big one the the rejection of the climate crisis was another one those are big things for me at the time and still are

[00:16:20] the whole creed notion that reciting a creed fell to me as a as an ex-religious person a non-religious person now but I was very religious at one point in fact I wanted to be a missionary when I was a 14

[00:16:33] year old you know how many how many 14 year olds do you know that wanted to be missionaries it's stank of that kind of religiosity which I have come to not agree with and don't like you know

[00:16:44] standing around in reciting effectively a creed yeah because you spent many years in boarding school and your dad being as you said an Anglican minister yeah reciting prayers and hymns and we've talked about your wonderful late mom Catherine Sanford lady Catherine Edmondson

[00:17:02] Lady Sanford and how you know she had me baptized when you were out of the house right just to cover all the bases she was very naughty we love her very much but she was well she was making

[00:17:13] sure that I you know I wasn't going to go to hell which is you know was she had good intentions but I know you rejected all that and maybe that's an that's an episode for another time well I don't

[00:17:24] know about rejected this you know there's a word in German called for Bungan which means to transcend preserve and abolish all at the same time and that's what it's about you know we take parts of

[00:17:35] civilization and we transcend the bullish and preserve it like that yeah yeah it is German without rewriting it yeah yeah persecuting people yeah absolutely what's the term called Alfa Bungan Alfa Bungan Bungan yeah I like that yeah so when did you like obviously you had these

[00:17:55] concerns but you supported me and you had your own kind of experience with the tools at one point you were going to be a coach and then you decided not to be well that was after I failed the test

[00:18:05] twice I got 33% and then 32% the second time I tried but also which was a deliberate tactic I think well because you could become a coach even if you fail the test was it meant that

[00:18:18] that meant that you would become a coach but you would keep taking courses to improve yourself I was giving you the cheat code Jim if you had asked me but I think also Linda my late step mom

[00:18:29] your late partner like wife was she nailed it right off the bat she knew from the beginning she's always yeah say things like Keith the humanitarian and I just thought that she didn't understand

[00:18:38] she called him a charlatan from the from the get go yeah she did but she was not supportive of your growth no in the company and she wasn't not not in the company she's supportive of my growth

[00:18:49] she experienced it too I mean she benefited from it there's no question about that yeah but she wasn't keen on us doing this work together I think that wasn't wasn't great for her

[00:18:57] to that we had this club that we were oh I see that she was a part of yeah no that was that was certainly a problem for her yeah and then and then you sort of stepped back

[00:19:06] so you weren't super involved when we got out if I recall like you hadn't been taking classes for a while I hadn't been taking classes for a while and I hadn't been successful at recruiting anybody

[00:19:16] I was absolutely useless of that well that's the other reason you couldn't become a coach you didn't get your two people no no I don't think I got anybody ever the way I talked to them

[00:19:26] they go Jim are you nuts right none of my friends were that remotely interested so when did you figure out that it was a cult oh I wouldn't have used that word I I from my point

[00:19:40] of view it was still a very good useful program of personal for personal development just the fact that you know at one point somebody took a photograph of all the people that were in an nexium and

[00:19:51] made up a collage of his face using their little tiny faces was I mean that was a that was a pretty telling sign that something was wrong you know this is all about hander image

[00:20:03] yeah you know those things where they yeah to take a lot of little images and make a big image yeah and that was hanging in the center yeah nothing says narcissist like an image of your

[00:20:12] face made up of images of your followers that's right oh that is so true okay so moving right along well I was going to cut to the point where yeah someone suggested an intervention

[00:20:23] with us yeah that we were still in didn't someone suggest an intervention that we do something about it that we call it yeah say something about it we talked about it all the time yeah

[00:20:31] yeah because she was yeah she was more concerned about it than I was definitely and we thought about things we could do I didn't discuss it with Linda so much because she was she had never been

[00:20:43] supportive and sort of threw the baby out with the bathwater I was holding on to the baby as you do as I do yeah yeah what was our wedding like for you the big one or the small one

[00:20:54] you know too with the big one the big one with having all the characters there oh you know I mean I think generally speaking I'm against big pageantry having grown up as an aristocratic son you know I see the value of pageantry obviously but generally pageantry is

[00:21:14] it doesn't really move me you and me both yeah but there is a value to having something like that in society you know like my grandson winning the getting the the award after the the game where

[00:21:25] he's you know scores a homerun and gets three outs in baseball those kinds of things that's that is pageantry at a small level yeah but the big stuff and that wedding was super expensive

[00:21:38] yeah sorry about that Jim I tried what was it like to watch us figure out that we were in a cult this is from Rebecca Perry to see your children go through something so harrowing

[00:21:50] it was very painful very painful to see you know two intelligent people coming to a realization that they you know had made a mistake and I found myself wanting to do two things one which was to support

[00:22:06] you and nurture you and and help you and the other and the other two just use everything that the program had taught me and I know that you would you too were doing this for yourselves to to take

[00:22:27] take it down and take Keith down so it was there was a feeling of immense grief and also immense determination because this is obviously not just limited to the nexium cult it's a bigger issue in society which I've been campaigning for for all my life

[00:22:54] which is making the world a better place and challenging abuse of power Aaron you stopped talking to me did you I mean it's my wife your daughter who was branded and then it was released in the media you and I haven't really spoken about like

[00:23:14] you know I had my primal urges for sure I've never really seen you get amped up unless the music playing loud at Hornby Beach at one time at one time but did you have that go on with

[00:23:28] you did you have a I'm gonna get on a plane and you know yeah and and and take him down yeah um yeah well I don't I don't see myself yeah no that's that's a good question because it's a natural

[00:23:44] knee jerk response one I had I didn't really get to yeah exercise I I'm not sure that I can honestly answer that question immediately I'd probably have to think about it it wasn't

[00:23:56] so much taking him down personally it was taking because you'd had much closer contact with him than I had I really had had not I had that one incident with the you know the diagram thing with

[00:24:08] the marbles going to that was it really I mean I hadn't had any other personal contact with him at all it was more a question of taking down his false the whole persona thing yeah and and and

[00:24:20] the system that went with it which was suddenly in clear technicolor bringing mostly young women into a situation of abuse and from Christina Hambrick so it sounds like your parents handled it really well which you did knowing what you know now is there anything you do differently

[00:24:38] good question yeah I would say trust your critical intuitive faculties I wish I had trusted my critical intuitive faculties earlier and acted on them and just raised those questions raised those thoughts as questions more and not being afraid to say to people who said

[00:24:59] what does it mean that you're raising this question about you and I say well what does it mean about you what does it mean about Keith Ranieri what does it mean about the people who at the center

[00:25:08] of the thing that they are promoting this ridiculous nonsense of women who can't meet their goals have to lose calories as a result of not making their goals that's just straight nonsense so

[00:25:20] you were aware of that when you were in it the calorie stuff yeah well you told me after the fact no during I did because I wasn't doing that no you said that that's what they were saying that DOS

[00:25:29] was saying but I would have told you after because DOS was secret and before yeah after after it was out yeah for sure right so what would you from Jennifer McIntosh Mackintosh hello mr Edmondson hello any sage advice for a parent of an adult child who went through

[00:25:45] what we did yeah I think just basically that you know you have your intuition your intuition is a very powerful force which gets drummed out of our operating it's put aside in favor of science and

[00:25:57] in favor of rationality and left brain thinking and all of my work as a psychotherapist has been in retrospect has been driven by the the power of my right brain which is primarily based on bodily reactions and intuition and you know a psychotherapist who doesn't trust their intuition

[00:26:14] is going to get well they're going to get somewhere but they're not going to get very far trust your gut listen to your gut all right Jim what's it like to see your kid helping so many

[00:26:22] folks on the other side the next same shit show and that's from Justin Underhill oh that's just great it's that and it's bigger than that I mean this the concept of abusive power is

[00:26:32] so fun it's also fundamental to our existence is that people who've had power throughout history have oftentimes abused it and if we can move forward as a world civilization without that then that's great and I see this as part of that that the cutting edge of that movement

[00:26:50] I'm excited I'm gonna have to be some people that get taken down yeah there's just no question about that and Beverly Sutton asked a question that's been asked already but she also said I understand that you supported Sarah and Nipi and their family in ways they really needed

[00:27:04] thank you for that they've made a healing difference in the world too thank you Beverly no okay yeah absolutely yeah it's it's a funny combination of healing and a sort of almost aggressive not aggressive but determine and um sort of assertive determination you know it's

[00:27:23] it's a two-edged process that's that these that you two have been taking on doing impressive those were the questions from our patreon audience is there anything that you want people to know as my dad and Nipi's father-in-law yeah just when it comes to power look at the

[00:27:39] ways that power is being wielded and if it's abusive if your intuition is saying it's abusive then use your critical critical faculties to figure out why and how it's abusive and fight those things

[00:27:51] thanks for being there for us thanks for being a support system thanks for not judging us once the last thing people need in this situation is a critic and I never felt that once with you good so I appreciate that and probably in times when I deserved it

[00:28:06] you're your biggest critic so I'll let you handle it that's probably true dad they love you thank you for teaching me to make the world a better place to live and instilling those values in me from the from day one thank you vanguard no we're not gonna

[00:28:20] no no we're not gonna thank very good fuck that fucker