PATREON REPLAY: Sarah & Nippy Answer Your Voicemails

[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, club,

[00:00:12] organization, business, individual, anyone, or anything. Hey everyone, it's Nippy here. Here's a replay from The Vaults that was originally broadcasted especially for our A Little Bit Culty Patreon crowd. You can get more of this kind of thing,

[00:00:25] plus ad-free flagship episodes and other exclusive treats if you hang out with us on Patreon. Cult chilling. Sometimes we zoom, sometimes we make word salads, you never know. So come on over,

[00:00:35] why don't ya? All the cool kids are doing it on Patreon. Find us at patreon.com slash a little bit culty. Patreon. Patreon people. Guys, this is like totally blowing my mind. I remember

[00:00:53] hearing about Patreon when we first started and I was like, nah, I don't want to do that. And now this is like, don't tell the other people that we love the Patreon people the most.

[00:01:01] We love you the most. Sarah, you're starting us first them thing and that's pretty culty. Just saying. We're gonna love bomb the shit out of you. Just love you. Us first them, little us first them, Sarah. Just pointing it out.

[00:01:15] How'd everybody feel about Dr. Marlene Wynnell? Nippy, what was the highlight for you of the episode that dropped Monday? What was the highlight for Dr. Marlene Wynnell? Okay, first of all, love her intelligence. Number one, I love it when we have a

[00:01:25] guest that's just like, bang on it, knows their shit, drops it like it's hot. Couple of things that I noticed that she articulated pretty well for me is I think, to me, the number one abuse that can go on is when you take someone out of society and

[00:01:40] you isolate them because that just puts them behind the eight ball. It makes them dependent and I think isolation is the worst form of abuse. It stunts your growth. It creates the us first them and it creates dependency on whatever group you're in and it basically

[00:01:57] says you're not okay or safe without that group. That is something that will go with you once you even outside of the group that you have to reconcile. It really, to me, is a single worst

[00:02:07] abuse. That's the number one. Number two, amygdala. It explains so much of what's going on today because you have that lower brain function that triggers you. Normally, it's on social media, but you're not in any danger. Basically, I think if people could understand

[00:02:21] that what they're witnessing on those social media things are people in fight or flight just firing off texts and firing off things when they're not having a human interaction with them. Most of the people would be able to reconcile the stuff I think if they're interacting with

[00:02:36] other human beings, but you're interacting with people's amygdala reactions. It's going to trigger yours and that's the primal nature that we're seeing on social media. I think understanding your hardwiring, understanding your physiology does wonders for understanding

[00:02:51] your decisions and what's informing them. I think she did a really good job of doing that. If people could have that education going forward, I think you'd see less of what's going on, particularly on social media. I want to preface that with saying what's going on.

[00:03:04] Social media is not necessarily what's going on in the world, but just that whole conversation to me was just really good to let her riff and go on. She has a lot of good language for it. She's smart and intelligent and really loved it. One of my favorites.

[00:03:17] How about you, Sarah? What was your biggest takeaway? Well, thanks for asking, Anthony. First of all, I'm appreciating and I hope that our audience is too that we're trying to balance the episodes with survivors and slightly heavier

[00:03:28] things with more expert perspectives. Even though she is a survivor, we focused more on her expertise. I appreciated that and I got a lot out of it. I specifically, and this is something that I think our audience knows that I struggle more with

[00:03:42] PTSD than you do, partly for obvious reasons that I was branded and you weren't. But I think, and I'm one of the nuggets I got out of that is that I was more invested in Nexium in terms of

[00:03:53] like financially. And I bought in more than you did. There's just things that you weren't willing to do when you were like, fuck this about it. And obviously, right? Where I was more internally,

[00:04:04] fuck this. My livelihood didn't depend on it either. I don't want to sit here and flex, oh, I wasn't susceptible. I was susceptible just in different ways. Totally. Right. It helped me remember that like my, I think we're both sensitive, you know,

[00:04:17] underneath that tough nippy exterior there is a very sensitive nippy that we all love. No, there's not Sarah. Don't tell people that. But I think I'm more, it's not fragile. I'm just more, I just take things personally more.

[00:04:30] It kind of pulled things together for me in a way that's like, that's why I'm actively constantly trying to get into parasympathetic versus getting out of sympathetic and just remembering, you know, so much of like was a lot of the things she talked about,

[00:04:44] we actually learned to partly in Nexium. Like Nancy taught us about the nature of fight or flight. And she didn't say the word amygdala hijack, but you know, how all the adrenaline goes to your

[00:04:53] limbs and you're ready to fight. But what I hadn't linked together is that a lot of what we did in the training is terms of state control, which has come up recently in the

[00:05:02] Vows season three is getting into what she called an intensity state. And remember there was that exercise like how to do something as if your life dependent on it, dependent on it. And this was a

[00:05:12] state you could get into if you want to get something done very quickly, you could get into intensity state. And the example they used is like your place as a mess and someone saying,

[00:05:20] Hey, I'll be there in five minutes. If you got into an intensity state, like you're, and you could clean your home or tie to your home as if your life depended on it,

[00:05:27] you could be very effective, you know, which cool, you know, great tool to have in your tool belt. I think that many of the leadership and myself included lived in intensity state.

[00:05:35] I was just go, go, go, go, go doing things as if my life dependent on it was very hard to transition out of that. And that continued and then amped up when we left. And that was sort

[00:05:45] of like the basis of my PTSD. So so much of what I do to counter that, you know, going to yoga and getting grounded, going to the woods and all the things that I talk about all the time.

[00:05:53] But I think that's the sort of the main nugget that I got is understanding how that works, how to, how to evolve it, how to stop and, and how to also deal with people who are,

[00:06:03] who are dealing with it. Like I think one of the things for our relationship that's been really helpful is there's been times when I've been like so whacked out in the sympathetic PTSD craziness.

[00:06:13] And you're like, I don't know what to do with you. And I'm like, you don't have to do anything except like hug me and tell me it's going to be okay. And I think that's a good nugget

[00:06:20] for people who, who have loved ones who are recovering or reclaiming. I really want to, I want to use that word. Can we talk about our listeners as listeners and reclaimers from now on?

[00:06:31] Reclaimers? Yeah, yeah, I can go with it. Yeah. Yeah. Cause we've, we've in season one and two, we were trying to find a name for the people came up with like thrivers and I don't know,

[00:06:42] all sorts of different. Back to what you're saying about the nervous systems. You know, I heard this one podcast that I remember where the guy was talking about. It's like, you know, with all the stuff and how we're getting our sound bites, it's people just

[00:06:52] throwing shrapnel into your, your central nervous system and how do you take it out? And how do people build awareness about what's being done? Because some people do, I mean, and this depends on how you think, how deep things go. But you would have to believe at

[00:07:07] some point there are people that are armed with the knowledge of how the human psychology and physiology works and how they direct their social media bots, if you will, to those nervous systems directly, they're specifically designed to get you to do that.

[00:07:21] And so if that's the case and you're not aware of this stuff, you're in essence a puppet to these mechanisms that are just pulling the levers of your amygdala. Well, that's the thing is it's

[00:07:29] all about the awareness, right? I love the line that she said about using the voices in your head in a positive way. And it's a fine line between like spiritual woo woo, spiritual bypassing where you're overriding what's going on with you, which is different than

[00:07:44] helping yourself transition out of a reaction that you're in danger when you're actually not. Maybe that's the conversation for another expert because I'm not sure when to do what at this point.

[00:07:56] I like, when do you go, okay, this is a feeling I need to address versus this is a fight or fight reaction based on a past experience and I'm actually fine and I'm going to ground

[00:08:07] and be in the now and dare I say, I don't want to bring up Eckhart again because it was so controversial. But this is the part of it that I extracted for myself. It doesn't work

[00:08:17] for you. Skip it, throw in the garbage. I don't care. We are not saying he is the new guru by any means. I don't want people to think that it's just a tool for my tool belt of being present

[00:08:28] in the moment when I'm actually fine, which is different than trying to get present in the moment and pretend things are fine when you're not fine. So that's the conversation that I think

[00:08:38] is still ongoing. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, totally agree. The other thing I really liked is that there are, and I think we're going to do another episode on this. I've seen a

[00:08:46] lot of questions in our in and Patreon and over on Instagram like how do you have a positive community? Is there any green flags to recognize when you're being supported and it's healthy?

[00:08:57] And I believe there are churches that do that. I just haven't experienced it because they don't go to church, but I do believe there's churches that do that. And I love that we have a supportive community here where we can have civil discourse about what tools work and

[00:09:09] what doesn't. And that includes people sharing their spiritual journey, which I'm still on and that we make mistakes in that journey in terms of like. Which is a great segue, Sarah. To some questions? Do you have some questions for me? Yeah, I do have some questions.

[00:09:25] Is that my unique name? Segway Sarah? Segway Sarah. Okay. What were your favorite questions from Patreon? Okay, this is from Jackie Shenwell. How did you feel about what Nancy said about trying to separate the quote sex crimes part from the case from the quote other

[00:09:40] crimes? Yeah, I mean, I'm hoping that this six episode arc in the vow has some redemption for her. But you know, those first few episodes don't bode well in terms of how she's trying to vindicate herself and clearly trying to avoid responsibility. It's frustrating because

[00:09:59] we know now that the two things were intrinsically linked. And we've always, you know, in the other interviews that we've done since speaking about this, tried to explain that there was the personal

[00:10:11] development on the outside and then like the sex cult stuff on the inside. In other words, you could take training and not know about it, which is true. But for her as the leader,

[00:10:20] she had to know about all of it. And perhaps she didn't know about the branding until, you know, we blew the whistle and exposed it. But she certainly knew that Keith was having sex

[00:10:31] with multiple women in the leadership. And she knows that because she was yemming people on their jealousy issues and having to quote share his penis. So it's frustrating. That's how it felt. How about you? I would just say that's her campaign to minimize her association with abuses.

[00:10:49] I think it's nothing more. The mere fact that she had to yem people on Keith's sexual behavior with the women that were there to work on personal and professional development, that's the reason they signed up and then protect that she was doing that

[00:11:02] to everyone else knowing that he was preying on women. Sorry, Nancy. It's just not buying anything that she's selling. I think that's because she was acclimated to the abuse of behavior that was going on or just simply didn't have a problem with it, which neither

[00:11:18] good looks. How did you feel when Nancy allowed her anger to show for a minute? This is from Karen Juliano. How did you feel when Nancy allowed her anger to show for a minute there at the end,

[00:11:27] the real Nancy in my opinion, my honest opinion, and then tucked it away neatly back in her pocket? I found it to be terrifying like watching an alien pop out of its human suit for a moment.

[00:11:34] Yeah. How'd you feel? So here's what I think. I think she was showing people how good the tools worked when she was explaining it. And I think she's that unaware of- How fucked up it is? Yes. Look, I think she's going, here's what we do, blah, blah, blah,

[00:11:50] we're not. And she's showing that she's an example of it, but not really recognizing nobody gives a shit about it. This is how it ended up. You just showed how you got away with your abuse. She isn't reconciled. Does that make sense? Oh yeah. No, it looks sociopathic.

[00:12:04] Yeah. It looks so crazy. I'm not necessarily convinced she is. I just think she's totally lost sensitivity to that. That's not a positive thing you just did. And I think she's selling it.

[00:12:16] This is what our tools do, right? Yeah. Knowing her, knowing that that's how she sold the curriculum. Well, look at how it came off. Look at how this person, look at how Cara and Giuliano is asking the question. Yeah. No, I mean the number of people-

[00:12:32] Thank you, Karen. And I saw that on Instagram a lot. Thank you, Karen. Okay, got another one from me. This one's from Gigalbit. I'm curious about the intent of DOS. Originally, I thought the master-slave relationships

[00:12:42] was about surrender and discipline, but listening to the way folks described being quote, at cause in the ESP curriculum and listening to the strong emphasis, loyalist focus, so strongly on women's quote choice and giving consent to something undefined.

[00:12:56] I wonder was the abuse in DOS intentional and preplanned? Was the whole thing some terrible and intentional exercising getting the members of DOS to make a quote choice, setting them up for abuse and then having some twisted higher purpose and reconciling

[00:13:09] being at cause? I guess the question overall was, was the abuse in DOS intentional and preplanned? As far as we know, Keith needed a way to keep women loyal and have a fresh supply for sex

[00:13:22] for him. So, and he needed to make it look like everyone chose. So that's on the main tenant of what we all learned in next year and for years. Everything's choice. We chose, we agreed. We gave our collateral willingly, which is bullshit because we gave

[00:13:37] our collateral willingly based on the lie that we were joining a women's group for women's empowerment. Not we're joining a group where we're giving collateral for Keith's personal spank bank. So this was totally intentional and preplanned. Maybe not all the women

[00:13:51] understood that because they were so indoctrinated to please him and do whatever their master wanted, but all of it DOS rests on the concept of at cause and is dependent on it. So everything

[00:14:05] that's set up for is designed for abuse, but can always have plausible deniability that it's not that. Yeah, I think it was preplanned to scratch all his indulgence. So this is actually a question

[00:14:16] I think I got from my Instagram. I didn't catch the name. I didn't, I didn't copy and pasted it into my notes. I didn't catch the name. So whoever this is, thank you.

[00:14:53] Men or Women? Curious. Thank you. Nice work. Also, who will play you guys in the movie? The short answer is no. However, Mark and I have been talking and he's starting to think,

[00:15:05] and I don't necessarily agree with him, but nothing would surprise me, that there may have been some other men's thing where they're collateral, they collateralize something. And he thinks some of the people that are still loyal maybe and part of that and then that maybe Mark and I

[00:15:21] were bypassed. I don't necessarily think that, but at this point, like with everything that we've been wrong about and what's come out, you know, I don't know. But in terms of what you've seen

[00:15:31] in DOS, there's nothing like that except for some collateral stuff about like, if I don't enroll a person this month, I'm going to give 250 bucks to a charity or something like that.

[00:15:42] Who's going to play us in the movie? There was a terrible lifetime we made a couple years ago, and we can't even talk about it. It was terrible. I'll add something. I mean, just from my perspective,

[00:15:54] it seemed like, you know, as coaches, the men and women had some similar roles. There were more female facilitators, like in terms of teaching the curriculum and more women. I mean, generally,

[00:16:05] more women were involved. And I at the time, I always thought it was because they were more interested in doing the introspective work is sort of a cliche in terms of the emotional work.

[00:16:15] But we had quite a few men. And I think that things changed and got more intense as SOP and Ginesse were introduced. But in terms of similar rituals, I mean, SOP had rituals in terms of like

[00:16:30] men getting together and you know, they would stand if people were late and they'd go like stand in really early hours of the morning in silence and waiting for somebody who was, I mean,

[00:16:43] maybe you can speak more to that. But that's a kind of a ritual, isn't it, Nip? No, there wasn't a whole lot of that though. Okay. Well, I wasn't part of it so I can't comment. But there was definitely more women than men in Nexium.

[00:16:54] It wasn't sexual abuse. No. See, women were brought into the pipeline we know now for Keith. I think the men were there to like, you know, protect him and like a nippy sake to be the face of it. Like, hey, look, we got this Ivy League former quarterback.

[00:17:11] You know, we don't know. We know. We don't know. But what we do know is that you served a different purpose for him. Don't you think? Yep. Okay. This is Jackie Shenwell again, because I just like this question. On Mark Vicente's podcast,

[00:17:25] read debriefed episode three, he kept calling Mark Elliott a good man. He protested him as a victim under Keith Spell. You all offered a different view in your debrief. When does victim crossover into perpetrator like in the case of Allison and Mark Elliott?

[00:17:39] Man. I mean, I don't even know how to answer that. I do think Mark is a good person. I really do. I think he's been incredibly misguided. Let me challenge you there. If you just met him for the first time, would you call him a good person? Yeah.

[00:17:51] No, I'd call him an asshole. You're totally insensitive to the people that have been abused. This is a totally self-serving thing that you're doing. You don't care about people that you're steamrolling with your three men. Are you talking about meeting him now? You're totally using cognitive distance.

[00:18:04] Do you want to meeting him now? Yeah. If you're going to meet him for the first time right now. Oh, okay. Sorry. For the first time right now. I'm saying when I met him originally for the first time, I thought he was a good person.

[00:18:12] So people are good and then something happens to them where they become quote bad. You can get into the semantics of good and bad. But I think the essence of this question is when did these people stop getting a

[00:18:25] hall pass for being good people who were just kind? And when can you call them vitriolic and mean people? And that's what they're all being right now. I guess every single one of them.

[00:18:35] I guess I have to look at what we learned from Dan Shaw when we were first getting out ourselves. I had to face how I gaslit people or I wasn't kind or good to people as part of my journey

[00:18:50] of healing. And Dan reminded me is that when there's a toxic gaslighting leader at the top, and that's how we are trained to work with people, we're all going to do it. So there's a part of me that understands that for Mark.

[00:19:02] Sarah, you weren't standing in burned ashes of a building with bodies all around you. No, I know. I'm just extending. They are. I'm trying to extend a little bit of grace to like that's not how he was when I met him. That's all.

[00:19:17] We've done plenty of that for them. Okay. So don't do it anymore? In the face of them. That's what I'm saying is I think the essence of this question for me,

[00:19:24] and this is kind of where I'm going is like we've done plenty of hold the line for them, plenty of like whatever. Every single one of them has had a friend or family member reach out to us

[00:19:33] for help. No one in our families and none of our friends are calling them to see that we need help to see it their way. Like how mean do they have to get and vitriolic do they have to get

[00:19:43] before a good man evolves into your vitriolic spiteful hateful person right now and you're toxic and the hall pass of good man, like how long do you hold their hand before it's

[00:19:55] like, hey look you know and eventually I think this is going for them because like take their behavior out into five, 10 years from now as an algorithm. They're not getting kinder. They're not getting nicer. They're not getting more empathetic. They're getting more mean.

[00:20:09] They're spreading more lies. They're willing to do more and more things to justify their narrative and impose it on the victims and the people who are actually hurt. What's the line? When did they cease to become a good man? Look, I agree.

[00:20:22] Mark's heart as far as I could tell when I was around him. Good guy, love to see him make the shift. He could turn this into a positive if he wanted to. Why doesn't he want to? Like what's the,

[00:20:30] do you know what I mean? Like I just think those questions are valuable as well. So when his victim cross over into perpetrator, it's a great question. One thing we didn't talk about in our vow party, vow party or vow after debrief is

[00:20:42] what the conversation you saw with Isabella, there was many of those and there were some even with Mark and Isabella where we were listening. They were infuriating. They were infuriating. What you saw with Mark was way worse. Mark gaslit her even worse than what

[00:20:58] you saw, but I'm so glad that they showed it and I'm so glad that they showed how Isabella fought back. It was kind, but it was well done when specifically when he said you're ruining

[00:21:09] the Tourette's and she goes, who's Tourette's mine? Yours or the study? That was so boss. I loved that. That was so great. And they say, I love you, hun. Honestly, it was really gross. It was really gross.

[00:21:21] Fair questions. I think, yeah, I think all the responses can be somewhat appropriate, you know, to not be sensitive to where they are, you know, means we haven't really reconciled ours, but there's a certain point like, you know, I think they're toxic and you got to get

[00:21:34] away from them and not engage them and not give them a platform. I've always said the best thing to do for them is leave them alone, let them run out of air. Okay. So now we're going to play some of the voicemails over on our website. So thanks,

[00:21:46] everybody. We've got so many. Here's just a few and we'll do some more next week for sure. So let's start with Andrea Brown. Hello, Sarah and Nippy. I was wondering if you guys are ever

[00:21:57] going to do a podcast regarding a landmark forum. I was involved for a short time and very culty. And I was just wondering if that was on your radar.

[00:22:12] I was involved in it. I had a boss that said, hey, I have something I want you to get involved in and I went and I literally lasted like one day and it just gave me the creeps. They would let

[00:22:24] you go to the bathroom. It was very cultish and strange. There were plants in the room, you know, it was just very, very strange. I couldn't get out there fast enough. So anyway,

[00:22:35] I was just wondering if you were going to cover that in one of your episodes. I think it would be interesting. I think people would find it interesting and probably a lot of people have been involved

[00:22:47] and would want to speak out. Like I said, I wasn't involved for very long, but it really creeped me out. And I still remember this day how I felt. I just, you know, I got up,

[00:22:57] I said, I have to go make a phone call. And basically they said, you know, we really don't want you to leave and hovered over me while I use the phone. This was before everybody had a cell

[00:23:08] phone, but hovered over me and, you know, it was like, you know, I can't leave. And I was like, I can leave whenever I want. It was just very strange. Anyway, just curious if we're going to do that. So I think people would find it interesting.

[00:23:24] Okay. Have a good day. Thanks. Bye. First of all, we'd love to do an episode on landmark. What you just said, you can't leave or question are two of the biggest reasons we want to do an episode on it. The red flags are the

[00:23:36] things that bring us towards an organization. However, they're protected another red flag. They've got a great legal team and they will go after you legally if you do that. So it's one of the things we're navigating a couple other people have done episodes on them

[00:23:51] and gotten some letters to take down their podcasts about it. We won't name names. Yeah. I mean, I think that most people don't touch it because they do have such a intense legal team that just shuts everybody down, which should be a red flag in and of itself

[00:24:05] that people can't speak about their experience. If it can't stand up to scrutiny as Stephen Hassen says, then that's a massive red flag for me. But from what I can see and

[00:24:14] from what people have told us, it's really all the same problems as Nexium minus the branding and perhaps the sexual aspect in the inner circle. But in terms of the relation and the coercion,

[00:24:29] as far as we know, but ultimately, yes, that's on our list. We've just been trying to find the right person to interview and it's just a little bit scary for us legally. So, yes, stand by and thanks for reaching out to us. Andrea Brown. Thank you, Andrea.

[00:24:46] Thank you, Andrea. Hi, my name is Megan. I'm also known as queerby on Instagram. I have messaged Sarah a couple times because I love y'all. Anyways, you know what fucking chaps my ass is watching the vow

[00:25:00] season two and I'm a mental health counselor and listening to these fuck faces act like Keith created cognitive behavioral therapy in basic, basic psychotherapeutic tools that we all use. I just can't. Also, I'm realizing I have a little bit of empathy for Nancy watching this most recent

[00:25:26] one where she is being honest about how Keith treated her. I was like, I fucking knew it. So I'm just glad she's coming to terms with that. So fucking chaps my ass though, these people,

[00:25:37] I mean, come on, you did not invent narrative therapy and a lot of the stuff that many of us use and we're not special. We're not special using it. We're just doing basic human stuff. So

[00:25:51] fucking Keith, dude, that fuck face. So you can air this. I don't know if you can because I fucking dropped fbombs as I do. Anyways, love you what y'all do. Keep it up. Thank you.

[00:26:03] Megan, we love the fbombs. Listen, girl after my own heart. I feel the same way. I'm glad she's coming to terms with how Keith treated her. And like I said with Mark earlier, it's both. It's always both. I think she probably was a good person at the beginning.

[00:26:20] She did some fucked up things and needs to be held accountable. Well, I think also how they handle it determines if they're a good person or ever were. When you find that you've participated in something that's been detrimental and you

[00:26:31] thought it was good, then what do you do with it? You fix it. I think I said that in first season. You go just go fix it and fixing it, you learn more. And yeah, as for the tech

[00:26:41] and the cognitive behavior, like that's pretty much been the response across the board from people who are superficially involved with cognitive behavior therapy. Like they just go what? Like she said, we're not special. It's standard practice. And I think it's almost embarrassing

[00:26:56] here and that thinking that we thought we were doing something, but they don't want to hear that. They're not going to hear it. And I think the story is more about the grasp of the belief

[00:27:04] system of what they're doing is good has on them. No amount of information is going to make them pivot. They're just going to make you bad and wrong and deny your experience, blah, blah, blah. You know the drill. But yes, thank you, Megan. Aschapping across the board.

[00:27:17] Thanks, Megan. And by the way, that was verified also by my therapist when I tried to explain some of the processes that we did. He's like, yeah, that's kind of psychology tool set 101. People are there. They're there, Sarah. Thanks. No, that's great.

[00:27:30] Oh man. Appreciate the interaction. Nippy and I are blown away by you Patreon fans. It's really like heartwarming and meaningful to us. And onwards and upwards. Thanks for the questions, everybody. See you soon. Patreon.