Seek Safely: Jean Brown & Dr. Glenn Patrick Doyle on the Self-Help Industry

[00:00:00] This winter, take your icon pass north. North to abundant access, to powder-skiing legacy, to independent spirit. North where easy to get to, meets worlds away. Go north to snow basin. Now on the icon pass. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered legal, medical

[00:00:31] 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, organization, business, individual, anyone or anything. I'm Sarah Edmondson and I'm Anthony air quotes Nippy Ames

[00:00:55] and this is a little bit culty. A podcast about what happens when things that seem like a great thing at first go bad. Every week we chat with survivors, experts and whistleblowers for real

[00:01:06] cult stories told directly by the people who live through them because we want you to learn a few things we've had to learn the hard way like if you think you're too smart to get sucked into

[00:01:16] something culty you're already prime recruitment material you might even already be in a cult you better keep listening to find out welcome to season six of a little bit culty welcome back to a little bit culty everyone. Sarah and I are sitting down recording the

[00:01:47] intro after going out and getting our halloween costumes or baby Billy Bababoncos may make an appearance for those of you have not watched righteous gemstones you might not know what we're talking about so you have about eight days before halloween and the debut of our

[00:02:02] fantastic costumes to get caught up otherwise you will not know what you are looking at. Going up now get on out of here and watch yourself some righteous gemstones. I love it Nippy. Thank you, thank you.

[00:02:13] Happy halloween season if that's what you're into thank you everybody who's been responding to the twin flames episode and sharing their feedback as you know we love hearing from you we love your reviews we love when you share twin flames now give me some twin flames love

[00:02:28] is that was that it you gotta work on that babe. It's a good start. Let's get started I'm gonna be telling you how a character starts yeah I also love when people share how the podcast has impacted them this is from Maggie Patton who wrote

[00:02:41] hi Sarah just want to let you know how much I loved your book and I've been loving y'all's podcast a little bit culty thank you I saw the HBO doc but loved hearing more of your

[00:02:48] story which along with the other stories of other survivors has sparked my initial interest in cults slash high control groups I'm currently in grad school in Austin Texas obtaining my master's in clinical mental health counseling to become a licensed professional clinical counselor and

[00:03:01] my goal is to specialize in cult recovery and the treatment of religious and spiritual abuse and trauma the stories of survivors of nexium are what inspired me to do this so just want to thank you for being brave and vulnerable enough to share your story well that Maggie

[00:03:13] is awesome it makes me so happy because certainly there is a lack of people who have that expertise I know I've mentioned this before but if you're new to the podcast we have a ton of resources

[00:03:23] at the little bit culty dot com including some trauma informed and cult informed therapists but not there's really not many including a newly dropped ped talk oh yes that should be on the resource list thanks nip my TEDx talk dropped last week thank you for everyone who's been

[00:03:39] watching and please don't just listen to it watch it because there's visual visuals and if you share it share it with the link so people can see the youtube content easily also apparently it really helps the algorithm if you comment so please share a comment

[00:03:53] share it with anyone who think you think might be in a cult or you know in an MLM and you want to give them casual information that might plan to seed for their future exit

[00:04:02] what did you like about it put you on the spot how it was concise and to the point so it's not like beating you over the head with a bunch of intel it's just like

[00:04:11] quick this is what it looks like if you want more here's where you can go which is our lane cool yeah I like to think that the TED talk is not really so much for this audience because

[00:04:21] you all have been you know especially for those of you who've been with us since the beginning we've covered a lot of ground but somebody I think was Yara in Portland said she was like

[00:04:28] it's your the greatest hits of the little bit culty podcast and the 15 or now actually 18 minute TED talk so I hope that you like it it's really just to get the information out there for

[00:04:38] the masses especially for the people who think they would never fall for a cult that's the person I'm talking to yeah send it to that person and in perfect that it dropped at this time at this

[00:04:47] juncture because we reached out to the seek safely organization to get permission to use the term seek safely in the talk which is sort of my goal the idea of giving people

[00:04:59] the tools to seek safely which is also a commentary on the group that's kind of waiting for people that have been in cults and stuff it's a really gracious community I find it was there for us

[00:05:10] and now we've been able to add to it not a body of work to it yes and for those people who are people like our guests who just wrote to us Maggie there is also a little bit culty good

[00:05:19] reads account where we have all the books that we've recommended in one place so you can check that out if you got a book club going maybe we'll do a book club one day that'd be fun speaking of books the self-help book industry alone is expected to grow

[00:05:33] this power is a power move segway right there kind of like that we're segue I mean my own little theme thing like you're a little bit called well we haven't done a word salad in a long time

[00:05:43] we'll get going back on that sorry tangent squirrel the self-help book industry alone is expected to grow from 10.5 billion annually to 15 billion and by 2025 that's just the Barnes and Nobles around the corner yeah exactly and despite being both a massive and growing industry

[00:05:58] some people believe that someone has to be somewhat fucked up in order to seek self-help or perhaps more importantly that only the desperate could fall victim to abuse within self-help organizations

[00:06:07] but we know firsthand from next year that this is not the case one such victim is Kirby Brown who died when she was 38 after being encouraged to stay in a sweat lodge during a self-help

[00:06:17] retreat she embarked on just outside of Sedona Arizona James Arthur Ray a prominent quote unquote guru reportedly ignored his clients pleas for help and told them to push themselves further two others

[00:06:29] died in addition to Kirby and to hear more about that tragic incident please listen to our episode with Laura Tucker from our early years with a little bit culting on today's episode we're joined by two guests Jean Brown who's Kirby's sister and the co-author of The Sweet Life

[00:06:45] Lived a memoir she wrote with her mother about what happened to Kirby and what they learned about the self-help industry joining her is Dr. Glenn Patrick Doyle a psychologist who was teamed up with Jean to create the Seek Safely non-profit org and podcast both aimed at passing

[00:07:00] legislation within the self-help industry to prevent abuse in the future I think this is a really important conversation after everything we've been talking about so far this season especially regarding Dr. Shafali and how to do these things safely wisely and with

[00:07:13] your eyes wide open yeah particularly when it's been endorsed by people who are influencers before the term was even a term so without further ado welcome to Jean and Dr. Doyle

[00:07:37] hi Dr. Glenn and Jean hi Sarah how are you hi guys welcome to a little bit culty thank you so much we're so happy to be here we're such huge fans of the show and everything that you guys

[00:07:50] have been doing so this is yeah this is really exciting for us at Seek Safely we are huge Sarah and Nipi Stans we're not just fans we're we stand it's great guys you don't even know

[00:07:59] I do sort of know because I've been listening to your podcast to prepare for this episode and I was like wow there's so many shoutouts and I'm so touched and honored and also I just

[00:08:10] was explaining to Nipi what a stan is this is a new terminology oh yeah it's not it's not just fan it's it's stan it's next level explain it I wasn't listening when you were

[00:08:20] explaining it I mean there are fans right like I mean fan like the origin of fan is fanatic right like so some people are fans of your work but when you stan somebody you

[00:08:31] stand behind I mean you uh you boost them what Swifties are to Taylor Swift we are to to Sarah and Nipi so you guys need like a label for that yeah without being too culty about it

[00:08:43] well just a little bit cool here we are just a little bit culty I just looked it up it actually originated from a combination of the word stalker and fan and there's the M&M song right

[00:08:55] so yeah fans who are highly engaged and supportive of their favorite celebrity so it is a positive thing but the first time somebody asked do I stan them I was like I have no idea what you're

[00:09:03] doing well I feel supported I don't feel stalked so I guess that's a good thing yeah it's positive it's great that we're finally doing this expedited as you both know by the TEDx talk

[00:09:14] I practice with Eugene right yes yeah recall you are one of the 30 to 40 people that I got on Zoom forced to listen to but that is in the topic how to seek safely the importance of understanding

[00:09:27] cult literacy which is you know largely what I want to talk about today but I also think it's hilarious that Dr. Glenn and I have been trying to have a phone call just a phone call to talk

[00:09:40] and connect and see how we could collaborate I want to say for a few years now does it true story true story and entirely my fault like my schedule is just a train wreck

[00:09:49] among the things I struggled with is is ADHD so yeah I'm all over the place so so this is actually the first time in a couple years because we actually did connect a couple

[00:09:59] years ago and it was really rushed and and we both said man you have so much to talk about we should like set aside just a chunk of time and that turned out to be three years ago so

[00:10:09] it's the first time we're actually talking since I always think it's so interesting in this strange post-cult survivor personal development space where all of our stories intersect and I originally heard about Eugene through Laura Tucker who came on our podcast telling us about the tragedy

[00:10:27] that happened in Sedona so maybe we could start there to give our audience a little I know most of our audience will have heard that episode but it was a number of years ago so just to

[00:10:37] bring them back into the memory of your story and how you got started in this space yeah so like many stories in the personal development self-help world it kind of goes back to Oprah

[00:10:48] you know in 2005 the book and the DVD the secret came out and was such a huge thing all about the law of attraction and manifestation and so my oldest sister Kirby she's 12 years older than

[00:11:00] I am she got really into it and she then had the opportunity to go to an event with James Ray who is one of like the prominent people featured in the in the movie the secret and as with most of

[00:11:15] these types of events you go to one and then you're quickly kind of encouraged to sign up for the next event and the next event and the next event so that path led her within like the course of

[00:11:28] I don't know it was like eight months or something she had gone to her first event and then in October 2009 she was at the event in Sedona and she is one of the three people who passed away as a result of

[00:11:41] that event so after that my family was you know struggling to kind of understand what had happened and you know we were getting some weird information from James Ray himself and people at the event it ended up you know becoming a criminal investigation and a criminal trial

[00:11:59] but what we discovered was that while what happened to Kirby was kind of like the worst case scenario it's kind of on a continuum of harm that comes to people from this industry

[00:12:11] where people are manipulated and taken advantage of you know waste a lot of time waste a lot of money spend a lot of emotional energy following people who don't really have their

[00:12:22] best interests at heart so that is what led us to found the organization SeekSafely which is really focused on self-help consumer education. Wow well first of all I don't even have words to express

[00:12:35] the how I feel about what happened to your sister and I felt the same way when I heard it from Laura's point of view but I can't even imagine from the sister's point of view

[00:12:44] what it would be like to go through that and absolutely commend all of you for you know taking that tragedy and turning it into wisdom for others is so commendable and I don't think

[00:12:55] happens enough so yeah first of all thank you thank you for doing that thanks yeah of course you and your mom wrote a book about it too right yeah that's right in 2020 June 2020 we published

[00:13:07] This Sweet Life How We Lived After Kirby Died and it's all about you know again this process of kind of discovering what happened to her and then how that led to learning about the

[00:13:19] wider industry we talk about our grief journey my mom is a licensed clinical social worker so her perspective there is also really valuable and then we talk about the whole trial and just the

[00:13:30] experience of living through the trial and the result of a trial where James Ray was convicted of negligent homicide and he served 20 months in prison which we can decide how you feel

[00:13:41] about that does not seem like enough I don't like it yeah particularly that he's still out there and he's trying to spend the story as I understand yeah exactly exactly and as his redemption story

[00:13:53] which I just find uh abhorrent yeah well thank you for I know that that is a much longer story and you made that so concise for the purpose of this episode so we can get into

[00:14:04] what you're doing now and before we do that I would love to hear about how you how these stories intersect with Dr. Glenn how you two found each other for those people who want more on

[00:14:14] both of these stories there are podcasts which is awesome and I've been listening to you to prep for this episode seek safely podcast there's entire episodes dedicated to these stories so that if

[00:14:25] you want the full arc go there Dr. Glenn you've been a proponent of personal development and had very positive connection with personal development that you've even said it saved your life and now you're here working with seek safely so what's that trajectory well I started out

[00:14:41] you know my my self-help journey it seems like the space has a lot of journeys in it so I'll say my own yes I'm starting when I was a teenager I was a really depressed kid I was I was dealing with

[00:14:54] abuse and trauma and what would later blossom into addiction issues and had really gotten to a pretty desperate point in my early teens and didn't really feel that I could turn to

[00:15:04] any resources like counseling or therapy I had no idea where to even start and I was embarrassed but I was lucky enough to find self-help books and they provided me with kind of just enough

[00:15:14] mooring to make it through that period of my life and then fast forward to my college years and I had been really lost and I dropped out of school I was once again you know really

[00:15:27] depressed and you know I was playing piano bars and stuff to kind of get by and I once again found self-help and once again it gave me kind of enough mooring and direction to get my life back on

[00:15:40] track and that's what actually gave me the thought if I can help me maybe I can help other people maybe I can be that person that I needed once upon a time and Jean and I talked a lot about how

[00:15:51] that seems to be the trajectory for a lot of people who get very into self-help you know they are helped by the industry or by certain materials and then they get it in their heads

[00:15:59] you know well maybe I can share the wealth but in my case I didn't become a self-help guru I'd be a lot richer if I turned into a self-help guru actually I'd be a lot richer and more famous but

[00:16:09] in my case I actually went into psychology interestingly I started out with like well maybe I'll be a hypnotist maybe I'll be one of these nlp hypnosis guys who can you know change people's lives in five minutes and as I got into learning about psychology

[00:16:24] Michael that's not really a thing as it turns out but I can become a psychologist which is which is what I did but even as a psychologist I had a and have really still a relatively

[00:16:36] positive orientation toward the project of personal development and self-help but over the years as I've become trained kind of and gained a lot of experience in behavioral science I've developed a lot more perspective on what the self-help industry like I always say that there's

[00:16:51] self-help culture and then there's the self-help industry there are a lot of things that the self-help industry does that are actually counterproductive and specifically the clinical direction that I went like I saw my specialist in working with them post-traumatic disorders

[00:17:04] complex trauma disorders trauma disorders I've really kind of seen how the industry takes advantage of the very people who are my specialty in helping so that's kind of where my orientation

[00:17:15] in terms of getting involved in the activist side of things came from but I was a fan like once upon a time I was we were talking about stands what's upon a time you could have said I was a

[00:17:22] stand of James Arthur Ray when homeboy got out of prison I had recently become licensed as a psychologist now remember to his books from years before and he'd been you know an important

[00:17:32] influence on me and so I messaged him and I said you know hey buddy is there anything I can do to help you I was on that side of the equation interesting he got back to me and he said

[00:17:41] well the thing you can do to help me is enroll in one of my courses like pay me thousands of dollars well sadly I didn't have I said if there's anything else I can do but as his project

[00:17:51] of restarting his self-help business really got underway I you know saw with fresh eyes like oh boy this is going in a really really negative direction that's when I actually reached out to

[00:18:01] seek safely to to become involved so again I started out on the dark side but then the scales fell and here we are but his lack of self-awareness and his shameless is is really

[00:18:12] one of the things that I think allowed him to keep doing what he's doing can you speak to that you think James lacks self-awareness but I had no idea what you're talking about.

[00:18:21] No just just to keep selling and doubling this is the thing that is staggering with all these people they keep doubling down in the face of like hey did you see what you did kind of thing.

[00:18:31] Well one of the things that really struck me and kind of turned me around on the whole thing was he would spin what happened in Sedona as something that happened to him not something that that he contributed to yeah caused. He actually used those words literally the first

[00:18:49] time he reached out to my family after my sister died after the event he said on the phone this is the worst thing that's ever happened to me and right away we were like okay well now we see what

[00:19:01] kind of person you are so him coming out of prison not having learned anything or gained any perspective was unsurprising to us I would have been willing to give the benefit of the doubt I

[00:19:13] agree with you Nippy I feel like if I had done something like that there would have been a lot of self-reflection and going okay maybe this is not the right place for me to be maybe I shouldn't

[00:19:22] be trying to you know sell myself as somebody who can help other people when actually three and four people have died under my care this is maybe I need to find a new line of work

[00:19:35] but yeah he didn't do that I know that you two came together with Seek safely but our audience may not know what Seek safely is yeah Seek safely we founded the organization in 2011 Seek actually stands

[00:19:48] for self empowerment through education and knowledge and the idea is after my sister died and we kind of learned what had really happened at the event we felt like had she survived she

[00:20:02] would have been like shouting about how messed up the whole thing was and so we decided well that this is what we need to do and in a way of the three victims my family was sort of uniquely

[00:20:14] positioned to be able to do that both with my parents backgrounds as mental health professionals and then you know Kirby didn't have any kids she didn't have a partner whereas you know some of the other families there were young kids involved and it just didn't it wasn't right

[00:20:29] for them to be so public about what had happened but for us we said no like there's a whole industry here that might not be killing people on a regular basis but it's harming people on a regular basis

[00:20:42] and Kirby's no longer with us to be able to kind of talk about that experience and speak to that issue but we can do that so from the beginning we've been focused mostly like I said on

[00:20:54] consumer education and protection we've also been working on legislation and we've been working as well to try to connect with people in the industry who are interested in doing this work in an ethical and safe way so that's kind of the three pronged approach that we've taken to

[00:21:10] the general goal of self-help consumer protection that's great it's worth mentioning that seek safely's first big project was the seek safely promise which is kind of like a pledge it's it's what I think of as the bare bones minimum of a commitment that any consumer of personal development

[00:21:30] products or services should expect from any provider you know it's basically I pledge to be ethical and accountable and transparent and seek safely's founding coincided with James Arthur A being released from prison seek asked James to be the first signer of the promise

[00:21:47] this kind of dovetails with you know nippy what you were talking about in terms of how James talks about the experience and how he doubles down on his version of what happened it really bothered me

[00:21:58] that James not only conceptualized it as something that happened to him but James conceptualizes it as this freak accident that is outside of what should have happened now people shouldn't have died but something that jenny brown seek safely's founder often says is

[00:22:15] what happened was actually the the logical endpoint of the way that James was doing business what I really wanted as a former fan of James was for James to come out of prison take the seek safely promise and spend the rest of his career talking about this stuff

[00:22:31] talking about the shortcomings of how he and the self-help industry was doing business but the fact that he doubled down on the idea that man it was this freak accident that maybe the

[00:22:41] universe was maybe the universe is trying to tell me something but who knows what that is right it just really really bothered me that James didn't become the biggest advocate of reform ethics and accountability instead of getting on a new horse he got right back up

[00:22:57] on the same horse and started to do business the same way it was inevitable that something like that was going to happen with that kind of psychology driving what he was doing

[00:23:07] yeah yeah I do think you're so right because he could have really let's go with the horse metaphor jumped on this other horse with you all I remember when we spoke to Laura originally even though the retreats were different and the content was different so much of the

[00:23:22] self-help jargony principles were the same and one of the couple of things that I actually just looked back at my notes from with Laura Tucker was this like a playful on

[00:23:32] is that the term playful on yeah we didn't say that exactly but it was like you know every day we go clap we are committed to our success and like everything was about that commitment and you

[00:23:44] either were committed or you weren't and this is something that I'm really kind of in my still processing and deprogramming I just read this book about recovering from toxic relationships and it was about relationships but it's the same as

[00:23:56] recovering from the cult stuff we just interviewed Jamie she's awesome she was explaining this whole like black and white like it's either this or this and that's either in or you're out and that's

[00:24:07] just actually not how it is like I can be totally committed and then also like I'm not comfortable with shaving my head actually right there's no room for nuance you know there were so many

[00:24:16] things about his whole setup that had he taken time to reflect he could be like look these are the things that are good and this is what's bad like yeah it's great to jump into a retreat and like really

[00:24:27] commit and play full on but if there's something you don't want to do you need to be able to trust your inner knowing and be like hey that's not right for me and people around need to go like

[00:24:36] dude that's cool you do you boo that doesn't exist so one of the things I really appreciate about your podcast is that you don't throw the baby out with the bath water and that has been

[00:24:47] also you know part of my journey as you I'm sure you know and not everyone in nexium agrees right a lot of people from nexium are like no chuck it all start fresh that was toxic

[00:24:56] if there's shit in the water there's shit in all the water yeah I'm a little bit in that camp as it pertains to the nexium I know yeah that's okay and we don't have to agree on the same thing which

[00:25:05] is why it's so great that we're not in a cult anymore but in that world if you're not going to throw the baby out with the bath water how have you been discerning what's good and

[00:25:15] what's bad about it this is literally like the bulk of what I was hoping this conversation would be like how do we give people the tools to seek because seeking is human yeah so we often

[00:25:25] start at that point you know seeking is human it is a very natural human impulse and it's one of the things that makes us frankly so cool as a species you know it's it's something that drives us

[00:25:38] to not just go through the day to day we're really trying to make something beautiful out of our existence and I think that's amazing so we definitely start at that point and then

[00:25:49] like we were saying a lot of these concepts in various self-help programs or that are being you know paraded by self-help goovers they're not new they're not you know revolutionary a lot of the concepts like having a positive mindset that's pretty basic stuff so I think

[00:26:08] one of the messages is that yeah you can look around and find a different program and maybe the way that they're delivering it to you has something interesting that's sparking something for you but the essential message should be something that's not so jarring

[00:26:24] necessarily compared to other things that you've heard before and then definitely that idea of there's something within you that you still need to maintain at all times some sense of self-preservation some sense of a gut instinct that's really powerful but that oftentimes

[00:26:41] these types of leaders especially if they are trying to manipulate you they're telling you to suspend that feeling and that's like a real red flag this podcast wouldn't happen without our amazing supportive generous patrons are you with us come find us over on patreon at patreon.com

[00:26:59] slash alubit culty for bonus episodes exclusive content and the occasional zoom with our fan favorites from our past episodes it's a lot of fun over there people meals bring people together but for many families providing their next meal can be a challenge you can help by

[00:27:21] participating in macy's annual feeding the hungry food drive all proceeds go toward local food banks and families now through january 31st you can purchase an icon in store or online or watch out

[00:27:33] for the blue feeding the hungry shelf tags where a portion of your purchase will be donated to local pantries together we can combat hunger in our local communities at macy's this episode sponsored by better help what are your self-care non-negotiables maybe you never skip leg day or

[00:27:51] never miss yoga maybe it's getting eight hours of sleep i mean that's my personal and everyone's dream isn't it well i definitely have some non-negotiables like i'm in vancouver right now and i'm spending literally as much time as i can outside of nature hashtag cold pools

[00:28:05] hashtag crushing it nature is a non-negotiable not enough time the fresh air and the trees around me and i start to feel not great not myself not grounded therapy day is a bit like my nature

[00:28:15] walks i try to not miss it and i know i'm just gonna feel so much better all around if i make it a priority i get so much out of it it helps me put my worries and anxieties in their rightful place

[00:28:24] and helps me clear my mind so i can focus on what i really need and sometimes what i don't need like i don't need to be overbooking myself just because i hate to say no to people you

[00:28:32] know what i mean thanks therapy thanks for helping me see that and if you're thinking of starting therapy give better help a try it's entirely online designed to be convenient flexible and suited to your schedule just fill out a brief questionnaire and get matched with a licensed

[00:28:45] therapist and switch therapists anytime for no additional charge look even when we know what makes us happy it's hard to make time for it but when you feel like you have no time for yourself non-negotiables like therapy are more important than ever never skip therapy day with better

[00:28:59] help visit better help comm slash culty today to get 10 off your first month that's better help h e l p dot com slash culty you've heard from our sponsors now let's get back to a little bit

[00:29:13] culty shall we it is so tricky though because there is truth in the you know you have to break out of your comfort zone to grow yeah for sure if you're uncomfortable then it's either you're uncomfortable because you're being manipulated or you're uncomfortable because

[00:29:29] you're about to grow and how do you know the difference with our distinctions you can make when implementing standards and practices if you're a seeker which i still am reluctantly

[00:29:38] how do i know in the moment am i about to grow or am i being manipulated so something that i think a lot about in that context sarah is the issue of commitment because something that a lot of

[00:29:50] predatory gurus and organizations trade on is this idea that we were talking about a second ago that you got to be all in that the key to success is being all in a frailty here

[00:30:01] tossed around a lot in these spaces is how you do one thing is how you do everything which is a second he said it all the time oh god as a psychologist i cringe because how would you

[00:30:13] feel self-esteem wise if you felt that the thing that the way you did the thing you are least motivated to do and least interested in and least good at that's how i do everything oh god i

[00:30:25] must suck right it's on a cognitive therapist call it black and white thinking and it's actually a cognitive distortion that has been shown to significantly deepen depression anxiety these kinds of things so you ask the question nippy you know like like how do you you know what criteria

[00:30:43] do you use to evaluate kind of these systems you know my own thought is if it's a system that says look this only works if you're all in and if you can make a lifetime commitment to this thing

[00:30:55] boy even if you have questions or doubts or your guts as it's wrong that you're still going to do the thing that's where my red flag goes up a little bit because the truth is when we're in the real world

[00:31:08] you know putting together our toolbox for how to handle reality like i talk in my work a lot about that your toolbox for handling trauma or handling addiction the reality is usually it's cobbled

[00:31:18] together from a lot of different sources like very rarely do you take one system and it's like this is the thing and i'm going to be a purist with this system in the real world that's

[00:31:28] usually kind of cobbled together and if this is a system or a theory or a guru who doesn't acknowledge that who doesn't acknowledge that realistically you're probably going to take a little of my stuff

[00:31:38] and maybe a little of tony robin stuff and maybe a little of james arthory stuff you're going to put it together in an amalgam that works for you if they can't acknowledge that they can't

[00:31:47] acknowledge that reality you know that's where i kind of like maybe not maybe they're trying to you know suck me into something that's just about something other than my growth i think there's also something about the idea that in order to grow and change it's hard to do

[00:32:05] that if everything beneath you is also unstable that's a great point yeah so i think in a program of self-improvement you have to be given the space to still have something stable in your life

[00:32:18] so i think it's when all of these things line up where they're going you know ignore all the people who are you know dissenting opinions and and aren't believing in what you're doing and there's a lot

[00:32:29] of like isolation into this like you're saying this one black and white way of thinking it's pulling you all into this place of like everything in your life has to be changing not just maybe

[00:32:38] one aspect of who you are needs to grow so i don't know it's a really hard it's a really hard question and i think one of the conclusions that we've come to as an organization is that

[00:32:50] when somebody is really deep in something i don't know what we can tell them necessarily to pull them out of it i think a lot of that is really just going to come in the time that it comes for

[00:33:01] them so we have focused on the sort of preventative type education which is hard because it's hard to learn something that you don't know you need to know but i mean it's it's

[00:33:12] kind of a conundrum that i think a lot of people in this space share everybody thinks that they've got the good one right like like no one thinks that they've got the guru who is going to

[00:33:22] turn out to be problematic everybody thinks like well even if 90 of other personal growth teachers might be problematic i've got the good one right so i don't have to think about this stuff i can

[00:33:34] trust him or her and that's one of the big obstacles that we face with our educational mission is that we all think we're the exception like in my work with trauma survivors like i say

[00:33:43] that you know we survivors we always think we're the exception like like we're the one to whom the rules don't apply i'm the one who can't recover i'm the one who doesn't need to think about this

[00:33:52] truth is none of us are the exception you know we are all vulnerable to the types of manipulation and coercion that lead to things like sedona need to things like dos absolutely i'm not sure if you've been following my social media but i got asked to speak at

[00:34:06] doctor shifalli's event before i said yes i followed my own advice something that i said in the ted talk but i said you know we can't like you said like when someone's in they're often very in but

[00:34:19] what we can do is give you red flags for the journey and i gave five red flags and five green flags and one of the red flags was do your research and where there's smoke there's usually

[00:34:27] fire i didn't go into the details in this because i only had 15 minutes but i've often said like if there's lawsuits and there's allegations dig in on those things and if you see that the

[00:34:37] organization's like oh well that didn't really happen or that person's just lying or they're a disgruntled ex lover or they went crazy those are like big red flags versus like taking responsibility

[00:34:49] so anyway i did my due diligence and like did a deep dive on reddit and i you know couldn't find anything that was concerning for me and i checked with some some people who were in

[00:34:59] the space and everyone's like no she's the real deal she's the real deal and i'm trying to also trust my instinct of like what's the sense i get from her and i feel good about it but i'm also

[00:35:09] aware that anybody any group any person can can also like derail right so it's currently the case and i'm not saying she will but like i guess that's that sort of like the thing i have in

[00:35:21] my tool belt now is like doing the research but also just knowing that things can change and or the organization can sour like the person can be solid but the people around them i guess

[00:35:30] the question for you is what would you want to know from somebody in that thought leader space well the question i think you're asking is how do you ensure that someone around you doesn't abuse

[00:35:39] the power that you have as someone who's a leader right well both i guess like i'm asking if i'm going to follow somebody and i'm never going to follow anyone ever again support well i'm going

[00:35:49] to use her parenting too i really like her approach to parenting and that's been helpful in my parenting if i go and like start learning under her i'm becoming her apprentice and leave my family

[00:35:57] to go be with her then you guys can do an intervention right do you know what i mean like i will never do that again in a way it goes back to that that idea of black and white thinking right like you're

[00:36:08] saying somebody can start out in one place and then shift over into a different unexpected place and so it's like if you've believed in them before or you believe in them for a time or

[00:36:21] you like something that they've said it doesn't mean that you have to believe in them or follow them forever and it doesn't mean that you have to you know grasp on to everything that they've

[00:36:31] said as some sort of gospel i think one of the big things for me when kind of assessing a person is it's kind of like looking for some sense of humility that they know that they're offering

[00:36:44] something that makes sense to them that's maybe worked for them that they've seen work for other people but they're not trying to tell you that it's like the only thing the only way to go they're

[00:36:54] not trying to present themselves as offering like some kind of bible truth they're just offering something that they think is good but they recognize there might be other things that are also beneficial i think a related red flag for me is if somebody is offering something

[00:37:11] that they claim is completely new and completely innovative and and that they have just invented because they are brilliant this might sound familiar to you guys no never heard that oh yeah because they're the smartest man in the world perhaps and they're right divine inspiration

[00:37:29] or judo champ yep you see this happen over and over again where a guru and i know we're misusing that word i feel bad whenever we say guru self-help guru because i know that i mean

[00:37:42] that's that's actually a thing and that's that the guru is a spiritual thing in another culture and i you know i don't want to be insensitive or insulting when you say guru but i mean just in our culture

[00:37:52] this is what it's come to mean that you know when a guru is saying yeah i've had a spark of divine inspiration like jane this doesn't get talked about enough but i can't overemphasize it

[00:38:03] james arthur re told his followers that he came up with his big idea harmonic wealth that's that's the concept that he claimed to have invented he claims he made a pilgrimage to the cave where

[00:38:15] moses received the 10 commandments on mount sinai and he spent the night in the cave and and this was downloaded into his brain and that that never gets talked about but he claims it's in his

[00:38:25] book he claims that that happened you know keith rennery like claimed that he all i've got this rational inquiry thing that that you know it sprung from my my my brain because i'm the world

[00:38:34] smartest man but the truth is if you look at all of these systems like as i as both a self-help junkie and as a psychologist i can look at that this stuff has been around forever so you know got

[00:38:46] different labels to it and different maybe systems for implementing it but basic concepts have been around forever so a red flag for me is is a guru a teacher who cannot say this is my version

[00:38:57] of this right right it's been said before it's been done before like that here's a formulation that that's uh you know i organized but it's related to that other red flag of thinking that their system is the only system and that you're not realistically going to combine their

[00:39:11] system with other stuff and other teachers that that you're learning from i was going to leave this alone but since gene you led with the opera comment and well i mean our version was you

[00:39:22] know we had the Dalai Lama we had all these other buy-in people that you know once they bought in my inquiry was less aggressive let's just put it that way and so yeah and you guys have something

[00:39:33] that seeks to put standards and practices and certain things that can prevent that now i'm not here to bang on opera but opera does have a big following and oprah's blind spot or whatever

[00:39:45] you want to call it allowed her to endorse someone that ultimately led to people's deaths and it's not the only one that we've come across in our journeys of being in this space or whatever

[00:39:56] that opera has endorsed and and has turned out to be not who they say they are and it's led to some some tragic outcomes what do you do to combat that how do you prevent someone like that and

[00:40:07] then is there an accountability is there anything that opera has done not that she's endorsed so many people you know and she probably has a team that doesn't have the education too you need

[00:40:16] to make allowances for opera to have a learning experience of hey this was my blind spot this is where i wasn't educated or whatever and is there any recourse for oprah you know because i know

[00:40:26] once oprah endorses it people just go buy it without asking and that's not necessarily something that we want people to do because oprah certainly isn't the standard in practices and she's proven that so yeah what do you do with that scenario and how can you address it yeah

[00:40:40] that was one of the main things that my family saw right from the beginning we knew that oprah and you know it was other media as well like james ray was on larry king i think he was on the today

[00:40:53] show like there were a lot of other places where he was getting a platform and so we said okay well those endorsements are not a mark of you know safety or they cannot be the thing that causes

[00:41:06] you like you're saying to sort of reduce your own process of evaluating someone so that's just part of our message that you can't just take these endorsements as a mark of you know this person being

[00:41:20] safe or operating with integrity in terms of what oprah has done we've tried to reach out i wrote an open letter to oprah i don't know if oprah ever actually saw it but there has been no response

[00:41:32] right after the event there was like a very brief statement you know oh james ray was on the show and where our heart goes out to the victims or whatever very non-committal and we were

[00:41:42] disappointed by the fact that we would never blame oprah for what happened but you know her endorsement is part of the story and more importantly her saying something about it after the fact

[00:41:55] could have been so powerful i could have been really you know impactful in terms of educating other seekers other self-help consumers about the potential for danger if oprah was duped if her whole team of people was duped how is like one regular person expected to evaluate someone like

[00:42:15] this yeah it's just kind of part of our standard message i would feel personally much different about oprah if this was a a one-off thing where you know one out of hundreds of guests that she'd had one guy turned out to be irresponsible and reckless unfortunately we've

[00:42:33] kind of established a pattern with oprah on one of our recent episodes on the seek safely podcast we talked about the 80s self-help author peter mcwilliams who wrote a a series of self-help

[00:42:45] books called the life 101 series they're very big in the 80s he supposedly co-wrote them with a guy named john roger and oprah had them on her show and they turned them into best-selling co-authors

[00:42:58] while as it turns out it was a cult john roger was the guru he was blackmailing peter into writing the books and putting his name on them oh my god this has happened again and again you see

[00:43:07] john of god john of god i was going to mention that yeah we haven't done an episode yet but yes you bet so the thing about oprah too in addition to this being a pattern she has kind of an

[00:43:17] interesting thing going on where she also interviews like like she has this she's worked to establish reputation as well i call out the fraudsters i have lance armstrong on right right like i have the victims of michael jackson on i'm for transparency and accountability and that

[00:43:35] enhances when she actually endorses somebody by having them on like people kind of reasonably so kind of get thought well man oprah is concerned about transparency and accountability she must have vetted this person and so it turns into a whole thing so in my open letter to oprah

[00:43:51] one of the things that i mentioned was the memoir writer james fray who wrote the book of million little pieces oh that's right and then as it turned out didn't right so she had him on his

[00:44:00] show and ripped him a new one right so i was like why can't you do that with james rave right this would be really important really have a lot of impact i think part of the thing that people

[00:44:12] really need to remember when they're trying to engage with self-help is that it is an industry which means that people are trying to make money off of it everybody needs to make money that's

[00:44:22] fine but like i think one of the reasons we don't see oprah going after these types of people that turn out to be dangerous is that she is very much part of this self-help industry

[00:44:35] oh that's interesting yeah i don't remember what the this you know the tour or whatever but like she has so many different things that are all built around these different ideas of self-improvement

[00:44:46] she's propped up so many different people and i think it's just that's all part of her business is self-improvement so i think to consumers the important message is that look you have to remember this is an industry whoever's selling you the book or selling you the seminar

[00:45:02] they're trying to make money and that's okay but as a result you need to have a healthy sense of skepticism at all times you can't just blindly go in and believe everything they're saying

[00:45:13] that's such a good point and now a brief message from our a little bit culty sponsors this episode is sponsored by better help what are your self-care non-negotiables maybe you never skip leg day or never miss yoga maybe it's getting eight hours of sleep

[00:45:32] maybe that's my personal and everyone's dream isn't it well i definitely have some non-negotiables like i'm in vancouver right now and i'm spending literally as much time as i can outside of nature hashtag cold pools hashtag crushing it nature is a non-negotiable not enough time in the fresh

[00:45:48] air and the trees around me and i start to feel not great not myself not grounded therapy day is a bit like my nature walks i try to not miss it and i know i'm just gonna feel so much

[00:45:57] better all around if i make it a priority i get so much out of it it helps me put my worries and anxieties in their rightful place and helps me clear my mind so i can focus on what

[00:46:05] i really need and sometimes what i don't need like i don't need to be overbooking myself just because i hate to say no to people you know what i mean thanks therapy thanks for helping me see

[00:46:13] that and if you're thinking of starting therapy give better help or try it's entirely online designed to be convenient flexible and suited to your schedule just fill out a brief questionnaire and get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapists anytime for no additional charge

[00:46:27] look even when we know what makes us happy it's hard to make time for it but when you feel like you have no time for yourself non-negotiables like therapy are more important than ever never

[00:46:36] skip therapy day with better help visit betterhelp.com slash culty today to get 10 off your first month that's better help h e l p dot com slash culty the frankies were a picture perfect

[00:46:48] influencer family but everything wasn't as it seemed i just had a 12 year old boy still appeared asking for help he's emaciated he's got tape around his legs ruby frankie is his mom's name infamous is covering ruby frankie the world of Mormonism and a secret therapy group that ruined

[00:47:11] lives listen to infamous wherever you get your podcasts break times over people let's get back to this episode of a little bit culty it's a good one what was it like for the two of you

[00:47:25] respectively to watch the vow and see the similarities so we did at least one i think we did a couple episodes about our reactions to the vow and it was so interesting when the vow

[00:47:37] became a thing because nexium had been on our radar screen the thing that i knew about nexium before the vow was that keyfunary had taken a lot of of his stuff from the same sources

[00:47:52] as anthony robbins nlp and you see kind of this commonality with a lot of these guys because james arthur rey was kind of in the very very same camp like he went to a tony robbins event he's like

[00:48:01] yes this is the thing um so i recognized even before the vow i recognize kind of a lot of a lot of the themes we also recognize kind of the mlm structure of the thing like we have a

[00:48:12] haul on the seek safely podcast we had a whole episode about now why does self help so often get into mlm multi-level marketing kind of territory this recruitment territory so on the

[00:48:22] one hand to see kind of all of this come out and stuff like well man we knew this we knew this it was great on the other hand something that uh was really frustrating about the vow and i

[00:48:33] imagined was probably frustrating to you guys and i've talked a lot with with mark vasente about this very thing was that so much emphasis got placed on the dos angle because that was

[00:48:45] kind of the right like that was what got in the new york times and interested and and that became kind of this you know it was the sensational part of the sex cult thing that that was what everyone

[00:48:54] was talking about but if you really watched the vow carefully you saw wow things were problematic far before that right yeah like like the the dynamics of of coercive control and high control groups were just you know right right out there and dos only kind of crystallized it

[00:49:09] and packaged it in a form that could sell newspapers the dust was our sweat lodge moment you bet yeah absolutely yeah well put yeah i appreciated the vow because it did really

[00:49:22] tell a much more complete story than just that sensational detail and part of why i love the vow and i became like a big fan of you guys is that i think one of the really important things

[00:49:33] about the series is that you guys are like smart interesting driven motivated people who happened to get into this cult right i think our cultural concept of what cult victims look like

[00:49:51] before the vow was very different and i think you guys have done so much to change that image of what a cult victim looks like and this is something that we have said for a very long time

[00:50:03] people who were in the sweat lodge including and that's you know in quotes the sweat lodge including my sister curbie she was not gullible she was not weak she was not stupid that's the

[00:50:14] assumption that people want to make because they want to think that that could never happen to them everybody wants to think they would never get into a cult because like mark facente said

[00:50:23] nobody joins a cult you think you're joining something else and i think you guys have done so much to increase people's awareness about that to make people realize that no if you're not careful this could be you and sometimes it's those very qualities being driven being motivated

[00:50:42] it's your personality to play full on all the time in your life those are the very things that can be exploited by a dangerous leader to then you know manipulate you and pull you into something

[00:50:54] that ultimately is not healthy and is dangerous that's why i'm such a stan of you guys because i think you have really done so much to send that message to people appreciate that to add to that

[00:51:05] you know we were talking a few minutes ago about what we really wish james arthur rey or or oprah had done in the wake of the sedona tragedy really wish that james had become a crusader

[00:51:18] about the the deficiencies and the problems in the industry you really wish oprah would have stepped up and pointed some of these things out part of what i think is so powerful about the

[00:51:26] story of the vow is that you guys were obviously so well intended kind of in your in your work with nexium and then you found out bad things were happening you guys had exactly the reaction

[00:51:38] that we were hoping for from james arthur rey or oprah you were horrified you went you immediately stopped and went out of your way all the way to the new york times to try and

[00:51:48] repair the damage that you've done you started a podcast to try and repair the damage that you've done so i mean it's it's such a contrast to how these other actors have behaved so it's one of the

[00:51:59] reasons like again like we so admire what you're doing because it's exactly what we hoped would happen some of these other folks thank you thank you for saying that appreciate that that's what

[00:52:08] we thought we were trying it's still hard to tell you still have to you know navigate it with new eyes and new sensitivity to make sure you're not perpetuating unwittingly i think when you stop following someone and start handing off your agency to someone else's

[00:52:23] evaluations and you start sticking to your guns at least they're your mistakes and not someone else's and so you can correct your own mistakes and that's been the valuable lesson is you don't

[00:52:32] need someone else to go make your mistakes for you yeah and to your point gene about people who don't think they're susceptible to it my kind of slogan in this space has been if you're

[00:52:41] the kind of person who doesn't think you're susceptible to it that very thinking creates the blind spot that makes you susceptible to it and the reason i say that is because i was that guy

[00:52:51] i was the guy who went into the five day with my arms folded dare i say a little arrogant and smug a little bit a little bit you know they're not going to get me i'm not that guy and then you

[00:53:01] know you know here i am years later no longer arrogant no longer smug right sarah oh yeah you totally evolved both of those things definitely kick that out thinking of self-awareness yeah

[00:53:14] now to make a joke out of it is that you can't think that you're smarter than someone who's praying on this and understands this and has studied this and knows exactly how to pray on people

[00:53:25] and if i see someone who thinks they're not susceptible i know i got them yeah so i think that was kind of my that's my what i've offered to this space if we're gonna use that keep

[00:53:34] using that word so yeah it's very valuable and i also wanted to add to that with there's like so many nuggets and bring it back full circle as i see we're almost at an hour with you know deciding to do a

[00:53:45] tedx talk and being like okay why would i do this while i've learned a lot i have this opportunity and now i have this like stage which is beyond the podcast which is beyond this space where people are are wanting to understand what happened to them and more

[00:53:59] to the general public which is like how can i glean all the nuggets from the past six years out 12 years in to quick math 18 years 18 years of in and out what can i take from that and in 15

[00:54:13] minutes to still a message right what's the message i can give people and part of the ending of it and i don't i don't want to ruin it for those who haven't watched the tedx talk yet but it's

[00:54:22] like you know maybe you don't need a guru maybe you don't need a retreat maybe you don't need an essential oil starter kit maybe you don't even need this talk right like you don't

[00:54:31] need any of it because you're just fine the way that you are but this whole industry is built on a foundation is knowing that most people don't feel fine the way that they are right and there

[00:54:42] is an inherent lack of self-worth or lack of self-love or lack of whatever that's driving that like i got to be better i got to understand myself or i need to improve or i need to hit my

[00:54:51] goals or i need to get results and blah blah blah blah blah which some of which is really great and some of it is really toxic so how do we dress that i hear that and that's such a tough sell right

[00:55:01] because if someone's even investigating you know this area it's because they feel crappy and so then to get hit with the message well and and they think well i need something i want to

[00:55:13] not feel crappy and then to get someone telling them eh you're fine right that still leaves me feeling crappy right yes you need more than that it's almost like we got to say we know like if you

[00:55:26] can bear with us you are fine we know you don't feel fine so we're going to go give you a some tool sets to feel better but don't get dependent on me in the process right like it's like yes and that was

[00:55:38] sort of like how i ended it it's like you don't need any of it you're going to do it because you're human just don't make any of these tools your life use the tools in your life don't

[00:55:46] make the tools your life yeah don't dedicate yourself to a single thing a single person single book single structure single church single yoga studio single whatever like put a lot of tools

[00:55:59] in your tool belt and keep seeking and also in that tool belt know that you're okay yeah even though you don't feel that way yeah it's a lot it's a lot to pack into 15 minutes well sir i can pack

[00:56:10] it into about 10 seconds if you want oh go for it let's see your ted x talk babe what is it this is about ted x talk right here i have a couple meme relationships with guys from like high school

[00:56:21] girls too they have there's about eight to ten of them and i see a meme we don't even talk anymore we just send memes back and forth to each other and i sent one recently and it said the economy

[00:56:32] is just smart people paying beautiful people to promote stuff and secure people say it again more slowly the economy is just smart people paying beautiful people to promote stuff and secure

[00:56:45] people and they can all be one in the same beautiful people can be insecure as well but i think it relates in a sense of like we're all going to feel insecure at one point in our lives and to be wax a little

[00:56:57] serious about your ted talk sarah it's like it doesn't mean you necessarily need something to go address it it's just life in a lot of ways so if you're doing life right you're gonna you're

[00:57:07] gonna feel that if you're not feeling any sort of adversity or anything like that so well i will say from dr doil's story is that he says that self help saved his life and i think that's important to

[00:57:18] acknowledge and he read all these books but what is important also is he never attended the seminars so like he just read the books right and was helpful for him but he never like invest he

[00:57:28] never became a coach and went up the proverbial switch my ted talk to read more on that point like i often say that if everybody's relationship with self help was exactly like my relationship with

[00:57:42] self help where they read books they took what they could and made it part of like a larger kind of toolbox that have that drew from a lot of sources if that's where everybody stopped

[00:57:54] there would be zero problem with the self help industry that's a good point we run into the problem is where people heavily invest financially emotionally in terms of time like you guys

[00:58:04] were talking about years of your life yeah right where it becomes really hard to say well this is just one thing well i've invested 18 years of my life in it right and the cognitive dissonance becomes such

[00:58:15] that you can no longer hold that balance right yes yeah i really like that idea of looking at these things as tools and not the whole thing not letting it take over your life because that is

[00:58:28] definitely something that happens to people and even like their life path gets diverted by you know what they have kind of been absorbed into they wanted to be you know a teacher and now suddenly

[00:58:42] they're like a coach and it takes them off in this different direction so yeah i really like that idea of using something as a tool and i think also you know part of this conversation is

[00:58:53] recognizing that this is this is part of like our culture this idea that we're supposed to be happy that we're supposed to be perfect complete people at any given moment is you know part of what is

[00:59:05] helping this industry sell itself because when you feel like you're not that perfect complete person that's where you get this sense of lack so i think there's something about all of us trying to embrace this idea that yeah we're not always going to be happy 100 percent of the

[00:59:21] time that's just not reality and that there are always parts of us that we might want to work on and that that in and of itself is okay and it's not an indication of us being less than because

[00:59:33] the message that the industry is trying to sell is that yeah you're broken or you know you're not good at this or you're not good at that so i'm going to give you the answer to help heal

[00:59:42] you to help make you good at that thing you want to be good at and understanding that we're all works in progress and that's just part of our existence and that's okay i think it's

[00:59:53] important that's so true jean i commend you with how you've been able to turn this into something so positive thank you it's hard it's work yeah it's hard it is it's inspiring to all of us and

[01:00:07] i'm so glad that we had this time to connect even though it's taken so long and i'm curious well first of all what's seek safely doing right now you have been effective in passing

[01:00:17] some legislation is that accurate we're working on it okay tell me so we've been for years now working with a new york state assembly i'm in trying to make changes to existing code because

[01:00:29] what we actually want think about the fact that i as a psychologist like like there are our laws and regulations that that govern what i do and if something like the quote unquote sweat lodge

[01:00:43] happened in a therapy group of mine they would take away my license and i could never do psychotherapy again but because regulations don't exist for what james arthur ray did he can get out of prison

[01:00:54] after less than two years and go right back into the industry and promote very similar events to what he was doing had any kind of regulation or or laws governing the self-help industry or personal development industry then in place nexium probably couldn't have existed the way

[01:01:10] that it did exist and one of the things that we've been talking about with the new york state assembly is that this happened in albany right under their nose right you know something that

[01:01:18] we think about a lot at seek is the fact that in order to be prosecuted you know prosecutors really had to get in some ways kind of creative and kind of go with the the human trafficking

[01:01:27] stuff it should be more straightforward than that yeah i totally agree so for years we've been advising on the the shaping of you know how they can change existing consumer protection

[01:01:37] code to begin to apply to these practitioners but as as it turns out changing law is as it turns out not so easy jean can we can we say that but that's that's what we've we've discovered well look

[01:01:48] i have a background in public policy so yeah it's for anything it takes a long time to change laws and for good reason on some levels so yeah we we've had a bill in existence in the new

[01:02:01] york state legislature for i don't know like six years now it's morphed over time but essentially it's you know creating some parameters around if you are an unlicensed individual who's running this

[01:02:14] type of event you need to have a safety plan in place at the very least so you know if you're running a physical event you need to have like a doctor available or an ambulance there that

[01:02:27] can respond to any accidents that might happen if you're doing intense psychological work with people you need to have some sort of licensed individual some sort of mental health support for people in

[01:02:40] the event that's you know somebody has you know some kind of episode at the event so this is what we've been working on it has changed form over time but we do have you know a senate

[01:02:52] a senator who is our bill sponsor so that's senator james scophus and our assembly sponsor is dana levinburg so yeah people especially people in new york state you can learn more about our legislative work on our website under the legislative section and reaching out to your

[01:03:10] legislators to try to get them to get on board with this bill would be really helpful but yep so we're working on it i encourage people to do that it's hard to take action when you're passionate

[01:03:21] about something it's hard to sit down and write a letter and make a phone call but i think what it touches you personally it's the right you know it's the right thing to do obviously is what we've

[01:03:31] all been doing but getting other people who are just a little pissed off about it to do it is the hard part yeah exactly so part of the difficulty i i know we're short on time but

[01:03:40] i think this really needs to be said is that part of the difficulty we've encountered with trying to change the law is the widespread perception that when bad things happen in self-help

[01:03:51] like dos or the quote unquote sweat lodge it's because there is a bad guy who did a bad thing and that's the exception right so why should we change the law for these you know bad guys they'll

[01:04:03] get caught and they'll get prosecuted like james arthur rey or keith renary what our message has been has been now this kind of thing happens all the time we don't hear about it all the time

[01:04:13] because there's not always this big splashy sexy you know hook that that gets reported but legislation is really really necessary to keep it from getting to that point this isn't the case of just a couple

[01:04:26] bad guys a couple bad apples i always remind folks the saying is bad out a couple bad apples spoil the bunch it's not that they're just a couple bad apples and get rid of them and you're

[01:04:35] fine like the whole barrel or whatever is spoiled they need to be educated on what it looks like normally it takes a physical manifestation of the abuse and that is the symptom of years of emotional

[01:04:48] abuse and they don't really have the acumen to understand what the emotional abuse looks like part and parcel because they might be participating in it themselves so they'd have to take a look at

[01:04:57] that but that's another conversation so you're going in talking about abuses of power that go on that happen to manifest insolacious behaviors but really start with the coercion and stuff

[01:05:10] and so all our systems kind of have those coercive behaviors in them and for them to go out and hold other coercive entities accountable they're going to have to start with themselves in a lot of ways

[01:05:20] and i just don't see the appropriate apparatus in there yet to do that i feel optimistic because our understanding of coercive control has come along absolutely yes and there has been legislation now addressing coercive control in in you know like domestic relationships and i think that is

[01:05:40] going to be helpful for the law to get its head around how this type of coercion can happen because that was something that really just was not even a factor at all in James Ray's trial was this idea

[01:05:53] of coercion that's a shame you know the question was did he bar people from leaving the sweat lodge no he didn't physically stop people from leaving the sweat lodge that they weren't playing all in

[01:06:05] if they were yeah right exactly there was a psychological aspect there that at that time in 2011 when the trial happened there was no mechanism for the law to understand that that wasn't part of the conversation exactly so i do feel optimistic because that is starting

[01:06:22] to come into the conversation that's great yeah it's like dr glenn said earlier about you could tell when watching the vow this had been going on for a long time and dos was just like

[01:06:31] this flashy stuff that stopped the train off the tracks or whatever but we spoke to some people who left who managed to get away earlier on like in 2009 2010 don't forget we left in 2017 and

[01:06:42] these were people who had been part of Keith's harem the part of the inner circle and we're having sexual relationships with him and things like that and both of them said actually three

[01:06:50] or four of them said when they learned about dos as a thing they're like well that was pretty much what our lives were like as a one of his harem members minus the branding you know he was taking

[01:07:00] naked photos of them but she was using his collateral didn't call it that you know he had them at beck and call that to be had their phones on at all time they were measuring their calories they were

[01:07:10] reporting in all the things that dos was was already happening so i hope that understanding is part of the conversation because all of these groups have that lower level type of

[01:07:20] course of control and if we can catch it now before it gets to branding before it gets to quote sweat lodges before it gets to kool-aid drinking flavorate drinking you know all of those

[01:07:30] things anyway i'm aware of your time and i know that everyone's got busy schedules so where can people find your well podcast obviously wherever people listen to podcast the seek safely podcast and on instagram instagram your personal handles are i am at dr doile says

[01:07:45] on on all of the things instagram twitter x whatever it is these days facebook gene what about you so the organization is at seek safely everywhere on instagram and twitter and all of that i'm at jb

[01:07:59] beans eight on instagram because that's like an old handle and gene c brown on twitter yeah but seek safely is where it's at and and our website is seek safely dot org so we have a lot of

[01:08:13] information there including like i said about the legislative effort and the seek safely promise which we talked about earlier we also have a whole section for consumers with a lot of red flags so it's definitely worth checking out amazing well we hope that this episode and

[01:08:28] also the ted talk shines extra light on on what you are doing which is so important and truthfully something that i wish i was doing more of and don't have the capacity to so i i will

[01:08:40] put some wind in your sails thank you love it thank you so much thank you guys that was great i appreciate it yeah thanks so much thank you till next time like what you hear do you give us a

[01:08:53] rating review and subscribe on itunes every little bit helps us get this cult awareness content out there smash that subscribe button you know you want to thank you everybody i hope

[01:09:06] that you enjoyed that convo as much as we did if you want to know more about seek safely we'll put all that information as per use in our show notes as well as links to the tedx talk and

[01:09:16] go on now get on about going to have yourself a good halloween seek safely trick or treat safely go on now enjoy yourselves a little bit culty is a trace 120 production executive produced by sarah edmondson and anthony

[01:09:46] nippy aims in collaboration with producer will reutherford at citizens of sound and our co-creator just temple tardy our writing and research is by holly azadra and matias rosenswig and our theme song cultivated is by the artist john bryant and nigel aslin