Spot A Spider: Dr. Amy Saltzman on Identifying Webs of Abuse

[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.

[00:00:27] The views and opinions expressed by A Little Bit Culty are those of the hosts, and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the podcast.

[00:00:35] Any of the fucking mazeball content provided by our guest bloggers, sponsors or authors are of their opinion and are not attended to malign any religion, group, club, organization, business individual, anyone or anything.

[00:00:46] We're not doctors, not psychologists, we're certainly not the AP. That's associated press for those of you listening at home. We're two non-experts. We found ourselves making a little podcast that people happen to like. Okay? Yeah. Okay. Music Hey everybody, Sarah Edmondson here.

[00:01:10] And I'm Anthony Ames, aka Nippy, Sarah's husband, and you're listening to A Little Bit Culty, aka ALBC. A podcast about what happens when devotion goes to the dark side.

[00:01:21] We've been there and back again. A little about us, true story, we met and fell in love in a cult, and then we woke up and got the hell out of dodge. And the whole thing was captured in HBO docu-series The Vow, now in its second season.

[00:01:35] I also wrote about our experience in my memoir, Scarred, the true story of how I escaped next to him, the cult that bound my life.

[00:01:42] Look at us. A couple of married podcasters who just happened to have a weekly date night, where we interview experts and advocates in things like cult awareness and mind control. Wait, wait, wait. This does not count toward date night, babe. We got to schedule that. That's separate.

[00:01:55] So it's two days? We got to hang out? We do this podcast thing because we learned a lot on our exit ramp out of Nexium. Still on that journey. And we want to pay the lessons forward with the help of other cult survivors and whistleblowers.

[00:02:07] We know all too well that culty things happen. It happens to people every day, across every walk of life. So join us each week to tackle these culty dynamics everywhere from online dating to mega churches and multi-level market.

[00:02:18] This stuff really is everywhere. The Cultiverse just keeps on expanding and so are we. Welcome to season five of A Little Bit Cultie, serving cult content and word salads weekly on your favorite podcast platforms. Learn more at alittlebitculti.com

[00:02:38] Welcome back everybody. Hello culty listeners. Thank you so much for joining us. We are excited. Now, I always struggle to find the word. How do you feel about this episode and follow up to our episode with Kim and Melanie from last week?

[00:03:04] Well, I don't know if excited is the word. I feel like purposeful. Purposeful. You like that one? Yeah. Let's run it back then. We're purposeful. I like it. You know why I like it? Because it's educational and so much of what we talk about.

[00:03:18] I get frustrated because all these cults are out there. You know, and I think our listeners know, we have cult content for days, years perhaps. So fear not culty listeners. A little bit culty isn't going anywhere. I just like to have a solution to the problem.

[00:03:31] Also maybe to help articulate it a little. Yeah, there's cults, but there's predators.

[00:03:36] And predators normally at the helm of cults. And predators start early on people and if your children or young ones or whoever can figure out what the precursors look like, I think this episode lends to that.

[00:03:48] What do you say? Yes. Yes. This is a solution oriented episode. Yes. I like that. Right? I like that. Yes. Okay. I think we're becoming podcasters right in front of everyone. 60 something episodes in. Took two years.

[00:04:03] But trigger warning, this episode does include mention of abuse and maybe especially unsettling for certain listeners. That said, it should be at least somewhat upsetting for all listeners.

[00:04:12] If you're not upset, maybe head over to the therapist or a doctor and get that checked out. However, if you need resources regarding abuse, please head to our website. We are all in this together.

[00:04:20] When it comes to abuse, we tend to focus our attention on the aftermath rather than what could have been done to actually prevent the harm. Our guest today, Dr. Amy Salzman is working hard on changing that.

[00:04:30] She is a former competitive gymnast, a physician, a mindfulness coach, author and victim, Sir Thriver of decades of covert emotional abuse.

[00:04:38] She now uses her experience and her expertise to help people and especially children recognize abusive behavior while at school or on sports teams or in religious settings, wherever such behavior may go on.

[00:04:48] Because the truth is, a lot of us and definitely kids don't actually even realize when abuse is taking place. But Dr. Amy's program called Spot a Spider is helping people do just that.

[00:04:58] Spot a Spider is internationally recognized and pairs well with Dr. Amy's book series, A Still Quiet Place, which aims to teach mindfulness to children and adolescents who are struggling with stress.

[00:05:07] In these works, she's proven a knack for explaining complex, adult and even disturbing concepts to children in a way that makes sense to them. For all the parents out there, you know that's no easy feat.

[00:05:16] But our listeners are not children, we hope. And so you might be wondering, what does this have to do with me or even cults?

[00:05:21] Well, as we always say in the show, being in a cult does not always look like living on a compound, being branded or sexually abused and all that stuff.

[00:05:27] It's worth discussing that abusive practices can be one-on-one and especially in this digital age do not even require in-person contact.

[00:05:33] For Dr. Amy, this topic hits close to home. A recent comprehensive neuropsychological assessment revealed that her 31-year relationship with her life coach and spiritual mentor was in fact covertly abusive.

[00:05:44] So we're honored to have her on the show today to share more about what abuse really looks like, how to spot it and how mindfulness plays into all of this. Without further ado, Dr. Amy Salzman. Hey Amy, welcome to a little bit culty. So glad to be here.

[00:06:11] It's been a long time coming and we're so excited to have you as a guest. I know that you have such a wealth of knowledge to bring to us and to our listeners.

[00:06:20] Can you tell our listeners how do you describe yourself when people say, what do you do with your life's work all about? How would you summarize who you are? If I only get one phrase, it would be preventing and relieving suffering and helping people find joy and flow.

[00:06:37] If I get a little bit more, I would say I'm a holistic physician, a mindfulness coach and a fierce advocate for preventing abuse in various settings. That is a great elevator pitch. I got goosebumps. It is under 30 seconds too.

[00:06:52] Yeah. We have a mutual friend in the cult recovery space who connected us and I was so happy that he did because when I heard about your story, Amy, I just thought, wow, what a perfect fit.

[00:07:03] And we have other plans. I don't know if I've told you this to hopefully speak to either Rachel, Dan Hollander or one of the other survivors of the Nassar case, which is relevant right now, as you probably know.

[00:07:15] Yeah. Rachel would be awesome spokesperson. She's definitely my model for forgiveness because she says that forgiveness needs to be coupled with seeking justice and speaking out. And I think that that's a really healthy definition of forgiveness.

[00:07:34] I think it makes you more of an authority in that field if you've reconciled your own kind of forgiveness around it, so you're not coming from a place of malice.

[00:07:43] Right. You can uphold justice and have people be accountable for their actions and not hold that personal vengeance in your heart, which can be toxic, correct? Yep.

[00:07:52] And we'll get to that in terms of forgiveness at the end. Tell us your story. I mean, it's just fascinating. Will you give our audience the cliff notes of your experience with a life coach?

[00:08:01] Yeah. So I was 25. I had been a competitive gymnast. I was at that time a competitive cyclist and in medical school and a fellow cyclist friend of mine introduced me to this life coach.

[00:08:20] I was dealing with some fear in my cycling and my friend told me that she thought her coach could help me. I didn't vet the coach. I didn't have any, like, spider radar. So I started working with this coach.

[00:08:40] When you joined, what specifically were you signing up for? Like, what were you hoping to get out of this relationship?

[00:08:45] I was really hoping to get support with dealing with my cycling fears. And then it kind of became this thing over time where it permeated every area of my life.

[00:08:58] But the initial thing was dealing with my, you know, fears of crashing basically when I was competing in cycling. So it was if I really thought I was signing up for more like sports psychology or performance enhancement or competing better.

[00:09:16] And you trusted your cyclist friend so that leverage trust earned you that relationship with this person? Right. Okay. And it was $450 an hour twice a week, correct? Well, 31 years ago it wasn't. So that gradually increased in terms of amount per hour and hours per week over the years.

[00:09:38] Like it was a slow escalation in terms of cost. Okay. Sounds familiar. And when things were good, what sort of support were you getting at the beginning?

[00:09:50] Well, I mean, I think I felt more confident in my cycling. I think I felt more like honestly somehow more whole with which now seems totally ironic. But I think at the time I felt more whole, more vibrant.

[00:10:08] But that's whatever you want to call it. That's the love bombing phase. That's the honeymoon phase. There were good things. And I mean, honestly, I feel like a lot of the principles, spiritual principles and psychological principles that I learned during those 31 years are sound and solid and trustworthy.

[00:10:28] And I keep them. I just feel like they were used in a cruel and manipulative and exploitative fashion. And it's not the principles that were the problem. It was the person and how they were used. Makes sense.

[00:10:44] That seems to be consistent with every single person we talked to. It's never the principles. The principles get abused or leveraged towards a person.

[00:10:51] With your hindsight, looking back, what were the red flags that you missed that you now know were red flags? Like can you think of them first one that you ignored as you call your wise self?

[00:11:00] I think the first one, and it's probably not the one I would emphasize the most, but the first one is just that sinking feeling when you're getting on a coaching call or when you're going to a workshop like that sick feeling in your stomach.

[00:11:18] That, of course, you're told you've heard something similar to this. And I think most groups and cults use these things is, oh, well, that's just your fear and you need to get over it.

[00:11:32] And that's impeding your progress, your spiritual growth. But that sinking sick feeling in your stomach is probably the first red flag. Yep. Been there. And the other ones along the way that you want to share now that you know what you know?

[00:11:48] Well, the other one is that, and again, I didn't realize it at the time, but like in many abusive relationships or coercive controlling groups or cults, when someone questioned, when someone challenged, when someone tried to hold her accountable,

[00:12:06] they were, you know, in Nixxiom it would be called being a suppressive. In Mormonism it would be an apostate. In our language it was you were in shadow or you were in ego or you were in fear.

[00:12:19] But it was meant to dismiss your concerns and establish her as the authority. And then if someone was thinking of leaving or leaving the people in the group or the other members or other people involved were encouraged to shun the person who had left and or was leaving

[00:12:43] and not to associate with them, which meant that no one is people who see the patterns. This is going to lead to when we talk about spotting spiders and the web, but people who see the patterns are ostracized so that no one else has the information about the patterns, if that makes sense.

[00:13:02] So you were working with this person with another group or one on one?

[00:13:06] Well, mostly my work interestingly was one on one. Additionally, there was a group, a writing group in LA and those people were more of a group and more involved. But you know I had friendships with those people.

[00:13:21] For example, my friend who introduced me left. I was told she's in shadow. Don't talk to her. Don't connect with her. She's untrustworthy. She's having psychological issues.

[00:13:36] And so my natural instinct to reach out to her, to see how she was, to see. I mean it didn't occur to me that she would have anything useful to tell me. I just wanted to check on her. But even my natural instinct to reach out to her was thwarted and that's intentional.

[00:13:53] Have you reconciled with that person? I have reached out to her and let her know that I and some other group members have been talking about our experiences. We have a short documentary that's out. We're looking at expanding on that.

[00:14:13] I haven't heard back from my original friend and I can understand, I think of all of us she was perhaps the most wounded and opening up that particular can of worms may be more than she wants to take on. It's understandable.

[00:14:31] What was the final straw? How did you, and I know we're going fast through your 30 years unless there's anything else you want to share there. How did you end up getting out of this web?

[00:14:40] Well, there's kind of the almost final straw and then the final straw. So the almost final straw is that in January of 2020 I asked to complete the coaching or asked to graduate, which after 31 years seems pretty reasonable.

[00:14:56] And even at that point I thought I was going to like really like have some kind of graduation or celebration and then I might do like graduate school. Like there was no awareness of the full extent of what was going on, even at that point.

[00:15:11] Then what happened is she began gaslighting me and telling me either that I had early Alzheimer's or that I was just resisting my spiritual growth.

[00:15:22] And she made one mistake. She insisted that I get a full neuropsychological work up and she had me thinking really either that I did have Alzheimer's or I had some other medical condition that was messing with my mind, or that yes, I was a terrible student and failing in my spiritual evolution.

[00:15:46] It never occurred to me at this point that the diagnosis would be what it was. But seven hours of neuropsychological testing later, two hours of the neuropsychologist speaking to the coach and one hour of the neuropsychologist speaking to my husband.

[00:16:04] The diagnosis that came back was that any symptoms I did have with my memory and some anxiety and depression were due to a relationship of undue influence, also known as coercive control or covert emotional abuse.

[00:16:20] So I went in, I mean like that was not even a possibility when I undertook the neuropsych evaluation. But the minute the woman said that sentence, that's the minute that like you know when you're standing there's a spider web there and you can't see it and then you shift or the light shifts and you see the whole web all at once.

[00:16:43] In that moment I saw the web and like the whole pattern was visible and there was no denying it. I want to add one more point, which is the neuropsychologist felt the abuse was so severe that she reported it to adult protective services. Wow.

[00:17:02] Because I am under 65 adult protective services could not act on their report, but that was the extent of her assessment of the situation. So she saw it. Wow. Yeah, she for sure saw the web and then she turned slightly and I saw the web. Right.

[00:17:22] What was that like to see it? How did it feel in that moment?

[00:17:25] That moment was actually pretty devastating because there were ramifications that I could see coming. So in that moment, I lost a relationship with someone who I loved and trusted or the illusion of them I loved and trusted.

[00:17:41] I lost at least for a while all my spiritual principles because it was just hard to separate the principles from the person. I lost my sense of self because it's like well if this person's this and this relationship's this then who am I?

[00:17:59] And I lost the relationship with a family member that still has not been restored. That family member is still in the web. Yeah. Oh, that is so hard. That's tough. That's a pain that Nipi and I know well and from not a family member just friends.

[00:18:15] So I can only imagine having the pain of having a family member still in. This is the golden age of cult recovery. The more we speak up and share our stories, the more we realize we are not alone. Your voice and your story can empower others.

[00:18:33] This is Sarah and I'm proud to be a founding collaborator of the hashtag I got out movement. Learn more at I got out.org. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. What are your self care non-negotiables? Maybe you never skip leg day or never miss yoga.

[00:18:55] Maybe it's getting eight hours of sleep. 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 in nature. Hashtag cold pools hashtag crushing it. Nature is a non-negotiable.

[00:19:12] Not enough time in 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 walks.

[00:19:19] I try to not miss it and I know I'm just going to 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

[00:19:28] 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 know what I mean? Thanks therapy.

[00:19:38] And if you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp 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 therapist and switch therapists anytime for no additional charge.

[00:19:51] 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 BetterHelp.

[00:20:02] 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 influencer family, but everything wasn't as it seemed. I just had a 12 year old boy still up here asking for help.

[00:20:21] 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 lives. Listen to Infamous wherever you get your podcasts. So what did you do when you realized this?

[00:20:45] How did you extract yourself? Well, I mean like the extraction itself was almost instantaneous. It was like the neuropsychologist hit the eject button. So the extraction wasn't the issue. It was the recovery. So I mean the truth is I lost 20 pounds.

[00:21:03] I spent almost a month in bed trying to put myself back together. And then I started writing. You know, initially I wrote an article on ending cycles of abuse in sports and society because the parallels between the spiritual abuse that I experienced

[00:21:23] and the abuse that so many athletes at every level are experiencing, they were super clear. And then that article led to me creating Spot of Spider because I've always been like a prevention and protection person. So I had learned mindfulness, you know, in my 30s

[00:21:48] and my first instinct was to then share it with children because it's like why do we have to be 40 and going through a divorce or have a heart attack before we learn these life skills? And so my impulse with my own experience

[00:22:04] and making lemonade out of lemons is, okay, let's teach kids and adults how to recognize these behaviors. So they're not trapped by spiders or if they are trapped by spiders that they can extract themselves. And let's take it another step further.

[00:22:23] Let's create structures, whether it's for sports organizations or schools or churches or Boy Scouts or whatever it is that spider-proof the environments so that this doesn't happen to people. It's such a perfect metaphor. Did that just emerge from your psyche

[00:22:40] or did you have to play around with some different metaphors to use this one? I think the web thing came almost instantaneously because it just had that feeling of like, you can't see it, you don't even think it's there and then it's right in your face.

[00:22:55] So that part was easy. And then once you start describing patterns, then you can start describing spiders and helping people recognize them. Through your work, what do you think allows the ecosystem to allow that kind of behavior to exist and even thrive? There's a few things.

[00:23:13] I think first of all, people just don't know what they're looking for. I think as so many of your guests have said on the show, like most of us are good-hearted, compassionate people and we just never imagine the cruelty and the manipulation. We're not wired like that.

[00:23:37] So we don't expect other people to be wired by that. And then I think when you get into certain settings like sports, things like having a winning coach, people put up with a lot if the coach is winning, feeling like you can't speak up

[00:23:53] or you'll lose your spot on the team. And I just think we do actually a pretty terrible job at making sure that people who are working with either young athletes or working with people's most tender vulnerable parts, whoever they are, are ethical, credentialed, held accountable.

[00:24:15] We are not creating those structures. One of the things that struck me in reading your article is I played football and I played all the way through college in one of four boys and I grew up in an atmosphere of just performance.

[00:24:27] And it was pretty common to be yelled at even as a kid. And then I can remember in middle school having a coach grab my face mask, you know, and there was a situation in college where my mom was at a game in a stadium.

[00:24:42] And she heard the coach call one of the players a cunt and my mom's like, is that often? I shrugged it off like, mom, you just, you don't get it. You know, it's like, and to me, it was normalized abuse.

[00:24:54] And ultimately one of the things that I didn't really want to go into coaching, I had a version to the raw, raw shit. And it just didn't feel that atmosphere was one I wanted to continue in. I didn't really see myself as being someone

[00:25:05] to change it at the time. How do you reconcile that? Like, do you know what I mean? Like, and what's the line? So I think it's interesting because I have two videos. The first one is how to spot a sneaky spider.

[00:25:16] And that's all about spotting the covert emotional abuse, like the super subtle invisible stuff. But the second one is how to spot an obvious spider. And that one is like, where is the line? Right. I was a competitive athlete. I was pushed. I was challenged. It was rough.

[00:25:35] And my best coaches, I always knew they cared and there was nothing threatening or manipulative about it. So there's for sure a line between passionate intensity and abuse. And part of what I tried to delineate in the second video is what is that?

[00:25:56] So, and I have discussion questions even for the videos. And so one of the questions is, is it ever okay for a coach to yell? Well, yeah, it's okay for a coach to yell. A coach can yell clear instructions. A coach can yell, you know, encouragement or motivation.

[00:26:12] All of that yelling is fine. Is any other kind of yelling okay? Probably not. Is a coach pulling on your face mask? And it's interesting because one of the images, I didn't quite get it in the video because there are some limitations with whiteboard animation.

[00:26:29] But the image that I had in my head for that scene actually was a coach pulling a kid's face mask, right? Like that's not necessarily quite physical abuse because they haven't hurt your body. But it's definitely emotional abuse and it's being used to scare and intimidate.

[00:26:50] Let me put it this way. We have two boys. If any coach did that to my boys, I would freak the fuck out and I would jump right up there and pull them right out of

[00:26:57] the sport just so you know I would do that for you as a little boy, Nippy. That's why Mama Barry states we're like, argh! Well, I mean, so to continue what Amy is saying, and I think I can put a little bit more language to it.

[00:27:08] You know, there's a little term in sports is called players coach, you know where the players always felt like the coach had their back and then there's a coach who's clearly there because he wants to motivate up the food chain to get in a

[00:27:20] more powerful position of coaching. And you can feel it as a player. And we had a guy in college that, you know, clearly was about him and using the college as a stepping stone to a bigger job. And that doesn't get a player to play hard for him.

[00:27:33] And I've always said that there's good guys as coaches who try to be assholes, but the good guy always comes out. And then there's assholes as coaches who try to be good guys, but the asshole always comes out.

[00:27:42] Well, and the other thing is Nippy, I don't think it's all, I mean, yes, they want to move up the food chain, but a lot of it is just about power over the athlete, whether they move up the food chain or not.

[00:27:53] Like they're going into the traumatizing narcissist piece, right? They're wanting to create dependency and fear because they thrive on power, because they weren't loved as children and they used power as a substitute. That sums up the traumatizing narcissist very nicely. Thank you. Yep.

[00:28:18] When you're trying to explain something to a child, it helps you be super clear and super succinct. Cause that's a super complex idea. Right. Well, it's a super complex idea to go into a domain like athletics and use it for yourself in that capacity.

[00:28:33] Like that's something any athlete is considering when they walk into that domain that this person's here to fulfill their own demons. You were making of how to spot a spider video or sneaky spider was designed

[00:28:44] to use the coach as an example, but to be applied across all relationships. Yeah, it's not proprietary sports. It's not proprietary sports. So we want to be clear on that. And I think it's, you know, I didn't have a co- I like dabbled in a couple of things,

[00:28:56] but I was not a sporty person. I was a theater nerd. So I'm, I'm applying, you know, all everything that you're saying about the acting teachers. Right. So it totally could be a theater director. And in fact, just last week,

[00:29:08] there was an article in the Hollywood reporter about an abusive theater group where the patterns are the same. So theater director writing group using some of your previous episodes like mom selling leggings group therapy group. You know, the patterns are the same.

[00:29:28] And our audience knows that there's more episodes coming out about that, especially actually the couple acting teachers who are textbook sneaky spiders. You know who you are and I don't think they do. But regardless, can you take our audience through

[00:29:43] and obviously we'll be encouraging them to access the video. Will it be online by the time? Is it ready to go? The video, everything should be ready. And you know that for every a little bit cultie listener

[00:29:57] who buys the video, 20% is going to come back to you all if they put ALBC in the affiliate code box. Wonderful. And we would like to do something with that specifically we're trying to figure out how to start like a nonprofit or like something to create funds

[00:30:14] because there's so many people that get out of cults who don't have access to money. Like they don't have a job and they need therapy and like I want to guide people to this but use those funds and thank you for that offer for our listeners.

[00:30:26] For something specific around healing, I'm not sure what it is yet. We can brainstorm. Yeah, and I think that's a phenomenal idea because as you know, most people spend a lot of money being abused and then healing is also expensive and people need support.

[00:30:43] And also challenging if people were abused by a coach or a therapist now they've got to get actual therapy. I'm sure there's myself included real aversion to doing that. So a video like this could be really helpful. Do you want to tell us a little bit about it?

[00:30:57] Like lead us through some of the points and how you came up with it. So the idea of the web was already there. I'd been following, of course, the abuse of the gymnast and the youth and adult women soccer players and the abuse now in Canada

[00:31:17] and the Michigan football players. Like the list is unfortunately endless and I could see the parallels between my spiritual abuse and how the abuse, especially of the gymnast started and right gymnasts are near and dear to my heart because I was a gymnast as a kid.

[00:31:34] So my thought was like, how would you explain this to young Simone or young Allie Raceman or young Rachel Denholland or like how would you help them spot these spiders, spot these patterns and give them the language to communicate to adults. This is what's happening.

[00:31:55] This is what's going on. I need your help, right? First, they have to know that it's a problem and second of all, they have to have a way to communicate it to responsible adults. The Simone, I say her last name, Biles. Yes.

[00:32:08] I follow that peripherally and because of my experience it was easy to get on board with her explanation of what was going on, but there was some pushback on her stepping out of the Olympics and one of, I think one of the people was like,

[00:32:21] you know, what's going on with the standard in the United States? Our athletes never used to do this, blah, blah, blah. We're creating safe space. This isn't, you know, and this isn't, if you don't want to compete, don't, you know,

[00:32:33] it was a whole kind of, kind of shaming her for her situation. I've talked about this on other episodes, right? I mean, it's a classic example of victim shaming and people not understanding trauma and probably not understanding what it takes to compete at that level.

[00:32:49] But if you put yourself in her shoes, her trauma occurred in these competition settings. So she's being triggered all the time, you know, walking into the gym, walking into the training room and she's expected to compete. And, you know, she said it super eloquently.

[00:33:10] Like she's basically right, she's going into freeze of fight, flight or freeze. But if you're going into freeze in the middle of a double twisting, double backflip, like that's not safe. So you can't be in triggered trauma freeze and compete, you know,

[00:33:28] and really that was a life or death situation, right? Because if she gets lost in space and if you look at the pictures, you can see that she just doesn't know where her body is. Then there's no way for her to compete safely. No, I can remember feeling,

[00:33:45] I mean probably not to that extent, but I can remember we're all dragging up to a practice that we didn't want to go to because of a coach we didn't like. Yeah, but this to me is way more about a trauma response. Yeah, I'm not comparing the two.

[00:33:58] I'm just saying my capacity to perform when my heart and mind wasn't in it was different. I can't even imagine what it would be like to go in and have trauma responses to the very thing I was going up to do that I professed to love.

[00:34:10] Right, when I think she loves it, I just think it's super complicated now. For sure. I don't know who you guys are talking about so... Simone Biles was a, or is an Olympic gymnast and during the Tokyo Olympics, I think it was last year, right?

[00:34:24] Because they've delayed it a year. She dismissed herself from competition because of what she was going through. Yeah, and the way that I would phrase it is she knew she was triggered, she knew she wasn't safe, and she made the wise, compassionate self-care choice not to compete.

[00:34:42] Like, I think that's the accurate and most compassionate interpretation of what she did. And I apologize, I don't know this case. Was she in an abusive relationship with the coach? Is that the tie in here? So she was one of the victims of Nassau.

[00:34:56] Oh, I didn't know that. Okay, okay. Clearly I have not done my research on that case fully yet. No, totally fine. That's why the sports talk is me and Nippy. Yes. We knew it was going to go that way. We did.

[00:35:09] Okay, so we're going back to Sneaky Spider. We've already talked about why you're doing this, why now? If you can share with our audience, what are some of the covert, spidery things that coaches deploy in the sports realm

[00:35:21] or could also bring it over to the life coach realm? What are some of the things that you've seen that you'd like to share with our audience? Yeah, well I think there are things that you know and are familiar with and cover in almost every podcast.

[00:35:33] I just think they have a particular flavor in this environment. But for sure the love bombing, right? If you're chosen for an elite club or a national team or whatever, you feel lucky to be there. You don't want to rock the boat. You don't want to cause problems.

[00:35:52] You want to compete and do what you love. And then that thing of like playing on your hopes and your fears, whether it's the hope of being an Olympian or with my life coach of my hope of being spiritually evolved and being of service.

[00:36:09] It's like on the one hand it's like I can help you get to where you want to go. Usually where you want to go is always a moving target. And then on the other hand it's like if you don't stay with me,

[00:36:23] if you leave me, if you challenge me, your hopes and dreams will never come true. And again that's whether you want to be an Olympian or enlightened might be a little grandiose but spiritually evolved. It's the same thing.

[00:36:37] If you leave me, you will never become who you want to be. Yeah. Sure it sounds totally familiar to you. Oh absolutely. And I was back to the acting thing too. This particular teacher I'm talking about, everyone that I know who's studied with her, myself included

[00:36:51] at a subconscious level anyway was like, well if I'm not with her, I'm not a serious actress or I'm not going to get to that level that I aspire to. So I see that rampantly. We have love bombing, all the grooming.

[00:37:03] What I love about the video is that you really show what the grooming stages look like in not just terms. Like I think that our audience by now knows the term love bombing and isolation but specifically what does that look like

[00:37:16] in words and sentences and actions in this case from a coach? Right and I want to say two things. One about the grooming and one about the isolation. So the thing I don't love about grooming is that

[00:37:30] grooming is like this idea that it leads to physical or sexual abuse and the truth is that grooming in and of itself is covert emotional abuse and there's data actually to show that covert emotional abuse is as harmful or more harmful

[00:37:49] than the physical or sexual abuse simply because it's covert and it's much less easy to detect and like you doubt yourself you doubt that it's happened, it's harder to explain. It's difficult to quantify. It's one of the things in our case too and I've said this

[00:38:07] I think a couple times the branding was the physical manifestation of the emotional abuse and it was easier to quantify to everyone else which made then the emotional abuse more plausible. Had that not happened I think the gaslighting and all the word

[00:38:21] salad and all the stuff in the plausible deniability is what allows it to exist so putting language to that is vital. Right and I think that often when we talk about abuse and coercive controlling relationships or cults right

[00:38:38] it's like the big things, the branding or the suicide packs or the Kool-Aid and these subtle insidious things are equally damaging but so much harder to see and articulate and they're not as compelling right like everybody can get

[00:39:00] branding but the I know this is allowed and I will probably only do it once but the complete mind fuck of the covert emotional abuse is so hard to articulate that it doesn't have the same impact as branding. Branding's easy. It's like it literally is visible.

[00:39:23] The scarring is visible but the covert emotional abuse is as damaging as that it's just not as visible. A lot of people think covert emotional abuse is bullshit too because they're too prideful to admit that they would be susceptible to it even when it's happened to them

[00:39:39] and we've seen that. Well I think when it's happened to you and you don't want to admit it right that I totally get because 31 years of my life I had to be willing to say oops let's reconsider this and that's brutal and it's not easy and sometimes

[00:39:58] you want to hang on to your vision of yourself, your vision of your abuser, your vision of your life and so to be willing to have the courage to reassess is no small thing. Correct. It's the first step. There's no way to recovery without doing that first step.

[00:40:15] That's the hardest I think. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. 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. That's my personal and everyone's dream isn't it? Well I definitely have some non-negotiables like I'm in

[00:41:01] 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 air and the trees around me and I start to feel not great, not myself, not grounded.

[00:41:15] Therapy Day is a bit like my nature walks. I try to not miss it and I know I'm just going to feel so much better all around if I make it a priority. I get so much out of it.

[00:41:23] It helps me put my worries and anxieties in their rightful place 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.

[00:41:34] You know what I mean? Thanks Therapy. Thanks for helping me see that. And if you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp 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

[00:41:46] with a licensed therapist and switch therapists any time 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.

[00:41:59] Never skip Therapy Day with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com slash culty today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp H-E-L-P dot com slash culty. Meals bring people together, but for many families providing their next meal can be a challenge. You can help by participating in Macy's

[00:42:17] 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 for the blue Feeding the Hungry shelf tags where a portion

[00:42:31] of your purchase will be donated to local pantries. Together we can combat hunger in our local communities at Macy's. Going back to not being able to put words on it that's why I like your video because you're giving concrete examples of what those sneaky

[00:42:48] invisible tactics look like from day one in this case with the coach. You know if I were to hear that my son came back from football and the football coach said that he had a really special talent and he was going to get

[00:43:01] special one-on-one coaching with his coach. That would be a major red flag for me now because I have gone through my experience and I've learned through your video. Well, and I don't want to give the impression that every cook right because there are also right.

[00:43:16] The coaches out there that are really they are the good guys or the good gals and they take people under their wings. They take kids who you know don't have great home situations or whatever under their wings but those kids are also more vulnerable.

[00:43:34] So somebody needs to be paying attention to is this safe, healthy and this person's actually going to be that adult in that kid's life who makes a difference, who gets them through school, who gets them to consider college, right?

[00:43:52] There are those people and I don't want people to think all coaches are like this but I definitely want people to know what the warning signs are. What else do you want them to know? Like if you could give our listeners some tips

[00:44:05] about protecting their children from early childhood to young adulthood and even college what are the things to look out for? Well, I think the whole videos are that but I want to highlight one more for sure which is like the us and them and the in and

[00:44:22] out group you know as long as you're doing what the coach wants and you're being compliant and you're singing the coaches praises, you're going to be in the in group and you're going to be kind of safe but if you start questioning then you're going to be

[00:44:40] discredited, you're going to be shunned, you're going to be isolated, you're going to be ostracized and you know if you're in a situation whether it's sports or a business or anything and people are as soon as someone questions or raises a concern

[00:45:01] they're shunned like run the other way right? It's not a good environment. And also if they're asked to like keep secrets or like not to tell anybody about their coaching or their time together. Yeah, keeping secrets, don't tell, no one will understand or if an athlete

[00:45:21] has concerns or a parent has concerns or an assistant coach has concerns and the coach's response is to discredit the concerns and to encourage people to shun or ostracize the person who's expressing concerns. That's a huge red flag. I mean and I'm sure you have

[00:45:44] an equivalent from your own experience. It's just stifling the scent. And to connect it with some of our recent episodes showing how people were coming out against Tiel Swan and her response is well these people are just traumatized and their ex-lovers with an axe to grind just

[00:46:03] proves to me that she is what they all say that she is. But what's what happened to you and I and Mark and they just went after our character. So we've been on the receiving end. Right, so in a coaching situation

[00:46:14] the coach will say just to go back to some of the specifics if an athlete like a teammates raising issues the coach will say oh well she's just jealous or she doesn't have what it takes or she doesn't want you to succeed and that starts to

[00:46:31] drive a wedge between the teammates so that the patterns don't get exposed. The coach doesn't want their spider patterns exposed and so they'll do anything to prevent people from talking about the patterns or bringing the patterns up and the easiest thing to do is to discredit

[00:46:50] the person who's exposing them. That's one step and then the second step is to make sure that that person is isolated and shunned. Have you noticed in the last couple years with all the recent documentaries and this being part of the zeitgeist to speak up about these things

[00:47:07] have you found that the culture is changing or is it obviously there's still lots of work to be done where do you think we're at as a society in regards to all this. I think you know thanks to you and other people who are speaking up

[00:47:21] and all these documentaries we're making progress for sure and at the same time what gets publicized the most is these super dramatic stories and I would put your story in there as well and the more subtle day to day like this is happening in your neighborhood

[00:47:41] stories are not getting told so I think people are starting to recognize the really dramatic stories the Tinder swindler or inventing Anna or Nixxiom or Teal Swan like that's getting recognized but the one-on-one abuse or the small theater group writing group band

[00:48:08] I don't think that's getting recognized as much it seems like that public policy needs to change and I mean look at Larry Nasser and the whole suit against the FBI clearly in this case not with our case but in this case drop the ball

[00:48:23] and you are incredibly passionate about preventing abuse in sports music programs and all these settings all these settings where parents bring their kids with a sense of trust and hope but right now you have got a soapbox maybe with 80,000 people listening or so

[00:48:38] so let it rip what do you want school administrators athletic directors and public officials to know so there are actually steps they're not complicated that an organization can take to vastly minimize the possibility that you're going to have a spider in your environment and on my website

[00:49:02] I have a code of ethics a kid version and an adult version post those at your entryway in your bathrooms, in your locker rooms I have hiring guidelines and questions that will help you detect if someone's a spider and we have policies for you know let's set up

[00:49:28] we'll just use a gym let's set up your gym so our gym promises that we're going to take good care of your physical mental and emotional health we're going to support you in taking good care of your physical and mental emotional health

[00:49:43] and we're going to commit to preventing all types of abuse in our gym and here's how we do this we screen our coaches we require that our coaches have safe sport training and there's issues with safe sport but the training model is good

[00:50:00] we require that our coaches have training in I forgot what you called it Nipi but I call it like holistic positive athlete centered coaching we have a athlete safety committee that has two either athletes if the athletes are over 18 and a trauma informed professional that's on the committee

[00:50:23] the committee meets at least twice a year it meets within a week if concerns are raised we have an anonymous reporting system we commit to not making a victim face their victimizer on their own or at all we have a report in having any discussions

[00:50:48] and we promise to take prompt action against anyone who we determine after an independent, full, timely investigation is abusive and against anyone who is being a bystander, an enabler or a conspirator and that goes from the woman who works to the desk at the club to the FBI

[00:51:15] there should be consequences for everybody in those settings that was the question what are the key steps this is a very tangible toolset for people at different stages and for me and Nipi we have two boys I'm really looking forward to

[00:51:39] walking our kids through how to spot a sneaky spider and having that conversation with them because this is something that comes up a lot as a question how do we protect our kids, how do we teach them what these things look like

[00:51:53] and obviously we're motivated to do that I hope I'm solving two problems for you the other problem you've mentioned more than once on the podcast is what am I going to tell them I hope this gives you child friendly language to explain it to your own kids

[00:52:11] and thereby you're protecting your kids from getting caught by a spider I'm pretty sure your kids are not going to get caught by spiders I'm going to be there the whole time but there's also this issue of how do you guys explain what happened

[00:52:28] and the other question that keeps coming up a lot so many people in our audience are in some form of cult recovery or abuse recovery and many people are also just trying to love someone through their healing journey so do you have any advice for our listeners

[00:52:43] who are trying to be supportive to people getting out of something like this as an adult survivor? I think the things that made the biggest difference to me were honestly when the neuropsychologist said that she had asked that my husband be at the appointment

[00:53:00] it was during COVID so it was a Zoom appointment one of my first thoughts was he's going to say I told you so and he's going to walk like 31 years, been telling you all this time he was so understanding and so compassionate and no blame

[00:53:21] and just super supportive so I think being kind, compassionate, gentle and patient That's really true. I really appreciated those people I told you so, that was really hard so thank you I guess you find out who your friends are too Yeah and I find power

[00:53:42] in naming the person so my coach's name was Georgina Lindsay and is still Georgina Lindsay and I believe we name our spiders to protect other people to be a voice for people who aren't ready to speak up and to be friends who were abused

[00:54:03] who aren't in that place in their healing yet to feel ready to do it to let, when we go back to the sneaky spider let adults decide fair consequences for the spiders behavior and most importantly to show that we've untangled that we've reclaimed our power

[00:54:22] and that we're free and so to me that in and of itself is also super healing to create this content for children Oh yeah, it lets me be who I always was and who I was thwarted all these years from being

[00:54:40] which is a person devoted to eliminating suffering supporting healing and helping people find joy and flow like it's a full expression of who I am at my best when I'm not tangled in a web and what I was going to say before is one of the discoveries

[00:54:58] was right, the coach always said that she loved me unconditionally and that my husband was holding me back and right in the upside down world my husband loved me unconditionally and she was the one who was holding me back

[00:55:19] Is she aware of your work now? Not yet but that's coming soon She's still practicing life coaching As far as I know My other question was specifically around life coaching it seems like one of the main problems is there is no regulation, no standards

[00:55:33] Do you think this can change? If you're a traumatizing narcissist and you're looking for an ideal profession life coaching is probably it and just like I said with the athletic coaches I am by no means saying that all life coaches are problematic I'm just saying it's completely

[00:55:54] unregulated, uncredentialed unsupervised and if one was a traumatizing narcissist and wanted an easy way to abuse people life coaching is definitely it because it's not regulated or anything I think that needs to change too Yup Well this is it This is how it starts

[00:56:17] Anything else you want to share about your healing or how you've reclaimed your spirituality and your growth path? Yeah so there's two things thank you for asking The first one is cycling love and fear hope and fear and fear and fear So right like that love bombing

[00:56:37] and then the fear of losing the relationship the hope and the fear is what we talked about before about like I'll help you make your dreams come true and if you don't do what I say then you're doomed and then there comes a point in the process where

[00:56:53] you're so like fear becomes such a big part of it that you're afraid of rather than being afraid of the spider you're afraid of your fear and you're convinced that your fear and not the spiders but it's holding you back So the common denominator there is fear

[00:57:10] so the more fear you feel in a setting the more I would encourage people to pay attention to that and if you feel dependent on someone or if you feel that you have to defend them or defend your participation I think those are red flags as well

[00:57:29] and now you can do chaps my ass and warms my heart So what chaps your ass the most Amy of this whole situation or the industry or whatever you want to say? I have several but I'm going to keep them short So the first one

[00:57:43] is the number of people that she and other people like her have harmed and are harming the thing about driving wedges between people so to preserve their power to abuse exploiting people's goodness you know someone's desire to be an Olympian someone's desire to be spiritually evolved

[00:58:09] and her disgraceful distortion of spiritual teachings and using them to manipulate people rather than what she proposes she's doing which is help them evolve Fair enough Yeah and the patterns are the same right it's a different spider but the web is the same

[00:58:28] and there may be little nuances but overall the patterns are the same you ready for warms my heart? Yes what warms your heart I have no So there's this quote that's you know going around on the internet and you too and your guests for sure epitomize this

[00:58:48] but it's people who've been through the fires of hell and come back out carrying buckets of water for other people That warms my heart too Yep sometimes our buckets of water have tears in them so well it warms my heart also that these people

[00:59:09] can connect in this way and find each other and create healthy community not warms my heart I didn't think I was going to cry on this one Oh it's both sports it's going to be so easy Well Amy thank you so much for coming

[00:59:26] on a little bit Colty Thank you so much not only for having me carrying buckets of water Certainly important thank you so much and please keep in touch Thanks for your work I'm certainly going to use it So what are your thoughts Sarah?

[01:00:00] Like I said earlier I like that this is a solution to some of the stuff we brought up in the episode with Melanie and Kim and we could do more on this if this is something that our audience finds compelling

[01:00:12] I've wanted to interview somebody from the Nassar case and I feel like this is all just so relevant right now especially with the docu-series that came out in Canada a couple weeks ago and it just feels like it's current and also something that as we mentioned last week

[01:00:28] something that I also struggle with in terms of having kids in sports and being encouraged slash yelled at where is the line? It's something that you and I talk about a lot Yeah I mean we had an incident where we both commented on how

[01:00:44] the ecosystem still has people who don't agree with the behavior not saying anything and that's metaphor for all the stuff of abuses of power normally it starts with some sort of that's not my problem or some sort of cowardice to say something in risk of being

[01:00:58] maligned by your friend or dismissed and many people seek to minimize it I found in all these scenarios to the almost two years that we're doing it the more you can talk about it and put language to it and then you can say I'm really also relieved

[01:01:14] to have a toolset that we can teach our kids very systematically like if you feel this way if you're being singled out in this way and showing not so much ace right now but Troy especially with his sports and all this extra curricular stuff

[01:01:28] well basically teaching him how to communicate with us when he sees these things and what they look like Yeah and that's the hard part If you grow up in an atmosphere like that you get abused till later on You know you get into a situation

[01:01:42] you get abused and you go somewhere else where someone doesn't have that and you go wait a minute I didn't have to take all that shit to get good or do you know what I mean? When I grew up I had a coach grab my face mask

[01:01:52] and I didn't think anything about it but if I saw a coach grab my kids face mask today I would go say something to him so it's evolving and these things take time and this is a great

[01:02:02] step in that direction I think with all the work that Amy's doing It just also feels rewarding for me to again another silver lining to meet somebody like Dr. Salzman not to be confused with Salzman by the way I never once confused that just so you know

[01:02:16] there's a lot to say about the topic and that's why Dr. Amy has written so many books and all the recordings that she's done on the subject I think we're going to discuss further over on Patreon we're going to unpack it, hear what our listeners have to say

[01:02:26] answer their questions right? Yeah you can find all sorts of good stuff over there we're really enjoying that healthy non-culti community and we can learn more about Dr. Amy and SpottedSpider by visiting the links in our show notes for this episode

[01:02:38] If you like some visuals with your podcast don't forget to follow us on the old IG that's short for Instagram after you rate, review and subscribe to our show until next time don't join a cult leave us from chairs and depths in the ocean

[01:02:54] I'm hanging on to the way that my love believed but I know I won't and for more background on what brought us here check out Sarah's page turning memoir it's called Scarred true story of how I escaped Nexium the cult that found my life

[01:03:39] it's available on Amazon, Audible, Narrated by My Life and at most bookstores A Little Bit Cultie is a talkhouse podcast and a Trace 120 production we're executive produced by Sarah Edmondson and Anthony Nippy Ames with writing, research and additional production support by senior producer Jess Tardy

[01:03:55] who is a great producer we're edited, mixed and mastered by our rocking producer Will Rutherford of Citizens of Sound and our amazing theme song Cultivated is by John Bryant and co-written by Nigel Asselin thank you for listening