ICAM and Deep Insights with Tabby

Tabitha Chapman is not only  a survivor of NXIVM and the founder of International Cult Awareness Month, she is a therapist, founder of Freedom Train Project and much more. Raised in Assemblies of God, Tabitha lived in socially acceptable abusive environments as a child. Last year she founded International Cult Awareness Month in August, amidst a great personal loss.  Deep insights into childhood trauma and victim mentality, how children create predictability, enmeshment, what is reslience, why do we fe and so much more. Tabitha explains some incredibly interesting topics and answers questions like, why do we feel empty? What is resilience? Is a victim mentality really a thing? And many more. We hope you enjoy this deep and beautiful conversation, and that you find it as enlightening as we did. Check out some of Tabitha's projects and join us in the journey of raising cult awareness.

The Freedom Train Project (helps provide referrals to services to support stabilization to ensure safety as an utmost priority)
www.thefreedomtrainproject.org

International Cult Awareness Month
www.internationalcultawareness.org

Transcript

   Welcome everybody to,, butterflies and Bravery. We're here today with our lovely guest, Ms. Tabby Chapman. Jemima and I have had some meetings with Tabby over the course of the last few months. Related things and all that. And when we got to go to ICSA was the first time we met her in person, and we got to give those good old hugs. They're so rare these days, but we're super happy to have you here.

And why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself because. You have all of the specialties. Of course. Thank you. Yeah, I keep hearing that about myself. , it's very strange to hear.  My name is Tabby,  I'm a former member of NXIVM. It's,  difficult because I usually say that last and all of my introductions 'cause , It's maybe like a catalyst for who I am today, but it's also the least important thing for me, you know?

Um, mm-hmm. But at the same time, , it's also why I'm sort of in this space having this conversation to begin with. So anyway, I'm a former member of NXIVM. , I used to be an apprentice coach and , I left a while back, but, , not unscathed. As my story goes. , but , during my, , sort of recovery process, I had identified that it probably,  if there were services available for me or someone could have just led me out or even told me there was ways to get away, , I wouldn't have.

And so,

What is, you know, known to the world as a victim service agency, , providing victim services to victims. So right now , it's most known in the domestic violence space or human trafficking space. Yeah. And there isn't really anything available in the cult space, primarily because, , it's not illegal to be a cult.

Yeah. So on., I went after my marriage and family,  degree, my professional clinical counseling, so a master's in psychology. And then,  the whole shebang kind of led me right into a doctoral degree, , in forensic psychology, public policy. So,  maybe like eight months of finishing that program.

Uh Oh. Wow. And, specializing in cult victimization, , and victim services. So I'm kind of excited about that when I finish that program. And,  i, I'm the executive director for victim service agency, the Freedom Train Project,  the Freedom Train Project. , and I'm also the founder, I guess, of International Cult Awareness Month. This is our second year, so it's kind of weird to call it being a founder, , we're all founders. , and I hope, and I always say this, but I, I mean it, I hope in five years I don't have to do anything for it at all on.

That's my, I have a five year goal of, of that happening. So, um, yeah, so I'm excited. Just everyone will know August is cult awareness month, like we do for domestic violence. , that's my goal and I hope , that I can achieve that goal. I, believe it actually. 'cause I think , if I met my old self from five years ago, I would not.

Have imagined that society in general would be talking about cults the way we do now and having these discussions the way that we do now, , I would not have even believed that , we would be having discussions about healing and trauma and coercion the way that we are having these discussions today. , and it's still relatively new last year. The reason why I knew , it would be successful is because the first year I did it, I really didn't consult anyone.

I just, I consulted maybe like three people, but , right in the middle of it, my mom passed away suddenly. Yeah. And, , I just took. I didn't post a single thing after that. , a handful of people continued and they continued making new posts and they continued talking about it.

And when I had a moment from my grief to peek in, I still saw other people , were thinking about it , and I thought, well, , maybe I'm stumbling onto something. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just very excited because I just kept reading comments after comments and a lot of comments from, , people who were born in, , or considered  second generation, , that  they felt seen for the first time with a lot of the posts.

And so this year we decided, the planning committee decided to focus specifically on that. And, ,

Challenging because it's a lot of new research for me to , dig through on top of my dissertation process, you know? Right. , but it is, it has been really cool so far. Yeah, , it's such an exciting space to be in. , we were in a meeting a little while back 'cause Jem and I have been talking about, , , there's a lot of different crossovers and .

We've been talking about taking a shortcut to get help, to get support systems. Um, simply because of that, we're like the first people. We're the first kids to sort of come out of this big, cult. Phenomenon.  I know that there's the more established ones,   that people talk about, like Jehovah's Witness,  Mormons and all  of that.

But I'm kind of talking that whole the Jesus quote unquote, the Jesus revolution that spawned, that whole, the hippie  generation? Yes. , and so , we are the first ones, , and they're seen, , for the first time, sort of the after effect of. Raising children in a closed society.

Yeah. And what that looks like. , and there's not been much study much. There's been nothing. There's been nothing. You know, I find of course in my dissertation process, there's been studies around the topic. Yeah. There's been studies, for instance, on the effects of homeschooling and children who are shielded.

Society in that sense? Yeah. Or the effects on , withholding medical care, stuff like that. ] , , there has been quite a few like research processes like Cindy Matthews and, , Scholars who have been researching , the second generation phenomenon, . , but I agree that we we're also the first generation or , we're the generation right in front of technology, you know? Yes. We're right in front of. , the advent of social media, the advent of podcasts, the advent of everything. And so we are essentially the ones that carry the awareness and the responsibility for awareness.

, that's a really powerful point. , there wasn't a way to have online communities like we do today. Exactly. So we were carrying our pain in silence. Like that's, very. Profound. , it's very interesting what you say about, , the studies done around, around the phenomenon.

We'll just call it that today because when.  I first, escaped and first got out. The first time I ever got to talk on a personal level with a psychiatrist. , just I had a friend who had a friend type of thing, right? The question I wanted to ask her that has been sitting on me since the moment I stepped out the front door of  of being on my own and being independent is what?

Makes a abuser an abused child, grow up to be an abuser. , because I'm looking around my community of people and almost to a man, we're breaking those generational cycles of abuse, even if it was just the one generation. But it's still,  we're breaking that. , I don't know, almost. Anyone  who's gone down that road , of problematic cause of,  passing on that abuse.

And she said she didn't know.  And , I was in school for psychology at the time, and the reason I asked her is I've been looking and  and looking for these studies, and I was like, how come there's not studies?

Why aren't your people and there isn't studies? And so she said, , I don't know, but my guess is that at my, have to do with the way that a, victim identifies, , if you're in a smaller group, You're gonna identify with your abuser, that's your chain of identity. But if you're in a larger group, you're gonna identify with the other victims.

That's your chain of identity. Hmm. Well that's interesting.  The article that I was reading, , by Cindy Matthews,, was a study that she did and, , they found that, for a second generation cult victims who parents were largely unavailable or were part of the perpetration themselves, or in some way just completely unreliable parents. Tended to bond to their peer group, so other abused children , in their group. And so women leaving, that made it much more difficult for them to leave because they were leaving their support system. , and first generations often have a fake support system in the group, but as soon as they leave, then they're absolutely all alone. Whereas the second generation children, That it is their only true support system.

They don't know any other type of support system anyhow. , I'm sure I'm not trying to tell you about yourself, , but leaving makes it, really hard. so that question then age long question, everyone always asks every domestic violence victim, right, why did you choose to stay?

It's a completely different question for second generation people. And so yeah, that's, that was something I learned last night. , that's a whole different way of thinking \ , and that. Yeah. You're right. I mean, and that is kind of connecting the dots is that that's who we, that was who we bonded with was each other.

We didn't have, we didn't have any other way to bond. Yeah. And so, yeah, you're, you're, you're, wow. I think the question of why do, , victim perpetrators end up taking that route, right? Mm-hmm. You're asking why do abusers abuse at the end of the day, or why do, why do the abused carry on the abuse?

Yeah. Um, part of the reason why we can't really study that her say, I think is because,  abusers have a way of fighting their abuse or. , not telling the truth about it, or in some way, or, in the cases of narcissistic abuse, they have a way of telling you exactly how they're going to abuse you mm-hmm.

In, in every gory detail and, and, and laugh at us because we don't really believe that's what's happening. So, yeah. Um, so it's, it's a little difficult to, to study that group of people, I mean,

Yeah. No, no, of course, of course. I mean,  anything to do with psychology. it's almost a one-on-one study, one person, right?  You get lucky if they're like, sort of narcissistic abusers, meaning they don't have any self-esteem. They, find it fun, generally speaking too.

Again, to announce all the pain and suffering they're causing in one way or another. Like Nexium for instance, Keith Rainere all of his modules were teaching us, essentially, when you look back at it, how to become sociopaths. So, um, he was teaching us how to manipulate people, how to trick people, but in the guise of like sales tactics, right?

, it gives it a whole nother song. When you look back on it from that perspective, there's a lot of people who are like, no, I went to the group and I, my life was great and I learned a lot of things about myself, and I became a better person for it. Which I mean, many, I'm sure let's not throw the baby out with the bath water, but, but when we look at it for what it is, right?

It's teaching us how to be master manipulators and how to people into enroll, paying thousands and thousands of dollars to invest in themselves, , my point is that they really do get a kick outta, outta telling you how they're hurting you and just kind of seeing what people do with that information.

So this research I'm doing with second generation,

To build strength. And I have a, a ongoing conversation with my partner who, , is a brilliant, her name is Dr. Gray. Brilliant, brilliant person. , and my partner does not believe in the term resilience at all. And, and I'm sort of coming round to her perspective. Um, and, and I get it. And part of the reason is because, , there's no single definition of the term resilience, like a kid who.

Basically anyone who's alive still is resilient, right? But true. But that's not even a fair thing to say, right? So some people will live until they're, uh, 80 , and then kill themselves.,  but some people  will live until they're 80 and then decide.

, how do we measure or define that term when some people, two people are living, they have had the similar atrocities happen to them. One of them cries themselves to sleep every night and, and one of them dissociates, right? So which one is the more resilient person? Right? So like, I'm kind of coming, I understand your perspective and I'm kind coming around to that a little bit.

So I'm instead to use the word. The term strength and power, you know, power self.  Because I think that's really kind of what we mean.  And even still, that leaves a whole lot of people who don't feel strong. Who don't feel empowered. Yeah, that's me. Yeah, that's me. I always feel like I'm super weak and like I suck at everything and like, oh my God, I can't handle anything.

And then I look back at my life and I'm like, well, shit, I've handled an awful lot of shit. So I guess that's probably not true, but I always feel very weak. Yeah. Thank you for sharing. It reminds me of , when we're trying to lift weights or something and build a part of. You know, we lift weights Yeah.

Everything's great, and then come back to it a week and it's like, still at the same weight. Okay. You know, like, okay, what's it gonna take to be able to add more, you know? Um, just see everything kind of shift back into place almost feels kind of pointless at times. But, , we just can't see the underpinnings, right?

 We can't see our little muscles rebuilding inside. We just, dang, we're still the same weights. You know? Yeah. That external,  evidence of what we're doing or lack thereof, we can't see the internal process until suddenly one day we're like, oh, that was easy to pick up.

Lemme try adding another. Right. Yeah. Really interesting. I've, I, I never thought of that. Like, I never even considered that. So that's very, very interesting.  What didn't you consider before the whole, like, you know, what is resilience? Oh, yeah, yeah.

, who is resilient and who is not resilient. Hmm. That's a very interesting point. Yes.  We were talking just earlier about like victim blaming words. . Catastrophizing is one of them we're talking about, and how that's a very victim blaming word.

But if you think of it in a way, like a victim responsibility, That's where resilience falls is it's a victim's responsibility to be resilient and that, you know, belief view. Sort of births these other things of like that whole don't have a victim's mentality, when in actuality the, the way to measure, , how bad it was, is to look at the bad thing.

You're supposed look at the bad thing, right? If the bad thing is, is bad. That's the measurement. My partner and I created a class, a course. It was a tongue in cheek course. Really. I mean, we, we really created it. It really is a thing that we have and we're absolutely willing to put it out there. We call it,  how victim mentality is actually perpetrator mentality.

, what we mean by that is basically anyone who's making the statement, you know, oh, don't have a. They just are being a perpetrator in that moment. They're just saying,  I don't wanna hear it. , I don't wanna hear your whining. I don't wanna hear who you're, I don't wanna hear about your story because my needs and everything about me is the most important thing in this moment.

, anytime we hear that, we, we, Almost sharks about it, , where almost like, um, excuse me, what did you just say? You know? Yeah, absolutely. , I love some of GE Jeff Brown's writing because he talks about that. He's like, some people.

Trauma is so bad that they become dysfunctional and that doesn't mean that they're not strong or that they're not re or you know, all the labels that we, , attack on them. It just means that they literally went through something that was impossible to go through. Yeah. And look at how's that their fault.

Right? And you look at other societies and you look at other. Ways that, that, that's handled , and it's handled differently even in the animal kingdom in some parts of the animal kingdom. Not to be like super brutal about it, but if there's someone who had, or an animal has had trauma and an animal who's,, just struggling, then the pack will put it out.

Its misery, right?

But there are parts in Kingdom.

And surround that and give it what it means, even if that ends up being its last leg, that the community of that group still comes together., I'm not an anthropologist, , so I have no idea really what I'm talking about, , but I think that we kind of generally know but humans are an interesting thing, right?

So like, when someone's had trauma , and more like mentally or even physically, my bird has an opinion, uh, physically, um, uh, limping into the scene in society. Our current climate. Our current climate is to treat them like pariahs right? Is to be like, oh my God, why are you still whining about that thing that happened all five minutes ago?

That was so long ago. Get over it. You know? Yeah. And as a therapist, I have clients who experience significant trauma in their lives, 

you do not have to get over it. You do not ever have to get over it. That is no, there's no promises that anything better will happen for you if you get over it. , and it's a sad reality, but it's getting over. It isn't gonna change things. Right. But becoming, making a different choices, becoming stronger ones self, self-efficacy, increasing that, that will help you.

A chaotic world, we can't really predict things. That's gonna happen. Also, because you can't, I, I hate that, get over it because it's like I can't get over who I am. You know? Like those things that happened to me made me who I am. So am I supposed to just get over myself? I mean, you know, even that whole get over yourself saying, It's super, like why, why should I?

But that actually takes us way back to your original,  question  that you brought up, which is how do abusers become abusers? We have a, society that condones micro abuses, right? , we believe that it's totally fine to tell someone to get over it or don't have a victim mentality because we think it's going to quote air quote right here, help them.

We somehow think if we like give them tough love and we push them off the ledge and see if they'll fly that, that's somehow gonna actually cause them to fly. But we're humans and we're not meant to fly like that. So, , that tough love is not really in our nature as, at least not in our current nature, right?

So like it hurts more than it helps and people don't understand, and that's part of the awareness. Yes. This concept of tough love. This concept of shunning, this concept, of ignoring this concept of, , talking about each other, , it's not going to bring about the change we think it's going to bring about.

It's not going help, , people who need help. , We need love, we need support that we never got , as children,  you never got the, , attachments that you needed. You never got ,  the modeling of self love. You never got the of self care.

Now we're just sort of flailing about in the world that says, oh, take some time out for yourself, take some self care. And I'm like, but how? You know, I dunno if you can relate to that, but Oh my God, so much. , that's one thing that I say constantly is that drives me nuts about the whole self-help world is , they're like, you need to learn to love yourself.

I'm like, but I never even saw it. If I don't know if I've ever been loved, how do I know how to love me? Yeah, , I think deep down inside we can build that and , we know that because we can know how to love an animal, right? Mm-hmm. We know how to love, we can,  love  our child, right?

, we have that within us because we're human and it's our human nature, right? . We are social creatures, instinct in us to love. Of course, I think it's a one off psychopath who was just born crazy, you know? But it is our instinct to love. But when we were talking about bigger themes and bigger themes and things that we didn't get, as as children, it's much harder for us to just sit there and imagine a world in which exactly, because not everything is, and not everything that's good and not everything is okay.

And so it's real big and scary to sit down and love those concepts You. And, and it's hard also as children. Everything we see in the world is also us.  It's our identity and so all the things that we can't love is part of us, and it's hard for us to separate out things that we can't love , in order to live ourselves.

What do you mean by that? Like, like this. So, so what I mean is, , there are parts of the parts of us , as we've been in these abusive environments. , as children, everything is an extension of us. This is part of, , Ericksonian, , development and stuff like that in psychology. , as children, everything is an extension of us.



So, let's just say kind of an innocuous example is, , if we're love drawing or love getting messy or love getting dirty or whatever. And , in our group,, we get punished for doing these things and we get told that we're bad, that we're wrong for doing those things. Or even kind of a side step of that.

If someone says, you know, I love laying in the mud. Yeah. Someone next to us who I admire in this group, you know, Says, um, anyone who plays in the mud is just them. Right? As a child, we think we can't help to keep to en mesh that right? We can't help that because that is how we,  we can only have concrete thoughts.

So, uh, me plus the mud equals fun, right? So when someone says, you know, it's anyone who's is dumb, right? So me plus equals dumb and.

As we grow and grow and grow and we have all these other abuses occurring to us, which is causing the same conflict in us as adults, we have a difficult time separating those conflicts, right? Because those were our identity. Now as an adult, we have , our adult brain. We go, well, duh, I'm not the mud. You know, like, I'm obviously not, but I am done.



We have our childhood identities wrapped around things that were an extension to us, which was virtually the entire world, but especially our caretakers and especially our parents, and so as adults , we've had trauma  it's very difficult to   separate out those things.

And we forget that it was about mud and someone's dumb opinion about mud, right? But now it's, we are dumb, we are wrong, we're bad. And so that's the kind of weird thought processes that we, trauma victims have to wade through. And that happened when I don't know how old you ladies are, but that happened when we 30 years ago, forever people, or 40 years ago.

And they and people who are like, just get over it. You have a victim mentality, are expecting us to somehow be able to just hop quantumly into our childhood, fix everything in our childhood in a second, and. Come back all like happy, just so they can feel better about them, their lives. And that's not okay.

That's not okay. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's so fascinating because we were talking about this in a, in another support group earlier last week about  internalizing shame and internalizing  disregard for yourself. And this conversation matches up to that.

But I was talking about how , in the Catholic world,  sex before marriage is a sin, so don't have sex before marriage, and therefore then I will not be sin and I'm not a sinner. That's super basic. I'm saying super basic. But we grew up in a way where it was like, Whether or not you could have sex before marriage could change by the hour or the day or whoever was in charge.

What was right and wrong, and what was made you good or bad was changing all the time. So it's really interesting to think about that in, in conceptualizing, yeah. If we go back to the mud, it's like sometimes the mud is bad and sometimes the mud is good, and then sometimes it's like the mud's not there at all.

, but it gets even more complex than that,  so what ends up happening is a lot of children just make a blanket rule to meet  the least common denominator, ? So if sometimes the Mudd is bad and you get punished and sometimes the Mudd is good and you don't get punished, Then they're gonna avoid mud altogether.

So mud is no longer going to be a, a thing. A yeah. Then that occurs constantly. So like then the next bug anyone has in their brain to create that confusion for children. And children are now gonna avoid that thing. And then the next thing in the next thing, until they literally are empty, and they feel empty. And then we grow up as grownups feeling empty. And we don't know why. We can't figure out why do I feel so empty that it's because literally everything that was joyful to a child, everything was taken, was manipulated, was misconstrued to the point where the  children need predictability and.

Children will make predictability. That's just, that's how they're born. They will make it predictable so that they can feel safe, even in environments where they're unsafe. So if the only way that they had to do that was to empty themselves and it's a no wonder why we have a lot of grownups who are feeling empty.

And then again, going back to the perpetrator mentality, yeah. Why do you feel empty? It I feel empty because it's not my job to make you feel better about your life. That's obviously not causal, but Right. That's a response to perpetrator mentality. It's not my job to make you feel comfortable, you don't have to be here.

Yeah. I'm not trying to talk about heavy topics. It's super good. It's it's powerful. I think what's one thing that and I know I, I won't go into it too much 'cause the politicalness of it all, but I think that's one thing that fascinates me about the transgender community is because they're having, they're reaching inside themselves for something that was never identified for them.

They're living in a world where they're being told to go away that they know is not the way that they need to go. , in some sense,  they're getting to self-actualization faster , because they're having to strip away what makes them.

And say where do I come from? Do you know? Yeah, absolutely. And then I agree that I think that they are going through a very similar process that, , victims who are in high control groups go through because they didn't choose their gender. 

Choose their sex, I should say. They didn't choose , what their anatomical body parts were, what their XY chromosomes were. , that's not a choice for them. They didn't choose the, the clothing they wore overall, they didn't choose any of that. So they have to fight against all that programming.

A hundred percent. The thing I see, I know this is getting into the political realm, but I see actual bad actors in the fields and the bad actors are destroying . The good ones. . I see people who are intentionally making problems where there shouldn't be.

And for, so for the transgender, People who they're having to fight for their life now in a whole different way than they had to fight for their life five years ago. And they're having to fight  for permission to exist. And whereas five years ago that the fight was permission to live, right?

And now is, it's a different kind of living. It's just existing. I'm not allowed to, talk about my gender. I'm not allowed to talk about my, I'm not allowed to even talk about a bathroom anymore. But really they just wanna live. They just wanna be, and that's being so overshadowed by people who might, I'm not even sure are transgender, yeah. Rising up to be the voices of the community. But I, the things that they're saying are not consistent with, transgender ideologies. So it's just causing. A lot of problems because people who are not educated in that topic are like, see, that's what they're doing.

That's the thing. They're trying to hurt us. They're trying to hurt our children. They're trying to do these things, but they're not that, , that's not representative of the community.

 Very fascinating. So  tabby, you were born in, into NXIVM, right? No, I'm not a second generation. Oh, you're not Second generation. Oh. I was born in, I was a young child raised in in assemblies of God, like a . Charismatic,  kind of church. But more,  importantly, I was raised like as an adolescent and as a child in socially acceptable abusive environments.

Yeah. So I do have that experience. I. I was raised in very high control. Yeah, I was not I had to pick between country music and Christian music, which I understand is not really the epitome of trauma. I understand. Comparing that trauma. But I was raised with, not capital, but corporal punishment.

I was raised  very limited on life and very limited on choices. So I have, I do have that experience, but, my, my experience in a cultic environment, and so it's NXIVM, but I think part of the reason why I joined NXIVM is because I was so used to that authoritarian control.

 That I just thought that somebody else obviously has the answers to my life, and so I'm gonna step out and find that person , and do what I need to do. Yeah. And then so what did your journey look like, your journey to advocacy look like?

Because we're sitting in a world right now where it's just all over the place and there is an element of work that needs to be done before one can be effectively an advocate. Oh, yeah. So I'm super curious in on how that journey came about for you. Yes. So  five years ago, I was a miss five years ago when the New York Times article came out with Sarah Edmondson's brands all over it.

That was the time I could no longer deny or avoid that I was in a cult. I thankfully was not part of the sort of quote sex cult part of it, but I was part of the. Doing work for free and things like that. And so the just and also just the mind control and the weird things I believed coming out of it.

I lost all my friends and, people would make fun of me. And I never knew why, because I thought whatever I'm saying is like smart and stuff and I really believed that. And so I was a mess. I actually had to take off time from work. I, when I did go back to work, I was ostracized as because people were then convinced that any, anytime I tried to invite anyone to AEs weekend or anything like that, that I was trying to lure them into a sex cult.

And I found that out later that's the reason why, or at least what people said. And I really think it was just perpetrators taking an opportunity to perpetrate where they could. But yeah I was ostracized. I was, I went from a senior person to being watched by everyone on my team and being reported to.

So anytime I was like, on my phone texting someone, I would get called in to the office saying I shouldn't be on my phone. Anytime I talked about anything other than work, even if it was the weather, I would get called into the office. It was just a regular basis. And one time stepped out into the hallway to take a phone call from a doctor.

I got written up for that. Even though it's in a, I worked in a university in a very public place, like where hundreds of people walked in the hallway. So it wasn't like, it wasn't like I was disturbing anyone's peace by doing that, so I ended up having to quit my job because of, I just couldn't handle what was happening.

And And I start during the six months off the initial six months off, I actually started with Colt de Programming with Roseanne Henry. And it wasn't like straight deprogramming, like the old school style, but yeah, it was basically working with Roseanne to figure out how I was so embarrassed.

I was so embarrassed that I felt like I was just so stupid and like, how could I have been duped? Because there's even a module where Nancy Salzman looks you straight in the camera and says you've been duped. And that would play over my head over and over again, like flashback after flashback.

It was a pretty difficult time for me. Working with Roseanne was helpful. She gave me books to read cults in our midst. Bounded choice, things by. Dr. Lalich so I read those books, I read articles. I just a journey of educating myself, which as we know is the first step, right?

And then then I s went back to working with my regular therapist who I'd been meeting for a while. My regular therapist, didn't know what to do with me at that point because that's I was very triggered. So then she sent me to E M D R and E M D R therapy was interesting. It was not helpful for me because it resembled the NXIVM exploration of meaning process too closely.

So I ended up having to quit E M D R, and then I went with Rachel Bernstein. And that was probably the best decision I'd made. And thankfully, I was able to go to Rachel because I was in a documentary from Seduced at Seduced, the story, the Star Uhhuh. And they have an amazing process of of really not stars per se, although I hope so.

But the director Cecilia Peck in Esner, they had an amazing process of producers, of caring for their victims and making sure that their victims had everything they need before, during, and after filming for as long as they need it basically. And so thankfully I was, through that process, I received grants to be able to see Rachel Bernstein and I Oh wow.

And I met with her for a lot of time and basically was able to get myself to the point where I was functional again and and then be, to a point where I was able to be handed off to a sort of everyday therapist , and so now I work with an amazing therapist  and the model that ended up working for me post-crisis mode is one called Comprehensive Resource Modeling.

 A modified version of it, but it's a very cool process. I also do that motive therapy myself with clients.  It's a process by which we break out psychologically and work with our younger parts and our younger selves.

And so we establish and identify what those younger selves needed that they didn't get or what they got. So comprehensive resource. Comprehensive resource modeling. Yeah. Wow. C r m. So either what they got and they shouldn't have, or what they should have gotten, they didn't, but whatever it is that they feel that they need, those younger parts of us, and then and then we provide that. So a lot of times, it's almost always coming down to an esoteric need or something like that. I needed love, I needed to feel seen, or feel heard or whatever. I needed to feel empowered. It comes down to that frequently. But but then those are things that we, as the grownup selves can actually provide to ourselves, right?

We can actually say oh, hey, because we are empowered. We are seen, we make ourselves seen, we make ourselves heard. It's when we don't feel heard, it's our younger parts that are coming forward saying, I don't feel heard, from our trauma. So we provide that for them. And then that, like slowly, part by part that kind of unravels us and unravels our trauma and allows us to be more free in the world and be more authentic.

And I think that's, there's always, every life coaching. I'm not a fan of life coaching. Every life coaching thing I see is like an advertisement, how to be more authentic with yourself. And then it's all here's your to-do list, which to-do lists are great. People who are traumatized are very good at to-do lists.

Very good at keeping ourselves busy so we don't have to think about the trauma. But more importantly trying to meet and soothe the parts of our soul, the parts of our psyche, whatever we wanna call it is the best way to get that, the fastest way to get that healing, so that's what I've been working on.

And I will never stop therapy. I'm very big proponent on therapy. Yeah. So I also am a therapist , there's lots of therapists who don't see therapists, but I do,  so, what caused you to come up with the idea of icam of cult Awareness Month? Yeah, so I, first I came up with freedom training and we've got that running got that on its rails going. And then like about a year and a half ago, I think I was meeting with my board.

And I was also thinking about what am I gonna do for my dissertation? For my doctoral doctorate degree? And then I thought I thought about domestic violence awareness, right? Because freedom frame project is more or less based on a domestic violence model, right? Yeah. I thought, I was reading reviews of the Vow which is a NXIVM documentary on HBO . And I noticed that a lot of people were saying very uneducated things like harmful rhetoric that. Literally could cause someone to unlive themselves, right? I, I was appalled, ashamed. I couldn't believe that people just let that happen. I saw Dr. Knowledge, like always, as soon everyone she could respond to was like you're wrong about that.

So it's almost seemed like a one, one person trying to hold back a tsunami, right? And that, it shouldn't be one person, right? It should be a whole team, like everyone, and so I thought how can we contribute to that? I tend to try to think ideas that affect.

Sort of a global perspective and I can't help it. I just I can't stop thinking that way, , I wanted to do National Cult Awareness Day, and so I, I bought the domain and I'm just, I'm doing it,  I've been a part of IA for a long time, but I hadn't met anyone, I'd never gone to anything.

I met anyone, but I met with Lisa Kendall from Counter Coalition. And and she got me hooked in with Debbie, the president of ia.  . so I  I met with everyone and I was like, so I'm doing this thing, national Goals Awareness month, .

And everyone loved it. And then they said, why don't you make it international? Debbie said, why don't you make it International Cultural Awareness Month? It's really big headed. I don't know that I can do that, and no, just do it. So I did that day, I bought international cultural awareness.org, and I was like, okay.

So that's gonna build slowly. There's a lot of things. This is meant to be like just a sort of central hub for the first few years and then everyone can just do whatever they want. There's no rules per se, as long That's accurate information. Yes, correct. Yeah. Yeah.

Interesting. Because it's not, it, there's not really necessarily a process, it's post. Yeah, so it, I mean it's just basically it's like you're trying, you're creating a culture in a sense, into where. The more people that say, yes, this is, then it becomes this. So the more people that post any information at all about cults, the more, as long as it's accurate information people who, who are, and it count.

And if you use I have a suggested list of hashtags or, people using hashtags. Sometimes we can do hashtag takeovers for hashtags that are destructive, right? And there's lots of different things we can do, but right now we're just working in the very basics, right? So just use these hashtags any on any social posts and in posts information.

Our website, international cults awareness.org has basic information and we do themes. We do like weekly themes, okay. Always the first week, no matter what our overarching theme is, it's gonna be like a cult 1 0 1 type, yeah. Pretty much. Always the last week. Which is only gonna be a few days left in August.

Is gonna be like, how can we make a change for people? Okay. Anything in between, we'll address whatever the topic is. Last year, the first year, the topics were cult typologies typologies. Oh. So last year we focused initially I, I think on so it was like pers or, psychology, self-help and personal growth, cults religion, doomsday, and and anything in that nature, types of cults.

And separate each week out to that bigger themes. Yeah. And those those types of cults affect people. So this year we're focusing on, second generation identification recovery. Leaving the group and the differences in what they look like and why we can't just ask the same questions to our second gener fellow, that we do our first generation and why we shouldn't even be asking those questions to first generations.

But, like why did you choose to stay is not the same question. It's not an answerable. Yeah. I did not choose to say I had no choice in the matter. I left as soon as I could. And that and that's not going to get people quite the salacious response that everyone's looking for when they ask that question, right?

Yeah. Yeah. So that's how the general makeup of it is that way. But there's no literally no rules except for it has to be accurate information and not intent. I guess if I had another rule to add, it would be , there should be no intent to harm. So if people wanted to support the awareness month, they could just go and grab material and stuff from off of your website, which is Cult Awareness International.

Cult Awareness. International Cult. Okay. Yes. So we have a, an official ribbon that I created that with, so I, how I have a rolling planning committee. So what that means is there's not a set committee, there's not like a secretary, treasurer or anything like that right now, just as it's early stages, it's whoever shows up is part of the planning committee that time.

And then I just invite people over and over again, and the rolling planning committee whoever's there, we make decisions and then we move on, right? We have a ribbon that we created in our first year. It's a maroonish burgundy type of a ribbon. Yeah. And so that's basically the only thing official, you know how breast cancer is a pink ribbon, yeah. Okay. Breast cancer awareness, for instance, that's very focused on raising funds. I would love to raise funds for Colt's awareness. I would we do have like t-shirts for sale and we have a mug and stuff like that, which I have to change because I got like the prototype of the mug and one side of it, it's very poor, poorly done.

But we got a mug and we got we're planning on still doing a virtual run to invite people to do a virtual one. Those are all fundraising activities. Okay. Yeah. But fundraising in this space is extremely challenging. So over the course of the five years that I've been here I've been doing this now Maybe I've raised a very small amount of number, like less than 10,000, probably even less than 5,000.

So it's been a big challenge. And the unfortunate thing is that people I serve, victims leaving cults or needing support after leaving a cult they can't get support without having finances, yep. And the cult therapists are alone, are between two and $500 per session.

And so it's very challenging. And no one, like I, my initial target for fundraising was the professionals in the fields, right? I think I got, I think I got maybe about a thousand from them. And I just, I remember feeling very disappointed. I feel like professionals should be the, like the first they, they wanna get paid.

They should be the first people to step up and be like, here, let's help this group. And that's something my own personal biases, but Yeah. Yeah. I also don't know a whole lot of people, so that, that's also it, a philanthropist. Anyone listening who's a philanthropist, I would love to touch base about donating to a nonprofit.

Yes, for sure. I think what a lot of people don't realize I mean it's all information, awareness, right? It's all what we're trying to do. And some of this is actually a similar thing we're coming up against and what we come up against in the human trafficking fe world too, is that the support that the victim's need are, is not flashy.

It's like you, it's this basic, we need to build their life, because there wasn't one before. And it's like, how do you inspire people  , it is very challenging. But also I think sometimes the backlash of the education that comes through the media of TVs and movies and stuff like that in a lot of people's minds, the bigger cults are the ones that are care, like Scientology, ton of money.

Go sue the cult if you need help. And there's a little bit of that mentality that comes around too, of but there's so many cults, right? That just, that don't have that type of resources and a lot of times to leave their kids are just there on their own, especially the second gen.

Also, again, cults are not a crime. So domestic violence is a crime, right? Human trafficking is a crime. Yeah. So the government has funds set aside in order to cover those crimes. So right now, as it stands for a victim service agency we have to interview hardcore our clients, right? And find out where's the crime, right?

Where is the crime? And so in, in each state, it's different, right? So in, in California, for instance, coercive control is a crime as it relates to domestic violence. So we have to, domestic violence, how can we show there's domestic violence? And then after so many of these kinds of victims, then we'll be able to submit a document to the government and say, we've helped these number of victims in domestic violence, or submit a document for trafficking for victims of crimes.

The Victims of Crime Act, right? Yeah. Or the other one was the violence Against Women Act. And so there's money in there, but but they're not gonna,  give you money if your focus is on things that are not crimes. Fortunately and unfortunately at the same time, Cult victims are a polyvictimization group.

So there's not just one thing that happens to them. There's the cult victimization itself isn't a crime. And it's not so far, and it's not the only thing that happens, right? So inside there, there's trafficking, there's domestic violence, there's child abuse, there's atrocities beyond, any human should have to deal with and and coercive control in some states, right?

In those cases we need to bring to the government here's a case like we, we need you guys to set aside some of that money for creating agencies like mine, and helping people. And then the awareness kicks in, right? So this is another major reason why I'm doing awareness. 'cause we need to not only bring awareness to the public to stop ridiculing people.

Yeah. We also bring awareness to the victims, which , is a special case, right? Some victims don't have access to any type of media. They don't have access to any type of outside world, and you have to be able to get the message to them that you, there's help available for you, yeah. And that takes money.

All that takes money. And so yeah there's a whole lot to be done in this field, like a whole lot. But all of it starts to ride on public awareness because we can create that critical mass of people who with that knowledge, we can then take it and say, here's all this knowledge we now have.

Yeah. Government please help. That's, of course my very optimistic outlook on things. Yeah. Gotcha. Very interesting. And when you say being in a cult isn't a crime per se,  does it make sense to say that there's a category in trafficking that could be cult trafficking? Like you have labor trafficking, sex trafficking, cult trafficking.

Absolutely. And that's the case that needs to be made, right? Yes. Okay. Gotcha. When I say that being in a cult isn't a crime, I don't mean it's a crime. I think it's an atrocity. And I think that harsh punishments, like 120 years or more in prison should be the standard for cult leaders, right?

Yeah. But the government doesn't think it's a crime at this point, right? It's funny, they're, they were totally willing to make transgender a crime, right? But things that are actually harming people they're not willing to look at this point. So what does that take though?

What does that take for the government to do that? Yes. It takes pressure and it takes and it takes public pressure. You said it. Public pressure. Yes. Yes. One thing it takes is when we can show  that it is a public health crisis, right? Meaning that a large portion of the public is affected by this and it's almost like an endemic, if you will, right?

And we see in that, to some degree in the political space, ? We're seeing people being willing to just go jump into whatever belief they, and follow these beliefs. And so we're seeing this sort of endemic process where we have two camps, 50% of the United States believe this.

50% and like how we have billions of people, how are their two beliefs? You know what I mean?  The more that we can show that this is a public health crisis, and it needs to be taken care of then we'll be able to start getting some traction on, hey, this, it's more than the sum of its parts is, or the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, right?

So yes, the p and e the child trafficking, the sex trafficking the domestic violence, the, all those things we can individually prosecute, we can individually, like they got Nexium through reco, right? Yeah. They're getting a lot of them through human trafficking. But there's so much more to it than just human trafficking.

Yeah. And so yeah, people can say, oh, just Sue Scientology. Sure. But no one wins, yeah, I know for sure. So it's, Scientology is so powerful and so strong with the money they have that No. And people just give up or, they're threatened or whatever. And that's a hard way to live life. And no one wants to do that, yeah.

 This is, yeah. Trailblazing work, so I'm very excited. Watching this grow to be able to be here, to see what, what's gonna happen next year and so on. We for sure here at butterflies and bravery will do our part to sound, the horn sound, the news.

And yeah. Excellent. I'm really happy. August is gonna be hard for me for the rest of my life 'cause it's the month I lost my best friend, my mother. But this work is important and my mother would've wanted me to carry on, she was very supportive of me throughout my whole coming out of a cult process, and I was reading a little text from her on WhatsApp the other day.

And she had finished watching Seduced the documentary, and she sent me this rant, this whole rant, and this I'm so sad for what you experienced. And it was like the most compassionate, empathetic thing that I'd ever read from her, and back, even back then, I remember oh my gosh, my mom had, she had so many feelings about it that she never told me, except for in that text.

And I was like, back then I was like, wow, okay, now I know how she feels. And it was great, it was comfortable. And it means even more to me now, to be able to read it again. I'm glad she was able to, felt comfortable sending it, then something about that documentary compelled her to be able to share her fears she had at the time and all these things.

But she supported me through the whole time I was there. In n vm, she, bit her tongue when I said things that were kind of word solidity and stuff like that, and then and then she supported me through the healing process and stuff. So it was just to see wow, she actually has a whole opinion on that was really cool.

Very cool. And so yeah, I read that everyone, yeah. But I'm ha I know it's always gonna be a mental health struggle as I work my way through August, which is part of the reason why in five years I don't wanna be in charge more. But but also I do wanna see it just take that organic growth and, even in like last year if I got, 50 people talking about it, and this year I get, 500 people I, and I think we can reach that, right?

I think, as we see it grow and grow, I don't see any of that as any failure at all. Even if we don't get 500, even if we only get 55, right? So yeah, that's more and more people who are talking about it in a positive way. And not tearing down victims in the way that happens now, or even helping people understand, why they might feel that they would never join a cult Yeah. Out there who never had a choice but to to be there and, yeah. Absolutely. Too. So that's this year's theme, so that's amazing. And I love it because in, in so many ways, you're setting up a platform for people to tell their story in.

Yeah. By this awareness and by making a safer spaces for people to tell their stories. So that's incredible. A platform for people to feel safe enough to not have to tell their stories, yes. So ultimately they can integrate into life and find themselves without having to broadcast their, some of their most shameful experiences in life and and I would like to see that as the ultimate. Yeah, absolutely. I mean our, yeah, I mean our getting through and moving forward and moving on is our story yeah.

Alright, thank you so much for the insights and I'm happy to anytime you guys wanna chat. I love talking, we love listening. We love talking too. And love listening. Thank you so much for joining us. Alright. We appreciate you and yeah, excited to do, keep building this movement. It was wonderful.

 I appreciate the platform and the time. And again, I'm, if you guys ever want to, you need to fill up with talking. I'm sure I have plenty to say about stuff, so I love that. We love that. 

  I'll talk to you guys later. All right. Bye-bye. Thank you so much. Bye.

Oh, it's funny, Lord. She's very smart. Yeah, she's so smart. That was some really good insight, the stuff she was saying. I was like, wait a minute, Harry, you're blowing my mind a little bit. Oh yeah, no, it was one of those and I'm working, especially the resilience thing.  The resilience thing, and I 100% agree with her, Yeah. The bonding Yeah. Makes a lot of sense. You were always living on that edge of I am. When do I become the excess?

Exactly. Yeah. I could be disposable at any time. And you were afraid to be bad too, because the bad kids got sent away and then Yeah. Oh, they got raped and murdered. That's what's gonna happen if you're bad too.  It's just this total. I told you they sent me to another home when?

My mom had her baby, when my sister was born, because it was one too many people now. So they literally literal, literally because there was like a 30. Yeah. Oh God. Oh my God. Yeah. So they all rolled over and one fell, one fell off. Yep. That was me.

That's just such shit. , no wonder it's so easy to feel like that we're expendable. Exactly. Because we were

born to be expendables. What is that burning on the altar of sacrifice? Some bullshit like that. We are the expendables, so were too, we didn't know how much weight that was going to carry on created to burn on the ulcer sacrifice. Wasn't that what that whole shit was? Yeah. We all had to memorize that at one point, right?

Yeah. What was that? What? Didn't they turn that into a song? I think so. I don't know. It makes total sense why it makes sense. Why, we continue to have a hard time even integrating into our lives here. Not just for all the reasons that we talked about, but just for that reason too, is that on of the very deepest level, our core identity, That were expendable.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So why connect? Yeah. Down roots. Yeah. ,. Like the emptiness. Yes. The emptiness. Exactly. 'cause things keep getting taken away from you. Things keep getting taken away from you until there is nothing. There is nothing. Yeah. Yeah. That was super enlightening about the emptiness thing because she's that's why all these adults are walking around feeling so empty.

And it's dude, that just fucking makes way too much sense. And dude, oh my God. Like I, she fucking shit on that whole thing. You do, you, I do. Me like, that's not my responsibility to make you feel better. Oh my God. She like yes. Yeah. Really good perspectives.

 What a fantastic, it's fantastic to have conversations with someone like her, who's literally on the cutting edge of the studies.

This is what we're learning. This is what we're knowing. This is what's going on. Yeah. It's fan fucking fantastic. Yeah. But it, it helps, you, you understand especially when you start like putting some of those things together. Yeah. Like when I got my guitar stolen by my sister, how many times do I talk about it? And even when I say something about it, I tell myself, just get over it. But it was the one like, yeah, it was the one thing, it was what I had.

Yeah. If there's 'cause it was something that was good. Yeah. Yeah. They could never take guitar away from you. I'm sorry.

 It was like one of the few constants. Yeah, the predictability. She said, you know where children make the predictability. Yeah. Exactly. So yeah, that was my fucking, I was rose on the life round in the ocean after the Titanic. That's how deeply I held onto that. And then,

yeah. Yes. Really important things to think about. Really good.



Oh. And she finally names that the comprehensive resource modeling. Yeah. I don't think I've ever heard that labeled the Inner Child Work. Everybody always says inner child work, but it's literally called. Comprehensive resource modeling. Of course, any therapist or just listening to this gonna be like yeah, but we know as a layman out here.

Yeah. But that's similar to probably similar to what sometimes people call shadow work too. Yeah. Just that, that side of you. Oh my god. See, I'm going back, I'm going back through the thing, dude.  The enmeshment. The enmeshment about love and how. We get enmeshed with the experience or the thing that we were made to feel less than for. And then even though as we grow and become an adult, intellectually, we can let go of the experience and let go of the thing. But that core belief of yourself still remains right.

And that's why you need to learn to love those parts of yourself that you don't like, that you don't love, or that you think are wrong

or that you just fucking hate. Yeah. 'cause I because I, because in my mind I often go back to that the one, that one experience that I had that was very traumatizing for me, obviously, 'cause it's been burned in my brain. When I was like, made a scene in the hallway  when I saw somebody that I knew was with you and I made a scene.

And the next, I don't know, it was like the next day or the day after I got brought up in front of the whole fucking group of 85 of us and just railed. I remember, oh my God. Oh my God. I'm just remembering now. 'cause he said, do you think Mama Maria would do something like that? Do you remember?

Yeah. It was always, and that was what they first pulled us. And it was, and it connected me immediately. It connected me immediately back to that way in the beginning when we called each other, like whatever fucking poodle name or something that we got in such big trouble with. And that's the same thing they said to us then this is not what Mama Maria would do.

And just, and so you're talking like, I was like going between points of shame of me just. Being excited to love someone or being excited to see someone and to, yeah. It's like intellectually I can say no, of course. Like I, I look around in the world. I see examples every single day of people who get out of themselves, put on a show, and everybody loves that.

Everybody just loves people that can get out of themselves and do that. And I'm so trapped, I'm so trapped in fully believing that if I did that immediately I become worthless. Immediately. I become worthless. Yeah, that's some kind of deep connective work that you have to do.

Once you start going back to those things and loving those pieces of yourself that got turned upside down, yeah.  . And the thing is that it's, it really has nothing to do with even what the words were or would do this?

It was the shame. Yes. They brought you up in front of everybody and then fucking shamed you to death, like almost to death. I cannot tell you how many times I would come off out of those fucking broom and broom umbrellas sessions and I was like, this is it. I need to find myself a knife 'cause I cannot keep doing that. It had nothing to do with what we were actually doing. It was just that shame. Like they might as well have just put us in stalks and had them throw fucking tomatoes at us. 'cause that's all it was. And nothing to yeah, what we were actually doing, or if we're worthy or if we good or bad. But

   It was all about shame, all of it. I'm scared and scary. 

And like Tabby was saying of course the only love that we knew was from our peers. So kicking us out of that was taking us out of our family because our family was each other. 

The shunning they did was internal. They would shun us with a group. Yeah. So because they knew you were literally alone. Yeah. You must even you let strangers, like they, you when you left, which they did that too, but they would shun you. Yeah. No one's allowed to talk to you.

Put the sign on your chest. Telling a baby they can't have their mom anymore. Just like letting them, leaving them on the ground to cry themselves to sleep. Figure out. Yep. Feed yourself. Because they would cut us off. They were cutting us off from every, from any bond or any connection that we had. Yeah. While we were in. Yeah.

Any bond you made was immediately broken immediately. Especially if it was deep. I also just in this doesn't have to do anything with even the cold, although there's a lot that intertwines in there. But that whole like, we are not meant to have tough love. Oh my God. Human beings are not built for tough love. And I was like, oh, whoa. Study after study shows that it doesn't work. Exactly. But yet somehow we keep doing it. Suck it up.  You get what I'm saying yeah.

Oh, there's not such thing as resilience. That's crazy. . Yeah. So what are we then The comeback queens?

You're like, I'm not resilient, I'm just a comeback queen.

Stay brave. What's that? So stay brave. Stay brave. You guys are everyone listening to this is very brave. We're brave. 

  



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