No Such Thing as a Good Cult w/ Mark Vicente pt. 2

As we dive into part 2 of Mark Vicente's experience in the NXIVM cult, we go even deeper and discuss the root of the problem, Keith Raniere and executive team, who aided and abetted his actions of abuse. Mark talks about victim blaming, and points out that what happened to him could really happen to anyone. Mark breaks down his emotional journey after finding out and then accepting the truth about Raniere's abuse. With the justice system being flawed, we witness the rare occasion where the abuser receives a deserving sentence.

Host Information: 

Instagram: Dr Ramani's IG - @doctorramani

Facebook: Dr Ramani's FB - @doctorramani

Twitter: Dr Ramani's TW - @DoctorRamani 

YouTube: Dr. Ramani’s YT - DoctorRamani

Guest Information: 

Instagram: Mark Vicente’s IG - @markvicente

Twitter: Mark Vicente’s TW - @markvicente 

Guest Bio:

Mark was born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1965. Taking his first photograph at age four, he quickly discovered his passion for being behind the camera. After attending film and drama school in South Africa, he began working his way up the ranks of the camera department. His first big break came as Director of Photography on the musical SARAFINA, starring Whoopi Goldberg. In 1992, he relocated to Los Angeles to shoot his first studio picture for Disney; FATHERHOOD, starring Patrick Swayze and Halle Berry.

Over the next few decades, he went on to shoot an additional 14 feature films and numerous documentaries, music videos and commercials. Mark soon discovered untold stories he needed to express as a director. He was driven by the conviction that tales of greatness, nobility and introspection could be exciting and financially successful.

Growing up during the Apartheid era in South Africa and its widespread iniquities, Mark learned early on to question fundamental assumptions and beliefs about human behavior, cosmology, existentialism, and mysticism. While that bold curiosity served him well, the path found him in direct contact with truly malignant pathologic personalities masquerading as forward-thinking philosophical leaders teaching self-improvement while inflicting unthinkable damage to their followers... and to Mark himself.

His recent defection from the NXIVM cult was chronicled in the HBO series THE VOW. Mark and a few courageous whistleblowers exposed the criminal activities of this organization, resulting in multiple arrests and indictments.

Mark is currently in production on a number of films including one on Narcissism and Narcissistic abuse.

#NavigatingNarcissism

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Have a toxic topic you want me to explore? Email me at [e-mail]  

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This podcast should not be used as a substitute for medical or mental health advice. Individuals are advised to seek independent medical advice, counseling, and/or therapy from a health care professional with respect to any medical condition, mental health issue, or health inquiry, including matters discussed on this podcast.

Navigating Narcissism is produced by Red Table Talk Podcasts. EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: Jada Pinkett-Smith, Fallon Jethroe, Ellen Rakieten, and Dr. Ramani Durvasula. PRODUCER: Matthew Jones, ASSOCIATE PRODUCER: Mara De La Rosa. EDITORS AND AUDIO MIXERS: Devin Donaghy and Calvin Bailiff. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
This podcast should not be used as a substitute for
medical or mental health advice. Individuals are advised to seek
independent medical advice, counseling, and or therapy from a health
care professional with respect to any medical condition, mental health issue,
or health inquiry, including matters discussed on this podcast. This

(00:24):
episode discusses abuse, which may be triggering to some people.
The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the
podcast author or individuals participating in the podcast, and do
not represent the opinions of Red Table Talk productions, I
Heart Media, or their employees. Think about the one person

(00:45):
you love the most, your best memory of love and friendship.
Now somebody comes to tell you that the person you
love is a sociopath. Now feel that resistance. Now you
have evidence that proves this person is a sociopath. Someone
you love and you thought cared about you is a monster.

(01:08):
Try on what that feels like. In part one of
our interview, Mark shared with us how he became part
of the Nexium organization, which was slowly revealed to be
a cult like and ultimately an abusive organization run by
mastermind Keith Reneering. Mark has shared with us his own

(01:30):
vulnerabilities that put him at risk for Ranieri's manipulation, the
process of indoctrination into this group, and the gradual erosion
of his sense of self. Mark's description of Nexium is
consistent with the architecture of any narcissistic relationship, the love bombing,
the devaluing, the smear campaign's triangulation, and ultimately the betrayal.

(01:56):
The narcissistic patterns Mark observed were a mash up of
a more covert, vulnerable, and communal styles of narcissism. Mark's wife, Bonnie,
initially shared with him her suspicions that Ranieri's behavior may
be narcissistic, and once he learned that, the pieces started

(02:17):
to fall into place. But at the same time, the
scandal that was Nexium slowly started to show itself, and
Mark will now share the experience of watching the horror
of the harm caused by a narcissistic cult leader, his enablers,
and the challenges of trying to tackle it head on

(02:38):
without losing himself. Next, I'd like to talk about Bonnie,
who you know I've not met. Bonnie I cannot wake
because I'll tell you I have such admiration for her,
because she's that unicorn who sensed it and saw it,
And if we had a world full of Bonnies, there
would be no Keiths because she sensed it and she

(02:58):
sort of shut it down for her self. But I
really think that the other wonderful thing about your wife, Bonnie,
is that she didn't hit you over the head with
that either. She slowly gave you the information and let
you come to it. I really preached everyone be a Bonnie.
Don't go up someone to your husband as a narcissist,
but kind of gently push the article across the table

(03:20):
and see how that works out. So I'm a huge
Bunny fan, so tell us. I think one of the
most powerful things about her is her intuition, which was
taken offline for a while, but they couldn't do it enough.
And I think what happened eventually is things got so
bad because being somebody who's deeply empathic, I think what

(03:41):
happens is people like Bonnie feel things in their body
a lot, very powerfully and early before they're able to
figure out what's actually going on in the situation, until
actually they feel in their body. So she was feeling
something in her body, and I think what happened eventually,
I think in two thousands sixteen, she said, I have
so many things going on, I have all these fears.
I'm gonna sit down and be still with myself. And

(04:02):
she spent about ten days just being utterly still on
her own. She just went on retreat, and she, I guess,
found some kind of connection that allowed her to see
how the entire system was working. When she saw all
the coercion and all the fear, and all the guilt
and all the punishment. And shortly after that she took
a walk with Runari and said to him, you know

(04:22):
what I see. I see all of these things. And
of course none of us knew who he was at
that point, and he said to her something like, it
seems like if you complain a lot, the squeaky wheel gets,
the oil gets the grease. Is this maybe just you
trying to get attention kind of thing? And in her
mind she was like, all right, I see what we're
dealing with. And that's when she knew, Okay, this guy

(04:44):
is not a good guy. She was able to do that,
though she didn't fall for the it's you sort of thing.
Instead of saying maybe it's me, she went with this
guy is not a good guy, got connected to herself.
I think she's spending those ten days in her own
She got connected to herself in a way that most

(05:05):
people don't have time and occult because they keep you exhausted,
they keep you busy. And I was off shooting a
film in Mexico and she said to me, I'm going
to l a. I'm just going to go and like
just going to retreat. So she took the time to
connect to herself. And what happens when you get away
from all that noise is you start to find yourself,
and she did, and then she became unstoppable. And look,

(05:28):
we all made mistakes. I made a bunch of mistakes,
waking people up, trying, you know, too hard, being too brash.
At first, she also pushed too hard. And then what
happened is she spoke to this amazing exit councilor who said,
you can't do that. You have to figure out exactly
what the mine fields are. So she was very smart
and how she did it, and by the time that
the dam broke from me, I was able to talk

(05:49):
to the exit counselor as well, you know, and this
person was amazing, she was incredible. I mean. One of
the first things she said to me, she said, do
you mean do you have dirt on them? And I
go probably. She said, you're gonna need it, and that's
what I really understood. Oh, my friends are going to
come after me. Yes, I'm going to destroy my life
and my family. You know, people say it was very
brave what you guys did, and to some degree, yes,

(06:11):
but there's something amazing when you get forced against the
wall and you don't have a choice anymore, it's amazing
what you'll do. Some people, many people, I would still argue,
it's grave. We're sitting here basking in the wake of
it being resolved. While it's not resolved, Mark, and you
are firing into the unknown, and you know what these

(06:32):
folks are capable of. It is tremendously courageous. And many people,
even though they may know the right thing to do,
they're too scared. And other stories, maybe minor children involved.
You don't know what stops people. I'm not saying it's
necessarily a lack of courage, but when it's not known,
it's one thing to sort of survey the damage after hurricane,
but you go to a dark place in the middle

(06:53):
of a category fight, hurricane. Do you know what this is?
This is me still doing some of the old patterns. Yeah,
underplaying things. No, No, it's celebrating things. And you don't
even need to have to celebrate it, but you don't
get to underplay it. It's to see it realistically, right.
It's that gray of that was brave. I can't even
sit here and confidently tell you I would have been

(07:14):
able to or I would have, and I would have
It would have wrecked me because it is so terrifying
when you don't know what's going to happen. It's the
not knowing. If you felt confident we're going to do
this and it's all going to be fine, but with
the not knowing, that's that's terrifying. It was terrible. And
I think that what happened is when I realized what
he had done to my friends, my female friends, that's

(07:35):
when the rage began. And that rage lasted a long time.
And I think that sometimes it does take someone else
that you might not even have fought this fight if
it was just you, but the harms that were coming
to other people in such a systematic way, I think
that rallied you, and that speaks to something about you.
Maybe that's your goodness, saying there can't be this erosion

(07:55):
of goodness in the will, I gotta go in there.
So talking to me about how you met Bonnie. Bonnie,
I met actually I think it was two thousand and
the first time. I think it was around two thousand
and six. Maybe I actually was trying to enroll her
in and we stayed in touch over the years, and
I think we reconnected in about two thousand nine. We
went to have tea and she said to me, something

(08:17):
is really different about you. And she, as she was
at the time in her life, she was thinking, well,
the things were not working for me, so well, let
me see what you have to offer. So she came
to take it intensive and she liked it. She really
enjoyed it. She got a lot out of it. What happened, though,
is our friendship grew more and more. And look, the
reason that I met Bonnie in the first place is
I was a huge Star Wars fan and so she,

(08:39):
being an actress in Star Wars, a mutual friend of ours,
introduced us and she was a huge fan of What
the Bleep. So that's how we first met. I've told
a few people the story. We went out to dinner
one night to watch a show and to have some dinner.
And I've never heard her music because she was she's
a singer, and I said, do you have anything? Do
you have your music? She said no, but do you
have a guitar? And I said, actually I do. I
was staying with a friend up in the Holly Hills,

(09:00):
went up in the hills. I made her some tea.
She began playing guitar and singing to me, and it
was all over. It was the most beautiful sound I'd
ever heard in my life. And that was the moment
I realized, I'm screwed. It is all over. And we
have been incredibly bonded, you know, all these years and
we've been through so much, and honestly, it has made

(09:23):
us stronger and stronger. I think that she and many
people have told me this. Her demonstration of true love
that is seen in the vow is what fortifies me.
You know, her goodness, her kindness, and her fierceness. This
is not a push over. My wife is not as
she is fierce. And you know, one thing that does

(09:45):
tell me, though, is that you had and sustained a
love story simultaneously to going through what you went through
In Next Yame, she also had her own experience with
it too. But it's a reminder to everyone too that
if when people are going through our sassistic abuse, if
there's even one empathic, loving touchstone in your life, that

(10:05):
might be one of the most single most important tools
towards getting out, towards healing. Not everyone has that, but
if you have one, and in your case it was
a spouse, a partner, other people, it's a dear friend,
others it may be a sibling or a family member,
whatever that looks like, but it is a it's a
game changer to have that. And what's remarkable as you

(10:27):
came through this together a real reminder that it doesn't
always have to be scorched. Sure, it's simultaneously to being
in this horribly narcissistically abusive system, you were able to
have and do still have a real loving relationship. And
I think that is probably to me one of the
most important parts of your story, Mark, because so many

(10:47):
people think I'm going through this narcissistically abusive situation, I'm
never going to love or be loved again. That didn't
go away for you, and I think to anyone listening
to know that even when you are being harmed and
just roid by a narcissistic person, you remain cherishable and lovable.
Absolutely absolutely. I was also fortunate because I knew what

(11:07):
actual love was. Yes, that that was a touchstone, a
comparison all the time, because in next thing, they would
talk about love and I'd be like, I don't know
if that's what love is. They'd say things like, well,
you know, love is your ability to withstand pain. That's
true love, And I go, okay, yes, I can, yes
to some degree, but like the ship you're talking about

(11:27):
does not feel good, and the thing that I have
actually feels amazing. But they try to make that seem
like a weakness. They trying to make that seem like
an attachment that you had that you used to get
rid of. They were constantly trying to separate people and
that love pain thing. I'm I'm not getting down with
that thing that now that that's just intellectually, there's certain things.
You know, if you love a child, are you willing

(11:48):
to go through enormous pain for your child? Yes, But
let's not make that a blanket statement and apply that
to everything and say love is that that is an
aspect of love. Perhaps, yes, exactly. I think that that
spinning it in. This is almost like when people are
told relationships are hard, marriages are work. So that way,
when it feels really awful, people oh, this is supposed

(12:10):
to feel like this, and they keep fighting for it.
All of these experiences you were having, they were being
equated with pain and any questioning from me, it was
for your this weakness. They also said the intensive if
you're feeling uncomfortable, it's working right right. Yeah, that is
a very slippery evil slow, yes it is. It's a
very slippery slope. Okay. So Keith Rnary was the focus
of these stories, Nancy a little secondarily, But you know,

(12:34):
Keith Rnary was sort of positioned as the leader, the villain,
rightfully so, but he could not have done this alone.
Talk to me about the other players in this story
that supported and may even continue to be supporting him
and what he's doing. So the thing is there's this
king right and around him were all these people that

(12:54):
were constantly talking him up. When I first got there,
I remember meeting all these people around him, mostly woman,
who would talk about him in such glowing terms, and
you start to believe the sort of myth after a while.
So maybe he is these things. Maybe he is these things.
I was a bit confused as well, because they seemed
to be in love with him as well. I was.
It was a bit odd, but I was like, Okay,

(13:15):
well I can get on board with Maybe this guy
is a really good guy. I never would have believed
that he was who I eventually believed he was if
it wasn't for the people around him. In advertising campaign
was constant, constant. Nancy Salzman looked like she would die
for him. Wow. Nancy Saltzman was the co founder of

(13:37):
Nexium with Rainieri. She was actually trained as a nurse
and worked with Ranieri developing a company called Executive Success Programs,
which was the forerunner of Nexium. She was sort of
the second in command in Nexium, and in true CULTI fashion,
was given the title of Prefect. Saltzman was the bodiment

(14:01):
of the enabler and would go to great lengths, including
surveillance of cult members to shut down critics and aid
and a bet Ranieri. And if I ever said anything
about him, or somebody else said anything about him negative,
she would go after you like it was nobody's business.
She would crush you. It was vengeful at times. What

(14:23):
would happen? So you're hearing the advertising campaign, and you
also know there's a cost if you question things. And
the people like her and a few other people, some
that have now died, they were his enablers. They were
sort of you know, the people that spoke constantly about him. Now,
the thing is everybody began doing that. We all began
doing that because that was what was required, that was

(14:45):
what it is expected. In fact, if you didn't do
it enough, you were told that you have a problem
with tribute. You know, you can't give tribute to other
people for their achievements. It means you don't understand what
achievement is. You don't understand what it means to be
approach user of value. So I noticed that the way
you spoke about Keith, you didn't really give him tribute

(15:05):
for these things here. And I still gave him tribute
for this and this, But what about these things here?
Perhaps you need to retake the tribute module to understand
what your limitation is. So what happened is you were
admonished if you didn't praise enough, which is like an
authoritarian exactly right. You know, it's like the authoritarian king
that you weren't like commenting on the clothing that wasn't

(15:27):
there enough, or the narcissistic parent or the narcissisic parent. Yeah. Yeah,
So the truth is everybody became that, but there were
people and some of them are still loyal to him.
They it looks like they will die for him, yes,
and they won't do anything for him. So I think
it's important for people to see that that there's a
spectrum here, that there are some people who don't break

(15:47):
out of the trauma bonded cycle and that unwillingness to
identify it. That's beyond the scope of what we can
talk about here, but I do think that's a it's
a critically important piece that people know that not everyone
has this same outcome. You came out of it, and
part of that was your focus, I think, on goodness
and growth and creativity, and you were loved and my

(16:12):
session with Mark will continue after this break. In any
kind of a narcissistic system, whether it is a cult,
a company, or even a family, when there is someone

(16:35):
demanding obedience and admiration for the dominator, the leader, and
the narcissist in charge. It's as though everyone is being
pulled into the vortex of that mega enabler's trauma bond.
This kind of dominating and harmful enabler gives the narcissist
exponentially more power and protection. Think about the one person

(17:01):
you love the most, your best memory of love and friendship.
Now somebody comes to tell you that the person you
love is a sociopath. Now feel that resistance. Now you
have evidence that proves this person is a sociopath. Someone
you love and you thought cared about you is a monster.

(17:24):
Cry on what that feels like. This statement bowled me
over because I think that so many of us, so
many people hearing this will say, oh, well, like really,
call leader, how could you have thought well of him?
But even people in narcissistic relationships, right that there is
that day, And it's not a day. It builds up
to a day, but maybe it is that day you

(17:45):
read the article and you have the conversation, or you
watch the video and say, oh my gosh, this is
beginning to add up. And then that's the day that
you find out that this person you love is a
sociopath or psychopath or a narcissist, and there's that day
you have, Like you said, try on what that feels like.
It is so important for everyone listening to this to

(18:08):
do that, because one of the things I struggled with
most when I watched the vow, when I've anything I've
listened to or read about with it, was the amount
of finger pointing what is wrong with these people who
couldn't see this, who signed up for the sex cult,
which is not what happened, but the blaming there and

(18:29):
then almost the more salacious interest in what was happening,
rather than I want to say, slow down everyone, you're
all doing this. You's happened to be doing it in
your own homes. But the humanization that you did here
is like, just take a minute, slow down, think about
someone you love now you find out there this, and
just sit with that for a minute. That is a

(18:49):
moment every single person goes through when they're in these situations.
The reason I did that was because I feel that
everybody who looks at these things is coming from having
the knowledge already of what's going on. And that's, as
you said, not what's going on. What's going on is
you're entranced in some kind of way, be it a
romantic partner, being a priest, occult leader of the CEO
of an organization, political leader, president, whatever. You don't know

(19:13):
any of this stuff yet, And I wanted people to
really try on what it feels like, that moment of
shock when somebody tells you who they are and you're
like no, you like you refuse. It's resistance, but sometimes
it's rageful resistance. And then what happens when you take
it in it is a massive shock to the system.
But what I'm trying to do all the time is

(19:33):
get people to understand put yourself in the position like
when people say to me, they say this online a
lot still sometimes how could you, like? How did you
not see it? Sometimes I say to them, are you
asking because you're ridiculing or you really want to know?
Because if you really want to know, here's a bunch
of books for you to read and put yourself in
the position of somebody doesn't have to be me who's

(19:55):
been hoodwinked and learned about it, but don't come to
me with these bullshit accusations and said something before. And
I tell people the single most disrespectful question we can
ask someone, for example, who is a survivor of domestic
abuse is why didn't you leave? When people say that
I see red, I have to step out of a room,
Are you kidding me? Do you not know anything about this?

(20:17):
And so it's the same thinging why didn't you leave?
How about we asked why did they do that? You
want to ask a question, Let's ask the right questions
when people say that they're literally enabling the abuser. Yes, yeah,
because you now have secondary abuse going up. Yes you do,
because already you come out of these situations thinking at
first you're like, I'm an idiot, I'm an idiot, and
then they say, yes, you're an idiot. Wow, thank you.

(20:41):
Why don't we talk about the pathology of the person.
But by the way, has trained their entire life to
abuse people, and me and people like me and people
like you yourself didn't train how to destroy people. You know,
most of us did not. We have training psychopaths, right,
and the psychopaths probably a little bit more born that way.
Narcissistic people kind of get that way. But I will
say this that the way these stories get told, the

(21:02):
vow is one of many where this story is told
this way. You know this better than far better than
I do. As a filmmaker, it's all about where you
train the lens. And there are times, and I remember
the scene of the Vow very well, all of you
were sort of at a summer camp kind of a
set up and having fun and playing and acting like children.
There's a blamy thing that went along with that, like, oh,

(21:23):
you fools carrying on like kids. I think you were
having such a fun time. Good for them, you know,
but there is that that entire sense of these are children,
these are fools, they're playing And I think I find
it so interesting that we live in a culture that
pathologizes joy, because as soon as you pathologize joy, you
really do give the power to the joy less, and

(21:44):
the joy less are getting more and more power, because really,
I think that's something we are lacking. Is just sort
of if people watch The Vow, they would have that
sense of the story of going from what started out
as these sort of personal development seminars and esp and
that then you know, evolved into this larger organization of
Nexium and then devolved into these sorts of sub factions

(22:07):
where the abuse was really happening and you had a
story going on. While all of that story was going on,
what was it like? How did that all evolve? From
a first person perspective, As this whole situation was unbraiding,
you went in for personal development, and obviously, I will
say even the personal development piece had some of the
markers of organizations that should concern us levels and their

(22:31):
sashes and calling him vanguard and changing identities. All of
that is cultic structure because it's taking one away from identity.
It's creating artificial hierarchies, leveling up and all of that.
But even all of that that, then this next devolution
really into this sort of grooming sexually abusive element of this.

(22:54):
How did that unfold? Was that happening in parallel and tandem?
Did it evolved down the road? And what was it
like to be the presence of all of that? There's
the surface level of everything, which is personal growth, creating centers,
creating business paths, that kind of thing. And then people
that were closer to Raniering seemed to be on some
kind of other path, which it didn't make a lot

(23:16):
of sense to me at first, but he had a
lot of people close to him. I think that a
lot of this was going on from the very beginning.
What turned out to be dust this sort of what
the world sees as some sex slave club that had
been going on for a long time. He had been
I found out later that back in two thousand five,
he had been talking about creating a sort of a
blackmail club of women that would target certain powerful men

(23:41):
and try and get black mail material from him. So
he was thinking about that stuff for a long time.
It turns out later we all realized he was also
sleeping with all these people, which we didn't know for
a long time. That became apparent around two thousand and fifteen,
two thousand sixteen, I thought, finally, I was thinking, oh,
so he's not a renunciate, so he is having relationships
that new to me, and it was new to a

(24:01):
lot of people. So yes, it was happening in parallel.
But just imagine the CIO, the n s A. Everything
is a need to know basis, and if you ask
certain questions you were shut down. So there was so
much compartmentalization. Like I remember saying, everybody's whispering, and Bonnie
and I were talked about everybody's whispering in corners, all
these people who whispering, And we had a joke because

(24:22):
the guys weren't whispering, but all the women were whispering.
Now I realized what was going on. They were all
stooping him and having issues about it. I didn't understand
that was going on. So you don't know what you
were looking at. You just knew something weird was going on.
What happened is that the woman's curriculum, and then the
men's curriculum, and then the ethesis curriculum. That's when stuff
started getting really weird, when the pen and stuff started

(24:44):
coming in. When love is pain and pain is love
started coming in, and sacrifice is the highest principle, giving
of your life is the highest principle. And showing videos
of that monk that burns himself some self emulation kind
of thing that was seen as a very noble things
to do. To die for a principle was the most
powerful thing you could do. Now we were heading into

(25:05):
these weird religious odd places that was devaluing just a
good life as somehow not being a good thing that
you had to reach for the stars and apparently he
was the highest principle in human form that you had
to protect. All of that was this multi pronged un

(25:27):
ramp to what became dos where people have been so
hollowed out that they thought they bought the idea that
slavery's freedom, which is terrifying, and it's double speaking, double second.
It's a whole bunch of weird things. But they bought
in because it took a while. This is a guy,

(25:48):
this is Rains was a salesman for a while and
multi level marketing. But he also said, you don't get
somebody from the first step to the tent step. You
have to get them to step two and get from
step three, and it's all drooming. And his whole sales
technique was about basically grooming somebody to buy the training
eventually incomes training. What we didn't realize though, is everything

(26:09):
was about in essence. The men were devalued, but the
women were devalued in a different way. Men were devalued
to the point that we felt so inadequate and so weak,
and so, you know, a whole bunch of things, and
women were as well. But then women were told, your
salvation is completely subjugating yourself, so I can recreate you

(26:32):
the way I want. Now, he didn't sell it the
way I want. He said into something that you should be.
You know he was. He was basically talking to Alison
mac about Joan of Arc and getting her obsessed with
Joan of Arc. You know, there were all these books
he was having them all read. So I know people
rag on these women for making those decisions, but they

(26:53):
don't understand how grooming works, right, No, no they don't.
It is it's a slow These women should not be
looked as fool as they're not. No, nobody, nobody who's
groomed is a fool. It is very stepwise process. And
when you're pulled away from your ordinary supports, because that's
how grooming works is also through isolation, so there's no
sounding board, there's no eyes on you to keep look

(27:16):
at them. We think classically of grooming, it's a younger person,
a child, adolescent, middle school puberty, who doesn't have a
parent who may necessarily or an adult who is either
distracted or not available or just has neglected them, and
it is not paying attention. And then that that's the
child who becomes the mark for the groomer. It is
I think it's something that any of us, any of
us are vulnerable. So it's that's why grooming works, because

(27:39):
it's sort of universally possible for anyone to be taken in.
So no, it was a very systematic process, and you
saw other women doing it yes, which normalize yes championing,
which was very confusing. One of the things I would
say to people, if you see something like that going on,
and somebody says to you, it's none of your business,
make it your business. I couldn't agree to. I will
never again let somebody say to me it's none of

(27:59):
my business. I'm gonna make it my business because I
don't like what's going on. That's right, whatever it is,
even if I don't know what it is yet, because
if I see, for instance, I've walked into restaurants, I've
walked into shops where the entire staff looks broken, and
I've always said to myself, a narcissist is running this place.
These people are broken, they're hollowed out, they're terrified, they're lifeless.

(28:23):
Something is not right. I agree. I've talked with people
who you could see there's a wide eyed, unsettled, almost
skittish nature to them, and something's not right. And even
if it's hard, because in some of those two situations,
we go into these restaurants and try to converse with them,
and we want to blink twice. If you want us
to arrest your boss, I don't know what to tell someone,

(28:45):
but yeah, but you know, just picking up at that point,
it's really important to I love what you're doing. And
also this this film I'm working on now, trying so
hard to look at the pattern. Yes, yes, because you
could walk into a restaurant. If you understand the pattern,
you can see it. And that's the issue with no
sort of cult porn or stories about narcissist porn. If
you get too lust in the story and the personalities,

(29:07):
you won't see the pattern. Yes, yes, I'm so glad
you brought that up, because I and you and I
have talked about this ourselves, this idea that again I
call it narcissism porn. I agree that there's cult porn,
this idea that we are so compelled by the stories
of the Keith Rainierians and the and all the people
who are at the center of these either docuseries or

(29:27):
even fictionalized series, who are so in your face narcissistic
that we are almost frozen in that story. In fact,
Pete Walker, who is a trauma therapist, calls it fawning.
It's a fawning response. It's literally a sympathetic, nervous system
response we have to someone that dominant, and it reflects
an attempt to get attachment needs met when we had

(29:49):
such a dominating invalidating parent and childhood. But you almost
find ruling and eyeing and look what they're doing, and
they're so visionary, and you want to say, slow own, folks.
I had today, I had a woman asked me about
healthy narcissism. I said, that's like a safe cigarette. No,
the two words don't get to go together. And so
this desire to think that there can be this impressario

(30:12):
that is somehow a benevolent force, it doesn't exist. And
we are in a period though every other show out there,
either everybody on the program is narcissistic or the vast
majority or the entire storyline coalesces around a very narcissistic individual.
And I think that this has become accused. We've now
we're focusing too much on the narcissistic people, and we're

(30:35):
never giving heed to the story of the people who
are harmed, and when we do, we portray them as
fools exactly exactly, And you know, our society right now,
we enable these people, putting them in movies, we're putting
them in TV shows. It's like we we worship them,
Yes we do. It's okay to say, look at these
people are like doing bad things, but we may have
to take a look at ourselves as well, society, because

(30:57):
we are really co contributing to are absolutely every possible
medium you can think of. We are contributing from elections
to who's holds corporate positions, to who holds the greatest
strength in social media, to reality television. You pick a medium,
pick a medium. They have the platforms, they have the stages,

(31:19):
and we stop what we're doing and we listen, and
we are normalizing this behavior to global literally global detriment.
We will be right back with this conversation with Mark.
I will say I am worried because I can't fix
the world. I'm trying to help people at the individual level.

(31:42):
You said something making it about patterns. If Bonnie had
rolled up to you that day and said, Mark, he's
a sociopath, he's a narcissist, your eyes might have glazed
over a little. She approached you subtly, there's some patterns
here that concerned me every client I work with say,
you've raised some patterns here that are concerning me, and
the empathy is a little patchy and entitlement and how

(32:02):
does all that make you feel? And then what it is?
It's almost like I've laid out all the ingredients for
a soup and they look at that carrot and the
potato and the broth, and I'm like, oh, we're making
a soup. I'm like, let's talk about this soup, shall we?
Because it's all these things are always going to make soup.
And so I do believe that by talking about in
terms of pattern you don't get as much of the pushback.

(32:23):
And I will say, also, and it's a misnomer. A
lot of people say, oh, you shouldn't say someone's narcissistic.
You shouldn't diagnose them. It's not a diagnosis. It's not
a diagnosis. If somebody came up to me and I
used this example all the time and said, hey, I
want you to meet my friend. She's really agreeable, I
wouldn't say, don't say, that's very diagnostic. It's a type
of personality style. And so it's being stubborn, and so

(32:45):
is being introverted. And nobody calls that stuff diagnostic, this word,
and I think it's because the people who are the
powers that be don't like the word. It feels like
a bad word because it kind of isn't a very
nice word because it's a bad pattern. But the world
of mental health is silencing this conversation. I have to say,
I think they're complicit in it, and they being the

(33:07):
world of mental health of saying maybe we just need
to look in the back. So I said, I don't
need to see any backstory when somebody is doing this
to another person. All I need to see is the
front story that I'm looking at right now. I think
that there are some people are so busy being academic
that they've lost their moral companies. And this is a
question of morality. If somebody's doing bad, that they're doing
bad ship. They may have a pathology, we can look
into that, but there's a problem. But they're going to

(33:28):
consistently do bad things. That's the other thing we need
to remember is everyone personalizes that. Maybe it's something about me.
Maybe I'm bringing out the worst of this person. Maybe
I'm not worthy of this. Maybe they're so much smarter
than me that I can't keep up and I don't
know in what world smart is a virtue. Smart is
like being able to juggle. It's just a skill set.
And so that idea of it is plausible that it's

(33:51):
not them, it's me also really adds to this. And
also something that I know you've brought up in you
and I discussed once, the Pollyanna attitude of refusing to
see add things in the world. The toxic positivity. It
is so damaging to people that are being abused, and
it allows these people to sort of skim under the radar. Yea.
The spiritual communities, loosely organized in many ways, bank on that.

(34:16):
And if a person, for example, isn't experiencing growth, even
in seminars like you were in, they will say, well,
it's because you aren't trying hard enough, you're not manifesting
hard enough, you're not present enough. This is you, not
your insane curriculum. And so I think that movement and
every other you know, Instagram post, is that this pseudo
toxic positivity message. So when a person who's struggling, isn't

(34:38):
leaning into that positivity, is experiencing real hurt, they pathologize
themselves saying, well, maybe this is my fault for not
being able to harness my positivity. And I'll say, slow down, sister,
You're going to get there, but you need to heal first.
So let's think of this in terms of aftermaths. I mean,
this was devastating. We saw the central players in the vow,

(34:59):
like yourself and her husband, Nippy, but so many people
were affected by this by nexium and women harmed and
traumatized and all of that. So let's talk about this aftermath.
Let's start by talking about what ended up happening to Keith.
I mean, after this six weeks trial, it was extraordinary
because the jury came with guilty and all counts, which

(35:20):
was amazing. That is amazing, and then Judge Garfist gave
him a hundred and twenty years in prison, which was
unheard of, and twenty years. I will never forget the
day I read that in the news and was sitting
in my living room and I sat down and I
got tears in my eyes, and I said, finally, out
of one five hundred thousand these cases, one of these
cases was finally sentenced properly, and that case is now

(35:43):
being used as precedent for a lot of other cases. Yeah,
they were clever in their use of racketeering. That was
something they stayed away from the word cult. They talked
about tours of psychology and stuff like that. They stayed
away from cult altogether because it's a very murky topic
in courts. But yeah, racketeering, that's what it was. It
was the mob basically yea, but using racketeering statutes, focusing
obviously things that were very clearly happening, the sexual trafficking,

(36:06):
the sexual abuse, all of it. I was stunned by
the sentence, and it was one of those rare times
where you actually felt that there was justice in one
of these stories, because they're so rarely is, and much
more importantly is to the degree you know, what has
happened to the other people involved who are hurt by this.
I think it's been very painful to a lot of people.

(36:29):
Um there are people that never said a word and
just start trying to get their lives back. I'm certainly
in touch with some of them. And then there's the
people that are still loyal and and I have finally
given up trying to help in any way because I can't.
But I don't know, I don't know what's going to happen,
and maybe they won't wake up, and maybe it's okay

(36:52):
they don't wake up, because waking up might be really
it might be really bad. So I don't know. I
just it's place. I mean, I have compassion for them.
I think they're super lost. They're very lost. And as
we said that, there's a continuum outcome for people in
narcissistic relationships and in narcissistic organizations such as cult like organizations,

(37:15):
and not every story ends up right side up, and
unfortunately we trauma, bonding, coercive control, these things are very real.
And the fact that there were still I mean, it
sounds like fifty six seventy people who are still standing
behind him, and we don't hear much from them, but
I imagine to their families that feels like a loss
that they're trying to talk about that they're not getting

(37:36):
a lot of attention on Twitter constantly Interesting, constantly saying
things about the whistle blowers and talking about how we're
just a bunch of victims and you know, YadA YadA. Interesting.
So they're for ever going to do his bidding and
they derive identity from all of that. But it's like
there's a continuum ab outcome here from people who actually
come out and not only whistleblowers, but are able to

(37:56):
see a different future, in a different path, and those
who don't get out. And I will say to anybody
who's contemplating speaking out, it is, I know, the most
terrifying thing, but it's the most rewarding thing, because, like
with any noble battle, you look back and you go,
I'm so happy I made these choices. I'm so happy
I did these things. I couldn't imagine looking back and

(38:16):
thinking to myself, what if I just said nothing? I
couldn't live with myself. So there's a lot of there's
a lot of wonderful things that comes out of doing
the right thing. Absolutely as terrifying as it is, Yes,
I think so. Like I said, here we get the
closure of Keith got a hundred and twenty years. But Mark,

(38:37):
there must have been time in there for all of
you thinking this guy may not see him the time.
I was terrified. The whole time. I was constantly worried
is the jury going to get it? I was worried
about what the defense was doing. I was worried, as
a prosecutor is gonna be able to make their case.
When he finally got sent guilty and all accounts, that
was the first time that I was like, all right,

(38:59):
we can close this door. But I remember even that
I walked out of the courthouse and I was immediately
on camera and somebody said to me, how do you feel,
as though I would feel triumphant, and I said, I
just feel like there's bodies everywhere because the fallout, that
damage to people, lifelong damage to people, so profound. It

(39:20):
wasn't so much yea, the badman's got put away. It
wasn't that. It was, yes, you can't hurt people in
the same way anymore. But there's so many people that
got hurt by this, and there are people that are
upset that we spoke out. They feel hurt by us.
Even people who don't support him, that's supporting, but they
think that there was some better way they think we

(39:41):
should have There are some people that think we should
have met with him, discuss things with him. So they
don't get it. They don't understand, they understand, And I
would say, then you don't understand what we're dealing was here,
so speaking out wasn't easy, Mark, So you still, I
mean to this day, granted, you can shut down Twitter
or not interact, would it not look at that stuff?
But to this day there are people who are critiquing

(40:04):
and that idea, oh you could have sat down and
talked to them, That actually kind of boils my blood
because it reveals absolutely no understanding of what this is.
And if we talk about any narcissistic relationship this way,
the number of people say, well, why don't you just
reach out and sit with them? So you're sending them
into a tiger's cage. What are you doing? No, no, no, no,
nobody's sitting and talking about this, And so that sort
of one size fits all, that kind of mediated response

(40:27):
might work with some folks not in this, and I
think the unwillingness to recognize that is when we think
of people who are going through this in their day
to day relationships, you can see why it is so
difficult for people to get out cult or marriage or
family or any of it. And when you skill these
abusive relationships like entire political parties, it is it is right, absolutely,

(40:51):
But I think all of these things that we're talking
about is why I have become so obsessed with this topic.
You know why I'm making this film, right, now about narcissism.
Talked to about that film two thousand seventeen. When I
realized this guy's the narcissist, that was the obsession began.
But then I realized, if we don't talk about the patterns,
we're just gonna get lost in the narcissic porn, so
to speak. So you know, the film is called Empathy

(41:13):
Not Included. It will probably come out at the beginning
of next year. Talked to many experts you included, talked
to many victims. We're also talking to self confessed narcissists,
which is absolutely fascinating. And what we're also looking at
is narcissistic abuse at different scales, from romantic to family,
to corporate too, churches to to recults all the way

(41:34):
up to the political level. We don't go after any
political parties. We want to just look at the pattern
of how these things work at that level. And I
believe what we're creating is something that will be very palatable,
very powerful, and people will want to hopefully study more
after they see something like this. I hope they'll dive
even more deeply into your work, or maybe discover your work.
There's a lot of amazing stuff out there right now

(41:56):
about narcissism, about trauma, bunding about betrayal trauma is wonderful
resources now, but I do agree. I don't like the
fact that sometimes clinicians are sort of anti pathologizing things.
People need to understand what they're looking at, well, they
need to understand. You don't even have to pathologize it.
I said, you have to. You have to understand the
fundamentals of narcissism. It's rigid, it's inflexible, it doesn't change.

(42:18):
You know. Daniel Shaw, who's working this field, probably the
person whose work I admire, living person whose work I
admire the most, he talks about this loss of intrasubjectivity,
that there's no space for anyone's reality except there. So
I always view it as like sort of like the
big fish eats the small fish, or you know, sort
of the amba sort of overtakes the and that's that
you're in the Neva system now. And so the real

(42:39):
work becomes for a person who survives one of these
experiences is to give themselves to become a differentiated whole,
to become something or someone separate from this system. So
what about you, though, what steps have you marked personally
as a survivor taken to heal through everything out. I
also there was a little moment I threw psychology out
as well, through everything out, and I went to you know,

(43:02):
Bonnie and I went to Portugal and we went to
the ocean just stare at the ocean. I had no
idea who I was. I wasn't entirely sure what goodness was.
But I knew that the battle I just done, I
thought that was good. But I had no real deep
connection to something inside of me until I sat at
the ocean for a long time and one day I
don't know what happened. I just felt something inside of myself,

(43:25):
something wonderful and beautiful, and I said, oh, that's it.
That's the real me that has been obscured for all
these years. So I am in a much better place
than I have been before. I find interesting enough. Working
on this film about narcissism is not traumatizing. It's actually
helping me. And actually everybody on the team was involved.

(43:47):
It's helping them, and every single crew member we have
has a story of learn and every time they listened
to an expert, they're like, oh my god, I know
what they're talking about. So it's been very healing. Honestly,
I can tell people that there is, you know, life
after narcisstic abuse. There is, and I don't know how

(44:09):
can I say this. I think I'm stronger than I've
ever been in my life. Maybe this is what was required.
Maybe I don't know. Yeah, I mean, I don't disagree.
I think every journey of narcissistic abuse is a hero
hero ins hero person's journey in the sense that it
is the it's the slaying the demons. It's being called

(44:30):
to adventure and then facing the existential crisis and then
having the fellow travelers that come along, the friends of supporters,
the therapists, the people who are there at your side,
and then returning transform. And that's the story. I hope
for every survivor is that they recognize that they can,
that we all have demons. It's only the narcissist that

(44:51):
become the demons. And I think that everyone else is
slaying these demons, and even the narcissistic people, I still
hold that or unicorns there where they don't have to
become the demon, that they could actually bring themselves from
the edge. But it's hard work. You've talked to self
professor narcissistic folks. But I do think that heroic journey
that exists in everyone is really the story of narcissistic abuse.

(45:14):
And I think you never look at the world the
same way that moment of clarity you had in Portugal.
It's a moment. It's a moment that if survivors can
go on like sort of let that process unfold, let
themselves face down that pain. For you, it even culminated
in a suicidal crisis. This is not small pain. This
is a big pain. But then come back wholly to yourself,

(45:37):
separate from any system that if you're going to look
for goodness, the goodness was there all along. Well, that
was the thing that had to happen. I had to
let go of looking anywhere else for the answers. Yes,
and because there was kind of this abdication of my
own sense of self that I had to get over
and by throwing everything out temporarily, and even when I

(45:57):
threw everything out, I was like, I know, this isn't forever.
I have a feeling and forever. But stopping to look
outside for the answers was so amazing because finally I
could turn inside and now I don't look at other
people as that they have the answers. I look at
people as like, oh, that's an interesting perspective. Let me
feel what that feels like. You know, all the experts
that i'm that, I'm that I'm talking to, I listen,

(46:19):
I go that resonates, that doesn't resonate. Okay, that's fine,
and that's fine. But that idea that you can hold
space for them, they can hold space for you. That
a narcissistic person can't hold space for your perspective, but
too healthy people, even if you don't agree, you can
sit there and hear that perspective and still know your
core inside is solid. Unfortunately, that's not how a lot
of people were raised as children to become their own,

(46:41):
their sort of own people. For me in this podcast,
something that's so essential to this is to again deep
pathologize the survivors who are Whether it's a story of
just one person's story of their marriage, well, why did
you stay so long? Why don't you leave to the
story of getting into a cold to the story of
people giving people money, whatever it may be, Well, why
did you do that? Yours weren't beyond that people were

(47:05):
unkind to you? I would argue cruel to you. How
did that impact your healing and how have you coped
with that? That was very hard. In fact, sometimes it
was an additional betrayal. In some ways, it was incredibly cruel,
and it did set me back quite a bit. I
got pretty messed up. I had to go of social

(47:27):
media for a while. You know, some of some of
it has begun to make more sense to me in
the last year because I look at how vengeful people
are in social media, and I'm beginning to see that
it's sort of like maybe they haven't dealt with their
shadow or something, and they're just projecting a whole bunch
of their own stuff everywhere. But I'm still proud of

(47:48):
what we did, and I don't care what they say
in terms of that because we did what we did.
I'm proud of it. Does it hurt when they ridicule
us a little bit? Still? What's helped me, weirdly enough,
is as I'm studying narcissism and narcissistic abuse, I realize
that pretty much everybody's in some kind of relationship of
abuse and they may not realize it. That's exactly right,

(48:10):
and that weirdly freed me because I'm like, oh, so
you don't see it, So you're shooting on me because
you see it in me, but you can't see it
in you. That's right, Okay, Well I hope it doesn't
go as badly for you as it did for me.
But you know what, can I say? Correct? Correct? And
I think that you have that big stew of narcissism
enablers and people who are in their own situations but

(48:30):
don't want to see it. So it's much easier to shame,
blame and pathologize the messenger, which would be someone like you,
than to look at what is happening in their life.
And you, at some level you can empathize with that
until you were ready to hear it, you weren't ready
to hear it. Well, the other problem is people like me.
I'm not the only one, but people like me are
saying monsters are real. Yeah, those stories of Dracula, they're real.

(48:53):
And people do not like that. No, no, they do.
And people don't like knowing it's not a just world.
People don't like the idea that there are are monsters
amongst us. People don't like that there's not always happy endings,
and that's a lot. We were raised on this stuff.
So I really feel that the work in narcissism is
a dismantling of every religious teaching, every myth, and frankly
every fairy tale ever told, and having to look at

(49:16):
these things through a very different eye. So do you
want to add anything else, Mark, because I just think, honestly,
I think that the work you're doing is so important.
People must understand how this works. They cannot keep their
heads buried under the stand the world is full of
these people, and they're in very powerful positions, very powerful positions,
which might explain why I've always had such trouble. I

(49:37):
always said, this should really be in case through twelve curriculum,
because you want to get this early. The pushback I've
always gotten this is too dark for that age, for
any anyone under eighteen. I said, great, this is when
kids start dating. We know that there's relationship violence when
people are in their teens, they may be dealing with
narcissistic parents, and so it feels as though you're you're

(49:58):
to talk about narcissism to me is the ultimate anti authoritarian,
ultimate sort of anti oppressive message. And I think in
that way, if you've got to keep finding the back
doors to think and to refuse to talk about it
is serving somebody and people. It does serve someone, and
I think I started this relationally, like really working with
people in their individual relationships, but to ignore the societal

(50:22):
piece of it. Any time a world event happens that
involves sort of a narcissistic theme. Every client I work with,
my phone blows up just thinking I'm unsettled. Of course
you're unsettled. The world is paralleling your relationship and your
wounds right now, so it means everything's right where it
needs to be. We should be disturbed these things we

(50:42):
have a heart, We should be disturbed. Well, thanks for
bringing back empathy in your special way making empathy healthy
and sexy again. I've reached it. What we're doing, that
is what we're doing. So thank you again. Where can
people find you? As there anything you want to share
about how because I personally can't wait to see this
film on the world. No, I have my website, I'm
on Instagram and starting tik talk and Facebook. You know,

(51:05):
it's always just Mark the Cente wherever I am, and yeah,
people can reach out to me on social media. Great, Well,
thank you again Mark for This is incredible conversation. Many
of us watched the Vow and were horrified by the
stories of sexual abuse, of power, control, and manipulation. This

(51:26):
conversation with Mark reminds us that the oppressive and manipulative
mind games used in occult maybe at a larger scale,
but they're no different than what happens in any narcissistic relationship.
Mark's relationship with Nexium started from a place a feeling understood,
feeling seen, and believing in the organization and the leaders.

(51:50):
As time went on, the lack of empathy, the grandiosity,
the gas lighting, the projection, blame shifting, isolation, and techniques
like mentally and physically exhausting people and making them jump
through hoops. While it may be more organized than what
happens in a family or a relationship, it's all the same.

(52:15):
Many people saw the Vow as the story of a cult.
I simply saw it as one more story of a
narcissistic relationship. So here are some takeaways from my conversation
with Mark. First, every narcissistic relationship is sort of a cult.

(52:35):
A cult of two maybe, but a cult grooming indoctrination,
having reality stolen, becoming isolated, manipulated and being told that
the relationship is a special place that no one else
will understand. That's a cult. When we think of it
that way, we are reminded that all of us are

(52:56):
vulnerable to this kind of manipulation. If you are witnessing
abuse in a family, or a workplace system, or any
other kind of system, be a support, speak up, and,
as Mark said, make it your business. Many times abuse
happens because other people stay silent if it doesn't feel right.

(53:18):
Reach in and protect others when you can do so
when it feels safe, but find a way to do so.
If you suspect someone may be in a narcissistic lee
abusive relationship, don't just roll up and say, hey, I
think that person is a narcissist. Instead, when you approach them,
focus on patterns. When a person is in one of

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these relationships, they often care about or love the other person.
They may still be in denial, and it can be
devastating for them to recognize that this relationship is abusive,
even if they are aware that it doesn't feel good.
Focusing on patterns rather than simply labeling a person can

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help you communicate with somebody else about it and it
may leave that other person feeling less defensive. A big
thank you to our executive producers Jada Pinkett Smith, Valon Jethrow,
Ellen Rakaton and Dr Rominey Devassla. And thank you to

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our producer Matthew Jones, associate producer Mara Dela Rosa and
consultant Kelly Ebling. And finally, thank you to our editors
and sound engineers Devin Donnaghee and Calvin Bailiff