April 21, 2026 • 40 mins
I watched the most recent cult document released on Netflix over the weekend called Trust Me: The False Prophet.
It is an absolutely disturbing and important show.
It’s the most recent in a long line of cult documentaries and crime podcasts I’ve watched over the years and I have noticed a pattern, a list of behaviors and dynamics that can coerce otherwise intelligent, successful, big-hearted people to do things they would otherwise find abhorrent.
Most distressingly, none of us are immune. These tactics are common and effective.
And they are deployed all around us, as we speak.
So how do we stay in our power? On today’s episode, I share what I’ve learned from many years of working with writers and the powerful tool for accessing agency that is at your fingertips perpetually, no matter who you are.
Host: Ally Fallon // @allyfallon // allisonfallon.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, and welcome to you to write your story pipecast.
Good job. Really pick up the pieces of your life,
pull them back together with the word you write. All
the beauty and peace and the magic that you'll start
too fun when you write your story. You got the
words and said, don't you think it's down to let
(00:23):
them out and write them down and cold? It's all
about and write, write your story. Write you write your story. Hi,
and welcome back to the Write Your Story Podcast. I'm
Ali Fallon, I'm your host, and on today's episode, I
want to talk about a topic that has been top
(00:44):
of mind for many of us lately, but that has
honestly been top of mind for me for a very
long time. This is a secret, not really secret, but
a very silent obsession that I've had for about as
long as I can remember, since I was really young.
I remember being interested in this topic and invested it,
and it does feel like it's become more of a
cultural conversation recently. I think there are a lot of
(01:05):
reasons for that that I'll get into on the episode today,
but I think there is a reason that as a culture,
we've become even more invested and interested in this topic
I'm thrilled about it because honestly, now I feel like
I don't have to keep this like I remember growing up,
keeping like my country music obsession a secret because I
did not live in Nashville growing up. I lived in Portland, Oregon,
and it was just like not cool to listen to
(01:27):
country music and in Portland, organ in the eighties and nineties,
and I was always very invested in country music and
just you know, loved every single country artist from the
eighties and nineties. This is similar where it's like it's
you know, it has felt like maybe it's not cool
to like this or not cool to be interested in this.
It's just like a very niche kind of thing. So
I want to talk about this. I want to talk
(01:49):
about why this topic is becoming even more popular right now.
And mostly I'm not an expert on this topic that
I'm going to address today. I you know, it's something
that I have invested a lot of energy and attention into,
but it is not my area of expertise. I'm not
an expert on this topic, but I do want to
talk about it specifically through the lens of what I
(02:09):
have seen as someone who has helped thousands of people
to leverage the power of writing to improve their lives.
I want to talk about why I think writing is
such an important tool to help us avoid the pitfalls
that we'll talk about today, and why now is the
time for you to be writing, regardless of whether you
ever want to publish a book. So that's what we're
(02:29):
going to get into today. Before I get into the
topic I want to talk about today, I want to
give a quick health update, mostly because my voice sounds
like this, and my apologies that you have to suffer
through the sound of my congested voice for a whole episode.
Please bear with me. I am not well and that
is evidence of the roller coaster that I've been writing
(02:51):
for the last several months with my health. And I
say months because my first big incident happened last September
in twenty twenty five. But really like this congestion and
weird stuff. I mean, if you've been listening to the
podcast for since the beginning or even for the last year,
you've heard me be congusted many many times and have
a lot of different respiratory issues. And I'm still working
(03:13):
on figuring out the exact reason why. If you've been
around for a while, and you've been listening you kind
of know the backstory. But basically, I've had these chronic symptoms.
I'm trying to get to the bottom of why exactly
they're all happening, including the respiratory symptoms, including like chronic
sinus infections and chronic I had walking pneumonia last fall
and or I guess that was two falls ago. So
(03:35):
this has been going on for a while now. We
were hoping that we had pinpoint of the problem with
an excessive amount of B vitamins that was found in
my system the last time I went to the ER.
I have stopped taking the B vitamins that I was taking,
and that does seem like it has helped. So the
B vitamins were definitely a contributing factor, but there is,
as I presumed or as I expected, there's something else
(03:57):
also going on. And if you're someone who is dealt
with chronic symptoms, because this is not the first time
in my life that I've had something like this happen.
So if you're on that road, what I know about
you is that you understand this deeply, that our bodies
are systemic and it's not ever just one thing that's
causing you know a problem, and also like we're extremely
intuitive about our bodies, many of us are. I definitely am.
(04:19):
And so if you have an intuition that there's something
else going on with your body or some or what
a doctor's saying to you, like you know, this is
what's causing your problem. Like at the er, the doctors
are like, you must be anxious, you must be stressed.
I'm like, I am stressed, but also like, I know
stress is I know the the toll that stress takes
in my body, and this is not that. So there's
something else going on. And it's tricky when you don't
(04:41):
feel like you have one doctor that you can call
who's going to help you figure out the solution to
the problem. It's not just like, oh, you call up
your doctor and they're gonna, you know, walk this path
with you and help you, help you trace it all
the way back to the beginning. You kind of have
to be your own advocate in the medical system. You
kind of have to you know, like draw from some
(05:03):
of the holistic side. And I've definitely had really great
experiences with acupuncture and with chiropractic and with yeah, more
holistic medicine, with supplements and that sort of thing, and
then you also have to draw from the Western medicine side,
you know, and check the boxes and make sure this
isn't a heart issue and make sure. So all that
to say, it's been a very long journey. I think
(05:24):
that we're narrowing in on the problem the more time
that passes and the more I attract my symptoms. My
best guess right now at this point is that there
is some kind of mold issue happening in my house
that that's causing maybe mass cell activation, that the B
vitamins exacerbated that mass cell activation. If you don't know
what any of that means, that's not unusual because it's
(05:45):
kind of a niche thing to know about. But that's
kind of like where my head is at right now.
But also like there are other factors that could be contributing.
I also had a COVID infection at the beginning when
all of this started, So I'm trying to figure out
like why I was definitely like sick at my best,
I was having some brain fog, I was having these
respiratory issues, and then all of a sudden, I got
(06:05):
like very very sick. And I'm trying to figure out
what why that point in time. Was it the COVID infection,
was it the B vitamins? Was there? Is there a
mold issue in the house, is or some of all
of that. So all of that to say, you know,
we're kind of narrowing in on it. We're going to
have I won't go down to long of a rabbit
hole on this, I promise, but we are going to
have our crawl space encapsulated. The inspector who came to
(06:28):
look for mold in our home found mold in the
crass space and the crawl space air is blowing directly
into the master bedroom in our house, So that would
explain why I am more sick than anyone else's other
than my husband also sleeps in there, so you know,
he's just different than I am, and you know, processes
toxins differently than I do. I'm more sensitive than he is.
(06:49):
So we're going to encapsulate the crawl space. I'm hoping
that will improve my symptoms. The one thing I will
say that this was the big update, was that I
left for a week to go to Oregon and visit
my family and was feeling really great, and then when
I came home, I started feeling terrible again, so and
I got sick right away, and the numbness came back
on my feet, and so that tells me there's something
(07:12):
going on in the house that's causing me to feel ill.
So my apologies for my voice. That's the update for
those of you who have asked, And if you didn't
ask or didn't care, then you know, sorry to have
wasted your time. You can hit the little fast forward
button and move right through these updates in the future
if you do not care to know. But that's the update.
(07:32):
We'll see how this cross space and capsulation encapsulation. We'll
see how this cross space encapsulation improves my symptoms. Cross
your fingers with me. That that's just this is what
I keep saying this to myself and to my friends recently.
I'm like, please, let it just be as simple as that, Like,
can we just have something be simple and easy and
the solution be just, oh yeah, no problem, just check
(07:55):
that box, just encapsulate the cross space and the symptoms disappear.
Please let it be that easy. May it only be
that easy? Okay, let's dive in. This idea for this
episode came because I watched yet another in a long
line of cult documentaries. I watched the most recent cult
(08:16):
documentary that came out on Netflix called Trust Me the
False Prophet. I have watched. When I say I have
watched every single true crime, every single cult documentary that
has come out in the last ten years, I'm not joking,
and you can ask my husband. I am obsessed with
this topic. I have been obsessed with this topic for
(08:37):
about as long as I can remember. It is so
interesting because even back in the day when I would
have called myself a professing evangelical Christian, I was still very,
very interested in cults. In fact, I can remember being
a sophomore or maybe a junior in high school and
reading this massive book called The Kingdom of the Cults.
I can still remember the book. I can remember the
(08:59):
color of it, I can remember the way it felt.
It was like a four or five hundred page book,
a huge book that detailed all of these different world religions.
I mean, it's funny, like it's clear the lens that
this book was written through because it was written from
an evangelical Christian and it was like, you know, all
of the world's religions in this book that were all
being called cults, and so Mormonism was in the book,
(09:22):
and the FLDS was in the book, and the High
was in the book. And I just remember being fascinated
by all of these other worldviews and all of these
other religions and the way that these religions drew people
to them and the leaders of the religions. And at
the time, I didn't really have the perspective, I guess,
(09:42):
or the self awareness to look at myself and the
position I was in and to say, oh, there's so
much about the world that you're operating in that is
similar to these other faiths that you're reading about. Yeah,
it didn't click for me. It didn't connect for me
that there were a lot of similarities to Mormonism, for example,
and Evangelical Christianity. There are so many similarities. But that
(10:06):
wasn't something that occurred to me at the time, and
it wasn't something that I really wanted to think about.
But it was something that I was fascinated with. I mean,
you look back, I would have been what fifteen or
sixteen years old. Something I was fascinated with then that
has carried through my entire life. I watched the entire
I don't know. It was like seven seasons of the
Lea Rimini documentary on Leaving the Mormon Church. I've watched
(10:29):
any cult documentary that you can name. I have seen it,
and if I haven't seen it, please send it my way,
because I would love to see it. This is something
that is just so interesting to me. I'm so fascinated
at the way people are drawn to these environments. I'm
fascinated at the psychology of it, like what makes us,
what makes us so prone, like so apt to sign
(10:52):
on to these types of communities. I can remember listening
to the Nexium documentary or the Nexium Sorry podcast series
when it first came out. And if you don't know
what I'm talking about, if this is not a special
interest of yours, there's a podcast series on wherever you
listen to podcasts about this group called Nexium. Now, the
group has since been dismantled because their leaders have been imprisoned,
(11:17):
rightfully so. But when I was listening to the to
the podcast series, I remember just thinking like, oh my gosh,
I would have joined this cult, Like if this cult
had found me in my twenties, I would have signed
up so fast. It started as like personal growth and
personal healing and taking accountability for yourself and learning how
to improve your life. Like so much of this sounds
(11:38):
like exactly what I was interested in during that time
of my life, exactly, you know, what I would have
been seeking out. And also, like, the other thing that
really fascinated me about Nexium is the way that the
people who join And this is true for scientology too,
and it's true for Mormonism, and it's true for so
(11:59):
many different worlds, so many different groups of people that
come together around ideas. These people were intelligent, they were beautiful,
they had everything going for them. They were successful, they
had careers, they were well liked, they were kind, they
had good hearts, they had great intentions, and slowly, over
(12:19):
time that got distorted, it got almost like commondered and
twisted into something that it wasn't at the start. And
so that was just a fascinating note to me on
human nature and how quickly we can be drawn into
these environments. And sure enough, like as I did start
to deconstruct the evangelicalism, over time, I did eventually come
(12:44):
to the realization that many of these principles or elements
that were at play with a lot of these cults,
including the trust Me the FLDS community that the Netflix
documentary follows. So many of the elements at play. Now
there's there are some communities that are more extreme than others,
but the elements that are at play are still the same.
(13:16):
In fact, I can remember making a list. I was
trying to be kind of like sarcastic and funny at
the time, I think, But when I finished reading that
book The Kingdom of the Cults, I remember making a
list that was like how to start a cult. I
looked to see if I could find this, because I
know I saved it somewhere, but I couldn't find it.
But I remember being like seventeen years old or maybe
(13:36):
eighteen years old and writing out like how to start
a cult? And I was being funny, but I was
just like number one, Convince people that they can't trust themselves.
Convince people that their own minds are not a safe
place to be too, Convince people that you know, there's
nobody else to trust but them. And I just made
this list of the things that you have to do
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if you're going to be a cult leader, if you're
going to get people to buy in completely on your
ideology and make sure that that ideology doesn't get questioned, where,
you know, cut them off from all of their family
members and friends, tell them their family members and friends
don't understand. So many of these elements are the same
manipulative elements that are present in abusive relationships too. And
(14:21):
when I tell you, like my fascination with the cult mentality,
my fascination with what drew people to cults makes a
lot more sense now at forty three years old or
almost forty three years old, than it really did at eighteen.
To me, I was like, you know, I think maybe
that's why I kept it a secret, because I was
just like, I don't really understand why I'm so interested
in this topic, and it's not a quote unquote cool
topic to be interested in. But I was fascinated by
(14:44):
the cult mentality. I was fascinated by abusive relationships. I
was fascinated by true crime, and like specifically like true
crime that happens inside of like domestic violence situations where
a if tries to leave a husband, and then a
husband it murders the wife. So I was just like
(15:06):
truly drawn to all of these topics which didn't totally
make sense to me at the time. Now at forty two,
almost forty three years old, it makes a lot more
sense looking back over the patterns of my life because
I'm realizing, like I am a prime candidate, Like I
called that out when I listened to the ex Nexium series,
like I'm a prime candidate for Nexim. I would have
bought into that hook line and sinker. I was also
(15:29):
a prime candidate for an abusive relationship. My first marriage
was an abusive one and was an extremely tricky situation
to get out of, and I feared for my life
in that situation. And you know, I also like grew
up in this evangelical environment. I'm not here to say
that any faith perspective as a whole, like that Christianity
(15:50):
as a whole, or Mormonism as a whole, or Hinduism
as a whole, or Buddhism or whatever as a whole,
that these are cults necessarily, but the way that they operate.
And I can speak specifically to Evangelicalism because I grew
up in that the way Christianity, let's just be more specific.
I'm not saying Christianity is a cult. I'm saying the
way Christianity operates inside of Evangelicalism oftentimes has many many
(16:14):
cultish elements to it. And you know, all those things
that I just listed, like, convince people that their hearts
are not their my own minds are not to be trusted,
Isolate them from their family member and friends, Convince them,
you know, to trust the spiritual leader's advice over their
own intuition or their own knowing. Those elements are all
at play in various ways inside of many Christian circles
(16:37):
or evangelical Christian circles and maybe other you know, branches
of Christianity too that I didn't experience. So those elements
are at play. And I think this is really interesting
because we do have to ask ourselves, like, why are
so many of us the perfect candidate to be like
(16:57):
opted into these situations? Like And the reason why I
think this is so relevant right now is because you're
watching a sort of cultish thing play out in politics too.
And I will say, even though I'm a registered Democrat,
I've never that's never been like a hidden thing. I
did not vote for Donald Trump any of the times
that he ran for president. I am adamantly opposed to
(17:18):
Donald Trump being our president. I voted for Kamala Harris,
I voted for Hillary. I you know, have no shame
in who I voted for or how I vote or
you know, my own political views. This is not a
political podcast. I don't feel like I need someone else
to be a Democrat or to be friends with them.
I don't think Democrats are better than Republicans any of that.
I also can be self aware enough to notice that
(17:41):
there are some cultish tendencies that happen on both sides
of the aisle. So it's not just like, well, just
because I'm a Democrat. You know, Democrats are right about
everything and Republicans are wrong. So there are cultish tendencies
that happened on both sides of the political argument. And also,
Donald Trump is the perfect cult leader. He is the
pered cult leader, and he has run the cult playbook
(18:04):
to a t. He has done everything that a cult
leader needs to do to get people to enlist in
their ideology, to get people to abandon all sense of logic,
to so distrust with anyone who's going to challenge their
point of view. You know, like notice the way that
Donald Trump is using RFK Junior and using him as
(18:26):
a pawn in his game to so distrust in science,
to so distrust in the medical institutions, to so distrust,
so distrust, so distrust so that his followers have to
turn to him for answers and conclusions about anything, because
it's like if everyone else is untrustworthy. This happened to
me in evangelicalism, It's like, don't read that book. That's
a slippery slope that is going to, you know, take
(18:47):
you into universalism, that that element of don't listen to that,
don't hear, don't explore that, don't go down that path.
That's a slippery slope. That person isn't to be trusted.
Don't trust anything they say, don't trust anything out of
their mouth. That extremism is like a page out of
a playbook in how to grow a cult. So Donald
(19:11):
Trump is extremely effective at what he's done. He has
grown this cult mentality around himself. He gets people to
buy into his antics and not to question anything. And
I think you're seeing that play out in real time
and you're seeing the dangers of that cult mentality. You
see it on that Trust Me the False Prophet documentary.
(19:33):
The way that these women in the documentary, if you
haven't seen it. It is an extremely fundamentalist LDS community
where the polygamy is practiced, and there's one man in
particular who's marrying all these women, taking on all these wives.
And I don't know, I don't know how many wives
he has, but like you know, twenty wives or something
like that, and many of them are sisters, and many
(19:54):
of them are underage, and all of these women in
the communit the very small community that are cut off
from broader culture. This is another tactic. They're cut off
from anyone who could disagree with them, or anyone who
could get them to question. The way that they have
to turn to him, to the one man who is
(20:16):
their trustworthy source of information. The way that they have
to turn to him to know what is right, what
is wrong? What am I supposed to do next? It's
extremely upsetting to watch, and yet you have to recognize
how this plays out in other settings and other circumstances
in maybe less extreme ways, but no less problematic or
(20:36):
no less detrimental, or no less upsetting. And I think
it could be helpful for each one of us to
have enough self awareness to look inward and go, wow,
in what ways have I outsourced my power? To someone
else have ways, In what ways have I assumed that
this one person has the answers that I need, and
that I that I can't trust myself. I can't trust
my own intuition, or I can't go do my own research,
(20:58):
or I can't question what the authority says. I think
you're watching the rise of this cult mentality happen right now,
like people are becoming more and more aware that this
is taking place. And I also think what you're going
to see is because of that rise and awareness and
maybe like the way that this experience is coming to
(21:18):
a crescendo, like it's more and more public and popular
and normal and regular for people to just be buying
into this cult mentality. I think you're also going to
see more and more people deconstructing from that mentality, and
more and more people questioning authority, and more and more
people coming into their own empowered state as a human being.
(21:50):
So that's one important question to ask yourself. And I
think another important question we can all be asking ourselves
is in what ways have I been unwilling to speak
out against the status quo? Like, in what ways have
I been just going along with the herds? So to speak,
because we are relational creatures and we do find safety
in going along with what other people are doing. We
(22:12):
kind of want to be like those around us. We
want to dress like those around us. And I'm even
like I'm an enneagram for I have like a flair
for being different. I love to be different. As soon
as everyone else is doing what I'm doing, I'm like
ready to move on and do something new. So I
do have that threadn me. And yet that the very
human instinct to be alike and to fit in and
(22:33):
to blend in is also there. And I think that
is there for every single one of us. Regardless whether
we like to, you know, dress with flair or be
a little different than those around us, or have a
different haircut, hair color, or whatever, there's still an element
where your biology is going to urge you to be
like those around you. And I know I've talked about
Ingrid Clayton's book Fawning, which is a trauma response. It
(22:57):
is a like fight fight fun, fight, fight, freeze and fun.
So it is one of the responses that your body
has to creating safety for itself. Like if your body
feels that you are in threat, it will either fight, fight,
fleet freeze or fawn and fawning for me was not
something that I knew about even ten years ago. But
(23:18):
when I read this book, I was like, Oh, this
is my trauma response. This is what I do when
I fear that my life is in threat. I make
friends with my abuser, like I make friends with the
most dangerous person in the room. Like if I can
just attach myself to you, then I'm safe. And it's
been interesting for me to know that about myself and
(23:39):
to have worked through a lot of that, and to
watch what's happening with, you know, on the political landscape
right now, with you know, Christy Nome getting fired, and
with Marjorie Taylor Green, and with some of these like
Megan Kelly even kind of flipping on Trump after his
most recent AI image of him as Jesus. I know
that there are so many people that are saying that
(24:00):
this is like too little, too late. But as someone
who was in an abusive relationship and who used my
faund response as a way to protect myself, I do
in some ways understand what has taken them so long.
It's not just like, you know, they fear losing some money,
or they fear losing their job or whatever. Although I'm
sure that's part of the faun response, but it's actually
(24:20):
like in some ways they fear for their life. Like
when you feel like your safety is in threat, what
do you do? And I have realized about myself, or
discovered about myself that I, when I feel like my
safety is a threat, I befriend the threat. I befriend
the person who I believe is threatening me because if
(24:42):
I can be on their side, then I will not
get hurt. And I have to wonder if many people
who voted for Trump at least this time around, were
operating in some ways from that mindset, from a mindset
that like if this this guy is a threat, and
if we get on his team, then will be on
(25:03):
the winning team. I'm not projecting that on to anyone.
I'm saying that that was my first marriage, that this
person to me, I perceived him as more powerful than me.
I gave him a lot more credit than I gave myself.
I did not have the confidence that he had. He
could walk into a room and like win people over,
he could talk to anyone. He was he made more
money than I did, He was more successful than me.
(25:25):
He just seemed to kind of have it all together,
and I didn't perceive myself that way, and so I,
out of utter self protection, was like, why don't I
attach myself to this person? Because if I do, I
will get to share in his power. I think this
is one of the dynamics that's happening in cult culture,
(25:47):
in cult groups and even religious groups that you might
not necessarily consider a cult. I think there is some
element of this. It's like I have to go along
with this powerful person. This is definitely happening in evangelical
care Ristianity. I mean you look at like the most
popular pastors of our time and they're all just like
wearing expensive sneakers, and you know, they're on the internet
(26:09):
and they're that was not ever, oh like Jesus's intention.
Like I'm trying to imagine the Jesus of the Bible
that we've read about, who was born in a manger
and had nothing and was always an outsider and you know,
didn't ever amass any kind of wealth and told the
rich young ruler to sell everything and or give it
(26:31):
all away. You know, I'm trying to imagine him witnessing
these pastors who are rich and famous it is just
a bizarre dynamic that is nothing like what I believe
Jesus intended when he was walking on this earth, And
so you have to acknowledge there's a dynamic there of like,
(26:52):
this person is rich and powerful, all the power is
in their hands. So the response can be sometimes I
need to put myself on their team so that I
too can experience wealth and power, so that I can
be on the winning side of things. And I think
it misses altogether what spirituality was meant to be about,
(27:13):
which is there is no winning team. There is no
winning side nonviolence, you know, like the sharing of resources.
It is just so far off the mark from what
I think Jesus was teaching. And that's not even my
whole point. My whole point is more about noticing the
ways in which you might be drawn also, like me,
(27:35):
to these cult dynamics. I think we have to be
extremely self aware about this so that we can stay
in our power because it costs too much. I will
say this as someone who spent four years of my
life married to a person who I was giving my
power away too constantly. It costs way too freaking much
to give your power away to this person and hope,
(27:55):
like sit there like a beggar, hoping that they'll give
you something in return. And I've given a lot of
my life away doing that. And I've met a lot
of women who gave away more than four years in
marriages just like that. And maybe for you it's not
a marriage. Maybe for you it's like a spiritual teacher
that you've latched onto. I know for so many evangelical
Christians who deconstructed and then you know, still felt like, oh,
(28:18):
I'm a person of faith, like I still have faith,
I believe in a God, like I'm searching for a
place to belong. They ended up finding other communities, other
ways where they could give away their power because that
dynamic feels so comfortable. It feels so normal to not
trust yourself, to trust someone else, to outsource your own power,
to outsource your own wisdom, and to do what some
(28:40):
some spiritual leader says is right or says to do,
to follow, you know, along with this group of people,
to believe this is the other thing is like cults
always have a promise that is really shiny. And other
series I've been listening too lately is the oh gosh,
I remember I forget the name of the series, but
it's about the Free Birth Society, And this is a
(29:02):
perfect example of how what these cults are selling is
extremely appealing. It is extremely appealing. The Free Birth Society
is a group of women who are coming together in
order to do what they call free birthing, which a
free birth is a birth at home with no medical professionals,
so no midwives and no doctors, and no medical care whatsoever,
(29:24):
so no regular prenatal visits, no gynecologists, no general practitioners,
no medications, no ultrasounds, no checks. These women are like,
you know, birth is this powerful spiritual experience and it's
meant to be orgasmic, and it's meant to be you know,
like transformative and transcendent, and it is a narrative that's
(29:47):
extremely appealing. Like, I've been through two berths that were
both one I was supposed to give birth at a
birth center and was transferred last minute to a hospital
and had high blood pressure and had to be put
on medication and my baby was went to the NICU. Yeah,
it was a traumatic experience. I don't wish to do
it over again. And then my second birth was much
less traumatic, but was also in a hospital. And so
(30:09):
no matter how you swing it, like, birth is a
crazy experience that changes you forever. It's extremely memorable, it
can be a little scary, and I think it's funny.
Like listening to that podcast series, I was just like, wow,
the way that colts really sell you this narrative that
life can be perfect, it can be painfree, birth was
(30:31):
never meant to be painful. What an incredible thing to
believe that birth was never meant to be painful? Then
why the frick are all these women saying it's painful?
Like how much more can we get into our denialism
to say that birth was not meant to be painful?
I'm sorry, but some things in life just are painful.
Being in a human body, in this human existence just
(30:53):
is painful. And why do we have to make that
the enemy? Like why so much of self help to
kind of falls into this category of selling you this
lie that you know your birthright is to be wealthy
and powerful like you, All you have to do is
think more positive and your life is going to just
turn out perfectly and you're going to get everything you want.
Like since when since when is that? Like? Is that real?
(31:18):
Or is that a message that's even helpful for anyone.
My point in all of this is not to disparage
any particular worldview or point of view, because I think,
you know, trying on different worldviews is part of how
we figure out who we are and what we like
and how we want to see things. And I think
the truth is never scared of being challenged. And so
(31:38):
if you have a worldview and you're afraid to look
at other worldviews because you think it might threaten your
own worldview, that is a red flag. But if you
have a worldview and you can look at another worldview,
like let's say your worldview is you know, Christianity, like heaven, hell,
that typical thing, and you look at another worldview like reincarnation,
and you're like, no, that doesn't fit for me. I
(31:59):
don't that just doesn't makes sense. I don't think that
that's true or that's not I don't think that's what happens.
Then you can always come back to your point of view.
Or even with the free birth thing, it's like, if
you believe that birth is best experienced at home with
no medical professionals and no medical treatment whatever, if that
is a view that you want to hold, then why
should you be concerned about being exposed to other options.
(32:24):
This free birth community basically had a rule saying that
all of the women who were in it weren't allowed
to discuss medical interventions at all. And I had an
experience very similar to this when I was pregnant with Nola.
I did a program called hypno Babies or hypnobirth Thing
or something like that. Anyway, the idea was like, you
take yourself into a state of hypnosis and you speak
(32:47):
positive words to yourself, and you do these meditations for
the whole time you're pregnant. And I meditated. I did
these meditations every single day I was pregnant for the
whole time I was pregnant, and still had late on
set preclamsya and went to the er, and the hypno
birth would say, Oh, you didn't do it enough. I
guess I don't know, you didn't think positively enough because
this other thing happened to you. And I just called
(33:08):
bs on that like I'm like well, And the hypno
birthing idea was, we don't even want you to look
into what medical interventions are available. We don't even want
you to think about what could go wrong, because that
will your brain is such a powerful, you know tool
that your brain is gonna sort of like manifest that
(33:29):
or make it happen. So when my blood pressure did
skyrocket and I was in the heat of the moment,
I had no knowledge, no information to help myself make
a decision, and I just panicked. And I think it's
irresponsible to say to sort of like put blinders on
(33:49):
and act like we're not going to look at what's real.
We're not going to look at what's really going on.
We're not going to look at that at the fact
that like women and babies do die in childbirth without
medical intervention. That's the thing that happens, you know, more
often than we would like to admit. We're just gonna
put blinders on, We're gonna pretend that doesn't happen, and
we're just going to only focus on the positive. I
think it's irresponsible. And the reason I'm bringing any of
(34:09):
this up, and the piece that I really want to
leave you with is the only antidote to falling for
cult mentalities, whether it's in politics or in religion, or
in your birth you know scenario, or in a relationship.
The only antidote to falling for that to being so
(34:30):
easily manipulated. And I'm saying that as someone who has
been very easily manipulated many times in my life. The
only antidote is to know yourself deeply, to know yourself completely,
to listen to yourself unequivocally. And this is where I
think writing comes in, because writing is such a powerful
tool to get to know yourself. You cannot sit at
the page and write honestly and not discover who you
(34:54):
really are and what you really think. And there's no
this for thinking about the FLDS documentary The Trust Me,
the False Prophet. These women didn't have the privacy to
even write in a journal and discover what they really
thought about something it wasn't. They had to only write
what the profit would approve of. Otherwise he would see
(35:15):
what they had written and they would be punished. So
all of their survival instincts kicked in and they did
the only thing that they knew how to do to
stay safe. I give them all the credit for that,
and I know what it feels like to be in
that scenario. It takes an insane amount of courage and
a lot of strategy and forward thinking to find your
way out of an environment like that and find your
(35:36):
way out safely. Because you think about a woman leaving
an abusive relationship is the most dangerous time in her life.
Most homicides, domestic homicides happen within the days or weeks
after a woman leaves an abusive relationship, So she is
not absurd for being scared when she leaves, because that
is her most vulnerable time. And the same is true
(35:56):
for leaving a cult, you know this is, or even
leaving a church like whether you want to call it
a cult or not a cult, like leaving a church community,
leaving a faith perspective, leaving a worldview, leaving behind your friends.
But someone even said to me recently, like, you don't
just leave behind your friends. You don't just leave behind
your worldview, You leave behind your social standing, And that
really hit me hard. I was like, man, yeah, it's
(36:19):
that has been a grief that I've had to face
in deconstructing the faith of my upbringing that I had
a social in my family still even has that social
standing in the community where I grew up, and I
don't share that with them, and that is a grief
I've had to come to terms with and you know,
my first book, Packing Light, came out under a Christian publisher.
(36:41):
It was a very conservative Christian publisher out of Chicago
and stepping away. By the time I was ready to
write my second book, I didn't have the support of
the Christian publishers any longer. And that was a tricky
line to walk. I mean, it costs a lot to
walk away, and yet it costs more to day, It
costs more to stay in an environment like that. And
(37:03):
I don't regret ultimately making that choice. And I think,
you know, writing my story was one of the main
ways that I was able to do it. In the
early days after my abusive marriage ended. After I, you know,
finally like through the final line and asked him to leave,
I was really prone, I think, to going back for
(37:26):
the first couple of weeks. The only thing that saved
me is I was writing down what was happening, and
it was impossible for me to ignore the facts of
the situation. So that's my encouragement to you, Like, write
down what's going on in your life. It will become
impossible for you to ignore the facts of the situation
and the facts matter. Turning a blind eye to facts
(37:46):
so that you can be more grateful or so that
you can speak more positively or be more positive is
harming you more than it's helping you. I'm not saying
not to cultivate gratitude. I think it's important to cultivate
gratitud But there's a difference between gratitude and toxic positivity
and turning a blind eye to what is true is
(38:07):
toxic positivity. And it is a key tactic of cult
groups and cult leaders, designed to keep you small, designed
to manipulate you, designed to keep you close, designed to
make you upon in the game of whoever is doing it.
And I do like I feel like because I've experienced
these tactics, I've lived them in real time. I've been
(38:28):
vulnerable to them over and over again. I've done a
lot of emotional work around this. I'm not saying that
I'm perfectly healed. In fact, even like Cush, as I
was watching this false prophet documentary, I was just like,
oh my gosh, like I still do this in certain ways.
I outsource my wisdom to other spiritual teachers, thinking that
they know more to like you know now of days,
(38:50):
it looks like an astrologist or someone who tells me.
You know, this is what this means or what when
this is going to happen? And it's like, not that
we can't take in the wisdom of others. You hear
the balance that I'm speaking here. I hope you can
take in the wisdom of others. It's not that you're
the only wise one, but it is. This happens in community,
(39:11):
and it has to be shared. The only true power
is shared power. The only true wealth is shared wealth.
The only true truth is shared truth. Like we come
together and we share in wisdom. My perspective is only
part of the equation in Yours is another part, and
then our neighbors is another part, and our other neighbors
is another part. And no one person's perspective is perfect
(39:32):
or perfectly right. So to put all of our attention
on one person or one way of thinking and to
shut out everything else is irresponsible. It creates division, It
creates hatred, it creates wars, Like all of that would
go away if we were all able to share in wealth,
to share in power. This is this is changing the
(39:53):
way that I think, even about economics. You know, I
have always been a capitalist. I think capitalism can be
an incredible force for good in the world. I do
think capitalism, you know, it's a nice idea to think,
like people are motivated to get up and go to
work and do their jobs and provide for their families.
(40:14):
That is not what we're experiencing anymore though in this country.
We've moved into a different thing. And I don't know
if anyone else feels that. And maybe that's just a
throwaway at the end of this episode, but my main
point is, please be writing. Please write down what's happening
to you. Please share your stories. Please get out pen
and paper. Please do it for five minutes a day,
or two minutes a day, or whatever you have to give.
(40:36):
Please tell yourself the truth about what's going on. If
you tell no one else the truth, tell yourself the truth.
The truth will set you free. That's all I have
for today. I'll see you back next week on the
Write Your Story Podcast
Hi, and welcome to you to write your story pipecast.
Good job. Really pick up the pieces of your life,
pull them back together with the word you write. All
the beauty and peace and the magic that you'll start
too fun when you write your story. You got the
words and said, don't you think it's down to let
(00:23):
them out and write them down and cold? It's all
about and write, write your story. Write you write your story. Hi,
and welcome back to the Write Your Story Podcast. I'm
Ali Fallon, I'm your host, and on today's episode, I
want to talk about a topic that has been top
(00:44):
of mind for many of us lately, but that has
honestly been top of mind for me for a very
long time. This is a secret, not really secret, but
a very silent obsession that I've had for about as
long as I can remember, since I was really young.
I remember being interested in this topic and invested it,
and it does feel like it's become more of a
cultural conversation recently. I think there are a lot of
(01:05):
reasons for that that I'll get into on the episode today,
but I think there is a reason that as a culture,
we've become even more invested and interested in this topic
I'm thrilled about it because honestly, now I feel like
I don't have to keep this like I remember growing up,
keeping like my country music obsession a secret because I
did not live in Nashville growing up. I lived in Portland, Oregon,
and it was just like not cool to listen to
(01:27):
country music and in Portland, organ in the eighties and nineties,
and I was always very invested in country music and
just you know, loved every single country artist from the
eighties and nineties. This is similar where it's like it's
you know, it has felt like maybe it's not cool
to like this or not cool to be interested in this.
It's just like a very niche kind of thing. So
I want to talk about this. I want to talk
(01:49):
about why this topic is becoming even more popular right now.
And mostly I'm not an expert on this topic that
I'm going to address today. I you know, it's something
that I have invested a lot of energy and attention into,
but it is not my area of expertise. I'm not
an expert on this topic, but I do want to
talk about it specifically through the lens of what I
(02:09):
have seen as someone who has helped thousands of people
to leverage the power of writing to improve their lives.
I want to talk about why I think writing is
such an important tool to help us avoid the pitfalls
that we'll talk about today, and why now is the
time for you to be writing, regardless of whether you
ever want to publish a book. So that's what we're
(02:29):
going to get into today. Before I get into the
topic I want to talk about today, I want to
give a quick health update, mostly because my voice sounds
like this, and my apologies that you have to suffer
through the sound of my congested voice for a whole episode.
Please bear with me. I am not well and that
is evidence of the roller coaster that I've been writing
(02:51):
for the last several months with my health. And I
say months because my first big incident happened last September
in twenty twenty five. But really like this congestion and
weird stuff. I mean, if you've been listening to the
podcast for since the beginning or even for the last year,
you've heard me be congusted many many times and have
a lot of different respiratory issues. And I'm still working
(03:13):
on figuring out the exact reason why. If you've been
around for a while, and you've been listening you kind
of know the backstory. But basically, I've had these chronic symptoms.
I'm trying to get to the bottom of why exactly
they're all happening, including the respiratory symptoms, including like chronic
sinus infections and chronic I had walking pneumonia last fall
and or I guess that was two falls ago. So
(03:35):
this has been going on for a while now. We
were hoping that we had pinpoint of the problem with
an excessive amount of B vitamins that was found in
my system the last time I went to the ER.
I have stopped taking the B vitamins that I was taking,
and that does seem like it has helped. So the
B vitamins were definitely a contributing factor, but there is,
as I presumed or as I expected, there's something else
(03:57):
also going on. And if you're someone who is dealt
with chronic symptoms, because this is not the first time
in my life that I've had something like this happen.
So if you're on that road, what I know about
you is that you understand this deeply, that our bodies
are systemic and it's not ever just one thing that's
causing you know a problem, and also like we're extremely
intuitive about our bodies, many of us are. I definitely am.
(04:19):
And so if you have an intuition that there's something
else going on with your body or some or what
a doctor's saying to you, like you know, this is
what's causing your problem. Like at the er, the doctors
are like, you must be anxious, you must be stressed.
I'm like, I am stressed, but also like, I know
stress is I know the the toll that stress takes
in my body, and this is not that. So there's
something else going on. And it's tricky when you don't
(04:41):
feel like you have one doctor that you can call
who's going to help you figure out the solution to
the problem. It's not just like, oh, you call up
your doctor and they're gonna, you know, walk this path
with you and help you, help you trace it all
the way back to the beginning. You kind of have
to be your own advocate in the medical system. You
kind of have to you know, like draw from some
(05:03):
of the holistic side. And I've definitely had really great
experiences with acupuncture and with chiropractic and with yeah, more
holistic medicine, with supplements and that sort of thing, and
then you also have to draw from the Western medicine side,
you know, and check the boxes and make sure this
isn't a heart issue and make sure. So all that
to say, it's been a very long journey. I think
(05:24):
that we're narrowing in on the problem the more time
that passes and the more I attract my symptoms. My
best guess right now at this point is that there
is some kind of mold issue happening in my house
that that's causing maybe mass cell activation, that the B
vitamins exacerbated that mass cell activation. If you don't know
what any of that means, that's not unusual because it's
(05:45):
kind of a niche thing to know about. But that's
kind of like where my head is at right now.
But also like there are other factors that could be contributing.
I also had a COVID infection at the beginning when
all of this started, So I'm trying to figure out
like why I was definitely like sick at my best,
I was having some brain fog, I was having these
respiratory issues, and then all of a sudden, I got
(06:05):
like very very sick. And I'm trying to figure out
what why that point in time. Was it the COVID infection,
was it the B vitamins? Was there? Is there a
mold issue in the house, is or some of all
of that. So all of that to say, you know,
we're kind of narrowing in on it. We're going to
have I won't go down to long of a rabbit
hole on this, I promise, but we are going to
have our crawl space encapsulated. The inspector who came to
(06:28):
look for mold in our home found mold in the
crass space and the crawl space air is blowing directly
into the master bedroom in our house, So that would
explain why I am more sick than anyone else's other
than my husband also sleeps in there, so you know,
he's just different than I am, and you know, processes
toxins differently than I do. I'm more sensitive than he is.
(06:49):
So we're going to encapsulate the crawl space. I'm hoping
that will improve my symptoms. The one thing I will
say that this was the big update, was that I
left for a week to go to Oregon and visit
my family and was feeling really great, and then when
I came home, I started feeling terrible again, so and
I got sick right away, and the numbness came back
on my feet, and so that tells me there's something
(07:12):
going on in the house that's causing me to feel ill.
So my apologies for my voice. That's the update for
those of you who have asked, And if you didn't
ask or didn't care, then you know, sorry to have
wasted your time. You can hit the little fast forward
button and move right through these updates in the future
if you do not care to know. But that's the update.
(07:32):
We'll see how this cross space and capsulation encapsulation. We'll
see how this cross space encapsulation improves my symptoms. Cross
your fingers with me. That that's just this is what
I keep saying this to myself and to my friends recently.
I'm like, please, let it just be as simple as that, Like,
can we just have something be simple and easy and
the solution be just, oh yeah, no problem, just check
(07:55):
that box, just encapsulate the cross space and the symptoms disappear.
Please let it be that easy. May it only be
that easy? Okay, let's dive in. This idea for this
episode came because I watched yet another in a long
line of cult documentaries. I watched the most recent cult
(08:16):
documentary that came out on Netflix called Trust Me the
False Prophet. I have watched. When I say I have
watched every single true crime, every single cult documentary that
has come out in the last ten years, I'm not joking,
and you can ask my husband. I am obsessed with
this topic. I have been obsessed with this topic for
(08:37):
about as long as I can remember. It is so
interesting because even back in the day when I would
have called myself a professing evangelical Christian, I was still very,
very interested in cults. In fact, I can remember being
a sophomore or maybe a junior in high school and
reading this massive book called The Kingdom of the Cults.
I can still remember the book. I can remember the
(08:59):
color of it, I can remember the way it felt.
It was like a four or five hundred page book,
a huge book that detailed all of these different world religions.
I mean, it's funny, like it's clear the lens that
this book was written through because it was written from
an evangelical Christian and it was like, you know, all
of the world's religions in this book that were all
being called cults, and so Mormonism was in the book,
(09:22):
and the FLDS was in the book, and the High
was in the book. And I just remember being fascinated
by all of these other worldviews and all of these
other religions and the way that these religions drew people
to them and the leaders of the religions. And at
the time, I didn't really have the perspective, I guess,
(09:42):
or the self awareness to look at myself and the
position I was in and to say, oh, there's so
much about the world that you're operating in that is
similar to these other faiths that you're reading about. Yeah,
it didn't click for me. It didn't connect for me
that there were a lot of similarities to Mormonism, for example,
and Evangelical Christianity. There are so many similarities. But that
(10:06):
wasn't something that occurred to me at the time, and
it wasn't something that I really wanted to think about.
But it was something that I was fascinated with. I mean,
you look back, I would have been what fifteen or
sixteen years old. Something I was fascinated with then that
has carried through my entire life. I watched the entire
I don't know. It was like seven seasons of the
Lea Rimini documentary on Leaving the Mormon Church. I've watched
(10:29):
any cult documentary that you can name. I have seen it,
and if I haven't seen it, please send it my way,
because I would love to see it. This is something
that is just so interesting to me. I'm so fascinated
at the way people are drawn to these environments. I'm
fascinated at the psychology of it, like what makes us,
what makes us so prone, like so apt to sign
(10:52):
on to these types of communities. I can remember listening
to the Nexium documentary or the Nexium Sorry podcast series
when it first came out. And if you don't know
what I'm talking about, if this is not a special
interest of yours, there's a podcast series on wherever you
listen to podcasts about this group called Nexium. Now, the
group has since been dismantled because their leaders have been imprisoned,
(11:17):
rightfully so. But when I was listening to the to
the podcast series, I remember just thinking like, oh my gosh,
I would have joined this cult, Like if this cult
had found me in my twenties, I would have signed
up so fast. It started as like personal growth and
personal healing and taking accountability for yourself and learning how
to improve your life. Like so much of this sounds
(11:38):
like exactly what I was interested in during that time
of my life, exactly, you know, what I would have
been seeking out. And also, like, the other thing that
really fascinated me about Nexium is the way that the
people who join And this is true for scientology too,
and it's true for Mormonism, and it's true for so
(11:59):
many different worlds, so many different groups of people that
come together around ideas. These people were intelligent, they were beautiful,
they had everything going for them. They were successful, they
had careers, they were well liked, they were kind, they
had good hearts, they had great intentions, and slowly, over
(12:19):
time that got distorted, it got almost like commondered and
twisted into something that it wasn't at the start. And
so that was just a fascinating note to me on
human nature and how quickly we can be drawn into
these environments. And sure enough, like as I did start
to deconstruct the evangelicalism, over time, I did eventually come
(12:44):
to the realization that many of these principles or elements
that were at play with a lot of these cults,
including the trust Me the FLDS community that the Netflix
documentary follows. So many of the elements at play. Now
there's there are some communities that are more extreme than others,
but the elements that are at play are still the same.
(13:16):
In fact, I can remember making a list. I was
trying to be kind of like sarcastic and funny at
the time, I think, But when I finished reading that
book The Kingdom of the Cults, I remember making a
list that was like how to start a cult. I
looked to see if I could find this, because I
know I saved it somewhere, but I couldn't find it.
But I remember being like seventeen years old or maybe
(13:36):
eighteen years old and writing out like how to start
a cult? And I was being funny, but I was
just like number one, Convince people that they can't trust themselves.
Convince people that their own minds are not a safe
place to be too, Convince people that you know, there's
nobody else to trust but them. And I just made
this list of the things that you have to do
(13:57):
if you're going to be a cult leader, if you're
going to get people to buy in completely on your
ideology and make sure that that ideology doesn't get questioned, where,
you know, cut them off from all of their family
members and friends, tell them their family members and friends
don't understand. So many of these elements are the same
manipulative elements that are present in abusive relationships too. And
(14:21):
when I tell you, like my fascination with the cult mentality,
my fascination with what drew people to cults makes a
lot more sense now at forty three years old or
almost forty three years old, than it really did at eighteen.
To me, I was like, you know, I think maybe
that's why I kept it a secret, because I was
just like, I don't really understand why I'm so interested
in this topic, and it's not a quote unquote cool
topic to be interested in. But I was fascinated by
(14:44):
the cult mentality. I was fascinated by abusive relationships. I
was fascinated by true crime, and like specifically like true
crime that happens inside of like domestic violence situations where
a if tries to leave a husband, and then a
husband it murders the wife. So I was just like
(15:06):
truly drawn to all of these topics which didn't totally
make sense to me at the time. Now at forty two,
almost forty three years old, it makes a lot more
sense looking back over the patterns of my life because
I'm realizing, like I am a prime candidate, Like I
called that out when I listened to the ex Nexium series,
like I'm a prime candidate for Nexim. I would have
bought into that hook line and sinker. I was also
(15:29):
a prime candidate for an abusive relationship. My first marriage
was an abusive one and was an extremely tricky situation
to get out of, and I feared for my life
in that situation. And you know, I also like grew
up in this evangelical environment. I'm not here to say
that any faith perspective as a whole, like that Christianity
(15:50):
as a whole, or Mormonism as a whole, or Hinduism
as a whole, or Buddhism or whatever as a whole,
that these are cults necessarily, but the way that they operate.
And I can speak specifically to Evangelicalism because I grew
up in that the way Christianity, let's just be more specific.
I'm not saying Christianity is a cult. I'm saying the
way Christianity operates inside of Evangelicalism oftentimes has many many
(16:14):
cultish elements to it. And you know, all those things
that I just listed, like, convince people that their hearts
are not their my own minds are not to be trusted,
Isolate them from their family member and friends, Convince them,
you know, to trust the spiritual leader's advice over their
own intuition or their own knowing. Those elements are all
at play in various ways inside of many Christian circles
(16:37):
or evangelical Christian circles and maybe other you know, branches
of Christianity too that I didn't experience. So those elements
are at play. And I think this is really interesting
because we do have to ask ourselves, like, why are
so many of us the perfect candidate to be like
(16:57):
opted into these situations? Like And the reason why I
think this is so relevant right now is because you're
watching a sort of cultish thing play out in politics too.
And I will say, even though I'm a registered Democrat,
I've never that's never been like a hidden thing. I
did not vote for Donald Trump any of the times
that he ran for president. I am adamantly opposed to
(17:18):
Donald Trump being our president. I voted for Kamala Harris,
I voted for Hillary. I you know, have no shame
in who I voted for or how I vote or
you know, my own political views. This is not a
political podcast. I don't feel like I need someone else
to be a Democrat or to be friends with them.
I don't think Democrats are better than Republicans any of that.
I also can be self aware enough to notice that
(17:41):
there are some cultish tendencies that happen on both sides
of the aisle. So it's not just like, well, just
because I'm a Democrat. You know, Democrats are right about
everything and Republicans are wrong. So there are cultish tendencies
that happened on both sides of the political argument. And also,
Donald Trump is the perfect cult leader. He is the
pered cult leader, and he has run the cult playbook
(18:04):
to a t. He has done everything that a cult
leader needs to do to get people to enlist in
their ideology, to get people to abandon all sense of logic,
to so distrust with anyone who's going to challenge their
point of view. You know, like notice the way that
Donald Trump is using RFK Junior and using him as
(18:26):
a pawn in his game to so distrust in science,
to so distrust in the medical institutions, to so distrust,
so distrust, so distrust so that his followers have to
turn to him for answers and conclusions about anything, because
it's like if everyone else is untrustworthy. This happened to
me in evangelicalism, It's like, don't read that book. That's
a slippery slope that is going to, you know, take
(18:47):
you into universalism, that that element of don't listen to that,
don't hear, don't explore that, don't go down that path.
That's a slippery slope. That person isn't to be trusted.
Don't trust anything they say, don't trust anything out of
their mouth. That extremism is like a page out of
a playbook in how to grow a cult. So Donald
(19:11):
Trump is extremely effective at what he's done. He has
grown this cult mentality around himself. He gets people to
buy into his antics and not to question anything. And
I think you're seeing that play out in real time
and you're seeing the dangers of that cult mentality. You
see it on that Trust Me the False Prophet documentary.
(19:33):
The way that these women in the documentary, if you
haven't seen it. It is an extremely fundamentalist LDS community
where the polygamy is practiced, and there's one man in
particular who's marrying all these women, taking on all these wives.
And I don't know, I don't know how many wives
he has, but like you know, twenty wives or something
like that, and many of them are sisters, and many
(19:54):
of them are underage, and all of these women in
the communit the very small community that are cut off
from broader culture. This is another tactic. They're cut off
from anyone who could disagree with them, or anyone who
could get them to question. The way that they have
to turn to him, to the one man who is
(20:16):
their trustworthy source of information. The way that they have
to turn to him to know what is right, what
is wrong? What am I supposed to do next? It's
extremely upsetting to watch, and yet you have to recognize
how this plays out in other settings and other circumstances
in maybe less extreme ways, but no less problematic or
(20:36):
no less detrimental, or no less upsetting. And I think
it could be helpful for each one of us to
have enough self awareness to look inward and go, wow,
in what ways have I outsourced my power? To someone
else have ways, In what ways have I assumed that
this one person has the answers that I need, and
that I that I can't trust myself. I can't trust
my own intuition, or I can't go do my own research,
(20:58):
or I can't question what the authority says. I think
you're watching the rise of this cult mentality happen right now,
like people are becoming more and more aware that this
is taking place. And I also think what you're going
to see is because of that rise and awareness and
maybe like the way that this experience is coming to
(21:18):
a crescendo, like it's more and more public and popular
and normal and regular for people to just be buying
into this cult mentality. I think you're also going to
see more and more people deconstructing from that mentality, and
more and more people questioning authority, and more and more
people coming into their own empowered state as a human being.
(21:50):
So that's one important question to ask yourself. And I
think another important question we can all be asking ourselves
is in what ways have I been unwilling to speak
out against the status quo? Like, in what ways have
I been just going along with the herds? So to speak,
because we are relational creatures and we do find safety
in going along with what other people are doing. We
(22:12):
kind of want to be like those around us. We
want to dress like those around us. And I'm even
like I'm an enneagram for I have like a flair
for being different. I love to be different. As soon
as everyone else is doing what I'm doing, I'm like
ready to move on and do something new. So I
do have that threadn me. And yet that the very
human instinct to be alike and to fit in and
(22:33):
to blend in is also there. And I think that
is there for every single one of us. Regardless whether
we like to, you know, dress with flair or be
a little different than those around us, or have a
different haircut, hair color, or whatever, there's still an element
where your biology is going to urge you to be
like those around you. And I know I've talked about
Ingrid Clayton's book Fawning, which is a trauma response. It
(22:57):
is a like fight fight fun, fight, fight, freeze and fun.
So it is one of the responses that your body
has to creating safety for itself. Like if your body
feels that you are in threat, it will either fight, fight,
fleet freeze or fawn and fawning for me was not
something that I knew about even ten years ago. But
(23:18):
when I read this book, I was like, Oh, this
is my trauma response. This is what I do when
I fear that my life is in threat. I make
friends with my abuser, like I make friends with the
most dangerous person in the room. Like if I can
just attach myself to you, then I'm safe. And it's
been interesting for me to know that about myself and
(23:39):
to have worked through a lot of that, and to
watch what's happening with, you know, on the political landscape
right now, with you know, Christy Nome getting fired, and
with Marjorie Taylor Green, and with some of these like
Megan Kelly even kind of flipping on Trump after his
most recent AI image of him as Jesus. I know
that there are so many people that are saying that
(24:00):
this is like too little, too late. But as someone
who was in an abusive relationship and who used my
faund response as a way to protect myself, I do
in some ways understand what has taken them so long.
It's not just like, you know, they fear losing some money,
or they fear losing their job or whatever. Although I'm
sure that's part of the faun response, but it's actually
(24:20):
like in some ways they fear for their life. Like
when you feel like your safety is in threat, what
do you do? And I have realized about myself, or
discovered about myself that I, when I feel like my
safety is a threat, I befriend the threat. I befriend
the person who I believe is threatening me because if
(24:42):
I can be on their side, then I will not
get hurt. And I have to wonder if many people
who voted for Trump at least this time around, were
operating in some ways from that mindset, from a mindset
that like if this this guy is a threat, and
if we get on his team, then will be on
(25:03):
the winning team. I'm not projecting that on to anyone.
I'm saying that that was my first marriage, that this
person to me, I perceived him as more powerful than me.
I gave him a lot more credit than I gave myself.
I did not have the confidence that he had. He
could walk into a room and like win people over,
he could talk to anyone. He was he made more
money than I did, He was more successful than me.
(25:25):
He just seemed to kind of have it all together,
and I didn't perceive myself that way, and so I,
out of utter self protection, was like, why don't I
attach myself to this person? Because if I do, I
will get to share in his power. I think this
is one of the dynamics that's happening in cult culture,
(25:47):
in cult groups and even religious groups that you might
not necessarily consider a cult. I think there is some
element of this. It's like I have to go along
with this powerful person. This is definitely happening in evangelical
care Ristianity. I mean you look at like the most
popular pastors of our time and they're all just like
wearing expensive sneakers, and you know, they're on the internet
(26:09):
and they're that was not ever, oh like Jesus's intention.
Like I'm trying to imagine the Jesus of the Bible
that we've read about, who was born in a manger
and had nothing and was always an outsider and you know,
didn't ever amass any kind of wealth and told the
rich young ruler to sell everything and or give it
(26:31):
all away. You know, I'm trying to imagine him witnessing
these pastors who are rich and famous it is just
a bizarre dynamic that is nothing like what I believe
Jesus intended when he was walking on this earth, And
so you have to acknowledge there's a dynamic there of like,
(26:52):
this person is rich and powerful, all the power is
in their hands. So the response can be sometimes I
need to put myself on their team so that I
too can experience wealth and power, so that I can
be on the winning side of things. And I think
it misses altogether what spirituality was meant to be about,
(27:13):
which is there is no winning team. There is no
winning side nonviolence, you know, like the sharing of resources.
It is just so far off the mark from what
I think Jesus was teaching. And that's not even my
whole point. My whole point is more about noticing the
ways in which you might be drawn also, like me,
(27:35):
to these cult dynamics. I think we have to be
extremely self aware about this so that we can stay
in our power because it costs too much. I will
say this as someone who spent four years of my
life married to a person who I was giving my
power away too constantly. It costs way too freaking much
to give your power away to this person and hope,
(27:55):
like sit there like a beggar, hoping that they'll give
you something in return. And I've given a lot of
my life away doing that. And I've met a lot
of women who gave away more than four years in
marriages just like that. And maybe for you it's not
a marriage. Maybe for you it's like a spiritual teacher
that you've latched onto. I know for so many evangelical
Christians who deconstructed and then you know, still felt like, oh,
(28:18):
I'm a person of faith, like I still have faith,
I believe in a God, like I'm searching for a
place to belong. They ended up finding other communities, other
ways where they could give away their power because that
dynamic feels so comfortable. It feels so normal to not
trust yourself, to trust someone else, to outsource your own power,
to outsource your own wisdom, and to do what some
(28:40):
some spiritual leader says is right or says to do,
to follow, you know, along with this group of people,
to believe this is the other thing is like cults
always have a promise that is really shiny. And other
series I've been listening too lately is the oh gosh,
I remember I forget the name of the series, but
it's about the Free Birth Society, And this is a
(29:02):
perfect example of how what these cults are selling is
extremely appealing. It is extremely appealing. The Free Birth Society
is a group of women who are coming together in
order to do what they call free birthing, which a
free birth is a birth at home with no medical professionals,
so no midwives and no doctors, and no medical care whatsoever,
(29:24):
so no regular prenatal visits, no gynecologists, no general practitioners,
no medications, no ultrasounds, no checks. These women are like,
you know, birth is this powerful spiritual experience and it's
meant to be orgasmic, and it's meant to be you know,
like transformative and transcendent, and it is a narrative that's
(29:47):
extremely appealing. Like, I've been through two berths that were
both one I was supposed to give birth at a
birth center and was transferred last minute to a hospital
and had high blood pressure and had to be put
on medication and my baby was went to the NICU. Yeah,
it was a traumatic experience. I don't wish to do
it over again. And then my second birth was much
less traumatic, but was also in a hospital. And so
(30:09):
no matter how you swing it, like, birth is a
crazy experience that changes you forever. It's extremely memorable, it
can be a little scary, and I think it's funny.
Like listening to that podcast series, I was just like, wow,
the way that colts really sell you this narrative that
life can be perfect, it can be painfree, birth was
(30:31):
never meant to be painful. What an incredible thing to
believe that birth was never meant to be painful? Then
why the frick are all these women saying it's painful?
Like how much more can we get into our denialism
to say that birth was not meant to be painful?
I'm sorry, but some things in life just are painful.
Being in a human body, in this human existence just
(30:53):
is painful. And why do we have to make that
the enemy? Like why so much of self help to
kind of falls into this category of selling you this
lie that you know your birthright is to be wealthy
and powerful like you, All you have to do is
think more positive and your life is going to just
turn out perfectly and you're going to get everything you want.
Like since when since when is that? Like? Is that real?
(31:18):
Or is that a message that's even helpful for anyone.
My point in all of this is not to disparage
any particular worldview or point of view, because I think,
you know, trying on different worldviews is part of how
we figure out who we are and what we like
and how we want to see things. And I think
the truth is never scared of being challenged. And so
(31:38):
if you have a worldview and you're afraid to look
at other worldviews because you think it might threaten your
own worldview, that is a red flag. But if you
have a worldview and you can look at another worldview,
like let's say your worldview is you know, Christianity, like heaven, hell,
that typical thing, and you look at another worldview like reincarnation,
and you're like, no, that doesn't fit for me. I
(31:59):
don't that just doesn't makes sense. I don't think that
that's true or that's not I don't think that's what happens.
Then you can always come back to your point of view.
Or even with the free birth thing, it's like, if
you believe that birth is best experienced at home with
no medical professionals and no medical treatment whatever, if that
is a view that you want to hold, then why
should you be concerned about being exposed to other options.
(32:24):
This free birth community basically had a rule saying that
all of the women who were in it weren't allowed
to discuss medical interventions at all. And I had an
experience very similar to this when I was pregnant with Nola.
I did a program called hypno Babies or hypnobirth Thing
or something like that. Anyway, the idea was like, you
take yourself into a state of hypnosis and you speak
(32:47):
positive words to yourself, and you do these meditations for
the whole time you're pregnant. And I meditated. I did
these meditations every single day I was pregnant for the
whole time I was pregnant, and still had late on
set preclamsya and went to the er, and the hypno
birth would say, Oh, you didn't do it enough. I
guess I don't know, you didn't think positively enough because
this other thing happened to you. And I just called
(33:08):
bs on that like I'm like well, And the hypno
birthing idea was, we don't even want you to look
into what medical interventions are available. We don't even want
you to think about what could go wrong, because that
will your brain is such a powerful, you know tool
that your brain is gonna sort of like manifest that
(33:29):
or make it happen. So when my blood pressure did
skyrocket and I was in the heat of the moment,
I had no knowledge, no information to help myself make
a decision, and I just panicked. And I think it's
irresponsible to say to sort of like put blinders on
(33:49):
and act like we're not going to look at what's real.
We're not going to look at what's really going on.
We're not going to look at that at the fact
that like women and babies do die in childbirth without
medical intervention. That's the thing that happens, you know, more
often than we would like to admit. We're just gonna
put blinders on, We're gonna pretend that doesn't happen, and
we're just going to only focus on the positive. I
think it's irresponsible. And the reason I'm bringing any of
(34:09):
this up, and the piece that I really want to
leave you with is the only antidote to falling for
cult mentalities, whether it's in politics or in religion, or
in your birth you know scenario, or in a relationship.
The only antidote to falling for that to being so
(34:30):
easily manipulated. And I'm saying that as someone who has
been very easily manipulated many times in my life. The
only antidote is to know yourself deeply, to know yourself completely,
to listen to yourself unequivocally. And this is where I
think writing comes in, because writing is such a powerful
tool to get to know yourself. You cannot sit at
the page and write honestly and not discover who you
(34:54):
really are and what you really think. And there's no
this for thinking about the FLDS documentary The Trust Me,
the False Prophet. These women didn't have the privacy to
even write in a journal and discover what they really
thought about something it wasn't. They had to only write
what the profit would approve of. Otherwise he would see
(35:15):
what they had written and they would be punished. So
all of their survival instincts kicked in and they did
the only thing that they knew how to do to
stay safe. I give them all the credit for that,
and I know what it feels like to be in
that scenario. It takes an insane amount of courage and
a lot of strategy and forward thinking to find your
way out of an environment like that and find your
(35:36):
way out safely. Because you think about a woman leaving
an abusive relationship is the most dangerous time in her life.
Most homicides, domestic homicides happen within the days or weeks
after a woman leaves an abusive relationship, So she is
not absurd for being scared when she leaves, because that
is her most vulnerable time. And the same is true
(35:56):
for leaving a cult, you know this is, or even
leaving a church like whether you want to call it
a cult or not a cult, like leaving a church community,
leaving a faith perspective, leaving a worldview, leaving behind your friends.
But someone even said to me recently, like, you don't
just leave behind your friends. You don't just leave behind
your worldview, You leave behind your social standing, And that
really hit me hard. I was like, man, yeah, it's
(36:19):
that has been a grief that I've had to face
in deconstructing the faith of my upbringing that I had
a social in my family still even has that social
standing in the community where I grew up, and I
don't share that with them, and that is a grief
I've had to come to terms with and you know,
my first book, Packing Light, came out under a Christian publisher.
(36:41):
It was a very conservative Christian publisher out of Chicago
and stepping away. By the time I was ready to
write my second book, I didn't have the support of
the Christian publishers any longer. And that was a tricky
line to walk. I mean, it costs a lot to
walk away, and yet it costs more to day, It
costs more to stay in an environment like that. And
(37:03):
I don't regret ultimately making that choice. And I think,
you know, writing my story was one of the main
ways that I was able to do it. In the
early days after my abusive marriage ended. After I, you know,
finally like through the final line and asked him to leave,
I was really prone, I think, to going back for
(37:26):
the first couple of weeks. The only thing that saved
me is I was writing down what was happening, and
it was impossible for me to ignore the facts of
the situation. So that's my encouragement to you, Like, write
down what's going on in your life. It will become
impossible for you to ignore the facts of the situation
and the facts matter. Turning a blind eye to facts
(37:46):
so that you can be more grateful or so that
you can speak more positively or be more positive is
harming you more than it's helping you. I'm not saying
not to cultivate gratitude. I think it's important to cultivate
gratitud But there's a difference between gratitude and toxic positivity
and turning a blind eye to what is true is
(38:07):
toxic positivity. And it is a key tactic of cult
groups and cult leaders, designed to keep you small, designed
to manipulate you, designed to keep you close, designed to
make you upon in the game of whoever is doing it.
And I do like I feel like because I've experienced
these tactics, I've lived them in real time. I've been
(38:28):
vulnerable to them over and over again. I've done a
lot of emotional work around this. I'm not saying that
I'm perfectly healed. In fact, even like Cush, as I
was watching this false prophet documentary, I was just like,
oh my gosh, like I still do this in certain ways.
I outsource my wisdom to other spiritual teachers, thinking that
they know more to like you know now of days,
(38:50):
it looks like an astrologist or someone who tells me.
You know, this is what this means or what when
this is going to happen? And it's like, not that
we can't take in the wisdom of others. You hear
the balance that I'm speaking here. I hope you can
take in the wisdom of others. It's not that you're
the only wise one, but it is. This happens in community,
(39:11):
and it has to be shared. The only true power
is shared power. The only true wealth is shared wealth.
The only true truth is shared truth. Like we come
together and we share in wisdom. My perspective is only
part of the equation in Yours is another part, and
then our neighbors is another part, and our other neighbors
is another part. And no one person's perspective is perfect
(39:32):
or perfectly right. So to put all of our attention
on one person or one way of thinking and to
shut out everything else is irresponsible. It creates division, It
creates hatred, it creates wars, Like all of that would
go away if we were all able to share in wealth,
to share in power. This is this is changing the
(39:53):
way that I think, even about economics. You know, I
have always been a capitalist. I think capitalism can be
an incredible force for good in the world. I do
think capitalism, you know, it's a nice idea to think,
like people are motivated to get up and go to
work and do their jobs and provide for their families.
(40:14):
That is not what we're experiencing anymore though in this country.
We've moved into a different thing. And I don't know
if anyone else feels that. And maybe that's just a
throwaway at the end of this episode, but my main
point is, please be writing. Please write down what's happening
to you. Please share your stories. Please get out pen
and paper. Please do it for five minutes a day,
or two minutes a day, or whatever you have to give.
(40:36):
Please tell yourself the truth about what's going on. If
you tell no one else the truth, tell yourself the truth.
The truth will set you free. That's all I have
for today. I'll see you back next week on the
Write Your Story Podcast
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