Healing from Trauma: Therapeutic Approaches to Recovery

In this conversation, Sonnet Daymont, a licensed marriage and family therapist, discusses her journey into trauma therapy, the principles of feminist theory in psychotherapy, and her upcoming book, 'When Dangerous Feels Like Home.' She explores the importance of EMDR and CBT in healing trauma, the psychological patterns of cult hopping, and the significance of recognising red flags in relationships. Sonnet emphasises the role of shame and intimidation in coercive control and offers advice for trauma survivors, while also addressing how the media can better represent trauma and its survivors.

HOME | Sonnet Daymont | Therapist near me | 1000 Fremont Ave, South Pasadena, CA 91030, USA

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Calling all true crime fans. True Crime Forum is coming
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(00:21):
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There's truly something for every true crime fan. True Crime
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(00:45):
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Speaker 2 (01:16):
Hello and welcome to the Cult Vault podcast, your dedicated
podcast for uncovering the darkest corners of cults and coercive control.
I'm your host, Casey, and I want to start by
thanking each and every one of you for tuning in.
Your support fuels our deep dives into these critical issues.
Before we get started, a word of caution. Today's episode

(01:38):
may contain discussions on abuse, including graphic descriptions of abuse,
and covers a variety of human rights violations that may
be triggering for some listeners. Please consider this as a
trigger warning and proceed with caution. I'm thrilled to announce
that I'll be appearing at Crime Con UK in London
on the seventh and eighth of June twenty twenty five

(01:58):
and again in Manchester on the twenty seventh of September
twenty twenty five. Join me and a host of world
leading experts, advocates and noisemakers at the heart of the
true crime community. This is the UK biggest true crime
event and you won't want to miss it. Use the
code cult ceult for ten percent of your tickets, and

(02:19):
remember there are flexible tickets and payment plans available to
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and it's always my favorite weekend of the year. I
hope to see some of you there And for those
who want even more from the Court fol podcast, you
can access early ad free content by supporting me at
patreon dot com forward slash the cult Fault, where every

(02:40):
pledge not only gives you exclusive access but also directly
supports the continuation of this work. Thank you again for
your support and your listenership. Now let's unlock the vault Jell. Hello. Hello,
Hello listeners, and welcome back to another episode of the
Cult fol podcast. I'm your host, Kate, and today I'm

(03:01):
joined by a new expert who's come to share their
expertise with us on the podcast, and I'm really looking
forward to linking their expertise with coercive control that we
see beyond cults but also cults as well. So hello,
and welcome to the show. Sonic Day.

Speaker 3 (03:22):
Hi there, thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 2 (03:25):
I usually start these interviews by asking people to introduce
themselves to the listeners.

Speaker 3 (03:32):
So I'm Sona Damon. I'm a licensed marriage and family
therapist based in Los Angeles, and I work primarily with
survivors of relational trauma, so trauma and relationships like obviously
cult survivors, domestic violence, child abuse, trafficking, and all sorts
of different ways in which we can be traumatized within

(03:54):
relationship to other people. I use EMDR, cognitive behavior therapy,
positive psychology, feminist theory, and I've also had a year
of training and existential therapy.

Speaker 2 (04:08):
Wow, oh my goodness, feminist theory. Can you talk me
through quite a bit a nutsheale? What that is?

Speaker 3 (04:16):
Yeah? So, feminist theory is a smaller modality of psychotherapy
that's based around sort of this the principles of empowerment
and questioning whether mental health symptoms or a reaction to
navigating what it feels like to be like in an

(04:36):
I'm going to say an opress group as a woman.
In most societies, that's the case. And what happens in
feminist theory that's a little different than other types of
psychotherapy is that we look at sort of society's view
of us versus what we know is true inside. And
then there's a lot of like empowerment through volunteer. So

(04:57):
like if you have an experience, like let's say you
you did survive a cult, you would go out and
you would do some kind of service to help other survivors.
And then there's this link with giving back and what
you've experienced and healing from it. And so they look
at that and they study that. Another piece that makes
feminist theory a little different is therapists will often self

(05:18):
disclose with consent and if it's merited right, if the
client would benefit and they are okay with it, then
there's a little more of like a balanced power dynamic
in the psychotherapy. The therapist doesn't necessarily act as an expert.
We're working together solving this mystery, and you leave with
self trust and empowerment.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
That all sounds so incredible. I'm already I'm already thinking
of so many different questions that I can ask you
related to just that alone. I wonder how you got
into this type of work. Is it's something that you
always had an interest in, something you always knew you
would end up working in, or did you kind of

(05:57):
accidentally find yourself working in the kind of psychotherapy and
trauma field.

Speaker 3 (06:04):
Interesting. I started out thinking that I wanted to work
in government and policy, so I began doing student government
and journalism tasks, and then I transitioned over to working
with young children. Quite honestly, I got really into music
and I thought, oh, well, maybe I'll want to perform
and build out this music career, which did not happen,

(06:26):
and being a school teacher would be like a nice
counterbalance to that. I find music ironically incredibly healing. We
had music long before therapy, and love lyrics of music,
all of that really was healing me. So I think
that drew me that direction. And as I was teaching,
I received something called the Pearson Teacher Fellowship, which was
a teaching fellowship sponsor Bry Pearson that goes into like preschools,

(06:50):
and we were Our aim was to teach reading to
children younger than it's traditional in the US. We were
trying to teach reading sooner to people. And of course,
if you can learn to read a little bit younger,
you start out in kindergarten already knowing how to read,
you're going to have like a better chance at learning
things faster. And while I was doing that teaching fellowship,

(07:11):
I just kept finding myself drawn to children that were
having social problems and mental health problems. They were just
so sweet and a lot of them were brilliant. And
I ended up going back to school and getting a
second bachelor's degree in psychology. I wasn't really sure what
I was going to want to do with it, but
I knew that I was more interested in talking to
those kids, I'm learning about those issues. And so my

(07:32):
first job after my psychology degree was working in a
safe house for traffic children. And it was the first
ever safe house for traffic children. It was based in
San Francisco, and it was a partnership between a couple
nonprofits and just a very generous woman who loaned a
house to try to help children. And yeah, and it

(07:54):
was a great little job. I learned a lot about
counseling from a very basic perspective of being right in
there with those those young women all day. And as
I left that position, I I, this is an odd one,
but I started working as a personal assistant to Gigi Jordan,

(08:15):
who was a pharmaceutical executive who needed a live in
preschool teacher, and I just kind of wanted to move
my tools around and like, see how this job would go.
It sounded really interesting and exciting. She had a young
son who had autism, and so I traveled with her

(08:36):
as as he received a like some FDA approved stem
cell transplant to treat some of the autism symptoms. This
was in two thousand and seven, and I don't know
how old you are, Katie, but in two thousand and seven.
In the US, stem cell transplants were considered like cloning
and like really scary and knowing wanted them. Now, of

(08:58):
course they heal all sorts of audio immune problems, and
we're using them. I've heard of people using them to
treat like muscle pain and different things now, But back
then it was a really big deal. And as I
traveled with them, I started noticing things fell off, and
I wasn't quite sure what to make of it or
how that would be real, you know, And so I

(09:23):
ended up leaving the job after like trying to get
help for the child because something fell off. Other people
filed CPS reports around that that they like trying to
help him, but there was just nothing we could do.
The family was so wealthy they could just bop from
state to state in the United States. If you file
a CPS report or a child trafficking suspicion and the

(09:45):
family or the perpetrator lives in California and then they
moved to Nevada, or then they moved to New York.
From state to state to state, those reports they're gone.
There's no nationalized database. So you think people who have
access to resources, they can just bottle around, and they
do so as soon as a report comes. Oh, let's
switch counties in some states, or just states all together.

(10:08):
So that experience really was challenging for me as a
young woman. I ended up I had applied to like
a bunch of master's programs for social work and psychology,
and I found out that Jude had been murdered by

(10:30):
his mom. Even though that you know, we had tried
to help, there was nothing that we could do. And
I know this is a really hard story, but this
is why I became a trauma therapist. This really just
sort of shifted everything in my world because I knew
something was wrong, but I wasn't sure what to do
about it, and everything everyone around me tried to do

(10:51):
did not work. And then, you know, you could follow
this case if you wanted, but you'd see that it
went on for like ten plus years and ended up
in the Supreme Court in twenty twenty three before she
ended up taking her own life sadly, you know, somewhat
somewhat of a epic journey, and just kind of watching

(11:13):
that dynamic play out and dealing with my own emotions
through it because I cared for him and I loved him.
And I tried to do what I could to make
things right, as did a lot of people that were
in his world, but it was just beyond our control, right,
That's how it is sometimes. And through surviving that, I

(11:35):
went back to school and I got a master's degree
and decided to become an LMFT, which is a licensed
marriage and family therapist. So I have this very real,
lived experience of having been sort of I don't know,
blinded to a psychopaths charisma, I guess, right, even though
there's a lot of wounds with people who commit crimes

(11:56):
that heinous and then continue to exploit political connect to
stay free rather than take accountability. Yeah, So I feel
like I've got this great blend of like lived personal
experience and training and genuine passion that I can bring
into my sessions. And that is pretty much my history.

(12:17):
Everybody ends up in their job somehow. I do sometimes
wonder like what would have happened if music had taken off,
Like would I've ever healed inside, or you know, would
I have been able to show up and help people
in some kind of way. I don't know, But I
love my job, and I love all my clients and
all of the beautiful stories I've seen of healing. Yeah,

(12:43):
thank you.

Speaker 2 (12:45):
When we do this kind of work, and you know,
we study psychology and we go through all of these
processes of understanding, you know, like how the nervous system
works and how the psyche works. It's really different to
have any kind of magical thinking or to not be
supercinical around any type of magical thinking. But sometimes I

(13:07):
do wonder if everything happens for a reason. You know,
it's one of those cliched sayings, but it's almost like
you are where you're supposed to be through a set
of really tragic circumstances.

Speaker 3 (13:22):
Well, I don't know. What I do know is that
I have a lot of drive towards feeling good and
feeling healthy, and I honestly think that I just sort
of went the direction that made my body feel more
calm and relaxed less adournaline and cortisop and I really

(13:44):
do believe, you know, in these principles are feminist theory,
where if we give back in areas where we've had wounds,
we feel energized and empowered, and it's good for our
tummy biome, it's good for our brain chemistry. We have
this natural sort of energy towards helping others. There there's
something in the integrity of that and the passion of that,

(14:05):
and and so so there we are. You know, if
you if you follow, yeah, you're healing, you might end
up in a good spot that feels better for you.

Speaker 2 (14:16):
That makes a lot of sense the Tommy biome. I
know that if I am anxious or stressed, I feel
in my stomach orfore I feel it anywhere else. Like
it's like, I don't know if I'm going to be sick.
I don't know if you know, I don't know what's
going on. Yeah, that's that's wow. That's really interesting to me.
On a personal level, everybody that's listener is going to

(14:37):
be like, Casey, move on about yourself. So and I
have been informed that you're writing a book When Dangerous
Feels Like Home. I don't know where you're up to
in that process, but I'm really interested in learning more
about what the book is going to be, about, what
inspired it, and you know, what's the journey looked like

(14:59):
so far?

Speaker 3 (15:00):
So uh, When Dangerous Feels Like Home is a true
crime inflected memoir about my experience as live in personal
assistant to Gigi and what I went through trying to
create a nationalized database for child to based reports and
human trafficking reports. And in this book, I sort of

(15:21):
paralleled that experience with my own childhood and my own
sort of choices and who I got close to, and
I examined, you know, why why did I end up there?
And I also examined like what am I going to
do with this and what am I going to use
my life for? And it talks about why I chose
to become a therapist and how I figured out how

(15:42):
to heal I it's it's a memoir like these are
these are my stories and my experiences. So parts of
it I have an odd humor. A lot of traumatized
people do. So parts of it are funny. I don't
know how that'll feel for everybody parts of it, but
it's real. It's human, and I hope that it is

(16:04):
something that is normalizing and validating and empowering for people
who have had real life show up and need to
figure out how to organize themselves and learn to you know,
you mentioned like Bran chemistry and tell me biome learn
how to read their body and keep it grounded and
make good quality choices and I sort of I don't know.

(16:27):
I mean, I feel like I love cognitive behavior therapy,
which is another form of therapy, and I feel like
this book really shows how you integrate cognitive behavior therapy
in your life without using clinical terms. Yeah, it's just
sort of my legacy project project. I don't have children,
it's not gonna happen. I'm an older gal. I have

(16:48):
beautiful dogs and partnerships, and I love writing. I receive
the Hedgebook Residency, which is a writing residency that only
two percent of applicants are awarded. It's highly competitive and
I've never written anything before. When I got into the group,
all the girls were like already published and had applied
like multiple times, and I was just in there. But

(17:11):
I care so much and I poured so much of
my heart into this book, and I really I want
someone to find it and say, okay, this this makes
sense to me, and I have hope too, and I
can go use my life to do something good.

Speaker 2 (17:27):
It sounds incredible. I mean terms like EMDR and CBT,
whether it's the acronym or you know, the full term,
it can feel quite intimidating if you don't really understand
what those terms mean. So to have like an accessible

(17:47):
book that is relatable through human experiences, human stories, real
things that have happened to real people, and also kind
of be like a gateway or entrance into some of
these clinical terms that intimidate. And that sounds like a
win wind like it sounds amazing.

Speaker 3 (18:04):
Yeah, I tried to shy away from the clinical terms
as much as possible and just sort of show the
healing journey and just what I went through and how
things kind of clicked and feel better now, and you know,
life is still happening. I live in downtown Los Angeles,
and right now we have like ice rays and really

(18:25):
sad things. Like I go outside and walk around my
neighborhood and I I see really sad things. I look
people in the eye and ask people, you know, good morning,
how are you like normal day to day life? And
there is a deep anxiety and sadness watching what's happening
in here right now, watching people hide in their homes

(18:45):
or get just sort of like pulled out with proper paperwork.
We don't know where they go. And in the midst
of this, I am very much falling back on the
things I learned throughout the course of my life, navigating
this Chigi situation and navigating you know, challenges in relationships

(19:06):
with dark triads, people who are don't have the best
intention for other people. And what I do is I
just go back to those basic self care CBT skills,
like I go outside and I know, Okay, I'm gonna
breathe more air in my belly, and I'm gonna let
myself have more water, and I'm gonna go on a
long exercise walk or do some planks if I don't

(19:28):
feel safe going outside or I felt relatively safe going
outside as a white woman who's a citizen, right, I
do find myself carrying my passport, which before, you know,
those would be something we locked away for special trips,
but now we're like carrying them around just in case.
And when life shifts and you've had these hard experiences

(19:50):
and you've healed them, you've got extra tools so that
you can survive well and be calm and strategic and
show up for your people that you care about the
best way you can.

Speaker 2 (20:20):
The title of the book, when Dangerous Feels Like Home.
It's such a powerful title because even you just describing
your neighborhood and where you live. You know, that title
can apply to certain parts of Los Angeles right now,
certain parts in other areas of America and other parts
of the world. But it also made me think about

(20:41):
this phenomenon that's kind of just been given this kind
of placeholder name because I don't really know if it's
the right term to describe it or if we really
understand what this phenomenon is of the cult hopping. So
somebody goes from you know, one abusive group to another,
or one abusive environment, I would like to say to another,

(21:05):
you know, not intentionally. I think sometimes exploitative individuals will
sense vulnerabilities that they can exploit, and that is often
why individuals might find themselves targeted upon exiting a cult
being recruited into another psychologically abusive environment. I would like

(21:25):
to ask you what your thoughts are on the psychological
similarities between cults and abusive relationships and why you think
this cult hopping tonology exists to describe like a set
of people that hop from you know, one abuse to another.

Speaker 3 (21:43):
Okay, I think that's a really nice question to look at,
right because if you are a survivor of any of
these instances, or you're just really curious about it, watching
dynamics onfold sociologically or with your neighbors, or you just
you know, there's a cult in your neighborhood. What is
going on, what happens for people is basically called like

(22:07):
a trauma reenactment. This is what we think, you know,
at this stage, at least from what I've learned and studied.
And the idea of a trauma reenactment isn't necessarily like
I am consciously going out trying to find challenging people
and not notice the red flag that there's something challenging
with them. It's really like we haven't tended to our wounds.
This is my theory and what I find as people

(22:30):
do emd R therapy and CBT therapy. If we haven't
tended to our wounds and we go out in the
world and we still have these unmet needs that these
communities are these people were tending to, we might not
even notice the red flags that other people have similar
traits or behavior. We just want to want to feel
whole and connected and all these things. So for example,

(22:54):
you know, like in my situation, if anyone does feel
curious and wants to read my book, you'll see a
lot of parallels between my childhood that sort of just
matched me up just right to feel like Gigi was
a smart, safe job for me. But a lot of
young women, you know that grew up with like two

(23:14):
parents that got along and siblings and were doing sports
and like more typical things, they would have gone to
that interview and been like, this is fucking weirderd and left.
Sorry for the f bum but but they that's the reality, right,
people would see it, But I didn't see it because
of untended two wounds. I didn't know the woones were there.

(23:36):
And that absolutely happens with communities too, right, And like
let's say someone's in like a twelve step group that
gets a little subculty and a leader forms and bosses
them around and bullies them and it fills the mother wound.
Or let's say the same thing could happen with like

(23:57):
a mindfulness group. You know, the person might need like
a like a parenting figure and not know that they
can do that for themselves. Now, if they sit down
and they look at all those wounds and they make
sense of them and meaning of them and focusing on
their own empowerment, and it is not necessarily like like

(24:20):
a stupidity or a self blame, or like something you're
doing wrong. It's literally like there's something you can't see
because of the reality of how you were presented with
information in this world.

Speaker 2 (24:34):
Right, and.

Speaker 3 (24:37):
My my sort of go to when I have a
new client and they say, hey, I have I think
I have CPTSD. And my childhood was like this, and
then my husband was like this, and then I broke
up and I dated this guy over here, and wow,
it was so similar, but twisted in to the left

(24:58):
instead of to the right. What I usually will have
people do is we'll sit down and we'll create a
timeline together. It's called a trauma timeline. And on the
top of the line, I'll put a plus and on
the bottom of the line, I'll put a minus. And
I'll just say, let's just go through your life together,
and let's write down all these wounds that in relationships

(25:18):
that were negative for you. And then let's go over
the line and let's write down all the things you
enjoyed and ways in which you survived during that time
on top of the wine, so we can see life
is full and rich and you've got some good lessons,
but you got some hard ones that were too hard
to look at, and then we just start breaking those
down as like emd R targets or processing verbally about

(25:39):
how we're gonna make meaning and learning as we go
about regulating our adrenaline cortisol that go off when we
think about these things when we remember them and noticing
what that feels like, and then it eventually, you know,
I don't ever want anyone to leave therapy with me

(26:01):
as a private practice. In my personal private practice, I
do like some EAP work and different things too, which
is a whole different modality. But when I have a
client in my private practice, what we will do is
make sure when they leave they have a really good
understanding of what healthy relationships look and feel like, and
what it feels like in the body when you're excited

(26:23):
versus scared, Like when this is a healthy next move
and that feels different than when hey, ajournaline and cortisol
is going off because I got complimented all day long
via text, and I know something's not right about that,

(26:43):
but it also was so flattering and like we could
sit down and kind of you would define and pay
attention to your own body and me making of your
own experiences to know when like when do I when
is this anxiety? And when is this so real threat?
What's the difference between anxiety and and excitement?

Speaker 2 (27:04):
Oh my goodness. Yeah, there are moments where you're you know,
you can feel anxious about something and feel like you're
in danger, but actually it's just you. You know, maybe
how to comment that somebody said at the school gate
and you're rolling it around in your brain and you'll
feel like you're in danger and you're like, hang on, aver,
let's just yeah. To be able to have a set

(27:25):
of skills that can help you in day to day
exchanges where things like that happen is invaluable. I don't
know the ins and outs of these different modalities. I
only know the surface stuff from the psychology masters that
I've done. But EMDR and cbt I Movement Desensitization and

(27:48):
Reprocessing therapy. Can you give us sort of like an
overview in a nutshell description of EMDR, how you as
a practic to use EMDR and how EMDR might be
able to help individuals that have experienced quite even controlling behavior,

(28:12):
whether that be in an abusive home or workplace or cult. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (28:19):
So I love EMDR. The first time I did an
MDR protocol as a client, I was twenty I think
I was twenty seven, and that I was doing it
while you was murdered. Actually, I was doing EMDR with
my therapist during that time, So it was my god,

(28:40):
mind blow right because I could go in in real
time and like process what I was feeling and remembering
while it was in the news, because it's just like
a lot. But I'm glad I had that little buffer
of EMDR to help me in a matrix of how
to think about these wounds and organize them. And you know,
you know when I have people do that trauma timeline,

(29:01):
I was talking about a moment ago where when we
first Meete and me look at like what are the experiences,
what are the protective factors, the things that you enjoy
that made life meaningful and beautiful. At the same time,
we are able to pol out emd OUR targets by
doing that together. And an emd R target is a
memory that is cringy, shameful, scary. Your body reacts in

(29:26):
some kind of way when you think about it, and
the event itself has lended to the way you feel
about yourself. So you think of Cognitive behavior therapy has
like three basic tasks you're doing. You're learning about mindfulness,
you're learning about common cognitive distortions, and how to thought

(29:47):
restructure look at fear versus fact when you look at
your thinking, and then you're going out your living life
and you're extinguishing inaccurate anxious reactions through exposure and reality
testing with mindfulness and thought restructuring. Right now, this idea
of thought restruction and CBT, the word sound so creepy,
especially if you've survived co control, but unfortunately you know

(30:10):
that's the word they use. But the idea of thought
restriction is, hey, there's like twenty five or so cognitive
distortions most humans do to some degree, you think, like catastrophizing,
black and white thinking, personalizing. These terms we hear all
the time that we even if you have social media,
which I don't recommend to anyone, but here we go.

(30:31):
Lots of people have social media and you're scrolling and
you're looking at Instagram ads. And I'm in my late forties, right,
so I look at an Instagram ad and it's going
to be pushing on my wounds, trying to sell me
stuff if I don't buy this lotion, I'm gonna have
all these horrible things happen to my face and all

(30:52):
this stuff, right, like, it's going to push on catastrophizing,
or it's going to push on black and white thinking.
And so one of the benefits to doing this kind
of therapy and abt as you've really learned to pay
attention to the world around you and how you're manipulated
in different ways with fear. So it's makes you a
better shopper, a better consumer, a better at paying attention.

(31:14):
And so the idea of these cognitive distortions are these
common errors that we make as humans, is that they're
influenced by schemas. And schema is a word that's used
in computer programming, but it is also really helpful in
thinking about the way our minds learn to, I don't know,
process who we are based on our lived experiences. So

(31:36):
eschema in cognitive behavior therapy is basically like how you
feel about yourself as a result of what you've lived
through and what you like. So if you've survived a cult, right,
or you've survived living with an entourage of people who
are kissing up to a psychopath, then you are going
to have certain beliefs about yourself based on some of

(31:57):
those memories, and an em DR, you're able to look
at those memories and the way you feel about yourself
as a result of having experienced them. And I'm so visual,
like hesea, I'm gonna.

Speaker 2 (32:10):
Show you image. So I don't know how to explain
it unless I show you an image.

Speaker 3 (32:14):
But so often what I'll do is I will be
real direct with my clients. And I think having a
therapist who's who's open is super helpful if you're if
you're planning on doing therapy, you know, feel into how
it feels to be with a therapist. But so EMDR
has this like basic line of this protocol of things
we do with the client and with each target, we

(32:37):
go in and we focus on the worst visual of
the memory. And if you're listening to this, don't do
it in your mind or try to just let yourself
listen to the process. Right, You focus it on a
worst visual of a memory, and then you track how
it makes you feel about yourself, the negative cognition, and
then you track the positive cognition, how it makes how

(32:57):
it should what's the positive belief? So I could give
you an example it's just like a random one. I
don't know if you want to throw out like a
random example, but I could talk through the process of
EMDR if you'd like, and how you sort of end
up in this position of having like a good resolve
in the way you feel about yourself and through a

(33:19):
really hard memory. And so the idea is you go
in and you look at the hard memories that influence
how you feel about yourself and you face them almost
like CBT, we call it an imaginal exposure, but with EMDR,
it's a real memory, so it's not you're not imagining
it happened in the future. You're going in and you're
clearing the past. Those two therapists go so brilliantly together,

(33:44):
and oftentimes they compete for things, so the research isn't
that it's frustrating. I wish people would blend them together
and research EMDR as in it.

Speaker 2 (33:55):
Oft I talk about this all the time. I talk
about this kind of and it goes back to what
you were saying about there not being a national database,
you know, for things like CPS reports. There's no holistic
approach to this work. And I find that with the

(34:18):
coercive control and the work that we look at here
on the podcast, and what my master's research was based
around is this idea that everybody is looking at the
same stuff, but each in their own corner of the room,
and the room is something that we should all be
paying attention to, you know, holistically as a group. And
unfortunately that's just not the way the way that it works.

(34:41):
People are, yeah, doing their own thing, but everyone's doing
the same thing. Everybody's talking about thought reform and indoctrination
and brainwashing and radicalization and coercive control, and you know,
essentially all of these things just describe a set of
you know, psychological techniques that people are subjected to for

(35:04):
the same result, the same end result of controlling a person.
So that's my soap box as everybody listening all though,
And it sounds like you have kind of those similar
difficulties in having like less of a holistic approach between
different therapeutic modalities, even if they do complement one another.

Speaker 3 (35:21):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's probably one of the strengths
of like having loved experience, right, Like you don't need
the credit, you have the actual integrity and drive to
try to get people healed because you know, it's good
for your body, and it's good for theirs, and it's
good for creativity, innovation, all of it to be sharing space.

Speaker 2 (35:42):
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean there's so much to talk about
with with just even these two particular types of therapy.
But I'm wondering, through your personal experiences and your professional experiences,
what do you think are some of the early warning

(36:03):
signs that we might overlook when not so much entering
into relationships or groups, but when we find ourselves interacting

(36:23):
with people and there are warning signs in red flags?
What do you find are often some things that are
overlooked or I guess kind of you think yourself out
of the doubt.

Speaker 3 (36:35):
Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. I feel like everyone
thinks about that all the time, like what were the
red flags? What could I have done to prevent myself
from stepping into that one or re enacting in this
other way that I didn't see coming? And you know
what I think personally looking at my own life and

(36:57):
having introspection and then studying all these stuff tools and modalities,
and then of course, you know, working as a therapist
with others, is that each one of us have our
own sort of set of personal red flags right, like
things we won't notice based on how we grew up
and doing that introspective work, being brave and looking at

(37:17):
your hard memories, taking good care of yourself, eating, sleeping, exercising,
being creative so that you can be paying attention and
notice when when things don't feel right. You know, when
when something doesn't feel right, when there's a threat, Our

(37:39):
body will will tell us the adrenaline and cortisol when
we sort of notice, like hey, pattern recognition, this person
said this, but now they did that, and now they're
saying this will tell us if we know how to
like notice a tummy gurgle, or notice our jaws tiding,
or am I talking faster? Or am I breathing more

(38:00):
chest in my belly? Like there's actual cues if we
really slow down and make the time to learn how
to read ourself and our own little kind of like
great red flags. But separate from going in and doing
au tun of timeline and EMDR and all these tools
that I have that I do with my clients. There's
a bunch of different ways you can do it, with

(38:20):
different kinds of therapies, healing modalities all that, But separate
from that, I would say that there probably is like
a I'm gonna say, like a basic red flag out
there that you could like watch for or listen to,
right And maybe it's the CBT therapist in me, you know,

(38:42):
setting about thought restriction and cognitive disortions. But I think
that there are sort of like basic things when when
someone is telling you things that are inconsistent, that's a
huge red flag. If they said this, but did that
and you're noticing and it feels weird, that's a red
if if someone is doing things that how can I

(39:04):
say it? I want to say like manipulative, but how
do you quantify that where you like notice something's manipulative,
you know, but but manipulate sy like a red flag
to me, Like if someone doesn't care about my needs
and I'm saying, hey that's too loud, or hey I

(39:27):
I need this, I need that, and they just like
get activated and then they tell me what they need
louder and it's not like a cooperative we're listening to
each other's needs and working together. That's a red flag, right,
Like to me, if someone is pushing me and not
caring or curious about what my needs are, or if

(39:48):
someone is lying and there's inconsistencies. Those are red flags
for me where I'm basically like, mm, I don't think
this person's qualified to be super close to me. They
can absolutely exist in the world and learn their lessons
with other people. Sure, great, I wish them well. But
like my inner circle that I know I can do
like high high end, creative, meaningful and pactful work with

(40:08):
it needs like a consistent set of like I don't know,
like integrity, And I think if we're paying attention, we
can notice when people don't have that or or when
our bodies are reacting to that. But is there right
like love bombing? I mean, shoot, how do you like
a lot of people just get excited and text with

(40:30):
their friends all day? Like I don't know. I yeah,
there's some sort of love bombing that happens where like
you can tell someone's trying to manipulate you by like
complimenting you a million times, and you're like, wait, this
feels fake, But you got to listen to your body good.

Speaker 2 (40:45):
Yeah, I mean I say this sometimes. You know, my
partner and I we've been together for ten years now,
and I'm still waiting for the other shoe to drop
because he is genuinely just a really great guy who
makes me feel great and is really comfortable, mentory and
super love Bobby, and I'm just like, when's it? And
he edits my stuff, so he'll in it as well.

(41:06):
But the difficulty is, as you said, it's kind of discerning.
It's discerning the difficulties over potential abuse or difficult moments
in a relationship. Oh, the toxic moments, you know, because

(41:27):
you can have an argument with your partner or your
boss or somebody in your church and you know, you're
adrenaline and your your you know, your body can go
into a different state and you can feel like you're
in danger, but it's just not quite abusive. And it's
hard to recognize the difference between those two things. And

(41:51):
sometimes you might think you're just having a falling out
with somebody, and actually what's happening is the you know,
the the love bombing stage has ended, and now you're
entering into that next stage of you know, isolation and
increased dependency and you know, the funneling into the center
of the abusive environment.

Speaker 3 (42:12):
Yep. Yeah. And so my sort of go to check
for myself and what I talk through with others and
one thing. I had an amazing professor in grad school.
He was so fun and funny, and he would always
say like, there be comes back to curiosity. And I

(42:32):
was like, you know what, maybe he's right. And I
started thinking about that in my own therapy and as
I was working with clients. There is an incredible amount
of power and curiosity. If you are talking with someone
and they are not curious about your needs, that's a
that's a big red flag, right. And so let's say
someone is love warming you, like in that example, whether

(42:53):
they're a coworker, a creative partner, or someone you're dating.
If you are getting all of this good praise, praise, praise, praise, praise,
and then all of a sudden here in the States
we call it nagging, Like someone just starts giving you
like these little put downs. If that's happening, you're getting
these little negative inputs, negative inputs, little slight, little baby

(43:16):
put downs, and you're like, this doesn't feel right, and
you bring it up to the person and you say, hey,
you know, I noticed you complimented all these things about me,
but then today you just said that, and I'm curious,
what's happening for you? Why do you think you said
that for me, and you'll see their response. Oh, you're right.

(43:39):
I was upset and I wasn't calming myself down. I
don't think I exercised today, That's not true. I love you.
I do think you're an amazing cook.

Speaker 2 (44:09):
That's really interesting to me because I was then gonna say, well,
what if you don't feel confident enough to have that
conversation But that answers itself, doesn't it, Or you don't
feel like you can bring that up to somebody, there's
a that's a red flag on its own.

Speaker 3 (44:23):
There's a power dynamic there, yeah, or just a need, right,
Like when I think about kind of regulating my brain
chemistry so that I am like in the best possible
shape to show up for big, weird life transitions like
what I experienced in my neighborhood, right, I think about

(44:44):
adrenaline cortisol and adrenaline cortisol in our minds are released
through like the lizard brain, like activation of threat comes in, right,
and adorenalinin cortisol go off. And there's ways in which
we can turn the prefrontal cortex on through mindfulness, which
is a lot of what cognitive behavior therapy teaches, right,

(45:04):
so you think like breathing into your belly, all of
those things in the midst of trauma to bring yourself
down so you can think well and handle a challenge.
But there's preventatives too. And when I work for the
school district in San Francisco, I don't know which social
worker therapist came up with it, but we had this
really cool model of the brain. And so I'll show
you as a hand puppet. You do like a high

(45:26):
five hand and then you put your thumb in the middle.
In the middle, your thumb folded into the middle is
meant to represent the amidala where adrenaline and cortisol go off, right,
and the big fingers on top. Each one can represent
a form of self care that if you're engaged in
this self care, you're in a better position to read
things and show up for yourself and have hard conversations. Right.

(45:47):
This is sort of like the foundation of what every
human needs to show up. One is sleeping through the night.
You need to be able to sleep, exercise. We are animals.
We have to move our bodies. It's good for a
brain chemistry, it's good for tummy biomes, all of that, right,
and eating healthy. We have to eat healthy food. There's

(46:11):
a great book called Nutrition Essentials for Mental Health by
like in Short that talks about all these studies on nutrition.
I'm not allowed to do that, it's out of my
scope as a therapist, but there's a lot of research
on food that is good for brain chemistry and or
tummy biomes in our mental health. And then the fourth finger, right,
like you fold down all the fingers and you make
a brain. This is the prefrontal cortex folded over the megdigla.

(46:36):
So you've got eating healthy, sleeping, exercising, and then you've
got authentic relationships with yourself and others. Right, And if
you don't have good social support and you're on a date,
in the sky's spin or girl, because women are absolutely right, Like,
that's what my book is about women behaving this way.
And you're on a date and someone is love bombing

(46:56):
you and you're getting all these compliments, all these compliments,
all these compliments, and then you're on like four dates
and five dates and ten dates, and and this person
starts putting you down a little bit. Well, if you
haven't been building out like strong social supports outside of
that relationship, you don't have a friend you can check
in with and say, hey, this is weird. They told

(47:18):
me that they're gonna lead me if I get fat,
But everything else has been perfect. Right. If you don't
have anyone to tell or talk that through with, you're
not gonna say anything. You're gonna be like, well, what
if I say something, I'm gonna have no one like
there's yeah. Absolutely, to be able to show up for

(47:41):
life on a day to day basis and control our
own ajournalining cortisol. We need sleeping through the night, exercise,
healthy food, and authentic relationships with ourselves and others. We
need each other.

Speaker 2 (47:55):
Those people absolutely, And you can sew see as well
how you would think your way out of that, you know,
think the doubts away or justify or you know, whichever,
Because I know people are very sensitive to different types
of terminology. So I try and think about all the

(48:17):
language that I'm using when I talk about these things,
and you can almost see how the in cults, especially,
you know, and I know that you know, con artists
are very good at this as well, you know, saying
a load of nothing and throwing in nuggets of truth.

(48:38):
You know, it's almost the same process where you can say,
hang on a minute, I know that what you're saying
is not accurate, it's not true, but the other things
you said were So maybe it's me or maybe I
don't know enough about it because you say things with
such charismatic conviction, and if you don't have somebody to

(48:59):
talk to about that you know and say you know,
or even just to be able to go and google
something you know, but some people might think or not
have the thought to confirm whether those things are true
or not. So it's you know, we have these opportunities
to or hopefully have these opportunities to have conversations with

(49:22):
people where we say, what do you think about this?
Because I'm just not sure whether that's about somebody saying
something negative or telling you an outright lie. I think
I'm not very eloquent. I say this all the time.
It's really hard for me to say what I'm trying
to say in a clear way, So I apologize. But

(49:44):
what do you think are some pieces of advice that
you would give to people who are perhaps stuck in
certain situations because of the kind of bifector of f
shame and intimidation. Sometimes people you know, I've been in

(50:05):
situations where I feel like I can't say anything or
take action or do anything because of fear, intimidation, and shame,
which are the staples of coercive control. I wonder what
your advice is to empower people that find themselves unable
to make change because of those psychological factors.

Speaker 3 (50:25):
Well, first off, what you said was was brilliant and
made a lot of sense, right, Like I think you know,
you described in a really like clear way for someone
who has been in a group dynamic where things like
that have happened, and hopefully people who have not can
really piece that together and hear that it happens slowly

(50:46):
over time, sort of like love bombing and people putting
in the little negative digs to devalue you, but they
start doing it with your concept of reality. And that
is like brilliant, Like that's that's what it feels like
to be.

Speaker 2 (51:00):
And I wanted to say, you've said it. You've said it.

Speaker 3 (51:03):
I well, because I paraphrase clients all day. People tell
me what they're thinking, or they tell me some wild story,
and then I got to say it back to them
to make sure I heard it right or else. We're
talking about two of the faces. This is it's like
all day long. So so my thought on that is,
And forgive me, I forgot what the question was, but

(51:25):
I just I mean you, I had to mention that
because that made a lot of sense. I really felt
into how those two are somewhere. What did you say that?

Speaker 2 (51:33):
Just wondering what your advice is around empowering people to
make change when they are constrained by fear, intimidation and shame.

Speaker 3 (51:46):
Okay, I'm taking a second because I feel like I
feel like it kind of goes back to that social
support piece of our intrinsic human needs. Right, Intimidation and
shame are really social things that happen for us, and
as humans, we need to be connected to other humans

(52:08):
in order to survive. As much of an introvert as
I feel like I am, I need to like go
stare at the wall and be mindful and read in
order to get my energy back to show up for
other people and like do stuff. I know extroverts they
like to go out and like hang out with other
people and party or go for a run with a
group or something, and then they're energized again. But nonetheless,

(52:30):
wherever you fall on that introvert extrovert spectrum. You need
some level of social support and community in order to survive,
and you think like evolutionary right. Evolutionarily as beings, humans
are adrenaline and cortisolt. They go off when we're threatened,
when our life or death is threatened in some way,

(52:52):
and so you think like social anxiety or bullied or
being left out in some way. Like if if we
were in a smaller community, let's say we're like the
first humans, if you believe in Adam and Eve, or
let's say we're just like the first tribe of humans
that exist on one continent for whatever reason we ended

(53:14):
up there. We would need to kind of huddle together
and work together in order to build out a town
and build out houses. And if we wanted to roam
over to another town where there was more natural food growing,
we would have to stay together in a pack. And
if one of us was getting bullied or left out

(53:35):
or somehow didn't fit in with the other humans and
they were sort of straggling in the back, a bear
would grab them and eat them, or a wolf or something.
I know this is a crazy sounding example, but if
you if you stay with me, there is like this
piece of If we're not in their if we're not
in the herd, we're not in the circle of humans,
we're gonna get eaten by animals or we're gonna get
left out. Like we need to be together. And that's

(53:56):
why bullying feels like really scary. Who who cares if
some girl in pilates doesn't like me? If I can
go over to Orange theory and those girls are great,
Like who cares? Right? Totally illogical, like maybe orange theories
closer to the house, these are goofy gems and in

(54:17):
la area. So so point being like, we react to
being left out even though logically we know this isn't
a big deal. There's other bits of humans, there's other
places to go, because our brain chemistry goes off because
it's like a real basic drive that's connected to who
we are as beings. And even though we can see

(54:37):
like fear intimidation, shame someone leaving us out and isn't
necessarily a big deal, we still react to it in
a small way. Even if some people cut in front
of me in line at Starbucks, that kind of giggle.
They don't care, right, that's fear intimidation shame in a
sense because I am feeling left out and I'm getting bullied,

(54:58):
and I can't really say anything because I don't have
five friends with me to say, hey, did you guys
just cut in line in front of us?

Speaker 2 (55:03):
What's going on?

Speaker 3 (55:06):
These are sort of silly examples, but this is I'm
trying to describe that, Like, hey, this happens all the
time in our brain chemistry, and it's more tied to
how we are as animals just beaks, right, Like, our
brain chemistry is reacting to the threat of being left
out because as we were forming as communities, if we
were left out, we would die. Now not so much
the case, but our brain chemistry still reacts that way.

(55:26):
Just like and this is kind of a grist example.
I'm sorry, Casey, but when I have tummy girgles too,
and so like, if someone says something mean to me
and I'm like, oh, no, I misread this person, and
now I got to have a hard conversation. I totally
want to go to the bathroom because my body wants
to drop everything so I could run fast if it's
a threat, because that's how we survived as animals to

(55:50):
form like these cool communities and towns and countries and
our interconnected planet.

Speaker 2 (55:59):
Yeah, this is this is endlessly fascinating for me. I'm
thinking all the time about how this relates to cultic environments,
and cults are just heightened extremist, radical subcultures. So all
of these real life applications that you're describing can be

(56:21):
directly applied to cults. And you just think about the
dial is turned up to eleven, and that is the
same processes work, but just in a very insular, extremist
way in cultic environments. So it might not be an
interaction in Starbucks that is unsettling. It might be like
a act of public ritualistic humiliation, you know, where you're

(56:45):
called out in front of a group of people. But
it's the same thing, right, You're on your own against
a group of people, and you can't say anything because
of the same mechanisms of fear, intimidation and shade. This
is just haven't I have a whole page of notes.
I've just been scribbling it down as we've been Okay, Yeah,
but when I go quiet and I'm just sitting here nodded,

(57:06):
I'm writing, yeah, this is this is just I mean,
you've mentioned a few things and nutrition essentials, a few
different authors, practitioners, and obviously different therapy modalities. But when
it comes to tools, books, practices and things that you
recommend to individuals that have experienced trauma from all areas

(57:33):
of life, what what would be some tools that you
would direct them towards so that they can do their
own sort of homework or learning outside of your professional capacity.

Speaker 3 (57:49):
So so one one book I recommend pretty much across
the board to everybody is called Full catashphe Living by
John Cabotson, and it talks about mindfulness from the perspective
of cognitive behavior therapy. So you get a lot of
understanding about adrenaline, cortisol, the amid dele versus the prefrontal cortex,

(58:10):
and how to start learning to tell when you're dysregulated
or alerted, and how to bring the body down and
how to be able to think strategically in the midst
of hard things. When people do like Special Forces training
or seers training, which is like advanced military training in
the US, they give a lot of emphasis on learning

(58:34):
to breathe in the belly and learning to keep the
body calm when something hard happens so that they can
think strategically, right, how do you solve this problem? If
you're a firefighter and you're going out into the world
and your job is to risk your life day in
and day out and walk through scary, hard places, you

(58:54):
are being trained like, hey, this is how you keep
your head, this is how you keep strategics. That's not religion,
that's not spirituality. That's basic Like, hey, this is how
brain chemistry works. How do you drive this thing? And
so I love Foctastrophe Living by John cavits In because
it's the it's the story of the creation of the

(59:15):
Mindful the Bace Stress Reduction Program, which is basically like
how to keep calm and strategic when you have heart disease,
And it's a bunch of studies on activities you can do,
like belly breathing, going on walks, changing your your temperature,

(59:35):
getting something cold and holding onto it and breathing when
you notice that you feel alerted. And when you're calm,
you can sort of evaluate whether or not it's a
real threat or not. But if you're activated or you
don't have good self care, you're not gonna be able
to tell. And another book, I love Way Less Acat

(01:00:00):
but it is a fun read and if you have
been through it right, you would read this book and
you would be like, oh, so validating, Like it's like
a blanket of nonscience. There is a book called Psychopath
Free by Jackson mackenzie, and he wrote another book called
Whole Again, which was basically a book about kind of

(01:00:22):
healing from being somehow connected to a dark triad, which
would be a person that is a threat, threatening that
doesn't have empathy and their drive is based less on connection,
connection and care and love and being with you, but
their drive is based more on, let's say, with narcissists,
external validation with sociopaths. Power with psychopaths, it's often revenge

(01:00:45):
or sadism. Right When people have those types of personalities
and there in leadership rules or they're in relationships with you,
like whether it's a church leadership rule or a I
don't know, lucky you you got the top dog as
your husband, right, Great, when you're in one of those dynamics,

(01:01:08):
there there's absolutely like patterns of behavior and things that
feel really crappy. And those books Psychopath Free and Hole
Again do a really good job normalizing it and then
figuring out how to get out of it, and how
to heal and how to make better choices, and how
to just kind of like let go and let yourself

(01:01:29):
just be a human and show up and do the
best you can. Shame is so I think about shame
all the time. I joke with someone close to me
about shame, like, do we you know Renee Brown? I
don't know. I love Renee Brown.

Speaker 2 (01:01:46):
As a speaker.

Speaker 3 (01:01:47):
I think I love listening to her lectures about her books.
They're not a good flow for me. If I ever
meet her or whatever. I don't think I ever would,
but she and I can talk talk about that, and
she can. But I don't think she's the best writer
or whoever's writing those books for her, Like I think
that that's a stuck point for me when I read
her writing. But this idea of shame that she talks

(01:02:08):
about in the lectures and her research on it is fascinating.
I don't know. I mean, I don't think we need
no shame. I think there's a benefit to having less shame.
But I think if we don't have any shame, then
we don't take accountability and we don't show it up,
and we don't care for people. Right, And you look
at these dark child personalities that have no shame. You

(01:02:29):
see lying, you see harming other people, You see them
sexually exploiting other people. These things we see in cult dynamics.
Whether it's zero shame, how are you showing up authentically
in community? If you have no shame, so being able
to consciously watch your shame and pay attention to it,
it's informing me I have shame. Does this mean I'm

(01:02:50):
a bad person? My adrenaline cortisol are going off? Does
this mean I shouldn't say anything? What do I do
with this? Right? This is where I can help find
my red flag. If you have no shame and you're like, hey,
they're shaming me, you might go way off the reels, right.

Speaker 2 (01:03:24):
I mean that in itself. I bet there's been some
interesting research papers around the idea of personal shame and
kind of like systemic institutionalized patriarchal shame. You know, if
you want to go down the feminist route and look
at you know, women might feel shame if they go
back to work after having a baby, or women might

(01:03:45):
feel shame if they become stay at home mums and
don't go back to it. Do you know what I mean?
Like all these different weird things that women might feel
shamed for, but actually like how much of that is
self shame or how much of that is like you know,
if you have an affair that's a shameful in my mind,
that's a shameful thing. Do you if you don't feel

(01:04:07):
you know, what's the difference between systemic shame and learn
shame or communal or shame that's being you know, that's
generational by design, and how much of it is actually
warranted shame if that.

Speaker 3 (01:04:22):
Pay Yeah, it is fascinating to think about, right, Like,
we do need to think about our relationship to shame.
But we shouldn't say all shame is bad. We've got
too much shame because it is informing I think. You know,
what I try to do in my life when I
feel shame is like stop myself and say, okay, wait,
I need to take accountability here or I'm being manipulated.
But something is going on. Why do I sell shape?

(01:04:44):
So breathe in my belly, have a drink of cold water,
maybe journal introspect, like where do I need to change something?
Or where is this it's telling me something? And in
the biology of wanting to stay home with a baby
or bring a baby to work and all that stuff
versus society saying, hey, you should you should stay home

(01:05:09):
with that baby and be a trad wife. That's the
word the young girls are using these days here. So
I mean, it's really personal how people want to organize
their lives right, and other people's opinions can be helpful
because it helps you say, like, hey, something feels weird.
I want to like lean into my values and decide.

(01:05:31):
But they shouldn't be bullying, and they absolutely shouldn't say like, hey,
you're going to be out of the group, or we're
going to call you names and intimidate you or use
fear to make you do what we think you should
do as a as a person in this office, like you,
if you don't come back to work, you've lost your job. Well,

(01:05:54):
you know that that's not a place I would want
to work. I would rather work somewhere where they're like, hey,
if you want to taper back in and be maximumly
relaxed and strategic and creative, I trust you. I know
you're a good worker, So come back in here at
the pacing at which you're ready. That is more largical
to me. That's what I would do as a leader,
because I would want people that are creative, right, that

(01:06:15):
are like passionate and they're like, hey, I'm ready to go.
I'm not sitting here not having enough resh yet or
or whatever the deal is.

Speaker 2 (01:06:24):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean sometimes we're protected by in
this country at least the Health and Safety of Work Act,
which does protect people from you know, harassment of bullying
in the workplace in targatic campaigns and things like shunning
and nepotism and things. But I know that that's not
the case, am I like in saying in some states

(01:06:45):
in America you can just be told like you're fired
and they don't have to give a reason. Yeah, Like
that's wild to me.

Speaker 3 (01:06:52):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What do they call it? I
can't remember what the term is, but it's basically like, hey,
you can leave whenever you want, and I can fire
you when you want, like no clause or something. I
can't remember.

Speaker 2 (01:07:04):
It.

Speaker 3 (01:07:06):
It's a bad long term strategy really, because if you
think about it, women make excellent leaders and workers. We're
very strategic, we're very calm when we regulate ourselves, and
we know everything going on right just like men. I'm
not not to say men aren't strategic or calm, but

(01:07:26):
there's something incredibly powerful about being a woman in this
day and time, with all this stuff going on and
trying to have children. Women are more likely college educated
than men at this point, at least in the US.
Women are often higher earners than their spouses here in
the US, which wasn't the case a while ago. And

(01:07:49):
women are multitask problem solvers. You've got, you've got your job.

Speaker 2 (01:07:54):
I've got No, it was, don't they.

Speaker 3 (01:07:56):
Yeah, it's going to be interesting what happens with AI
because it's can rid of a lot of those masculine jobs.
A lot of the fields that are dominated by men
are getting eradicated by AI like and it's gonna just
leave all these relationship based jobs and women. It's gonna
be a real shift in leadership hopefully, and we'll see
how that goes. I think men make excellent leaders too,

(01:08:23):
but I think it has nothing really to do with gender.
It has to do with brain chemistry. Can you keep
your cool? Can you notice when you're adrenaline and portosol
are going off and bring yourself down so you can
make a long term strategic decision that benefits your creative
output as a team. And women are great at that

(01:08:43):
because we're multitaskers. Oftentimes, oftentimes we get oppressed by systems
and we have to learn to do that in order
to survive, right, And men can be men can get
better at that too. You think military training they get
trained to do that.

Speaker 2 (01:08:58):
Well, we've talked all about that on this show in
terms of how it actually relates to indoctrination and brainwashing
and all of those terms that people like to use.
For anybody that's interested, there's a couple of episodes in
the back catalog about the Marines and they're basic training
and basically like how it aligns with cult recruit.

Speaker 3 (01:09:21):
I always love to listen. I would be very curious. Yeah.
My thought on that is it kind of comes back
around to paying the attention to your body and learning
to pay attention to your body and when the adrenaline
and cortisol are firing. I love that John cabots En book.
It is just studies and labs about how to get
your own body down as a person with heart disease

(01:09:44):
so that you don't have a heart attack and die
when you're and so you can make slow, strategic decisions
It's a great book about really driving your own mindfulness.

Speaker 2 (01:09:54):
There's just so much that I had on my question
list that we haven't been able to even touch. And
I'm so so fascinated by the things that we've that
we've explored. My brain is just going in a million
different directions. I've kind of looked at the questions and
and and given myself two more to ask. There was

(01:10:16):
loads of things I wanted to ask around language and
how parents can protect children in abusive homes. But my
last two questions will be how can the media do
better when we're looking at the idea of trauma, being
trauma informed, being sensitive and compassionate? What do what? What

(01:10:38):
do you think the media can do better in supporting
the processes of recovery trauma victims in general. And lastly,
what advice do you have for anybody listening that may
be on that journey of recovering from trauma.

Speaker 3 (01:10:57):
So in terms of like media in the sh sharing
of information around trauma, there are psychotherapists all over the place,
like myself who will consult for free and gladly like
participate in media interviews or I've helped with some films
and like talking to different directors or people that are
talking about films that they're making and put in my

(01:11:20):
input about what's accurate and what's healthy and safe. I
think a lot of people do that. I think a
lot of people available as therapists will gladly if you call.
If you call therapist up and ask them what they
think about an article you're writing, help you out for free. Additionally,
you know journalistic integrity and values. I think a lot

(01:11:43):
of these people working in the media need help too.
They're traumatized all the time constant. Are they getting together
and processing, Sorry, someone's time to me a coffee? Are
they getting together and processing you know what they're experiencing
and figuring out how to ground and show up and

(01:12:06):
care for themselves so that when they're writing these articles,
they're writing them from a place of like matching their
own values and helping the world, or old school journalistic
values of like fairness and logic and reason and here
are the facts, not my opinion. I'm not writing from
a traumatized activated brain trying to you know, I don't know.

(01:12:32):
I don't know how else to say it. This is
something that I deal with all the time. I love
reading the news The only thing I didn't could afford
to do in high school was journalism because it was free.
So I got really into like like balanced integrity values. Right,
That's that's a million years ago in the nineties. My
thought would be for media to represent cult survivors better,

(01:12:55):
or people who've survived interactions with dark triads. I mean
some would say even just like what it looks like
looking at Americans navigating what's happening in my neighborhood, right,
like things like that. In order to represent that fairly,
you could talk to a therapist, you could interview one,
but you need to deal with your own feelings too
and get together and start like processing and talking about

(01:13:19):
what's happening for you.

Speaker 2 (01:13:20):
All.

Speaker 3 (01:13:21):
That would be my thought on media, Like everybody just
needs to start doing the work to heal so that
they can share things in terms of like what I
would advise to cult survivors or if you're questioning, like,
am I in a dynamic? Is my twelve step group
bossing me around too much? Is this not normal? Is
my church bossing me around? Is this? Is this not normal?

(01:13:44):
I'm feeling scared, something feels wrong. Would I would start
off by making space to check in with when your
Journaline and Cortisol go off. Go journal, go sit down
and think about it. If you don't have safe privacy,
grab a notebook, when a journal in a pen and
go somewhere. Journal your feelings and try to get clear

(01:14:05):
with yourself. Rip it up and throw it away or
flush it or burn it or whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:14:10):
Like.

Speaker 3 (01:14:10):
Make sure you've got a space where you can start
kind of grounding the self and looking at things logically,
like you think cognitive behavior therapy. That's full catastrophe living
by John Kevinson. I mean I that book. It would
be great if you were, like, am I in a cult?
Is something going on as this normal leadership? I'm feeling
bullied in this office. Are we really supposed to be

(01:14:32):
sleeping on the floor working fourteen hour days? Hopefully that's
not happening you set anyone.

Speaker 2 (01:14:37):
But yeah, but it's just let the listeners. Though we're
not affiliated, this is not we're not doing any marketing.
We're not paid to promote.

Speaker 3 (01:14:46):
No, no, not at all. I wish I should get
a credit that book because I have everybody reading that.

Speaker 2 (01:14:51):
Yeah. No, already, I'm already joken it. Should we talk
about my own book? Yes? Yes, actually that that's fantastic
vice for the listeners. Are really strong thing to end on,
you know, just reminding yourself to take small measures to
take care of yourself and put yourself in a position

(01:15:11):
where you are able to better protect yourself and understand yourself.
And it can be quite daunting, but it doesn't have
to be an immediate thing or fast thing. It can
be a very you know kind of the slow way
people get into cults and abusive environments or are recruited
in or born in. You know, the slow way that

(01:15:33):
that kind of indoctrination and control process happens the same
speed to come out slow, slow, take your time, and
you know some of the small.

Speaker 3 (01:15:43):
Steps districtive in here are fetch your safety and valuable. Yeah,
like you think like a safety plan, right if someone
comes into therapying in California or in the United States
for question, whether or not they're in a domestic violence situation,
is it is not like, yeah, pack up your shouldn't
go right away. It is very much like a slow

(01:16:04):
process of slowly letting them decide for themselves if they're
ready to go and you don't, you don't wanna, How
can I say it? You don't want to put yourself
in harm's way. Like if you if you think if
you left you would be at risk of violence, then

(01:16:25):
you want to make sure you're really committed to go
because those back and forth periods are really dangerous at
least in w rses or domestic violence, when people are
if you're going to leave, you gotta leave. If you
go back and forth, back and forth, that's when something
really hard's gonna happen.

Speaker 2 (01:16:39):
So yeah, yeah, get yeah, I think a homicide rate
so like it's something wild, like three hundred percent more
like dangerous or something wild like that.

Speaker 3 (01:16:50):
Yeah, And those law lawyers are like in danger because
the divorcing people are. That's like the most dangerous job
to have as a lawyer. Is really sad because it's
such a hard job for those folks.

Speaker 2 (01:17:04):
So in terms of your book, I don't know if
you have like an idea of when we might be
able to, you know, see it published, grab a coffee.
If if you have any kind of like idea of
a timeline. It's really exciting that we've got that we've
had the chance to talk before it's published, because then
I might be able to grab you for a follow

(01:17:25):
up episode where we can catch up after the publication.

Speaker 3 (01:17:28):
Oh, I would love that. Yeah. So my book, When
Dangerous Feels Like Home is a is a true crime
inflected memoir about my personal experience as a living personal
assistant to someone who was a dark triad or a
psychopath and how that led me to want to become

(01:17:48):
a trauma therapist. And currently the book is done. I
have finished it in the US. It's a really slow
process for querying agents. I queried two agents that I
was recommended to, and one of them's retired now, but
it was such an honor that she wrote me back,
so I felt like it was like the epic agent

(01:18:10):
of my dreams. And then another one changed genres and
is newer to the field, so I'm kind of like
paused right now. I sent a query letter to maybe
like ten literary agencies like Principles, the people who own
the agencies or run them, And that was a few
weeks ago, and you're supposed to just sit and wait

(01:18:31):
for a few months to see who reaches out. But
if a publisher or an agent hears this and they
have like a similar sense of integrity and values and Principles,
starts helping people. I want this to be available to
help people. I'm not like I don't have energy to
self publish it. I would like to have someone else
just sort of take it and really love it and

(01:18:52):
make sure it gets to the right people. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:18:56):
Yeah, Well, congratulations on finishing the book. I hope that
we'll have news soon that it's been picked up, because
I would love a chance to read the book. I'd
love the listeners to have that opportunity. I'll see, I'll
send you something as a bit of me I've had
give me a mark copy, not the whole thing.

Speaker 3 (01:19:17):
I'm allowed to give the whole thing, but I can
I can give you like the the pages, the proposal
pages that I'm allowed to give out earlier.

Speaker 2 (01:19:24):
The stats that would be amazing, that would be great.
I'd love to have a read. And I just I
feel it sounds as though it's going to be a
really helpful resource to have in the world. So I
really do hope that we have some good news soon.
I will share with the listeners if we do get
news of an update, and I'll be keeping a close

(01:19:47):
eye on social media pages and your website, which is
sonnet Damon dot com, and I'll put a link to
that in the episode description for anybody that wants to
have a look at your work, your services, and also
keep their eye on any book updates as well. So yeah,
that's That's not all of my questions, but we got

(01:20:08):
through a good amount of them, and I can't tell
you how energizing this conversation has been for me today.
And I always feel a little bit apprehensive before interviews
because and I'm sure that this happens for some people
with you know, therapy clients as well, that apprehension of
kind of knowing that you're going to be around trauma

(01:20:29):
and ficarish trauma is a very real thing. So sometimes
I can feel that in my body before an interview,
and it dissipates once the interview starts, typically, But this
has just been energizing today. I've really enjoyed it. I
feel infigurated, and I also feel smart, because sometimes experts
talk and it goes over my head. But I've managed
to keep up today. So I'm appreciative of you for

(01:20:52):
many different reasons. Thank you so much, just on it.

Speaker 3 (01:20:54):
Yeah, thank you so much for your time. That was
a beautiful compliment in I wish you the best. It
seems like you're doing a great service for people with
this podcast, and I'm going to go back and listen
to those those previous episodes. Thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:21:09):
Yeah a lot, there's a lot to get through, so
I usually just tell people, you know, hopefully there's at
least something in the back catalog that would capture somebody's interest,
and we just keep plodding along, one day at a
time with all of these things and fighting the good fight,
and it's it's really nice to connect with other people

(01:21:32):
who are doing the same with, you know, fighting the good,
fighting their own way, and it all culminates to a
better world. So thank you so much, saw that, and
enjoy the rest of your day.

Speaker 3 (01:21:42):
Yeah you too, have a wonderful weekend out there.