SEEK Safely Summit Recap with Anne Peterson

[00:00:00] At Seek Safely, it's our mission to empower seekers to have a safe and meaningful self-improvement journey. Why do we care? Seeking to be your best self is an amazing, beautiful human impulse that has led us to create art, invent technology, tell amazing stories, and reach the moon.

[00:00:19] But we saw the dark side of self-help in 2009, when a recklessly run self-improvement retreat led to the death of three people, including my sister, Kirby Brown. We want people to seek, to dream their big dreams and chase their beautiful goals. But we want to make sure they're safe along the way. This podcast is about education and empowerment, and getting real about the promises and problems of self-help.

[00:00:46] We talk with people who understand and care about the self-help industry, and everyone it touches. I'm Jean Brown. I'm Dr. Glenn Patrick Doyle. And this is the Seek Safely Podcast. Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Seek Safely Podcast. My name is Jean Brown, and I'm here with my co-host, Dr. Glenn Patrick Doyle. Hello, Dr. Glenn.

[00:01:15] Hello, Jean Brown. How are you? Oh, I'm well, you know, just tired and busy and all the things. Boy, I'm good. I'm happy to be here. The year is staggering to its end, to its grand finale, and we're wearing it, man. We are wearing it this year. It's been a year, Jean. It has been a year. It has. So I'm happy to be here with you, but I'm also happy that we have a guest with us tonight. We have Anne Peterson.

[00:01:45] Returning to the Seek Safely Podcast. Returning, because we love Anne. We do. We love Anne so much. Oh my gosh, Anne loves you guys. You are my guiding light. Seek Safely. Yeah, we feel very honored to be in that position. And then it's also very exciting because, so Anne, you have connected with us over the last few years as you have gotten out of your involvement with Landmark.

[00:02:10] And, of course, you recently released your book, Is This a Cult?, which we had talked about on a previous episode of the podcast. You know, kind of going through your experience of learning sort of what was underlying all of the Landmark stuff that you were involved in. One of the things that I'm really excited about for you, though, is that you've managed to come out of, kind of come through your experience, do a lot of learning, a lot of searching.

[00:02:39] But I feel like, you know, you really developed a lot of skills with Landmark and you're finding a way to put those to use. Right. Which I think is amazing because I think a lot of people who come out of experiences like this kind of don't know what to do with the time that they put into the group or the organization that they were involved with. Which is a bummer because I think a lot of people, you know, they were talented before they got in there. They maybe developed some skills.

[00:03:08] Even if there were bad things going on, there were still good things happening as well. And trying to dissect all of that is a lot of work. But we have been the beneficiary of some of your efforts because you have really felt motivated to take some of our Seek Safely material and kind of operationalize it in a way that we just as an organization haven't really had the skills to do that. So we're very grateful to you for that.

[00:03:36] And one of the reasons that we wanted to have you back on the podcast is that we recently had the Seek Safely Summit, which was kind of some dream fulfillment for us at Seek Safely. And we ended up having an amazing day. So maybe you can tell us a little bit about your vision for the day and then what it actually was. And then we'll get into it a little more deeply. That's awesome, Jean. Thank you. I want to say a little something about what you said about my journey.

[00:04:03] Because, you know, my book is just a snippet of my journey, really, a little over 20 years, close to 25 years. Right. That I spent, you know, deeply involved, to use the landmark language, accountable for the transformation of life itself. You know, primary vehicle, obviously, that I worked with was landmark. But then I also worked with, you know, then I set up when I set up my own event company and worked with a handful of gurus, so to speak, in other disciplines.

[00:04:32] And my book, fundamentally, is me, new information came on board, right? So I found out the information sort of threatened everything about my view of the world of personal development and transformation. And so it's really like, well, how do you, and the biggest thing for me was like, oh my God, did I just waste 26 years of my life? Plus having the dilemma of, you know, I'm with a teen mom who dropped out of high school.

[00:05:02] I figured out at one point if I wanted to go back to school, like kind of pick up where I left off when I got involved, I would be in my 60s before I could even start, like on a career path. And that's upsetting. It's just really, and I think that's a thing that a lot of people deal with is you sort of wake up to whatever, you know, whatever kind of new, you know, idea or religion. I would say like my relationship to my religion sort of has evolved.

[00:05:31] I didn't really ever have that experience of like, oh, that was all, you know, something bad. And, you know, I didn't have quite the same thing, but it's definitely, but in terms of devoting my professional life, I shut down a business. To go work their business. And yeah, so anyway, so when I, for me, when I got introduced to your mom, Ginny, and the whole Seek Safely thing, it really was a lifeline. Because I was, it was the first time I was like, oh, maybe I can stay in this industry.

[00:06:01] I can, everything that I've learned in terms of my skills and ability as a facilitator, as a program manager, as an event producer, as a leader of big teams, as all these skills that I can put on a resume. But as soon as I put the skills were gotten at Landmark Worldwide, I'm like, the people are like, isn't that a cult? I mean, I literally heard that from a few people. I know Landmark thinks that I'm the first person when I put it on my book. That's my big sin is I use the big C word on my book.

[00:06:32] But the truth is, I was reading Steve Hassan's seminal book from 1988 last night. There's a whole section in there about is Landmark a cult? Like a new question, right? It's not, and it's also not an uncommon question in the marketplace because they are big enough and whatnot. And honestly, as I've studied it, until you get into the staff circles, it's a pretty benign cult, actually. You know, it's not necessarily, if you just do the programs, you get some good stuff and you go on. If you get into an accountability, now you're in the water.

[00:07:00] So anyway, so the whole Seek Safely thing, you know, I was like, oh my gosh, maybe there's a way to do this better. And there's who are talking about that and interested in that, not just talking about the problems, which has also been a big part of my healing. Like watching the vow was both very upsetting, not just for Sarah and Nippy, but because I'm like, we talked about that Landmark. That sounds like, what? You know, so, and that's a big part of the problems that organizations like Landmark are having. This is all these things come out.

[00:07:29] People like me watch them and go, that's really familiar. Yeah, yeah, exactly. What was I really involved in, right? So the whole Seek Safely mission and finding out that there were people out there that were like, not just interested in educating consumers on how to be safer, but also providing a pathway for practitioners to be better. That is what really got, because there I was as a practitioner trying to think like, do I have to literally drop this whole skill set off a cliff or over at 57 years old?

[00:07:59] I was probably 56 now, so 53 then, which is really daunting. So anyway, that was, and then, you know, so I went after I met your mom and was introduced to her and all that. And I came to the Kirby Jam. Yeah. And I came in part because literally it was like this lifeline, but also like, I really want to work with these people, but they don't know me. And I've been the leader in a big cultish organization. I've got a correct guy on the trust list.

[00:08:28] So, I mean, I wouldn't trust me if I were you. So anyway, so a big part of it was to like meet you guys and whatnot. But as I was at that first jam, like I literally, the event planner in me. So one of the things I have an event company that specializes in retreat style events, particularly, but any kind of a learning event or I used to say transformational event. Now I can hardly say that word. But right now, it's a hard one. So, of course, immediately I'm like, okay, this needs to be an international event.

[00:08:56] This needs to be, you know, I mean, I just, my all, everything started going off like, oh, this and this and this and this and this. So, and then we have, you know, we have that pandemic thing that really shut down events and retreats in particular. And they're actually just now still kind of struggling to come back, you know, for all kinds of reasons. And, but anyway, yeah, so that was where my vision of I want to do a Seek Safely Summit. And it was your mom, I think sometimes teases.

[00:09:23] She's like, okay, this is like Ann's amends, which has got a certain amount of truth in it. But it's really more about, wait, I have all this skill set. And I, all I ever wanted to do was contribute. I just wanted to contribute to leaving. I want to leave the world a little bit better place for my grand girls and for my kids. For, like, that was why I was a leader at Landmark. So, yeah, that's what, that's what Landmark was promising you, right? Yeah.

[00:09:51] And to a certain extent, yeah, this is one thing I say to people all the time. Because I'm like, but I think I made a difference. And we did make a difference. You just didn't make the difference that they would try to sell, which is you're transforming life itself. Like, that's not a thing. But you are making a difference in those moments and in those interactions. You know, people have insights, they have breakthroughs, they take, you know, positive actions. They make, you know, things in their life that haven't been working. All that is definitely true. And, you know, if that stuff wasn't happening, nobody would join any of these groups.

[00:10:19] Always wanting to be, you know, my professional efforts. I've always wanted to aim at somehow being difference making. So, anyway, so putting on the Steve Safety Lee Summit was like, yay! And then, of course, you know, funds. It's expensive to put on events. And it's, you know, hard to pull it all together and like all this stuff. So, finally, I decided this year, I'm like, we're just going to do it. We're just going to do a one-day online event.

[00:10:43] A big part of my vision also was through my own journey with my own book, I started meeting a lot of people. And, you know, meeting, a huge shout-out to Sarah and Dippy of A Little Bit Colty. They've been support to me when I reached out to them. And they've just really been an amazing support. And so, it started with them and then meeting Chris Shelton, who's become a great buddy and friend and just really enjoy. And Rachel Bernstein, who's brilliant.

[00:11:12] You know, like as I start meeting people, I ask, do you know about Steve Safety Lee? And they're like, mm-hmm. Or it's not like, well, yeah, but, you know. So, it was really, that was my other intention behind hosting a summit was to start to bring folks together. Mm-hmm. And really are passionate and committed about not just keeping people safe, but having it be better. Having personal growth and development, wellness, like having that, that can be better.

[00:11:41] We can just do so much better. Mm-hmm.

[00:12:14] You know, to bring that group together was a big part of the passion for me. Right, right. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. It's tough because I feel the same way over the years. Like, we've connected with lots of different people. It's just, it gets hard to kind of keep track of people over time, you know?

[00:12:31] So, your, you know, like, let's just do it approach is much appreciated because I know sometimes those relationships, you make the connection and you have to just like kind of capitalize on it right away and turn it into something more. So, yeah, that was awesome. Well, that's one of the beauty of events, right? Whether it's a retreat or a one day or a workshop or whatever.

[00:12:52] But to me, always, and this is part of the training in the particular event that I led in Landmark as well, but was all you need for, this is what I was kind of taught. All you need for transformation is to put a group of people together and give them the space to talk and share and maybe give them the subject. Get some good material in there. And then that's all that you really need. Now, that was very distinct to the very particular little division inside of Landmark that I worked and taught in.

[00:13:20] It was kind of the way we were different than the rest of the organization. But yeah, I definitely saw that happen there. Like, it was cool. And then, you know, and if we keep having events, then we'll keep having a reason to meet up, to be together. And things will work like that, you know? Right. I now want to do a healing retreat with Rachel and Glenn. That's always hard to say this when Jean's in the room. It's Sedona. It's okay. That's okay. I get Sedona. It's beautiful. Yeah.

[00:13:47] Well, it's because I have two, actually, these really cool venues and places where I have talked to them about actually creating a, this is one of the things I want us to do, Jen, is create like a safe-seeking venue stamp of approval. Like, we actually say like, hey, this, like these guys have taken the time as hosts. Because that was a big piece that was missing in whatever that place was where Kirby was too, right?

[00:14:10] Like, I don't think that whoever owned that or ran that, they of course never intended for, you know, anybody to be her, let alone I, you know, like any of that. And I believe they've lost their property and ranch and whatnot. I was talking with somebody about it today who just bought a huge ranch property and wants me to work with them and turning it into an event center. And I said, okay, but if I'm running it, it is going to be one of the first official safe-seeking venues.

[00:14:37] And I said, okay, I'm going to be the first official safe-seeking venue to make sure that, you know, there's safety protocols in place, that there's, you know, plans, that there's, and we're not going to let people, you know, if somebody, we now have on my intake forms, if I want to work with a particular leader or group, it now says, do you do any, you know, altering kinds of practices? And we go through holotopic breath, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, we want to know that ahead of time. We want safety plan. You know, how are you doing?

[00:15:03] It's stuff that seems, it's so logical that it gets taken for granted. Yeah, for sure. Until the worst happens. Yeah. And then it's too late. That question of, so what do I do with this skill set and these tools that I have, like in your case, you'd acquired over the course of decades, is something that we run into so, so often. I'm like, I run into it working with survivors of especially religious trauma because very often folks have invested, it's very often decades.

[00:15:33] And in a church or community. And when something turns toxic, when they realize things or they stumble upon things or they have something happen to them that is traumatic, you know, the culture says, well, gosh, if something turns toxic, you just shut the door on it and you move on. But something that I'm constantly preaching about is the fact that complex trauma, we can mark a timestamp in the episode when I brought up complex trauma because that's, that's, I'm either always talking about complex trauma or James Arthur Ray. Oh, there's the other one.

[00:16:03] Anyway, no, I mean, complex trauma is trauma that's kind of warmed its way into our developmental process over years. And it's impossible to just say, well, I'm going to close the book on this because again, our nervous system has been, you know, physically molded around these experiences. Mm-hmm. And so that, so, so we're up against that again and again. And, you know, my, my story that gets told a lot is that, you know, gosh, I wouldn't be here without self-help culture and self-help books and stuff.

[00:16:33] And so when I come to a realization of how toxic it can be, do I just kind of throw that out? I don't think you can because I think, you know, throwing the entire culture out or the entire industry out, you're depriving the next Glenn who is now a teenager and suicidal and, and, you know, might access those tools that might save his life. Right.

[00:16:53] So, so that question where I'm, you know, and I'm always particularly glad that's, you know, really prominent on your radar screen of like, you know, man, let's not toss the baby with, with this bathwater. And there's plenty, Lord knows there's plenty of bathwater in the industry as we've talked about, as we've made an entire podcast out of talking about. Right. But man, the baby is really important, not just because self-help has useful stuff, but because people have invested years and years of their lives.

[00:17:20] Like I often have this conversation with people about, again, religion, because folks know that, for example, folks know that I'm a practicing Catholic and that it's an important part of my identity. And I constantly get folks asking, how can you, you know, gosh, with all of the pain and harm and abuse that the Catholic church has undeniably enabled, like what's, you know, what's, how can you have that continue to be a part of your life, especially part of your spiritual life? Mm.

[00:17:45] And, and so I take that question of like, you know, man, it's really impossible to like, I mean, if you excise the Catholicism for me, you excise a really important part of who I am. So I think we, we necessarily have to deal with that question of like, well, what do I do? What do I do with the skillset? What do I do with this worldview? What do I do with these tools and these experiences that maybe they're complicated, but we're not all negative or destructive. So I've always really appreciated that about your approach. Well, and I don't know if y'all listen to Vicente, Mark put it on his show.

[00:18:14] I think it was probably last week. So I was listening to it this weekend, but he put out this great little 30 minute thing. And he said a number of really great, pretty controversial and some great things. But my favorite was, it's like, we got to grow up. We got to grow up. And you know what he was talking about. I talk about Glenn, you taught, you just talked about it there, which is, it's not just that we have to be able to hold both the good things and the bad, but we, we do. We have to learn how to navigate that. We have to learn how to, we can't just exit the world.

[00:18:43] And a lot of people try and they suffer and they suffer. And I know many people who've left Landmark and they're like, and they knew, especially if they were on staff, because the center staff area was where most of the toxicity is in that organization. And, you know, and they're just like, okay, I'm going to just cut it out and go on. And, but it doesn't work that way. First of all, trauma doesn't work that way. It comes and gets you and it does not age well. I mean, now that I'm seeing a lot of people sort of aging with their trauma and like it doesn't go well. And you get, your life gets smaller and smaller.

[00:19:13] You shrink and shrink in terms of your expression. You're, you know, we even talk about this in Landmark. Like that's why you quote unquote clean things up so that you don't have to disappear. Now they have a little bit of a twisted version because cleaning up there means that they always look good. And, you know, like, but by growing up, we got to be willing to look at the dark side, look at the mistakes we've made. Look at the, without all the judgment, without all the, you know, are you, we're going to have some judgment, but then you got to let it go. And can we learn? And that's my whole thing.

[00:19:42] And what I love so much about it is like, well, gosh, we learn a lot from the light side of self-development, but can't we also learn from the dark side? You know, if you want to use that analogy and then do better. It's never going to be perfect because we're going to invent the next thing. And then 20 years down the road, we'll find out what we didn't know about that. That's not, you know, we're finding out now social media. Woohoo, I can stay connected with millions of people all at once.

[00:20:07] Now we all have ADHD and can't turn the phone down and our nervous systems are whacked and we're have, you know, imposter syndrome and well, you know, but that's the way it goes. So if we're going to be here, we got to stay in the game to me. That was a lot of it. But then also, like you said, going that really emotional. I mean, I have kind of the same thing because I grew up in the Christian church and that's not looking so good these days, in my opinion, you know.

[00:20:33] But I still, you know, I still think Jesus loves me and I like that. You know, that gives me a lot of peace and that I have a higher power that I can be connected with and be an expression of. And like that gives me a way to sort through things and process things and grow and whatnot. So we got to hang on to that. And then my big message is you just got to always remember you're the one doing it. Don't give your power over. It's not the teacher. It's not even the teaching.

[00:21:04] It's you and your participation with the teacher and the teaching and how you can put it to work. And I loved. So to go back to our summit. So one of our first sessions in the summit was Gene introducing the empowerment compass to Gene. We go offline. We need to actually have a company. We're going to do a program. We need to submit and take people live through the compass. And, you know, we're going to start circulating that. It's a really powerful tool to be grounded in what are my values? And I really loved.

[00:21:31] It was fun because a lot of my kind of ex-landmark people were on live with us. And they were like, wow. They're still talking about it. They're still talking about like, wow, what's really available if I, when I'm going shopping or looking for a coach or a teacher or whatnot, and I'm really aware of what are my deficits? What are my strengths? What are my values? And the whole deficits thing was like, oh, brilliant. If you want more, you're going to have to download the empowerment compass.

[00:21:58] But come to the empowerment compass class and let Gene walk you through the process. But that was really great because we could see those of us that are kind of on the recovery side of having felt some abuse and exploitation in some of those communities. Those deficits are what was exploited. Yeah. And if we've gone and kind of like knowing, oh, wow, okay. You know, this is a, it's just a whole way to be awake and aware. Yeah. Not ashamed and embarrassed and trying to fix. Exactly. Yeah.

[00:22:27] Which is what keeps you in those, you know, you're going to fix yourself and then you get fixed. Except they always have the next break. You know, that's the hell gets. Fix you, break you, fix you, break you, fix you, break you, fix you, break you, right? So you keep buying. That's the model. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, well, that's nice to hear. I'm glad it resonated with people. I just, I just want the, I want the audio program where Jean does that exercise where she's like, take a step back from the world. I know. I will put that. I have to just record that.

[00:22:57] I have a whole video that I edited together too. That's really beautiful. So I need to just put it all together. Like, I've heard that shtick probably 20 times, 20, 30 times. Each time I'm like, oh, this is nice. This is great. Oh. Yeah. Yeah. So that was our first session was talking about the empowerment compass, which again is like, I think we put that together in about 2021. 2021. It was during the pandemic.

[00:23:25] Maybe it might've even been 2020, actually. I can't remember exactly now. We did a weekend, like a retreat day where we did that with people, but then we just hadn't gotten around to, you know, doing it again or putting together like a workbook that we could get to people. So, and I'm very grateful you lit a fire under my butt to just like, okay, Jean, make a workbook. I was like, okay, fine. I will. That's the whole lot of events. It's a deadline. Yeah, exactly. I very much always need a deadline.

[00:23:55] But yeah, so it was really nice to be able to present that again. And then yes, to put it into like a workbook format, which we will keep refining and keep working on and make it available to people. But yeah, that was fun. I was excited to be able to do that again. It's now available in the Seek Safely Summit downloads. That's one of the free gifts is you get the compass and you get Jean walking you through. It was really valuable.

[00:24:20] I mean, because I had read that you're also walking through and kind of, there's a lot of nuance and stuff that you bring and add into the conversation. It was our consumer offering, right? So we kind of, I envisioned that I had like a session for each distinct thing, but that was the consumer. Like I'm out here, I'm a shopper, I'm a consumer. How do I stay safe aside from, you know, what we also have in the free gift boxes, which is the red flags and green flags that we developed over time too. You know, like, okay, look for these things, not for these things, but it's never that simple.

[00:24:49] And as soon as you say that, as soon as we start getting like, oh, this is a red flag, this is a red flag. Like I promise you, the people out there that are out to make money, you know, making you better, they're going to find a way around the argument. Rachel and I, we're going to do it this week and then our schedules got messed up and whatnot. But out of that too, we're going to do a session because she walked through what is a cult. And the whole time I was like doing the whole, if I was a guest seminar leader, what I would be saying to counter every one of her points. Yeah.

[00:25:15] So, but the way you guys organize that, that compass and the, just sort of the thought that it provokes for the consumers to kind of then have in their pocket. Yeah. When they're looking and shopping, they know. And I just had to crack up because when you got to the deficits part, the thing I put on my form when I did the landmark form, which if you read my book, you know, the story that, you know, my husband was going to leave me and I'm having this whole freak out. And anyway, so I registered in the form to try and save my marriage and then in the form figure out like, oh yeah, he should move out.

[00:25:44] So that's not, I didn't put any of that on the form. I think I put, I want to work on my relationship, but the main thing I put, I remember, I want to stop procrastinating. That was the thing. I have put that on, I don't even know how many forms. Everything, right? How much money I have spent to stop procrastinating. And then finally, I can't remember where I was or what I was doing or whatever, but somewhere I just got, I'm a procrastinator and that's okay. Yeah.

[00:26:09] And that's, you know, I'm also a burster, which means I procrastinate, procrastinate and then boom, get all it's done. So anyway, but I laughed. Jane and I have no idea what you're talking about. We do not. We have no, no sense of what you're talking about. I actually, I had a, I had like written a blog for a while and my first like breakout blog was all about procrastination. The self-styled life. The self-styled life.

[00:26:37] I know I need to get back to it, but so I've been procrastinating writing the blog, but yeah. And I talked about how I realized I, you know, I have this like productive procrastination thing where I will put off the thing I really need to do by doing other things that are also useful. But what I have learned over time is that like, while I'm cleaning my house, like in my brain, it is working on the thing that I have to do. That's right. Yeah.

[00:27:04] And then when I sit down, it's just and it comes out. Yep. And yeah. And in a way there's a bit of just going, you know what? That's just kind of who I am. That's part of my process. And yeah, maybe I don't need to fight it, but to be aware of it, you know, and figure out how to work with it. Right. I have a teacher who comes and works with our little goddess community every once in a while, and she's an intuitive and whatnot, but she, that was actually part of her class was how you access. Cause we were like, well, how do you ask?

[00:27:34] What is this intuition thing? You know, we just, that's what we do in that community is we just ask a bunch of questions and bring on people who have expertise and question them a bunch and whatnot. But it was really good. I'll never forget. She said, what you do to access your intuition is you, you know, come up with a question or an issue or something that you want to work on and then, and ask the question and then go do something else. Like actually go do something else. And then just notice what comes in, like what thoughts, what, what not.

[00:28:02] Cause that is exactly how your brain works. Your brain's going to work on, there's actually technical terms for this landmark, a whole special event about this one time, but about how your brain works on stage. When you're not paying attention to it. And then this other gal I talked, she's like, well, that's kind of what your intuition sounds like. It comes in and it's like, oh, okay. So tell me what to do or what the answer is or whatnot. But yeah. Anyway. Yeah. All kinds of access. Yeah. It's very cool.

[00:28:30] So yeah, there's definitely some great discussion that always comes out of the compass whenever we kind of have it in a group setting. So that was, that was a lot of fun. I think that was definitely a great discussion. Some good input from people and good conversation came out of it. And then the next session after that, we did.

[00:28:50] That was like, well, and Glenn talking about both reconstruction and recovery, which are kind of terms, especially the deconstruction term is getting tossed around a lot now. But I don't think many of us know what that actually means. But that is really the process. And we sort of, I don't really like the term come out of a group like that, although that happens for some. But I do think there's a thing that's happening. I think it's going to happen a lot more.

[00:29:15] Where we sort of, at a certain point, we see the way that we've seen something or interacted with something or participated with something is wrong. Like there's something that's not accurate or right about it. Like where we really are forced to confront our own thinking, our own beliefs, our own whatever. And when that happens, what we automatically go into is a kind of deconstruction. Well, wait, what happened? And I love my friend Brian Nord's little show. He's on a hiatus right now. But he called it, How Did I Get Here?

[00:29:44] Because he read my book. He had left Landmark. He was a center's division director, center manager. Like he was right in the thick of like the harshest area and aspect. And he like walked off, like quit the job, like suddenly one day, called on a Monday. I'm not coming back. Don't ever call me again like that. And he did that in part because his, the love in his life, his partner is a recovering Mormon.

[00:30:12] And so they, as he was seeing that journey, he started to recognize the similarities. And then there's a lot of, you know, Landmark has had a very rough four years as it's tried to reinvent itself until the pandemic and all this and that. So anyway, but he walks out and then, but then he's all alone because you're suddenly cut off from your whole community. You can't talk to people and you can't talk to people for two reasons. One, you're terrified they're going to talk you back into whatever it was you just left.

[00:30:41] So in his case, it would be the job. In my case, I wasn't, I didn't quite have that, but the, you know, you're worried about saying that. But the other thing is you don't want to, you don't want to upset other people's apple cart. Like my questioning, and that was what I had to reconcile. It was three years to get myself to the place where I could write my book to just share my journey of questioning myself.

[00:31:03] Because I knew as soon as I put that out, it was going to set off a bunch of people now questioning their own transformational experience, their own, and you know, like even if it's delusional, you don't want to take people's delusions from them if they're making them happy. Mm-hmm. That's how we thought. And to me, that was, that's the first step of deconstruct. Like, wait, I have to deconstruct. How the heck did I get here? What happened?

[00:31:29] What, and as you do that worry, that concern about questioning, speaking out, it starts to diminish. And then you start to be free to ask more questions and dig a little deeper and a bit more and, you know, and then at some point you get brave enough to start talking to experts in the field. Still laugh about my, I have to check in and talk to him in several months, but Rick Ross, like when I called Rick Ross for the first time, I was shaking. Like shaking.

[00:31:58] Because in the landmark sphere, that's the devil. And he's got an agenda and he's got an ax to grind and like all this stuff, which I'll say very loudly, he does not. He actually defended landmark way more. It was a little surprising actually how much, he didn't defend it exactly, but he was like, you know, he was very, he was very not who they said he was. Mm-hmm. You know, but that's all part of deconstruction.

[00:32:25] Like, okay, now am I willing to talk to people who think differently than me? Who believe differently than me? No. Who maybe even challenge the way that I believe? Am I willing to get in comfort? But that's a process to get there because it's scary. So anyway, I loved, Rachel walked us through the, what is it called? Like, doop, doop, doop, doop, doop, doop, doop. And then Glenn bringing in your expertise about complex trauma, about, and recovery.

[00:32:52] It's a whole aspect of what does it really take to recover? Because I'm, I mean, and I know there's probably, hopefully some of them are listening to this right now, but guys, I mean, you leave a group like that, a high control group, a culty group, a relationship, I mean, it's all over the place. A belief set, you know, a spiritual or political belief now, and you start to question that because it's so entwined with our identity. It's really scary. And then your questions lead to a lot of answers that aren't necessarily comfortable and they do

[00:33:20] need, I know a lot of people that are dealing with a lot of unacknowledged, misunderstood, emotional, spiritual trauma. You bet. Well, I mean, that's, as you know, because I've gone on your show to preach about this and I'll preach about this to anybody who will listen. You know, something that, that I am a real evangelist about is the fact that trauma is not what a lot of our culture traditionally thinks of as trauma, right?

[00:33:48] Like we think of trauma as these very bad things that happen, but that are, that are limited, finite. Like we think of the thing that happened, not realizing that, you know, man, when we are enmeshed, it could be in a group or a church, a community, a family. Very often that, you know, really is destructive to how we think of ourselves and what we believe about ourselves and the world and the future. That's it's trauma. It's what we call complex trauma. And it's really hard.

[00:34:17] Like, I mean, look as somebody who has been really invested in self-help culture in one way or another, since I was a teenager, something that I've always understood really well about the industry and the culture surrounding the self-help industry is the fact that anything that is powerful enough to make a significant positive difference in your life, also powerful enough to really fuck you up. It just is. And we have to be realistic about that.

[00:34:44] And it's unreasonable to assume that of 100% of the teachers and systems and groups and techniques and stuff that we explore that 100% of them are going to be awesome and non-toxic. You know, like I often talk, you guys know, like I often talk about self-help people. I'm a self-help person. Me too. All right. And we kind of err on the side of, eh, maybe, right? Like we hear a wacky thing. And instead of being a cold-hearted cynic like Jean Brown, who says that's silly. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding.

[00:35:14] Jean is not a cold-hearted cynic. But instead of being, you know, instead of being, I mean, I wouldn't say we're not skeptical. We can safely say that she's a little bit more grounded than you or I. I feel comfortable with that. That's a very kind way of putting it in. No, but we self-help people. Like if we've got kind of the self-help gene, we hear about even a wacky thing and we go, eh, maybe. Like I'm open to it, right? I'm interested in it. And on the one hand, that's one thing that, you know, really, I think fuels and feeds us on this journey.

[00:35:42] Like the fact that so many folks that I've worked with are so open and willing to think outside the box and we're self-help. Well, possibility people. It can, on the one hand, be one of our very best qualities. What predatory communities and organizations and teachers tend to do is to take that one of our best qualities and kind of use it against us, right? Yeah, it's an opening. And we wind up, you know, this is how we wind up in this position of having been traumatized. And we may not even realize it is trauma.

[00:36:11] One of the ironies of being self-help people and immersed in self-help culture, lots of us, is that we're really resistant to calling it trauma because we've been trained to say like, well, words matter. And it's only trauma if I think of it as trauma. You know what I think outlines that, that I am on a war path against now, which is the villainization of victimhood. Oh, you bet. Oh, I could talk for hours about this.

[00:36:36] It's not, it's not, I mean, I think trauma is actually, I mean, I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but it's getting kind of, it's kind of cool. This is kind of cool. It's one of my daughter's like big gripes because she has complex trauma. I mean, she has real, like we've had her brain scanned and they said, oh, you have complex trauma. Right? She's like, she hears people in her millennial TikTok realm. Apparently there's a lot of people that are realizing their trauma and makes her, you know,

[00:37:04] she's like, okay, that your boyfriend left you is not, you know, dah, dah, dah. And I'm like, well, don't judge. You know, you never know. It leads people to gut health line. But the thing that I hear that underlies it, and I know this is why a lot of my landmark friends don't want to actually say like, ooh, one, it's confusing because they had a lot of good experiences and stuff. But the other thing is to be a victim is the lowest of the low that you can be in our society.

[00:37:30] We have turned, and I have all kinds of like, I got a big soapbox about this because I think it's super tied to patriarchal kind of victimization, you know, because it gets labeled on women a lot. Like if you complain at all, or if you say anything, you're just being a victim. And we heard it a little bit, even at the summit, as some people shared, or well, maybe it's in the, comes up a lot in the healing group that I'm hosting. Like people don't want to deal with, well, gosh, you know, working 70 hours a week and

[00:38:00] then volunteering 30 on top of that or 20 on top of that was all exploitive and stuff. But I wasn't the victim. I chose that. I chose it. Like they'll go to the power position, not because there's power, they feel power there, but because there's, they're not, they don't want to be related. Being a victim is a bad, bad, bad. Right. Well, we've been, as you say, like we've been conditioned, like anybody who follows my material knows that, that I'm very expressive about the fact that we are harmed by the conditioning

[00:38:30] that a complex trauma imposes upon us. This is, this is not conditioning we choose, but we are conditioned to believe that, that we are choosing that. I mean, you know, and you know, Jean and I did a whole episode on, gosh, we did multiple. We did the secret, we did an episode on manifesting and all these things, but it's a very dearly held precept and a lot of self-help culture that you are like everything you're experiencing. You're choosing on some levels.

[00:38:57] It drives me nuts actually, because I still have a soft spot for a whole lot of self-help content. And it is so frustrating how some of the most toxic stuff, this is, there's a tangent and I could rant about this forever, but now it's frustrating about how some of the most useful stuff can sit alongside the most toxic stuff. I was listening recently to an old classic, Bob Proctor, he's one of the secret guys and

[00:39:25] kind of one of the old school, like he's in that, you know, Jim Rohn, Earl Nightingale tradition. Right. And I really like Bob Proctor, like, like, like by and large, but man, he can say things that are really wise and then follow it up with like, because you know, you're choosing like, like every experience, like you're on a metaphysical level. And I'm like, Bob, Bob, what are we doing here? So the fact that again, we've been conditioned to, you know, to take radical ownership.

[00:39:54] Well, there's the question, right? Sorry, Glenn, but who are you being? Right. Isn't that the landmark question? Who are you being that happened to you? Yeah. Yeah. Who are you being that best that you like, literally? Right. Like, like you really want to see radical ownership, go to a 12 step meeting. Like, like those are real people taking radical ownership of their recovery. But I think it's really telling. And Monday 12 step is complicated and it has its pros and cons, but something I think 12

[00:40:21] step gets really right as I say, look, we believe in, we do believe in radical ownership, but what's the first, literally the first step to radical ownership. It is surrendering this fantasy that we can be fully responsible for everything. Like we're not like, like the step one of the 12 steps is all about accepting our powerlessness over certain things. Anyway, the point of all of this though, is the connection between complex trauma and

[00:40:48] some of our negative experiences and in the self-help world is that, you know, man, if you're invested enough in this ecosystem, that, that a negative experience impacts you, if it impacts you at all, it's probably on a complex level. You probably have to familiarize yourself with, you know, this recovery model for complex trauma. Because again, if you lean on what you've probably been taught in your journey, like Tony Robbins,

[00:41:12] my boy, I say that facetiously for everybody who's, who was saying, Jean and I got flack for like, like, I was calling Tony Robbins, my boy. And we got a comment just saying like, that's so disappointing. I'm, I'm to joke. Somebody was testing. I can't remember who I talked to so many people on a date, but somewhere in the last 48 hours, somebody asked me if I thought that Tony Robbins was a little bit culty.

[00:41:36] And, um, and I said, yeah, this is a little bit culty because Tony Robbins puts himself at the source of her. So anyway, but then they told me later, they like, oh yeah, that was a test of me to see if I was like really sincere about, you know, I'm like, it's one of Tony's old chestnuts. It's one of Tony's old teachings that change happens in an instant, that the moment you go from the balance of consequences, pleasure, pain, like, like the moment that balance is

[00:42:05] reversed, change happens in an instant. He's been saying it for years. And that's what, that's the ethos of a lot of self-help schools and philosophies. It's this idea that you make a decision, like, it's not coincidence that Tony Robbins and James Arthur Ray, like they all start out with like the power of decision. You make a decision and everything changes. Um, like we in the real world know that it's way more nuanced than that. But my point is that you have an experience of complex trauma. And then if you go to this to kind of lean into this, like, well, mind over matter.

[00:42:35] And, and, and I can just, I can change this by just relabeling this and, and, and change happens in an instant. You gotta, you gotta have a bad time. So that was the gist of the session that Rachel Bernstein and I did. It was really good. Yeah. Well, and in every session, I think it went even for all the contributors and conversations went in places we didn't necessarily expect or plan. It was very organic. It was really good. I do have to slide in my idea. Tell me what you guys think. My idea for, I do want to write another book.

[00:43:03] I actually think I have two more books on this topic and then I can probably leave it forever. Hopefully. And the third one is the one I wanted to write to begin with, which is how to not be a cult leader. Hmm. And, um, which is more like a guide for practitioners, like how not to fall into this, but there's one now that I think needs to go in between and my working title is getting clear how good ideas get weaponized. Hmm. Because to me, that's what happens is, you know, it starts out, you know, there's a good idea. There's some good wisdom.

[00:43:32] There's a piece of wisdom. And then, you know, in the process of turning it into a unique product, a lot of the wisdom gets left out of the wise idea, you know, or gets parted off or gets, you know, all that. And that's, you know, since my book came out and I kind of, that was a lot about the organization that I was a part of and all that. And then, but now I've been really thinking about, can you really separate the ideas from the organization? You know, that's the phase of deconstruction that I'm in now is like really asking myself

[00:44:01] that question and really starting to examine the ideas and most particularly the cliches or, you know, look at it and say the thought terminating cliches, right? Like really looking at those cliches and going, huh, what, while there's cliche, like context is decisive. That's one of my current ones that drives me bananas. Transformation is the other one because of the thing you just said, Glenn, which is, and it's through all the self-help things. It's all about shortcutting, bypassing and shortcutting.

[00:44:29] And what I know at 56 is there's no damn shortcuts. That's what I know. Thank God I have another 34 years at least to keep learning because it's going to take that to probably get half of where I wanted to be when I was in my 20s because there are no shortcuts. Like it's a... Well, that's a concept that I agree with you and that's a concept that I think gets way misunderstood, right? Like so, so I really teach and preach. God, I'm doing a lot of preaching tonight, Gene.

[00:44:58] Isn't that problematic? Am I a cult? Not yet. I mean, not yet. We're watching, you know. We're watching. I tell you, a couple of years ago, we were just talking about Anne Peterson showing up at the Kirby Jam and I gave, it was at the end of my first year as board president. I gave a little spiel. I gave a little speech and I get done giving the speech and Anne Peterson's like, you could be a cult leader. I'm like, Anne, it's not the flex I'm looking for. What are we talking about? Anyway, she said I had charisma gang.

[00:45:28] I had the riz. He does. Anyway. No, I think that idea of no shortcuts, I think really gets misunderstood. Like, so I teach and preach a lot that, you know, the magic in trauma recovery is in the recovery. It's not in the therapy. Like therapy is a tool of recovery. But I mean, therapy needs to set you up for the 167 hours between therapy sessions. And in order to survive that 167 hours, you're going to need tools and you're going to need skills.

[00:45:54] And sometimes when you hit upon a tool, you've really been suffering and struggling and you hit upon just the right tool or skill or philosophy. It can feel like magic. Like it can feel like, like, like, you know, man, you've accessed a secret and you've got a hack. Like I've heard it described, like that's a hack. But it's no more really a shortcut than saying, I'm going to build a house. And I've discovered this tool called a hammer. Like it's really hard to build a house without a hammer.

[00:46:23] But if you've been trying to build a house without a hammer, yeah, man, getting a hammer is going to feel like magic. It doesn't mean it's a shortcut. It doesn't mean it's a hack. It's the appropriate tool for the job. And I think this is where, again, there's this misunderstanding that, you know, man, there's a difference between appropriately equipping ourselves for the project versus trying to bypass, find a, do an end run around, around the work. Cause man, even if you've got a hammer, you know, it's sure easier to build a house with

[00:46:53] a hammer than without. Still a lot of work to build a house, right? Yeah. When you need other tools, like you said something really quite brilliant, like really stuck with me in that interview we did for Confirming the Line. And I asked you to come on and talk about complex trauma specifically. And you said something along the lines of our coping mechanisms become like these life strategies. And then, and maybe they work once or they worked here or they worked then, like they worked when we were children.

[00:47:21] But here we are at 30, 40, 50, 60, and we're still using that mechanism. And it ends up being destructive. And that's what I saw a lot in the Landmark culture. And, you know, and I just referenced Landmark because that's where I was, but I've talked to enough people now that are in other groups, like insight and context and all these, you know, they're all the same. Tony Robbins, next thing is blah, blah, blah. So it's all very similar. It's all built on a lot of the same ideas.

[00:47:47] And yeah, you get some tool like, Ooh, context is decisive and it gives you some freedom and some light in that moment. And that may be true. That may be the right tool for that moment. But a couple of things are happening. One, it's not the right tool for every moment. And it's my whole problem with context is decisive in the way that it's used is it's only referring to one half of what actually creates context, which is how I see a situation. How what's, how I'm feeling, seeing, thinking like what's going on with me.

[00:48:17] Context is actually the combination of what's going on with me and the external circumstances. In the Landmark world, they leave out the whole external part. They leave it at context is decisive. So you end up with this kind of magical thinking that all I have to do to deal, you know, to feel better in a situation is change my context. Now, the idea, if you get in the scene, your bodies and you really study it is supposed to be, if you change the context, you'll change your actions.

[00:48:44] And by changing, when you change the actions, you'll ultimately change the circumstances. Except for there's no action you're going to take that's going to have it stop being icy and rainy on the roads. No access is going to have it have your abusive partner or spouse stop abusing except for leave. So I've seen one of the ways that idea has been weaponized. And I've now heard the story from quite a number of ex-Landmark staff program leaders, particularly.

[00:49:13] But where they tried to apply that idea in circumstances that that wasn't the right tool. Well, abusive relationships is a big one. Oh, well, you just got to change your context for how your husband occurs for you. No, you need to call the police. In fact, that was one of the things when the, you know, some of the aides first started coming to me about where that was one of the things where I just need to create a different context. If what you're saying is that he's putting his hands on you and physically harming you, that's not a contextual issue.

[00:49:42] That's a physical abuse issue. It would take me much longer to recognize verbal abuse because I didn't really know that was a thing. Until a lawyer explained it to me. Apparently, when you call people's vile names and stuff, that's like can be verbal abuse and there's actually laws against that. I just thought it was a training tool because that was the context I was given. Right. That's how it's weaponized. Oh, well, yes, I'm saying really harsh things for you, but the context is that I love you. That's the weaponization of that idea. Mm-hmm.

[00:50:12] So, yeah. So kind of bringing that back to the trend. So when you said that about like, oh, we get these strategies and then I could see that these tools become the strategies and then we get absolute with them. You know, like, okay, this is it. I got the answer. This is it. And that's where what Mark was talking this week about. We got to grow up. There is no the answer. Everything is nuanced. It's always, you know, we have to have, you know, be able to hold all sides, but that doesn't mean we have to tolerate it. Because that's another big thing I've been grappling with.

[00:50:40] A lot of people that I really love and admire, they knew about the horrible abuse and they, it was okay with them in a way. Or even if it wasn't okay with them, it was okay enough to say, to not say, no, I'm not, that's wrong. And I'm not going to participate or engage in that. And in fact, if you don't do something about it, I mean, this is what Landmark's own teachings would say. If you don't do something about it, then there's going to be consequences.

[00:51:06] I'm going to call the police or I'm going to call a lawyer and get that taken, you know, and handle that. Landmark has been sued. I can't even, I've lost track of how many employment seats we've now found. They all say the same things. They all say the same violations. Right, right. Millions and millions and millions of dollars. And look, I was a stockholder. So this pisses me off because that was my, technically, supposedly, that was my money. That's how we're, that's what we're led to think in the East office. Millions and millions and millions of dollars on lawsuits over the same stuff year after

[00:51:36] year, after year, after year. So that's not a contextual issue. That's not a being responsible issue, but you know, it could be if the CEOs were being responsible and actually changed the practices and applied consequences to the people who abuse, but they didn't. They transferred them. Oh, sure. It's going to be somebody else. And that's, again, talk about another, and again, we can talk about this all night, but

[00:52:01] let me talk about another example of, you know, how exploitative organizations, community teachers take something that often has this really valuable kernel of truth to it. Right. Like, so for example, is context important? Of course it is, man. Like there's an entire cognitive therapy technique that we call reframing. Right. Yeah. Right. That's really powerful and really useful. And there's a time and a place for that tool.

[00:52:30] But man, again, it goes back to what I said a moment ago, that any tool or philosophy or whatever that is powerful enough to make a positive difference can also fuck you up. And that tool of reframing or shifting context or whatever, like that tool with you is just a tweak away from becoming gaslighting. Right. Right. But this really brings us back to, you know, this is where the compass, I mean, if not the

[00:52:58] tool itself, the philosophy behind the tool really comes in handy is this idea that, you know, man, we need to kind of go into these things with eyes wide open and a respect for the fact that any of these tools that are remotely useful are potentially dangerous and we need to handle them with care. Like we need to handle them with mindfulness and authenticity and care. And if you're a practitioner, even more. Because that's another thing that gets used a lot is like, well, the consumer chose, but

[00:53:27] they're not the ones in the position to know. They're not the ones that were doing hours and hours and hours and hours of, you know, recreating the, that's what you did, which I now understand was the Scientology learning process. Yeah. But, you know, going over and, you know, documents looking up word by word and studying and learning, but we were still only ever seeing a slice of it. Like, I'm wondering when you're, you know, when you're in school to become a therapist

[00:53:51] and you're learning about reframing, for example, as a tool, are you taught about the ways in which that tool can be used to harm or the misuse or abuse of that tool? Because we were pretty much almost never, I mean, a little bit like you want to tell people not to be genuine or formal leaders. Well, this, this really gets into a subject that is near and dear to my heart and we could do an entire, what we have done, an entire episode on trauma. But the trauma informed worldview is, this is where the rubber really meets the road with that.

[00:54:21] But because, so the way that I was trained, like in, and in my doctoral program, yeah, man, you had one course explicitly on cognitive therapy. You had another course on, on dialectical behavior therapy, which is a type of cognitive therapy, but it's sold as if you're unhappy, it's because your thinking is distorted. And, and the way cognitive therapists work, you know, as being, they root out, they think they're rooting out distorted thinking and they give you a different way to think about it, a different way to talk to yourself about it, a different way to frame it, right? Like, well, that's kind of, it's decisive.

[00:54:51] I mean, that's how we taught it. Right. Exactly. Now in my best of all possible worlds, CBT cognitive behavioral therapy would be, did you know that CBT is an abbreviation for something else, Jean? I did not. We'll let the, we'll let the listeners look it up, but I didn't. CBT cognitive behavioral therapy, but also other things, but don't worry about it. Okay. I really wish that it was taught from a trauma informed perspective that says, you know,

[00:55:16] look, a subset of folks who have what, for example, cognitive therapy would call catastrophized beliefs or catastrophized expectations. And it's making them anxious. It's making them miserable. A subset of them don't have those beliefs or expectations because they're drama queens, but because they've had terrible things happen to them. They're, they're going on experience here. And it takes a lot of chutzpah to tell a trauma survivor who has actually experienced

[00:55:42] terrible things that, man, you're thinking in all these over-generalized, catastrophized terms, man, like, can't you just chill out a little bit? Right. Like that's where it gets a little gaslighting. But to your question of, is that really taught? No, it's not. In my experience and most of the classes I took, and this is true of any therapy, you know, the psychodynamic stuff or the cognitive stuff or whatever it is. Like usually it's taught by a professor who practices that type of therapy and who is really sold on that type of therapy. And so you're constantly being subjected to like, well, this is it, like this is the

[00:56:12] thing, like this is the thing. And very rarely is it contextualized in what I would consider a trauma-informed way. Look, I have a master's degree and a doctoral degree, both in clinical psychology. Ask me how many courses I was required to take about trauma. It's a big goose egg, zero. Anyway, that's a rant for another time. Well, you know what's interesting though about what you just said? So what I just said is so basically the problems that live in the self-help industry from the

[00:56:42] practitioner side in terms of their training and development are also in the therapeutic side. So you just described exactly, you know, it's the same thing. And what's, which to me makes it all the more important, the kind of legislation that seeks safely a standing for consumer protection legislation, that certain kinds of guardrails, because what there is in the therapeutic industry that there is not in the personal development industry is a licensure and there's an accountability that's missing.

[00:57:10] I really discovered that in our first safe practitioner little workshop that we did this year. This other thing I launched this year was that safe practitioner workshop. And as we were having those discussions, it got really clear, like to keep that promise, to keep, you know, a lot of those promises, what's required is some kind of a feedback loop, some kind of an accountability structure that is outside of the practitioner, that is outside of the self. Right. And I mean, that's how, this is how I have promised Glenn that while I think he would be

[00:57:39] an extraordinary cult leader and I would probably be in his cult, I won't let it, he can count on me as his friend to like, if he gets to mirror culty, I will be going, okay, you're off, dude. You know, that's one of the chapters in how to not be a cult leader is surround yourself with some people that you empower, like tell you when you're going off and then you're going off the rails. So in the self-help world, all that has to be self, it has to be managed internally.

[00:58:06] There's no external force other than some people will argue that the market is an external force. Well, the market sucks at accountability. Yeah. Right now. It certainly does. The market is rewarding some of the most toxic, awful behaviors and it's happening because as consumers, another reason I'm so passionate about Seek Safely is because consumers don't know. They know that they are responding. They're actually feeding, we're feeding narcissism. We've been training narcissists.

[00:58:36] Now the more I've studied narcissism, I'm like, oh wow, the whole hemopotential living was basically about training you to be narcissistic. Then I came across those articles and I started discovering that it's been labeled, the human potential movement has been labeled as the me movement. It literally was training us culturally to be narcissistic. And so no wonder we look at narcissists and don't see, what's the problem? That's leadership. No, that's not leadership.

[00:59:03] That's somebody who's completely self-involved and manipulating you to do their work, whatever work it is. But as consumers, we don't even know what we're looking at. So, you know, and then it has to, like for me, it had to get really bad. I mean, that's a lot of what I'm sharing in my book is like all these kind of little things that seem a little weird or a little off or a little, and I just kept sort of, well, that's sort of quirky. And some of them are just quirky or just are, you know, idiosyncrasies of a particular leader or whatever.

[00:59:33] And they weren't particularly harmful, but they, when I added together, and then when you get the full picture, you know, people then started coming to me and saying they were being physically harmed and, you know, money and enslaved essentially. I was like, whoa. And then backtracking from there, then I started to see the line. I had actually, the line had been crossed long before those things, but it took something really dramatic.

[00:59:59] And honestly, I mean, I chose in my book to not tell any of the detail because I felt that it was the people who experienced those experiences directly placed. Might be changing my mind about that coming in. Anyway, just because there's a lot of information that isn't known yet, and it does seem to take that while it used to. I don't know. There's a lot of information that's known too of abuse and assault and all kinds of things. And we're like, well, you know, that was when he was drunk or he was younger.

[01:00:27] Or it was, you know, or she was da-da-da-da-da. Or, you know, like, excuse it. I don't think we have to, like, excusing it isn't the answer. Also vilifying it isn't the answer either. Because then we get all right-grazed on the other side. And, you know, and then we start canceling and shutting everything down. And, you know, then we're just a different kind of asshole on the other side. So, anyway. Were we talking about the summit? We were. Were we talking about it? We were. See, this is one of the great things about having Anne on.

[01:00:57] Like, whenever Gene and I are like, do we have a topic? We can either ask Anne or Christine Whelan on. And the episode takes care of itself. Yeah. I'm telling our secrets now. But that's our... Anyway. So, after Rachel Bernstein and I chewed it up about complex trauma and deconstruction and recovery. Recognizing cultish, high-control, you know, abuse. Like, what you're looking at when you're looking at.

[01:01:22] Then we plunged into a really interesting roundtable conversation that was, speaking of Christine, that was mediated by Christine Whelan. Mm-hmm. Professor of purpose. What's the other thing? She's a professor of... Happiness and purpose professor. Yeah. You can choose one or the other. You can't... Not at the same time. Well, happiness... She was, you know... She realized... She was happiness at first. And then she realized, really, it's more purpose is the thing that people need to be after.

[01:01:51] So, anyway. Yeah. Happy, purposeful Christine... Anything else that's about purpose. Facilitated a roundtable discussion. And so, we had survivors of different traumatic events with self-help. On the one hand, you had Gene and Ginny. Of course, survivors of James Arthur Ray Sedona, not Sweat Lodge.

[01:02:12] And then on the other hand, on the other side, you had Sarah Edmondson and Nippy Ames, who, of course, are NXIVM whistleblowers, NXIVM escapees. And one of the things... So, when Christine Whelan and we were kind of tossed around, like she was asking us, like, so what questions should I ask this panel? And something that I kept returning to was like, you know, man, we've heard so much from... I mean, Sarah and Nippy have a whole cult... Not the whole cult. A whole show about cults. And we've heard so much about the culty stuff.

[01:02:41] But I would really love to hear kind of their perspective on, like, they were heavily involved in the self-help industry. Mm-hmm. Even aside from the culty stuff. Yeah. Like, the culty DOS stuff, the sex cult stuff in NXIVM, was not even really a part of Sarah's experience, Sarah or Nippy's experience for a long time. Mm-hmm. They were in the straight self-help personal development. Yeah. Yeah. So, anyway, like, I was, you know, saying to Christine, you know, man, I'd love to hear kind of more of their perspective on the industry. Mm-hmm.

[01:03:11] And kind of move them away. Like, we hear their culty stuff on their show every week. But I'd really love to kind of hear about the self-help stuff. And I think Christine did such a great job in kind of directing the conversation. Like, let's talk about self-help. Yeah. Such a good conversation. Really good. And we kind of put in this through-line question. I got asked a couple different ways, but mostly it sort of ended up in two.

[01:03:30] What I loved was in each session, in each, you know, starting all the way with your mom at the beginning as she was telling the safely origins and the story was what's... If we had a magic wand, if we could really say, you know, those of us that have, you know, we've literally experienced the worst. So, those are some of the best people to ask. But what do you see as possible? What do you see if you had that magic wand? What changes would you make in the industry?

[01:03:56] What do you think would correct some of these, you know, or avoid some of these dangers or problems? So, that was a really fun question, too. And everybody in lots of different ways, like, throughout the whole thing. But I, to me, again, that's the lifeline that Seek Safely was for me. It was like, oh, maybe I don't have to ditch 26 years of experience and knowledge and know-how and whatnot. But maybe I can put, really put it to, you know, put it to good work. Which is, you know, as I said, it's all I was ever trying to do anyway, right?

[01:04:23] And I don't make that sound like I didn't do good work while I was at my mark. I think I did. And I've had a lot of people call me and tell me I did. So, but yeah. So, that was really a rich conversation. And I really invite people to, like, you know, make the contribution, get the downloads, listen to it. Because you hear Sarah Niffy talk about stuff you don't normally hear them talk about, right? Yeah.

[01:04:44] It was really great to give them the space, you know, as well as Ginny and Eugene to, like, just really talk about the industry as a whole. And what you see is where, how it could do better and where it could go. And kind of some of the ways that it's also expanded out just from kind of the traditional self-help sphere. But the way a lot of the, what we're now dubbing culty practices that lead to damaging things have impacted lots of different aspects of our society.

[01:05:14] And it was a really juicy conversation for that. Yeah. It was a very good conversation. And then the final session was Shelton and I talking about, basically, we kind of loosely originally called it like, wait, what do practitioners, what do, you know, coaches, how do we not be culty? What do we need to be looking out for? And we divided that into two parts. What are the, I've been really into the ideas, how good ideas get weaponized. Mm-hmm.

[01:05:43] How they get used in ways that don't, you know, aren't positive, don't have positive outcomes and positive impacts. And so that, and then we walked through the Safe Practitioner Promise, which is the basis for the Safe Practitioner Workshop that we're, you know, creating where practitioners can go in and go like, okay, all right, I'll make a promise to be accurate, to be truthful, to keep safety in mind. Like, it's not a hard promise to make. Right.

[01:06:07] But it's a hard, it is a much harder promise to keep than recognize if we're not in there actively learning and thinking. I actually saw a whole thing that's going to be humiliated about, again, somewhere I was in the last 48 hours talking to somebody, but it's not accuracy. Oh, no. Mm-hmm. I was watching the show Shrinking. Okay. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. So, first of all, totally fantastic show if you haven't seen it.

[01:06:33] It's an Apple Plus show, but it's a really great show about a bunch of therapists. And anyway, Jason Segel is one of the main characters in there, and he's going to write it off, and he says this thing. He goes, oh, you know, as Carl Jung says, that which you resist persists. And I'm like, I stop at TV. I'm like, what? What? What? That's a landmark. And, of course, then I'm on the Googles, and I'm like looking it up. Where does that come from, right? Because I heard it.

[01:07:00] We tend to think where we heard something is where it comes from. It came from, yeah. And I don't know that Landmark ever claimed that it came from that. But like most practitioners, Landmark never said like, oh, as Carl Jung says that, or as, you know, I also found that it's a key idea in ACT therapy, which I happen to know is the only kind of therapy that Werner Earhart thinks is worth a shit.

[01:07:23] That is a direct quote because he did a session with my daughter, and he's like, oh, look up so-and-so who is the inventor of ACT therapy. And Werner told me, he goes, it's the only therapy as far as I'm concerned that's worth a shit. So then I found it very funny. Okay, Werner. So anyway, but it was so funny because I'm like, you know, I'm like, oh my gosh.

[01:07:47] You know, I'm constantly finding out these ideas that I learned there and taught there and whatnot, like where they, you know, all the other places are uses and whatnot. And it's always a little bit startling. And I put a thing up, I have a great book club, it's this great group. And I said, hey, how do you guys feel when you hear some idea? And you think it was from that, but it's really this. And then there's a discussion going on in this Facebook about that, that's really juicy. And I realized that suddenly I'm like, oh, that's a whole aspect of accuracy that we haven't talked about.

[01:08:17] So because one of the safe practitioner promises is that you will be accurate in your reference yourself and stuff. So that's one of the things I'm going to be putting in the next workshop is part of that exploration is, are you accurate, you know, about where your different ideas come from? Yeah, citing their sources. Yeah, it's never the idea itself that is your thing. It's the application. It's the moment. It's the, you know, so you don't have to. It's not threatening as a practitioner to say, oh, you know, like it's Carl Jung says.

[01:08:44] Or as they say, you know, in fact, it gives you credibility. It doesn't take visibility away. But I've seen it a lot. I've seen it. I've coached a lot of traders as well. Yeah. And I said, you know where that comes from. In fact, yoga man, that was the whole thing. How I ended up, it was because he was teaching all this stuff and he had no idea what he was teaching. Right. Well, yeah, you know, and that kind of goes back to the conversation about the market being a terrible barometer for good self-help, right?

[01:09:13] Because I think one of the things that people feel compelled to do is like you feel this compulsion to be like, well, I came up with this idea. To, like you're saying, to lend credibility to yourself. You're so brilliant that you came up with this. And that's why people need to go to you and not somebody else. Because you're the one, you're the source, you're the one that has the ideas.

[01:09:34] Whereas, you know, in a lot of other contexts, like in an academic context, like we're always talking about citing sources, right? And you don't want to try to be claiming knowledge that's not your own. And it's completely respectable to demonstrate that, you know, you've done some research and you, you know, the magic in whatever you're offering is that you're able to put this together for people. You're able to take multiple things together and offer it.

[01:10:02] And you're able to maybe describe it in a way that is accessible to them that it may not have been previously accessible. But yeah, that's definitely not what people are encouraged to do. They're encouraged to just be like, well, this was my own brilliant idea. Yeah, and even if they don't think that, because in the discussion that ensued following that, my whole wave of shrinking, was, you know, in the conversations like, well, I never really thought that they were the originator of the idea and da da da. And I said, yeah, I don't know that I thought that either entirely.

[01:10:31] But I can definitely say after all the years in that circle and that community and now talking to hundreds of people, not just from there, but other groups, we're kind of left to think that, you know? Right. And that's not, that's deliberate. Right. Right. That's intended. And it's deliberate. And it's not accurate. Yeah. And it's also, I mean, to me, it's another sort of narcissistic, you know, red flag.

[01:10:54] Like, I'm kind of always got to take the, you know, you know, I'm sort of not willing to acknowledge or appreciate the various sources and places and stuff where I've learned from. That was another thing that came up in our first safe practice in the workshop was the whole thing of like putting down, because there's a lot of people who don't have formal credentials. I'm one of them. Right. And I promise you, I'm a pretty good coach. Actually, I make a big difference for people. I haven't been coaching because I'm scared to death too, because I'm talking about all this stuff.

[01:11:24] And that's another thing that really came up actually in that workshop was how once you do start to wake up to these sort of abuses and misuses and exploitation of ideas and whatnot, then the good practitioners, good coaches, good, like get so scared, they get paralyzed. And now they're off the field because they're scared to get on the field because it's like, oh, but I don't want to be one of those bad guys. I don't want to go down a wrong road.

[01:11:51] That's why I have a big place in my heart for practitioners because it's a really touchy space to be in. And so then we start hurting ourselves by, you know, we're giving away our, you know, we're not charging anything or we're staying silent and we just take ourselves off the, out of the game completely because we think, oh gosh, you know, I don't want to be a part of that muck and that mire work either. So what do we do instead? Well, we start educating ourselves.

[01:12:16] We start educating ourselves about what is narcissism look like first and foremost, so we can recognize it in ourselves. And then how are we, you know, so that's really all of the SIEC work as far as I'm concerned is, you know, the empowerment compass. And now these workshops we're developing with the safe practitioner workshop and the consumer workshop and the summit. And, you know, we're starting, we're just starting, we're going to keep going.

[01:12:43] The, one of the things I was well known for in the landmark world is not really asking permission, asking for forgiveness. And I sort of put out on the SIEC folks, I kind of asked for permission. I said, I'm doing this. You all right with that? Yeah, it's okay. It's okay. I was like, I'm all right. So we're just going to start doing this stuff because we need to, this education needs to get out there. And then as I'm very passionate about the legislation and whatnot that you all stand for and support. And we need to support that.

[01:13:07] And how we can support that is by supporting SIEC safely and, you know, helping with that funding and, you know, getting so that all this stuff can grow and carry forward. That's my passion. That's ultimately why it was the summit. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:13:49] Okay. Writing for healing. It's amazing. She gifted a free session of that. So there's a bunch of yummy gifts in there as well. And most of all, you know, portion of those proceeds goes to, well, the whole proceeds go to support us continuing this work. Illuminate to continue to operationalize this stuff and SIEC safely just straight into supporting the organization to continue its work. And, yeah, so we'll make sure it's in the show notes to where people can buy it and get that SIEC safely updated. So it's actually, it's the same link.

[01:14:19] It doesn't matter. It looks like come to the event. But now when you click it, you're not going to come to it because it was on November 16th and we do not have a time machine yet to take us back. But when you click on that, it's all the same webpage. So it'll actually let you buy a ticket and access the recordings. And hopefully people will do that and listen to them and watch them and have discussions. And then we also have the Safe Practitioner Workshop coming up another round. I'm offering it two ways.

[01:14:42] For $99, you can get the recordings of the first one we did or for $379 or right now it's $299. So I decided to get it on the Cyber Monday stuff. But you can do a live workshop with me where we'll go through each thing, each aspect of the promise and really discuss what does that look like in your business, in your industry, in your coaching thing. And it's really fun. The first time we had 40-some people in it.

[01:15:10] And what was cool is we had people from a lot of different industries. Like we had coaches in there. We had professional people working in organizations as professionals. So we had several people that are kind of in this new emerging field using psychedelics and print medicine. Right. And that was really neat because then as we're looking and sharing ideas about how do we be accurate, how do we be truthful, how do we maintain safety? You know, lots of people had a lot to contribute. It was really cool.

[01:15:38] So that's kind of the advantage of that live and interactive art. Yeah. Really interesting conversations to come out of that. And just like, yeah, coming up with things that you would never think of or situations that you maybe haven't thought of before. Because like you're saying, somebody with a different perspective can speak to something like, oh, yeah, I've had to deal with that. And, you know, here's how maybe we would approach that. So, yeah. Oh, yeah. That's what I was trying to say earlier. I went down a different train.

[01:16:03] But one of the coolest things that came out of one of the conversations last time was this thing about dealing with our credentials. Because somebody has those initials of those credentials. Like it came up. That doesn't mean that they're safe. Right. There's a little bit of a better chance because you know they've got training. You know, there's an accountability body around them in some way. But it doesn't guarantee that. So, we got into some really creative ways to communicate to the consumer what, you know, what kind of practitioner we are.

[01:16:32] And one of them was to share who our top influencers and teachers are. You could tell a lot about, is that the right coach for me? Is that the right kind of class for me? Da, da, da. And I didn't realize it until I heard Jean at the summit during the compass thing how much that fit in with the compass. You said that you had the same way. You're like, oh, maybe that's not the right teacher for you. So, if you know this thing. And I was like, wow, I never thought of that. Because like Glenn says, I go in like, oh, I could get something from anybody.

[01:17:01] Oh, they're doing crazy insane things. But I can pull something good from that. Yeah. I mean, it's something I think about a lot with our mission at Seek Safely. And Jenny and I have conversations about this all the time is that accountability does not guarantee safety. Like it's better, but it doesn't guarantee safety.

[01:17:21] We talk about this in the context of, we recently had finally some legislative success in New York State and trying to codify some of these guardrails and law into law into legislation. And on the one hand, that's great. It's better to have some sort of way for practitioners to be accountable when something bad happens. But that's something bad has still happened. And for any of that to kick in, that means somebody has been harmed.

[01:17:51] And it's not just a problem with folks who are unlicensed. It's definitely a problem like God. A not small subset of my clientele have been harmed by people in positions of perfectly legitimate authority. Right? Like whether they've been harmed by licensed therapists or doctors or ministers or like whatever. So it's tricky.

[01:18:13] The thing about the Seek Safely Summit, like one last pitch for this, is the fact that, you know, man, if you look at the group of folks that Ann brought together for this thing, between me and Gene and Rachel Bernstein and Sarah and Nippy and Chris Shelton, like normally to hear all of us on the same program, you'd need to go to, you'd probably need to go to a conference of some kind. And so Ann really kind of, you know, pulled together some names that tend to have really interesting things to say. Plus me.

[01:18:41] She let me participate in addition to those interesting people. So I definitely think this is the, if you're listening, if you're listening to our voices right now, you're probably into this stuff anyway. And it's definitely worth checking out. And it won't be the last time we do something similar to it. Yeah. So Ann, thank you so much for all the work that you put into organizing. I mean, it's, we know it's a labor of love and it's something that you're passionate about. And we so appreciate it. And we so respect your skill set in doing this.

[01:19:10] And we also appreciate and respect your passion. So we're, we're so happy that we connected with you. Now you reached out to us, even if you did call me a potential cult leader. Thank you. It was a cult. You also called me an expert in your book. So I will, that's how, when I was reading your book, I'm like, oh, when you talk about meeting me, like, yeah, he's an expert in post-traumatic disorders. I'm like, this book is awesome. This book is, is she knows her stuff. So anyway. More on that coming more as we look for more places to show off Lynn's expertise.

[01:19:41] Awesome. All right. Well, we will have all the information about how to access the summit and then how to keep track of what else we will have to come. More collaboration to come for sure. And thank you so much. And, and Glenn for your time today. Always nice to chat with both of you. Thank you, Jean. Yeah, you're welcome. Thank you seekers for tuning in to the seek safely podcast.

[01:20:06] If you loved our podcast, please go to Apple, go to wherever Spotify, wherever you listen to your podcast. Leave us a glowing five-star review. If you didn't like our podcast, please forget. I said anything. Follow us on all the social things at seek safely. I'm at Dr. Doyle says, and where are you on all the social things? And L. Peterson, actually. And or Illuminate, my company. I think it's socials for everything. Goddess Living, Illuminate, and L. Peterson. I'm supposed to consolidate.

[01:20:35] I need to come up with something as cool as Dr. Doyle says. She was lecturing me about how I need to consolidate my stuff. And now Ann's like, I'm all over the place. All over the place. I'm a serial instigator. That's right. All right. Ciao, ciao, gang. All right. Thanks so much. Thanks for listening to this episode. We hope that you have found it enlightening. And we'd be so, so grateful if you'd share it with the seekers in your life. We all know at least one, right?

[01:21:04] Until our next episode, you can find us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook at SeekSafely. Connect with Dr. Glenn Patrick Doyle at Dr. Doyle Says. And me, Jean, at Jean C. Brown on Twitter. Feel free to send us an email, info at SeekSafely.org. To support Seek Safely, you can make a secure donation on our website, SeekSafely.org slash donate. The Seek Safely podcast is produced by Citizens of Sound.