Sounds Like A Cult - The Cult of Self-Help

Episode Date: February 14, 2023

In 2005, this week's guest Sarah Edmondson joined what she thought was a personal development program devoted to helping her overcome her "limiting beliefs." Little did she know it'd turn out to be one of the most notorious and scrutinized groups of all time, NXIVM. "Self-Help" is a distinctly optimistic American pursuit and a majorly profitable industry. Sooo many culty groups start out with the innocent promise of helping their members become their best self. This gray area between positive self-improvement program and dangerous sect is exactly what hosts Isa and Amanda discuss on this week's can't-miss episode with Sarah, host of the podcast A Little Bit Culty and star of The Vow on HBO (Season 2 streaming now!). To support Sounds Like A Cult on Patreon, keep up with our live show dates, see Isa's live comedy, buy a copy of Amanda's book Cultish, or visit our website, click here! Thank you to our sponsors! Get 10% off your first OSEA order sitewide with code CULT at OSEAMalibu.com Visit ritual.com/CULT to start Ritual or add Synbiotic+ to your subscription today. Sounds like a Cult is sponsored by BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com/CULT today to get 10% off your first month.

Protect your skin from winter dryness with awesome vegan skincare and body care from Osea. Right now, we have a special discount just for our listeners. Get 10% off your first order site-wide with code CULT at Oseamallaboo.com. That's O-S-E-A-Mallaboo.com. Use code CULT for 10% off. Cynbiotic Plus is a 3-in-1 prebiotic, probiotic, and postbiotic to help support a balanced gut microbiome with no refrigeration needed. Ritual is offering our listeners 10% off during your first three months. Visit ritual.com slash cult to start ritual or add Cynbiotic Plus to your subscription today. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. If you want to live a more empowered life, therapy can get you there. Visit betterhelp.com slash cult today to get 10% off your first month.

That's betterhelp-h-e-l-p.com slash cult. The views expressed on this episode, as with all episodes of Sounds Like a Cult, are solely host opinions and quoted allegations. The content here should not be taken as indisputable facts. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. So Amanda, why don't I show you my 2019 vision board? Oh my god, I have heard so much about you and your goddamn vision board. It works. Let me tell you, writing things down, but keeping it broad and general, but with clear intentions is so important. So I divided mine into four categories, wealth, health, create, and love. We're still working on the love aspect.

Why do your vision board's categories sound like the title of that movie, Crazy Sexy Love or Crazy Stupid Love? They're not all nouns or all adjectives. We're really mixing and matching the grammar here. Oh, as you know, I don't know, grammar. Wait, is wealth and love not the same thing? All I know is that I wanted to, at the time I was an assistant and with wealth, I was like, I want to make more money. I also don't know why I put Southern California Reproductive Center. Oh, because I want to have kids at some point. Where did you get the idea to create a vision board and what were you going for? We've all heard of vision boards, you know, like our whole lives. Just like I've always been told

that a vision board is important. And then my sister actually has had a vision board for a lot of her things in her life. And there it is. They have, yeah, there it is. It's sibling competition. You were like, if she has one, I need one. Yeah. And also my roommate at the time wanted to make them. And so we did it together. So it was just like an arts and crafts project that makes your dreams come true. The cult of manifestation. Yeah, I mean, for this year, I put on the vision board that I wanted the podcast to grow and boom, it grew. So you're welcome. And if you hadn't put that on the vision board, it would not have happened. Exactly. This is Sounds Like a Cult, a show about the modern day cults we all follow. I'm Amanda Montell, author of the book Cultish

the Language of Fanaticism. I'm Issa Medina and I'm a Canadian touring all over the country. Every week on our show, we discuss a different fanatical fringe group from the cultural zeitgeist, from the Kardashians to chiropractors to try and answer the big question. This group sounds like a cult, but is it really? So today, if you couldn't guess, or if you can't read, we're doing this. Sorry, that's not nice. No, that's funny. Okay. All right. It's okay if you can't read, but literacy is important. We're doing the cult of self help. And this topic can be defined so many different ways. It applies to so many different modes of engagement with life. Issa, how do you define self help? I would define self help as like intentional acts to help yourself

be a better person or whatever that means to you. Like for me, the past couple of years, self help has meant consistently going to therapy, consistently working on my anger issues, consistently focusing on my goals, big and small, and chipping away at those. For me, self help is a very solo journey. But as we're going to talk about in today's podcast, for a lot of people, self help is more a community thing. What does self help mean to you? Okay. Well, I've been thinking a lot about it. To me, self help in 2023 means a couple of things. It not only means this sort of distinctly American ethos of like becoming your best you and fulfilling your potential and overcoming the limiting beliefs, cult language, that are keeping

you sad and stressed and poor. It's also this whole commercialized industry, right? Who's underlying message is like, you have the tools to manifest and you don't need anyone else except this book or this course or this app, which will at long last help you unlock those tools. And if it doesn't work well, then that's your fault, right? So I guess self help really spans our whole entire live your life, watch your back, get the fuck out cult spectrum. Absolutely. You have everything from mainstream beloved books by people like Brene Brown and Glennon Doyle. But then moving along the cultish spectrum, you have sort of like scammy mental health and wellness influencers like Teal Swan and the person we covered in our Instagram therapy episode.

And then on the most destructive end, you have dangerous cults like Nexium. Yeah. And that makes sense that people can be exploited, you know, like when I get a coffee with a friend and I complain about how I have trouble focusing, a friend will recommend to me a book about the importance of doing like chunk focusing like hourly, you know, like productivity methods like the Pomodoro method. Yeah, exactly. They like recommended to me a book that I already forgot the name because I didn't read it because I'm famously, I don't know, I just do things the way I need to do them myself. But I think it's so easy to distract yourself from actually doing the work by doing research on how to do the work. And I think that's how this industry of self help

has gotten so big, because someone finds something that works for them. And then they're like, Oh my God, this is my gospel. I have to share it. They proselytize it. Exactly. Also think another history that is linked is probably self help and breakup help love and sex life help totally something that's similar in the self help of productivity versus the self help of love and sex is that both times you're just distracting yourself with more content kind of totally instead of doing the work. And that's why maybe sometimes those self help books about breakups and love do help you because instead of focusing on your heartbreak and your sadness, you're distracted by reading a book. Yes, it's a very roundabout way of getting your mind off your problems.

But you're exactly right that whether you're talking about productivity or love or wellness or whatever it is, we as Americans are conditioned to want a quote unquote perfect life. We want to achieve the American dream and the self help industry has boomed so exponentially in this country in service of that. But what self help also does is sort of bastardize self care concepts from marginalized communities who have always been locked out of mainstream institutions and didn't feel supported and needed truly to take their own wellness upon themselves. So it kind of takes those ideas and infuses them with a sense of paranoia. Like nobody else can help you. You have to help yourself. And that's sort of toxically individualist, right?

Yeah. And also the paranoia and the idea that perfection is possible because if all of a sudden you think, oh, there is a level that I haven't gotten to or that a thing that I haven't achieved, then all of a sudden you're like, what's wrong with me that I haven't been able to get there? And that's just a falsehood and also perfection doesn't exist. You know, I never thought about perfection and paranoia specifically being linked, but that feels really accurate. You know, like if you've been conditioned to believe that your best self exists, that can cause a kind of conspiratorial anxiety of, you know, who or what has been keeping me from that self. And it is that paranoid perfectionism

that makes someone really vulnerable to cult exploitation. There are leaders who are, you know, mostly trying to do a good thing, mostly harmless, but also leaders that are super destructive like Keith Ranieri, who can step in and say, you know, look, everything has failed you before to make you happy, to make you fulfilled, to make you achieve your dreams. My program though can help you help yourself. Yeah. And it's so smart and so evilly genius for them to say, instead of me helping you achieve exactly what it is you want to achieve, I'm going to help you help yourself because it's so broad. It's that idea that people are just going to project what they want out of the organization or out of the

cult. And then that means that it's open to more people. I'm now trying to think of like how I can convince people to come see me do live comedy by being like, if you come to my show, you're not going to laugh. I'm going to help you learn how to laugh. This comedy show is going to make you a happy person. You know, I talk about my love life and it's going to make you have a love life. Those grandiose promises are high key a cultish red flag, especially when I actually like don't have a love life famously. So I'm like, oh, I'm just pretending. I always used to think that like I didn't talk about my sex life on stage because I was better than other comedians and I wasn't as raunchy. And then I like took a look at myself and my life and I was like, oh, it's just

because I'm not having sex. And then when I do have sex is all I talk about on stage. But you know, my comedy shows are small and quaint. We're talking about self help here, which is one of the biggest industries in America. Amanda, how big has this industry really gotten in today's world? So according to market research, the self improvement market was estimated to be worth over $13 billion in 2021. The self help book market has skyrocketed over the past 10 years. According to NPD group, sales of self help books in the US grew annually by 11% from 2013 to 2019. And 18 million self help books were sold in 2019. I am in the wrong fucking genre. Yeah, I was just about to say I didn't even know that many people read. Sorry. I know you're

literally another. No, my thing is it says more about how many people want to help themselves than how many people read because think about all the self help books you see in people's homes. I bet you not even 50% of those books were actually read. And these self help books have these really grabby titles like think and grow rich, how to win friends and influence people, the power of positive thinking. They're the sorts of titles that make you want to rip that book off the shelf. But especially in the digital age, we want a quicker fix than reading a whole last book. Yeah, which reminds me of one of the OG self help books, which is The Secret. And my dad actually read that. And I remember when I was in high school,

he became obsessed with The Secret and he gathered us together as a family around his bed and was like, I'm reading this book. And I really think that you guys should read it and like set your intentions. The secret to life is just think about your goals and then make them happen. And I was like, I was like, I'm vision board, like you are your father's daughter. I really am, but I'm in therapy to try and control how much that I am. You're getting at something really important here, which is that we want there to be a formula, a recipe for success, not only success, but more existential abstract goals like happiness and fulfillment and perfection. And the truth is that there is a lot of randomness at play,

but we don't want there to be randomness, especially not during times of crisis. Like now, we want a sense of control and the self help industry at large, whether you're talking about Glennon Doyle or Nexium with varying degrees of consequences and destructiveness, creates the idea that there is a recipe that you can follow and help yourself. And that's why I'm going to double down on my theory that if Instagram would just let us watch our posts chronologically, then a lot of our problems would just melt away. I don't know what you're doing. Okay, because you think that the algorithm is too real, because you were saying like we want something that we know. And because the way that Instagram and

Facebook keeps people addicted is by constantly changing the algorithm because we don't know how it works. Whereas like, if they just made the algorithm in a certain way and told us the rules of the algorithm, which chronological posting would be a very simple turn, then we would all just relax because we would know how to help ourselves. You're right. No, I was a happier Instagram user when the posts just showed up chronologically. And a lot of people actually don't know this is that if you go to the top of Instagram and click following instead of just random, it shows you your post, it shows you the people who you follow posts chronologically. Look at you now, you're the self-help guru. You're like, how to make social media work for you by

Issa Medina. Let's talk a little bit about the background and history of the self-help industry. So I ended up learning a lot about the history and origins of the self-help industry while researching my book, not because I set out to learn about self-help, but because I set out to learn about the multi-level marketing industry. And as it happens, those two origin stories are basically the same. Okay, so the embrace of self-help, it actually starts way before our country was even founded with the Protestant Reformation and with Calvinism. John Calvin was this French theologian who really came up with the idea that God plays a role not only in human being's spiritual successes, but in your monetary successes. So he kind of set the stage

for the idea that you can be hashtag blessed in a monetary way. So everybody sort of began aspiring to become this sort of pious, self-reliant entrepreneur type. And being seen as successful in the eyes of everyone you knew in real life, but also in the eyes of God, became the same pursuit. And that's why so much capitalist language sounds spiritual, like the spirit of capitalism and the sacred stock market bill. Yeah, I mean, it's also important to highlight that we are inherently a very religious country, even though we are supposedly founded on the separation of church and state. God is in our constitution, you know? So like there's always going to be that idealism that Americans are going to reach for. And I think it's because they

colonized this continent, but they were still very far from their home. And so what do you do in dark times and times of unrest of unknown, you turn towards a larger figure, an idea of hope that was seen in the small businesses that were created in this country when it was first founded in the family structure and then inevitably in our economy. And I think the reason people like to see that is because it makes you believe that it's possible. Absolutely. But I want to talk about the first self-help book that was aptly titled Self-Help that was ever published. It was published in 1859 and it was a blackbuster success. Like we really glommed on to this thing. 1859, the bookstores were just popping off. Everyone was watching it on Netflix. Twitter

would not stop talking about it. So after that, rags to riches stories became really popular. Then by the mid-1950s, the self-help space took on more corporate vibes rising through the professional ranks. But then self-help went through a pretty major rebrand. In the 60s and 70s, which we often think of as like a peak cult era in the U.S., that's when the self-help industry started taking on Eastern occultic vibes. What does occultic mean? The occult refers to anything having to do with witchcraft, paganism, sort of like the metaphysical, mystical, Ouija boards, that vibe. Oh, I love Ouija boards. Oh, me too. Oh my God. I want a real one. I have like a fake plastic one.

I want an authentic one. Aren't they all fake plastic? No, some of them are like hundreds of years old. I mean, yes, they are all fake plastic. They were fake back then, but now they're old and fake. Now they're old and fake, but old and fake somehow seems more real than new and plastic and fake. Yeah. It's giving constitution. Exactly. Like a ghost is more likely to haunt a piece of old wood than a piece of plastic, you know what I'm saying? Or just because something has been around for a really long time, it makes it more legitimate sounding or looking, but that's not necessarily the case. No. In fact, a lot of the shit that people thought a long time ago was absolute garbage. So in the 60s and 70s, that's when the self-help industry got all new agey when people were into

like transcendental meditation and shit. And I feel like it gave way to a lot of the self-help industry that we see today, which we've covered on the podcast a bunch like Goop or essential oils or SoulCycle. They're just different versions of these self-help spaces. Oh my God. A good half of our episodes are kind of self-help-y, like Instagram therapy, minimalism. That is sort of the crux of so much of what we cover on this show. But I also want to say there also is this kind of contingency of the non-Ernest, non-Woo-Woo, but no less cult-followed anti-Guru, like Mark Manson with his book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. It's the IDGAF self-helper. Yes, exactly. It reminds me of the mom fluencer who's like the messy hot mom hot mess. Totally. You're still

influencing, you're still mom fluencing, but you're pretending that it doesn't matter. Yeah, it's just self-help dressed up a little different. Yeah, it's like me when I spend two hours on my skincare routine in the morning, but then I don't wear makeup and it's like, I don't care about what I look like. I'm just not plastering makeup on my face because I want to make it look like I don't care. That's exactly right. It doesn't reek of self-help, but bitch, at the end of the day, the self-help industry is not going anywhere. We're still searching. We're still unwell. There's still so much on we. We're still overworked and underpaid. We're spiritually unfulfilled. Speak for yourself. I think no one will ever be perfectly fulfilled. We are creatures who are

conscious of our own existence and our own mortality. We're just running around this earth being like, what do I do? With our heads chopped off. Dude, that is such a fact. The reason why my dog and my cats are so present is because they're not aware of their own demise. Exactly. And they're not on Twitter. Somehow I'm not on Twitter and I'm still so fucked up because you're heavily on Instagram. I'm heavily on Instagram. Thank you so much to Ocea for sponsoring this episode of Sounds Like a Cult. Ocea is one of our favorite skincare brands that we both use and love. If your body needs a little love this winter season, you can replenish your skin's moisture barrier with Ocea, which is a one-stop shop for nourishing clinically proven products for both

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Visit ritual.com slash cult to start Ritual or add Sinbiotic Plus to your subscription today. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. If you're thinking of giving therapy a try, BetterHelp is a great option. It's convenient, flexible, affordable, and entirely online. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapist anytime for no additional charge. I myself used BetterHelp when I couldn't connect with my own personal therapist and just really needed somebody to talk to. It was great because I was able to chat with the person, so I didn't have to put on makeup and look nice. And it really just helped me get through a tough time. Yeah, I love BetterHelp because it's just so convenient, affordable, and entirely online.

I mean, who has time to go to an office these days? Not me. Therapy is so helpful for learning positive coping skills and how to set boundaries. It empowers you to be the best version of yourself, and it isn't just for those who've experienced major trauma. If you want to live a more empowered life, Therapy can get you there. Visit BetterHelp.com slash Colt today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelpHELP.com slash Colt. So today, we're going to be talking with a friend of Amanda's and a survivor of, one could say, the worst case scenario of self-help Colts, which is Nixxiom. We're going to be talking to Sarah Edmondson. Sarah Edmondson is a Canadian actress and podcaster, and she was a member of Nixxiom co-founded by Keith Ranieri, and she was heavily featured

in the HBO docu-series The Vow. Sarah also is the author of a memoir called Scarred, and she is a creator and host of the podcast A Little Bit Colty. And if you like this show, you'll definitely like that show. Sarah and I met because the community of people who write about Colts is kind of Colty itself and really small, and so we've actually become pretty close friends. All right, well, here's Sarah. My name is Sarah Edmondson. I got into Nixxiom in 2005. I thought it was a really fantastic personal development program. I was wrong. In 2017, I was branded with the leader's initials, went to the New York Times. There was a trial. Keith Ranieri went to jail for 120 years, and now we have a podcast called A Little Bit Colty. That's great.

That was fucking slick. Wow. We were so in sync. We're also in sync because we're all so tired. And also the tired thing is great because since we're talking about Nixxiom, I was tired like the whole time and the whole thing. They kept you really busy. Get me so busy. And we would sleep sometimes four or five hours a night in a training for 16 hours. I can't even get this out properly. 16-day training, sleeping for very little every night. And the whole thing would be like, well, just change your state. It was not acceptable to be like, oh, I just need a little nap. Then you'd be like satiating. Well, this is a safe space to complain about being exhausted. This is why it sounds like a cult is not a cult because you're allowed to nap whenever you want. And we

love sleeping. Well, Amanda, personally, I feel like you wake up early, but that's your body. I only wake up early during times in my life when I feel deranged right now. But normally, I'm pretty good sleeper. I mean, I fall asleep the second my head hits the pillow. And if I'm not stressed, I'll sleep for 10 hours. Amanda is like my mom. If I ever complain about sleeping, she's like, oh, why don't you just put your head on a pillow? It's not that easy for me personally. I have to have a whole routine. I turn on 10 candles. I meditate and then I still can't sleep. Sarah is the queen of routine. I'd like to compare routine. Yeah. What's yours? Well, it depends where I am. And if I have the kids and stuff on a daily at home, I try to like get the housework

done and prep everything for tomorrow. And then I have a hot bath with Epsom salts and I drink my Organifi tea. After that, I don't look at my phone because if I start looking at my phone after the best, then bad news game over game over. And then I do things kind of embarrassing, but I do legs up the wall where I put my legs like up against the backboard or up to the wall. And that's like a yoga pose. It's very restorative. Okay. I actually did all of those things the other week. Really? Even legs at the wall? Not the wall. I did everything. Bath with tea. I cleaned the whole house, like did the dishes, sat down to meditate. And then like every time I thought of something that I had to do for tomorrow, I wrote it down. And then yeah, took the bath with the tea and then

put my phone away. Didn't look at it for two hours before bed and didn't do the legs up the wall though. So maybe that's why I still didn't sleep well. That's the key. Before we get further into it, can you briefly explain the story of how you got involved with Nixxiom? I joined a program called Executive Success in 2005. It had been referred to me by a filmmaker named Marc Vicente, who made a film called What the Bleep Do We Know? A film that at the time was really big in the zeitgeist is the word that I noticed that you all loved to use. Yeah. Amanda taught me that word. I didn't really know that word before, Amanda. German. It's a beautiful word. I mean, it's such an evocative word, sign of the times, you know? It's so useful. I use it now all the

time. I'm like, oh, I'm late. It's because the zeitgeist is just, it's in the way. I don't think the zeitgeist can make you late, but I quite take it. Let's see. So yeah, he referred me and I, if he was somebody I really trusted and wanted to work with, I had come to a point in my career where I was like, I was doing shows that didn't really mean much to me. I technically was a working actor, but I was like, there's got to be more and more purpose. I was really craving community and the acting community I think over the time was kind of caddy and not super supportive and I just wanted, I wanted more of a lot of different things. Mark told me about the five day. I didn't research it. I just jumped in and I was, I changed my mind, tried to get my money back,

I'd put a deposit in, they would give it back to me. They basically gaslit me into going anyway, you know, using my own values against me. Basically, I tried to get out of it and saying like my agent might call and I have to audition and she said, well, are you going to be waiting for your agent to call the rest of your life or do you want to be the master of your own ship? And I was like, oh, you're like, I'm an actress. I will be waiting. So I took the bait on that one. Same thing with the first five days and first few days were very challenging for me. My instinct said to run my loyalty and my trust in Mark who said, you know, I know it's weird. I know it's weird. Wait till day three. And he was right by day three. I had enough perceptual shifts about

myself and how I lived my life. And I was like, this is amazing. I ran a women's group, like a support group for actors that we got together every, this is before Nextium. And there was like 10 to 12 of us every week. We eat muffins and we did the artist's way and we journal and share our goals and help each other and give each other feedback. And I came out of the ESPN. I was like, this is like, oh my God, all the women I know need this. Everyone, everyone I know needs this. And I felt I was very zealous. And the people that trusted me came along and the people that thought it was weird and in a cult pulled away. And there was a big division. Oh my God, you saying that about the women in theater support group. Actors and creatives are unexpectedly

some of the most susceptible people to cultish influence, not only because so many creative fields are pretty exploitative and that can make you vulnerable, but also because creatives are dreamers. Nobody has loftier goals than actors, you know, like fame and spiritual enlightenment are basically equivalent in this culture. Scientology goes after so many actors in LA for a reason. Yeah. And I also feel like in order to have endurance in the entertainment industry, you have to tell yourself certain mantras. This role wasn't for me or like it's going to come around next time. You have to get into like that mentality of hoping everything will work out for the best because you're invested in it either way. Also like what it did for me in terms of

validating me, like for your listeners who don't know, there was like a martial art system of belts, what we wore as sashes, which were cheesy and I hated them, but I grew to love them because of what it meant in terms of what I earned and all those things. Now I hate them again, but at the time it was a perfect reward system of if you do X, Y, and Z, you get the next stripe on your sash. On the stripe path of the different sashes, white is student, yellow is coach, orange is proctor. What was a proctor? Once you're proctor, which takes a lot of fucking work and I think one in 10 people become a coach and one in 10 coaches become proctors. It's very MLM vibes, you know, like almost no one becomes like a Mary Kay, Diamond, Cadillac, cellar or whatever. This

is why I would fall so far down the spiral because I'm so above all I am competitive. You two are both ideal cults targets because Sarah is so idealistic and so outgoing as you mentioned and Issa is competitive and wants to belong. If I had joined this group, I would be like so deep in and I think one day I would just wake up, have a light switch go off and either be bored of it because I get bored easily and I'd be like, all right, I'm done or I'd notice it from one day to the next, but I don't know how it happened for you. Well, there were a lot of things that I had problems with towards the end and part of it is that like, yes, I did go up the straight path very fast. I think they saw the recruitment ability in me and like poured a bunch of resources in me and like

flew me out and put me on the private jet and made me feel really special and belonging and all the things that I was looking for, right? And then I stalled at getting to Proctor. I like foam with the mouth over the terminology because like you using it to this day and not even noticing like, oh, the average person doesn't know what a Proctor is. Like it really shows how robust the culture was. It was huge. So you talked a little bit about the recruitment tactics in the beginning and that you didn't want to be there and then they were like, just stay till day three and all these promises of like making the world a better place, making yourself a better place. What were some of those original promises to you that resonated with you? I didn't experience them as promises,

but that probably is a good word. It's more like at the time it felt like this is a tool set that can get me where I want to get to and it's a tech. They called it the tech red flag. That's L. Ron Hubbard Scientology appropriated terminology. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He called it tech. I mean, that's how he coined his strategies to make them sound scientific. Yeah. So we had the promise of this tech at the community group of like-minded people, a lot of women that like I resonated with like these really strong women. And there was a certain level of glamour to it as well and being like accepted. Like I've always had trouble kind of fitting in. I'm not one of the golden popular kids growing up. Despite what you might think of me now, I was not. No, honestly, that does surprise

me because Sarah is so charming and beautiful. Like there's no reason why you should not have been the most popular girl in school. I see that. Yeah. I mean, I feel immediately comfortable around you. And again, like I've said, we've never met before and I'm like, we're friends. And that's like, for some reason, hard to hear because it was the opposite. I was full on nerd. It was a theater nerd. I had big glasses. I had buck teeth. I was a late bloomer. Same. Same. No, I really relate to that a lot. I've looked at the same my whole life, which is never like a 10. I've just... Like I never like hard bloomed, but I never like dismantled. Do you know what I mean? Oh my God, Issa, it is actually so true. Like remember when

that baby filter was circulating on Instagram stories or whatever that made you look like the infant version of yourself and on Issa, she looked exactly the same. But I did feel like I got accepted there and the curriculum helped me with a lot of things right away. I was like addicted to sleeping pills at the time, got off those immediately and helped me with my communication and my relationship at the time and helped me with a whole bunch of things. But I think the promise that really, to answer your question, and I haven't heard it asked that way, it was like kind of ticked all the boxes of everything that I was looking for. And also I did have the magical thinking element going into it. That's a mindset that so many of us have, you know, like show me a more

human drive than wanting to find your purpose in a seemingly chaotic and purposeless existence. And something about something ticking every box that like you're after is such an amazing feeling. You know, it's not the same as joining a cult, but I found a really good planner the other day and you know, very similar, you know, when you like have a planner that it has the monthly, the daily, the weekly, and it also has space for notes. It's like Nixxiom was like your human planner. I have saved every planner that I've ever had my entire life. So I get you on the planner. And not only that, they had a class called time and lists, which I'm sure he stole from like, I don't know, like seven habits of highly effective people or something like that.

And that was my favorite class to teach because it's all about how to organize your time and set up your whiteboard with your projects, which I actually still do. That's beautiful. What I'm hearing is that Keith Ranieri, who famously just sort of borrowed and stole so many different tactics from so many different cult-ish groups throughout history, mostly Scientology, is that he was really big on creating this illusion of control. Like that's why he had so many steps and sashes and classes on lists because we crave control so badly. And here was a person who was like so confidently promising everyone, you can get your life under control if you follow these steps. But it was confusing because then I would get in trouble for being

controlling. Like it couldn't make it make sense in my mind. Because ultimately he had to be the one in control. Exactly. It's like they want you to be in control of your own life as long as it doesn't get in the way of them controlling your life. I always overrode my gut instinct about the bad things because we'd been trained that that was just like something to look at and issue to get an EM on. Can you explain what an EM is? Sorry. Yes. An EM is an exploration of meaning. It's when you present something that you were reactive to, to a coach and they would help you work through your reaction. For example, stimulus. I'm in Whole Foods and I don't know what to eat and I start feeling anxiety. That would be a perfect thing to EM because I don't

want to feel that way. That's annoying. I want to be able to be like, oh, I can eat this and I can eat that. I'm like super chill person. It was Nexium's version of Scientology's auditing. Yes, exactly. Well, and also something that like my personal therapist would say to that, you're feeling anxious. She would probably be like, okay, stay there for a moment and feel that anxiety and work through that feeling. Like sit with it. Sit with it. Yeah. Because I feel like something that a lot of people do and Keith Ranieri doubled down on this was push it down, push it away, make it go, be perfect. We are literal human living beings. Yes. There's no perfect version. The line you would hear a lot in Nexium is just a viscera. Just a viscera?

What does that mean? What does viscera even mean? Viscera was a noun in Nexium to describe your feelings in your visceral gut area. Oh, right. They made it sound scientific. Yes, that's what they do. I mean, we as human beings, we are nothing but viscera. When I first watched the vow, I was just so glad I never met anyone in the group because I would have, I would have joined. I would have joined for sure. Yeah, like we would have been Amanda famously thinks she could never be convinced. Not of a group like that. And that's because of my dad, right? That's because of my upbringing. I would be like, la, la, la, la, la. Well, I know. And that's the thing. And that's what we try to communicate on this podcast all

the time. No one is entirely above cult-ish influence. It's just that I was primed because my father, the cult survivor, raised me on his stories. I was primed to be profoundly allergic to group-based conformity and belief. But I have been in so many cults of one toxic friendships, one-on-one romantic relationships. It's the same thing dressed up differently. Totally. I tried to recruit a number of people over the years. One of them, we actually had in our pod, Ian Corlett, who's extra of his witness. And he's like, I really like you. I like Mark. But I was in a group like this. It's too similar. And I didn't know much about Jehovah's Witness at the time, but I was like,

you're just projecting your own thing onto this. We're not like that. But speaking of the New Age stuff, I remember we have spoken before about how Keith Ranieri insisted that Nexium was not New Age. It was not a religion, but a lot of the tenets and rituals sort of smell of woo-woo new religious movement. So I was wondering if you could talk about how some destructive New Age dogmas were camouflaged in Nexium as like secular self-development. So yeah, there's a couple of things I see now as New Age. He specifically said it couldn't be a religion because the whole point of Nexium was to bring people of all religions together to have a common language that we could all agree upon. So everything was pitched as being scientific.

There were things that were more New Age, like there was this module called Focus. There was this emphasis on learning to have the belief that you could do something no matter what, no doubt in your mind. And you'd EM any doubt out of your mind until you believed with your whole heart that you could achieve it. It sounds like there is something for every concern that you had. Every time you had a concern, not just with the program itself, but with your personal life, they were like, we can fix it. Just follow our path. The main con, I think with the whole thing, and this is how I feel with all large group awareness trainings, even those that you may not talk about because they're very litigious and you don't want to mention their names, all of

them operate on the same con, which is we come to the training trying to better ourselves and we're open. Like unless someone drags you to the training, you know, and you're like, fuck this, like my partner dragged me or my boss, whatever. If you come and you're open and you're wanting something and they're saying, this is the tool set and you believe that you're open to all the suggestion and the main suggestion that will then also get implanted is that like underneath everything you're broken and there's like something wrong with you and they have the path to fix it and they're the only people that can fix it. And it's not just like a five day and you're done. Just you wait till relationship day. If you think the five day was good, holy

shit, the 11 days going to blow your mind. And we thought that was really good because there's so much more growth to be had. Now I see that it's just hooking people in long term and you know what Keith even called it? The money pump. Oh my gosh. I mean, it is just absolutely analogous to Scientology. I tell the story in my book, but I got quote unquote kidnapped by the church of Scientology when I was 19. I was lured in by a pretty girl to take this Scientology personality test and I was in there for three hours and then, you know, some authority figure in the church, quote unquote church, analyzes your personality and points out all your flaws and says Scientology can help you with that. And then they guide you to someone who's there to sell you on a CD and a

book and a course. And then they want to take you into another room so you can watch a video. And you think in your mind like eventually going clear or self actualization or whatever it is possible, but they're just going to be upselling you across that bridge to total freedom as they call it in Scientology forever. Yeah. And it reminds me like the way that you said that they break you down to find the problems in doing my own self help work through real therapy. I want to work on my anger issues before I get into a serious relationship. And I've been working on them for a really long time. And I've gotten to this point where I don't know if I'm ever going to be perfect because none of us are perfect. I don't know if it's worth waiting longer before I put myself out

there because I'm just going to be consistently working on myself for the rest of my life. And that's part of the process of like being human is accepting that we're always going to be having to put in the work. And I feel like the problem with these organizations or these groups is that yeah, they lie to you that if you just take the next class, then you'll be perfect. And if you continue with them, then you'll be perfect, but no one's perfect and no one will ever be perfect. Yeah. And that's my class. Yeah. No, it's true. And if I'd met you at a bit, I would have gone right in on the anger stuff and been like, we have a class for that. And you would have gotten some great tools for it.

Yeah. In terms of like, I can tell you right now, so you don't have to join a cult. There was one, one thing called the switch. And again, I haven't figured out where he stole this from, but it was basically like in the moments where you're feeling like some people caught flooding, like outside of nexium, it's just like the extreme emotion is to remove yourself from the situation. So stop, think, act, respond, star, another stupid acronym, go take a pillow and you basically like scream from the, not from your throat, but from your gut as loud as you can into the pillow and just release the adrenaline. I have literally done that. To me, it's a quick solution, but it's not

the bigger solution. It's like the way I've been working on it is by talking about my childhood. We would have done it both ways. Ultimately, whatever triggered you in the first place, you'd then bring that to your coach and work on the stimulus. So it was like... Someone chewing really loud. Chewing. Chewing. Amanda knows. He's saying it's chewing and clapping. Slurping or chewing. Do you know how many, how many times I EM'd people on chewing? Oh my gosh. Dude, I, when you were saying you were like, you feel something, it's like I can literally feel

my blood boiling. Someone could start a whole cult based on helping people getting over their anger and response to chewing. Listen, as he gets out of jail and people let her, she could do that because, I mean, it did help. How were outsiders who criticized the program like demonized to you guys? It was kind of case by case. Generally, I really feel like Keith studied other cults, specifically Scientology and Children of God, and learned what worked and what didn't work. We weren't like on a compound, for example.

I think he was smart in kind of trying to keep family members close. And also we were trained, like if people said this is a cult or this is weird, it'd be like, what specifically is weird about it? Like, oh, wearing sashes. And I was trained to say, I totally get that. I thought they were weird too, because I did. But what I found is this is a system for measurement for growth. And so everything, when you understand why we do what we do, it makes more sense.

And generally people who thought what we were doing was bad or was a cult or whatever, I just felt like they didn't get it. But if they were actively trying to do anything against us or speak badly about them, then we thought that we'd call them suppressors. Another term from Scientology. They told you how to get in front of it. And that was not only convincing for other people, but it was probably really convincing for you.

Yes, it fortified it. And I saw the same thing being done to me when I left. And I was like, I got branded and they're branding women. And they're saying, but what specifically is bad about that? And also it's ignoring the fact that your feelings aren't ever going to be right or wrong. So like you were feeling a certain way and he was saying that's wrong. And that's like the one thing you can never tell anyone, like even if you're in an argument with a friend or something,

and they're like, I feel like you did this to me. And I can't tell you that you're wrong because you feel that way. So this is ultimately an episode on the cult of self-help. And, you know, Nextium is sort of a worst case scenario in that larger culty umbrella. But we talk a lot on this show about how X members of cultish groups will sometimes go on to join other destructive cults. It's a bit of a pattern, you know, Jonestown to sit in on. Cult hopping.

Yeah, cult hopping. That's what we call it too. And hopefully they always end up at our podcast. This is the final stop. This is the end to the bridge to total freedom. And, you know, we were talking earlier in the day and joking a little bit about how like, you are totally still into wellness and self-improvement through like yoga and routines. And I was wondering if you could talk about what culty communities or practices you currently

engage in and how you avoid ending up in another community as destructive as Nextium. Yeah, great point. And this is something that like is sort of the underpinning of our podcast is we're not going around saying like, you're going to call and get out of the call. Like what's happening in that group that's problematic and do you want to be a part of it? I mean, even something like Glennon Doyle, even when I read her book at the beginning of first getting out, I couldn't even read it at first because I was too allergic to even the genre.

So keep in mind, I'm five years out. I'm very sensitive and very careful with what I get involved with. And somebody said to me once right at the beginning, it's one thing to take some tools and put them in your life and that's can be healthy. But when you make the tools your life, that's when it's problematic. Oh, I love that. I don't ever practice a method. I'm never going to do Kundalini.

I'm never going to do Bikram. I'm never going to do Shtanga. Like when it leaves the classroom with you, you want to do yoga where you go to a class, you do the yoga, and then you leave and you're done with the yoga. Exactly. Here's a fun fact for you. The word sacred literally means to set aside.

So if you're engaging in a sort of mystical woo-woo practice, it needs to be something that you can set aside, something you can engage in for a while for a period of ritual time and then return back to some version of consensual reality. I like that. It's something new every day. My lifestyle is a bit of a hodgepodge of a bunch of different things that I find helpful.

But I have to be honest that I'm still open to things, even Sage or Palo Santo. I don't know how it works. I know when I light it and put it over my body after a dark interview, I feel lighter. Yeah. Because maybe it's just a little ritual that makes you feel better. One thing that I learned writing my book

and that really caused me to be at once more skeptical but also more compassionate is that we humans are just so dreamy and superstitious and communal by nature. It is not human to completely disaffiliate from everything culty. It's just about having the awareness to know what's up. Live your life. Watch your back and get the fuck out.

Yes. So what are some culty self-help figures currently in power that you think our listeners should probably keep an eye out for and actually avoid? Any group that has smoke is guaranteed that there's some fire. If there's controversy, if there's been a documentary made, if there's people who've left saying I've been hurt, chances are there's truth there,

even if the documentary was exaggerated. Fact is that there's victims and survivors and they're speaking about it and any kind of large group awareness training. I just don't think that's a good way to work through your stuff. There's much better actual legit therapists and I think what people are drawn to and they keep going back is there's a high and the rah-rah of being,

it's like we call it like a rock concert personal growth and we even talked about that next year. Like you could go to that and you're like, yeah and you feel that energy and it's super exciting. But it fades and yes, it feels good to be in a room with such a big group of people but it's not sustainable. You should not be getting your rock concert

and your therapy from the same place. Yes. Like go see Coldplay and then talk to your therapist later. For me, the red flag is that they're trying to make doing the work like fun and easy. Yeah. A lot of times when people are like, I love therapy, like I just talked to my therapist.

I'm like, you're probably not really putting in the work because I don't look forward to therapy but I know I leave feeling better and feeling lighter. I know that for the next hour, it's probably gonna be a lot of tough conversations. So it's not like putting in the work is easy and I think that's the immediate red flag. 100%.

Wow, what a juicy, delicious, important conversation. Now we're gonna play a little game. We always play a game with our guests. That sounds like a cult but we've actually never played this one before. We came up with this game like early, early, early on but we actually never ended up playing it with any of our guests until now.

It's called Stan Ban Bonk and it's basically our culty version of Fuck Mary Kill. We're gonna name three culty figures or culty groups and you're gonna have to identify which you would full-blown join, AKA like I'm gonna marry this group, which you're going to ban, AKA kill it, arrest them and then Bonk is like the equivalent of Fuck

which is like, okay, I'll do a weekend. Okay, so Stan Ban Bonk, Teal Swan, Tony Robbins and Elizabeth Holmes. Which one would you stand? Which one would you ban and which one would you Bonk? Oh, that's how I gotta figure out which one I have to Bonk. That's like, let's get that one out of the way. And by that, you don't actually have to have sex with them.

You just spend a weekend with their group. Oh, okay, fine. That's tough. Definitely not Elizabeth Holmes. It'd either be Teal Swan or Tony Robbins. Oh. Yeah, I kind of wanted the skin in there and sea for myself. Oh man, that's tough.

I really want to do, I want both of them. I want to, I want to bonk both of them. What did you do? Plot twist. Can I have a three-way with Tony Robbins and Teal Swan? Oh my God, baby. Oh my God, that's amazing. It's like Teal Swan, Tony Robbins and Bantino Massar

walk into a bar. Sarah's there with a microphone, ready to record an episode of A Little Bit Goldy. I guess I'm going to bonk Tony Robbins, and then I'm going to ban Teal Swan. Which means you're going to stan Elizabeth Holmes? Wait, that's it. No, I can't do that.

I don't want to stan any of these people. This one's triggering. Okay, this one's too hard. You guys, that's way too hard. Okay, this one's too hard. This one's too hard. That was, yeah, that was a trigger. I'm so sorry.

Okay, round two. This one will be a little easier. The stakes are lower. Stan Ban Bonk, Kim Kardashian, Jared Leto, Elon Musk. Ban Kardashian. Ban Kardashian, just that whole world, this makes me nauseous. Might as well bonk Jared Leto and stan Elon Musk.

Just because- Super controversial. Very controversial. I mean, if I'm going to marry someone, it might as well learn me. Marry Rich. Marry Rich. Big goals are true.

I'm dead. Okay, next one. Stan Ban Bonk, Disney Adults, Swifties, who are Taylor Swift fans, and Goop. I'm going to stan Goop and I'm going to- Of course. Because I like some of the perfect- You like that stuff.

I like that stuff. And Ban Disney Adults. So we're going to bonk Swifties. That's the right answer. Yeah, that's well for you. Last round, Stan Ban Bonk, academia, multi-level marketing, the NFL. Oh, man. Ban, for sure, multi-level marketing.

NFL and what was the other one? Academia. Academia. God, I really hate this game. I don't like it at all. You're like, I'm going to stan the NFL because of my husband. I'm going to stan Allegiance too with my husband.

And bonk academia. Fair. Great. Well, that's all she wrote. That's the game. Sarah, thank you so much for being here. This has been a really long time coming because we've been friends for over a year

and I did your show a little bit culty and I'm so glad that you've been here today on Sounds Like a Cult. If folks want to keep up with you and your work, where can they do that? Thank you so much for having me. I actually thought it was never going to happen and I used to cry silent tears at night.

Just wondering when I'd get the invite. People can find us on Instagram at a little bit culty and me personally at Sarah Edmondson. I also have a book. If you want all the juicy details, of everything that happened in those 12 years, it's called Scarred, The True Story of How I Escaped Nexium, The Cult that Bound My Life.

That was such a lovely conversation. I'm so glad we got to talk to Sarah about this because she knows on a personal level. So informative and Sarah's so good at creating such empathy for people who get involved in cults like Nexium because we all like to think we're so much better than that. And she goes to show that we're not. So out of the three cult categories, live your life,

watch your back, and get the fuck out. Esau, what do you think about The Cult of Self-Help? Well, I think because it's such a broad topic and we like to focus more normally on niche topics, I feel like it would be irresponsible not to call self-help a watch your back. Totally. I completely agree.

It spans our entire spectrum. I think it is possible to participate in a live your life level self-help journey you with your vision boards. But because the history of self-help in this country is so nefarious and capitalistic, like conflating church and state, conflating money and enlightenment and God and all this stuff,

like it's just so easy to exploit. And that would have to make it at least a watch your back. Yeah, it's like the definition of a watch your back category. I mean, like nothing is watch your backier than this. Yeah, exactly. Well, that's our show. Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back with a new cult next week.

But in the meantime, stay culty. But not too culty. This episode was edited by Alana Nevins and mixed by Jordan Moore of the pod cabin. To join our cult, follow us on Instagram at soundslikeacultpod and ESA here to check out tickets to my live stand-up comedy shows and tell me where to prepare for it. Thank you for watching.

Don't forget to subscribe to our channel so you don't miss out on any of our new episodes. Thanks for watching. To join our cult, follow us on Instagram at soundslikeacultpod and ESA here to check out tickets to my live stand-up comedy shows and tell me where to perform next. You can find information on my Instagram at ESA Medina. I-S-A-A-M-E-D-I-N-A-A.

And Amanda here, you can feel free to find me on Instagram at Amanda underscore Montell and check out my books, Cultish, The Language of Fanaticism, and Wordslet, a feminist guide to taking back the English language. And if you like our show, feel free to leave a rating on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. And if you don't like our show, feel free to rate other podcasts the way you'd rate us.