Latest / Reclaiming Consciousness / Bewitched - Breaking the Spell After Spiritual Mentoring Goes Wrong - Robyn's Story

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Bewitched - Breaking the Spell After Spiritual Mentoring Goes Wrong - Robyn's Story · Reclaiming Consciousness

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Reclaiming Consciousness.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Elise Bassine, trauma and breath work expert and creator of the Metamorphosis Method, the only methodology bridging the gap between spiritual healing and clinical trauma work.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: For many years, our consciousness has been hijacked by societal and cultural programming, religion, the media, and familial and ancestral trauma.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: In this podcast, you'll discover my unique perspective on trauma healing and how it is the gateway to fully reclaiming your consciousness.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: You'll hear stories and teachings that expand your mind as you discover how every relationship challenge, business block, or limiting pattern is an invitation to reclaim the parts of your consciousness you unknowingly gave away.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Get ready to go deep.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: Now let's dive in.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Hi everyone, welcome back to the show.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I am so excited for you to hear our second episode in our Bewitched series.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: This week we are swapping from last week, and I am interviewing Robin about her experience working with this coach.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, I meant to say in the intro of the last episode that we are using the name Betty because we don't want to say her name.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: And we've also changed some of the places that we mentioned about the retreats, just because we just want to keep it like that.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: I think you all figured that out.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: But we are using the name Betty to describe this coach.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: So the other thing I wanted to let you guys know is that Robin's interview is actually in two parts.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: So you're going to hear the first part today, and then you're going to hear two interviews with two other women who were at this last retreat that Robin talks about.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: And you're going to hear their interviews.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: And then after that, you're going to hear part two of Robin's episode.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason why we did it that way is it's kind of like chronological, and you'll get that as you listen to all of them.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: So just know that this episode you're going to hear.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: While it is very long and very deep, it is not the whole thing.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: There is a part two for Robin's episode.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: And the other thing I just wanted to say is I just wanted to thank all of you so much because we had such an overwhelming positive response to the episode from last week.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I just want to say, like, I had this feeling of just such joy and happiness about how helpful it was for so many of you.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I've had conversations with a lot of you now.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: People have reached out to me, mostly on Instagram.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I've talked to a lot of you.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: And it's been really helpful to hear how helpful this episode was for you.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: And also people who've had similar experiences with this coach or other coaches or just other people.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like I was talking to other people who've just had similar experiences with narcissists, not in the coaching world, but just in life and how similar it is.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I know that having this conversation is so important, not only for you know the coaching industry, but also just for the world at large, because I think that if we look at what's going on in the world, so much of the problems in the world are based on abuse of power and people claiming to have good intentions, but really do not have good intentions.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I feel like this is like a microcosm for a greater conversation, a greater energy of what is truly happening on our planet.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like if we can have this conversation here and bring this to the light and bring this to the forefront, then it's healing for so many people in so many ways.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a greater healing for the collective as well.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I just wanted to say that and just say thank you to everyone who's reached out.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so happy that this has been so helpful for you and it's been incredibly cathartic for me.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like this is something that people need to talk about.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: So many people have said to me that they feel they were ashamed and they couldn't speak about this kind of thing.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I felt the same way.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like I felt shame and embarrassment for a long time.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I felt like I couldn't talk about it.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: And to be able to talk about it is the most like freeing and liberating thing.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like we have to bring these conversations forward because if we don't, then it's just keeping the people that are abusing power in power instead of taking our power back by talking about it.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: So that is everything I have to say about that.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm really excited for you to hear this conversation with Robin.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, one more thing.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: So we are gonna do a debrief after every episode on Instagram live.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll try to announce them on my stories, but we're gonna try to do it every Monday after the episode comes out on Thursday.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to like give everyone a chance to listen to the episode.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then Robin and I are gonna go live on Instagram and kind of debrief about it, talk about how we felt about it.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd love for you guys to join us over there and join the conversation and you know, bring your questions, bring your comments forward so we can have a conversation about the episode.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: So just a couple of quick things.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: The certification is starting next week.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: If you are still interested in joining, reach out to me.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then also right now, I am running a really insane special on the mothership, which is my 12-month membership mastermind.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's the place to commit to your evolution long term.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's how people get real results.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: If you talk to anybody in my world, the way they've gotten permanent, big transformation in their lives is by committing to this work long term.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: The mothership is the place to do that.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: You have access to all my programs, trainings, masterclasses, anything new I bring forward.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: You have access to anything new I teach live.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: And then also you get a monthly group coaching call with me, you get a telegram chat with me, and a live group breath work session with a metamorphosis method trained breathwork practitioner.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a ton of value.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then the bonuses are worth over$2,500 just in bonuses.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: So you get a private breath work session with me where we permanently clear the familial and ancestral trauma that is blocking you from creating what you desire.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: You get a private call with me where we create a roadmap to pinpoint your core wound, and then you'll leave with a roadmap of how to navigate shifting it moving forward.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then you also get a free month.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: So you're gonna get 13 months for the price of 12.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's all if you sign up before the end of February.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll link that below.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: Please reach out to me if you have any questions.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's a perfect time to join the mothership and to commit to your evolution long term.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody who comes into this program is blown away and they get insanely good results.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: If they have a career, they get a promotion.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: If they have a health issue, it goes away.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: If they wanted to move forward with their business, they move forward with their business.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: If they want their relationship to get better, it gets better.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like the thing will happen in 12 months.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: So it's the place to be to commit to your evolution long term in my world.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: So please reach out if you have questions.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: I will leave it there.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: Enjoy the episode with Robin.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, everyone.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to the show.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I am really excited to be doing this interview with Dr.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: Robin McKay.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: And this is part of an interview series where she's going to be interviewing me.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to be interviewing her.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then the two of us will be interviewing some other women, all around experiences we've had in the last couple of years or so working with a particular coach.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: And these are stories that we feel very strongly need to be told, not only for us to tell our stories, but also so the community at large can learn from the things that we're sharing and understand different implications and things that can happen, things to watch out for.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll get deeper into it as we go in.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: But Robin is telling her story today, and I will be holding space and interviewing her.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: So, Robin, welcome to the show.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: And thanks for holding space.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: And let's dive in.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: So why don't you just start by giving everybody?
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: I know most people who listen will be familiar with you, but just for those who aren't, give us a little background into you and then take us where you want to start with the whole story.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I have a PhD in counseling psychology from the University of Kansas.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: I worked for a long time as a psychologist in the university systems.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: And about 12 or 13 years ago, I stepped away from that life and I began pursuing my dream to have my international coaching practice and really to pursue spiritual entrepreneurship and developing spiritual leadership, I'll say.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: And my background and training as with my PhD has to do with vocational psychology, has to do with the psychology of gifted and talented people, and most specifically, it has to do with spiritual intelligence.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: From a background education and training perspective, I've been doing this work for a really long time.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: I've attended retreats, spiritual retreats, in particular, transformational retreats, more generally since uh probably 2002.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: So I've been doing that a lot and I've been hosting retreats for a long time as well, is coaching people in spiritual entrepreneurship and business as well.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: So that all becomes important because one of the things that we know in spiritual entrepreneurship is that there has been this emphasis on the importance of having a coach, working with somebody who is further along than you are, who has basically the things in their business or are doing things in their business that you want to do.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: And certainly that was the case for me with this coach who I'm gonna call Betty just for the sake of ease.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's not her name.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I just think that it's it's important to have some kind of name put in into this conversation so that we can follow along pretty easily.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: I started working with Betty about seven years ago, and the reason that I did, of course, is because she seemed to be further ahead than I was in business, and she seemed to have mastered a level of expertise in spiritual entrepreneurship, doing good and doing well at the same time.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: And where do I start with that, Elise?
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: I think one of the most challenging things for all of us within this is that it's not just one thing, right?
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's not all bad.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's not all good.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: So why don't you start out with your initial experience working with her, which I know was good, and then take us through what started to happen and what were some things that you started to notice that made you take pause and then how that evolved from there.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, of course.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: We work with people and we want to get results as fast as possible.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: And that was one thing that I noticed right off the bat between changing my relationship with money and being able to sell very quickly high ticket.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'd always always been able to do that, but not necessarily consistently.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so that shifted very quickly as well.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: And Betty was really good at generating ideas on like names for programs and next steps and things like that.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: So that was a really cool benefit of working with her.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: She also seemed to have mastered some energetics that I was really curious about.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'd studied Reiki for a long, long time and other healing modalities.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so anytime there was something new that I didn't know about, I have this insatiable curiosity to want to learn as much as I can about any kind of multidimensional technology, including the ones that she was accessing and teaching and so on.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: In that way, those were all good things.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: They made sense to me, they were helping me in business.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: I felt supported by her for the most part.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: For the most part, is I think where we want to go next, because we have to always look at does the good outweigh the bad?
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: And what I started noticing pretty quickly was if I would reach out to her as part of my contract, I had access to her Voxer or whatever kind of app that we were using at the time in order to ask questions and get coaching in between private sessions.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: There was one time in particular that I reached out to her because I had received a letter from the IRS and I was freaking out about it because I was still going through fixing up some back taxes and things like that.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: So I was freaking out about it.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: I messaged her in a freakout and received back rather than any kind of compassion or any kind of support or response that somebody like you would bring or somebody like I would bring.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: It was really more like a snake bite.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's I think the best energetic comparison to it.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: It was shocking and it was quick and it was jarring to my system.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: I know exactly what you mean because I experienced the same thing.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: We've talked about this kind of thing very extensively around when you're in the position of being a client, you automatically are like, okay, this person knows more than me.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: So if they're telling me something, I'm gonna reflect on that, even if it makes me feel uncomfortable.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like that dynamic is something that ended up being to our detriment in certain ways.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe you can take it from there.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: So let's talk about power differential.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: By nature of hiring a coach, there is a power differential.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: We are assuming that this person knows more in some way, has more experience, has more expertise, more wisdom, more something.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: We're hiring them for a purpose because we see that they have some wisdom that they can either bestow on us or train us in or whatever.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: And as a counselor, as a therapist, as you and I are, we understand that power differential and we're really good clients.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: I think both of us are good clients.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's not that we're without, I know I'm speaking in we here, but generally speaking, I think that people go into a coaching business being pretty good clients because that's where we came out of.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so when that snake bite came in, I did exactly what you mentioned.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: I took a look at myself and sorted through how I was going to manage that, recognized very quickly that she is not the person to go to in a panic about anything, because if that's the response I get, I'm not wanting to have that experience again.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: I think that she and I might have talked about it briefly.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: And basically, what she said to me, it might have even been in that boxer message returned that she returned to me.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: She might have said said that this is her setting a boundary.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: You and I both know that you can set boundaries without being brutal, but that was not the method that she chose.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and like the whole thing with the boundary setting, I do want to talk about this more.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if it's right now, but that was something I felt was really overly emphasized as being necessary and a problem.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, as I've really grown over this past year and processed, I realized that like setting boundaries is not something that I need to think about.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's something that I just naturally do as a part of who I am.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I never have boundary issues with clients and I never once talk about boundaries or set boundaries.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a natural thing.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: So that to me is very interesting thinking about somebody who is constantly saying, you're taking advantage of me or you're impeding on my boundaries.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: What is that?
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: To me, it's somebody who's not been trained in therapeutic modalities or methods, even general helping skills.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: That's what it is to me.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: And when I look at my training and education in psychology, yours and counseling, of course, we're going to be good at setting boundaries.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: Those are like therapy 101, very basic to do.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: And when you are credentialed and trained in that way, to your point, I don't have problems with boundaries either.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: And also the other thing, too, is even I have a client who is upset and triggered.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: And even if they make it about me in some way, like I know what's happening for them.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to meet them where they're at and walk them through it and not make it about, oh, you impeded on my boundaries.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like my job is to walk you through your trauma.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to be able to meet you there.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that was one of the biggest problems is when you're wanting to lean into this person for support that you hire to support you, and then you're met with a slap in the face, that I think was like the beginning of behaviors that then went on to escalate to like way, way, way worse than that.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: So that's like the beginning of what you started to notice.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I do want to say this that if I had hired a business coach who didn't have similar credentials to mine, I wouldn't expect somebody to know boundaries and trauma-informed coaching and things like that.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: But Betty actually hung her shingle around being trauma informed.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so when a client comes to you in a trauma, an apparent trauma, and they're met with a snake bite, that's not a way to demonstrate that you're trauma-informed, much less an expert in trauma management transformation.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: To me, it illustrates that you're not an expert.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that was one of my missteps early on.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: If I were looking back, it could have been deliberate, I don't know.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: But on my end, I made the assumption that she actually was uh trained in a similar manner to how you and I were trained.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: And if she was, then I don't know that I saw a lot of evidence to support that.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so then that was the beginning.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: Then, like, how did things start to evolve for you where you started to have more and more experiences that made you kind of question what was going on here?
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: In hindsight, what I can see now is that there were a lot of times when I had would have private sessions with her where she would spend a lot of the time of my private session focusing on something that was going on in her business or with one of her colleagues or with one of my colleagues who happened to also be coaching with her.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: And what I mean by that is that she would disclose things about people to me, and then she would say, I don't talk about you in the way that I'm talking about this other person, first.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: And second, you and I wear different hats with each other.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: You have a PhD in psychology, I know you can handle this.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so it became dual relationships.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: I think is probably the best way to describe that from an ethical perspective.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: Now, there are a lot of people who I have dual relationships with you.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: I have dual relationship with you, I have a dual relationship with Barb, my colleague and creative buddy.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not that, it's how do you handle the dual relationships?
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: And we have to also go back and look at power differential, which is this that even as she was sharing information about other people, basically talking shit about other people in my sessions to me, I was thinking she's a very, very successful coach in this field.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: I'm getting the behind the scenes on stuff, I'm seeing the nuances on what's going on behind the scenes.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe that's part of what I'm actually paying for in my coaching.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: So I made it be okay for me, even though there was part of me that was kind of like, this doesn't feel really good based on what my training and education is on how people share things and disclose things in a private confidential.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then did you ever have a conversation with her about that?
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: In the thought of having that conversation, did that even feel like a possibility for you?
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: It didn't.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason it didn't is because at that point had enough experience with the snake bite.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: I remember another time, it was right before the second retreat I attended with her, which was in San Diego, when I had voxered her about a question about a payment plan versus a paid-in-full situation with a new client who was coming on.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: And once again, rather than giving advice or support or navigating that, she came back at me with another snake bite about I can't believe I have to deal with this with you when I'm just getting ready to leave for this retreat, that kind of thing.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: And it was in that energy.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm a private client, I'm paying thousands of dollars a month.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: This is part of my coaching, and I can't ask a question without getting that immediate and pretty brutal bite back.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so So, in terms of thinking about having a conversation about dual relationships or about how I do remember one time I couldn't find a recording that I really wanted to listen to.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I was afraid to reach out to her to ask her where it was, because once again the snake bite would come.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: And this time it would be in a public forum or a semi-private forum, anyway, with other colleagues.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: If I were to post in a Facebook group, oh, where's this recording?
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: I knew because I had seen it happen with other people, that she would come back about lead yourself and you need to figure this out and you need to find it yourself.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so I did have a conversation like that with her around a simple recording.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I got teary about it when I was having a conversation with her because there was a level of fear, intimidation that I was dealing with as I was having this conversation.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: I know that sounds weird because here I am.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a leader, I have a PhD in psychology, yada yada.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: And yet there was that power differential that was very prominent and very subtle at the same time.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: Can I just say I'm trying to hold my tongue about this, but this is something I have a big problem with?
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason why is because I watched it happen to so many people, including myself.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I've literally never seen somebody who's supposedly at that level of business not have their courses organized in any way, which is to me completely unprofessional.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: And then when someone asked her to find something, yelling at them as if it's their fault when her stuff was the most confusing thing to find.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: She had no course platform, nothing was organized.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then when you asked about it, it was your fault.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: This is something that, like, as I'm hearing you talk about, I'm just getting angry because I remember watching it happen and being like, okay, so I guess I'm just never gonna find any of this stuff because I'm not gonna ask because I don't want to get yelled at in front of people, but also it's unfindable.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: Truly.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: That to me is just what bizarre world are we living in.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: One of our other colleagues was talking with me about this very topic, and she said, that's just basic customer service.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like when people ask me where stuff is, I feel like, oh my God, I didn't make it simple enough for them.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like I try to make things so organized and simple and easy to find, and everything is labeled.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: And then when people ask me, I'm like, oh my gosh, you can't find it here.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: Let me explain it to you.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: I want people to have that experience.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: I would never yell at them.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: It occurs to me that this was a confusion matrix that we were in.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: And as part of the confusion matrix, if you ask questions and the responses that you get in trouble for it or you get publicly reprimanded for asking a question, you don't ask questions, and then it pulls you deeper into the confusion matrix because now you think you have to figure it out on your own, or to your point, you just give up because why would you keep looking if you know that it's an impossible task?
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I actually think that that is a theme that we can bring up again, the confusion matrix and the impossible tasks that we were somehow agreeing to on some level, as you and I and others went through this experience.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: Then let's keep moving forward.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like, where were some more of the pinnacles for you of like how this really started to turn into something else beyond?
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because right now I feel like just to kind of like recap, right?
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like 20 minutes in, I feel like we've gotten to like, okay, it sounds like this is a coach that was just behaving badly at times, but we're still at the bottom of the hill.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: So let's take us now another step up to going beyond just a coach with bad behavior.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's so funny.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: But you're right.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: Because at that point, too, the good was still outweighing the shitty moments because there were a lot of good moments in there as well.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's what keeps us stuck in, is because there's enough good moments.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not unlike a narcissistic relationship.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: Narcissistic abuse, there are enough good moments with the narcissist that it keeps you thinking that, oh gosh, it'll come back around or something.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: So let's flash forward to Denver.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: So Denver would have been my first retreat with her.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: This was pre-2020.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: And there were only three of us plus her at this retreat.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: And remember, I've been doing retreats for a long time.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: I've participated in them, I've hosted them.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes, especially when you're on the spiritual path, when you're in transformational development, interesting and very unique things happen on retreats.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like one of my first spiritual teachers is a channel, and there was a channeling that happened.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: This was years ago.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: So this isn't that was not unusual to me.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: At this retreat in Denver, I had left the room to go have a phone conversation with a client, with a new client who actually, during that time I was gone, paid in full for her package.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_01: So that was a pretty cool moment being at a retreat and having this new thing come in.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: That was awesome.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: Meanwhile, I come back into the retreat room and one of the other participants is now channeling.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: Well, come to find out, she's never channeled anything before in her life.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know to this day, I don't know what preceded that, other than that there was something in the tone that got set that day or something that brought this energy through.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: And the other thing I want to back up here to the Denver retreat for just a minute, because in hindsight, there was something that happened that was seemingly simple, but as I'm understanding it now, I would say very coercive.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: And it was like I was giving permission to something that I didn't know I was giving permission to.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: Betty and I were alone in the retreat room before the other people had come in.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_01: I just happened to be the first one there.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: And we're standing in the kitchenette and she hands me a bottle of sparkling water.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: She looks me in the eye and she says, Will you open this?
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: I had the weirdest feeling come over me, Elise.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: My thought was, why can't you open it yourself?
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that would have been my thought.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, what are you handicapped?
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: But it was the way that she looked me in the eye.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I, because I'm a nice person and because I like to be helpful and I'm loyal and whatever, and she's my coach, I open it for her.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: But there was something weird about that that still doesn't sit right with me to this day.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I really do feel like that was a moment where I agreed to open her bottle, but there was an unconscious agreement that was also formed in that moment.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's so weird.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like we've talked about different things like that that felt really weird.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: And it's hard to even describe them in a way that people would understand because it's just like a feeling that you have that is almost hard to describe.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: The feeling isn't hard to describe.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: It was for me, it was annoyance.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: And when I feel annoyed about somebody asking me what to do, it's my intuition telling me that they're asking me to do something that I should not be doing.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: So if you had to like put it into words, what would you say she was really asking you?
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: She was asking me to be in agreement with her on an unconscious level.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_01: And what I want to say now is to do something at the time I did not know what that was, or to be a part of something.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: And at that time I did not know what that was.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_01: Let me reframe that.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: I think she was asking me to agree to open myself to her.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: That makes open my consciousness to her, give her access to my consciousness.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: By opening this bottle, you open your consciousness.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's like the genie comes out of the bottle.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was like a spell.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: It was.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: And now looking back, I feel like you can see the ways that you were under a spell.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: For sure.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: So at the Denver retreat, that was the first weird thing that happened.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: And then the second weird thing was this person who had never channeled anything before in her life.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_01: She was very intuitive and had some precognitive experiences and things like that.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: But during this channeling, what ended up happening was that there was all this information coming through.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: This was pre-2020, and there was all this information coming through about what was going to happen next in the world, not knowing that things were about to change in the world in 2020.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: But that was strange.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: But here's the ethical part for me.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: If I've got somebody in a retreat with me who has a first-time channeling experience, I'm going to scoop them up after I'm going to say, are you okay?
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: Or I'm going to stop it and see what's going on there.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to manage it in a way that enables my client to feel safe and secure.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't see that happen.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: And as far as I know, there was never any follow-up care or any kind of explanation or any kind of support other than maybe a cursory, oh, you had a walk-in experience and now let's do a bonding and integration.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_01: That was probably the extent of it.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's something that's been like a theme that we've talked about of like creating these experiences with people that can bring up trauma or just bringing up trauma for people and then not helping them through it or supporting them with it.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: And if anything, hurting them by it.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: And that's something that has happened over the course of the time as I look back.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: At the time, I think when I was in it, I didn't know behind the scenes because I wasn't asking people, oh, are you guys processing this offline?
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_01: Are you going into your private coaching sessions?
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: And if I'm seeing something publicly, I'm not going to be monitoring to see if people are getting the support that they need behind the scenes because I'm a client too.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: And it didn't occur to me to do that, I will say.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_01: Bringing up trauma for people or bringing up shock, or I remember this person who channeled just was like, she didn't know what had happened.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_01: She was confused.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_01: So there's the confusion matrix again.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_01: She was confused by it.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know what happened, she said.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so that I would say, I don't know if I would label that necessarily as trauma, but it was definitely one of those experiences that deserves some processing and some kind of closure for both her and the group.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_01: Then the other interesting thing that happened after that Denver retreat is that she tried to gather us together and keep us together as a group.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: And eventually, like after one or two follow-up sessions, the other two just dropped away and then we closed that group.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_01: I thought it was because people were like trying to integrate it into their experiences and couldn't quite integrate it, and so dropped away in order to do that.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_01: And she made it seem like that from the beginning, anytime somebody would drop out after an experience like that, she would say that they were contracting, or she would say that they were basically shirking their responsibilities as leaders or and things like that that gives me pause now because of what will have transpired toward the top of the mountain as we get there.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that was a saying for the whole time was this theme of if somebody leaves her world, then it's an immediate opening to trash talk them, spend entire mastermind calls talking about them, stuff that is just like completely inappropriate or out of integrity or unethical.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like that was kind of a regular behavior.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, for sure.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_01: And she would, I think, frame it under the I'm telling you this for a reason.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_01: But what it ended up being was creating an in-group and then creating an enemy or an out group.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_01: So as soon as somebody's out of her world, then they become public enemy number one.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I have to explain and I have to tell and I have to defend my perspective on why she left or what she did in order for me to kick her out of my world and the betrayals and the things like that that she would bring forward into the smaller community as a way of educating and advising us.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: But really, oh, the big lesson for me is don't leave because if you do, she's gonna talk shit about you, whether or not it's true.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_01: And turn everybody against you.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_01: Turn everybody against you.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: Separate the inner group from everybody else.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_01: So that was a theme in hindsight that I could see very early on forming, and it only amplified as we move on through these experiences.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: So, what would you say would be like the next step up from here, like where things started to get a little bit worse or a little bit more intense?
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things that I noticed after the retreat in Denver, this was night 2019.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_01: So 2020 rolls around, the world is shutting down.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_01: There were many people in the light worker community who started having conversations about false light and about the matrix and all of the going down the rabbit hole and the red pill and all those things.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_01: And she was one of those people.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_01: And the way that she was framing it was that truth has a frequency, and that if you listen to her, and if the frequency is truth, then it is true.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_01: So that was one thing.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I actually, she started talking a lot about two truths and a lie and things like that, which by the way, there's a very, very well-known person in that space who talks a lot about two truths and a lie.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I didn't know that at the time until much later.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_01: I thought she was getting all of this channeled information, but I think that it was coming from other human sources, frankly.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_01: But one of the things that personally happened after 2020, I remember exactly where I was when it happened.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: And this goes back to that moment where she asked me to open that bottle.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_01: So in March of 2020, there was COVID everywhere.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_01: The meatpacking plants were having COVID outbreaks and so on, and we had a conversation, and she said, it's really time to stop eating meat, stop eating animal products.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_01: And listen, I'm from South Dakota in Kansas.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: My family grew up on venison and meat and cheeseburgers and steaks.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, when we were in Denver, we went out to dinner and I had a steak and a glass of red wine, which I do every time I go out to dinner after a big thing like that.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember her staring at me.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: And she didn't say anything, but I just remember her staring at me sort of in horror that I would be drinking red wine and eating meat at that time.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't think anything of it because I always do.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_01: So in March, when she said it's time to stop eating meat, and then she went into this long litany about the whys of that, the why you don't eat meat and the ethics behind it, but also the idea that meat is contaminated and things like that.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_01: Interestingly, really truly, I remember I said that day, so no more meat.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: And she said, no more meat.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_01: And really after that day, I stopped eating meat for five years.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_01: It was not a hard thing to do.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_01: But here's the thing that's interesting it began separating me from my family.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_01: My husband and I regularly had steaks.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_01: My dad and I always ate cheeseburgers together.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_01: And now all of a sudden, I'm not eating meat anymore.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_01: So it was a very simple and subtle thing.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_01: But in the end, it was one of the first cracks in my armor in terms of allowing her access to influence me in ways that would lead up to what we're getting to.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I watched her do that to a lot of people, including myself.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I think there's like these subtle ways of making you question yourself or gaslight yourself because it's like, oh, this is the way that you have to be, or whatever.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: I remember she would always be saying, like, because you're gonna be filled with more light, you're not gonna be like wanting to eat as much.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I actually was like, because of all the work I was doing and working with so many clients, I actually was needing to eat more like grounding food.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: And then I was feeling like wrong for that or something.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: And it was like those kind of things where it would make you question yourself or think you were doing something wrong.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then it divides you from yourself and also the people in your life, like you said.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_01: Betty was somebody who would talk about don't abdicate your power, don't abdicate your leadership.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_01: And yet she was encouraging just that by suggesting, just suggesting.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_01: But when you're spiritually intelligent, you're highly open to experiences.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: We know this from the personality assessment, the NEO.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_01: And highly suggestible people score very high on openness to experiences.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_01: Even if we are intelligent, even if we are discerning, we still are highly suggestible.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_01: And high suggestibility is actually a test for hypnosis.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so people who are highly suggestible are more easily able to be hypnotized or highly hypnotizable as well.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_01: So we can see these very subtle things happening early on, not just with me, but with you as well and with others, that given personality profiles and the high openness to experiences, the background in spiritual development, we can see how easily and effortlessly it can be to influence people on a very subtle level and make them think it's a good idea and make them think it's their idea.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: And it starts out small and then it gradually gets bigger and bigger.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_01: So let's talk about the next retreat for me because here was the next thing.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_01: So retreat number one in Denver, will you open this bottle for me?
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_01: Retreat number two was in San Diego, and you were there with me on that one.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_01: So, retreat number two, I get in to San Diego, I unpack my stuff, I'm in my hotel room, and at I don't know, 11:30 p.m.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_01: or something like that, I get a boxer from Betty.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_01: And Betty is in, I wouldn't say she's in a panic, but she's very stressed out because the place that we were to go the next day for an experience, she was having difficulty with the owner of that place.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_01: And she said that the owner is acting like we've never been there before and I've never talked to her, and now she's charging me more.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so she asked me for two things that night.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_01: One is, can you go to the bank tomorrow and get more cash for me?
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'll pay, I'll pay Polly you over, but can you go to the bank for me and get cash?
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_01: So that was one.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then the other one was can you do any energy work on this woman to prepare her and us for the thing that we're doing tomorrow?
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_01: So, me, rather than sleeping all night, now I am doing grid work.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_01: Now I'm doing energy work on the relationships, on the group, and so on throughout the night.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_01: And it wasn't like I was had really decided to do that.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_01: It just dropped in, and that's what I was doing through the night.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_01: And then in the morning, I get up, I get in my car, I go to the bank, and I get her however much money she wants out of the bank, which she PayPals to me.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: I was paying for this retreat as a client.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_01: But there are two more tasks that came forward that were outside of the scope of being a client at the retreat and placing me in the difficult position of saying no to somebody who I hired as my coach, who is the retreat leader, who I like, who I have a relationship with.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_01: Like if you were to ask me to do that, Elise, I'd be like, sure, no problem.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_01: To say no to somebody like that and wanting to support her, because I do want to support people in their work, but I look back at that as another, those were more activities that I was doing what she wanted me to do.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_00: And it was kind of like impeding on your boundaries.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_00: And also I think as we get further along in the story, there's also a lot of in these retreats pushing everyone to their extreme with lack of sleep, lack of food, not having your needs met.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that was the start of that.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's a really good point because you're right.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_01: I got very little sleep.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_01: And when you're sleep deprived, you're more easily controlled, you're more highly suggestible than you already are, or I am anyway, and those of us who score very high on openness are.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_01: So sleep deprivation is one of the tactics that now I can look back and say that was definitely a part of this experience, the sleep deprivation created the conditions for my consciousness and out all of our consciousness to be altered way more easily than it would have had we been had enough sleep, enough food, enough water, and so on.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_00: With this particular retreat, was there anything else that happened that started to escalate for you, like the boundary crossing or the behavior and the like manipulation, or how did this retreat escalate?
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_01: This was a business retreat.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_01: We were all business owners.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember early on, everybody had an opportunity to have their business looked at, not just by her, but everybody in the group.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_01: And there was one woman who's just getting started on her business.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_01: She was like we do.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_01: We go in circles and we try to figure things out, and we're not sure, whatever.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember at one point watching this whole thing unfold.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: With Betty telling this person, I'm bored with you.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_01: I am so bored with this conversation.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_01: And again, it was one of those snake bites.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_00: I remember.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know how you went on for you then, but in my mind, I was kind of like, you're in a group, but there's still for me, there was this, she's leading this.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_01: There must be something in here because she and she's known this person for many, many years.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so there must be something there that I'm not privy to or whatever, but there it was awkward.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_01: And it also sent a message, don't bore me.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_01: If you don't want to be yelled at, don't bore me.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think what happens too is it also puts you on edge because to me, I wasn't expecting that.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't expecting that to happen.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_00: And when it did happen, I was very uncomfortable.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_00: I felt terribly for the person.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_00: It kind of went out of my body a little bit.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my God, I feel so bad for her.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like I couldn't help but feel what she would have been feeling.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it puts a level of fear because it's like, if I wasn't expecting that to happen to her, and I'm also not quite sure exactly why it happened, then how do I know it's not going to happen to me?
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a sense of unpredictability.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_01: And we had already had the bond of going to an animal experience.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_01: We had already had the bond of being in the van together.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like we had all of these bonds, and then we come back and we're supposed to have a sense of cohesiveness and safety in the group at this point.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_01: And then something like that happens and it rattles the foundation.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_01: It rattles everyone's foundation of the group.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_01: And it, at least for me, when I was sitting there, my thought was, I'm glad it's not me.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_00: And now that I'm thinking about it, this was such a pattern because this would happen all the time in other retreats and also in stuff online where one person would just get yelled at or get kind of like made to feel I don't even know the word, like admonished essentially.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then it was like everyone would become scared that they would be that person.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_01: Let's call it punished.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's punished, but it's also like made an example of or something.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, for sure.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_00: And it's for no reason, because really there's no reason why anybody should be getting yelled at like that.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_01: Especially in a public forum.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's horrible.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_01: Especially anywhere.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_01: And in a public forum, there's another level of shame that can come forward because now you're with your peers.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my God, I'm embarrassed.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_01: You remember being in like elementary school and getting in trouble in elementary school, how embarrassing that was.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's a similar approach and tactic.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_01: Some people use embarrassment and shame as a weapon.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_01: My suspicion is that Betty was doing that.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_01: So the other weird thing about that retreat was that everything was business as usual until we're almost done.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's now, we'll say it's 7:30 or 8 o'clock on the last day.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_01: We're getting ready to say goodbye.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_01: We're having, I remember you and I were drinking wine and eating cheese, and then all of a sudden something changed.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_01: And then we went into this, I don't even remember how many hours we were in that room.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_01: And it was all energetic, spiritual, channeled, but attacked.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_01: It was like a spiritual war situation, Star Wars situation.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how you have to describe it, Elise.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_00: How do you here's how I would like to describe it so people can understand, just in terms of the pattern of behavior that we saw, which was that she was constantly trying to make us feel like we were under attack, or that there was like some kind of dark energy, or this person is out to get you, or this is out to get you, whatever.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_00: And again, I know there are dark energies on the planet and humans or whatever that have negative agendas, right?
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like I'm not saying that's not true, but I feel like there was this level of manipulation where she would kind of like draw everyone into this like story that she created, and then everyone has to kind of like go on this roller coaster ride with her of whatever it is.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'll call it a psychodrama.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's a good, that's a good one.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_01: As I was reflecting on this whole trajectory, I was thinking it was like at that moment we enter into another world.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_01: If you think about it, we've been with her for however many days in San Diego, we'll say three days, three or four days.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_01: And now we're highly open, we're tired, we haven't had a lot of food or access to water or other nutrients.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_00: We only were given really like one actual like meal on that whole thing.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just gonna call it what it is.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_01: So all of the physiological needs, the basically fasting, we're basically in a fasted state.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_01: So now we're altered even more.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_01: So it's easier to step into another world, into the world of imagination, and play Star Wars with the supposed creatures that are watching us from the hotel across the place.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm so open and so highly imaginative, I can go with that.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_00: But I think the issue is like no one agreed to any of this.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_00: And also, like the other thing, too, that just bothers me a lot is I feel like there was always this sense of like you should feel bad that you need to eat or drink water.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just because she doesn't eat, which I have my own opinion about, but I won't say right now.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um like that to me was like very unethical.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_00: And also to like invite people to an experience and have them pay a lot of money and then not feed them and then use that to your advantage.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's a problem to me.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_00: Is there anything else you want to say about that experience?
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_01: It was a weird experience, and I've had weird experiences.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_01: I've had all kinds of weird experiences in my in my work in the spiritual spaces.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_01: So I just remember the next day you and I went and had tacos because that seemed like the most human thing that we could do instead.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_00: Wait, we had two.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_00: We literally stopped at Dell Taco and then Taco Bell.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_01: It was all tacos all the time.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, this is the first time I've eaten a Taco Bell in like a decade.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I got like a cherry coke and it was so good.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_01: It was so good.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_01: Basically coming back into our humanity and coming back into the real world after being on this, the best word I can call it is a psychodrama.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so then again, after that, people started dropping out of her spaces.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_01: Either she would kick them out because they weren't showing up in the way that she thought they ought to be showing up as a leader, or they were simply leaving because, for whatever reason, and everybody has their own reasons to leave, they chose to leave.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_01: But she was making that again about people are contracting.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_01: And from a psychological perspective, you've heard me talk about the theory of cognitive experiential self-theory, which is you either integrate experiences that are outside of your schema, your personal worldview, or you basically reject them and put them in a container to deal with later, or you separate from them.
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I think a lot of people were separating from them for good reason.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_01: I was able to integrate because it was still within my worldview for the most part.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_01: But also there was uh, I think probably for you as well, some of the trauma bonding that came out simply because we'd experienced trauma that she had actually provoked in us.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_01: And if you want to talk about that a little bit more, we can.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_01: But there was this bond that we had that kept us in the psycho drama longer.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so maybe we can talk about because I think that for me, and I know for you too, we didn't necessarily realize that we were being traumatized until after the situation was over and we had time to process it.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want to talk a little bit about what that was from your perspective?
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, one of the things that she would do with me is to make me feel special.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_01: You're so smart.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_01: You're one of the smartest people on the planet, you're so classy, like those kinds of things.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_01: And then she would give me these assignments to do, just like teacher's pet in fourth grade, if I got to hand out papers, that made me different or that made me more responsible or something than everybody else.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_01: So there was that kind of playing on my inner child, I suppose.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_01: But I really didn't, truly didn't recognize until after I fully stepped out of it the level of gaminess there was to how my trauma, my psychology was being used to keep me close and to keep me engaged.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that if I look back, one of the things that I would ask myself and you is, and anyone else who is going to talk about this is what were we actually getting out of this?
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's the big question.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I know for me, that's a big question that I have as a practitioner.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_00: I want to always know that I want to make sure that my clients are getting everything that they can possibly get out of working with me, right?
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_00: Having nothing to do with me other than I'm the one providing the tools or the support or whatever.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_00: But I think that's one of the biggest things is like all of these experiences, right?
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_00: They were sold to us as beneficial to our businesses or whatever.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_00: And like, was it?
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna take that as a no.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_01: No, because there was so much time after I would literally think, okay, how can I make this relevant to my business?
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like I was doing so much of that.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_01: Like mental gymnastics.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_01: How can I leverage this energy to infuse my business?
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_01: How can I add to the creativity of the business and those kinds of things?
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_01: But it was never a straight shot of direct relationship with the business.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_00: No, and I think that, and you can probably attest to this too, because you were with her longer.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_00: I think in the beginning there was help with the business.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then I think it gradually became more and more unhelpful until it was just like incredibly unhelpful.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was reflecting on this because at the beginning, when I hired her as a business coach who happens to be a spiritual entrepreneur, I hired her for that reason.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_01: But over time, as Betty transformed, the focus became less on business and more on ascension and oh energy work and clearings and things like that until it was like a straight up like spiritual training school, I'll say, rather than a business school where you use the energetics to support the business.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_00: Then my big question, too, and this is something I've been thinking about a lot, is like the spiritual training, quote unquote, we'll call it, even though I think that's a generous name.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_00: Is that helpful?
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_00: I always have to look at real world results.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_01: And when we can't link it back to real world results, and this is for anybody, then we can we say that it is helpful.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_01: Is it helpful that I know myself?
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_01: 2020, 2021, I was going through, I was having some existential crises, it was a stressful time.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_01: Understanding who I am, what my role is on the planet, why am I here?
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_01: Those kinds of questions emerged.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I can't say that she helped me answer them, but she always said, here's the other thing.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's always nice to have somebody who has your back.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_01: There were a couple of times where I had shitty things happen in the business, and she did support.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_01: I think anybody could have supported you, could have supported me through that.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't anything special that she was doing in order to support me through that.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that for me, my loyalty to people keeps me in things longer.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_01: My loyalty and my endurance to just plod through things, even if it's not apparent what the benefits are for me.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_01: What I do know for sure is that the longer time I spent with her, the more separate I began to feel from my husband, from my family, because there was this sense of that they don't understand you.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_01: I understand you way better.
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_01: I've got your back, they don't have your back.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so it was a the creation of the us versus them paradigm in the in-group and the out group that we can move forward into the next retreat if you want to, because that became even more evident.
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we can move on into that.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that the other thing I just want to point out when you're talking about why you would stay in something for so long, I think we can also go back to the moment in when she asked you to open the bottle and you felt like you made some sort of agreement you weren't aware of.
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's like those unconscious agreements or ways that your energy was manipulated that do keep you in things longer.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_00: So again, it's not to say that like we don't have free will and we don't take responsibility, because I do think that is also true.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_00: However, I do think there are ways that people can energetically manipulate you and energetically pull you into things that you're not aware of.
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that is also what can keep people in things for longer, even when they're not working.
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, that's called coercive control.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about that just briefly because in decision making, if you're on a year-long contract, there's always a decision.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_01: Am I going to work with Betty in the future?
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_01: And you and I have both talked about how at the ends of our contracts, we would always think, oh, I don't know, I think I'm done.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_01: But then for me, I would think, oh, there were some good things that happened last year.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_01: She she introduced me to some people in her network.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_01: There's potential for me to get on big stages because of that, whatever.
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I always said yes for that reason.
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_01: But I also said yes because I was afraid of her wrath if I said no.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's the bigger thing.
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_00: Let's move on to the next, because I feel like these retreats were all like steps on like this ladder to full-on crazy.
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_00: So let's go to the next one.
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_01: So the next one was in Santa Fe.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_01: You were there for that.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_01: There were a couple of others who we'll be interviewing as well who were here for the Santa Fe retreat.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_01: You and I stayed together with a couple of our other colleagues in a house off the property.
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_01: So we had some space to eat and have tacos and do the things that we wanted to do.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_01: So that was a lot of fun.
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_01: Drink wine and eat.
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_01: Smoke cigarettes in the back porch, whatever.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_01: I don't smoke.
• 59:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'm happy to sit out with the cool kids.
• 1:00:01
  SPEAKER_01: But the first night I was there, even before the retreat started.
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, and this was another time that I had driven there, and she said, Can you be one of the drivers?
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_01: So again, there I am in a position of doing extra stuff.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_01: And she made it sound like what's a logical thing to do.
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to rent a bus.
• 1:00:21
  SPEAKER_01: Let's just have a couple of drivers.
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_01: Will you drive?
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_01: And she paid me, she paid me gas or whatever.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_01: But there I was again in a position of being in service to her, to the retreat, and also paying an immense amount of money to be there for the retreat that I was now working at as well.
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_01: And because of my background in training, I'm also now in this position of kind of monitoring people as well, seeing how people are doing, because I'm aware that she's not, it just felt like she was more in for herself than she was in for the for the people at that point.
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_01: And it's all about her.
• 1:01:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:01:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I really feel like that Santa Fe was the turning point where it was all about her.
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, it was totally about her.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_00: And that retreat, too, you, me, and a couple other people were asked to work in a sense.
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_00: And that was not an enjoyable experience in a lot of ways.
• 1:01:19
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we had fun in the house that we stayed in and for certain parts of it, but I would say overall it was not an enjoyable experience.
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_00: And there was another experience of somebody being yelled at.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_00: It was like these patterns of behavior that looking back were really, really unethical.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:01:41
  SPEAKER_00: So from your lens, what happened there that kind of like really started to escalate things.
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_01: If you remember the first night we were there, even before the retreat started, I was up all fucking night.
• 1:01:52
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't even sleep in my room because I felt this whirlwind vortex right off my bed.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, I forgot about it.
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_01: I was writing all night.
• 1:02:01
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things that came through when I was writing is beware of the charlatans and the frauds.
• 1:02:06
  SPEAKER_01: That was the first thing that came through.
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_01: Beware of the charlatans and the frauds.
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'm thinking, Santa Fe, there are some kind of people who are a little bit different up there, whatever.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_01: What now I look back at that, I think that that was my spirit warning me about actually Betty.
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_01: But because of all of the things we've already mentioned, relationship, longevity, connection, all of those things, no like and trust factor, that's the last person I'm gonna think is the charlatan or the fraud.
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_01: So that was night number one.
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_01: Weird things during that retreat.
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_01: What wasn't weird?
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_01: But there was a point where one of the other retreat members, she was really not fully present with the retreat.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_01: It was very strange.
• 1:02:53
  SPEAKER_01: She was acting very strangely.
• 1:02:55
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know her, but I do know that she had a long connection with Betty and had been on a retreat 10 years before, not in North America, somewhere else in the world.
• 1:03:07
  SPEAKER_01: So they had this long connection.
• 1:03:09
  SPEAKER_01: So I remember the night, it was the end of September, and I remember she held Betty held you and me and a couple of other people back to ask, what should I do?
• 1:03:17
  SPEAKER_01: She was consulting with us on this person.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_01: And nobody really had an answer because she was the retreat leader.
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_01: She had some decision making to do.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_01: We all offered suggestions about possibilities, but ultimately it's her retreat.
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_01: She's got to decide what she's going to do.
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_01: So the next morning, we wake up to a boxer message from Betty saying, I have a plan.
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_01: This is what we're going to do.
• 1:03:38
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to help this person.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we're going to have a ceremony, and that's going to really help her.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_01: So we all get ready for that ceremony because we are spiritual leaders and we're all healers and we know what to do in situations like that.
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_01: But basically, we get there and she conducts this ceremony, a birthing ceremony, basically, in order to help this person.
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_01: And Elise, to this day, now I look back and I think, fucking, I think we helped, you know, her birth herself.
• 1:04:09
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think that the person actually was, she changed a little bit, I would say, after that that ceremony, but I really don't think that it was about her at all.
• 1:04:17
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was about Betty.
• 1:04:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it was about bringing this nonsense, the charlatan and the fraud, all the way through into Yeah, looking back, that's like exactly what it was like.
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that we were all in such a state of shock.
• 1:04:34
  SPEAKER_00: I don't even know if the word is shock.
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's more like confusion where I was just kind of like, what is happening right now?
• 1:04:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that we were all healers, very, very talented in our own right.
• 1:04:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that our gifts were leveraged, siphoned, used for her in a way that was unethical and without our explicit permission.
• 1:04:56
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly, without us even knowing what was going on.
• 1:05:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then I think the confusing part too was right after that, there was a lot of loving energy.
• 1:05:08
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how to describe it.
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_00: It felt like there was like healing energy present that felt really good.
• 1:05:16
  SPEAKER_00: But then I feel like after that, it gradually went really bad.
• 1:05:22
  SPEAKER_01: Remember, there's this theme of there's always an outsider who's causing a problem.
• 1:05:26
  SPEAKER_01: There's always an enemy.
• 1:05:28
  SPEAKER_01: So in San Diego, it was the woman for that we were gonna go visit at her animal thing, right?
• 1:05:35
  SPEAKER_01: That was the outsider.
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_01: Now, this time the outsider is a guide that she, that Betty and another person were who apparently was inappropriate with one or both of the women.
• 1:05:47
  SPEAKER_01: So now he becomes the outsider that is the troublemaker, the one who's the enemy.
• 1:05:53
  SPEAKER_01: So now again, it's a group formation.
• 1:05:56
  SPEAKER_01: I'm an in group, we're at war with this person who's outside of.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_01: Us and now we have to go fight this war.
• 1:06:02
  SPEAKER_01: We have to go to this place.
• 1:06:03
  SPEAKER_01: And she was Betty was so determined, there was no stopping her.
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_01: At that point, we're along for the ride.
• 1:06:09
  SPEAKER_01: And there were all of us were, I think, in this place of WTF is actually happening here.
• 1:06:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't know how much more we want to go into about that.
• 1:06:19
  SPEAKER_00: For that, what would you say?
• 1:06:21
  SPEAKER_00: Because that was very much a turning point, right?
• 1:06:25
  SPEAKER_00: Where she then started being this other being, or whatever you want to call it.
• 1:06:31
  SPEAKER_00: And is there anything else that you feel like we need to say about that particular experience?
• 1:06:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there's a lot because that was yeah, that was really the turning point where everything became none of it was about business anymore.
• 1:06:47
  SPEAKER_01: And now it was all about this saving the planet, basically.
• 1:06:51
  SPEAKER_01: And it was all about Betty coming into this new version of herself and insinuating that she knew more than we did, that she was somehow more evolved than we were, and that she was basically channeling truth, the truth of everything.
• 1:07:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so when we get into that territory, now we start talking about the cultish kind of things that start coming forward.
• 1:07:20
  SPEAKER_01: Because when you have a leader like that who is charismatic, who is loving, who is a bright light, who is filled with joy, and also the polarity of that as well, which we saw immediately during that time that we were in Santa Fe, boy, there was a great contrast of that from my perspective.
• 1:07:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I always like to say this I was not operating from a professional perspective as a therapist or psychologist or anything.
• 1:07:44
  SPEAKER_01: I was there as a person who was on a retreat with my coach, and suddenly this thing happens.
• 1:07:49
  SPEAKER_01: And now I was not in a position to evaluate the difference between crazy and uh channel.
• 1:07:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you were asked to pretty much immediately.
• 1:07:59
  SPEAKER_00: It was.
• 1:08:00
  SPEAKER_00: Which looking back is like, oh, so you just started channeling this really high being, and you're all high vibe and high frequency.
• 1:08:09
  SPEAKER_00: But yet the first thing you do is you want Robin to vouch for you from a doctor, PhD, psychologist perspective.
• 1:08:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's really interesting.
• 1:08:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was very uncomfortable and disconcerting.
• 1:08:24
  SPEAKER_01: And when I looked at it from that perspective, I was like, well, you know, I can track with this because I know her history, what she has told us her history is anyway.
• 1:08:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I was not aware of any severe mental illness in her family at the time.
• 1:08:39
  SPEAKER_01: That would come later.
• 1:08:40
  SPEAKER_01: I would learn about things like that.
• 1:08:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:08:43
  SPEAKER_01: But it was an uncomfortable, it was an untenable position for me.
• 1:08:46
  SPEAKER_01: It really was.
• 1:08:47
  SPEAKER_01: I was in a place of vulnerability as a client, and yet I was being asked to not assess or evaluate, but to basically what you just said is to vouch for her.
• 1:08:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:08:59
  SPEAKER_00: And that was a terrible position to put you in.
• 1:09:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I can't really believe that that wasn't planned or thought out because, like, how would that be like your first step?
• 1:09:10
  SPEAKER_00: And also the other thing, too, that I think added to the confusion is I think that none of us thought this was a permanent thing.
• 1:09:20
  SPEAKER_00: We thought it just happened for this time period where she was like channeling or something, and then it was like not going away.
• 1:09:30
  SPEAKER_00: And then I think that was the confusing part.
• 1:09:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there's the confusion matrix again as well, because that group are a group of people who can channel.
• 1:09:40
  SPEAKER_01: And we've all had that experience of having conversations with non-physical beings.
• 1:09:46
  SPEAKER_01: And one of my dear friends is a trans channel and allows those beings to come in.
• 1:09:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so we were all thinking it was that, as opposed to this consciousness sticking around and then basically throwing everything out that had come before and wanting us to go along with her on this psychodrama.
• 1:10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:10:08
  SPEAKER_00: Someone had said to me after that retreat, I think we did the podcast about it or something.
• 1:10:14
  SPEAKER_00: And somebody said to me, I thought it was really messed up how she wanted all of you to like vouch for her to say that this is like real or something.
• 1:10:25
  SPEAKER_00: And we did because she, I think she worked really hard to make us all feel that we were like special and like a part of this like miracle or ascension or whatever.
• 1:10:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I believed that for the a time period because that's what I was made to feel.
• 1:10:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like there was a feeling that I feel like she invoked in us to make us like feel that.
• 1:10:48
  SPEAKER_00: But then as it gradually started to go downhill, it's like, oh, wait, this is not that.
• 1:10:55
  SPEAKER_01: That's an interesting thing too, because I think that it was way more calculated than what I originally understood.
• 1:11:02
  unknown: Yeah.
• 1:11:02
  SPEAKER_01: I thought it was a spontaneous thing.
• 1:11:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that she did a really good job of hiding any kind of polarity that would cause me to think otherwise, or any of us to be in a position to not vouch for her, even when there were things that were happening.
• 1:11:19
  SPEAKER_01: But when you look at the bonding, the trauma bonding of it, the bonding of this intense experience, like you get energetically pulled along by the bond of it, by the story of it.
• 1:11:31
  SPEAKER_01: I'm in it.
• 1:11:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm in this psychodrama.
• 1:11:33
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know where my exit point is.
• 1:11:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not really even looking for one because we're just in it now.
• 1:11:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:11:40
  SPEAKER_00: So then how did things transpire after that?
• 1:11:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not ready to talk about personally because there's just I'm gonna write a book because it's bookworthy.
• 1:11:54
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, it really is.
• 1:11:56
  SPEAKER_01: But what I will say is that my life started changing dramatically after that because of the experiences there, as I was also understanding my own self in a different way and having my own experiences as well.
• 1:12:12
  SPEAKER_01: But what I started noticing, I want to flash forward to so February of 2024, that was after you got air quotes fired as a client for copying her for supposedly wanting to be her.
• 1:12:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, which was a very funny joke.
• 1:12:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 1:12:30
  SPEAKER_01: Meanwhile, this was a time when I was still working with her privately, and I got on a call with her, and I had this feeling before the call.
• 1:12:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, I was feeling really edgy.
• 1:12:42
  SPEAKER_01: I was actually up at my sister's place in South Dakota helping with her kiddos for a couple of weeks.
• 1:12:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember I got on that session with her and she said, What's on your mind today?
• 1:12:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, and I told her what was ever on my mind about like transitions, and I was making some decisions about my personal life and things like that.
• 1:12:57
  SPEAKER_01: And she said, We are not on the same page at all.
• 1:12:59
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone is so uncomfortable with you.
• 1:13:02
  SPEAKER_01: She said, Everyone knows that you're trying to copy me and be me and become me.
• 1:13:06
  SPEAKER_01: You and Elise, she said.
• 1:13:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I was already in a very vulnerable position in my personal life.
• 1:13:14
  SPEAKER_01: I had really been leaning on her and on you for helping me make decisions about what I was going to do with regard to a lot of things and personally.
• 1:13:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so to have her say that felt like it wasn't a snake bite that time, it was a punch in the face.
• 1:13:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I was so shocked that she said that because, and I really was apologetic.
• 1:13:32
  SPEAKER_01: I said, I am so sorry.
• 1:13:34
  SPEAKER_01: I was not aware I was doing that at all.
• 1:13:35
  SPEAKER_01: It was very deeply reflective of this.
• 1:13:37
  SPEAKER_01: Now that was in February of 2024.
• 1:13:40
  SPEAKER_01: Flash forward to after all of the shit show this year or this past year, I look back and say, Fucking, are you kidding me?
• 1:13:48
  SPEAKER_01: She was the one who, after the Santa Fe retreat, began wearing her hair in braids like I did the whole time I was there.
• 1:13:56
  SPEAKER_01: And she absconded with my favorite cowgirl t-shirt.
• 1:13:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, she made you give it to her.
• 1:14:01
  SPEAKER_01: I had lent it to her because she looked cold.
• 1:14:04
  SPEAKER_01: When I'm saying goodbye to her, she's got it on and she says, Oh, sweetheart, I know that uh you gave this to me as a gift.
• 1:14:10
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't give it to her.
• 1:14:11
  SPEAKER_01: So then you're like manipulated.
• 1:14:13
  SPEAKER_01: Oh no, I didn't give it to you as a gift.
• 1:14:15
  SPEAKER_01: And then after I leave, I'm like, I really want my shirt back.
• 1:14:20
  SPEAKER_01: So I texted her and I said, What's the brand of that shirt?
• 1:14:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna go on and see if I can find it.
• 1:14:25
  SPEAKER_01: You stop copying me, she said.
• 1:14:28
  SPEAKER_00: Here we go with the actual insanity.
• 1:14:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry, I'm just gonna call it out because it really makes me mad.
• 1:14:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's actual insanity.
• 1:14:37
  SPEAKER_01: That she was mimicking my hairstyle, wearing my clothes.
• 1:14:43
  SPEAKER_01: And this happened later, too, after our return from Croatia as well.
• 1:14:48
  SPEAKER_01: She absconded with a couple of my beautiful things that I ostensibly gave her, but not really, because I can still feel that that tug of those things as well.
• 1:15:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's where it really gets tangled because she had accused me of the very thing that she was doing.
• 1:15:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and she did that to me too.
• 1:15:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the very thing that she was doing.
• 1:15:08
  SPEAKER_01: And the history, Betty's history of calling people out for copying her.
• 1:15:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that was something I thought in the beginning to bring up because it was a very long pattern.
• 1:15:18
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, when I first started working with her in 2020, pretty much immediately she fired somebody as a client for quote unquote copying off of her.
• 1:15:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this is in the very beginning where I didn't know the depth.
• 1:15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:15:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then it just became a pattern where over and over and over and over, and I remember thinking, like, if this many people really copy off of you, and then starting to see her copy off of you, me, and other people.
• 1:15:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, Oh, okay, well, you're just accusing people of what you do.
• 1:15:52
  SPEAKER_00: Did you feel that you could confront her about that?
• 1:15:55
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my god, no, unless I wanted to be like admonished or no, of course not.
• 1:16:02
  SPEAKER_00: And even when she fired me and accused me of copying off of her, it took me a second to even actually process that because I think I was also in shock of oh no, she's gonna turn everybody against me type of thing.
• 1:16:17
  SPEAKER_00: So it took me a second to even process that.
• 1:16:19
  SPEAKER_00: But once I did, I was like, I don't even have words for it.
• 1:16:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's just it's just crazy making.
• 1:16:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's gaslighting, it's accusing somebody of the thing that you've did.
• 1:16:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's like a classic narcissistic manipulation tactic, sociopathic tactic.
• 1:16:38
  SPEAKER_01: And what it served with our relationship is to divide us.
• 1:16:43
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 1:16:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that was the other thing that she started to have a really big problem with is you and I becoming close.
• 1:16:50
  SPEAKER_00: And she didn't like that.
• 1:16:52
  SPEAKER_00: So she had to end that.
• 1:16:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I think she could probably see that we were becoming closer than either one of us was with her because we are cool and she sucks.
• 1:17:04
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, the anger is really getting stirred up in me.
• 1:17:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll try to be like professional, but I don't know if I can control myself.
• 1:17:11
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, there's a lot to this, right?
• 1:17:14
  SPEAKER_01: That in having these conversations, this is for the good of everyone else, but it's also for us to figure out what happened, how it happened, and then hopefully to prevent it again from obviously from happening with us, but also as role models, as leaders, to say if it can happen to us, it can happen to anybody, and let this also be a cautionary tale.
• 1:17:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so take us to the top of the mountain, Robin.
• 1:17:39
  SPEAKER_01: So the top of the mountain is the retreat in Croatia.
• 1:17:44
  SPEAKER_01: All of the other treats, incidentally, were very close to me.
• 1:17:48
  SPEAKER_01: They were very easy for me to attend.
• 1:17:50
  SPEAKER_01: Denver is just a couple hour flight.
• 1:17:52
  SPEAKER_01: San Diego, six-hour drive, Santa Fe, maybe six hours, something like that.
• 1:17:58
  SPEAKER_01: Easy.
• 1:17:59
  SPEAKER_01: Croatia, that's another, that's a horse of another color.
• 1:18:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I hadn't been in Europe since 2014.
• 1:18:05
  SPEAKER_01: So it had been a while for me to travel internationally.
• 1:18:08
  SPEAKER_01: And this summer, this past summer, when she promoted this retreat, she didn't promote it as a business retreat, but all the people who she was wanting to go were all her business clients.
• 1:18:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I assumed, of course, that there would be a business component to it because there always was.
• 1:18:25
  SPEAKER_01: But she started initially from the get-go, started talking about it as her anointing, that it was all about her and her anointing, her second anointing.
• 1:18:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I should have, obviously, duh, I should have known.
• 1:18:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm heavily rolling my eyes right now, for those of you that can't see me.
• 1:18:43
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't feel like I wanted to go.
• 1:18:46
  SPEAKER_01: And yet I felt like going was the only option.
• 1:18:51
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, even when I was booking my flight, I had a hard time booking my flight.
• 1:18:56
  SPEAKER_01: I had to call in the airline and have them help me book my flight.
• 1:19:00
  SPEAKER_01: And somebody else who also attended said the same thing.
• 1:19:03
  SPEAKER_01: She was having a real hard time booking her flights.
• 1:19:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so we could all feel the rumblings of something going sideways.
• 1:19:11
  SPEAKER_01: But because several of us had been uh to Santa Fe with her and been on these other retreats, there was something like, let's go for it and see what happens.
• 1:19:19
  SPEAKER_01: Still, in some ways, believing that there was some good that was going to come out of this because she was still very much promoting it to be around wealth consciousness, around making money in business and that kind of thing.
• 1:19:32
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, I think that Betty always made it about the money as much as possible.
• 1:19:36
  SPEAKER_01: And she was completely unapologetic about doing so, which is kind of nice and refreshing in some ways.
• 1:19:41
  SPEAKER_01: But as the top of the mountain approaches, you will see.
• 1:19:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I just want to add to what the money stuff.
• 1:19:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, of course we want to learn how to make money, but I feel like there was so much around, oh, you can make 100K months, but then there was literally never once any instruction as to how to actually do that.
• 1:20:03
  SPEAKER_00: And that was my big problem.
• 1:20:06
  SPEAKER_00: But we don't have to go too much into that.
• 1:20:08
  SPEAKER_00: I just needed to say that.
• 1:20:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:20:09
  SPEAKER_01: I will say after the Santa Fe retreat, I came back and did have my first 100K month.
• 1:20:14
  SPEAKER_01: Was that due to her?
• 1:20:15
  SPEAKER_01: Probably not.
• 1:20:16
  SPEAKER_01: But I did come back and have my first 100K month.
• 1:20:19
  SPEAKER_01: So that was a cool thing for my business.
• 1:20:23
  SPEAKER_01: So once again, I get the the reward of a big cash infusion in my business right after on the heels of a retreat.
• 1:20:32
  SPEAKER_01: So there's that kind of US association of my business is doing well, and and it happened on the other side of this retreat.
• 1:20:43
  SPEAKER_01: So the Croatia retreat rolls around and everybody meets there.
• 1:20:50
  SPEAKER_01: And the first night before the retreat started, I met her and one of the other women who we're going to be interviewing on the podcast.
• 1:20:58
  SPEAKER_01: Gia was there because Gia had actually flown in with her to, and she kept on using this word handle her.
• 1:21:05
  SPEAKER_01: I need a handler.
• 1:21:06
  SPEAKER_01: She would say, I need a handler.
• 1:21:08
  SPEAKER_01: Who else talks about handlers or all the people who were in the control and whatever and cult and things like that?
• 1:21:15
  SPEAKER_01: So anyway, so Gia flew in with her.
• 1:21:17
  SPEAKER_01: So I meet Gia and Betty on uh the rooftop of a hotel that we're staying at.
• 1:21:22
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a nice night, sparkling, and all of a sudden, two things happen.
• 1:21:27
  SPEAKER_01: One, Betty starts talking shit about this young woman who did not attend the retreat, but who had gone to Croatia before us ostensibly to prepare the land for our arrival.
• 1:21:40
  SPEAKER_01: Betty was completely insulted by this.
• 1:21:42
  SPEAKER_01: I did not ask this person to do this.
• 1:21:44
  SPEAKER_01: How dare she?
• 1:21:45
  SPEAKER_01: She is an infiltrator.
• 1:21:47
  SPEAKER_01: She's trying to penetrate our retreat without being here.
• 1:21:50
  SPEAKER_01: She could have paid for this and she is not here, and so on.
• 1:21:53
  SPEAKER_01: So there's our first enemy, a young woman who wants to be a part of this group, maybe can't afford the retreat, whatever.
• 1:22:01
  SPEAKER_01: I have no idea.
• 1:22:02
  SPEAKER_01: But Betty starts making her enemy number one.
• 1:22:05
  SPEAKER_01: That was number one.
• 1:22:06
  SPEAKER_01: Number two, as we're sitting there, a drone flies up on the edge of the hotel and is hovering over there.
• 1:22:14
  SPEAKER_01: When I saw the drone, I thought of a time I had gone to a wedding in Cabo, and there was a drone at the end of the wedding taking pictures of the whole wedding party and things like that.
• 1:22:24
  SPEAKER_01: So that was my automatic thought.
• 1:22:26
  SPEAKER_01: Betty starts talking about how they're watching us, that drone is penetrating us.
• 1:22:31
  SPEAKER_01: So she starts setting the tone for we're being watched on day zero.
• 1:22:36
  SPEAKER_01: This was before anything else.
• 1:22:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then the other piece was again making me feel like I was different from everybody else because she invited me up on the rooftop with her and Gia.
• 1:22:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's a smaller group.
• 1:22:48
  SPEAKER_01: We knew each other from other retreats and so on.
• 1:22:50
  SPEAKER_01: So there was that kind of separation from the main group.
• 1:22:55
  SPEAKER_01: The retreat was supposed to be 10 days.
• 1:22:57
  SPEAKER_01: So for the first couple of days, we stayed in the city proper.
• 1:23:00
  SPEAKER_01: And she kept on, whenever we would walk, she kept on pointing out all of the CCTVs.
• 1:23:05
  SPEAKER_01: They're watching us, they're watching us, they're watching us.
• 1:23:07
  SPEAKER_01: So there's this constant suggestion of being watched.
• 1:23:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, I don't get it.
• 1:23:14
  SPEAKER_01: But she's already set herself up to be fully aware of everything, and she's set herself up to have full awareness and that she channels truth.
• 1:23:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm basically at that point just letting her have her experience as I'm like not getting it.
• 1:23:32
  SPEAKER_01: And then pretty quickly, the next thing was an increased, I'm gonna say, paranoia of the staff who was helping with the retreat.
• 1:23:41
  SPEAKER_01: There were two people who she had hired as guides who were local people who knew the area.
• 1:23:46
  SPEAKER_01: And all of a sudden they became the enemy.
• 1:23:48
  SPEAKER_01: So now it's not just outside, now it's not just some girl on the internet.
• 1:23:52
  SPEAKER_01: Now it's somebody's in our circle who are the enemies and they are working against us, and they have bad vibes, and they are infiltrators.
• 1:24:02
  SPEAKER_01: And she started using words like infiltration and double agents and things like that.
• 1:24:07
  SPEAKER_01: And that's when the psychodrama began.
• 1:24:10
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for being here.
• 1:24:12
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• 1:24:19
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• 1:24:27
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• 1:24:38
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• 1:24:43
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