Was I In A Cult? - A New-Age Hypnotherapy Cult PT 1: “Split personalities, Split Families”

Episode Date: January 20, 2025

You may know Danielle Nicolet as Cecile Horton on the CW’s “The Flash,” but long before Hollywood, her life was far from scripted. At just ten years old, Danielle’s world was turned upside down when her mother fell under the influence of Judith—a therapist turned guru turned cult leader. Judith used hypnosis to “recover” memories, shattering families and exploiting Orange County housewives by diagnosing them with multiple personality disorder for her own gain. But Judith’s influence didn’t stop with her mother—Danielle herself was pulled into Judith’s orbit. Encouraged to reject modern medicine, she found herself reciting affirmations to cure strep throat and believing the fabricated traumas that demonized her own family.  In Part 1 of Danielle’s story, we follow her journey from gymnastics prodigy in small-town Ohio to navigating the unsettling extremes of 1980s Orange County, an affluent and conservative enclave where she was one of the only Black kids at her school—all while having to cope with a mother who now has eight additional personalities. _______ Control Body Odor ANYWHERE with @lumedeodorant and get 15% off with promo code Inacult at Lumepodcast.com/Inacult! — #lumepod _______ LINKS: Find Danielle: @daninicolet  Follow us: @wasiinacult  Have your own story? Email us: [e-mail] Please support Was I In A Cult? Through Patreon (we appreciate the hell out of you guys): https://www.patreon.com/wasiinacult  Merch is here! www.wasiinacult.com 

The views, information or opinions expressed by the guest appearing in this episode solely belong to the guest and do not represent or reflect the views or positions of the hosts, the show, podcast one, this network or any of their respective affiliates. by my choice. I was a kid and my mom joined what I now refer to as a new age cult and I started listening to your show and realized that you guys were probably the only people that I felt like I could speak publicly about my experience with because you have a similar way of dealing with it and processing it as I do which is recognizing that being in a call is like really freaking weird and the only thing you can do sometimes is Go to therapy and then laugh about it. So I think I decided by doing this It was an opportunity for me to take all of that stuff back and that secret no longer is mine to carry

It's my mother's and anyone else who's in the group and whatever choices they make with their life. But their choices don't have to be mine anymore. ["Wassup, Y'all?" by The Bachelorette plays.] Welcome everyone to Was I in a Cult? I'm Liz Iacuzzi. And this is me, Tyler Reesom. And as of right now, you guys, we are recording our second episode of the year. And just a

quick update. The fire that was near Tyler's house, the Eaton Fire, is currently 45% contained and the Palisades Fire is still only 19% contained. I personally am not in LA at the moment. My son and I made the decision to leave town for the week. And me, well, I'm actually back. I actually came back to my house. We just got back a couple of days ago. The house is still standing. The fire came within two blocks of our home.

So we are safe. We unpack of our home. So we are safe. We unpacked our stuff. There was a lot of ash on the ground that I spent cleaning up. How did you clean that up? I didn't have my leaf blower. You're not supposed to blow ash. So I had to wet it and sweep it.

Exciting stuff, isn't it? Everyone thinks the first responders, but I was the fourth responder and nobody really gives us the hero title The ones that come in with the brooms the air is not so great. So we're very careful not to go outside too much Our hearts are with everyone all of those who lost everything. It's just fucking awful. Yeah, it's awful I have friends who lost their entire homes our businesses I was with a woman the morning of who lost her home that night or the next day.

It's like, it's just surreal. It doesn't make sense. Nonetheless, LA is a strong community and we are moving along. It is nice to have everyone kind of be a community and care about each other and give warm wishes. So we are in the midst of that right now until we get on the 405 and we're late. Then it becomes ugly. But otherwise, it's a nice area to be in despite the lack of fresh air. Who wants to make a podcast?

Who wants to tell a story? Who wants to talk about a cult? That's what we're going to do. Whether you want it or not, we're doing it, guys. So when we left the town, when we left our home, we went and one of the places we stayed was a nice little place in Orange County, which is great because that is the setting for our show today. On the ground research.

It's a tax deduction. I wrote it all off, but it's a hell of a story we're about to get into. Yes. Today's guest is fantastic, like all of our guests, but she is just great. It was actually quite trippy talking to her because as we spoke, she and I continued to realize that we have more and more in common. She's very smart, very funny. And those are the things in common? Is that what you're saying? No, that's one of the things I'm saying.

There are other things. Tyler, everyone. New year. Same Tyler. Well, somebody has to keep you humble. No, but she's fantastic. You may know her from her role as Cecile Horton on the CW's The Flash. But if you don't know her, you're in for a real treat.

So with that, let's please welcome today's wonderful guest. Take out your knife. Purify me. Don't spare my life. Crucify me. My name is Danielle Nicolay. I am an actress and a writer. I've been in a ton of stuff that everyone has seen enough to think that they went to college with me.

I was born in a very small town in Ohio, in northeast Ohio, very working class, salt of the earth people. My dad is black, my mom is Italian. My parents met at Kent State University. Go Golden Eagles! I asked her where in Ohio she was from and she was like, you haven't heard of it. It's this little town called Ashtabula, Ohio. And guys, not only have I heard of Ashtabula but I used to summer there my aunt and uncle who are from Cleveland Ohio just about an hour away had a lake house in Ashtabula and so I water skied a plenty in Ashtabula Ohio. This was our first little weird connection. Speaking of Kent State University though

Liz. Here we go. I gotta I just got to it's too important not to. Kent State University though, Liz. Here we go. I got it, I just got to. It's too important not to. Kent State University, just outside of Cleveland, is home to the Kent State Massacre. I'm sure you've heard of this, right? It occurred on May 4th, 1970, when members of the Ohio National Guard fired into a crowd of unarmed students

protesting the Vietnam War. Over the course of 13 seconds, the guardsmen fired 67 rounds, killing four students and wounding nine others. A tragedy. But from that came great art because a week later, David Crosby handed Neil Young a copy of Life magazine which featured graphic photos of the killing, deeply moved and enraged by the images, Neil Young quickly penned the song For Dead in Ohio which Crosby's Till's Nation Young released only four weeks after the episode. My father was a TA and my mom was a student. My mother took his class, she took one look at my dad from across the room and said, that

is the man that I am going to marry. And she was married to him within, I think it was six months. I remember when I was three years old, it's one of my earliest memories. My brother, who was a few years older than me, was taking some sort of, I don't know, tumbling class or something.

And we went to pick him up. And I went straight to the high beam and I climbed up on it and I started walking back and forth across it. And that day the coach said, wow, this kid needs to be doing this. And my mother pulled me out of dance class and she put me in gymnastics. I was a gymnast and started competing when I was like five. Second connection, I too was a very competitive gymnast

growing up and I also- And you also have Italian, right? On your father's side. Yeah, we get it, Liz. You and Danielle are pretty much the same person, except I'm assuming she was a better gymnast. Well, your assumption is correct. When I was seven, my parents started having problems and working their way towards divorce.

My mother was really young and she came up with a very controlling mother and she lived in a very controlling world where girls were really limited to what they could do for work and what they could talk about. I don't think my mother ever got to have her summer of love and her rebellious period. She never got to sow any oats. And I think the demise of their marriage was the fact that my mother, two kids deep, woke up and looked around and said,

oh, I want to do fun stuff. I want to figure out who I am. And I have feelings. And they have value. And I want to do fun stuff. I want to figure out who I am and I have feelings and they have value and I want to live in California and I want to live an exciting life. Ultimately, like the lore of my family is that I was some fantastically amazing gymnast. And so my opportunity to train in Southern California

was my mother's opportunity to leave Ohio. It was her perfect excuse. And I blame my mother for a lot of things. I don't blame her for that. The list is long, but that's not on it. And once we got out to California. And note a very specific part of California. Oh, we were in Orange County.

So she brought her mixed children to literally the whitest part of America, like the whitest, wealthiest, conservative. I was the only black kid in my middle school. It was a really different world and it was a tough adjustment for all of us. Orange County, California, home of Disneyland, Laguna Beach and over 240 plastic surgeons. In the 1980s, Orange County's population of about 1.9 million people was, as Danielle says, predominantly white, about 80%. And yes, it was conservative. About 75% of voters voted for the Republican candidates

in that decade. But also Orange County was a cultural mecca at the time contributing to surf, skateboard culture and music, especially of the punk, ska and alternative versions. Producing such bands as Social Distortion, Berlin... All the bands you weren't allowed to listen to growing up, right, Town? Correct, including Rat, which was an Orange County band. Remember the song Round and Round? But also No Doubt was formed in 1986 in Orange County.

So while Danielle doesn't fit in, at least she got to listen to some rad music. Because nothing cures the inner angst of impending racism like, sorry, I'm not home or now, I'm working in the sport of webs, living around the gym, I'll call you back. No doubt, no doubt.

And I think things are overwhelming. M10 at this point, my parents are divorced and she's raising us on her own. And she's trying to work and keep a roof over our heads. And she wanted to have a big, expansive, interesting life. And I don't think she had any idea what that would even look like. And my brother and I started quarreling a lot as brothers and sisters do.

My mother decided to take us to therapy to fix us and make the fighting stop. And she's walking through this complex and she sees this office called Vision Quest. And it says very clearly right there on the door that it's a therapeutic space for women. Quick note, Dani changed the name of this establishment to preserve its anonymity. But boy did we have a fun time coming up with the pseudonym Vision Quest. That believe me sounds just as New Age culty as the original.

And as Danielle's mother enters this vision quest, she sees there are other women there and she ends up chatting with the woman who identifies as the therapist of the space and her name was Judith. That would become the name that haunted my dreams. And she said, bring your kids in here and we'll make everything better. And Judith had one session with my brother and I, and she asked us to step outside, called my mom in, and then told my mom that she was the one who needed therapy and that her kids would stop fighting if she got herself together.

Hey, your kids are unhappy, your household is tumultuous because you've got to get yourself right. If you change, then everything around you will improve. And that's not bad advice. But for my mother, it was almost the invitation for the fly to land in the spiderweb, right? I knew there would be a spiderweb callback in this episode. You had no doubt?

I actually had no idea. That was a complete coincidence. And then the next several years of her life would be getting untangled from all of it. It would be going deeper and deeper until ultimately getting herself disentangled, but never being right again. And that was the beginning of a long stretch

of pain and heartache and manipulation. And we'll be right back. No doubt. You really have to stop that. You started this with your useless punk facts, Tyler. You know what, Liz? Don't speak, okay? I know just what you're saying.

Listen, I'm just a girl in the world. That's all you'll let me be, Tyler. And that sucks. Alright, okay, we promise this joke will run itself to death when we come back. When we holler back. History lesson. The first deodorant, which was created in 1888, was a waxy cream that came in a tin can and was applied to the armpits and feet. The name was Mum.

And you know that because your dad created it, right? But over 130 years later, we are still using deodorant. And thank God because people still stink. Yeah, and you know who doesn't stink? Me, because I put Lume deodorant on my pits. Oh please, I got you. I put Lume on everything, pits, feet, fa-jay-jay. You got me beat there.

Lume whole body deodorant is clinically proven to block odor all day and control odor for up to 72 hours. Yeah, and they certainly didn't have the fresh Lume sense of clean tangerine or peony rose in 1888. But they have it now and Tyler's gooch is proof of that. In all seriousness, we love Lume. We use it. We endorse it. They have paste, sprays, roll-ons. Personally, I love the pastes and the roll-ons. Lumi's Starter Pack is perfect for new customers. It comes with a solid stick deodorant,

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that equals over 40% off their starter pack. What? What? Use code INACULT for 15% off your first purchase at lumedeodorant.com. That's code INACULT at L-U-M-E-D-E-O-D-O-R-A-N-T.com. Sign me up for the Motherfucker National Spelling Bee. You cannot say motherfucker in an ad.

Please support our show and tell them we sent you smell fresher, stay dryer, and boost your confidence from head to toe to v***y with Loomy. We love our sponsors equally, but we get very excited when new ones come pouring in, like First Leaf, a wine club. Pouring in, that's a nice one. First Leaf is a wine club that delivers your favorite types of wine right to your doorstep. Which is my favorite place to drink.

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here at Washing and Coat. That is music to daddy's ears. I'm quite picky about my wines and First Leaf delivered literally and figuratively. I got a nice Cabernet, I tried a bold Zinfandel and I added an oak chardonnay to my doorstop wine tasting group that I'm starting because you won't invite me to yours.

So go ahead and treat yourself guys with wines from First Leaf. Go to tryfirstleaf.com slash cult to sign up and you'll get your first six hand-picked bottles for just $44.95. Yep, that's T-R-Y-F-I-R-S-T-L-E-A-F dot com slash Colt. Tryfirstleaf.com slash Colt. Sign Tyler up also for the National Spell Review.

And now back to Danielle, her mother and Judith. So my mother started therapy with a therapist who was a licensed, I believe, MFCC, which is a marriage and family counselor, whose license was canceled. Judith decided that she wanted to be a pioneer in hypnotherapy. She would have been in her from mid to late 40s at the time. She was a tall, thick, broad-faced woman. She was a very big presence.

She wore a lot of flowy, kind of like, D.D. Nicks scarves on top of moomoos, who also had this very lovely, sultry, soothing voice. It's no wonder she hypnotized everyone. And so my mom starts going to therapy and Judah starts questioning her about what's good on your life? Why are you so unhappy? Well, my mom was controlling and difficult things happened. My mother was in fact molested as a child, which she very much remembered by an uncle. And so, I think in today's therapy, that therapist would say, well, let's talk about that. Let's explore that.

Let's heal that trauma. That therapy that my mother was in was, well, okay, you're deeply unhappy and you don't really know why. So it must be that bad things happen to you in the past that you don't remember. So I'm going to hypnotize you and guide you through remembering those bad things so that we'll know why you're so deeply unhappy. I'd quickly like to remind the audience that the original objective set by Judith was to have Danielle's mom go to therapy herself so that her quote children would stop fighting.

I like to bring this up because cults have a fantastic way of diverting from the original intention of the group faster than celebrities drop pounds on Ozempic. It's Wigovie now Liz. Ozempic is so 2024. Judith begins hypnotizing her regularly and she guides her into quote unquote remembering really deeply horrific traumas from her childhood. And so you are guided to visualize something that's quite horrific, like a terrible sexual abuse when you were incredibly young by a close member of your family. So my mother was guided through these very dark

hypnosis sessions to remember horrible thing on top of horrible thing on top of horrible thing. When you come out of that hypnosis that so-called memory is very fresh as if it just happened moments ago and she proceeded to have a psychotic break. I was 10 years old. My mother started crying one day and wailing out like a wounded animal, hysterically. And she just didn't stop, morning, noon, and night for three days. The neighbors could hear her.

Someone called the police. I answered the door when the police came and lied to them and convinced them that everything was fine because they let me know that they were going to take me off to foster care if everything wasn't fine. And in the midst of all of it, not knowing what to do, I called Judith.

And that was the beginning of a very long, strange trip in my childhood. Judith became very quickly the only source of solace for my mother, and she became the only person that I could turn to for help, because my mother was so profoundly unstable from that moment forward. She's never been like just a regular person again. And this might be a good time to give a tiny bit of backstory about what Judas' therapeutic technique was or where it came from.

So here we find ourselves in the 80s. Q Tyler playing really cool 80s music, probably from Cleveland. Yes. Thank you, Danielle. Oh God. I feel like a DJ taking requests. WIIC radio. Was I in a cult?

Collar Danielle wants to hear some Cleveland rock and roll. All right, Danny, let's get groovy, shall we? I don't think she really does. She does. Danielle, you are to blame for this. Give the man an inch and he takes the whole damn mix tape. Am I right? You know, Danielle, I'm sorry.

Despite being the home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland is not exactly the cradle of rock royalty. I mean sure there is the James Gang. With their hit, Funk Number 49 is a great guitar intro by the way. And I'm sure you're going to play it for us, aren't you? Just the intro. There's Eric Carman. He founded the Razz Berries, another great guitar lick opening with their hit, Go All

the Way. So yes, there's a couple of good bands from Cleveland, but I gotta admit, there's just not that many. Oh my gosh. I'm pretty sure Chrissy Hyne and the Pretenders are from Cleveland, so he's probably gonna go there because I think back of a change game came out in like 86. Okay, okay. All right.

Yes, Chrissy Hine is actually from Akron, which is a neighboring city, but the pretenders were founded after Chrissy moved to England. And Back on the Chain Gang was released in 1982, but features another really great opening. One of my favorite songs, actually. I love that song. Well, now we all know why Danielle is Tyler's favorite guest. He fed the dragon, Danny, never feed the dragon. He'll fire out so much white rock music

that listeners will start to think that they're on a yacht. Can we get back to the story now, please? Sure, why not? Thank you. This shit is getting bananas, guys. B-A-N-A-N-A-S. At that time, there was a movement going on where therapists, some qualified and some not so qualified, were practicing hypnosis on their patients.

The assumption that anything in life that is forgotten can be remembered under hypnosis. And so there were a group of scientists who believed that our brains have the ability to recall every single thing that they've ever seen from birth. And once under hypnosis, that therapist could prompt you to remember things that you don't remember when you are present. So I think it was born, this is my own personal assessment of the book, Sibyl,

which for anyone listening has been completely and totally debunked on every level. Cue Tyler to give the breakdown of Sibyl. Yeah, I mean, I've never felt so seen in my life. Thank you. Go for it, Tyler. Sure. The 1973 book, Sybil, written by Flora Schreiber, tells the supposed true story of Shirley Mason, a woman diagnosed with multiple personality disorder. It follows her therapy

sessions with her psychiatrist, who uncovered 16 distinct personalities supposedly created by severe childhood abuse. Now, though Sybil the book and a consequent movie became a cultural phenomenon and sparked widespread interest in multiple personality disorder, its accuracy has since been heavily criticized. And interestingly, Shirley's psychiatrist, Dr. Wilbur, used hypnosis during her therapy sessions. Over the years, critics and researchers have questioned whether Mason's quote multiple personalities

were genuine dissociative symptoms or influenced, possibly even created, by Dr. Wilbur's methods. Hypnosis in particular has been criticized for implanting false memories or encouraging patients to adopt behaviors suggested by the therapist. You know, I'm sorry, Liz. I appreciate that, but I don't remember Danny saying, Q Liz. Oh, I'm so sorry, Tyler.

Just let me know when it's safe to wake up our audience again. At the same time, a movement was happening in America. What is now known as the Satanic Panic was birthed based off of a book that came out called Michelle Remembers about a woman who claimed to, under hypnosis, remember that her parents had done all sorts of horrible things to her, that they were secretly Satan worshippers and she was guided by her therapist. Now, for the children of the 80s, like myself, the Satanic panic was real. The moral hysteria was fueled by fears of secret Satan worshipping cults engaging in ritual abuse and the media

ate it up. Conservative groups amplified it and suddenly everything was a target. Heavy metal, Dungeons and Dragons, even daycares where they claimed teachers were performing ritualistic abuse of children. Of course, almost all of this was completely fabricated. Most cases lacked evidence and most of the cases were subsequently debunked. What's wild about Michelle Remembers is that this book wasn't just discredited.

It was obliterated. Turns out the therapist that co-wrote the book, he co-wrote it with his patient, Michelle, and later divorced his wife and ends up marrying Michelle. Where's that documentary, Tyler? Wow, is that right, Liz? It is. Did you just one-up me on some fun facts? Like they say, if you can't beat him,

just rewrite the script and give yourself the better material. There's a book that came out in the 80s called The Courage to Heal. So The Courage to Heal had a list in it for women to look at and analyze and say, okay, do you exhibit any of these number of symptoms? And it was everything from, does the sound of breaking glass scare the bejesus out of you?

Do you suffer from PMS? Sometimes do you find yourself crying and you don't know why? There's a hundred things on this list. All of them are things that are literally normal to every person who's ever been born female. This whole idea that women were struggling in the world to find themselves, to individuate,

to have agency in the world, to communicate their feelings. Well, come on, Danny, that has never been the female struggle, matching shoes to a purse? Now that is the real battle of our time. Yeah, that and smiling. I mean, why is it so hard for you women to look sweet and approachable all the time? It's not like you have anything better to do than make us men feel comfortable all the time. You write these lines for me, Liz, and now I'm going to get in trouble.

So the series of events seems to be Bibl and then Michelle remembers and then A Cour to heal. And all of these three books intertwined with one another and they created this movement that anybody of a certain age will remember where suddenly everyone was a multiple personality which let me just take a moment and say and I'm deeply aware that multiple personality disorder is no longer called that it It's called dissociative identity disorder. But at the time, it was called multiple personality disorder. Multiple personality disorder changed to dissociative identity disorder, or DID, in the DSM in 1994. My mother very quickly went from being a single mom who works a normal job and does her best to

like make sure her kids get up for school in the morning and get to their lessons to someone who could never stop crying, couldn't stay calm enough to operate a motor vehicle and couldn't maintain her job, had to go on government assistance and required, according to her therapist, therapy four to five times a week in order to manage all of these supposed so-called memories that are continuing to emerge with each and every hypnosis session and with each and every horrible memory, which gets more and more outrageous. And all of a sudden, my mother is uncovering these memories of horrible abuse that was committed upon her in her childhood childhood either by her mother or that

her mother knew about the abuse and allowed it to happen. And of course you could call my grandmother, my mother's mom, and say mom says that you know on June 7th 1957 the following awful thing happened. And my grandmother could literally open up a photo album and say, this photograph is dated June 7th, 1957. And you can see we are in Buffalo, New York on vacation, and everyone with us is in the photo. So that can't possibly have happened. That didn't matter. There would be another memory of how my

grandmother then was able to manipulate photography. And so of course the next step after having that memory and hypnosis was for Judith to encourage my mother to break off ties with my grandmother, because why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't you? Look, I know all cult leaders are awful guys, but this woman is top billing. She just creeps me out. I mean, they all weaponize abuse, but to take that to the next level where she's now encouraging fabricated memories of sexual abuse by family members for the sole purpose

of gaining full control over Danny's mom's life and decision-making and isolating her from her loved ones. It is sick. She has to be very very sick herself to do that. My brother, MIA, he goes and stays at a friend's house for most of the time. It's more than he can deal with. I adopt the job of being responsible for my mother's well-being, partially out of complete self-preservation because that day that the police came to the door, they made it very clear to me that if my mother was unstable, the result of that for me would be either foster care or get sent home to Ohio to live with my dad.

It was a perfectly capable and acceptable parent, but home to Ohio to live with my dad meant no more gymnastics. We'll be right how the back. Ha ha ha ha. June's journey, June's Journey, June's Journey. Now what are you doing, Liz? Well, we're recording an ad for June's Journey. I want to get the tone just right.

June's Journey. I mean, there is a lot more in that ad than simply the name, Liz. June's Journey, June's Journey. I guess you're just gonna leave it up to me to tell the people it's an incredible app where you can find hidden clues to solve mysteries. You mean June's Journey?

I mean, you play it, I play it, we escape reality with its gripping mystery, murder, and romance. Which is why I love June's Journey. I mean, we gotta sell this thing, Liz. Our listeners will certainly like this game and I wanna get it right. Which is why I am practicing Tyler. June's Journey. Okay, well let me know when you're ready because I have to read the call to action.

Ready? How sharp are your observation skills? Put them to the test in... June's Journey. Download for free today on iOS and Android. Nailed it. Was in a Cult is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Hey Liz, did you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save

more cash? I mean, yeah, I like saving money. Well, Progressive makes it easy. Just drop in some details about yourself. Yeah, you want to leave out the juicy bits. And you can see if you're eligible to save money when you bundle your home and auto policies. Seems like a lot of work. Well, the process only takes minutes and it could mean hundreds more in your pocket.

Since when did you start sounding like a commercial, Tyler? About 37 seconds ago. Visit progressive.com after this episode to see if you can save. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates potential savings will vary, not available in all states. And now we both sound like a commercial. So a normal day for me from 10 to 13 was get up in the morning, make myself some breakfast. Usually there was a block of government cheese

and some kind of bread. Go to school. After school, if it was a gymnastics day, big ride from one of my teammates' moms or one of my coaches to take me to gymnastics. Work out for a few hours around 7 p.m. Come home. My mother was usually either crying or I would go

straight to Judith's office and then I would either sit in group therapy with my mom, I would sit in on my mom's private therapy session where she was being hypnotized and recounting stories of childhood abuse and I won't get into the specifics of what my mother quote unquote remembered. But it certainly wasn't appropriate for a young child's ears. And she was becoming increasingly more unstable and in pretty short order she was then diagnosed by her therapist as having multiple personality disorder. And there it is.

And then Judith helped her uncover all the other personalities that explained to her why she can't remember any of these things happening when she's not under hypnosis. So there was like a six-year-old, there was a four-year-old. You're probably thinking, well, my goodness, if my mother was a victim of horrible abuse and all of these terrible things had happened to her, my God, how did she survive in the

world? How did she raise children? How did she have a regular family Thanksgiving with the very people that she claimed did these horrible things to her? Well, the answer always is there's a personality for that. There was the character, if you will, who was the person that my mother was responsible for her working a job. How was I able to graduate college? Oh, well, because professional Pat was the one who worked at the business.

And the one who goes by Sadie identified as a student. She's the one who did all the studying for you and so on and so forth. Until my mother ultimately had nine personalities. I am at a complete loss for words. This Judith woman is unbelievable. And unfortunately, Danny's mother wasn't the only one. They were without fail, suburban moms that were feeling less than satisfied in their

lives or struggling with their children or their unhappy marriage or difficult relationships in their families. And they also sought help from Judith. And Judith manipulates their minds by hypnotizing them, which is literally a brainwashing state. And then she insinuates into their minds that they had horrible things happen to them that they simply can't remember without her help. But now that they remember these things, they're not only emotionally unstable because they're processing that people that they loved their whole lives are actually evil and villainous. And now that they're processing that, they become unstable and they can't work.

But the one thing that these suburban women all have in common is really high quality health insurance. And the insurance companies were willing to pay for intensive therapy in order to address multiple personality disorders. So now there's a lot of checks coming in for all of these therapy sessions. MPD, also known as monetizing people's disorders. There was anywhere between 10 and 12 women at a time in the group. But you can imagine if there's 12 women, but all 12 of them on average have six personalities, then math. Cue Tyler to math.

12 times 6. 72. Show off. It's just math. It's simple math. Oh, look, I'm Tyler. I went to third grade. That many personalities.

And I knew all of their names too. It was crazy. Yeah, knew all of their names too. It was crazy. Yeah, they all had different names. As the women would move through therapy, they would be leaning more heavily into their more adult, more responsible personalities that would eventually become one person. And as they approached that, each of the women was encouraged to change their names. Now, if this isn't the epitome of break you down and build you back up in my image coal leader bullshit, I don't know what is.

My mother's name is not her original name. I have a different last name than my mother. So Nicolay is not the name I was born with. My last name is Diggs. And I changed it when I was 13 because of this whole process of the encouragement of my mother. And so as a collective, they became something that we just referred to as the group. They were essentially only friends with one another. As their children, we spent a fair amount of time together and the women all had the same relationship with Judith, which was she was the beginning, middle and end of all decisions, all days. She let the women know whether or not they were capable of working.

She let them know whether or not their family members cared about them. And so in turn, all of the women systematically alienated themselves from their family members. Judith used those things to pull people closer and manipulate them in order to get their money, their praise, their attention, their affection and strangely control their sex lives. My recollection is her discouraging all the women from having sex, her discouraging all of them

from being in relationships. My recollection is that every married woman in the group ended up divorced and their children ended up in different places and spaces. So suddenly you have this group of women, all they have is each other and their therapist who is quickly becoming less of a therapist and more of a guru. Not sure she ever started out as an ethical therapist, but...

Yeah, and it didn't just stop with the hypno fuckery. That was hastened along by the adoption of a lot of new age practices. And so as a group, we were all instructed to stop taking medication of any kind. It was a very solid new age belief that any illness that is acting itself out in your body, any disease, a dis-ease. Yes, so dis-ease is dis-ease. It's not in your body, it's in your mind. My call leader used to say that shit too. Dis-ease is dis-ease. She said all these words like that. It drove me crazy. Hugh man, it's Hugh man. Jesus, it's jeez, it's us.

Like, what, that doesn't even make sense. That sucks. Those aren't even portmanteaus. Cultural, cult, you are all. That was my favorite one. Cause people would say she's a cult and she'd be like, cultural, cult, you are all. You are all in the cult, cultural. She literally told you you were in a cult and she'd be like, cultural cult, you are all, you are all in the cult, cultural.

She literally told you you were in a cult and you just sat there and said, she's so smart. Right. Your episode coming soon. And so rather than a medical journal, we had a book called, You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay. All right, cue Liz with some new age nonsense. Oh goody goody, my turn to bore you guys with a book report.

For those who don't know, Louise Hay was basically the queen of new age self-help from the mid 80s to the early 2000s. Her book, You Can Heal Your Life was published in 1984 and according to her website has sold over 50 million copies. She also founded Hay House Publishing, which released bestsellers like The Law of Attraction and helped bring Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now to a wider audience. Her whole philosophy was that illness is caused by emotional issues, like cancer being the result of resentment.

She said that period cramps stem from anger at yourself or hatred of your body. And back pain signals a lack of financial support. Yeah, I think I'll just tell my wife that the cramps she's having are because she hates herself and give her an affirmation. I'll subscribe to that magazine. I don't think that would go over very well. I'm wise enough to know.

During the AIDS crisis, she became a prominent figure by hosting support groups and promoting affirmations as a path to healing. But she also claimed AIDS was caused by guilt, which... Yeah. Yeah. No. Yeah. So, if, for example, I had a sore throat, you're not finding your voice, you're not

communicating your feelings properly. And so the remedy for that is an affirmation repeated until your dis-ease is improved. And so if I had strep throat, then my doctor's orders, if you will, were to get out my notebook and write that affirmation 100, 200, 300, 500 times. Things have really progressed in the esoteric new age ology of it all. I equate it, when I hear the term conspirituality these days, like people who like yoga in the morning

and then they go way too deep on YouTube at night and they're convinced that like, pizza gate is real and they also don't vaccinate themselves. I feel like my mother's group was sort of one of the earliest iterations of that. It's just we didn't have internet, right? Between hypnotherapy, group therapy, some iteration of what they thought was traditional talk therapy, there also was like reiki healing, energy healing. You've heard of past life regression.

We did a lot of that because it goes hand in hand with the hypnotherapy of the time. And there was every kind of therapy. It was like art therapy. So my mother would draw really disturbing pictures or chalk paintings of like, it's really awful, of like adult genitalia, like attacking a minor, things that my mother saw either in her nightmares or

in her therapy sessions because the nightmares are often considered to be memories as well. And so I was exposed to everyone's art therapy. Some of the women in the group believed that their parents were secret Satan worshippers. And so I saw their contraints of what they thought they remembered from when they were nine or 10 months old of their parents, like putting them on some sort of altar and like doing terrible things to them. And so I had these really intense scary images in my head. I didn't understand what sex was yet. I certainly didn't understand it from an adult point of view.

And yet everything around was always about sex, but it was deviant. And it wasn't just her mom that was indoctrinated. I was all the way in. And it did not take long at all. I was a kid and I was in the midst of it and I got dragged along into all of these sessions and believed with 100% certainty that every single thing that every woman in the group claimed happened to them happened, I believed that everyone in my family, my extended family, I believed

they were all secrecy villains. And I believed that something was inherently broken in me. This guy was as cold and calculated as they come. Maybe we weren't going to get it solved. It was like the epitome of innocence that had been preyed upon. This is a case that has no evidence. We didn't have DNA. We didn't have fingerprints. Step inside the court of law with the new true crime podcast, American Justice. We realized we have four men who answered the same ad for a job on a farm.

My brother Ralph went to interview and he was never seen again. A podcast that explores impactful crimes and reveals how our justice system works. You have to consider that there are more possibilities than one. And sometimes, how it doesn't. We have to find whoever this monster is. Go in depth into chilling cases and their conclusions in this new true crime series. You just have a pit in your stomach thinking how many people are we going to find. New episodes of American Justice are available every Wednesday, wherever you get your podcasts.

Eventually, Dani stopped only watching from the sidelines. And the group starts getting more and more intertwined into each other's lives to the point where one member of the group gets assigned to be my therapist as a kid because all of their children need to remember the things that we don't remember happen to us. So therapy for me was with a sort of senior member of the group. So she had more dominant adult personalities as we all understood them to be. And so my therapy sessions would be going into a room with her.

I remember the room having no furniture in it, and so we would sit on the floor and she would attempt to hypnotize me so that I could remember things that happened to me in my young childhood. I do remember feeling a lot of pressure. So I was, in fact, molested as a child. And I know that because I remember it and I told my mother about it when I was a kid, well before any of this happened.

But certainly at 10, 11 years old, I didn't really feel like it was something that I wanted to share with strangers, but I felt very pressured to have had something happen to me as well. And so I told the truth and it became very quickly apparent that the truth was not nearly enough. And so she would hypnotize me or attempt to hypnotize me and try to elicit memories from me. And in particular, I remember a lot of pressure trying to elicit memories about my father and things that they

wanted me to say that he did that my father never did anything but go to work and play baseball and insist that I turn out my feet because I was pigeon-toed. And I'll give my mother this credit. She had a lot of pressure to elicit memories about my father doing bad things to me. And she held fast and she didn't, she kept it very self-centric. Everything was about somebody did something horrible to me, but she didn't, she didn't accuse my dad of doing anything. I remember my mother needed to wholly be focused on therapy and attempting to

parent in the midst of all of these different personalities. I remember my mother being an active participant in like who we're going to be today. Judith would essentially say like, now we're going to work on your six year old named Rosie. And so Rosie would be in the forefront for days if not weeks, sometimes months on end. And so it became that 12 year old me had to parent a six year old that was coming out of my mother the whole time. So I cooked, I cleaned, I made sure she took

a good shower. I made sure that she was okay. She was showing up to my middle school talking like a six-year-old who had driven there in a hatchback and confusing everyone and putting me in a position where I had to like make up one million stories. It's no wonder I became an actress in order to explain her very bizarre behavior. There was a really fun stretch when I was 12 where she was being a petulant teenager that was like only two years older than me. Let me tell you that sucked.

In retrospect as an adult, my mom was profoundly unstable and she probably had no business parenting me anyway. And it ended up being this very unfair, unspoken agreement between us that if I wanted to continue living with my mother, I had to understand that she was going to shirk her parenting responsibilities. And the result of that was my grades slipped, gymnastics slipped, I became very sad, I had a lot of anxiety and depression. And I didn't really understand how much I was spiraling. Everything

that was happening with my mother and happening within the group was destabilizing me. I no longer go to church. I no longer go to doctors. I no longer speak to my grandmother, my grandfather, my uncle, my other set of grandparents. I barely speak to my father. Everyone in my family, I've been told a story about how they are a secret villain and they can't be trusted and they're dangerous to me. And if I were to be around them or speak to them them they could do to me what they did to my mother and so I went from being the kid who had a really strong understanding of who she was and a lot of confidence that came from being smart and being accomplished to

Being a kid who understood that the very basis of my being is brokenness and the only way that could be fixed is to participate more readily in the group. And so that created this really dichotomous circumstance for me because I wanted so desperately to be normal. I wanted so desperately to fit in with this community that I was living in of rich white people who had no fucking idea what was going on inside my house. So I had every reason in the world to keep it a secret. And my dad, I did not tell him any of it. He knew peripheral stuff. He knew that she

wasn't working. He knew that she wasn't doing well. He knew that my gymnastics, my grades were slipping. He saw my scorecards and my grades as well and he just sort of didn't understand what was happening. My brother was completely checked out but when he turned 16 he drives like he was gone. He certainly knew everything that was going on, but for him it was all like a giant eye roll and like this isn't about me, so I'm not going to participate. What I saw was the older children of all of the women all said, no I'm not doing this, I'm going to live with my dad or I'm on my own or I'm not participating.

And then they very quickly became part of the family group that was alienated. And then the younger kids like me, we either got hypnotized into remembering something that we didn't remember before and then on-sided with mom, or like in my case case didn't hypnotize easily and couldn't be coaxed into remembering something unknown. It became very clear very fast when I wasn't down with the memory program I started being identified as

counterproductive to her therapy. It became that the only way my mother was going to make her way to the goalpost of integration was if she sent me away, because she needed to focus on herself. Judith said to my mother that she absolutely had to send me away. And 13 hours since, back to live with my dad.

Fortunately, Danny's story doesn't end there. Yep. This story is so good. We needed two episodes. We'll be back next week to wrap up Danielle's incredible journey back to her mother and eventually to freedom. Danielle's incredible journey back to her mother and eventually to freedom. From then on though, my mother's life just proceeded to be a series of calamitous choices. And those calamitous choices always ended up falling into my lap because I've always felt so responsible for her.

Thank you, Dani, even though you never cued me in this episode. The love is real. Just a quick couple of thank yous before we go. Big thank you to our newest Patreon members who by their names, guys, I think they have to be some rad witches because they became members after Melissa's episode and they are Robin Peacock and Leanne Nightshade. Ooh, I want to be a witch. Get in line, Tyler. And a vagina while you're at it. Also Melissa Fortner, who was our guest from last week's episode, also just became a Patreon member. So thank you, Melissa.

Oh, by the way, she's going to be sending me some of her perfume, which I can't wait to try. Which can't you? Which? Kill it, Rob. Kill it quick. God, I hate this. I will be sure to let you guys know what I think of her perfume when I receive it.

And she also said she would send us some mead wine. So I'll share some with you, Tyler. Which wine? Mead wine, the mead wine. Which is which wine? Danielle, can I get a cue Tyler to stop talking, please? Rob, can you just AI that in Danielle's voice for us? Yeah, let me hit the AI button.

Hold on one second. Cue Tyler to be fucking quiet. Damn you technology, damn you. That is our show you guys. This year we are coming in strong with some atypical slash alt slash non-Christian cults. So if you have a story that falls into that category, we would love to hear from you.

Please send it our way to info at wasanacult.com. And speaking of that, one quick favor. One of our listeners reached out to us for help. See, he was raised in a cult and his parents didn't believe in getting birth certificates or social security numbers. So now that he is an adult, why he can't get a driver's license or a job. It's terrible.

So if any of our listeners have had similar situations or might know of a solution, please reach out to us at info at wasianacult.com. Thank you all for listening, for joining us in this new wild 2025 that is already filled with lots of craziness. We are excited to keep making this show. Please write in a review if you haven't.

Please continue to spread the word. Tell your friends. It really helps our show. And we'll see you in a week. Was I in a Cult is written, produced, and hosted by me, Tyler, the Disjockey-mesum. And me, some doubt, Liz Iacuzzi. Sound design and edit by Rob Akron Sound Para. And assistant editor, Greta Sibyl Stromquist.

And our executive producer, Steven, multiple non-personalities. Wait, bro. That's not true, Steven. You have a wonderful half of a personality. No, you have a good full personality. All twelve of them. Don't spare my life. Crucify me. free. You can binge laugh out loud sitcoms like Frasier and re-watch cult classics like Higher Learning. Whether you're in the mood to solve a little crime before bedtime with NCIS or Tracker or curl up with a surefire hit

like Forrest Gump, Pluto TV has thousands of movies and shows all for free. Pluto TV. Stream now, pay never.