Body Language Analyst/Hypnotherapist REACTS to Teal Swan from "The Deep End." Is She DANGEROUS?

is my life better now i don't feel that it is because i don't ask you that's the thing yeah it is better actually yes that's [ __ ] would you like to see how the conversation actually went cults hypnosis trauma therapy the accuracy of television this week's video has everything let's go what's going on everyone welcome to the behavioral arts and this week is going to be quite a little different than all my other videos this is a person that i've had a lot of requests about throughout the months and her name is teal swan so a couple of months ago there was a documentary that was released on hulu and on youtube and other platforms called the deep end and it was a deep dive into a woman named teal swan now teal swan is a youtuber with a pretty impressive following she's a self-help guru she's a spiritual healer and she has a whole bunch of youtube videos where she gives tips and talks about psychology and the healing process and trauma some people swear by her techniques and just swear that she changed their lives and then there's a whole bunch of people who are extremely skeptical about her methods you know healthcare professionals psychology professionals who say that her methods are reckless and this documentary was more about her life her retreats her inner circle and it was some shocking footage so in this video i'm going to analyze a lot of different aspects of this whole story and it's gonna be a little more than what i normally do because normally on this channel we do body language and behavior analysis but in this video i'm gonna bring in other areas that i have a lot of experience in to help me with this analysis starting with my experience as an award-winning mentalist and hypnotist as a performer i've also talked about this on the channel before but i am a certified and licensed hypnotherapist and i spent years actually practicing therapy and a lot of what we're seeing here relates enormously to hypnotherapy which again is something people misunderstand hypnotherapy isn't always necessarily therapy under hypnosis it's simply therapy on a subconscious level to deal with the problems at the root and again a lot of what she does relates to that and we're gonna see the connections there and finally i have extensive experience on television shows i've done everything from reality shows to competition shows to performance-based shows to news shows to special appearances and i know just how misleading editing and production can get so we're going to talk a lot about that as well so the video is going to be split into four segments the first segment is going to look at the documentary the deep end all about teal swan and we're going to look at how accurate is it based on what we're seeing some of the editing based on some of the things that teoswana said herself on her youtube channel are we getting a real image of what's going on or is there some sort of bias there are they trying to push some sort of narrative we're going to look at that in the first part in the second part we're going to look into the validity of teal swan's practice whether it's her youtube videos whether it's some of the stuff we saw some of her techniques that she uses what are they based in are they really hers are they effective are they dangerous there's a lot of different people with a lot of different opinions we're going to look at that we're also going to talk a lot about therapists and healers and sort of how to screen them and how to figure out who works best for you in the third segment we're going to take a look at teal swan herself so once again there's so much controversy on this a lot of people think she's this great healer this really sweet personality and a lot of people think that she's narcissistic egocentric and all these awful things we're gonna see is either one of those true is it something in the middle what clues can we get about the type of person that she is and finally in the fourth segment i'm gonna answer a question that's coming up a lot is teal swan running a cult and here we're gonna look at the psychology of cults how they're built and does teal swan's organization have a lot of overlap with that is it a cult is it not a cult and we're going to dive into that so i'm really excited let's start with part one looking at the accuracy of the documentary here we go i want to begin with a scene in the documentary that was for me the first red flag where i went okay hold on something's going on here with the editing and i'm not sure what it is so this was teal swan at one of her retreats she had a group of followers sitting in front of her and she was you know going over that day's lesson and you know we talk a lot about body language on the channel we saw a gentleman and his body language immediately signaled to me that there's some disagreement we saw some tension in the lips we saw some mouth blocking which is usually trying you know to hold something in we saw the eyes kind of searching a little like he was feeling a little skeptical and then he voiced that skepticism and he asked teal if there's anyone she looks up to if there's anyone who's above her and immediately we saw in this documentary that she was very resistant to that almost in an unpleasant way let's take a look at her answer try to pay attention to something that's going on that you might catch that's a little bizarre is there anyone out of the team that you would have enough respect for that they could challenge you it's a strange question why is that an important question why i should have someone above me not above you like who do you look up to i don't look up to anyone but i and so i have resistance against that if i'm being brutally honest why i should have someone above me okay so not sure if you caught it i'm sure some of you did for me with my experience on television on youtube with editing i'm always a little skeptical when someone's talking and we don't see them and the camera is cutting back and forth and focusing on someone else but here there was something else that really caught my attention the first is she says that same line twice almost the exact same way why i should have someone above me and it's the exact same tonality so unless she in fact said that twice it's very strange that we're hearing it twice so to me that was a question mark are they taking a sound clip that she said and they're repurposing it and slicing it up to make it seem like she's being really resistant to this question and the second thing is the way she says it she doesn't say why should i have someone above me she says why i should have someone above me like she's asking him this but that's not english teosuan is a very eloquent speaker she speaks really well in fact that's the reason she has a success she has because people really connect with her when she speaks if someone asks me is there someone above me and i want to say that statement the answer would be no why should i have anyone above me why should i she's not saying that she's saying why i should that usually comes at the end of a sentence like blah blah blah i don't know why you would say that i don't know why i should have someone above me but we're not seeing the first part of the statement there it's just the end because why i should comes at the end so to me looking at that it was very bizarre i was like that doesn't feel like that conversation is real so eventually my thought was confirmed by teo swan herself on her youtube channel and i will leave a link in the description she did a video where she looked at several scenes in documentary and said you know luckily my team was recording that day as well here's how it actually happened and this conversation was one of those scenes in the audio that she shared in that video we don't really see the back and forth a lot but we definitely do see that the guy's statement was a lot longer he said a lot more things and they cut out these little bits to make it look like he's challenging her that's not really the way it played out so to me that's a little irritating that it's being misrepresented as this like attack on her credibility and then it looks like she's being super defensive when that's not in fact what happened but it definitely wasn't as shocking as another conversation later in the docu-series where there was this woman at one of the retreats and she just seemed like she was calling teoswan out hard and it almost seemed like they were having this argument and it seemed like teal swan was very standoffish let's take a look at that or what because my life did not get better everything got worse i'm sure you already know that i attempted suicide in january i don't know if you know that and i can't do this anymore look i know it sucks but here's the thing it's my intention that you feel better right i want you to feel better i want you to walk out this door feeling better but the reality is is that most adults today yourself included are living an inauthentic life is my life better now i don't feel that it is that's why i don't ask you that's the thing yeah it is better actually yes that's [ __ ] so that was really shocking for me the first time i saw it in the series and we could see that this confrontation really seems like they're biting heads but again in that same video on her channel she released the actual footage of that conversation and it's nowhere near as tense as that feels to me that was a really big shocking one it really seems like she is listening more she is giving more advice it's a lengthier conversation it's a very different vibe from what we saw in the series would you like to see how the conversation actually went what if being a little bit more like her is what stood in between you and like being more like her yeah is that what men want you know i'm not telling you oh my god another thing that thiel shared on her youtube channel is videos that the crew of the deep end sent her for her birthday and i'm just gonna show you one or two here and there's quite a few more almost everyone on the crew sent her a really kind and nice birthday video but i just want to look really quickly at the one from the director uh john caspy so this is a video he sent her on her birthday happy birthday teal hope you're having a great day i speak for the whole film crew when i say we have so much appreciation and gratitude to you and everyone on your team for welcoming us into your lives and into your family i feel like we've learned so much along the way and just feel lucky to have met someone like you who's so brave and intuitive and willing to do the hard things to make the world a better place that seems a little incongruent doesn't it because if you watch the deep end it really seems like you know she has a lot of really dangerous uh habits and therapies and that she's sometimes a mean person and she mistreats those around her and to get such a warm and kind birth and by the way this was sent like way after a lot of this was filmed so it's not like this was in the beginning that he sent her this video so there kind of seems to be an incongruence there like if he was really so thankful and he thought all these nice things about her on behalf of the entire crew why then does your video reflect this really dangerous person so to me this incongruence that doesn't sit right so what does all that mean does it speak to her character does it speak to her personality her practice does it speak to how effective her methods are absolutely not i just want to make it very clear that not everything we see on television even if it's in a documentary reflects 100 of reality and it doesn't even reflect the true feelings of the crew behind it sometimes there's an agenda sometimes production wants to go a certain direction sometimes they want to get a rise out of people so we're seeing here that there were certain things that were edited to seem a certain way and there were certain things that were done and when you compare them to these messages that the crew are sending her it's not really congruent with how kind they seem to think she is versus how kind they portrayed her as being on the docu-series all right now we're going to move on and take a look at her actual techniques and her therapy methods and look at what she's using is it based on anything is it truly her own work and is it as dangerous as a lot of professionals seem to think it is but before we do that do me a huge favor hit that subscribe button to the notifications on for more psychology content so throughout the series we get a lot of clues as to what methods teal swan is actually using to cure or work with her trauma patients and there's a lot of hypnosis right off the bat almost anyone who has any training in hypnosis or hypnotherapy can see that a lot of her language the tonality the what looks like the meditation exercises the things she says is very very much hypnotic technique hypnotic language and comes from hypnotherapy don't you sense or feel this bubble separating you from the rest of the world now imagine sense or feel the prison of this bubble at some point we could see them outside and she's doing this what i would describe as a trance or an induction and people are relaxing and we even see one woman who is experiencing rem rapid eye movement now this only happens in a certain depth of sleep so when we're sleeping our eyes move really really rapidly and you can even see it with the eyelids closed it also does happen in deep trance but we're definitely seeing rem and that's not something that one can fake try it you'll see try to record yourself getting that sort of really quick twitching it can't be done on purpose we also get a really great clue at some point that not just teal swan but her surrounding go a little bit above and beyond hypnosis and actually study the psychology of persuasion because her best friend of years who was at the top of our organization for a very long time at some point is packing some things away into a box and we see him put influence by robert cialdini which is the number one best-selling book ever on the psychology of persuasion here it is influenced by robert cialdini the global authority on the psychology of persuasion and this is actually an incredible book i'll leave a link in the description if you want to check it out but it's got great stuff in there whether you know you work in sales or you want to use this in your day to day life it has some really great explanations as to how we can get people to make certain decisions but i've always compared this and books like this to a scalpel because a doctor can use a scalpel to save a life but you can also use a scalpel to really damage someone so i'm not suggesting in any way what the intended use was in this case why blake had this what use they have for this but at the very least we're getting an indication that her inner circle is reading this book on persuasion so they get the psychology of persuasion as well another really interesting moment that i caught was this now see one person in your life who you are attached to by one of these cords why might you have allowed them to attach this cord to you what are you afraid will happen if this cord isn't there imagine the cord falling from the other person i instantly recognized that idea of this string that connects us to someone uh it's actually an old hawaiian ritual called oponopono and again i'll leave a link in the description and it's actually a really beautiful sort of process that you use to kind of let go emotionally of someone and sort of take your energy back and you wish them well that's a very big part of a pono pono that i've always loved it's not malicious you just wish someone well you wish them on their way but you just take back your energy and they can't have it anymore and the reason i know it is because it was taught to me by one of my hypnosis teachers and a lot of hypnotists did use that beautiful imagery of a heart string connecting us to someone and then severing it and taking it back as a great imagery to say goodbye to someone i use it a lot i've used it in therapy i've seen the power of this visualization i've had people burst into tears i've had people get over you know people that they really felt attached to still in one session so it is a very powerful technique but anyways all this to say that that metaphor of the string that's not hers it goes back to oponopono okay now we're gonna jump into some of her more controversial moments and techniques uh big warning here big big big warning anybody who's experienced psychological trauma anybody who's watching this video to try to figure out if teal swan is a good resource to deal with your trauma if you're looking for a healer and that's why you're at this video you might want to skip this next bit in fact i'll put a time step on the screen and you can just skip to that timestamp and it'll skip all this stuff that is is really triggering i'm not saying it's actually a bad thing we're going to look at it you know but uh it is it is very intense so if you feel like this might trigger some emotions please do skip it okay here we go so at one of the retreats we see teal tell the followers to go off in pairs into separate rooms and re-experience their trauma with a partner so basically the exercise seems to be seems to be there could be more to this but it seems to be that you're going to re-experience this trauma as deeply as you can you're going to go back to it with this person and the person's going to do the same well we see an example of it and i'm sure that you know for effect for drama the documentary filmed all of them and picked the most intense one and it and it is intense it's very intense so that obviously got a heck of a lot of criticism from people watching the documentary from psychology professionals and let's talk about what this is is this really dangerous should someone re-experience their trauma is there any healing capacity to that so i have a lot of thoughts on this first and foremost let's address the main question can revisiting trauma be therapeutic big loaded question and the answer is it really really depends there are a lot of forms of therapy that are based on revisiting the traumatic moment i've seen a lot of very very competent and capable hypnotherapists have the person go back to the moment of trauma there's an entire discipline called emdr therapy which literally relies on going back to the trauma to deal with it so i have seen the effectiveness of that type of therapy but it's very very fragile and the problem for me is not necessarily revisiting the trauma if teal swan feels that that can help and she's used this effectively before and she wants to do this one-on-one in a controlled environment that's fine there are ways in which that can be done but the thing i find irresponsible about this is there doesn't seem to be a competent or licensed professional in the room there's someone sort of overlooking i don't know who that person is if that person is a licensed therapist i'll be a lot more comfortable with this idea but it really seems like this woman is working with another woman who's experienced trauma and we're even seeing at the end that while she's experiencing it her partner is also being hit with that trauma so it's bringing out that trauma out of her i don't really see what the benefit is of putting two people like this who have a lot of sensitivities we experience this together does it have benefits i'm not saying it doesn't can this be beneficial can it heal i'm sure there's something here that can heal i just think without someone there to be able to take care of any ab reactions that might happen something might get really emotional and there's no one really there to step in that's the part about this that i find a little dangerous again that can be taken with a grain of salt i know that the documentary has seems to have an agenda to really push this like wow dramatic like oh my god look at how crazy this is type scenario and this may be taken out of context to where we don't really know where everyone else is is there someone on standby is that person standing by the door a licensed or experienced mental health practitioner i don't know so it just seems on the surface that it's it's being a little irresponsible but i could be wrong about that now here's the thing you've been loosely and mostly subconsciously toying with the idea of suicide this time what i'm going to encourage you to do is to consciously imagine committing suicide there's no way of knowing if that's actually going to work out there's no quality control there and i don't think that it's defensible in a public forum okay so that's another one where again there's a lot of controversy and i think it's rather justified i'm not sure what that video is that she's watching is it a youtube video that teal swan put out is it something that's only shown in a controlled environment to her followers at a retreat i don't know i haven't seen all her youtube videos in the comments let me know if you're aware that video we just saw of teal swan is that just under youtube for anyone to watch if it's a video that anyone can access like on youtube or on her website where there isn't a controlled person around i do believe that that could be quite dangerous again am i saying it doesn't work that it can never help absolutely not i get what she's trying to do there i could see how that could benefit someone i'm not saying that the technique is only bad but it can also be bad i can imagine a vulnerable person on a low watching this video and it really really not helping and doing the opposite so yeah i agree with the gentleman there was being interviewed he is an expert on suicide prevention and he's saying that you know you you can't know how this kind of technique is going to work out and and you can't he's right you know what the two examples we just saw that re-experiencing the trauma and the thinking about suicide thing remind me of it's like imagine if someone goes to a friend of theirs and says i really need more money i want to make more money but i don't know what to do and their friend says oh that's easy invest all your money in the stock market i did it it worked out for me i 10xed my my money so it's great go do that so let's look at that yeah it could be good advice for some people you know if if they go they look at it a little they figure out what's going on they make the right investment it could totally work out you it could be the best decision you made in your life but it can also not work out if you don't know what you're doing or you're not you know in the right space or you don't do your research or just out of pure luck it could also be you know a complete demise of their financial situation that's the way i see this i'm not judging the techniques and saying this will never work that's absolutely not what i'm saying i'm sure in some cases it will but to me it is a problem that in some cases it won't so once again i'll say it again and again i wish these were done in a setting where there is more control there is someone overseeing it or it's being done a little more responsibly i would feel a lot more comfortable that way moving along with theo swan's practice and her methods this next part is going to be very difficult for me because as a mentalist as a hypnotist as someone who has really dealt with a lot of these techniques i have a lot of beliefs here and i'm going to try to not let them get in the way so i'm going to look at this very objectively because that's very important to me so in this one we're looking at therapy through channeling so we see a lot of examples of this in the series we see a gentleman who lost his mother and one of the women there juliana who's part of the inner circle channels his mother and he now is according to this therapy communicating with his mother who has passed on through juliana i'm sorry for all the pain i got we then go on to see a woman whose entire childhood is being played out with channeling so one individual is channeling the child version of the woman and then two other individuals are channeling her parents and she is witnessing her own childhood you're going to bring your child self into the room okay along with your parents at that time okay i'm relating to this i'm not recognizing okay you're grounded too nobody watches he can take his aggression out on me wow when i was in your father's role about that maybe he had abused the sun and then when i was in the mom role it felt like possibly like some inappropriate touches happened oh wow okay now the reason i say my experience as a performer ties into this is because with hypnosis it's very easy to convince someone that they're a different individual we do it all the time and with mentalism i've very often used psychology trickery and all kinds of stuff to convince people that i have access to information that i can't possibly know so if i wanted to i can put on a very very convincing demonstration of channeling but i know just how easy it is for the mind to accept things that aren't necessarily true but once again this is not about my beliefs or my opinion on channeling because maybe i haven't experienced anything that allows me to believe in it but maybe you have maybe something's happened in your life or you witnessed something and said oh my god there's no way this could be real unless this person was channeling someone i know or someone i knew so if you believe that total respect optional resistance you're entitled to that what i'm curious about is this and i'm being totally genuine here did what we just see convince anyone who's watching that this was 100 channeling and it can't be anything else please let me know in the comments when we saw juliana speaking to that gentleman's mom these generic statements nothing really specific did that convince anyone beyond the shadow of a doubt that she for sure channeled his mom you might believe in channeling i'm not asking you to debate channeling but is that for sure a demonstration of that can't be role-playing can't be just imagination taking over that is 100 a legit demonstration of channeling please let me know in the comments but even that is not my biggest issue with this because it wouldn't really matter if channeling is a real thing if this exercise benefit the person who was doing it for example the gentleman who got closure with his mom does it matter if it was real channeling maybe not maybe if he left that experience feeling better about himself like he had a chance to say some things to his mom then great it doesn't have to be real because it helped fine but if we look at the potential positive we have to look at the potential negative in that second scenario of channeling the woman didn't recognize what was happening we see her say things like this doesn't ring any bells i must have blocked it out and then when the people who were channeling say yeah we felt like there was some abuse she's going oh you know i didn't remember that and she's accepting it as being legit and she's now convinced that she had an abusive childhood because these individuals who channel this seem to believe so well now it kind of matters if it's real because what if it's not what if they're bringing their own bias their own feeling their own childhood into this experience what if this isn't legitimately channeling i don't see anyone there verifying to make sure somehow that this is a legit channeling demonstration they're just kind of sort of doing it and then the woman is like oh my god i guess i was abused as a child and i'm sorry i really hate that now again if that's a misrepresentation and somehow it was edited in a way where that's not what happened i'd welcome that i would love to see that footage but this isn't a case of like a broken conversation she's legitimately saying things and seeing things she's that emotion in her face to where she came out of that experience believing that there may have been abuse in her childhood i'm not okay with that in fact in the documentary we get a testimonial from an ex-member of the inner circle who says that he was convinced of things that you know may not have been true because he just believed these processes and these therapies and he had blind faith in teal take a look teal made me question like all of my childhood experiences and everything that i had gone through and just you know made me like cut ties with family and think this and accuse my dad of sexual abuse like awful stuff now again am i saying that this gentleman's testimony means that teal is evil and everything she does has to be thrown out no this gentleman obviously had a terrible experience obviously he's going to speak very negatively so i don't really take his opinion as the entirety of what i think of teal swan but that's valuable what he's saying there to where he had these ideas in his head of what happened in his childhood or with his father because i could very much see that that channeling exercise can provoke this kind of circumstance so to sum up the second section is teal swan's practice the worst thing in the world is she a demonic satanic cult-leading monster i don't think that she is i think that somewhere in teal swan there is a willingness to help people we're going to now talk about sort of her personality and her character i think that there is a willingness to help people um i think that if you're just watching her youtube channel and you know you're picking up some tips and some little exercises i don't think there's anything wrong with that i actually think if you find benefits there and it's helping you out by all means go for it some of these therapy practices though at the retreats in person are a little intense so let's quickly talk about how do we screen a therapist how do we know if a potential healer or guru is dangerous whether it's for ourselves or we have a friend who's really getting into this kind of thing so always remember with any therapist with any healer you don't have to accept everything blindly you are allowed to ask questions and do your research so prepare a questionnaire things you want to find out how long have you been doing this have you dealt with a case like mine before can you walk me through the therapy we'll be doing and just sort of open-mindedly listen to the answers and if anything sets off a red flag if you're uncomfortable with anything you can ask for more detail you can go back home you can do some research on it you can ask them what's what's that called go home do a bit of research on it see if it's beneficial has it helped other people if it's a guru like someone like teal swan and maybe you have a friend or you yourself want to go you know to one of their retreats or one of their events look up testimonials look what other people had to say don't go in blindly try to see what the consensus is out there and if ever you do go to one of these events and something happens you know sometimes when we're in that group atmosphere it's very easy to just sort of get sucked in and just go along with the group in fact in the book influence he talks about social proof when a collective of people do something it's it's easier for us to go along with it so if you're at these events and something's happening that you're not comfortable with you don't really feel like it's right you might want to see it before you do it don't ever be scared to just say pause i'm not comfortable with this i'd like to see it first or just sit it out step out essentially this don't ever do anything that you're not comfortable with okay speaking about boundaries and limitations now let's take a look at some clips that show us a little bit of who teal swan is now again remember it does seem like the docu series has a certain agenda and over the years that they filmed remember that this took a very long time to film they're showing you the most dramatic and most intense bits so i'm not sure be very flattering if someone followed me around for years and showed my worst moments so let's be mindful of that yes the things she's saying allow us to get insight into her character and how she thinks but also keep in mind we might be seeing moments of her at her worst if somebody says this person's dangerous and i'm in the business of healing that's no different than profeeding people die here on the outside of a hospital it prevents people from coming through the door i want the process i take people through around suicide to be something that's adopted in the mainstream psychology fields i love that clip because to me it pretty much sums up really effectively what i think of teal swan highly intelligent highly perceptive but also has tendencies for delusion and ideas of grandeur so we're seeing here a very comprehensive sort of explanation as to how demonizing her has a much worse effect on her career given the industry that she's in it's really eloquently expressed and then we hear her say that she wants her work to be studied by mainstream psychologists now i find that listen it's great to have big goals whatever industry you're in please have big goals i'm not discouraging that but it is a little unrealistic of her given that you know psychologists really focus on the facts and they do studies they do it a certain way there's a certain discipline she's got a little bit more freedom to the way she does things she explores things with a little bit more let's say open-mindedness and kind of doesn't really restrict herself to scientific processes so it's kind of to me delusional for her to say she wants mainstream psychologists to study her work am i saying they shouldn't i'm not saying they shouldn't i'm just saying i don't think it's likely oh my god my daughter never had an issue with suicide until she talked to teal swan oh yeah i read a journal i'm so tired of families we're like i don't know what happened i'm like you happened of course your daughter killed herself jesus if people don't start doing this kind of work on themselves they're headed off a [ __ ] cliff that's the thing force them oh [ __ ] yeah i i don't feel like lincoln person but it doesn't work that way that's [ __ ] that's [ __ ] you literally just crossed the line now we have problems [Music] so there is the that's the teal swan that a lot of people have a problem with a lot of the negative things they say we're seeing it there is that intensity it's that language that seems like there's no empathy there um that sort of rage in her and then someone on her team questions her or debates her and there's zero tolerance there's complete shutdown you've crossed the line you're way out of line so i do think tail swan is highly intelligent but she has a big ego and we're seeing it here she doesn't like her methods to be questioned i think she has a little bit of messiah complex and she's come to really trust her vision and i've worked with a lot of people like that whether it's therapists or performers who really trust their vision trust the way they see things i think within her inner circle she doesn't like to be questioned she wants a team that blindly trusts her and the moment one of them questions it you've crossed the line and yeah that's a big ego it can be a problem in the beginning we're seeing a lot of aggression towards people who question why people around them are depressed and if you look at it there's a there's a lack of sensitivity there but there's also an anger towards people who don't get why people are stuck in a rut so it's intense it's shocking it's dramatic but that first part doesn't necessarily reflect that she's a bad person it just reflects that like she really has zero tolerance for people who question why people around them are depressed this is the part of teal swan that i could see being self-destructive whether it's for her business whether it's for herself you know a lot of people look at teal swan and say she's great she helped me big time i see that potential but this ego is sort of like she's not to be questioned and again i don't know how much the editing played a role in this but she's saying certain things in there there are certain things saying that whether it's edited or not she's saying those things and um i do see that as slightly self-destructive what is it that i should have done to make blake feel valued or to make blake value this more or love me more like what is it that i should have done i know the most dangerous thing in the world is to think you're the good guy so i'm awake at night doubting myself because that's what i teach other people to [ __ ] do consider that maybe you're not the good guy all right again an attempt to balance things out that one is a big plus one for teal swan again a lot of people throw around the term narcissist about her let me tell you something the language we just heard is not the language of a narcissist you could say you know she's very tuned in she knows the cameras are on so she's saying that she's you know she's sort of saying that but she doesn't mean it regardless of that what she just said is not the words of a narcissist nurses can't even bring themselves to say that on camera whether they believe it or not it's not the thought process of a narcissist she's turning inwards she's looking at what she could have done different or what she did wrong she's saying you know it's always easy to think we're the hero so that's a trap i don't want to fall into i honestly find that part admirable i don't care what you think of teal swan even if it's fake even the fact that she's doing that on camera and sort of getting that out there i'm okay with that because it's these are not the words of a narcissist so look i'm i'm trying to be balanced here you you all know those who've watched the channel regularly i don't like to be polarized i hate being subjective and i know a lot of people are gonna watch go how dare you defender a lot of people say how dare you slam her name i'm not interested in doing either i don't want to defend her i don't want to slam her name i'm just calling the shots as i see them there are moments where we saw a lot of ego but here we're not seeing ego and that brings us to the final question is teal swan a cult leader is she leading a cult so in this final little chapter we're going to talk about what constitutes a cult what behaviors what cults have in common and we're going to talk about why why are called so effective there's a lot of fascinating psychology here so let's dive right in so we're going to start with a clip where a private investigator that teals team hired is facetiming with her or video chatting with her and then she brings up something called the non-negotiables and we see teal's reaction to that take a look um does she cause suicide is she a cult no maybe and i wanted you to hear that from me before i start writing this up that um your non-negotiable list kind of solidified that for me so when the private investigator says that you know maybe what you're running here is a cult we see a lot of really great body language from teal she's taken her back first she her head shoots back as her eyes open up and her eyebrows go up she's typically quite unexpressive even when she talks about pretty intense things she's not very expressive with her face so this kind of shock is out of baseline for her and it's surprise uh you know one of the universal emotions everyone experiences surprise the same way one of the things that happened is our eyes open up as we try to take in as much information to try to figure out what's going on so eyes open then we see that mouth shrug which is typically consistent with disagreement or like i don't know what to say i think we're seeing surprise and disagreement when the investigator mentions the non-negotiables we instantly see teal swan look at her manager quickly with a disapproving look and this is i think what's going on ahead is whoa wait a second how does this investigator know about the non-negotiables so what are non-negotiables well the non-negotiables are a contract that teal swan has her inner circle sign this isn't for her followers it's not for people who attend her events it's just for that close inner circle who lives with her and helps her run the business so we're going to go over right now what those non-negotiables are but before we do i want to share with you my list of five techniques that gas sliders and more importantly cults use to brainwash people almost any cult i've ever studied or looked at had these five things in place so the first one is less contact with friends and family so they isolate you they do these retreats that are isolated they encourage you to stay away from friends and family and not be in contact with them because this is more important this family is more important than that family this is where you belong they isolate and create a sense of belonging here second they use a lot of language to disconnect you from the person you were before like that person was invalid that person wasn't aware of what's going on that person lacked a lot of qualities and either you're going to be or you are now a different version of yourself now there's nothing wrong with evolving learning growing there's nothing wrong with that but if you ask me about my former self when i was five years old i'm aware that that was a younger version of me when the language starts to be my former self a different self they give you a new name a nickname or or some sort of title this is trying to completely separate you from your life up until this point and it's very common in cults third cults use a lot of higher purpose language what we're doing here is of a higher purpose you know and it could be spiritual it could be religious it has a lot of you know it manifests in a lot of different ways but whether it's the leader themselves or the group as a collective there's a higher purpose that other people cannot understand the fourth criteria is to discourage critical thinking you are not allowed to question these processes you are not allowed to do any of your own research in fact in a lot of cults there's punishment involved with doubting questioning or second guessing it's not allowed and finally the last and i think worst technique that a lot of cults use is the promise of shame or exclusion if any of the rules are broken or if somebody disobeys someone who's higher up in the hierarchy so with that in mind let's look at these non-negotiables and sort of keep in mind those those five things and see how much overlap there is you can't put your own family first the teal has to come first if she wants you there she gets you you can't have personal boundaries that have in any way an effect on teal you will now be in the world of fame this makes relationships very very complicated and often painful anyone you introduce the community could turn on teal blackmail her rip the community apart if you want to have a normal life do not choose to be part of the inner circle and it goes on so there's quite a bit of overlap there there's a lot of like your life's not going to be normal you can't be in touch with your family the mission takes priority quite a bit of sort of higher purpose language there as well but i will give them one thing which is a little bit of a distinction is right at the end she says you know if this isn't for you then just you shouldn't be part of this like if all that doesn't sound like you can do that then just don't be part of this usually with cults maybe they'll have that right in the beginning like right like in that first sort of recruiting phase they might have that sort of like if this doesn't sound good you know please don't come but the moment it begins uh there's none of that anymore in fact they do a lot to keep members in place it doesn't seem like that's what we're getting here so it seems like a really strict contract a lot of strict expectancies something that you know i find intense i would never sign something like that it seems like you know there's no life there but uh at the end it goes if that doesn't sound good don't do this so again i feel like this is more consistent with someone with a giant ego and a very strict mission who applies these rules to herself she's not really in touch with family she doesn't have a social life she's really devoted to the mission and she wants people in her surrounding to do the same here's the other thing important to note remember this there's no recruitment process she's not looking for each of her followers to go find 20 more she's all looking to grow she's very protective of her inner circle i think that needs to be taken into account so is this a cult i leave that entirely up to you some people can look at this and go well yeah that's you know she wants total control she wants to isolate them that's a cult some i look in and go no you know it's it's kind of intense but it's just the standard she has for followers let me know in the comments i don't think there's a straight answer to whether or not this is a cult i think that's why the private investigators said maybe i don't know let me know in the comments is this a cult now before we go let me throw this at you with the permission of the person who taught it to me um because a lot of you might be looking at this and looking at the retreats and saying you know why do people just go along with this you know like if we look at the channeling exercise why are they just just buying this or you know why do some of these people get so sucked into this dynamic and a very good friend of mine who you all know because he's been on the channel numerous times and he is also on one of the most successful youtube channels in the psychology space chase hughes from the behavior panel has done some of the best work in the world on the psychology of persuasion and yes something that i love called the fate model and it explains 100 why at these retreats or in these gatherings people just seem to go along with it and they just seem to be in the sort of days where they accept everything the guru is saying and fate totally explains that so fate stands for focus authority tribe and emotion and when these four things are controlled then you can pretty much get someone to do anything and at these retreats that's exactly what the case is you have their focus because this is set up in such a way that the stage or in the more intimate sort of settings teal swan is right in the middle of focus and she she's very good at commanding focus second is authority obviously if you're there you know of teal swan you know her success on youtube you know of her retreats the influence he has so the authority is a given third is tribe you're there and you're surrounded by like-minded people there's a tribe thinking so when everybody behaves a certain way science shows us it's all in here we just go along with that with that tribal thinking and finally emotions which is probably the thing to swan is the best at getting people into an emotional state through personal anecdotes through stories that are told by members of the audience so she is controlling all four of those things focus authority tribe and emotion so after all this after all this looking at her character looking at her practice looking at the way she treats her inner circle is teal swan a savior or a psycho um like all other things i think it's somewhere in the middle and most importantly i believe she is to you exactly what you need her to be so if if you resonate with her lessons you watch your youtube and you see her talk about things that resonate with you and they help you heal all power to you i'm not going to tell you to stop watching her i have no reason to say that if on the other hand you're looking at this going that's dangerous i would never do that that doesn't resonate with me nobody's asking you to watch your content the only thing i will caution is this it seems from some of the footage that some of her practices are irresponsible now she said on her youtube video that she has very qualified practitioners there overseeing some of these activities if that's the case no problem but it does seem like pushing people into trauma surrounded by other people who are unqualified to handle this who are also experiencing trauma that's responsible i'm personally not a big fan i don't encourage that kind of thing but i will not go as far as saying she's a complete monster because i'm sure that in certain cases that has helped people in terms of her character yes she's strongly egocentric we can see that she has blind faith in her system she doesn't like to be questioned when she gets questioned she gets really aggressive really quick and i do believe that these are things that you know for someone who helps other people get better i think it is something she should work on i think she'll be better off for it i don't wish her or any of her followers any harm whatsoever i hope they all find what they're looking for and i hope anybody who finds her channel finds what they're looking for even if that means saying this isn't for me so there it was i know this was a long one there was a lot to unpack but i hope you learned a couple of things um i i hope this brought some clarity for those of you have questions about this and let's get some discussions going in the in the comments about you know what what do you what do you what do you think do you think that um these qualities that she has this sort of ego makes it you know that nobody should follow her or do you see it as sort of a gray area do you feel like it's not important it's completely unimportant because she has the capacity to heal and that's all that's important let me know in the comments what you think can't wait to hear from you and i will see you on the next one

Channel: The Behavioral Arts

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Id: uYnLTpy27mg

Length: 50min 36sec (3036 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 12 2022