Confronting The Line

A cult researcher spent 11 years inside a Buddhist community, rising to her teacher's inner circle, before a spiritual crisis broke it open.

CONTENT WARNING: This episode contains open discussion of spiritual abuse, coercive control and psychological manipulation within a high-control spiritual community. If you are a survivor of spiritual or religious abuse, please take care of yourself as you listen — that might mean listening with someone you trust, taking breaks, or choosing not to listen right now. Your wellbeing matters more than any conversation.

She spent 11 years inside a Buddhist community, rose to assistant to the teacher, and watched abuse allegations surface from within. Then a concussion changed everything.

In this episode, Anne talks with Rayann Gordon, a writer and researcher finishing her master's in the psychology of coercive control, about a topic most people don't expect: spiritual abuse inside Buddhist communities. Rayann shares her path from an early apprenticeship with an unregulated channeler who claimed to be infallible, into 11 years inside a Buddhist group where she rose to one of its most trusted roles, and finally to the disorienting experience that broke the spell and let her see clearly.

They dig into what spiritual abuse looks like when there's no physical or sexual abuse to point to, how coercion gets woven directly into spiritual teachings, and what Rayann calls "trauma-coerced attachment" — when a leader manufactures crisis and then offers comfort, binding people tighter the more chaos they create. They also talk about implicit versus explicit coercion, why "suspend your boundaries until Monday" is a red flag in large group trainings, and why it so often takes 7 to 10 years to fully understand what happened.

This conversation is about how a genuine hunger for meaning and growth can be quietly redirected until questioning it feels like betrayal — and why no space, however sacred it looks, is automatically safe.

Find Rayann at rayangordon.com and rayangordon.substack.com

Resources mentioned: Rachel Bernstein's resources and Healthy Healing group https://ilumn8.life/op/lgat-recovery-group/ 

A Practical Guide to Life After a Cult by Chris Shelton https://ilumn8.life/op/what-now-book-chris-shelton/

Confronting the Line is dedicated to the safe and ethical practice of personal and professional development.

Support the show on Patreon: patreon.com/cw/BeyondtheLinesStudio

Financial Transparency: isthisacultbook.com/confronting-the-line-pod

Anne Peterson and Chris Shelton — author of What Now: A Practical Guide to Life After a Cult — are teaming up for a 21-week workshop designed for anyone who has ever found themselves in a group, relationship, or environment that left them confused, smaller, or asking what just happened to me?

We know how to lock our doors. We were taught to park under the lights and have our keys ready. But nobody taught us how to keep our minds safe from manipulation, coercive control, or predatory influence — and that gap is exactly what this workshop is here to close.

Chapter by chapter, week by week, you'll explore how coercive control actually works, why smart, capable people get caught in these dynamics, and what it takes to truly understand — not just survive — what happened. Understanding is what protects you next time.

✦ 21 chapters, every Tuesday at noon Pacific✦ Join at any point — all recordings included✦ Private community group for participants✦ Education-focused, not therapy — though insight has a way of doing its own healing

Workshops start June 30. Join at any time over the 21-week run.

All the details and registration here: https://ilumn8.life/op/reclaiming-your-mind-and-life-chris-shelton/

She thought she had left. She had walked away from the church, built a career, created a new life. Then a panic attack in a Costco in the early days of the pandemic stopped her cold — and told her the truth. She had left the building. But the building had never left her.

Susan Stirling is the author of Velcro Kisses: Prophecy, Trauma Bonds, and Reclaiming the Narrative. Her memoir traces a journey that begins in childhood — growing up in the Canadian Rockies with a mother who became born again, attending house churches in the early 70s where end-times prophecy and rapture anxiety were the backdrop of ordinary life.

From those early years, Susan learned to split herself in two: a spiritual self driven by fear, and a normal self that got on with living. That split would follow her for decades.

The book moves through a frightening solo trip to Australia as a teenager with no plan and no hostel booked, arriving at a racehorse ranch with every internal alarm screaming and no language to act on it. It moves through the pull of a large group awareness training and the psychological fracture that followed. It moves through 25 years inside a prophetic church community, where Susan led a successful dance ministry, built a business fuelled by Rhema words and prophecy, and slowly lost access to her own discernment. From the outside, her life looked like a testimony. From the inside, she had almost no autonomy at all.

What Susan and Anne explore in this conversation is what so many people discover only in hindsight: leaving is step one, not the whole journey. The real work of deconstruction often doesn't begin until years later — triggered, in Susan's case, by a global pandemic, a supermarket, and a heart that finally said enough. Through EMDR and the practice of building what she calls a coherent narrative — taking scattered scenes and putting them in order so the brain and body can finally register that it is over — Susan found her way to something she had been looking for her whole life. Not transcendence. Not breakthrough. Just herself.

This episode is for anyone who left something and thought they were fine. For anyone who grew up with fear-based religion and still feels its weight. For anyone whose internal alarm system went off and they had no language for what it was saying. You are not alone. And you did nothing wrong.

Find Susan on Instagram @seeingsusanstirling or Substack @seeingsusanstirling

Resources mentioned:
Velcro Kisses by Susan Stirling — available on Amazon and wherever books are sold
Rachel Bernstein's resources and Healthy Healing group https://ilumn8.life/op/lgat-recovery-group/
A Practical Guide to Life After a Cult by Chris Shelton https://ilumn8.life/op/what-now-book-chris-shelton/
Beyond the Line Studio (Patreon): https://www.patreon.com/cw/BeyondtheLinesStudio

Confronting the Line is dedicated to the safe and ethical practice of personal and professional development. confrontingtheline.com

Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/BeyondtheLinesStudio

Transparency and funding: https://isthisacultbook.com/confronting-the-line-pod/

CONTENT WARNING: This episode contains open discussion of psychological harm, coercive control, and alleged physical abuse in an employment context. If you are a survivor of a high-control group or workplace abuse, please read on carefully and take care of yourself as you listen.

That might mean listening with someone you trust, taking breaks when you need to, or choosing to read these notes first so you know what's coming. It might also mean this isn't the right moment — and that's completely okay. Your wellbeing matters more than any conversation. If anything here brings up difficult feelings, please reach out to someone safe. For support around high-control group experiences, consider joining the Healthy Healing group hosted by Anne Peterson and Rachel Bernstein, LMFT: https://ilumn8.life/op/lgat-recovery-group/

A whistleblower case involving former staffers of Werner Erhard has just reached the Court of Appeal in England and Wales — and won. The case, Rogerson v. the Erhard Jensen Initiative, is now unappealable after the Supreme Court refused to hear it. What it means for workers, survivors and whistleblowers around the world goes far beyond Werner Erhard and Landmark Worldwide.

Anne sits down with Michael Polak, award-winning international barrister and Director of Justice Abroad, to break down what happened and why it matters. Michael represents Daniel Rogerson, a close personal assistant to Erhard based in London, whose case travelled from a private Singapore arbitration all the way to the English Court of Appeal. The allegations include regular physical violence against staff — hitting, slapping, strangulation, throwing objects, pulling hair — alongside contracts and arbitration clauses designed to keep people silent. Daniel didn't go to the press. He went quietly to those closest to Werner and asked them to help make it stop. Instead of protecting him, the organisation brought an international arbitration against him.

The Court of Appeal ruled that companies cannot use private legal proceedings — here or overseas — to punish someone for blowing the whistle on unlawful acts. That judgment now stands as legal authority across the entire common law world. This episode is also a clear-eyed conversation about what coercive control looks like inside organisations that speak the language of transformation and integrity — and why, in law, no one can consent to abuse when they don't have the freedom or capacity to make a real choice.

Michael Polak is a barrister at Church Court Chambers and Director of Justice Abroad. He specialises in public international law, international crime, human rights, private prosecutions and strategic litigation. In 2021 he received the International Bar Association's Outstanding Young Lawyer Award. He is representing Daniel Rogerson pro bono.

Justice Abroad: https://www.justiceabroad.co.uk/

Church Court Chambers: https://churchcourtchambers.co.uk/barrister/michael-polak/

Court of Appeal ruling: https://churchcourtchambers.co.uk/court-of-appeal-success-for-michael-polak-in-important-whistleblowing-decision-following-arbitration-success/

Read Anne's book Is This A Cult?: https://isthisacultbook.com/

Healthy Healing and Recovery Group with Rachel Bernstein: https://ilumn8.life/op/lgat-recovery-group/

Confronting the Line is dedicated to the safe and ethical practice of personal and professional development — exploring what separates genuinely transformative work from environments that exploit the very people seeking growth. confrontingtheline.com

Support the show and go deeper on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cw/BeyondtheLinesStudio

Funding and transparency: https://isthisacultbook.com/confronting-the-line-pod/

Children of the Forum is a special series on Confronting the Line, hosted by Lindsey Hartzel, exploring the lasting impact of Large Group Awareness Trainings on young people and those shaped by high-control environments before they had the language to name what was happening to them. This is episode three — and the series continues for as long as there are stories worth telling.

Ann Betz came to est through The Hunger Project in the early 1980s, drawn in by a mission to end world hunger through collective will. She became so absorbed in the work that she dropped out of college to be closer to the New York center — a decision that led to others she would only come to fully understand years later. In this conversation with Lindsey, Ann brings both the lived experience and the researcher's lens. As a neuroscience educator and certified coach, she explores what high-control environments actually do to the brain, and why the damage is especially significant for young people whose identities and nervous systems are still forming.

Ann explains how chronic stress and unresolved trauma can narrow perception, reinforce survival patterns and make people more susceptible to shame, rigidity and manipulation — even when they are bright, motivated and genuinely seeking growth.

She speaks honestly about narcissistic dynamics in personal development spaces, the psychological cost of environments that treat suffering as personal failure, and why so many capable people can spend years inside these spaces still feeling deeply disconnected from themselves. And she offers something rare: a clear-eyed account of what real healing actually looks like — not performing transformation, but slowly, patiently rebuilding trust with your own mind, body and instincts.

If you have ever found yourself in a group, program or relationship that left you more confused than when you started, this conversation offers both understanding and a way forward.

Resources: https://isthisacultbook.com/confronting-the-line-pod/

Confronting the Line is dedicated to the safe and ethical practice of personal and professional development. And the fallout of Host Anne Peterson's book Is This A Cult? https://isthisacultbook.com/confronting-the-line-pod/

Support the show and access early episodes:  https://www.patreon.com/cw/BeyondtheLinesStudio

Transparency and funding information: https://isthisacultbook.com/confronting-the-line-pod/

Cara Cordone thought she'd found her people. Then she tried to fix what was broken — and discovered the damage was by design.

In Part 1 of this two-part conversation, Anne sits down with Cara Cordone — coach, advocate, and host of Fool's Gold: Discernment in the Age of Grift — to trace how a search for healing and connection led Cara deep inside ISTA (the International School of Temple Arts), and what she uncovered when she started asking hard questions.

This is a conversation about what it really means to be transformed — and what happens when the high wears off.

In this episode you'll hear:

• How a COVID-era retreat became a years-long journey into a high-control organisation

• What emotional release techniques actually do to the nervous system — and why the research doesn't support them

• Why "you're responsible for your experience" can be one of the most dangerous ideas in personal development

• The moment Cara encountered DARVO — and recognised it had already happened to her

• How a Facebook group meant to build bridges revealed a decade of unaddressed harm

• What ISTA, Landmark, and high-control groups share — and why internal reform almost never works

• The one question that cuts through any narrative: Who benefits?

Cara brings honesty, hard-won insight, and genuine generosity of spirit to one of the most layered conversations we've had on this show. This is not a takedown. It's a reckoning.

WHO THIS EPISODE IS FOR If you've ever left a programme, group, or community feeling like you were the problem — this conversation is for you. It's also essential listening for coaches, therapists, HR professionals, and anyone working with people navigating recovery from high-control environments.

RESOURCES & LINKS

Check out Cara Cordone's Podcast — Fool's Gold: Discernment in the Age of Grift

Read Anne's Book — Is This A Cult? Confronting the Line Between Exploitation and Transformation → https://isthisacultbook.com/

If you or someone you know is navigating recovery after a high-control group, relationship or organisation: Healthy Healing and Recovery Group with Rachel Bernstein → https://ilumn8.life/op/lgat-recovery-group/

Join us Beyond the Line If this conversation resonated, you're invited to Beyond the Line — our Patreon community for listeners who want to go deeper. Members receive early access to episodes, bonus reflections, and thoughtful discussions supporting ethical inquiry, survivor-centred learning, and safer pathways forward. Your membership directly supports this work and helps keep resources accessible to those who need them most. → https://www.patreon.com/cw/BeyondtheLinesStudio (please verify this is your live public URL)

💛 FUNDING & TRANSPARENCY Read about how Confronting the Line is funded and our commitment to transparency: → https://isthisacultbook.com/confronting-the-line-pod/

Your support helps us create thoughtful content, host conversations like this one, and offer accessible learning and support resources — including facilitated healing groups — for people leaving high-demand or coercive environments, regardless of their ability to pay.

🔍 FIND THIS EPISODE IF YOU'RE SEARCHING FOR: ISTA recovery | International School of Temple Arts | high-control group experiences | large group awareness training | LGAT | Landmark Forum | cult recovery | coercive control in wellness | spiritual abuse | emotional manipulation in personal development | DARVO explained | consent and trauma | self-help industry harm | safe communities | Cara Cordone | Fool's Gold podcast | Confronting the Line | CTL podcast | Anne Peterson coach

📋 MODERATION NOTE Healthy debate and discussion on the topics covered here is always welcome. Personal attacks on individuals, places or organisations will be removed. This is a space for thoughtful, survivor-centred conversation.

What happens when the very tools meant to help us grow are turned against us?

In this episode, host Anne sits down with Kellie Rhea — an Australian entrepreneur, former animal behaviorist, and horsemanship expert — who spent nearly two decades inside a personal development organization that slowly crossed the line from helpful to harmful.

Kellie's story is remarkable: a self-made woman who built a 160-acre ranch, 95 horses, and a thriving multi-faceted business — driven by a genuine desire to understand behavior, both animal and human. That curiosity led her to seek out tools for growth. What she found instead was a system built on undue influence, manipulation, and control.

Together, Anne and Kellie explore the slow, quiet nature of this kind of harm — why it's so hard to see from the inside, why "just leaving" isn't as simple as it sounds, and why healing doesn't happen overnight. They also talk honestly about what recovery actually looks like, including the specialist support, the nervous system work, and the community that makes the difference.

This conversation is for anyone who has ever felt pulled toward a teacher, a program, or a community that promised transformation — and wondered later whether it really delivered. You don't need to have been in a cult to find something familiar here.

In this episode:

• How the desire for quick healing can make us vulnerable
• The difference between physically leaving and mentally leaving
• Why professional development often has healthier guardrails than personal development
• What it means to dismantle beliefs that were never really yours

Confronting the Line is dedicated to exploring the personal and professional development industry with honesty, care, and curiosity — because knowing the difference between helpful and harmful just might change your life.

RESOURCES & LINKS:

You can find Kellie on her INSTAGRAM @iamkellierhea

Read Anne’s Book Is This A Cult: Confronting the Line Between Exploitation and Transformation and find other pods and resources → https://isthisacultbook.com/

If you or someone you know is wrestling with recovery after being involved in a high-control group, relationship or any organization, check out the Healthy Healing and Recovery Group w/ Rachel Bernstein https://ilumn8.life/op/lgat-recovery-group/

Join us Beyond the Line

If this conversation resonated, you’re invited to Beyond the Line—our new Patreon community for listeners who want to go deeper.

Members receive early access to episodes, bonus reflections, and thoughtful discussions that support ethical inquiry, survivor-centered learning, and safer pathways forward. Your membership directly supports this work and helps us keep resources accessible to those who need them most. https://www.patreon.com/cw/BeyondtheLinesStudio

FUNDING

Read about how Confronting the Line is funded & our commitment to transparency: https://isthisacultbook.com/confronting-the-line-pod/

Your support helps us create thoughtful content, host conversations like this one, and offer accessible learning and support resources—including facilitated healing groups—for people leaving high-demand or coercive environments, regardless of their ability to pay.

MODERATION NOTE:

While healthy debate and discussion regarding the topics being discussed is encouraged, personal (ad hominem) attacks on people, places or things will be deleted.

If you've ever thought "I would never fall for that" — this conversation is for you.

Anne sits down with author and researcher Jon Caven-Atack (If Scientology Ruled the World, Opening Our Minds) for a candid, wide-ranging conversation about how smart, well-meaning people end up in high-control groups — and why believing you're immune is actually your biggest vulnerability.

Jon spent years inside Scientology before becoming one of the world's foremost experts on undue influence and manipulation. Together, he and Anne trace the surprising historical roots of the modern self-help and human potential movement, explore what makes a personal growth program genuinely empowering versus a well-disguised trap, and get real about why our laws, our culture, and our own psychology leave us more exposed than most of us realize.

In this episode:

• The telltale signs that a group or program may be crossing a line
• Why peak experiences feel like transformation — and how that gets exploited
• The difference between healthy belonging and dangerous groupthink
• What "coercive control" actually means (and why the term itself is misleading)
• Jon's definition of a destructive cult — and why it applies in more places than you'd expect

Plus — Jon is joining Anne as a featured speaker at the upcoming Seek Safely Summit, where they'll be developing accessible education to help everyday people understand and recognize manipulation in real time.

https://ilumn8.life/op/the-seek-safely-summit-2/

Whether you're a survivor, a curious mind, or someone who works in personal development — this one's worth your full attention.🔔 Subscribe so you don't miss upcoming episodes 👇 Drop your questions and reflections in the comments

RESOURCES & LINKS: 

Learn more about the Seek Safely Summit https://ilumn8.life/op/the-seek-safely-summit-2/ 

Jon Caven-Atack's books: 

If Scientology Ruled the World - https://a.co/d/0ipOAuVa 

Opening Our Minds - https://a.co/d/04qRbJLD Check out Jon’s show https://www.youtube.com/@jonatackfamilyfriends6176

Read Anne’s Book Is This A Cult: Confronting the Line Between Exploitation and Transformation and find other pods and resources →  https://isthisacultbook.com/ 

If you or someone you know is wrestling with recovery after being involved in a high-control group, relationship or any organization, check out the Healthy Healing and Recovery Group w/ Rachel Bernstein  https://ilumn8.life/op/lgat-recovery-group/ 

Join us Beyond the LineIf this conversation resonated, you’re invited to Beyond the Line—our new Patreon community for listeners who want to go deeper. 

Members receive early access to episodes, bonus reflections, and thoughtful discussions that support ethical inquiry, survivor-centered learning, and safer pathways forward. Your membership directly supports this work and helps us keep resources accessible to those who need them most.  https://www.patreon.com/cw/BeyondtheLinesStudio 

FUNDING

Read about how Confronting the Line is funded & our commitment to transparency: https://isthisacultbook.com/confronting-the-line-pod/ 

Your support helps us create thoughtful content, host conversations like this one, and offer accessible learning and support resources—including facilitated healing groups—for people leaving high-demand or coercive environments, regardless of their ability to pay.

MODERATION NOTE: 

While healthy debate and discussion regarding the topics being discussed is encouraged, personal (ad hominem) attacks on people, places or things will be deleted. 

Brandon began Landmark programs at just 13 years old and quickly became a success story within the organization. But the deeper he went, the more he began to see things that didn’t line up with the promises of personal and global transformation. And when he started asking questions and raising concerns, Brandon says the response wasn’t reflection or change - it was gaslighting. He was told the problem was with him. Over and over again.

In this episode of Children of the Forum, Lindsey speaks with Brandon about his journey through Landmark - what began as a seemingly empowering personal development experience eventually became something much more complicated.

Brandon shares what it was like to grow up in and around Landmark, the pressure he says he felt to recruit friends, their parents, and even teachers, and the culture inside the organization once he began working for them.

This conversation explores identity formation, manipulation, accountability, and the power of trusting your instincts - even when a system insists you’re the one who’s wrong.

If you’ve ever questioned an organization that told you the problem was you, this conversation will resonate.

Content Warning: This episode contains discussion of sexual abuse of a child and high-control group dynamics. Listener discretion is advised.

RESOURCES & LINKS: 

Get to know Lindsey and her story on the episode we did with her recently E58 Growing Up in Landmark: Introducing Lindsey Hartzel

Join us Beyond the LineIf this conversation resonated, you’re invited to Beyond the Line—our new Patreon community for listeners who want to go deeper. 

Members receive early access to episodes, bonus reflections, and thoughtful discussions that support ethical inquiry, survivor-centered learning, and safer pathways forward. Your membership directly supports this work and helps us keep resources accessible to those who need them most.  https://www.patreon.com/cw/BeyondtheLinesStudio 

FUNDING

Read about how Confronting the Line is funded & our commitment to transparency: https://isthisacultbook.com/confronting-the-line-pod/ 

Your support helps us create thoughtful content, host conversations like this one, and offer accessible learning and support resources—including facilitated healing groups—for people leaving high-demand or coercive environments, regardless of their ability to pay.

If this episode resonated, please subscribe, consider becoming a YouTube Community Member, and share or comment to help others find the conversation.

MODERATION NOTE: 

While healthy debate and discussion regarding the topics being discussed is encouraged, personal (ad hominem) attacks on people, places or things will be deleted.

What Makes Coaching Truly Safe — and When It Crosses the Line

Not all coaching is created equal — and knowing the difference could protect you from real harm.

In this episode, Anne sits down with Ann Betz, CPCC, PCC, MNTC — neuroscience researcher, master coach trainer, and co-founder of BEabove Leadership — to pull back the curtain on the world of personal coaching. They explore where coaching genuinely helps people grow, where it can blur into harmful territory, and how high-control groups and organizations have used "coaching" language in ways that manipulate rather than empower.

They dig into the questions you should always ask before hiring a coach, why no ethical coach can promise you results, and why healing from trauma is never a one-size-fits-all, one-weekend solution. Ann also shares her own journey — recovering from cult involvement and a toxic relationship — and what actually worked when no single method had all the answers.

Whether you're considering hiring a coach, in a coaching program right now, or you're a practitioner yourself, this conversation is full of grounded, honest insight you can use.

In this episode:

• Red flags to watch for when evaluating coaches and certification programs

• The important difference between coaching, therapy, and personal support

• Why promising results is an ethical violation — and a major warning sign

• How "chosen people" group culture creates harmful us-vs-them dynamics

• What healing from cult or narcissistic abuse actually looks like

• How to know if a coaching relationship is truly working for you

  
  

🎙️ Host: Anne L. Peterson — Safe Practitioner Advocate and Creator of Confronting the Line

RESOURCES & LINKS: 

About Ann Betz, CPCC, PCC, MNTC Ann Betz is the co-founder of BEabove Leadership and an international speaker and trainer at the intersection of neuroscience, coaching, and human transformation.  Learn more https://www.beaboveleadership.com/faculty-and-staff/

Read Anne’s Book Is This A Cult: Confronting the Line Between Exploitation and Transformation and find other pods and resources →  https://isthisacultbook.com/ 

If you or someone you know is wrestling with recovery after being involved in a high-control group, relationship or any organization, check out the Healthy Healing and Recovery Group w/ Rachel Bernstein  https://ilumn8.life/op/lgat-recovery-group/ 

Join us Beyond the Line - NEW PATREON CommunityIf this conversation resonated, you’re invited to Beyond the Line—our new Patreon community for listeners who want to go deeper. 

Members receive early access to episodes, bonus reflections, and thoughtful discussions that support ethical inquiry, survivor-centered learning, and safer pathways forward. Your membership directly supports this work and helps us keep resources accessible to those who need them most.  https://www.patreon.com/cw/BeyondtheLinesStudio 

FUNDING

Read about how Confronting the Line is funded & our commitment to transparency: https://isthisacultbook.com/confronting-the-line-pod/ 

Your support helps us create thoughtful content, host conversations like this one, and offer accessible learning and support resources—including facilitated healing groups—for people leaving high-demand or coercive environments, regardless of their ability to pay.

MODERATION NOTE: 

While healthy debate and discussion regarding the topics being discussed is encouraged, personal (ad hominem) attacks on people, places or things will be deleted.