Host Alyson gets personal about what it's like having a parent who's a therapist and a toxic narcissist. Alyson shares about her mom's unethical household EMDR sessions, unofficial sessions her mom tried to facilitate between her and her coaches, the ways her mom financial exploited her for her practice, and more. This is a story about breaking the spell, learning to decenter a toxic parent, and discovering how to find closure within yourself when the person who broke you is basically licensed in gaslighting. 🎙️ Subscribe to the podcast! 

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00:00 – Introduction: My mom's career was a mask01:31 – Unofficial therapy session with coaches04:02 – Hiding my sexual assault to protect her image05:30 – How she pathologized my friends to isolate me07:20 -- Thinking everybody wants her advice for free8:30 -- Victim blaming but she's a trauma therapist10:40 -- Encouraging my eating disorder but she is a therapist for people with eating disorders11:14 -- Messing with my medication12:20 -- Everything is psychosomatic 14:02 – Working at her practice: "boundaries"15:58 – Financial exploitation 19:11 -- Stole my brother's tuition money20:00 -- Telling our therapists what to work on with us in our sessions21:00 -- Present day: Financial deception, custom house budgets, and grandiose delusions23:00– The art of reparenting, letting go, and finding final closure

Earlier this year, TikTok’s favorite relationship expert, Therapy Jeff, had a series of Threads posts go viral that exposed a pattern of inappropriate behavior, performative feminism, and alleged manipulation. He shared a beautiful apology that left our hosts, Alyson and Tabitha, completely unsure of whether they could trust his content going forward. Today, we are breaking down the entire controversy to the best of our ability. Can we actually trust a licensed professional after these boundary violations, or is his apology all just calculated damage control for the sake of likes and views? What about performative feminism? Let's talk about it.

00:00 Intro - the TikTok relationship guru.

02:30 The infamous Threads post and the initial callouts.

04:38 graphic s*xual threads posts

6:13 Local women report abuse

7:00 Inaccurate information

11:00 Watching his apology video

15:40 Parasocial relationships

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International spiritual guru Teal Swan has thousands of online followers completely immersed in her digital echo chamber, going beyond basic New Age positivity to monetize human trauma. Teal Swan is publicly teaching vulnerable people that suicide is a safe fallback space and an existential reset button. Even worse, her core trademark therapeutic practice, "The Completion Process," routinely forces traumatized people into severe clinical dissociation under the guise of an enlightened breakthrough. At her high-ticket retreats in Costa Rica, attendees are subjected to extreme physical containment and water rituals that clinical psychologists look at and call exactly what it is: waterboarding masquerading as spiritual wellness.Host Alyson dives headfirst into the multi-million dollar corporate structure of Teal Swan International. We dissect her unverified memory regression techniques, expose the multi-level marketing pyramid scheme she uses to exploit her practitioners, and track how her entire cosmic origin story was manufactured by the architect of the 1980s Satanic Panic.At the end, we break down the necessary public health guidelines and policy shifts needed to legally regulate the wild west of the internet wellness market.🎙️ Subscribe to the podcast!👍 Make sure to leave us a rating, review, and hit that subscribe button to help the algorithm find us!

In this psychology episode, host Alyson uses her psychology and research science training to break down the data-driven predictors of divorce. Moving beyond common myths, we'll look at how specific personality traits, attractiveness, age, relationship history, career paths, education levels, physical or mental health differences, substance use, religious differences, and having children mathematically alter the longevity of a marriage.

Then, we will look closely at the ultimate accurate predictor -John Gottman and Robert Levenson’s historic longitudinal research models to explain why some marriages face a rapid five-year collapse due to high-conflict behavior, while other couples experience a silent, neutral decline that leads to a split after 14 years. We'll explain Gottman's predictors of divorce that can predict the downfall of a marriage with 94% accuracy.

Grab a notepad and get ready to calculate your relationship's survival.

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These queer creators continuously host panel discussions saying: ovulation makes lesbians go d*ck crazy, identity is a choice, people should be allowed to bring men into sapphic spaces, and comparing gender to race. Even worse, they registered as a Canadian non-profit organization dedicated to "accurate representation," exempt from paying taxes, even though they have NO BOARD, no oversight, and no public reports about funding. So then what do the donations go to? Better podcast equipment for their podcast, which is already funded companies donating to right-wing politicians? Hosts Allison and Tabitha dive into the problematic rhetoric spread by the Canadian podcast The Queer Collective. We dissect how their points actively reinforce dangerous, weaponized conservative talking points about corrective rape and sexual identity being a fluid choice. Here's our take that we touched on at the end in probably too chaotic of a manner and not enough detail: if they are going to maintain nonprofit status and present themselves as an academic resource as they mention in their apology, then:

1) they need to get a board of directors that includes academics with degrees in gender/queer studies and represents a diverse set of people with intersectional identities (Em talks from a place of white privilege in many episodes)

3) stop advertising products for companies that donate to Mike Pence and other right-wing politicians and presenting Vizzy as one of their foremost "initiatives"

4) any donations and funding they receive should go to actual community-based initiatives, they should be publishing reports about salaries and funds on Guidestar or Charity Navigator (they do not)

5) stop using such vulgar language on their podcast (another comment here mentioned it made them feel nauseous), as many straight people and young people and people with sexual trauma (as seen in comments on their other videos) DO use their podcast as an educational resource, because they present themselves as such, and right-wing commentators can take clips of it and twist it to fit their narrative.

From the Canada.ca website: "If a private benefit is more than incidental, an organization can face sanctions or have its charitable registration revoked."

If they did all that, then we would be fine with them maintaining their nonprofit status. Otherwise, it should be presented as a conversation between friends talking about personal experiences.

Alyson worked in the nonprofit sector for 5 years, which is why we are particularly passionate about this topic, as we know many many other organizations that deserve the visibility that Queer Collective has.

Many orgs turn down funding from organizations that are affiliated with right-wing politicians, and Queer Collective has not, making us feel like their activism is performative and privileged.

Also, at the time the episode we were discussing in this video was released, Em was going by she/her pronouns and was referred to as such in the very early episodes of Queer Collective we were looking at, and we had only seen Instagram posts from around this time, so those were the pronouns we used in our conversation- we were not aware that they now go by Em, and they/them! If we talk about them in the future, we will make sure to use Em's correct pronouns. Thank you to those of you who let us know - we did not mean to misgender them.

How would you feel if the founder of the Trevor Project, GLAAD, or the Human Rights Campaign published a video using words like "d*ck crazy" and telling lesbians to "F*ck a guy a year" while advertising and drinking alcoholic beverages made by a company that donated to Mike Pence? Why does Queer Collective get an exception, given their rapid growth? Our community deserves better representation than this.

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"It’s a love story and a love letter to myself." That is how Ashlyn Harris describes her Roku documentary Game Changers. But behind Ashlyn Harris's new, aggressive PR campaign is an unbelievably messy trail of public relationship wreckage, narcissistic statements, weaponized therapy speak, and infidelity that has left the soccer and lesbian community completely divided. Hosts Alyson and Tabitha break down the propaganda of the documentary, the interpersonal fallout between Ashlyn and her ex-wife Ali Krieger, and her current girlfriend Sophia Bush. While Ashlyn adamantly denies cheating on a string of media appearances, her timeline tells a very different, suspicious story. From going on podcasts to blame her unhappy marriage on Ali’s failure to prioritize intimacy over their two adopted children and dying father, to proposing an open marriage right before filing for divorce and getting together with Sophia Bush, Ashlyn has written her own script.

But what is the human cost of turning your family into a vanity project? We tackle the devastating ethical reality of how these public feuds affect their children Sloane and Ocean, and their child's birth mother, who will one day grow up to read that their adoptive mother Ashlyn viewed their existence as a "burden" and a "weight" that compromised her freedom. Real growth is about accountability, not making a television special to rebrand your cheating as an act of personal bravery.

Don't worry, we won't leave you completely trapped in the garbage pile! We end the show with a"Happy Lesbian News" pivot, celebrating the thriving romance between Ali Krieger and Scottish soccer star Jen Beattie, and honoring creator Hayley Kiyoko's latest artistic wins.

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What happens when you realize you absolutely hate being a parent? We are diving into real, anonymous confessions from online spaces like Reddit's r/regretfulparents, where parents grieve their old lives, battle guilt, and wish they could "delete their decision" to have kids. We'll talk about:

• The Prague Cohort Study, which found that children from unwanted or accidental pregnancies were four times more likely to develop insecure attachment styles.
• Why developmental psychology shows that infants as young as four to six months old can detect hidden negative emotions and indifference within milliseconds of exposure.

• What happens when a child accidentally discovers their own mother's anonymous posts about regretting parenthood online.

• Why the absolute highest risk period for domestic abuse and reproductive coercion shockingly begins during pregnancy
• How people research buying their new car or house more than they research what it's like having a child

It is time to have an honest conversation about the true cost of parenting.

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In this episode of Do You Want to Hear Something Awful? Host Alyson exposes the international pig-butchering and romance scams. But behind it is a much darker human rights crisis. We break down the recent international law enforcement raids that reveal who is actually on the other side of these text messages: young men and women lured overseas by fraudulent job postings, only to be held captive under brutal, industrial-scale forced labor conditions. From AI-driven voice-morphing software and deepfake live video filters to sextortion, investigate how criminal organizations take advantage of predators dominating the global dating pool. We show how organized crime syndicates have figured out how to extract millions of dollars using male misogyny, desperation, and insecurity to turn predator into prey.

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Imagine paying triple the price of a standard Royal Caribbean cruise just to participate in a few hours of Jojo Siwa-themed activities, only to realize there isn’t even any Jojo branding or decor on the ship. Welcome to the cash grab of the Jojo Siwa Official Fan Cruise .

Hosts Alyson and Tabitha cover Jojo Siwa's recent cruise and provide a dive deep into Jojo Siwa history, from her first girlfriend to Chris Hughes. We talk about how right-wing media has taken advantage of her branding switch to spin their own narrative. We expose the chaotic history of the Siwa brand: from her heavily managed childhood on Dance Moms to her catastrophic Karma era, where she claimed to invent gay pop while ripping off multiple independent artists. From weaponizing toxic stereotypes that harm the lesbian community to exploiting child labor, tune in for Jojo Siwa 101.

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🎧 Follow us everywhere: https://linktr.ee/somethingawfulpod

📧 Have a topic suggestion or a positive news tidbit to share? Email us: [email protected]

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In this special psychology bonus episode, host Alyson uses her education in psychology and research science to take an analytical look at the neurobiology, evolutionary psychology, and clinical data behind infidelity and betrayal. We look at relationship history, attractiveness, income, career, pregnancy and parenthood, and personality to assess risk factors, and identify the motivators behind cheating.

• Longitudinal research shows that individuals who have cheated in a past relationship are three times more likely to cheat again.
• Dr. Ana Nogales found that 55% of adult children who grew up with knowledge of parental affairs went on to engage in infidelity within their own adult relationships.
• Furthermore, studies in the Journal of Family Issues confirm that children of unfaithful parents are twice as likely to cheat compared to those from historically faithful households (it shifts the statistical probability of cheating from 22% up to a glaring 44%!)
• Personality traits that predispose a person to cheating, including extroversion and charisma
• Why 60% to 85% of all affairs occur within the workplace,
• The infamous seven-year itch
• Why the statistical probability of infidelity spikes by up to 15% during pregnancy
• Anxious-avoidant attachment trap as a risk factor
• What happens after the truth comes out.
• While 60% to 75% of couples initially try to stay together, long-term survival rates plummet to 50% after three to five years, with many couples remaining unhappy, passive-aggressive roommates.

We close out the discussion with a powerful perspective from Belgian psychotherapist Esther Perel, reminding us that assuming a relationship is safe is actually the exact complacency that invites the greatest risk. Tune in, protect your peace, and remember:

"Our partners do not belong to us. They are only on loan with an option to renew." - Esther Perel