Welcome to the World

In this episode, I explore the strange social vertigo that can follow life in a high-control group, why authentic connection often feels riskier than performance, and how we can shift from to less theater, more improv. Along the way, I share a few stories from my own attempts to navigate life without a script—some insightful, some awkward, and at least one involving psychedelics and questionable d...

Another underdeveloped muscle in former cult members: Discernment The cult taught us that every thought and action falls into a neat little black and white category of right and wrong, regardless of the situation. And what a shock... turns out that's not actually the way the world works, and it can be quite difficult to leave that warm snuggly feeling of certainty behind. Fear not my friends, beca...

We start by confirming what you already suspect: If you were raised in a cult or high control religion, you are most certainly not normal, and will most likely never achieve the status of such. We follow up with all the reasons "normal" is a shit thing to aim for, and why the road less traveled is often the most alive

A whole episode devoted to the feeling of being ghosted (transitive style) and how to sort through that grief

One of the worst things you could be in a cult is selfish . Pursue a career? Selfish. Go to college? Selfish. Skip a meeting because you're too exhausted to feign interest? Selfish. When you're handed the grandiose mission of saving the human race from Armageddon , even a tiny spark of personal joy starts to feel like a moral failure. But now you're out. You survived. And for the first time, you c...

Don't come back until you've tried em all

From time to time we all get sucked into the sunken place of depression, and some of us sink deeper than others. Until recent year, I'd been in and out of the clinical depression hole most of my life. Today, I walk you through the fool proof blueprint I mapped out myself to climb out of that hole every single time, one I have walked many clients through successfully. If you're struggle-bussing, th...

More spiritual food to choke on... at the proper time

Today we're going to take the first of many stabs at the wonderfully awkward world of post-cult dating. Essentially, the challenge of learning things most people learned in high school at the age of 35.  Here's the thing, you can't skip the mess. The mess builds the muscles. But we've put together some of the most common lessons learned for all you late bloomers that will hopefully make the leveli...

Proper bullshit at the proper time

A playful breakdown of the narcissistic deflection cascade

Prior to my work with ex-JWs, I would generally encounter clients with parents on the narcissistic spectrum maybe around 20% of the time. Once I started working with ex-JWs, that number went up to about 80%. This is no cute coincidence. There's a pattern here, and we spend this entire episode exploring that pattern in more detail, not only in how it presents in those on this spectrum, but also in...

Fresh off the tail of our very first ex-JW ayahuasca retreat, I'm thrilled to report that it surpassed all expectations. Today we're going to give you a breakdown of all the joy, surprises, and personal lessons learned in the process. Through the retelling, we'll be touching on themes of connection, nuances of forgiveness, and something called "the caretakers dillemma". 

Today, we're talking about pain; more specifically Clean Pain vs. Dirty Pain : Clean pain is the sharp but necessary pain of ripping off the Band-Aid. It heals you. Dirty pain is the slow, grinding misery of avoidance. It traps you. Ex-JWs know all about dirty pain—it's what keeps people stuck in the cult, chasing after shunning family, or waiting for an apology that's never coming. So today, we'r...

What the build up to an ayahuasca purge can feel like

Hey guys, Sorry for the fake out, but for reasons I explain in this episode we decided to skip the episode on my worst psychedelic experience (for now) and instead focus an entire episode on ayahuasca.  We focus on the benefits of ayahuasca, some explanation around what an experience is like, and of course I share a little about my own encounters with the medicine (plus a more-than-you-asked-for h...

For all the Star Wars fans out there

This episode marks the first in a three part series in honor of our upcoming Ex-JW Ayahuasca retreat in March (DrRyanLee.com/retreat for more info). In today's episode we talk a little about the upcoming retreat, some best practices for working with psychedelics, and then we take you on a little adventure through my first ever LSD experience. Episode 2 will cover my worst experience (lots to learn...

Building off of last week's show, we cover 10 key areas that help us in our pursuit of making new friends

In part 1 of this two part episode we tackle everything related to the experience of losing our JW community and rebuilding our social circle from scratch, including how to navigate trust issues and rewriting some of our core beliefs around human connection

This episode is for all you superheroes our there blessed/cursed with the power of empathy. We cover the origin story of the empath, the kryptonite of social gatherings, and how to harness this power through energy management  

An analogy to help us conceptualize the work of deoprogramming

More comforting ideas gleamed from ego death experiences

On our very first Halloween episode, we take a cold, hard, chilling look at the spooky topic of death , and explore the possibility that death isn't necessarily the big scary monster we thought it was. We start by sitting for a bit with the uncomfortable actuality of our imminent demise, followed by some more comforting ideas to take the edge off. Finally, I open up about some of my personal exper...