The Deep End, S1E1, "The Lost Toys"
True Believers, S1E4, "Teal Swan and the Wellness Tribe"
The Deep End S1E2 “The Safe Space”
The Deep End S1E3 “The Carousel”
The Deep End S1E4 “The Adversary” NEW
One of the first things I learned about Teal Bosworth Scott Swan — or teal, as I now refer to her — was that she was very, very famous. So famous that I wondered how it could be that I'd never heard of her. She reveled in her "fame" in a way that I'd never seen any "spiritual teacher" do. That was way back in 2013. In the years since, she's parlayed her social media popularity into some book deals and a smattering of regional interviews, but her path to mainstream success has not been a smooth one. As discussed here, it's been a bit rocky for the self-described "celebrity" who wanted to reach people on "every single continent," and was designed pretty and white by an Arcturian panel for that very reason.
She was, in her own words, "completely duped" by Gizmodo and Jennings Brown, who created "The Gateway" podcast. An interview with OZY magazine had been "antagonistic," by daring to ask her standard journalistic questions about the criticism of her. Her foray into mainstream media was starting to look more like a collision.
And then it got worse. She was interviewed by Lebo Diseko of the BBC, whose reportage lead to some of her videos being pulled from her YouTube channel and the abrupt removal of Teal Tribe from Facebook.
Now teal has been thrust into the media spotlight in a way I've never seen before. Over the past month, two documentaries have debuted. On May 2, she was featured in the fourth episode of Vice's True Believers series, "Teal Swan and the Wellness Tribe." And on May 18, the first of four scheduled episodes of The Deep End aired on FreeForm, then on Hulu. (Full disclosure: I had what I think were fruitful discussions with producers and reporters for all of the above.)
The Deep End has generated a lot of buzz, so, for the first time ever, a news search for Teal Swan brings up a lot of articles and mentions. On the downside for teal, a lot of that reporting includes the c-word, cult: 'The Deep End' Trailer Reveals the Cult-Like Influence of Teal Swan, A New Freeform Documentary Looks Into How Possible Cult Leader Teal Swan Took Flight, What is Teal Swan's real name? All about the cult leader ahead of Freeform's The Deep End documentary.
And then there's the other c-word: con artist: Who is Teal Swan, the controversial spiritualist or scammer in “The Deep End”?, Teal Swan, The Controversial Spiritualist Or Con Artist In “The Deep End,” Has A Name.
Any mention in legacy media like the Washington Post should be considered great publicity, but it reads:
The Deep End (Freeform at 10) A four-part docuseries — that will also stream on Hulu — about the wellness/spiritual influencer Teal Swan who has been accused of effectively running a cult.
Worse, some articles have noted her relative obscurity.
When Freeform first announced The Deep End, it chose not to mention that its docuseries would be about Teal Swan. Instead it referred to her as a “controversial female spiritual leader.” In many ways, it’s an omission that makes sense. Though Teal Swan is far from a household name, she has an extraordinary amount of influence over her followers.
The Deep End seeks to answer the question that has haunted many who have stumbled upon Swan’s videos. Is this woman just a popular alternative healer or is she a potentially dangerous cult leader?
The biggest tip-off that this massive boost to her public profile is not flattering is teal's muted response to it. She and her team are not promoting The Deep End, despite their full participation in it. They've mentioned it only obliquely and apparently grudgingly. It all looks to me like damage control, not great damage control, but damage control.
Two days before it aired, she posted on her blog An Explanation For My Non-Response Approach to bad press and "haters." There is much in this post that's nonsensical, but the biggest problem is that it's entirely false. None of us who've been on the receiving end of her ire could call it a non-response. She responded to my first blog post about her by writing one about me and siccing her flying monkeys on me. Beyond the swarms of vitriolic comments and emails, there've been mass reporting attacks on my Facebook page that have gotten my blog blocked repeatedly, and I've seen screenshots of her defamatory, if comical, attacks on me in Messenger threads. I've also seen the kind of venom and vicious defamation she's aimed at others, particularly former friends/followers and exes. She responds. She definitely responds.
Lest we forget, she put out a two hour video called Teal Swan Answers To The Allegations. I broke that down here. Did she forget that she did that? Is she ok?
She also put out a fresh, new welcome message. Even in those brief few minutes, she manages to shoehorn in a complaint about people misunderstanding, fearing, and twisting her meaning. I'm not sure if she's expecting an influx of new potential followers, courtesy of this surge of media, but she sure seems to think they'll need to be inoculated against having a bad impression of her.
The night before the documentary aired, Blake Dyer intimated that there might be some reveals about his departure from Teal Eye, the company he founded with his long-time, mostly platonic companion. Blake announced last September that he was stepping back from his many roles and responsibilities as teal's second banana. From a safe distance, we could all see the outlines of this transition: engagement to fiance #1, teal unhappy over Blake's priorities, break-up, engangement to fiance #2, marriage, departure from teal's world. It seems that some of this drama has played out in front of the film crew, and having seen at least some of that footage in the first installment, leave say, this could get very interesting. Writes Blake:
I can't really explain the power, ferocity and magic that has lead my life to change in such a dramatic way in the past 2 years. In short, everything has changed in that time. My family, friends, career, place of living and relationship.... I won’t lie it has been a messy, painful, trying and often terrible road with moments of beauty and compassion in between. And in a mind bending staggering addition, an award winning documentary crew was there to capture some of those trials, giving me the precious opportunity to look back upon my actions to gain further awareness and reflection.
At some point on Saturday, three days after the first episode aired, teal quietly slipped a video of her response to it on the main page of her website, well below the fold. It's titled simply "Documentary Episode 1 Thoughts." What documentary? You'd have to listen to it to know. But I will save you the trouble. There are things she likes about the first episode of The Deep End and things she does not. She really likes the parts where her fans and supporters show their love and appreciation for her. She dislikes all the parts that made her look like a "very hard, harsh, cold, dismissive, unworkable, domineering, competitive, and angry" woman, with a "superiority complex," because all of that was taken way out of context.
The next day, she posted the video on her YouTube channel. If she's posted it anywhere else, I haven't seen it. It's not on her official Facebook page, and I've been told by people who can see her profile page — because, unlike me, they are not blocked — that it's not to be found there, either. The following image has been at the top of that page for a couple of days now.
She seems to be reacting and, dare I say, responding to media that she does not think is representing her in a way that makes her "look good," which, for some reason, she thinks is their job. It's all sort of veiled and indirect, but she is very much making her displeasure known.
The Deep End S1E1 "The Lost Toys"
I think The Deep End is a much better title than what teal actually said.
My rule is if you wanna come within 50 miles of me, you better be ready for the deepest end of the pool.
How many ends does this pool have?! I can see where it might have many ends and quite a range of depths, because it covers 50 miles, minimum. So that's one very large, bizarrely shaped pool. I can't quite imagine it... and I don't think I want to.
I think it was very generous of the documentarians to edit her mass of mixed metaphors and weird imagery into such a pithy title.
This is a very lush, cinematically beautiful production, so much so that I fear it risks glamorizing teal's world. And a glamour concealing a murky darkness is teal in a nutshell. The style is observational, with no narration, so it gives the viewer that fly on the wall feel. The access she granted them is incredible and surprising, after her previous brushes with mainstream media.
Jennings Brown, in a recently aired podcast interview, A Little Bit Culty, explains that he reached out to teal's team, post-Gateway furor, and asked them if they'd be interested in working with The Documentary Group. Despite their chilly response to him, they said "sure." (He also mentions that they had sought to have him take down the articles he'd done for the podcast series, which he did not do. I expect he got the same toothless legal letter I did, practically begging me to take down my post. I didn't either.) So, yes, her willingness to let in cameras and microphones again, after a request from someone she thinks "duped" her is a little surprising. In the interview they ponder why she may have done that. My theory: She's an exhibitionist who loves to be filmed and photographed and believes wholeheartedly in the force of her own charisma.
Brown admits that he was "manipulated" and "controlled" by her, in their first sit-down interview. I've seen this with other media professionals as well. The reality, for which teal has been totally unprepared, is that professional journalists have editors, other sources, fact checkers, multiple processes in place to prevent any one source or subject from controlling the final edit. The fourth estate is by no means perfect and media professionals can and have been gamed, but these aren't the sycophantic YouTubers teal depended on during her ascent. These are professionals who answer to other professionals.
"I'm a mirror. What a mirror does is it shows you the reality," says teal to a workshop audience, a few minutes into the episode. The grandiosity of this statement should be a glaring red flag. She has been calling herself a mirror and a "universal reflector" for some time and I believe she took this notion from Human Design. But if she truly believed in oneness and our holographic universe, as she claims to, she would know that everyone and everything is a reflection. We are all mirrors to each other. As my teacher, Cherokee Mystic Virginia Sandlin, always said, "I am not the source of your reality. From my perspective, you are my reflection, and from your perspective, I am your reflection." (I may be paraphrasing this slightly.)
But teal keeps positioning herself as speaking from "source perspective" as if, somehow, others are not. She claims to be "a mirror of the universe within the mirror hologram that is our earth." In a hologram, every cell contains the entire image. Every one of us contains the entire universe, in every particle of our being. This mystical concept is a totally equalizing principle, but in her hands, it somehow becomes self-aggrandizing and further enshrines an alarming power over her followers.
From that vaunted pedestal she asks a woman, who is seeking to understand her lack of direction and motivation, "Why are you still here on the planet?" All roads lead to suicide, with teal. The woman seems stunned into silence, passively nodding. From there teal presses her to the same sort of binary, get off the fence, choice that she presented Leslie Wangsgaard with, by her own admission. "It's like part of you is trying to find an answer and stay alive and part of you is like 'I'm just gonna take us out.'... Like when we're really facing that decision point, play out both sides... go to the worst of the worst case scenarios and make your mind up. None of us are gonna get out of this thing alive..." It is certainly not the first time she has said something like this, one on one, and to a depressed, suicidal following that she has cultivated. If you want to know why many of us call her "the suicide catalyst," this is one more example.
Amazingly, teal manages to come off even worse than she does in that scene, as this thing goes along. There's a jawdropping exchange between her and a retreat participant who asks her if she has enough respect for anyone that they could challenge her, as she does with everyone else. "Why? I should have someone above me?" she says, implying that she is above everyone she calls out. "I don't look up to anyone." Someone might exist who has more "awareness" than she does, but she has never met them. Her anger at the suggestion that she should have mentors or even equals who can call her on her shit is staggering, but it's fully in keeping with her escalating arrogance.
We also learn that it's Blake who has been doing teal's henna treatments... for 17 years. So one of his many responsibilities has been unlicensed cosmetologist/colorist. Who is doing her hair now that he's gone? And he is gone, as discussed above.
I will have much more to say on the Blake resignation saga, but I will table that until we see how the backstory plays out in the coming episodes. This episode saw him in a heated exchange with teal over bringing Juliana into their intentional community. It is, again, an ugly side of teal playing out before an unflinching camera.
True Believers S1E4 "Teal Swan and the Wellness Tribe"
Vice's True Believers series runs six episodes, each focused on a different controversial spiritual or health and wellness organization, and teal's is the fourth. It opens with a gut-wrenching interview with the parents of teal follower McKenzie Faye Lazarz who killed herself at 18. They believe that teal’s messaging was pivotal in their daughter’s decision to end her life. As the episode unfolds, they demonstrate, through a montage of teal’s videos and interviews with key figures from teal’s inner circle, how her parents could have reached that conclusion.
I cannot listen to the story of how this teenage girl ended her life without weeping. And I can’t help but think about teal’s reaction when Lebo Diseko of the BBC asked her about the two very young people from Teal Tribe who killed themselves on her watch. “I’m not aware of them,” she shrugs.
As teal’s ex-husband Sarbdeep Swan says in this documentary, “When you tell vulnerable people, who have nothing to live for, that you have all the answers, that suicide is a reset button, then people will kill themselves. She knows this, but she doesn’t care.”
Some of the most affecting moments come from the interview with teal's ex-boyfriend Jared Dobson, aka., Fallon. There's a certain poetry to that, for me. It was teal's disturbing, degrading, and classically culty treatment of Fallon that moved me to put pen to paper and write my very first blog post about teal. Here he opens up about the events that led up to her kicking him out of the house and out of the tribe. "And the last thing she told me is that if I were you, I'd just go kill myself. There's no help for you. There's nothing anyone can do."
I'm reminded of what teal claimed about Leslie Wangsgaard's suicide during her comedic riff on the loss of her client:So then we have to ask the question do we really want this to work. And what's interesting is that when she asked herself that question the answer was, "No. I'm done." There's nothing that any healer could ever do for that type of vibration, which is totally fine.
It's seems like she gives up on those she deems suicidal very easily. If she can't fix them, no one can.
Besides, they're just hitting the reset button.
The Deep End S1E2 “The Safe Space”
I’m hearing from a number of people that they’re finding The Deep End too triggering to watch. Some feel that it is glamorizing and promoting a woman they consider dangerous and they can't stand to watch that unfold. I have my own concerns about that, as I said above, but I don’t think this docuseries is doing teal any favors, not if the media and public reception of it is any guide. She doesn't think so either and she's making her displeasure known.
Optics aside, I can see why watching it could be deeply unsettling. It’s very up close and personal with teal, and particularly for survivors of her “tribe,” being a fly on that particular wall can be hard on the eyes. Watching it is an immersive experience, no pun intended. The camera brings you very close to her face as she scowls, glares, smirks, and cocks her eyebrows at people. It’s an even more vivid experience of her mental chess matches than her streamed workshops.
The people I’m hearing this from are survivors of the tealverse, but I could see where anyone who’s experienced narcissistic abuse might feel uncomfortable during such a vivid enactment of these dynamics.
This episode is subtler and, at least on the surface, less dramatic than the first. But it has that feeling of the calm before the storm, like it’s setting the scene for major plot twists and revelations, some of which are teased in the preview for the next episode.
The Blake and Juliana saga is emerging as a central story arc. This episode explores Juliana’s attempts to merge into the community Blake calls home. And it seems much more challenging than meeting potential in-laws.
The title of this episode is “The Safe Place,” which given the subject matter, would seem to indicate a haven for seekers, or even a “safe space” for the many troubled souls who come to teal seeking healing. But, no, that’s not it. In fact, teal tells Juliana, “It’s not a real safe community.” The “safe place” is the bubble of protection that this community is expected to provide for teal. And most especially, she means Blake. “He’s my safe place,” she explains. “And, like, I need him in my life.”
Once again, the cult dynamics are on full display. Everything revolves around teal, her needs, her comfort level. She has to be “safe,” her community, not so much. They are her buffer against “attacks.” She uses the word “mission” a lot, which serves to justify the level of energy and devotion she expects from them. (See item 5 in the checklist, in this post.)
And then she really puts Juliana on notice:
The problem comes whenever a girl that he’s with has a truth that opposes mine in any way. He acts like a little noodle and then it’s about her versus me.
The thing is, though, the Blake, Juliana, and teal show has a prequel. Not addressed here, Juliana is Blake’s second fiancée in a matter of a few years, which makes his comments about never having been committed to anyone before Juliana more than a little confusing. The video is long gone, but in early January of 2017 (or maybe a little before) Blake and the entire intentional community, at their Costa Rica center, one by one, proposed to Lynn (because this is definitely not a cult). She accepted and their relationship certainly seemed to be moving forward. Note that Lynn describes them, in this video, as "very committed to each other."
But cracks in Lynn’s relationship with teal started to show.
Note that one of the hashtags is #narcissist. That would be fitting, if it was meant to point to teal's own behavior. But it appears to be aimed at Lynn, as if her failure to revolve her life around teal’s moods instead of her own means she’s the narcissist.
Apparently Blake was “a little noodle” in the midst of Lynn and teal’s collision of "truths," because teal put him in that “hot seat” she loves so much, over his “codependency.”
And to cure him of this codependency, she tells him what he thinks and what to say.
“Lynn, I have every intention of living in this community until the day I die. I do expect you to take my life as your own." That's your truth. That's your truth.
So that put some starch in his spine, I’m sure.
Not long after that, “engaged” quietly disappeared from Lynn's and Blake's respective Facebook profiles.
I don't know what to make of this investigator, Molly. I have concerns over the fact that she was hired by team teal, especially given that hers appears to be the only third-party, professional voice included in the documentary. She’s not a psychologist, let alone an expert in cults or the psychology of influence. And her bias toward the people who’ve employed her seems pretty plain.
Even as she starts encountering evidence of teal's misconduct, she doesn't seem to want to believe it. She describes knowing it as a "burden" and "the pandora's box you wish you'd left closed." But isn't this her job? To find the truth? Isn't that what she claimed she'd do?
I don’t love that she trotted out the “ur just jelly” defense, as if teal’s “attractiveness” is what’s making her a “target.” As I wrote here, that was the weapon of war that was wielded against me by teal’s “army” of followers. (And, yes, it is teal herself who uses that kind martial language to describe her "mission." In fact, she described her followers as an "army" again in this very episode.)
I loathe the sexism of this idea, as if all women care about is whether some other woman is prettier. If you’re criticizing a woman, it can’t possibly be about her words, her ideas, or how she uses her position. It must be about her looks. As I have repeatedly pointed out, teal is very focused on her appearance and how it gives her an advantage — over Black women, for instance — and I think that signaling may have something to do with why her flying monkeys always go there. I find this idea revolting. Can we please, please stop reducing women to their bodies like this. Please.
I am curious to see what this investigator who was hired to exonerate teal comes up with, but I have concerns. I do like her rolodex, though. Old school. Love it.
Another person who seems very het up about Molly's partiality is, um, teal. Although her concerns are 180° out from mine:
This episode introduces Molly as the private investigator and in this episode she says that it is her job to find out if this is a cult or not. That is actually not her job, and she was hired by me. She is not an independent investigator.
But in Molly's conversation with Matthias, she presented a very different picture:
You can say, well here, read this. This is the truth. This is a third party, independent, unedited investigation, that we have no influence over the content of.
Yet it seems that teal was under the impression that she was paying this woman to give her and her business a clean bill of health, that her "third-party investigator" was bought and paid for. And I guess we'll see whether or not Molly's ethics square with her claims of truth seeking. As far as teal's ethics are concerned, she's just made that abundantly clear. She thinks she can buy a third-party expert's partiality.
In this, her response to part 2 of The Deep End, teal seems really angry. Her phrasing is clipped and strident, and she's not pulling her punches. It is "not a documentary," it is "tabloid," and is not focused on her work, but rather on her private life. (Was she not aware that film crews were recording all these intimate conversations? Were these hidden cameras?) And she really hates the music, I mean really hates it. The music makes her look like a "bad person" and a "cult leader." Pretty sure her on-camera behavior does that on its own, but then, I've thought that for many years.
Much of her criticism seems to be based on straw men. She complains about a scene that appears to show her "secretly watching" Blake and Juliana. I think I know what sequence she's talking about, and it did not read that way to me. There are obvious edits that shift between the happy couple and teal, but it does not look like she's watching them. Yes, they are telegraphing that a conflict is building, but then, as we already know the outcome, that's not a stretch.
As per teal, the "set" of this series makes it look like she and her followers are living in a "commune."
While I support intentional community, I myself, actually live in an ordinary house, with my son, partner and my personal assistant. In fact, Blake moved into his own apartment nearby, in preparation for Juliana's arrival, and so, surprise surprise... Juliana, Blake, and I never even lived together. And all the other people I consider part of my community, live in their own apartments in the same city.
Of course, there is no statement from the documentarian that they live in an "intentional community." That phrasing comes from teal herself, as she explains things to Juliana.
This community, obviously based on the fact that it’s oriented around this mission, with me at the spearhead of it, functions a lot differently than most intentional communities... So my only safety is this community. It’s all the people around me. I’m in the middle here and, like, my community forms this little circle.
She really needs to stop blaming people who quote and document her, when it's her own words that make her look bad. These are not things that are being said about her. These are her actual words, from her actual mouth, in front of a rolling camera.
I did not assume Blake, Juliana, and teal were living under one roof, despite the fact that I know that Blake has been living with teal throughout her many marriages and relationships. She says herself that he only just moved out, to be with Juliana, despite the fact that she is currently living with an unnamed "partner."
Says teal:There was a carefully edited scene in this episode which makes it seem like Blake and I have some kind of immoral sexual relationship going on behind Juliana's back. And that we are trying to keep it a secret from Juliana. It makes it look like I'm saying that we have a "special relationship" behind closed doors.
Wow! I didn't think anything like that from watching that scene. But now she's got me thinking... maybe... Was that her guilty mind spilling out its secrets?! Now I really have to wonder.
What I took from that scene was very different. To me it reads like she's testing Blake to see what control she still has over him. And it's a master class on manipulation. She seems jealous and threatened. And while that's troubling, the part that I find truly chilling is how controlled and controlling she is throughout that conversation.
It's teal who brings up Blake's relationship with Juliana and presses him on how it's going, because, "I don't think we're on the same page." (Being on the same page is very important to teal. She does not brook disagreement.) She's unhappy that they "haven't spent enough time together." And when he stammers out that his time is invested in Juliana and that he intends to propose, she exclaims, "Okay, well, thank you for telling me!" as if it's only natural that she should know before Juliana. The whole discussion reads like Blake needs to be accountable to her about his time, relationship, and intentions, and he sheepishly complies.
Then she changes tacks, and shows support for the pending nuptials, but not without mentioning Blake's romantic feelings towards her and commenting that she's watching and noting that Juliana doesn't react when Blake touches teal. The whole dynamic is creepy and enmeshed and seems to me to be about teal calculating what she can and can't control.
Surprising no one, teal really goes after Jared Dobson with venom. He's a "disgruntled" ex-boyfriend. The relationship failed, as per teal, "for reasons you can probably figure out by listening to what he says." Yes, telling someone he should kill himself puts a chill on things. Of course she denies ever saying this. But the reasons for their split are not clear from this documentary. The Vice doco (above) is much more informative on that front. His Mormon Stories interview is also excellent.
As I said above, it was the Jared/Fallon story that made me start blogging about teal. I saw her abuse of him play out in real time. So no, teal, it's not obvious from this documentary why your relationship ended. It had a little more to do with her branding him a psychopath, scapegoating him, whipping her followers into a frenzy against him, and kicking him to the curb.
Having read and listened to much of what Jared has said over the years, I think he's been very consistent as to how this went down. He's also remained incredibly kind and compassionate toward teal, despite her abject cruelty towards him. He's an incredibly sweet man.
It wouldn't be a teal video without grandiose, unfounded claims.
Let me remind you that, based on statistics, the truth is that my methods are more effective at helping those who are potentially suicidal, than conventional methods.
Do tell, where is the published, peer reviewed research that compared teal's approach to suicidality to "conventional methods?"
This whole video feels like one big gaslight.
It's not just teal who's angry about the way The Deep End is unfolding. Members of her inner circle have also put out video messages registering their complaints. Those that I've seen really seem to boil down to their lack of screen time. It's called the cutting room floor, folks. They are very disappointed about how their incredible healing journeys have been reduced to a few short scenes that they're convinced make them look bad. It's almost like they're peripheral to the central issue that is teal. You'd think they'd be used to that.
I've located videos for three people who appeared in part 2. They did not feel the episode did them justice. They are: Cyan, Graciela, and Tristen.
Cyan, seen above, nearer to the beginning of his healing journey with teal, has put out a statement on part 2 that appears here, here and here. He would like you to know that he didn't change his name from Matthew to Cyan because he's taken on a cult personality. I'm paraphrasing. Sure, it was teal who helped him decide on that name, but it was his choice and it felt right. I remember another follower who teal "helped" into a name, Jared Dobson who accepted the name Fallon because teal liked it much more than his first choice. Things went poorly for him. Just sayin.'
And can we talk about the fact that cyan is a blue-green color a bit lighter than teal? Or, more accurately, teal is a darker shade of cyan.
Graciela, seen above operating as teal's footstool, is also very unhappy about how she comes across in part 2. She thinks the episode makes her look "retarded." Ignoring, for the moment, the insensitivity of that term, I'm not sure how the doco could possibly make her seem any less significant than she has through her years, on any of teal's platforms.
This video, in fact, is a much worse look for her — and for teal — than anything in the docuseries so far. We learn from her, for example, that she has "moved out of this house a few times... to see if I could make it on my own." It "created a rupture" with teal and her community. It was her own fault, though, because she didn't do it "in the best way."
Despite her botched attempts to live on her own, she has derived some independence, now that she has her own business as a Completion Process Practitioner, certified by teal. So she now drives a "pretty fancy car."
If she's trying to prove that this is not a cult and that it's made up of independent people who are there only by choice, what she says here is not helping her case.
She is very upset that they didn't include a "magic" moment when teal spoke to a man who happened by a workshop, as it was being filmed. As per Graciela, his chat with teal caused him to drop his drink and swear off alcohol. It was that life-changing. If they had included that footage, the only responsible way to present it would be to follow up with that man and see if he was still sober a year, or even six months later. People have all kinds of revelations — when they're doing LGAT's, for example — get back to the day to day, and fall right back into old patterns. This man wasn't even a workshop participant. He was just wandering by... with a drink in his hand... for some reason. Knowing what I know of alcoholism, I'm doubtful that his declaration, in a moment of excitement, held for very long.
We also learn that she's a college dropout. Having gone to a "private university" to study psychology, she became disenchanted, because "no one had an answer for me." This is a very telling statement. In any academic setting, most of what you're learning is theoretical. You don't go to college to find answers, but rather how to ask better questions, to research, to evaluate information. This is one of the lures of any cult or dogmatic religion, and why they're particularly attractive to young people transitioning into a complex and confusing adult world. They offer an illusion of certitude.
The Deep End S1E3 “The Carousel”
So... um... the drowned god scene near the end of this episode... was THAT the deepest end of the 50 mile pool? Are we there yet? Because if this gets worse... or wetter... or deeper... I don't know if I can take it.
I can't believe I need to say this, but holding people under water so that they cannot come up for air, as needed, is a bad idea. It could go very, very wrong.
The trigger warning for these episodes now needs to include "trauma bonding" and "torture."
Needless to say, this scene has really upset people. And needless to say, team teal has been doing damage control at about 90 miles an hour.
This was posted by another "Curveball" participant to show that this was no big deal. The cinematography is not nearly as vivid, but it still looks ghastly and dangerous.
The claim from teal and co. is that this "waterbreath" technique is "shamanic." Oh really. Hmmm...
I've been working with shamanic techniques for many years. I confess I've never come across this one. So I reached out to Christina Pratt, because she's the most knowledgable person I know, when it comes to cross-cultural shamanism, having written the an exhaustive Encyclopedia of Shamanism. She was also unfamiliar with this "waterbreath" thing.
Never heard of waterbreath in any time researching for the encyclopedia or since.... It's appropriation/erasure to use "shamanism" to make your crap sound legitimate to the uninformed and desperate.... There is no torture in shamanism. There are extremes in initiation, but without a coherent culture and actual adults, there is no initiation.
In this case, as near as I can tell, the only culture teal's appropriating is World of Warcraft, or Dungeons and Dragons... maybe some other pop culture tropes. I just know I would never try this unless I could get my hands on some gillyweed.
Neither Christina, nor myself, can prove a negative. Perhaps there is some indigenous culture that holds people underwater until they thrash about, gasping for air. If anyone wants to enlighten me as to the origins of this practice, and how exactly it's shamanic, please do. But it would not allay my larger concerns. James Arthur Ray managed to kill three people through his twisted, idiotic appropriation of the very real indigenous practice of sweat lodge ceremony.
When did the word "shamanic" become the table-slapper?!
What you're doing looks really dangerous.
Yeah, well, it's shamanic! [drops mic]
Not every indigenous practice is shamanism. Shamanism is an anthropology term and rubric taken from the Siberian, Tungusic word, samān, and expanded to encompass similar, cross-cultural practices. It describes certain mind-altering methods that allow people to pierce the veil and interact directly with the spirit world. It is not every death-defying, courage-building practice, or ceremony, practiced by indigenous people. Many of these practices, like the most extreme versions of the Sun Dance of the Plains Indians, should be filed under "do not try this at home."
So whether this is an indigenous or shamanic practice or not, and I have my doubts, without the safeguards and extensive training and preparation that would be part of that culture's practices, please, for the love of God, stop. You could kill people and go to jail like James Arthur Ray did.
The title of this episode should be something like Teal Cuts People Off From Their Families Because This is a Cult, but I can see where that's a bit long. That is one of the elements that teal is most displeased about, as she explains in her response to the episode.
She is very angry about the suggestion that this is a cult. I'm not going to make this post any longer by picking apart her oft-repeated justifications, because I've already addressed most of these same defenses in this post here.
I do need to address some of the specifics she argues regarding the documentary.
There's another scene with Sabrina that was shown out of context and because of that presents a false narrative. In this scene she says that I told her that her parents don't love her. When I use the word love I use it in a specialized way, as a term of art, that Sabrina understood. It means that a person takes another person as a part of themselves. It is one of the most difficult things any person can do. Most people cannot do this, which is why they fail to act in the best interests of others. Most people do not love yet, but that is not to say that a parent is not filled with caring or affection for their child. I want people to have wonderful healthy relationships with not only their own family but with every person they meet in the world.
So teal uses words, in this case "love," in an idiosyncratic way, that her followers understand as being different from the rest of the world's understanding. Most people in the world don't really love each other, because they don't have teal's special understanding of what love means. Most parents don't love their children, just feel affection and caring. And teal is all for family connection, as long as they understand and accept her idea of what a healthy family is.
Gosh. Why would anyone think this is a cult?! I mean just because even the word "love" is special, insider jargon... oh god...
For teal to claim that she doesn't turn people against their parents is risible. It's evident in her workshops, it's evident in her videos, parents are always the culprits. Some years ago, on a lark, I tried one of the "processes" available on her old website. I documented the entire thing in this blog post with screenshots. There was no way to reach any conclusion other than that my life was not working and my horrible parents were to blame. It didn't matter how I answered the questions. It was a push poll into despair.
Likewise, for her to claim that she does not implant false memories doesn't pass the laugh test. Not only have multiple survivors talked about their experiences of her having done this, she's on tape doing it in workshops, like the one used in The Gateway podcast.
I don't think she addresses the "non-negotiables" document that she apparently makes her inner circle sign. She talks about the awkward conversation with Juliana regarding priorities. I'm not sure if her comparing Teal Eye to Apple, Google, and Burger King was an attempt to fairy-dust away the issue of this document that demands, for instance:
- "you can't put your own family first, teal has to come first, if she wants you there she gets you,"
- "the priority of the entire community is whatever's in the best interests of teal, everything else is second to that,"
- "you can't have personal boundaries that have in any way an effect on teal."
It also restricts personal relationships, because they pose a potential blackmail threat to teal, because where "fame and money are concerned, people cannot be trusted." It goes on. It's horrible. Blake indicates that he was fine with this list, because teal compares it to "joining the military or something." Speaking as a military spouse, um, no. Molly tells Blake that "most of it is illegal."
It's looking more and more like Molly is going to determine this to be a cult. I say that for a couple of reasons. One is that she now says that she's seeing a lot of things that tick the boxes on cult checklists. But the greater indicator is that teal insisted in her previous response that Molly was not hired to determine whether or not she's running a cult. She already knows Molly's findings and it looks like she's trying to do a little damage control by getting ahead of the story.
Her majesty's biggest complaint (I feel fully justified in calling her that, now that Matthias has compared them to the royal family) is still that the footage was edited and put together in a way that she thinks misrepresents her. As she says herself, this was filmed over three years. Out of that, four episodes of an hour, minus commercials, have been produced. So, yes, a lot of things are going to end up on the cutting room floor, and segments will be edited together in a way that doesn't exactly represent the actual sequence of events, but that is faithful to the way things played out overall. That's to be expected. For example, she complains that she did not tell Juliana that she had "crossed the line" at the point that it occurs in episode 3. But she's not denying that she said it.
And you know that stare down that it looks like I gave Juliana in the green room at the event when we were all discussing Sabrina and my frustrations about the risk I am taking working with suicidal individuals? I never gave her that look. I gave that look to Matthias, my business manager, about an unrelated matter.
I don't know how she can keep her withering looks that clear in her memory, but that she glares at people like that, she is not denying. It's a bad look, no matter who it's aimed at and when. This complaint is also a neat distraction from the sheer awfulness of that conversation and the fact that she was way more concerned about how a suicide could impact her business, than the potential loss of life. So she's nit-picking minor details to avoid much larger concerns.
She also announces a campaign to press the filmmakers to release all the raw footage. Because, sure, we'd all love to sit through three years worth of unedited recordings of tealworld. My eyes are starting to bleed just thinking about it. But you know what I would like to see? All the Shadow House episodes that have been memory-holed.
I've only ever caught a few of the duller episodes and currently the only Shadow House episode still standing is the one excerpted here, in which she tells Justin how to kill himself by stopping his heart with his thoughts or by procuring astronaut cyanide. Long gone are the episodes of legend: like her humiliations of people like Cameron and Jared/Fallon, or her infamous racist rant, or when she tried to help everyone "remember" that they were actually aliens and that they were also in the Satanic cult with her. I say prove to us that the Shadow House episodes weren't culty, abusive, and weird.
#ReleaseShadowHouse
And while you're at it:
#ExplaintheNonNegotiables
Graciela also did a response video for episode 3. It was here, but don't bother looking for it. It's gone. I'm a little disappointed over that. But I'm hoping that if she redoes it, she explains some things that I was really curious about, but that weren't addressed in the now missing video.
For instance, she did not explain why she was in bathtub, fully clothed, and with makeup on her face. She's wearing no makeup in any other scene, but to soak in a tub, full makeup and a dress. Make it make sense. I was half expecting her to come out with something like, I was not fully dressed and decked out in a bathtub. Editing! They CGI'd me into that tub. Nope. That part was real, apperently.
So it wasn't terribly informative, left us with more questions than answers, and now it's gone. I have to say, though, she looked smashing in that red top. It's a good color for her.
She was a little more forthcoming in comments in Teal Tribe - Intentional Community - World. As Graci is an employee of Teal Eye and an insider, not a rank and file member of that group, I'm going to post some of this without redaction, aside from length. Leave say, her version of events is a bit different from Jennings Brown's (see above). And honestly, it's the clearest statement I've seen yet, as to why they might all feel so betrayed by the filmmakers.
So, um, poachers? Does she realize that she's basically saying they trusted Kasbe because he can make criminals look better?
But here's a question. Even if they were extorted into doing this doco by the diabolical Jennings Brown and then manipulated for three years by Jon Kasbe, how did teal not see this? She told Jennings Brown she could tell what he ate for breakfast, because of her x-ray vision into his intestines. She claims that she can see everyone's "shadows" so clearly that she feels like she's being gaslighted, if they're not honest. Reading people's energy is her job. How did she miss that all these producers, directors, and journalists were playing her? How does she keep getting "duped?" I'm a professional psychic myself. I would never make the kinds of grandiose claims she does. But I would absolutely know if this many people, that I was meeting with face to face, were fucking with me.
It's very obvious that teal's "army" has been in the war room mapping out a strategy. The enemies aren't just the documentarians. They're going after Blake and Juliana. And teal is keeping her hands clean when it comes to her oldest friend and his new bride. But her lieutenants clearly have their marching orders.
The official story seems to be that Blake admitted to Juliana that he still had feelings for teal and that this made Juliana jealous, which created tensions, as it certainly would, if true. This was the nut of Graciela's now deleted video and the story is being amplified in the tribe, such as this accounting by a CPP, the entirety of which is too long to share here.
I've seen the word "scapegoat" kicked around quite a bit, in fact I think Graciela used it twice in her now deleted video, so I guess we're dispensing with any pretense that the Ask Teal video on scapegoating the ex-girlfriend was about anything either than Blake and Juliana, not that it was subtle.
Here are two of my favorite moments in that video. I think they say way more about teal's self-concept than they do about Blake and Juliana.
She looms large!
I think it goes without saying that all hell is breaking loose in the tealverse, over The Deep End. They're going to the mattresses. And now another battlefront has opened up, as if they needed one more PR disaster. A childhood friend from teal's past has told her tale of woe on Mormon Stories. And what a story it is.
Her story corroborates Doc, the accused Mormon Satanist, pretty completely, from teal's performative cutting and manipulation of her family to the fact that she spent very little time with him. She pulls the rug out from under teal's modeling claims and makes it very clear that teal was a fabulist from a very early age. I have said from the beginning that the logistics of teal's story, alone, make it wildly implausible, and this story makes that painfully clear. There is so much here that I'm still processing and I may have more to say later, but the bottom line is that teal abused this woman, starting when Diana was the slightly younger child, and caused her incredible heartache. My heart goes out to Diana and I applaud her remarkable courage.
The Deep End S1E4 “The Adversary”
The fourth and final episode was, as expected, a doozy. The major story arcs come to fitting conclusions. And we see teal in all her abusive glory, totally unable to take responsibility for her own bad decisions, and turning on her inner circle in ways that are downright terrifying.
It opens with teal leading a workshop "meditation" that steers people straight into pain, forcing them to drudge up trauma. I've said it many times, her guided meditations over-direct people, cue specific emotional states, and show no respect for them having any sort of independent experience. And they can lead people to very dark places, real and imagined. This is potentially dangerous.
We learned, in general terms, where Molly's investigation led her and that was: cult. Her attempt to engage teal in a conversation about her concerns... well... it does not go well. And as it sinks in that the report she paid for did not go her way, that she can't use it to shut down all the bad press she's been getting — and I find it hilarious that she thought she could take down the Vice article I discussed here — she does what she always does. She hurls blame, turning on Blake and Matthias, telling them they've lost her trust.
I did not say what she said I said, "You can't have relationships and be part of this." I don't understand what these people want my answers to be. No I'm not actually very dedicated to this. No I don't expect people around me to be dedicated to this. No I don't think it's a problem if they have partners who are completely incompatible to this.
So they can have relationships, but not if their partners are not in line with teal's "vision." So, yeah, she is saying what Molly said she said.
Case in point, Blake's new partner Juliana, has become such a problem for teal, that she fires up the "hot seat" for her. In a scene reminiscent of her Shadow House humiliations of Jared/Fallon and Cameron, she induces the rest of her inner circle to pile on for a collective verbal beat-down. And, of course, it's all about how Juliana doesn't love teal enough.
How does teal know this? Juliana's "insults" are "all over [her] energy field."
"I'm afraid, actually," says Juliana.
"You should be," says teal.
Wow.
In a surreal game of mind-reading, everyone tells Juliana what she really thinks, because when Juliana speaks for herself, that's just not good enough. Where Juliana had been very diplomatic and tried to focus on teal's positive traits, the rest of the group insists that Juliana has very harsh judgments of teal. Their assessments really ring true and are probably concerns that they are harboring themselves, but have no license to say out loud, except as an exercise in projection. The most apt is a litany from teal that includes: attention whore, narcissist, controls others' perceptions, too masculine, too harsh, manipulates Blake, tyrannical, uses people, power hungry, wants everyone for herself, surrounds herself with enablers... These horrible traits are what Juliana is quietly daring to think of teal. Well, clutch the pearls!
One of the creepiest statements comes from Matthias, who warns Juliana, "There is no resolution until you recognize authority." (!!!)
Yet even after teal's beat-down of Juliana, Blake chooses his wife over what teal seems to believe was a life-long commitment for him to be by her side, as her ever-platonic helpmate, while she cycles through a series of romances and is currently on her fifth husband.
I find it kind of interesting that one of the books Blake puts into a packing crate, on top of The Completion Process, is Trapped in the Mirror: Adult Children of Narcissists in their Struggle for Self. This is not to say that he's identified that teal is a narcissistic abuser, but teal has taken to calling herself a "universal mirror." (see above) So many layers of meaning.
Of course teal would have you know that none of this was as it seemed in the docuseries.
Her explanation of the kitchen scene makes no sense at all. She claims that her tirade against Blake, calling him weak and a loser (and a series of synonyms for both), had nothing to do with him leaving. She claims that she was mad because he'd done something that sent both himself and Juliana to the ER. But the exchange starts with Matthias talking about paperwork to remove Blake from the corporation. And teal says she's heartbroken over the end of their eighteen-year collaboration. It was clear to me watching it that what she was mad about was Blake's decision to move on from Teal Eye. The packing and moving read to me as him closing out his office. It may well have been that it was B-roll footage from his earlier move out. But none of it had anything to do with what teal is claiming here. She's accusing the filmmakers of telling a "story that didn't happen," when her own story about that scene transparently "didn't happen."
She can claim that there are "no consequences" for leaving, but her rage at Blake for posting about his resignation in The Tribe gives the lie. She's furious about all the well-wishes from "men," when he's "abandoning" her over "high pressure." Get it? None of them are real men who take care of women properly. Weak!!!
The happiness for him and Juliana, though, sends her off the rails.
All these people are like wishing him and his wife a wonderful life together and if they really knew what just happened here they'd be wanting her dead.
And people wonder why teal's critics get death threats.
Now that the documentary has exposed some of the hard truths about Blake's departure, teal's rage at him is also becoming public. She's being slippery and underhanded about it, deploying members of her inner circle to do the dirty work, like Tristen and Graciela shown above. But now many members of the larger community are stepping up to feed this ugly narrative: It was Juliana who was jealous, because Blake admitted that he was still in love with teal and found her to be the more attractive of the two. I doubt we'll ever know the truth about this, but we did all see how teal went right there when Blake said he was going to propose, testing his affection and attraction, cueing him to tell her she was sexy. Some version of the now official narrative probably played out, but it's being twisted into some petty high school drama.
The war on Blake escalated when he released a non-statement about the documentary.
Ya get it? As long as you say what we want you to say and fully support teal, you're not violating the NDA you signed. Now post the comment we want you to post.
Can someone please explain to me why the leader of the "authenticity movement," the "open shadow" lady, the woman who just said she wanted all the footage released, because she has "nothing to hide" is requiring NDA's with non-disparagement clauses?
The bigger question: If Blake made a full, honest statement, would it be disparaging? Is that why he's biting his tongue?
Within a couple of hours, teal made a rare personal appearance in some of her Facebook groups, and posted the following exercise. And before you ask, this is not about Blake and why would you think that it is?
Some folks wrestled with the victim-blaming tone of the post and teal, predictably, doubled down.
Am I the only one having visions of teal lobbing balls at a wheelchair-bound quadriplegic and yelling at him for not catching them?
Yes. You read that right. The self-help author who specializes in healing abuse trauma and suicidality, whose latest grand vision is to end suffering, just called trauma survivors "weak" and says we shouldn't indulge them too much.
The shark is the real victim! PITY THE SHARK!!!
Funny how she always relates to predators and victim-blames the people they kill: Jim Jones, Elliott Rodger, Bundy, Hitler, sharks...
Dear god, she's not even trying anymore.
What sickens me now is what sickened me nine years ago, the way teal mobilizes her followers into mercilessly attacking someone who isn't bending to her will. If you're "against teal" there is no limit to the frenzy she will whip up in her following. The attacks will be personal, cruel, relentless, and may involve death threats. Back then it was Jared/Fallon, whom she emotionally brutalized and encouraged her followers to attack. Later I learned she'd done the same to Cameron. And now, bizzarely enough, it's Blake and his lovely bride. The targets change, but her tactics are predictable as the weather.
Right on cue, she's released an Ask Teal about the need to accept both light and dark aspects of people. It's transparently about the fact that her shadow is on display in this documentary in a way it's never been before.
She could have chosen any of a myriad of complicated heroes, with feet of clay, to make this point. But no, she'd like us to contemplate the dual natures of Mother Teresa and Ted Bundy, a spiritual abuser and a serial killer.
Fraud, hypocrisy, and the glib charm of a psychopath are not "dichotomy." It's all bad. And the relish with which she describes Bundy... Tell me you fantasize about being a serial killer, without telling me you fantasize about being a serial killer.
Another target of teal's ire, as she makes clear in her response video, is Molly, who is now also a Judas figure, I guess.
I need to make something clear to you because some people are confused about this: Molly Monahan the Private Investigator did not work independently, and did not work for the film team. She wasn't connected to any law enforcement or governmental agency. She worked for me. We hired her so that we could improve our business practices and avoid false conclusions that we are a cult. She spoke with me once, that's it. Then she handed us the draft report and I've never spoken to her since. I'm not sure why she would betray me, her own client and play "tv personality" but, I'll find out.
I more fully understand now what teal meant in her response to episode 2, when she said Molly was not an "independent investigator." Her report will never see the light of day. Matthias's immediate response was not to publish it. Molly compares it to the Lost Ark, as in Raider's of.
None of us would have ever known about Molly's report, had she not been in this documentary. And I'm quite sure that if she'd exonerated teal of cult accusations, teal would have been thrilled with her appearance in the documentary. She knew full well that cameras were rolling when she was discussing Molly and when they had their face to face. She's not mad that Molly was on TV. She's mad that her investigation turned up negative information about teal and that that was on TV.
And once again, I must point out the irony, nay, the hypocrisy, of teal demanding that The Documentary Group release three years of footage, when she's burying Molly's report.
#ReleaseMollysReport
I find it remarkable that teal's response to all this was to make the non-negotiables, that Molly found so troubling, more restrictive. But there she is, spitballing ideas with her inner circle about curtailing their personal relationships... and their bodily autonomy.
I want you to be able to get partners, but I also, given what's previously happened, don't want you to have partners. 'Cause this has just been such a problem for me.
And so it is agreed that partners must also agree to the non-negotiables and teal can fire people with mates who aren't in line with teal's work.
And then, goddess help me, they discuss whether or not they should be able to have children. Can't be waking teal up at 3:00 am with crying babies. Remind me. Where do these people live? I thought most of them had their own homes. Would they be leaving their baby monitors at teal's house? Once again, teal's responses to the documentary and the things she says on camera don't square.
All the girls here are on board. We're not having kids.
It goes without saying, at this point, that teal is very unhappy with The Deep End. She would very much appreciate your signature on this Change.org petition to press the filmmaker to release the raw footage. She also seems to have shut off comments on her Instagram posts, for some reason. There's a certain irony in that, as well.
She has signed it and left public comment. Let me just say that "criminally edited" may be one of the funniest phrases I've ever read. Of course, I think like an American who believes in the First Amendment. She always seems to think like the leader of a totalitarian state. But then, given that mind control cults are like mini tyrannical governments, that isn't so surprising.
Director Jon Kasbe has given a really compelling interview with "On Documentary," which can be heard here. He describes how the filmmakers' perspective shifted over three years of filming, a process that seems to have been reflected in Molly's experience of hard realization. He also describes teal's need for the camera to be on her and how "unapologetic" she is for who she is and how she operates in the world. I would use words more like "exhibitionism and lack of self-awareness," but potayto, potahto.
Overall, I loved this documentary. I know that it was like tearing the band-aid off for a lot of teal survivors and the reactions have been profound, emotional, and volatile. It's been a journey for me, as well, back down the bottomless rabbit hole that is the tealverse. I would have liked to hear more from her victims. Jared, who despite teal's claims, took up a very small sliver of the screen time, was as poignant a voice as he has ever been. I'm also left wondering if the filmmakers were editorializing just a little with repeated images of that purple-hued beverage teal's community shared and its resemblance to Jonestown's grape Flavor Aid, but I'm pretty sure I'll never know.
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