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Hi, everyone.

Thank you so much for your wonderful support of the podcast.

I am so happy that we are partnering on keeping this on

the air and making it available for so many people. Truly, thank you, thank you.

There is a subject that is important to talk about, which is forming, finding, maintaining, healthy relationships.

After you've been in unhealthy ones, after you've been involved in a cult, after you've been controlled by someone, after you've been manipulated by someone,

and what that looks like, sort of how you find a good and healthy relationship and what you

know really to look out for. So if we look at healthy relationships, we first, I think,

need to address the challenges that people face after they've been hurt in a relationship.

First, you have the fact that you've been most probably in a very controlled environment.

So cults will often, as you know, create these highly controlled environments where members are

isolated from the outside world, and this can involve living in communal settings and restricting

access to other people, restricting access to information, and cults often restrict members'

social interactions and limit their opportunities to develop

social skills or reinforce social skills. And sometimes the way people interact in these environments

is not the way people interact with each other in outside environments. I know I talk to a lot of

people who say, I don't know how to do small talk.

I don't know what that is. I don't know what that looks like. I don't know why other people kind of

...