These next few episodes where our three defectors read out text messages is going to be a field day for anyone in the mental health field.

Psychologists, psychiatrists, clinicians, forensic psychologists.

If that's your world, you're going to recognize a lot of what's in here.

And if you've been in a high control group or a high control religion or a relationship with a narcissist,

you won't need the clinical language. You'll just recognize it. Confused, disconnected, unmoored,

unable to trust your own perception. Searching inside yourself for the evil that someone

else convinced you must be there. Jacqueline is going to describe that state in her own words,

and most people who've been through something like this

will know exactly what she's talking about.

Before we get into the episode,

I want to mention something that comes up constantly

in the YouTube comments.

People say things like, these are such huge red flags,

like why didn't she see them?

It's the equivalent of saying, why did you get on the Titanic?

It was going to hit an iceberg.

Yeah, none of them knew that.

They thought they were boarding the greatest ship ever built.

So here's what actually happens.

I'm going to give you a metaphor.

The psychological immune system, that internal warning

system that flags danger, doesn't get switched off all at once. It gets walked back in stages,

...