Nxivm Quotes

Years later, NXIVM would implement a rule that no psychologists or psychiatrists were allowed to attend its courses, a rule shared with Scientology. When a former trainer asked Nancy about this, she said it was because psychologists “ruin the training for everybody else; all they want to do is argue.

The ones who truly love you will always love you, and that’s by far been the greatest lesson in all of this.

As French philosopher Voltaire once wrote: “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.

He never paid bills, never provided for these women, never even cooked for himself. They had all done everything for him, right down to driving. And now, equipped with this truth about him, I was ready to fight back.

The term ‘brainwashing’ is really describing a synthesis of coercive persuasion and influence techniques used to gain undue influence over people. The way you recognize undue influence is you will see people acting against their own best interest but consistently acting in the best interest of a person who has undue influence over them.

Racists and eugenicists are obsessed with it, which is never a good sign.

For as long as I could remember, I’d held some suspicion that there’d always been something fundamentally wrong with me. I also knew this belief made me more uptight and judgmental of myself than almost anyone I knew.

They explained one of Keith Raniere’s principal beliefs: that all we humans really need to survive are food, water, shelter, and air. Anything else—clothes, connection, love, money, relationships—were pure “desires,” or “nonintegrated fixations”—things we thought we needed to be happy, whole, and complete, but that were ultimately just cover-ups for our inner deficiencies.

All this clicked for me: if I had blamed David for making me feel unloved because he hadn’t come to bed when I did, then I had asserted that he was a more powerful individual than I was, giving him potency over my feelings and state of being.

We learned how to quickly access, anchor, and self-trigger different states, such as motivation, excitement, power, and magnificence.

But it was very systematic—what cult experts call a “closed-loop system of logic.” ESP contended that the way you live and view the world comes through the filters of your experience. So while this process of inductive reasoning appeared to have been designed to empower us, it also left room for us to be set up for manipulation.

Any reaction can be spun as one’s own issue.

controlling food intake is a common practice in many cults. In particular, restricting intake of protein and/or sugar leaves participants in a literal brain haze.

you wrestle with a pig you both get dirty, but the pig likes it.

Right then I knew that the universe was supporting me in my exit from NXIVM.

We talked to cult experts, therapists, and a few people we knew in the media to figure out how to manage it.

Now I was going to live my life and find true happiness and not feel bad or guilty about it. I’m learning to navigate everyday situations without second-guessing every emotion, and I understand that no person—not Keith Raniere, and not me—can know, do, or be everything. I don’t put anyone on a pedestal anymore. No one can determine my worth.

know that no matter what anyone else says, you are loved, you are whole, and you are already complete.

have learned I can’t please everyone—I am not perfect and I am OK with that now.

your job is to create the illusion of hope.

Lauren told one of our sisters to inform us that if we failed again, she was going to get paddled and locked inside a cage.

She told us that NLP was considered to be more effective at changing an individual’s behavior than years of therapy or even hypnosis, which she had also mastered after studying Milton Erickson’s unconventional approach to psychotherapy.

In fact, as these women worked closely with one another over the years to develop new education, sales, and enrollment strategies, every single one of them thought that Keith had chosen her as his one-and-only lifelong soulmate while he thought of them all, collectively, as his “spiritual wives.

but as the truth started to emerge, we now had this private space inside our life together to examine what would begin to expose itself. In my every experience, there you are.

Wasn’t NXIVM called Executive Success Programs when it started?” Dan and I had been mesmerized by The Vow, and he’d done a deep dive on NXIVM after we’d watched it, reading several books by ex-members and listening to endless podcasts. “I think you kind of want it to be a cult so you can put all that knowledge to good use.

Keith’s former publicist from many years ago. In 2007, he’d been hired by political consultant Roger Stone—yes, that Roger Stone—to clean up Nxivm’s image. (Stone had worked at Nxivm for a short stint.

Gina was interested in Eastern religion, shamanism, philosophy, and martial arts, and Raniere positioned himself as a brilliant mentor in all of those fields. Heidi says she now recognizes this as a tactic predators commonly use to groom families into allowing unsupervised contact.

Mack and Clyne had been invited to participate in a “recommitment ceremony.” The plan was to show loyalty to Raniere in the most vulnerable way possible, which might have included group sex had the cops not shown up that day. Under her clothes, each actor bore a scar in the shape of Raniere’s initials, burned into her skin with a cauterizing pen more than a year earlier. It symbolized her lifelong commitment to obeying Raniere’s every request.

In letters to his inner circle he used Scientology terminology and later adapted some of it into NXIVM teachings—though in court battles, he later denied being influenced by Dianetics, L. Ron Hubbard’s pseudoscientific theory of mental health.

Raniere told the reporter that he’d learned to spell the word “homogenized” by reading it off the side of a milk carton at age two, and that he “had an understanding of subjects such as quantum physics and computers by age four.

In one recorded interview with Hawaii Five-O actor Grace Park, Raniere even described having memories of infancy and early childhood. “I spoke very early,” he told Park. “By the time I was, you know, a year old, I was asking questions…. I had some really deep, profound thoughts at an early age.

He told one of his partners that he required sex constantly, or else spiritual energy might consume him to the point of death.

As in Scientology, NXIVM used the word “suppressive” to describe people and forces that went against the organization’s interests. In NXIVM, a suppressive person was described as someone who had their wires completely crossed, so that good things made them feel bad and bad things made them feel good.

Raniere also told Daniela that sex was a tool he used to fix “disintegrations” in women. He claimed to be able to see disintegrations and other weaknesses in people’s bodies, and that he could heal them through sex or through NXIVM therapies.

Raniere had a signature way of flirting with women like Bouchey. He handed her a copy of Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged and told her she was his Dagny Taggart, the heroine who wants to save unbridled capitalism.

One way Raniere’s inner circle could atone for their Nazi sins was through yogic enlightenment practices achieved through sex.

From that moment on, Raniere became a nonentity when it came to business records. He told his inner circle that because powerful forces were gunning for him, he needed to protect himself by not having a driver’s license, not owning any property or businesses, and basically staying off the grid entirely. Instead he encouraged the women around him to put their names and bank accounts on the line.

Having a dinner party with NXIVM friends meant constantly dissecting your fears and insecurities. If somebody said they didn’t like sharing the food on their plate, for example, other group members would chime in with probing questions in an effort to overcome the block. What would you lose if you stopped the behavior? Is refusing to share holding you back?

From what she’d already seen at NXIVM, Daniela was familiar with this kind of plotting bordering on criminal conspiracy. What stood out most for her wasn’t the hacking plot but the price tag Keeffe attached to it: a steep $24,000 for access to one email account. “I remember it was a very large amount of money they were willing to pay for a password,” she said.

NXIVM coaches worked for no pay until they advanced far enough to become proctors. Coaches would arrange for participants’ food, facilitate the training exercises, and pay for their own travel, essentially just to maintain their standing within the company. It was only by hitting an exceedingly tough recruitment goal—developing six new coaches with at least two students under each—that NXIVM lifers could actually start making an income.

She wasn’t as tiny or striking as some of the women around her, and this was a point of shame Raniere leveraged. He set Keeffe’s weight goal at 128 pounds, and would ask her to report her weight in front of colleagues.

She wasn’t as tiny or striking as some of the women around her, and this was a point of shame Raniere leveraged. He set Keeffe’s weight goal at 128 pounds, and would ask her to report her weight in front of colleagues. Like many NXIVM women, she developed an eating disorder.

Joe O’Hara, the lawyer who’d done consulting work for Raniere and had introduced NXIVM to Interfor, told me that after he ended his contract, his cable and phone lines were cut and the words “You will die in seven days” were spray-painted on his property.

EACH NEW CURRICULUM and company was an opportunity to bring in more money and people. All the successful ones followed a similar recruitment and pay structure, with 10 percent of dues going back to their “philosophical founder.

On their walks, Raniere would ask Nicole the kinds of personal questions that often appeared on NXIVM worksheets: What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done? What are you afraid of? What would be the hardest thing for you to tell me right now?