You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist

Swell AI Transcript: 95. Layton Ulery part 1.mp3
Layton: They told me that homosexuality is a form of cannibalism. They said that because of my trauma, I felt a deficit in my own womanhood. And in order to make up for that deficit, I was siphoning and cannibalizing from other women to make up for my own lack of self-worth. And they believe that.
Stephanie Winn: You must be some kind of therapist. Today I am here with Leighton and we are going to talk about all the interesting stuff. Her detrans journey, we're going to talk about health and what she's learned about the endocrine and nervous systems. From her journey as a detransitioner, we're going to talk about mental health, somatic stuff, a little bit about her detrans lawsuit. and surviving a cult, so her story has so many interesting pieces today. I'm a long hauler. I've had ongoing symptoms for two years after my first infection. So as you can imagine, having a second infection is quite overwhelming. I am not my best self today, but I'm really happy that Leighton is the first person I'm speaking to as I'm getting back to work because she's been there. She's really understanding. We were just talking before the interview about dealing with COVID and long haul symptoms. So hopefully she can bear with my brain fog and we can still pull out the interesting parts of her story. Anyway, Leighton, welcome. I'm so glad that you could make it today. Thank you so much for having me. So your story has so many interesting pieces to it. You are currently in a lawsuit about the care that you received and as a treatment for your previous gender dysphoria. You're only able to say so much about that lawsuit, of course, and you're going to stick with whatever your lawyer has advised you to say there. But some of the reasons behind your lawsuit are interesting, not only kind of the standard stuff that listeners of this podcast are familiar with, with regard to how Gender-affirming care is not based in science and it's you know, basically malpractice as far as I'm concerned But but the factors that led to you seeking that treatment in the first place are some interesting things, you know surviving a cult I believe that you oh My goodness my brain fog is so bad that what's on my mind is multiple personalities even though that's actually not what it's called anymore. I It's okay. I'm supposed to know this. So when people think of multiple personalities, the technical modern term for that is, help me out here.

Layton: Dissociative identity disorder.

Stephanie Winn: Dissociative identity disorder. I know that, people. I'm just coming back from COVID, so bear with me.

Layton: It's the brain fog.

Stephanie Winn: So I think you might be the first, at least the first public detrans lawsuit that anyone's familiar with where there's this dissociative identity disorder part of the picture of what got missed. So I'm just going to sort of leave it to you. Where do you think would be an interesting place to begin with your story and how you got here?

Layton: Yeah, I guess I can just kind of start from the beginning. And if you want me to elaborate on anything in particular, I will. But yeah, essentially, I was in a religious cult for a for many, many years, basically up until a decade ago. And during that time, I'm a lesbian, and I had to go through conversion therapy twice. The first time was only for like a weekend, which was still traumatic, but didn't really affect me very much. And then the second time was about nine months. And that was very intense during that time and paired with just a lot of the religious trauma that I had, a lot of the emotional and mental trauma that I had. There was just a lot going on in my life that caused me to heavily, heavily dissociate. And I also want to say, I had When I was around five years old, I had a traumatic injury to my head. I still have a massive scar on my forehead up here from it that basically caused my skull to crack open and I fully believe that that injury made me extremely prone to dissociation from a very young age. because it was after that that I first remember having dissociative episodes and whatnot. So I think that that just made me a lot more susceptible than most people would be to that kind of response. So having that happen to me at such a young age, and then having all of this trauma, it just felt like My life was one trauma after the next. And at the same time, from the age of, I was around six years old when I started being heavily medicated for mental health issues. So that was really bad for my nervous system, really bad for me mentally and emotionally. So I had all of these factors that were causing me to be kind of unable to develop an accurate relationship with myself. Um, I didn't really know who I was. I was extremely dissociated from myself. I, I was very mentally split, um, for, for lack of a better word. And that just kind of positioned me to be the perfect target for something like gender ideology, all of those things, and then leaving a cult and In that, when I had left the calls, I didn't have any of my friends anymore. I didn't have my job. I didn't have my family. I completely left States. I only had my wife, who also left with me at the time, and yeah, and basically nothing else. So it was just us and all of this trauma that I had, all of this dissociation that I had, and then me seeking help for that, and the help that I sought is what essentially led me down that path.

Stephanie Winn: You just said so much in such a short period of time. And I'm so glad that you brought up the conversion therapy piece earlier because with my brain fog that was the other like really interesting piece of your story that I meant to mention up front. So really glad that you brought it up early because As anyone who's familiar with this podcast knows, we talk about the conversion therapy issue. We talk about some of the lies that people have been spreading about the idea of conversion therapy as it pertains to gender dysphoria and its treatments. I have said in the past that conversion therapy is pretty rare in terms of the torture of homosexuals and the attempt to change sexual orientation. That's not a thing that licensed credible therapists do, yada yada. That said, I've never said that it's non-existent because every now and then there's like someone who's actually been through what you've been through. And so I'm really grateful to have the first opportunity so far on this podcast to speak with someone who has been through the conversion therapy that does still exist or did still exist 10 or 20 years ago or whenever that was. So I have so many questions about that if you don't mind. So first of all, was this a licensed therapist or was this like a religious leader in your cult or?

Layton: So the first person I believe is licensed, but I'll just say his name because I'm not 100% sure. His name is Steven Bennett. He's actually a really nice person, which a lot of people wouldn't expect. But he believes that he's ex-gay, and he has religious motivation behind this. So, yeah, I'm pretty sure that he's licensed, but I would obviously feel more comfortable giving his name in case I'm wrong, because this was a very, very long time ago. And then the second time I went through it, I know that they weren't licensed, and that was when I went through it for nine months, because it happened through a Teen Challenge facility.

Stephanie Winn: Ooh, like, okay, when you say a Teen Challenge facility, are you talking about, like, those programs that try to set teens straight? Yeah. Were you like a problem child that your parents sent off to boot camp or what?

Layton: Well, I initially went into Teen Challenge. I actually went in by choice after I had my overdose and near-death experience and everything I had there.

Stephanie Winn: Just throw that in there. Overdose, near-death experience. I know.

Layton: I know, I feel like when I talk about my life, it's just like the craziest, weirdest things.

Stephanie Winn: I get it.

Layton: But how old were you at the same? At that point in time, I was 18. OK. Yeah.

Stephanie Winn: So you went into it voluntarily because you're like, I need help.

Layton: Yes, although I didn't know that I was going to be experiencing gay conversion therapy while I was there. I thought it was more like a rehab program and I basically only went into it because after I had the overdose and near-death experience, I was afraid of myself. And my near-death experience was a highly spiritual experience for me. But the only framework that I had of spirituality at all was the cult that I was raised in. So I had this very religious, dogmatic mindset about it. And so I kind of thought that must be what I experienced because I didn't have any other foundation, any other framework. And so I thought that in order for me to really get my life together, I had to give everything to God, but it was through that very dogmatic framework that I no longer believe in and no longer follow. So then after being in this in this teen challenge facility where you don't have access to the outside world, you don't have a cell phone, you don't have computer access, you have to follow a certain curriculum and they assign you reading material and you're meeting with these different people who are telling you what to believe every day. I was in such a vulnerable place that when the gay conversion therapy started, I was thinking, like, they're right. And they were saying things to me like, think about it. You never would have been a drug addict if you weren't a lesbian. You never would have been an alcoholic if you weren't a lesbian. You were doing this because you knew that it was wrong. And I was just so vulnerable that I But I believed it, um, because I, I was scared to get back to where I was before. And also because like I said, I, I only had that cult framework before, so it wasn't, it really wasn't that abnormal to me. Um, it, it seemed, it just seemed normal to me already. It just seemed like what had already been my life. So I felt like I was just accepting what I had been raised to believe was true anyway.

Stephanie Winn: Are you a therapist looking for a professional community that hasn't gone mad? Consider joining Critical Therapy Antidote. CTA provides a platform for clinicians, trainers, and supervisors who want to protect traditional therapy. This international network brings together therapists like you with a range of opportunities for networking and professional development, including talks by distinguished speakers, group peer consultations, webinars, trainings, and professional development seminars. Visit sometherapist.com slash CTA to learn more. That's sometherapist.com slash CTA. So it sounds like they sort of like gradually led you to this point. After you were in the program, you'd signed yourself up for this, you were being really vulnerable, asking for help, saying like, I know I need to turn my life around. I don't trust myself. And they sort of gradually led you to this hey, actually, it's the same sex attraction that's really the cause of your problems. And so was there an underlying belief that somehow being gay was a choice that it was? And if so, like, what was the narrative that they came up with or that you came up with at the time about how you chose to be lesbian, or how you could choose not to be lesbian anymore.

Layton: Yeah, so, um, they told me exactly what Steven Bennett had told me the first time, um, which was that it was a trauma response. Um, they told me that it was because I was raised not knowing my biological father, and that even though I did have a father figure, that I had this big trauma around that, and that they also said that it was um you know because of the the kind of tumultuous relationship that I had with my mom growing up and um yeah they said it was childhood sexual abuse like all of these different things I had gone through that they just pulled from that and and said that that was what I was experiencing and then they told me that homosexuality is a form of cannibalism. And that because of my trauma, I felt a, yeah, they said that because of my trauma, I felt a deficit in my own womanhood. And in order to make up for that deficit, I was siphoning and cannibalizing from other women to make up for my own lack of self-worth. And they believe, yeah.

Stephanie Winn: Okay. I mean, for the record, my father abandoned me and I have a fraught relationship with my mom and I turned out straight so I don't know that we can just you know I don't know that their logic is is based in anything but um Okay, so your same-sex attraction is a trauma reaction because you feel insecure in your femininity and some kind of disconnect, some kind of problem with the masculine, and so therefore, instead of being attracted to men, you are cannibalizing the energy of other women in an attempt to fill some hole in your soul. This is the logic. So then, What's the solution? How do you stop cannibalizing women and heal your mommy and daddy issues? Find yourself a good Christian man or good whatever cult this was man. How is that supposed to work?

Layton: They basically just told me that I needed to surrender more to God and that if I cared more about God than I cared about myself, that it would go away. And it's hard for people to understand. And I think it's probably also just the fact that maybe I just didn't meet anyone for a while that I was actually attracted to. But I had a very long period where I genuinely thought that it was working. And I thought that I wasn't attracted to women anymore. And not only that, but I thought that I was starting to become attracted to men. And I realized once I would get into a relationship with a man and it would start to kind of get to a certain point, I would realize I just don't like them, but I thought it must just be this one person because I still couldn't accept that I had put so much work and effort into something and truly started to believe something that wasn't actually true. Because if that hadn't been the problem, then what was the problem? You know, like why, why was I a drug addict before? Like they had created this entire narrative around it and because I was so vulnerable and Honestly, I really was at the point in time where, I mean, when you're raised in a cult, you're used to everyone just telling you what the truth is all the time. I didn't even have the capacity to come up with my own idea of what was real and what wasn't. That's something that I didn't have the capacity to do until years after leaving the cult because I just didn't know how to think for myself. I had never had the opportunity to do that. Yeah, it was really intense. It was crazy. And they never once, despite the fact that in one of the lesbian relationships I had been in, despite the fact that I had been groomed, in that relationship, which was something that I didn't even really process until years later. They didn't even bring that up to me. Nothing. No, it was it was me being evil, siphoning from other women, being an energy Hannibal, an energy vampire. to try and make up for something. So, um, kind of their method in there was to take everything that you had done wrong, and of course, we should take responsibility for our part in things, absolutely, but they were making us responsible for our trauma in a way that didn't really make any sense, you know? And made it very difficult to heal from because it disconnected me from the reality of my trauma even more.

Stephanie Winn: You said that you had been… in a lesbian relationship that was harmful to you. And so they weren't in any kind of position, based on their ideological belief system, they weren't in any kind of position to say, we're so sorry that that happened to you. Tell us about how she treated you. You don't deserve to be treated that way. Instead of just treating it as its own unique experience, they're sort of this like, glossing over of how you've been harmed by that because there's this assumption, well, if anything bad happens to you in the context of you being a lesbian, then it's your sin and you deserve it. And we don't need to acknowledge how you've been harmed by this. We just need to make you stop being a lesbian.

Layton: Yeah. And I'm glad that you phrased it that way, because it reminded me of something else that they said that was actually extremely embarrassing for me at the time, because in this facility, I was living with six other women who were kind of in the same place as me, plus some staff members. So it's all these other women. And for the most part, all of them are straight. And they're being told that this lesbian cannibal lives with them and they would frequently single me out like the staff members would in front of the other women and say that I was a lesbian also because I was possessed with a spirit of lust. And because of that, you know, if we were getting ready for events or something, I used to be a cosmetologist and I wasn't allowed to even do the other girl's hair or anything like that because they said it was going to turn me on. Um, and it, it became this very traumatic experience for me where I was, I was isolated from the other women in a way that was just very uncomfortable, very difficult, um, to deal with while I was in there for that entire time. And, and I think that that also really impacted the amount that I was dissociating from that part of myself. And I just wanted to be what I thought was normal based on their framework for what normal was, you know?

Stephanie Winn: It sounds really heavy on the shame and almost like creating paranoia. You're starting with people who are, like you said, you're in one of those vulnerable positions in your life. You don't trust yourself because you're a young adult with a rough past who's made some poor decisions. You're already in this place where you don't trust yourself. And then they're just kind of creating this paranoia of creating the sense in you that you deserve every bad thing that's ever happened to you because of this sin. And then also creating a sense in the women around you that they deserve to live with this scary predator because of everything bad that they've done. You're all being taught to fear each other, which makes sense for a cult. It's not surprising because this is a divide and conquer strategy. You guys are actually going through this together. If anybody's in a position to understand each other, it's everyone who was going through that cohort of women. You guys could have actually may be banded together. So it makes sense that they would, like, try to instill this kind of fear and paranoia, um, so that you can't even support each other in these very innocuous ways. And by the way, was that men or women or both who were instilling these messages that Leighton can't do the other girl's hair and stuff like that? Because it sounds to me… It was women? Okay. Because my first read on that was like, that sounds like a projection of, like, some… horny creepy man like because women aren't like that like women I mean like you know yeah like I wouldn't I wouldn't I wouldn't trust certain men to be in a position to like do women's hair and stuff but like it was weird like you're right women aren't like that and I remembered being why would that happen especially as a cosmetologist

Layton: It was really bizarre. And you're right, they did want to pit us against each other. They didn't want us having relationships with each other. I mean, we weren't even really allowed to have personal conversations with each other. And there was, I had a roommate, I had two roommates, and one of them was bisexual. And they basically told her like, no, you're just straight. And we got along really well. There was zero attraction there. We were just friendly with each other. And we had one incident where we were sitting at the dinner table, and we were trying to pass salt to each other across the table, and there was one person in between. And it was one of those situations where every time we went to go in front of the person to pass the salt, they would lean forward and so then we would try and do it behind and they would lean back. So we were like laughing because we're just trying to pass the salt to each other and this person doesn't realize it and they keep blocking it. And the staff members saw us laughing with each other and we were not allowed to speak for two weeks because they said that we were flirting. Because we were laughing about something that was just subjectively funny and They pulled me out. They took me for a drive and lectured me the entire time. Then they did the same thing with her. Then they told everyone to keep an eye on us. And yeah, it was very intense. I mean, all of this happened to me a very long time ago. But even still, when I specifically talk about those things, I get that somatic shaking that happens in my body that I just kind of let happen because Yeah, there, there was so much shame and, and just being extremely ostracized. Um, and yeah, and, and you're right. This, I mean, this stuff is incredibly rare and it usually happens in these extreme religious cults. Um, I've never known anyone that's had something like this happen to them outside of a religious cult, but I do know other people that in this same cult went through the exact same thing that I did.

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Layton: Not in Teen Challenge specifically. I mean, it was, well, they would do weird things. I don't know if you've ever heard of the series Love Comes Softly. It's like a Christian romance series. And they would play that and it seems really innocent just thinking of them like playing a show or something. But the entire reason why they would do that is because I had to watch it to learn what heterosexual relationships were like, you know, because I had never seen them before. It is my life never seen heterosexuals before so clearly I needed to learn how they would interact and actually that goes back to the the initial conversion therapy that I went to with Steven Bennett where he took me on this like pretend date and Because I had to learn how to have like a normal healthy conversation with a man really weird things like that But yeah a lot of it was They relied really heavily on shame, on me feeling ostracized from my peers, and I'm not the only one. I mean, even when I graduated from Teen Challenge, I know other people that went in that were lesbian or bisexual that went through the exact same thing, and it was heavily traumatic for them. But also, yeah, along with that, psychological conditioning, they would say things to me. And again, because I didn't trust myself, I believed them. They would say, if you leave here, you're going to die.

Stephanie Winn: Like, you're literally going to die. Did they explain how? Like, you're going to hit by a bus, or you'll meet a lesbian cannibal who's going to eat you.

Layton: No, they, they, I mean, they basically had convinced me that if I left, I was going to overdose again, or I was going to get in some other really bad, really bad experience. And they would use other people who had left before the nine months, which is kind of ridiculous. It's like nine months, there's nothing special about that. Like if you stay until until the end, you're not going to just have something magical happen where you just never never relapse or get into a lesbian relationship again. But that's what they had convinced me of. Yeah, so they really had me convinced that if I left, something bad was going to happen to me to the point where when my nine months actually came up, I didn't want to leave. And I actually asked them if I could stay longer because I was really scared. And it made me feel a little bit better knowing that I was leaving Teen Challenge and going right back into the cult and I was going to have that as like a support system and guardrails, kind of. But it also, even being in the cult, it wasn't as… um as serious as teen challenge in the sense that I wasn't having like like I still had some free time being in a cult you know like I I had more time to myself more alone time which is is how you kind of end up with the ability to do things that you're not supposed to do anyway because you can't be watched 24 7 when there are thousands of people in this you know, community opposed to in teen challenge, you can be watched 24 seven, because there's only six or seven of you. So yeah, they had me very afraid and I didn't want to leave.

Stephanie Winn: And so were you born into this cult?

Layton: So there were like multiple locations of this. There's basically, there's a name for what is kind of the umbrella term for every single one of these communities that are all essentially the same one. So when I was around five or six, we were in the first location and then a few years later we went into the second location and each location got periodically worse. I don't know if it's just because of how things progressed with the times and maybe people just felt like they could be more open with things, things weren't being hidden as much. And then the third location was the last location that I was in, and that one was definitely the worst. And I never say the name of the one that I was in the most, for obvious reasons. But I will say some affiliated cults that are, when I say affiliated, I mean it's literally the exact same thing. And I went to one of these places and was closely involved with them because of this, but Yeah, so a lot of people will know Bethel in Redding, California is one of these cults that is extremely well known. A lot of people know about just the stuff that they do and how abusive they are and how crazy a lot of the things are there. And then also the International House of Prayer in Kansas City, which I was also heavily involved in, and the International House of Prayer. I mean, there's a Rolling Stones article about a murder that happened there. I mean, it is very well known as a cult. So, Yeah, and then the smaller locations, even though they're affiliated, there is not as much out there, so it's kind of a little bit more dangerous to talk about them when they haven't been as exposed, if that makes sense.

Stephanie Winn: Okay. And this is based in Christianity? Yeah, like quasi Christian, loosely Christian. So you're in it from a very young age. And you told me before we started recording that your parents are now out of it. I know this might be kind of jumping around a little bit, but. Have you gone through some kind of process with your parents of sorting out what happened there and its impact on you, its impact on them and your relationship?

Layton: Oh, yeah. If my parents could do things differently, like they would have just kept us home and homeschooled us forever and kept us away from anything like that at this point. It was really hard on our relationship at first, but In a weird way, the fact that we all went through a cult together has made my parents and brothers and I so much closer than we ever could have been before, I think, and really created a space for a lot of very difficult conversations. In the beginning, there were a lot of boundaries that had to be in place, and there was a lot of anger and frustration that I had towards them. And they had a lot of confusion because, you know, they didn't go into it knowing this is a cult and I'm bringing my children into it. It was something that that was harder for them to kind of reconcile with, I think, because they had to reconcile with, oh, and our children were also exposed to this, if that makes sense. So, yeah, it was it was a lot for them to process. And I mean, Uh, you know, my mom went to therapy for a while and, and I was in and out of therapy and, and we've had so many conversations about things. And, um, I don't know if that answers your question, but, but we're in a really, really good place now. And yeah, I never felt like I had a close relationship with my family at all growing up. And now we are just so close in a way that I really have to attribute to kind of going through that.

Stephanie Winn: I'm very glad to hear that there's at least that silver lining that you've come closer with your family and you've been able to sort out the impact of all that on you guys. So I mean where we left off you were 18 maybe 19 at this point when you graduate from the program you don't want to leave because you at this point you're just full of shame and fear and guilt and paranoia, and you don't trust your own judgment. You feel like your identity and your safety depends on allegiance to this group that knows the answers. Eventually, though, you have to exit this high-control small community into a larger high-control community of your greater religious community. So what was that transition like? And then how did you eventually get out of this?

Layton: Yeah, so someone who was like a leader at the current location that my family was at at the time basically came into the Teen Challenge Center and talked to me, tried to figure out what she could kind of immediately plugged me into when we go back. They wanted me in different leadership positions and stuff like that. And I felt really happy about that because I really craved the structure and I wanted to immediately be doing things. I felt like if I wasn't, something bad was going to happen to me, you know? So, Yeah, basically, I left the Teen Challenge immediately the day of. I went back into the location of the cult and immediately started getting involved with different things. There were so many different programs that they had there. And slowly over time, I worked my way up into multiple different leadership positions. And yeah, I was doing quite a lot there. And there was also a lot of You know, as I had said before, there was a lot of like religious abuse, a lot of spiritual abuse. They do something called sozo there, which I don't know if you've ever heard of before. But it's essentially like a really bizarre kind of hypnosis. And essentially in this, they will kind of try and rewrite negative experiences that you have and tell you that things didn't happen, if they actually happened. It's basically like getting gas lit, but they make you think that it's a good thing and that it's going to help you. And then in that really vulnerable, hypnotic state, they will also tell you a lot of different things. I had a person over me the entire time I was there who was essentially a handler. And if you were a leader, if you were in a leadership position, especially a high up one, you had to have someone like that. And she did the sozo for me. And one of the times doing the sozo, she was saying things to me about how I'm not special and I shouldn't think that I'm special. And all of these really weird weird things that were kind of designed to, while I was in that vulnerable space, make me feel like I was nothing outside of this organization. And that's something that I just didn't even clock that they were doing at the time. So yeah, I had a lot of really weird, just weird experiences there with that. I didn't have any real connections with people. I felt like my entire life revolved around this organization that, at the end of the day, I didn't really feel was actually offering me anything in return. I didn't feel like I could actually live out my purpose there and it was a really confusing time because I had dedicated my entire life to everyone there and I genuinely believed that my identity existed because of them, that I didn't have an identity outside of them and everything they told me to do I did and If they told me not to do something, because like I said, I had this person over me that was essentially controlling every aspect of my life. I mean, she would tell me who I could date, who I couldn't date, where I could go, where I couldn't go. Essentially, there were a lot of things happening that were massive red flags, including this program that they had. I will say the name of the program, but I probably should just leave out the specific name, but there was a program where they did this obscure, and it was private, like it was secret. People weren't supposed to know about this missionary training that they would do where they would make people cut off chicken heads and they would shoot guns into the air when you were blindfolded so that you didn't know if someone was being shot or not. Um, you know, to prepare you in case you were a missionary and, and someone kidnapped you and they were going to shoot you or something like really bizarre things like that. They would make people stand in fields with bags of flour over their head, um, for hours at a time. Um, things that ended up really traumatizing people and, and someone had ran away from that and no one ever heard from her again, like really, really crazy things. And I started seeing a lot of people becoming really harmed. And I also had a situation where I was like a public speaker there and I was leading over so many people and always having to speak about things. And they always wanted me to talk about being ex-gay. And they wanted me to write a book with them about being ex-gay. And I just had the worst feeling about it. I had such a bad feeling that that I was being used and they wanted to kind of control the narrative and this organization, they had a lot of writers and they were trying to get everyone to put a book out. I mean, just like Bethel or the International House of Prayer, everything is about marketing. Everything is about how can we siphon people and rope people in, you know, so they really saw me as like an opportunity to do that and I just was too naive to realize that that's what was happening. So a lot of red flags started coming up and And I started realizing that they didn't have people's best interests at heart, and they also didn't have my best interests at heart. And there were multiple situations where I had to throw people under the bus that I cared about for the loyalty of the organization, and that just made me feel horrible. And then Um, I saw some, some abusive things happening to my wife and we weren't in a relationship at all. Yeah. At the time we were just colleagues. We just worked together. Um, but we worked together very closely and, um, it was very difficult for me to see. And I saw them blatantly lying about her, um, and gaslighting her and, and doing stuff to her and then telling her that it never happened. And. All of these things were happening that were kind of building up. It was finally enough for me to see, you know, these are just not good people. And this is a really bad place. Like, this is not good. And yeah, so then my now wife and I started getting a lot closer and we started talking about the things that we were seeing and we got into a relationship and we were like, we got to get out of here. And we slowly started stepping down from the positions that we were in and Basically, my parents found out that we were together and they were like, you got to go. You guys have like 20 minutes to pack and leave if you're going to be together. They said that I could stay if I just wasn't with her. And I knew that I couldn't because if I stayed, I would have to stay in the cult too. And it just wasn't, you know, it wasn't working at all for me. And I was also hurt because I was noticing all of these things that were happening in the cult that other people just weren't noticing and my parents didn't believe and they weren't noticing and you know so so I was like I have to go and I have to I have to leave I have to leave and I can't be associated with these people anymore I can't do any of this anymore so yeah we just left and and we had to not talk to anyone anymore and then they had a sermon about us where they said that we were like traitors and all this up and told people not to talk to us so we lost everything. Literally everything.

Stephanie Winn: It sounds like the only reason you were able to do that is because you had each other. And prior to having each other, you had nothing outside of this cult. So it was kind of finding each other despite the ways that the cult tried to control people, control who they dated, who they associated with, make them afraid of each other, divide and conquer. Despite all that, you managed to kind of form this secret connection that was strong enough to sort of allow both of you to help each other Flea. Hearing your story, this part reminds me of, um, did you ever see the Twin Flames documentary?

Layton: Do you know? Yeah, well, I actually, um, I watched part of it because people kept saying, like, you really should watch this. I didn't watch the whole thing, um, and then I watched a lot of people's interpretations of it on YouTube and whatnot. So I know the gist of it.

Stephanie Winn: Well, I don't know if you got to the part where they had people who were not actually in a great place, elected into sort of pushed into these leadership roles and made into examples. So, you know, as you know, because you've if you watched any part of this documentary, then you know that it's about this cult that preyed on people's desire to find true love. And then, I mean, everyone should watch this film, especially if you're interested in gender issues, because they end up transing people to try to match people up. Because guess what? A group that's about helping people find true love is going to be mostly women. Mostly straight women. So what do you do? You make some of them into trans men and tell them that that's their soulmate. Anyway, it's a crazy story. But, um… Yeah, just hearing that part of your story where you're like, you're told that you are this success story. You're still vulnerable, you're still young, you still haven't actually met a man that you're truly sexually and romantically attracted to. You're not like, you're not a success story, but they're like, you, you need to write a book on being an ex-gay. Yeah. Yeah, it shows like how, vulnerable these cults really are. They're operating purely on the psychological conditioning, but they don't have any actual ground that they're standing on. So anyway, you fall in love. You help each other get out of there. You have nothing but each other at this point. that must have been a really shaky moment in your lives. And then I imagine from there that you like helped each other sort of process what the heck that was. I recently told you about a group called Do No Harm, who's working to do just that. Eliminate the harm that so-called gender-affirming care for minors and political ideologies and medicine are causing. Do No Harm is made up of thousands of members across the country. from doctors to nurses to policymakers to concerned parents who see what's happening at practitioners around the country and are waving a red flag. Membership is free and you get unlimited access to information from experts, on-the-ground updates from people working in medicine or state houses to take a stand and collaboration with other thinkers. Learn more and sign up at do-no-harm-medicine.org slash some-therapist to learn more. That's do-no-harm-medicine.org slash some-therapist. What was that period of life like where you and your wife were trying to find your feet on your own?

Layton: Well, we were homeless at first. We had nothing. We didn't have food. We didn't have friends. We basically had nothing. I had a car, so we had that going for us. And yeah, we didn't have connection with our families or anything. It was really hard. I did have some friends from up north, we were living in the south at the time, so we moved up north, and I reconnected with people that I had not spoken to in years, and was kind of trying to establish I guess established myself as a new person outside of the cult, but also I was reconnecting with people that I had been really close to when I was in addiction and stuff like that, so it wasn't really compatible. But it was also all that I had, so that also kind of solidified this state of confusion and not really knowing who I was and not feeling like I was being mirrored properly by anyone or feeling as though I had ever experienced proper mirroring in my entire life and being in that state of dissociation and still in that state of trauma because now I don't know if my basic needs are going to be met. I don't know Um, if I'm gonna have a house, you know, I don't know if I'm going to have food and, and so there was a lot of stress and pressure on both of us that that made me feel even more desperate than I felt when I was in the cold.

Stephanie Winn: So you just kind of had to figure it all out. from this really vulnerable position, not having any resources, just figuring out how to survive as two adults in the world. You don't have a solid worldview or operating system. I can imagine a culture shock element too when you're leaving this high control environment and then you're just out there in the world. that you've been taught to fear? Because this cult has probably warped your perceptions of what it's like out there. So what were some of the ways in which you discovered maybe the world was not the type of place you'd been taught it was?

Layton: Well, I think that I kind of went too far in the other direction at first with thinking, you know, I just left this place that I thought was safe and it was actually really dangerous. And so then I was way too trusting with the world. Um, and I, I kind of rebelled in a lot of ways again, and, and was abandoning a lot of the progress I had made before. I mean, I didn't relapse or anything like that, but I, um, I was breaking a lot of the values that I, that I had developed and, and slowly started to kind of build up that post, uh, near death experience, like post, overdose. And I was drinking a lot again and just prioritizing the wrong things. So it was hard because I kind of felt like the world was now my safe place, but I was engaging with it in a way that wasn't safe because I had never learned a safe way to engage with it. So it was a really complicated time where it just felt like years and years of trial and error. And then Also, because I had this built dependence on other people and I had been taught that I couldn't trust myself and that I wasn't a trustworthy person. I mean, that had been hammered into me from childhood because we're sinful, right? We're evil. We can't trust ourselves and we need these authority figures to tell us what to believe and to tell us what to feel. So I think that made me very vulnerable when I was looking for anyone who could help me with leaving a cult and with trying to rebuild my life in the world and with trying to figure out who I was. I became very vulnerable to whatever it was that they fed me, you know?

Stephanie Winn: And it's occurring to me that, you know, you and I decided during our break that we're going to do a part two, because there's so much more to your story. And I'm not sure how much we're going to get into this today, but it's occurring to me, like, we've talked this far in your story, we haven't gotten to trans stuff at all. So I'm really curious, my mind is starting to fill in those blanks, but like, how did this vulnerable state lead to the trans I don't know if that was days or months or years between those different times in your life. I'm sure you're going to fill us in in a moment. I'm just like, you know, sometimes like the most vulnerable a person can be to an abusive relationship or a high control community is right after leaving another one. Because you just learned to recognize the warning signs you should have seen about the place or the person you just left. You're just like, oh, now I realize they were like this and like that. And so that's your new map for what danger is. And then you have a totally inaccurate map for what safety is. And I like the way you put it because you're like, the way you put it sound like you didn't know how to find safety in yourself. You didn't know how to trust your own judgment, your own instincts, how to make decisions. And so of course, that left you in a place where you're looking outside of yourself. And then you go from sort of flipping from my community is the good people and the outside world is bad to, oh, the community I just left is actually the bad people, that must mean the outside world's good. Meanwhile, you still don't know how to carry yourself in the world. So, yeah, you're just very vulnerable at that time. So, yeah, how did all of that lead to the trans stuff? Was there a direct connection there or a gap?

Layton: Yeah, so like I was saying with the conversion therapy stuff, I was made to feel like some predator of women or something. And so I think that in that way, I started to feel like other women didn't see me as a woman, but they saw me and interacted with me as a man if they knew that I was a lesbian. I kind of just assumed that that rejection was happening. And so I felt very uncomfortable. I didn't know how to interact with women that were straight. I felt like they were going to think that I was preying on them or hitting on them or something. For example, you can see straight women and they're comforting each other if one of them's upset and maybe they're like holding each other or holding hands or something and there's nothing there. It's just nurturing. It's just this platonic love. And I didn't feel like that was something I was allowed to have. And so that was very, very difficult for me. I wanted those kind of like sisterly relationships, but it had been hammered into me that that wasn't something that I could have because everyone was going to think I was some predator or something. So I think that it really warped my mindset. And then on top of that, I, as a coping mechanism, had eating disorders, and I had really bad body dysmorphia. And that triggered the eating disorders, obviously. The way that I saw myself was extremely inaccurate for what I actually looked like. And I think that that was just a material representation of what was going on in my life anyway. It's like I just couldn't see myself clearly. I had no idea who I was. And that had just manifested in this body dysmorphia. So dealing with chronic dissociation, where I then have internalized homophobia and I have body dysmorphia and body issues and stuff. I had started binding and I had, like, I think I was going by probably they them pronouns or something at the time. And for me, it wasn't necessarily gender related at the time. It was more so just that I had started to feel very uncomfortable with femininity. And I mean, why wouldn't I? I've been told that I'm now this creepy person or something and made to feel very uncomfortable in myself because of that. And like I said, I started feeling like people were just seeing me as a man or something, but it still was not really this conscious gender dysphoria. So I ended up finally going and seeing someone who was supposed to be a dissociation expert, and I basically was saying things like, you know, my dissociation was really bad at the time. I was splitting, but I didn't really know what that was. I actually didn't even really know what dissociation was. I was being told that I was doing or saying things and not in the sense of, you know, I've heard people say in the past, like, oh, that's really convenient to just say that you can't remember things that you said or did. And it's like, it's not like I was going out and doing something wrong and then being like, oh, wasn't me, you know, not going to take responsibility for that. I mean, I didn't, I genuinely didn't remember my own address. I couldn't remember my own zip code, my own phone number. I would have these really bad episodes where I would be out in public somewhere and I wouldn't remember how I got there. So it was really, really terrifying. It was not, you know, the DID stuff that we see on TikTok or anything like that. It was really, there was no, there was no access to a core self. I don't really know any other way of describing it. And I was in such survival mode that it was like all of the different parts of my brain that we all have, there was no consensus between them. And it was just, it's like I didn't have enough consistency or enough groundedness. I'm not even really sure to be in more than one or two of those states at one time. So it was really ruining my life. It was making it difficult to go to work. It was making it difficult to maintain relationships. And so that's when I had finally reached out to someone and I was like, I know this is from all of my trauma. And I knew that My head injury probably played into it because I had had, like I said, when I was younger, I had had a lot of mental health issues, especially around memory and whatnot. And I had ADHD and OCD and all this stuff. And I knew that my PTSD from the way that I was raised and the abuse I had experienced and all this stuff had really just pushed everything over the edge. So I was like, I need help for this. But one of the things that we talked about when I was getting help was the fact that I kept saying I feel like a trans woman, which is really ironic because I was saying that I want to be a woman and I want to look like a woman, but I feel like I can't connect to that or I feel like I don't look like one. And that was my way of trying to express that I felt like a trans woman in the sense that I felt like there was a disconnect between me and being a woman and I was trying to bridge that gap. That doesn't sound anything like I want to be a man, you know? It's not… I didn't want to be a man. I didn't want to not be a woman. My whole thing was that I felt like being a woman was this unattainable factor. And a lot of that, like I said, had to do with the dissociation and the internalized homophobia and all of this stuff. And I didn't feel pretty enough. And I had all these body issues and all this stuff. And that statement was turned around, and instead of it being, you know, it makes sense that you feel that way because of all of these comorbidities and all of your past trauma, things that I already know exist, it was, the response I got was, well, because my therapist at the time, who was a dissociation expert, also had DID, non-integrated DID.

Stephanie Winn: Yeah. Okay. For those who are just listening, you put air quotes around dissociation expert, but you're saying your therapist herself, herself, herself had a DID diagnosis and was public about this or you later discovered this? Yes. Boy, it's public. Yeah. Oh my goodness. What a myth. And I know there's more and I cut you off, but just to acknowledge what you've said so far. You have all these reasons that you feel awkward as a woman. And it really makes sense given your life experience. And you said that there was a lack of mirroring in your life. So I hear you looking for that mirror, right? Like you're looking for a sounding board to help you make sense of yourself so you can see yourself more clearly because you do not have an accurate sense of sort of the boundaries of where you begin and end and what is you and how to integrate between these different states that we all move through. And so you're feeling very discombobulated. You're looking for some kind of grounding, some kind of accurate reflection for you to get a sense of yourself. And there's a huge missed opportunity because what you're saying, you're grasping at something. And the job of a therapist is to understand what it is their client is trying to express. And I often have this experience as a therapist where I just slightly rephrase what someone just said. And then they're like, I never thought of it that way before. It's like, this is what you just said. There's often that they also say, you just hit the nail on the head. That's what I'm looking for. I'm trying to make sure I'm on track. Because that's part of the healing process is to feel like you are being accurately mirrored, that you get a more accurate sense of yourself so you can work through and understand your own perspective. Anyway, I'm obviously going off on a tangent right now. There's just, you felt like a predator of women. You felt awkward about women because of how this cult had made you feel about yourself. And there's this huge missed opportunity for the therapist to help you put yourself together and understand what you were really getting at when you compared yourself to the experience of a trans woman. Like, you're somebody who wants to be a woman. You're trying to pass as a woman, but you feel like you don't pass because women have been conditioned to fear you. That is part of your experience. And you've been conditioned to fear yourself around women, not to trust yourself. There's one other element of that story that really stood out to me, but I'm forgetting of course, so I'm just gonna let you get back to the story.

Layton: Yeah, no, you're, you're completely on point with all of that. That's exactly what should have happened. And instead, I, you know, I knew that she had had DID and she kind of praised it as, you know, these, these are just different parts of ourselves that, that all of us have, which is true, but we're not supposed to stay just associated in that way, you know? And she said to me, I have a heterosexual part and a lesbian part, and I have a trans man part and, and all of these things, and framed it to me as me also having that. There was this projection where I had the same thing that she had, and I believed that, and then Yeah, and then she was kind of asking me questions about my childhood, my interests, like things to affirm any type of dysphoria or affirm any other times where I didn't quite feel like a woman, which again, had nothing to do with being trans. I don't have gender dysphoria. To this day, I don't have anything like that. And I just did not know myself well enough at the time to know that. So that's how it was framed. And because of the state that I was in, I I just thought, well, you know, everything I have thought I've known about myself has been a lie. Like, I thought I was ex-gay, and then that wasn't true, you know? So I was really just, again, looking for someone else to tell me who I was, unfortunately. And I believed it. And then she said that she knew some people at a gender clinic and could get me, she could get me over there and talking to them and stuff. So I felt like I was going to be taken care of. I felt like whatever was going on with me, whatever, you know, was wrong with me was about to be figured out, I guess, and fixed.

Stephanie Winn: So you see this therapist who I'm going to describe as having poor boundaries, a therapist with unresolved issues. And this therapist sort of projects onto you, at least this is your take on it and sounds accurate, right? Projects onto you, ooh, someone like me. And then she sort of holds herself up as an example as if she's a role model. where she's like, well, look at me. I'm a perfectly fine, successful person. And I am split into all these parts. And you are like me. But then there's also this element of latching on to a narrative. So on the one hand, the parts framework You could look at it from more like if we set aside the pathology of DID and look at it more like an internal family systems lens, thinking about it symbolically, thinking about how we all have parts. There is a world in which a therapist could think that way, could think, well, I have these parts. I have a part of me that's straight, a part of me that's gay. That's called a bisexual therapist, by the way. And I have a part of me that's… And I have a part of me that's a trans man. Okay, so let's say you're thinking that way, in a world in which that's a real thing. Okay, so there's a way that you can consider that as a symbolic where because these are all just parts of you, um, certainly doesn't mean you should just act on one of those parts, right? So in a world in which a part of you is a trans man, okay, fine, whatever, um, that doesn't mean that that part of you should take over and make the rest of you permanently a trans man. So there's a lot of, like, flawed logic here, but… but so she sort of projects onto you, I'm like this and I'm okay, I don't need help. And look at you, you're like me, you should want to be more like me. But then also kind of latching on to the novelty and I'm almost wondering, and I'm just speculating at this point, but if she's like, oh, I caught a live one. I found a tranny. I get a special patient. That makes me a special therapist. There's a grandiosity. that I'm picking up on or imagining is there anyway in the thought process of this person and then she feels like she's special or saving you or doing a good thing by being the one to find out that you are actually a trans man and then being the one to refer you to her friends and so I'm just really getting a sense of like the ego of the therapist playing a big role here. And we're going to have to start wrapping up pretty soon. This is, I think, a pretty good point in your story to save for our part two. Listeners of this podcast will know I've never done a part two before, but I've often thought that I really should have because some of my interviews are so long. And today, just with the flow of the day and how many things are unfolding, I just asked Leighton during the break if we could actually turn this into a two-part so we have lots of room and fortunately she's available later today to finish recording this. So I think we're gonna pick up next time we talk on this moment in time that your therapist projects onto you, decides she's going to be the magical special savior of this poor lost trans person who just needs help discovering his true self. And, but before we wrap up this part, is there anything that you, any like loose ends from our conversation so far that you wanted to tie up?

Layton: Well, I did wanna say that your read was entirely correct because she now considers herself to be a transgender specialist, which is really ironic because if the first trans person in quotes, you know, that you help ends up de-transitioning, That's something to look at, right? But yeah, there's this element of, you know, I'm helping people that have DID like me, and that's like a niche. It's a weird thing that a lot of people don't experience. But I noticed this projection of kind of diagnosing a lot of people with DID, you know, whether or not they may even have those kinds of those elements. But that again is, I mean, that's public. She's put that out publicly.

Stephanie Winn: It's a rare condition. So it's strange. I mean, yeah, if you specialize in it, then you attract people who are looking for that. But it's still kind of suspect.

Layton: Yeah. Yeah, and then having this theme of specifically working with people that have dissociative disorders and then they all just happen to be trans. Right. It's like preying on people that are so dissociated from themselves and then sending them over to this clinic to transition.

Stephanie Winn: Get more dissociated. Interesting. Yeah. Well, totally. And by the way, there is a fascinating article on the Pitt Substack. It's a few years old at this point. That's pitt.substack.com. It's like a two-part series. It's called the Transmedical Taliban or something like that, written by a parent with medical expertise. And they look at some of the medical information that we have. on trans issues and they find that people who identify as trans, and I don't know if it's only people who've medicalized or people with gender dysphoria, but actually have less activity going on in the regions of the brain associated with mind-body connectivity. So that's an indicator that, yes, people with gender dysphoria are more dissociated, but there's also a chicken-and-egg dilemma with regard to how starting off with body dissociation can lead to identifying as trans, but also when you're in the trans thought loop, pattern that a lot of trans-identified people get into, you're actually making it worse. There's a lot we can talk about there, but I just wanted to kind of bookmark that. We're going to wrap up here. I'm so excited to continue our conversation for you and I. That'll be in a few hours. For the rest of the world, it'll be in exactly one week. Thank you so much for your time so far, Leighton. And just for people who are listening to this who don't end up listening to next week or just to make sure we take care of this now, where can people find you, or where do you want people to find you, if you do?

Layton: Well, on YouTube I'm on there as Psychic Somatics, and then on Twitter I'm on there as Original Angel, but the Ls at the end are the number one instead of Ls.

Stephanie Winn: I hope you enjoyed this episode of You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist podcast. To check out my book recommendations, articles, wellness products, guest episodes on other podcasts, consulting services, and lots more, visit SomeTherapist.com or follow me on Twitter or Instagram at SomeTherapist. If you'd like to go deeper, join my community at somekindoftherapist.locals.com. Members can dialogue with other listeners, post questions for upcoming podcast guests to respond to, or ask questions for me to respond to in exclusive members-only Q&A live streams. To learn more about the gender crisis, watch our film, No Way Back, The Reality of Gender-Affirming Parent, at nowaybackfilm.com. Special thanks to my producers, Eric and Amber Beals at Different Mix, and to Joey Pecoraro for our theme song, Half Awake. If you appreciate this podcast and want more people to find it, kindly take a moment to rate, review, like, comment, and share on your platforms of choice. Of course, just because I am some therapist doesn't mean I'm your therapist. This podcast is not a substitute for medical advice. If you need help, ask your doctor or browse your local therapists online. And whatever you do next, please take care of yourself. Eat well, sleep well, move your body, get outside, and tell someone you love them. You're worth it.