Podcast Episode 8: That Time My Maid of Honor Said What No One Else Would

Some people come into your life at exactly the right moment. Not because they planned it. Not because you asked. But because they see what you cannot, and they love you too much to stay quiet.

Jen is deep in the process. The sessions are ongoing. The training is in motion. And for the first time in a long time, something feels like it might actually be working.

Then her phone rings.

This is the episode where the person who knows Jen best sits down at her dinner table, opens a laptop, and starts asking the questions nobody else thought to ask. No agenda. No drama. Just a best friend who had a bad feeling and refused to let it go.

This is the episode where things get very uncomfortable, very fast.

The human lie detector said he could read anyone. He never accounted for her.

Talk Nerdy To Me® - Episode 8 Transcript

EP. 8 - That Time My Maid of Honor Said What Nobody Else Would

Keep in mind as you listen to this episode that I am still being stalked.

Welcome to Talk Nerdy To Me. This is the unbelievably true story. Once you hear it, you may never experience your own life in the same way.

Morals and Ethics

"I am going to reach out to some of my former students. They're going to need to approve you, too. I need confirmation on your morals and ethics."

Morals and ethics. It was like being given a gun, and they had to make sure I wasn't a murderer. The irony wasn't lost on me that recently I had met, and technically lived with, the actual person who murdered my friend. I even pet their dog.

"Call me back in 10 minutes," he said, as he hung up. Jen honored the timeline and called back at exactly 10 minutes. No answer, just voicemail. After a few moments, she sent a text. Nothing.

Manifesting her training as she knows how to best, she decided to watch three "Best of" Cal Lightman videos from Lie To Me before she got an email.

"I have reached out to one of the students, and she is available to meet with you next week at this time. The link is provided below."

The anticipation was agonizing. I Googled her, impressed by her website, but I just wondered what the next part of the approval process would look like. I then told Jeff that I'm meeting with a morals and ethics committee on Tuesday. He was surprised.

"Morals and ethics?" he asked.

"You either have this skill or you don't. You can't prepare for this meeting."

"Oh, I know," I said. "Also, if I don't pass, I can at least say I failed a morals and ethics review. That's at least worthy of a post I could laugh at."

The Oracle

Tuesday arrived, and Jen was surprised by what she saw on her screen. She wasn't on some big screen with scientists staring at her face like they showcased on Lie To Me. Instead, she was greeted by a woman in her living room on her laptop looking rather cozy. This could still be like Oracle from The Matrix, she reminded herself not to judge too quickly since it was still COVID.

"How can I help you?"

I told her everything. The gang stalking, seeking a profiler, trauma therapy, the autism diagnosis, and how despite it all, I just happen to have this gift for reading body language. I explained that I see incongruent body language like it's in black and white. It's like The Wizard of Oz. It just sticks out to me like a sore thumb.

"This is going to change your life. The fact that this comes naturally to you is incredible. But with his program, it's going to give shapes to what you are already seeing. Get creative with it. The work can be applied to almost anything in life."

Talking to her felt like catching up with an old mentor. Thirty minutes in, she said she had to go because she had just gotten her booster shot and needed to lie down, but not before delivering the final verdict.

"Just in case you were worried, you absolutely have my recommendation. I think you will be a tremendous asset to the community, and I'm excited to see what happens."

I got the recommendation. Military grade training for non-verbal leaks and crisis management. For the first time in 20 years, I said it. Class starts next week.

Something Shifts

But just as Jen was downloading the syllabus, things shifted. She found the way the human lie detector kept describing the training strangely unsettling.

"This knowledge is a loaded gun, and any of my students can be dropped anywhere in the world with a black parachute and figure their way out."

She thought he was laying it on a bit thick, but she trusted the process. Fortunately, a girlfriend of hers who had just read her post about her new path intervened. She called, a rare occurrence.

"I don't know how to say this, so I am just going to say it. I have a really bad feeling on this guy. Like, really bad."

"What do you see?" Jen asked.

She texted her video after video of his speeches on YouTube.

"I know. I was going to tell him to delete them because the quality is so crappy."

"Okay, but that's only a visibility issue. Have you heard what came out of his mouth?"

"No," Jen admitted. "I only looked at it through the talent producer lens. Let me wrap this up and get back to you."

Her friend didn't stop.

"I know you're busy. Please, please, please take a look when you are mentally ready. I found out more information, and it's really not good."

What I couldn't admit at the time was exactly who this friend was. She wasn't just a friend. She was my neighbor, chosen little sister, and maid of honor.

Lindsay

Hi, everyone. For those of you who I haven't met yet, my name is Lindsay, and I am a neighbor turned little sister of Jen and Jeff. I live two floors below them in our elegant sitcom-worthy haunted mansion of a building in Los Angeles. I first met Jen a few years ago through a string of encounters in our building lobby. Yes, she was wearing a different costume every time. Some, myself included, would even go so far as to say I targeted her for her friendship and all-around awesomeness. And not to brag, but I think that worked out in my favor.

Jen, how is it even possible to put into words how remarkably special you are, and how much I look up to you? Not only are you brilliant, but you look at any obstacle as an achievable challenge. Not only are you creative, but you ignite the imaginations of everyone you encounter. You care endlessly for and about others, both human and animals alike. You champion other women like no one I've met, encouraging our friendships and reminding us what we are capable of. You cherish authenticity, and you provide a space for others to safely grow and come into their own. You make the hard phone calls, and you are always there for a hug after them.

So now, this was her version of a tough phone call, and a tough visit at the apartment the next day.

The Research Session

"You just went through everything with the gang stalking, and I know you're autistic, so you don't pick up on certain cues naturally. I cannot shake this belief that there is something very wrong with this man," she said, almost shaking herself.

"First off," she said, opening up her laptop, "there is something called the Goldwater Rule." She explained that psychiatrists have a responsibility not to give a professional opinion about public figures they haven't examined in person.

The Goldwater Rule is Section 7 in the American Psychiatric Association's Principles of Medical Ethics, which states that psychiatrists have a responsibility to participate in activities contributing to the improvement of the community and the betterment of public health. But they should not give a professional opinion about public figures whom they have not examined in person, and from whom they have not obtained their consent to discuss their mental health in public statements.

The human lie detector frequently led with how he profiled many seated presidents, members of NATO, and ambassadors. The rule itself is controversial, but that alone makes his public profiling, technically speaking, unethical.

"Oh, so that's why when you hear about a doctor talking about a celebrity who had plastic surgery, they admit that they are qualified in the field, but not their specific doctor."

"Yeah, he doesn't do that," Jen said.

"I also don't know if he would be ethically required under the same rules as a psychiatrist. He seems to go back and forth on credentials. Marriage and family counselor is consistent, but I'm not sure what else is. I was told his word is also admissible in a court of law, but that was only from Jeff, who told me that because they were going to work on a project together."

"I don't know a lot of people who call themselves a doctor who aren't clear on their specialties," her maid of honor said declaratively.

"What does clear mean in this scenario?" Jen asked, needing literal clarification.

"You take everything that he lists out as specialties and Google certification or license. Is he licensed, and if so, in what? It's public information." She looked up his LinkedIn and paused when she saw how many grammatical errors were on the page.

"Grammatical errors aren't indicative of someone lying," I reminded her.

"You're not wrong, but you mentioned in the curriculum he sent that you had to write a 1,500-word essay. He specifically spoke on the importance of the written word. If someone is preaching that, shouldn't they follow it in their own practice? My eighth grade niece writes better than what he has published on his page."

I was not only impressed by her memory, but also our combined research capabilities, as I then found this article seemingly confirming some government association, but also even more confusion.

What the Research Revealed

Back in the '90s, a psychologist was invited to the capital to coach leading politicians in crisis management, especially in how to read people. It sounded like a fairly conventional assignment at first. But while they were there, the psychologist was contacted by a mafia boss. His son had been arrested for killing a journalist, and the father wanted the psychologist to help get him out of prison.

What made the situation especially unsettling was that the father seemed to know exactly when they were back in their rooms. Every time they returned, the phone would ring almost immediately. It was him. The psychologist's staff happened to have a microphone detector with them. They swept the rooms and found microphones. They were being listened to.

In the end, he couldn't help the boss or his son. Later, they heard that the son had been executed. It seemed like the story had reached a grim and final conclusion. But about a year later, one of the staff members was in New York City and ran into the son, the same son who had reportedly been executed.

I have never forgotten that. It left me wondering what really happened, who was listening, and how much of the story we were ever meant to know. Lesson learned: sometimes, or perhaps often, the reality you observe is not real, so be prepared for surreal situations.

Then they found yet another firsthand account. In the late 1990s, a negotiator met a psychologist through a colleague who introduced him to an arresting idea: that tiny movements in the face could expose what people were feeling beneath the surface. He called it the non-verbal leak. Under stress, he believed, each person revealed a repeating sequence of facial micro-movements. He thought those movements could point to emotion, denial, trance, even buried trauma.

At first, he was captivated, but then he began asking a question the method could not answer: what happens when two people are actually interacting? He started filming conversations with two cameras and studying the footage frame by frame. What he saw was not a fixed sequence. When he showed the psychologist the recordings, he could not explain what he was seeing. He spent years trying to bring these observations into the method, but the more he read, tested, and watched, the more uncertain he became.

The psychologist was the person who opened his eyes to non-verbal behavior, but he was also the person whose theory he ultimately left behind. He could not find adequate scientific support for the claim that every person carries a stable, repeating non-verbal leak, especially in real interaction. Sometimes the most important lesson comes from the teacher you eventually have to question.

The Satanic Cult

They both rabidly continued researching, click by click, confirming the maid of honor's intuition.

"Look, they say here he's a controversial therapist." I began reading, but had to stop somewhere around the reference to a student of his creating a Satanic cult. As a side note, it's shocking how many people I've known in Los Angeles that have ended up in cults featured on Netflix.

For years, social services funneled vulnerable patients to its leader, a charismatic practitioner who claimed she could uncover buried abuse just by filming a client's face. She had been trained in a framework developed by an American therapist. It's crucial to note that therapist was not involved in what happened next. In fact, the investigative account notes that he eventually withdrew her certification.

She began spinning increasingly bizarre and grandiose lies to her staff and clients. She claimed she had survived torture and miraculous cures. More brazenly, she boasted that former prime ministers and foreign affairs ministers had secretly been her patients. She even told people that the Queen was a former personal friend. As her stories grew wilder, the environment inside the clinic turned toxic. The paranoia eventually swallowed the practice whole. The leader convinced her followers that a Satanic cult was hunting them. What started as a clinic promising to heal trauma morphed into a machine that manufactured it, leaving behind a wake of fractured lives and demonstrating how easily therapeutic authority can be weaponized.

"I really have no idea who this person is. He came so highly recommended from someone I trust. Not only Jeff, but he was apparently in this inner circle. I'm just so confused."

"I know," her maid of honor reassured her. "But technically, you hired him as a profiler, and then it turned into trauma therapy, and now you're going to be a preacher of sorts of his method? That's a lot of extra steps included at an extremely vulnerable time for you."

The Cowboy Hat

I remember the cult case. Amid his many long monologues about himself, he mentioned having to revoke someone's certificate in his work. He also repeatedly told a story about wearing a cowboy hat at a mall and confronting a mother whose child had a leash attached to their backpack. I heard this story at least seven times, but what I took from it was less concern for the child and more about how highly he seemed to think of himself, as though it was his job to tell this woman she was doing something wrong. Personally, I used to disappear into clothing racks as a kid. If child leashes had been around back then, I'm pretty sure I'd be on one.

Yes. I just read someone describe him as a flamboyant consultant. Honestly, that tracks. I'm surprised he didn't wear his little cowboy hat in his LinkedIn photo based on what I've been reading.

"Also, even with recommendations, you still need to do your own research. People live in bubbles and think that, oh, because this person is the one who introduced us, they must have already been vetted. You can't just assume they have."

"You're absolutely right. I kept telling Jeff, I'm going to trust in the process, but there are a lot of red flags. He told me not to talk to his wife, who schedules his appointments, or the oracle from the Morals and Ethics Committee while I was in training. I was only supposed to deal with him directly. The moment he said that, I recognized it as a pattern manipulative people use as a form of abuse: isolation. I had been told this would be a collaborative experience, so it wasn't just messed up, it felt like he had lied about what it was."

I also felt like the call to the Morals and Ethics Committee was a dog and pony show, similar to Neil Strauss, whom I was a wing woman for back in 2012. He kept demonstrating his higher value. It's a manipulation tactic. Make yourself appear more authoritative, become the immediate alpha, and socially engineer the upper hand.

During one session, he told me to call him back in 10 minutes, and when I did, he didn't answer. I then waited another 10 minutes and just went about my day, but I recognized it for what it felt like. It was a cheap tactic designed to make himself appear more important. If he is who he says he is, why would he need to do that?

Bingo

"Because he's not who he says he is. Let's explore that literally," she said, pulling up his website. She cut and pasted each of the accreditations listed into Google.

"Why was I the only person he offered this training to in the United States?" Jen asked, with the dots finally connecting.

"Thank you for bringing that up, because that's also a very strange statement to make. That statement and the 'any of my students can be dropped from a black parachute anywhere in the world.' How arrogant to say that you'd make it out because of him."

"You're right," Jen said. "What if I land on some bush and I discover I'm allergic to it and develop some rare form of reaction that causes me to die within minutes upon arrival? Obviously, that's a dramatic thing to say, but also speaks to someone who isn't thinking critically. There are too many variables to say definitively that because of one person's teachings, you're going to be able to accomplish blank."

"Exactly. He told you he was giving you a loaded gun. Who says that? Psychology isn't a loaded gun. That phrase is a smoking gun."

"Going back to the US comment, it's too specific. He's got this great reputation internationally, which I'm not saying isn't true, but what happened here in the US that either required him to go abroad or limited him from expanding to the US? If his reputation is as strong as he says it is, people would be jumping to help him expand. Why are you the only person in the US he has offered this to? I can't say for sure, but it feels like yet another manipulation tactic. He's using you for who you are and what you have to offer, and as your friend, I won't let him do that."

I smiled, feeling endlessly lucky to have her target me for her friendship those many moons ago in our building lobby.

Keeping my head in the game, I then went back to searching and specifically opened a document that might clarify more or continue to poke holes in his work. I opened up the PDF and hit Control + F to search for his name directly. There were hundreds of matches.

"Bingo," Jen said, turning her screen around so they could read her findings together.

"Oh my God," she shouted as she read aloud. "He kidnapped a young girl from school."

In unison, they placed their hands over their mouths, shocked.

So let me get this straight. The profiler I hired to help identify the person allegedly stalking me and one of the suspects in that case had each, separately, been accused of kidnapping someone. What are the odds?

The Sisterhood

Jen did not reach this moment alone. Her maid of honor helped her name the warning signs and validate what she had been sensing all along.

Grateful doesn't even begin to describe how I feel about our sisterhood. Destiny is a little bit more like it, and I am so elated that you found your match in Jeff.

In the end, finding her match was not about passing someone else's test. It was about trusting her instincts, choosing people who met her with honesty, and following the work that truly fit her and her unique gifts.

In the next episode, Jen meets a personal hero whose advice changes her life. Only this time, it changes it for the better.