Sarah grew up in the Church of Scientology. But she also grew up in a small town. And, in a neurodiverse family. We come from so many places. Exploitative, hierarchical, hypocritical. Generous, tender, and odd. It is an honor to present this installment of Listeners' Stories. We're tickled to learn that Sarah's awakening from Scientology was quickened by that South Park episode. And we're humbled to learn about how her mother, despite being deeply enmeshed in a coercive cult, still managed to kindle both compassion and common sense in her children.
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Like we often think of cults as being hierarchical and authoritarian and top-down, but there's this other dynamic that can emerge where if you are a member of a high-demand group and you have children, you kind of become a child yourself.
You become equal with other children in the group.
So how did that play out for you?
Yeah, I think there's a lot of children who get sent away.
And I know that in the orgs, kids spend a tremendous amount of time on their own together in groups.
And I'm aware of like a few families that we knew whose kids did that.
Also, Scientology has two schools.
Um, has an elementary school in Boston and has a high school and middle school in Sheridan, Oregon.
And a lot of, like, committed Scientologists send their children to those schools, and they're private schools, so they spend the night.
Um, I think, I think the Boston one is.
My parents didn't have money to do anything like that.
So it was very much off the table for us.
And my mom was kind of like, if you were gonna be in the public, you need to learn to deal with the public.
Like, that's where you'll live your life.
Because she was adamant that we should never join an org because you sign a contract for all of your lives.
Yes, the contract is for eternity.
And your mom felt that that was kind of an important thing to be aware of.
Yeah, she thought it was silly, to be quite honest.
You know, she was like, they own you, was her exact phrase.
And so, it was really weird existing in this duality, because while we were staunch believers, and my parents believed, and I have some indication that my parents believed even the wackier kind of higher-up notions, which I can explain in a minute.
But like, they were true believers in this church, and they raised us with a really strong ethics code, which is the Scientology Ethics Code, which eventually led to why none of us, you know, me and my sister can't be in it anymore.
But like, we also screened their calls.
And Got caller ID specifically to screen their calls.
And we avoided them a lot because in Scientology, it's nonstop what they call reging, which is when they try to get you to sign up for programs or commit money and donate money.
And the reging is incredibly aggressive.
That's a registration.
I assume so.
I was talking about this with my sister.
Like, there's so many abbreviations that were just a part of our life.
We don't quite know some of them.
Right.
But I would assume it is registration to register people to sign up or to get donations.
It's like a really aggressive, hard sales pitch.
And kind of the best example I can think of is They kind of hold you in a room and they force you to give them money or sign up for a new program.
And if you don't, which my sister and I didn't when we finally decided to leave, they then take you and put you on the e-meter, which is one third of a lie detector.
And you hold the cans, which is the cans that measure your electromagnetic waves.
If you haven't heard of the e-meter, it is what you use to audit with.
And they put you on the cams if you don't sign up or give money, and they basically are like, what happened and why don't you want to?
And in order to get out of that, your needle has to float, which means there can be no energy discharge, which in Scientology means you're not withholding anything.
You're not lying about anything.
There's nothing charged.
And yeah, and so my sister and I had to go through, it took a whole day.
To get off course when we eventually decided to leave and we didn't tell them, obviously, we were leaving the church.
We just were like, yep, we're done for now.
We don't have the money.
Thanks.
Bye.
But it took a whole day.
They kept sending us to people.
They kept sending us to other people to check out.
And so my mom, once, this was like the first time I was livid about reging.
My father had passed away a couple of years earlier.
She went to her church to grieve that loss, as you do.
She did everything she said she was going to do.
She paid to do auditing.
She goes to leave, and of course, they're trying to get her to sign up again or donate.
And my parents weren't Poor, but they weren't wealthy.
They didn't have a lot of money.
And she had just lost her breadwinner and was figuring out what she was going to do.
And so she pulled a 5 and a 10 out of her wallet.
And she said, this is what I have.
Which one do you want?
And they took the 10.
Oh, my gosh.
Yeah.
And as a kid in my early 20s, I was like, what is this place?
You watched the bills come out of her wallet or her purse and... Yep.
Yep.
And you watched the guy take the 10.
Yes.
After your dad had just died.
Yes, they knew she was a grieving woman.
But that got her out of the cans.
So then she could leave.
She didn't have to go to the cans because she gave money if she had persisted.
And my mom was great.
And this is one thing they loved and hated about my mom was she was great.
My dad was very bad when it came to reging and it was a contention point between their marriage that he had children to spend money on and life to spend money on, and he would very easily donate or sign up time.
And it was a huge source of contention between them.
Because, you know, like I often say, like, I'll never forgive the church for asking my father to choose between his family or her spiritual salvation.
Right?
There was always this ask, which is just horrible.
It's also, you know, if I may say, it's a generous way of phrasing it because they're actually asking him to choose between the family and their grift.
True.
Correct.
In his framework, I was looking at it from his point of view.
Yeah.
Not theirs because they, you know, Money is the most important thing to Scientology.
People who have money are prioritized, and people who have celebrity are prioritized because they're a good face for the church and they can propagate and recruit.
And that's well known.
Like, even when I was in it and a believer, everybody knew that.
Like, they have a special celebrity center for celebrities, which is way nicer than where, like, the normies go to do course.
Two things about reging.
First of all, you describe you and your sister finally leaving after it taking a whole day and I imagine that it took, did it take several attempts to get the needle to float?
Great question.
So, great question.
The needle floating is such a scary thing when you first enter Scientology, at least for me as a kid.
Like, I would always be afraid because, you know, the idea propagated behind it is that you are secretly withholding things from yourself, right?
You are a secret criminal in the The E-meter will bring it out, and we'll find out what triggers are there.
We'll find out what's going on.
And so, when you think things, it can change.
It's basically energy, right?
It's just your electromagnetic read.
But in Scientology, when you think things, it will move, and then they'll say, oh, what was that thought?
Tell us about that thought.
Oh my god.
Yes, that's how it goes.
How manipulative is that?
It is wild.
It is wild and scary, definitely.
The first time I was put on the cans, I was in middle school.
My parents had an auditor come to the house because my sister was a moody teenager who was having a lot of emotional issues as teenagers do.
And I assume scared my mother a lot because she had, I just learned this actually when I was talking to her about this, she had told my mom that she didn't feel like she deserved to be happy, which is like tragic.
I mean, I can only imagine what my mother was thinking Going through that.
And the only person she could turn to would be Scientology, right?
She couldn't take her to a psychiatrist.
She couldn't take her to the doctor.
Those weren't the correct modes.
Of course, the cans are going to have an influence on anybody's, especially a child's, capacity to understand whether or not they're worthy of love or they should be happy.
Because I imagine if you fail enough times at the cans, you think you're a terrible person.
What means you need more auditing is what it means.
But yes, you definitely, right, like you don't want to be Um, restimulated is what they would call it, right?
Which is where your past lives trigger your...
Reactions.
So there's like the reactive brain and the logical brain in Scientology and the reactive brain stores all the things that's ever happened to you in all your lives and that's what controls you.
And when you go clear, which is like not halfway up the bridge but partway up the bridge, you've like handled all your past reactivities and you're like a fresh slate moving through the world.
In Scientology Being not happy is incredibly painful.
It's not good.
There's a thing called the tone scale, which is this chart that labels from 40 to negative 40.
I don't understand the numbering scale at all.
It's incredibly silly to look at it now.
But the tone scale basically labels all these feelings.
And says, these are good feelings that mean you're close to being caused, which are all the happy feelings.
And then any of the sad feelings are considered low tone, which means you're not effective, you're not at cause, you're riddled with all of these things.
And so my sister, who is, we know now, autistic.
You know, was deeply shamed through things like the tone scale because her brain worked differently, and she had a lot of different feelings about things, and she didn't understand things.
She's very rule-based.
And so, like, I can only imagine by the time she became a teenager, it was deep-seated brokenness inside.
And so they had an auditor come to the house and it was a family friend and she audited her and I guess made her feel better.
I think my sister did gain some relief from being able to imagine that, sit in a room and talk to somebody about how you were feeling, you know, that wasn't your parents.
And then they had extra time.
I forget why.
And so my mom was like, well, let's get this other kid on there.
And she put me on the cans and I went in for some auditing.
And I remember feeling like it was a test and deeply afraid I would fail.
Because it kind of feels that way.
Uh, like you feel a little bit interrogated?
You sent me the tone, the full tone scale by email just before we met and I have it pulled up in front of me.
And I imagine that this diagram, which with your permission, can we put this into the show notes?
This is not, this won't give anything away, will it?
No, please do.
This is public.
I found this on a Google search.
Okay, so yes, it says the tone scale in full and I'm imagining that this is sort of the elementary school version of this when I can see it kind of hanging in a classroom.
It has kind of little minion cartoon characters that begin, let's see, at the negative 40 stage of total failure and actually there's no There's no minion character at all down there.
There's kind of like a trash heap.
And then...
we move up to minus 30 and the feeling is can't hide.
And then minus 20 is being nothing.
And then minus 10 is being an object.
And then minus eight is hiding.
And then the minion little guy or little fur ball starts to get animated but is very upset and ashamed.
And we move up through regret, blame, shame, pity, failure, body death, that seems to be a bad feeling.
But really that's at zero, that's not in negative territory.
And then things start to improve and the colors also go from sort of gray to blue to green to red
through all of the pain and anger and hate feelings towards a yellow sunshine.
And then by the time we get up to 40 plus 40, we're a pure white minion fuzzball guy
smiling and radiating out golden light.
And the category is serenity of beingness.
So is this something that you actually were exposed to in childhood?
Was this in your home?
Were you aware of the tone scale?
You're saying that your sister was quite aware of it, but was it just commonplace?
Yes.
So this was blown up in a poster size and it hung on the back of our front door so we could look at it as we left in the morning.
Eventually it got moved, but that's where it lived when I was very little.
And it was, you know, child level because our door had like a window.
So it was like, you know, right where a toddler's eye and view is.
And we'd often sit on the stairs to put on our Shoes, and you could just stare at it, right?
You could just look at all of these things and see.
And being, obviously, in the yellow and the sunshiny feelings is great.
And then anywhere else is, you know, descending down the tone scale.
And as you descend, you become less and less cause and more and more a danger to yourself and others.
But you're self-reporting always or no?
Yes and no.
No, like when you're a little kid, like you don't know where you are on the tone scale.
And so my parents would often point to specific characters.
And that was very psychologically damaging, especially because none of us in my family are neurotypical.
So all of us are neurodivergent.
My brother has a bunch of learning disabilities.
I have a bunch of learning disabilities and mood disorders.
And then my middle sister is autistic.
So, and I suspect my dad wasn't neurotypical either.
He did have dyslexia and I would suspect he had other things.
I became an elementary school teacher later in life and realized like, Oh, we all had really clear signs of like, you know, learning disorders.
So when you're not neurotypical, your emotions can be a little more unregulated as a kid.
I mean, beyond just a normal toddler, right?
Like my sister being autistic, she could have huge tantrums and So they would point and say, like, this is where you are, and you need to get to here, and here's how we're going to do it, you know?
And they would have ways to help you do it, which were all Scientology procedures.
Like, there was one called, like, the ARC Straight Wire, which is, like, how to get in communication with people who you're upset with.
There was one, I think it was part of ARC Straight Wire, where you, like, remember a time you were happy, and then you remember another time you were happy, and you remember another time you were happy, and it, like, makes you feel happy and that was like one way to get to the happier stuff.
But no, please note that like there is no victimhood in Scientology.
So there's no such thing as being a victim because you are the one who is in control.
So when I got hit by a car in high school, I pulled it in.
That was my fault even when I was rear-ended.
I Braked for an ambulance.
Perfectly normal thing to do.
Absolutely logical.
Get rear-ended by a car that didn't brake fast enough.
And that's my fault.
I pulled that in.
Because if I were truly at cause in that moment, that car would have missed me.
That car would have never hit me behind.
It's incredible.
So as a kid, you're raised thinking there is no time where you're You can legitimately claim that you have been hurt by somebody else.
Your feeling and reaction is caused by you and you're the one in control of that.
And the more cause you are, the more you can control other people.
So if you wanted to create a system by which you could systematically abuse children, This would be a very powerful protective device for that system.
Do you have the sense that it would operate in that way in Scientology families?
Absolutely.
And I think there are reports of the organization Using it to abuse children who are separate from their parents, right?
Because the parents who are their teachers or caregivers at these private schools are using this same framework, too.
And again, thankfully, we didn't have the money to do that.
Thankfully, my parents, through a completely separate system of beliefs, my parents were staunchly against hitting children.
Thank goodness.
But like, absolutely.
I mean, I can only imagine how scary it is to be in that presence with somebody who thinks you are, one, a grown adult in a child's body, and therefore fully capable of understanding the spiritual and physical ramifications that you're undergoing.
You know, which of course is ridiculous.
I don't know.
If it hadn't been for my mom, I don't know what it would have been like to grow up with my dad.
Not that he was physically abusive, but he had anger issues.
I mean, he would get frustrated about things and it was always his fault.
I mean, everything was always your fault.
And, you know, like the down, like a, like an economic downturn would be like you not succeeding through that was your fault.
Like, so thank goodness we were raised with, with the idea of like, we, you don't hit children ever for anything.
I mean, it's a blessing in this story.
And there's something else, and I don't know, maybe I'll be totally embarrassed by this question and totally cut it out, but something occurs to me about you describing the probability that your father is neurodiverse and that neurodivergence runs in the family.
And that you're also alone and isolated in this rural environment.
You're away from the orgs.
And, you know, you're not growing up at a time in which there's a lot of attention that's being paid to neurodivergence anyway in the regular society.
And we know that very complex systems like Scientology might very well be oriented towards Stimulating or calming or orienting a person who is neurodivergent into a kind of safe or perhaps a complicated space that they can continue to learn to navigate.
I'm wondering if, given the fact that your parents sound like they were fairly liberal, That they would have been the progressives of the church, if anything.
Whether there was a certain way in which this very sort of otherworldly ideology Did it help in some way?
Did it provide some sort of protection or specialness in relation to the outside world?
Like, was your family perhaps being neurodiverse already going to be set apart from its rural community in some way?
Great question.
I think that this is a really interesting question because my dad, as I said, he was the one who found the church first and got my mom into it.
And he held on the most because he had the most to lose.
If he lost that system of belief, because he did incredibly poorly in school, he dropped out of college, he really struggled to find a place for himself, and he had an incredibly negative sense of self, and an incredibly negative inner critic, which of course Scientology just turns onto steroids.
Right.
But it also gives you something to do with it, right?
Yes.
It gives you the cans.
Yeah, and it gave him a lot, I think, to navigate a lot of things that happened to him.
And like you said, L. Ron Hubbard is a plagiarist.
So like early beginning Scientology is really just like good communication.
How do you get your point across?
How do you ask people clarifying questions?
And that's how they get you, is that the bottom levels seem really normal.
And then they progressively get weirder and weirder.
Of course, I didn't know any of this because you can't talk about any levels with anybody.
But I think my dad, it provided a meaning-making lens that he didn't have from anywhere else.
I think it was just really important to him to hold on to because it was a huge part of him, like, stepping into adulthood and how he behaved with my mother, like, because they had Scientology ethics and they truly followed them, which I will say, I have met many Scientologists that don't, right?
Like, they don't follow the ethic book, in my opinion.
But, like, you can't talk behind people's back in Scientology.
You have to go and talk to them.
You can't, you know, like, You have to be honorable to your word.
You have to make promises and keep them.
So like, in their marriage, it meant that they were very transparent with each other and they talked about everything.
Even when they were having, you know, normal marital problems, like they would use Scientology as a framework.
I'm kind of fascinated by this point, which is that there are relational rules within the high demand group that are probably instituted in service of the leadership, like don't talk behind anybody's back, you have to go directly, you can't, you have to honor your word, you have to stick by what you say, but if the member is not oriented really towards one of the orgs, if they're not oriented towards Elrond, if he's long dead or if he's like on some other planet or whatever, but you're really just sort of living as a church member,
And in your own sort of sphere, that those same rules might actually serve you in some circumstances.
Yes.
And I think Leah Remini talks about this on her show, which is also how my sister and I felt, which is that we were raised with such a staunch ethical morality.
And my dad was also raised by a pacifist.
So he was a pacifist as well.
Once we got to the church, we didn't feel they were following their ethics.
And that was really why we felt so gross being there.
Because they have, we found out that they have like morning huddles where they talk about all the new recruits and they talk about ways to recruit them better.
And they talk about, you know, so then you're like, wait, you're not allowed to natter, which is what it's called in Scientology.
When you talk behind people's back, you're supposed to be confronting them.
You're supposed to be transparent.
Let me just get this straight.
So you, in part, left Scientology because you were a better Scientologist than the people at the orgs that you ran into?
