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overthinking entertainment
The Deep End: Episodes 1-4 - Season 1, Episode 1
Mary Teal Bosworth, AKA "Teal Swan", is a self-styled "spiritual luminary" and "expert on suffering" with no professional mental health credentials or training whose self-help YouTube videos, books, public lectures, workshops, and retreats have received widespread criticism. In an effort to disprove the allegations that she is a cult leader whose teaching methods may be having a harmful effect on the vulnerable people who are seeking her help, Teal allowed filmmaker Jon Kasbe and his film crew full access to her life and inner circle for three years, and also hired private investigator Molly Monahan to investigate and report on her activities. The result is a beautifully shot and compelling four-episode 2022 documentary in which Teal's words and behaviour speak for themselves. (CW: Verbal abuse, descriptions of sexual assault and physical abuse, discussions of suicide.)
The Deep End is an American four-part documentary series about the life and work of spiritual influencer and author Teal Swan. The docu-series was developed for Freeform by director Jon Kasbe, producer Bits Sola, and executive producers Tom Yellin and Gabrielle Tenenbaum. Jon Kasbe was present during three years and had access to almost every aspect of Teal Swan. The series was announced on April 5, 2022, and premiered on Wednesday, May 18, 2022, with episodes streaming the day after premiere on Hulu.
The docu-series covers Swan's upbringing, her history of chronic physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, her rise to fame, and covers allegations of her being a cult leader. Freeform calls the series, "an arresting and provocative exploration inside the world of one of today's most controversial spiritual teachers and her dedicated followers."
Academics Sandro R. Barros and Jennifer A. Sandlin identify Swan as part of a cohort of "conspiritual life coaches" who fuse conspiracy rhetoric with commercial wellness culture, using five overlapping strategies: body purity, reinforced gender binaries, trauma exploitation, appropriation of Indigenous practices, and commodified spirituality.
"Two compelling investigations reminded us to beware the beguiling words of power-hungry charlatans" -- The Guardian, June 10, 2018.
"Teal Swan: The woman encouraging her followers to visualise death", BBC.com, November 22, 2019.
posted by orange swan on Nov 27, 2025 at 11:53 AM
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I became aware of this documentary and its subject because it was #29 on a list of the 37 best cult documentaries as chosen by Teen Vogue that I am systematically working my through.
The IMDB user reviews of this documentary are a ride, with a number of 1 star reviews claiming that it's all lies and slander against the amazing Teal Swan and a lot of 7-10 star reviews saying that it's meticulously filmed and Teal is a narcissist/psychopath/snake.
I find it hilarious that Teal, who claims to be a psychic and a mind reader, would invite both a film crew and private investigator to document/investigate her with the idea that doing so would vindicate her, and after it turned out the documentary revealed her to be an appalling person say that the film maker who had been filming her day-to-day life for three years had deceived her as to his intentions for the film. In my opinion, Teal is a malignant narcissist, but usually narcissists are more on the ball than to do things like that. They are secretive and fight shy of exposure as they know perfectly well that they are doing wrong -- maybe not in a very nuanced or in-depth way, but in a general way -- and don't want the world to know about their behaviour as they know that will have consequences for them.
From what I saw in the documentary and have read online, I believe Teal is also mentally ill, and has been since she was a small child. It's alarming to think of the effect her so-called therapeutic methods might be having on her millions of followers, many of whom are very vulnerable people. She's encouraging graphic suicidal ideation, nurturing false memories and false accusations of ritual abuse by family members through thoroughly debunked recovered memory techniques, urging people to cut contact with their families, and downplaying the severity of death by suicide by likening it to "hitting the reset button" into a future reincarnated life, and using waterboarding as a trauma treatment.
Shoutout to the private investigator Molly Monahan, whose level-headed competence was such a pleasure to watch.
posted by orange swan at 1:11 PM
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This article is a decent run-down of why Teal's methods are so dangerous.
I listened to a June 2022 episode of the Mormon Stories podcast today, "Growing up with Teal Swan – Diana Hansen Ribera | Ep. 1607". Diana Hansen Ribera met Teal when she was 9, and Teal was 11 or 12, and they spent a lot of time together for some years, with Teal essentially demanding that Diana spend her all of her time with her and do all the activities Teal wanted to do to the point that both sets of their parents saw it as a problem. Diana's parents ultimately decided she would live with her father instead of her mother in order to get her away from Teal.
From what Diana says, Teal's claims that she experienced extreme abuse (i.e., she personally witnessed the murders of seven children, that she was part of a Satanic sex cult from the age of four until she was eighteen, that she was trafficked to ten men a day in a gas station bathroom) basically cannot be true. Diana says she feels terrible for Teal's parents, who in her experience were very decent people and responsible and attentive parents who recognized early on that their daughter had serious issues, and did their best to develop an understanding what was wrong with her and to help her.
From the sounds of things, even as a young girl, Teal was precociously manipulative and controlling, had a terrible temper, believed she was special and unique, tried to aggrandize herself by claiming that she has grandiose abilities and accomplishments, liked to shock people by making up wildly dramatic bullshit about things that happened to her, and took a perverse pleasure in pushing other people onto a self-destructive path.
I don't know how this cult of personality will end, but I suspect the answer is "not well".
posted by orange swan at 8:18 PM
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