How to Deal When the Shit Gets Real Podcast · Rietta Boksha

Tina Djuretic: Cult Life and Narcissists

·38 min

Marietta opens by asking Tina how she gets through things when life gets hard, and Tina answers with the kind of honesty that sets the tone right away. She says it depends on what has been thrown at her. Sometimes it is wine, sometimes meditation, sometimes yoga. Tina says she is from Vancouver. The talk then moves into her childhood. She says she was about 10 when her parents joined a fanatical Christian church. It was not built on love. It was built on fear. She describes how the rules created separation and isolation. She says they were not supposed to spend time with people outside the church, and that even within Christianity there were degrees and divisions. The conversation stays rooted in how controlling that world felt day to day. Tina then shifts to her adult relationships. She jokes that some of her early ways of handling pain were not going to work. The conversation names trauma bonding and love bonding as ways people can keep repeating what hurts them. She says she dated three major partners and all of them were narcissists. She sees now that she kept circling the same pattern, and only understood it after the third breakup. Marietta points out that there was movement, even if it did not make the pain lighter. Tina agrees that growth was not the same as healing. She says she was still drawn to narcissists because she was still broken in that way. The third relationship finally pushed her to a breaking point. She says she was done and could not picture doing it again. She describes the partner as bipolar and says she did not see it coming. For six months, she had felt on edge and knew something was wrong. She made a list of what was bothering her. Seeing the pattern on paper hit her hard. She realized she was describing her own mother, who was bipolar. That moment brought her to her knees. She says that in hindsight she could see it coming, even though she missed it at the time. The closing section shifts from story to advice. Tina asks listeners to notice when they are walking on eggshells. She urges them to recognize when they are in a toxic relationship. She tells them to find the strength to leave. She reminds them that support exists, but the decision has to be made by the person living it. The episode ends on self-love, survival, and the plain truth that things can get better after leaving.

As heard by us

A blunt look at how fear and bad patterns can feel normal until they do not.

Tina looks back on a fear-driven childhood and the adult relationships that kept echoing the same hurt. The episode is strongest in the way it treats control, denial, and the slow moment when a written list makes it harder to keep explaining things away.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want a straight talk about cult-like control, repeated relationship patterns, and what it can take to leave.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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