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Episode 84 - sean faingold
84. From Cult to Courage: Breaking Free and Redefining Masculinity with Sean Faingold
Episodes Release: Monday 24th & Wednesday 26th November 2025
What happens when the love you receive as a child comes with conditions? When the world you're born into demands absolute obedience, and questioning means losing everything?
Sean Faingold's story begins in a place most of us can barely imagine—born into the Jehovah's Witnesses, a world where conditional love shaped his earliest understanding of himself, where silence was safety, and where leaving meant losing everyone you'd ever known.
But Sean's journey isn't just about escape. It's about what comes after—the harder, messier work of rebuilding yourself when everything you were taught to believe turns out to be a lie.
Growing up in a cult doesn't just shape your beliefs—it shapes your entire sense of self. Sean learned early that love wasn't freely given; it was earned through obedience, conformity, and silence. The moment of realisation came in an auditorium, surrounded by thousands of people passively listening to authoritative voices, nobody questioning, nobody challenging. That's when he finally saw it: we were in a cult.
Breaking free physically was only the beginning. The real battle came in the aftermath—the addiction that filled the void left by years of suppression, the relationships that crumbled under the weight of unhealed trauma, and the painstaking work of discovering who he truly was beneath layers of conditioning.
Sean doesn't shy away from the darkness. He speaks openly about his struggles with porn addiction—not as a moral failing, but as a coping mechanism for emotions he'd never been taught to process. "Porn wasn't the real problem," he explains. It was the feelings he couldn't face alone, the stress and pain he had no healthy way to release.
His journey through addiction and recovery revealed a profound truth: emotional awareness isn't optional—it's essential for survival and genuine connection. Learning to recognise triggers, to sit with uncomfortable feelings, to understand that healing starts with feeling everything—this became Sean's path forward.
Today, Sean Faingold is a fierce advocate for emotional awareness and a powerful voice challenging toxic masculinity. His work creating safe spaces for men to express their emotions is transforming lives, one vulnerable conversation at a time.
He knows what it's like to feel trapped, to self-destruct, to wonder if healing is even possible. And he's living proof that it is.
Sean's story reminds us that true strength isn't about suppressing emotions or "toughening up"—it's about having the courage to feel them. It's about unlearning toxic beliefs, rebuilding from rock bottom, and finding your voice when vulnerability has always been punished.
Breaking free isn't just about leaving a place—it's about finding the courage to become who you were always meant to be. Sean's ongoing journey of self-discovery, his commitment to questioning societal norms, and his radical honesty about the messy, non-linear path of healing offer hope to anyone who's ever felt trapped by expectations or struggled with conditional love.
This is a story of resilience, courage, and the transformative power of emotional awareness. Sean Faingold's journey from cult to courage proves that true strength lies not in having all the answers, but in being brave enough to ask the questions.
This is what leading your own way looks like. Raw. Real. Unfiltered. And absolutely worth it.
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