What We Can Learn From 'Bad Vegan' (a Netflix docu-series not about veganism, but intricate psychological abuse)

3/29/22

spoiler alert / trigger warning 

the docu-series Bad Vegan is the story of a trendy raw food restaurateur, Sarma Melngailis, and how the man who she ends up marrying distorts her reality & controls her mind so greatly that it leads to the demise of her business & brand, and effectively leaves her $6 mill in debt. 

this is my personal take. I see from a holistic lens & take into account factors of codependency, addiction, past trauma, inner child issues, and attachment. My personal experience as an abuse survivor & my professional work & exposure in the field of addiction & holistic health have informed my opinions. 

the relationship between Sarma & Anthony is a trauma bond. Because of both of their trauma histories & never having dealt with it, they were the perfect “match” in that they fit squarely into eachothers wounds. Anthony was looking for someone to control & exert power over and Sarma was looking to give her power away & be saved.

In comes Anthony, at an acutely vulnerable time when Sarma was caving into the enormous pressures of running her famous NYC restaurant (Pure Food and Wine), being in the public eye, and already being 2 million in debt to buy out the restaurant from her former biz partner. 

Anthony sold her the fantasy of getting her out of the mess & she bought it. 

Thats what she did ‘wrong’- she bought it.

She saw him as her ticket out.

She trusted someone who didn’t earn her trust or show themselves to be worthy of trust.

She trusted him blindly yet had no trust in herself.

She was overwhelmed, understandably so.

And because she wanted to believe so bad, even when the stories weren’t adding up, the brightest red flags were popping up & the shadiest shit was happening & her entire staff was sketched out by this dude named Anthony, she continued to believe in the fantasy, b/c the alternative was too painful for her to face.

"somehow the farther along you get into it,

the more warped ones perspective gets.

and the more you want to believe what he's saying

because the alternative is too painful.

you just end up...sort of trapped." - Sarma Melngailis

She seemed to be stuck in denial, which as most of us can admit, is a very foggy place to be in. I think we can all relate to using denial when we don’t wanna hear something or aren’t ready to see it. it’s a protective mechanism, that shields us from things we think we can’t handle.

She implied in her interviews that she was in over her head with the restaurant and just wanted someone to protect her. Anthony clearly zeroed in on this ‘Cinderella complex’ & he played the part of someone who could save her. 

Her coping style since childhood seemed to be avoidance, as the withdrawn loner-type bookworm they portrayed her as, so it was “on brand” for her to stick her head in the sand & kind of just emotionally numb out. She was good at rolling up her sleeves and working but she seemed out of touch & disconnected with everything else in her life. 

Anthony, described as “charming,” strategically ran a scheme on her: said the things she wanted to hear, groomed her to trust him, promised her castles in the sky (which is how they hook you in - the vision of what *could* be, not the reality of what IS. the vision never actually materializes) and cumulatively drained her of her life force so that she became dependent on him for a sense of self. This is more or less the textbook skillset of highly manipulative/narcissistic/pathological people, which they spend a lifetime honing. 

He was calculated and he was a professional con artist at this point, already having sucked dry an ex-wife prior to meeting Sarma. 

i deeply empathize with Sarma. I see some of myself in her. And I have known many characters like Anthony. This psychological/emotional abuse dynamic is one i wish i didn’t know and it’s why i found this exposé both riveting and disturbing. 

this could have been an addiction documentary if they were to spotlight Anthony’s casino gambling addiction and how he, like a sick ‘addict’ in the depths of self-destruction, would do anything to get his fix - lie, cheat, steal - which he did, to the tune of 6 million dollars, and how Sarma was absolutely his ‘enabler’, as she wired him 10k, 40k, 100k, whenever he demanded, without ever finding out what it was really for & blindly believing his bogus stories. 

who would do such a thing? and jeopardize their entire business, brand, life’s work, life dream, and reputation? 

someone who is trauma- bonded. 

a lot of people are saying - “how could she be so dumb, she went to Wharton biz school, how could she have believed him?”

because succeeding academically, and even in some types of business, has little to do with emotional & relational intelligence. 

because formal education does not equate to wisdom or knowing how to spot a predator. 

because everyone wants love & support and he was painting her a seductive picture of it. 

She is bright & v cerebral but she was also so clearly cut off from her heart, her emotions, and her intuition. Not to mention had a great deal of past trauma that did not get dealt with & of course it shows up here. 

she was under the influence. 

of Anthony. literally. just like a drug, he distorted her version of reality & subsequent judgement & decision-making. 

remember Anthony is using powerful cult-like mind control tactics. Sarma feels powerless & dependent. by definition, this is trauma bonding. it is strong af and challenging to break, even when one is aware - but she wasn’t aware. 

Anthony is addicted to gambling and Sarma is addicted to him, most especially from a nervous system perspective. To the body, these may as well be real drugs in pill form. 

and once he hooked her in & gained her trust, he drip-fed her lies so often they started to feel like truth and/or she is so confused, that she doesn’t know anything anymore, thus becoming dependent on her abuser for a sense of what’s what. she was trapped, just like she said.

the problem with delusion, denial, and brainwashing, is that you don’t know you’re in it when you’re in it. she was deep in the trance & the more she drank his kool-aid, the more of herself she lost. 

i think it’s a grey area whether Sarma should have responsibility in this. She was definitely a victim & i don’t believe she had ill intent like Anthony did, but she was a ‘consenting’ adult in many of the crimes so she would have to own some responsibility. it’s hard to say; I am not the judge nor the jury. but to me it seemed there were many opportunities for her to surrender and get help, and she had plenty of long-time support in her corner - her parents & sister & entire staff, but she seemed to be frozen in denial and could not deal. and again, the intricacies of abusive mind-control are at play plus the sheer lack of awareness from Sarma. She didn’t know what she didn’t know. she was basically sleep-walking.

there are certain things that make someone more susceptible (not at fault, susceptible) to abusers like Anthony. 

The type, which Sarma portrays, is someone with a high degree of empathy, who has great vision & ideals, who feels a strong connection to animals, who believes the best in people & gives the benefit of the doubt, who befriends the downtrodden and underprivileged, and who takes people at their word. 

To be clear, this doesn’t make her someone who deserved abuse. no one deserves abuse. None of these traits are wrong or character flaws and in fact i fit this type, so that’s how I know its what makes one extra susceptible to getting played b/c here we are: idealists who wouldn’t suspect this level of pre-meditated mind-fuckery because remember we believe the best in people and how could anyone ever do that & therefore we don’t believe it, because we can’t fathom it.  (we are not perfect innocent beings, our wounds are just different)

high empathy & compassion is beautiful but without discernment & boundaries, it is dangerous. to be able to have empathy with a boundary is to be able to say “I understand why you may be the way you are, but no, this isn’t ok, i don’t like this ride and i’m getting off now.”

To walk away, most times without closure; to opt-out instead of in when invited to more craziness- this is critically important & something i’ve learned how to do out of necessity. First necessity, then choice.

one of my clearest non-negotiables is if the words aren’t adding up or making sense & the person is consistently trying to bullshit me with stories, i’m out. i do not stick around for the mind fuckery that will inevitably ensue. i don’t allow myself to get carried away w/ peoples words, no matter how good it sounds. 

show me. and show me early on. otherwise i have no reason to trust you. trust is earned. i’m not “guarded”, I’m discerning & wise.

and more than words or actions, if i feel something is off, in my body, then it is. 

my stomach tells me & i listen. because i trust myself. 

Sarma didn’t trust herself. She didn’t know herself.

there are plenty of Anthonys in the world. this being a high-profile case, it’s great seeing him get caught & charged, and therefore improving the likelihood of character reform.

but for the most part, i don’t focus my attention on the Anthonys in my life in a way where I try to fix them, because that’s not where the solution lies. We’re not going to change the Anthonys but we can get wise to their mind games & heal ourselves. We can stay on our side of the fence. Knowledge is power. Healing ourselves is power. 

I also feel empathy for Anthony, but i still hold him accountable. He was probably a victim too at one point. I would make an educated guess based on some of the interviews that his dad trained him how to do this by doing this to him. people don’t just appear like this w/ no cause. he learned how to victimize others from somewhere. that’s the generational trauma piece of this. we are all shaped by our environments - for better and worse. 

however, the wounds & pain we carry are our individual & collective responsibilities. some people take responsibility & break the patterns & become the cyclebreakers, some people don’t and just keep repeating the trauma they endured & traumatize others. i can’t control if people choose to keep traumatizing others but i can protect myself from them. 

i have hope for peace & recovery for Sarma. It’s a lot of pain & grief to walk through, a lot of wreckage to clean up, and it will take considerable time for her to regain her trust in herself & restore her sense of self. but it’s truly the most worthwhile journey. 

If you are struggling with knowing your value & standing up for yourself in relationships due to inner child wounds, consider working with me! Fill out this form to get on a complimentary clarity call.