Obedience vs. Consent: The Cult Psychology Behind Youth With a Mission

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research at William-Branham.org and with me I have my co-host and friend, Jenny McGrath, founder of Endwell Movement and Sematic Experiencing Practitioner. Jenny it's good to be back and to talk about all things y-wam, youth with emission. Last time we were talking I randomly mentioned, as I'm writing down all of these thoughts that I wanted to explore with you, the the effect that the child obedience laws, I'm using the word laws loosely, but these rules that are in place in many of these

cults that demand child obedience, the effect that it has on development and this is a subject that I've wanted to get into. I wasn't sure actually which host that I would go with, but I have been studying the formation of Joel's army and for background to you, I know you probably haven't listened to it, they haven't come out yet at the time of this recording, but as Joel's army was forming, you had a lot of political things that were happening in the world. You had the Hitler Youth Movement, you had the Billy Graham Youth Movement, you had

all of these different things that were forming and it was a sort of a political move rather than a religious move to train the children on the ideology of the nationality. That's really what this became and the Sharon Orphanage, they because of Pentecostalism, Pentecostalism focused on the passage from Joel to and specifically you were, I'll pour out my spirit on all flesh, that was the Pentecostal thing, well when Joel's army began to form and laterane began to form, they focused heavily on a phrase within that passage and your sons and daughters will stream dreams and see visions. So they wanted to

build a youth army that is dreaming dreams and seeing visions and this blew up into this laterane movement, this big thing that happened. All of that could have been good, could have been bad, there were some aspects that were probably good, but as it relates to the children, there were some very, very horrific things happening to their heads and I can say that with some experience because I grew up as a youth in a cult, I know how this works, I know the effects that it's had on me, my family, my friends, and this is a big topic to explore, I'm not

even certain we can do it in one podcast, but thank you for coming. on. Let's talk through it. Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. I think it is such an important topic and already, as you're setting it up, my mind's going to a million different pieces. So yeah, we may have to talk about this for a few times. But one of the things that came to mind is I think of obedience as the antithesis to consent because I see consent as centering agency and choice. And obedience removes that and says no matter what you want, no matter

what you decide, you will comply and you will do this. And in, you know, a typical world that really probably doesn't exist, ideally children by the age of two-ish will learn their favorite word, which is no. And or whatever language they speak, it will be the same idea. And many times, if you've spent any time with others, you may be experienced this where they might even say no, even if it's something they want, because the idea of exercising their agency is actually more exciting and more fulfilling. It's like, wow, I am a sovereign being who can say no. And in these worlds where that

no is not listened to or worse, it's punished. We can learn really, really, really young to actually hide even our no from ourselves. And so we, we may be complying and it's actually more out of a survival response. And so there's this lovely book called From Surviving to Thriving.

And it talks about the traditional fight flight freeze. And then it also adds this category of fawn. And for many folks who've lived in long-term chronic developmental complex trauma, they've needed to fawn and they've needed to acquiesce and they've needed to say yes. So at the end of the day, the end of a year, the end of a decade, that psyche, that body actually has a really hard time distinguishing what they want, what they desire, what they choose, because they've been so used to abdicating their agency to whatever the leader or the voice of God was telling them to do.

There's so much that I want to get into with this. Whenever I've, and I've given this example, I think before, whenever I'm training my children, I let them experience what they're doing good or bad. Sometimes I will let them make a mistake so that they can learn from that mistake.

We as humans learn from our mistakes. And it is so backwards in these groups because a lot of times they will focus on the negative more than they will the positive, the scolding rather than the praise.

And I don't even train a dog like this, I've mentioned this before, you train a dog with a treat. You say, good boy, here's the treat, and the dog will do what you say.

If you try to scold or punish the dog, they never learn, it just never works. The problem is, so many people have been indoctrinated in these movements that whenever you talk about obedience, they think it's a good thing.

If you're a Christian and you're in one of these movements, you have been indoctrinated with every single passage that talks about obedience, but you've never taken the time to understand the culture of growth that is actually embedded in the text.

There are passages that talk about growth through mistakes, and quite honestly, I can't remember the passage somebody listening can put it into the comments, but there is a passage that talks about a good portion of the Old Testament was learning.

People were learning by making mistakes, they were growing, they were falling into idolatry coming back out of it, etc. Whenever I train my children to walk, if you train them to walk by saying no, you will never fall, you're not allowed to fall, they will never walk.

That's just not how it works. You let them walk, you let them fall, you let them experience the fall, they get back up and they walk again. But the problem is in these cults that train with such intense obedience, they're not letting the people fall, but worse than that, the people are literally scared to make a mistake.

They develop this mentality that I can't make a mistake because if I do, I've watched what happens to the other people in the group, they get chastised. Some people get excommunicated if they make a mistake or they're eternally damned.

This culture that is created of obedience to the adults, it is painful, but now take it to the mindset of the children. In the children's mind, they are developing and at ages where they need to be asking questions, they need to learn from their mistakes, their experiences, they feel like they're not allowed to.

The normal progress of development that happens in the minds is completely shut off in these groups. I think so. There's a phrase in the somatic world called hedonic tone. Our hedonic tone is our sense of what we like and what we don't like.

Over the years, I've done a lot of trainings and workshops with former missionaries and people that were in ministry, and I do this exercise with them where I say, I'm just going to list off 20 things.

If you like it, I would love for you to shake your head, yes. If you don't like it, I'd love... you to shake your head no, and if you're not sure or you've never tried it, give a big shrug.

And the most common response I've gotten is, I don't know. I don't know what I like and what I don't like. And there's this phrase called anhodemia, which is, I don't have access to my hedonic tone. I don't have access to what I like and what I don't like, because those developmental cues for learning and not even learning. Like I actually think infants are the best teacher about being a body because they are very clear. Like I want to be warm, I want to be fed, I want to be dry, I want to be held or not. And hopefully they live in a supportive environment where

they can cry, they can coup, they can let us know what they like and what they don't like. But by the age of one, we can learn if certain emotions have an adverse reaction to our primary caregivers. And so if we're reading, wow, if I feel angry and mom gets mad, or if I feel angry and dad gets sad or fill in the blank, then I'm just going to hide those emotions and I'm just going to ignore them. And so a lot of these, if someone is growing up in these high control worlds, it's actually probably a pre-verbal trauma that it's part of the blueprint of how

they've learned to come into the experience of their world. Absolutely, it's traumatic. And some of the more destructive groups, they'll even take it a step further, they have these doctrines where they intentionally want to break the will of the people. And they reverse the roles that I've just described by saying the children, they need to have their will broken so that they can become obedient when they're adult. They can practice having their will broken. In Brannemism, Brannem gave this example of how the perfect shepherd will break the legs of the sheep so that they don't leave the fold. If they keep leaving the fold, which, you know, growing up, I heard this,

and I'm not a sheep herder. I have no idea. But afterward as an adult, and I'm thinking about this, this is terrible, man. This is not how you would heard your sheep by no means. But that was the mentality of the movement, break the will of the people, break the will of the children, and they will stay in the cult. That's essentially the doctrine. It all comes down to obedience, not to God, but it's obedience to the group. And what this does as a dynamic for people, you'll find that people even the conversations are different. As they get together and they're talking and learning what

other people perceive to be sinful or not sinful, some of the, some of the words or phrases might be offensive to one person, and they're taught that these are spirits when they feel offended.

though that hurt my spirit, that must be sinful. I'm going to condemn what they said. So as adults, you see this dynamic happening in the group. Well, I remember this dynamic as a child because I would watch the adults talking and I would be wondering myself, well, what words can I say?

What phrases can I say? And some of the children, because they don't have as strong of willpower, they may actually bottle up their words. They may not actually start talking. So the development of social skills is completely limited in that frame.

So when you're going down that pathway where people are trained to be obedient, trained to question each other, point fingers at each other as to where the demons coming from, often the child starts to think, well, I must have this demon because I'm saying many of the things they can dim.

Which I think is existentially terrifying when you are preaching a doctrine of demonology and saying that children can have it or an ideology of hell. As we talked about last time where the consequences for disobedience may be a spanking or a beating, which is horrible in it of itself, but you also have this sense that disobedience could lead to eternity in hell.

And I grew up pretty much in the shadow of focus on the family. And James Dobson was very big on harping on the first spare the rod spoil the child and believed adamantly in corporal punishment.

And using, I would use the language of child abuse to conform children to the will of the parents. And I think it's also, you know, so there's so many different dangerous connotations to it.

And one is obedient to who? Like who gets to decide what's the right way to move or what's the right way to make a decision? And when you have these hierarchies on these systems where no matter what you're supposed to obey the leader, well, what if the leader doesn't actually have your best interest in mind or, or, you know, who is to say who they are obeying when they're saying they're listening to something.

And I think in a lot of ways that actually also becomes a way of people not taking responsibility for their actions. When I've seen people in the missionary world or the development world, including myself, it was often, I'm not doing this because I want to.

I'm doing this because I am following the will of God. And if I'm just being obedient, then I don't have to bear responsibility for the... arm that I'm causing in these communities where I'm implementing various things and especially systems that are continuing to oppress populations that I'm working with.

And that really, as it relates to youth with emission, that really bothers me because looking back at my own childhood and my own manipulation, as you're coming of age, before you reach a teenager, all of this doesn't really hurt that bad.

You're just learning and you're kind of exploring the world and you, you find your boundaries and your boundaries are very limited. But now when you reach the teenage years, whenever you're becoming basically your developmental skills of how to interact with people, how to survive in the world, take that forward into your late teens early 20s, this is when you're learning how to be an adult, how you should act.

And what happens when you're under this level of obedience training, there's probably a better term for this, but I call it basically developmental damage. You're actually doing damage to the children who are raised under these teachings.

And the effects are very obvious. The children who are under this type of training, you can sense that they have blunted emotional expressions. I've talked to children who had, their family had escaped a cult, they've come into the support groups and I've watched the children and you can see that they're just in this trauma that they don't understand and their emotions, they're afraid to express them.

The family has just escaped, they will evolve and they will become better, but had they stayed in the cult, remain in the cult, that blunted expression sticks with them. That's part of their development.

So you have something that's literally development from trauma that gets embedded into the person's identity and now that is shaping their identity. So as they develop into adults, that trauma that they build all of their world around is now deeply inside of their, in their being.

And it comes out in other expressions, usually anger, one of the things that I've, when I've talked to people who had been outside of the cult, who were watching what was happening within. They would say it was, it was weird because you could say something and they would just suddenly snap, they would be ranger at you and we don't know why.

Why did they do this? I've been asked this question and they often mistake it for, I said something that offended them, I said something wrong or against the group, but it isn't so much that once you have that trauma embedded in your personality, you don't know how to express yourself.

So sometimes the wrong emotions start to come out. I felt this growing up, I know that other people have it, is that something that you experienced? Yeah, yes, and you know, many, many, many years of my life.

people complimented me or praised me for my permigran and everyone was like you're always so happy and you just you must have the light of God in you and internally I was seething but I knew I couldn't express my anger and Peter Levine who founded somatic experiencing has this helpful spectrum that I think about where ideally a system is able to express healthy aggression so if you say something I don't like and I go hey I didn't like that you said that then we can kind of move on and it's okay if a system is not able to express healthy aggression they might start

to experience anger and then I get really pissed and like well why did they say that why can't I say anything back and if a system can't express anger they will express rage and rage can often be the last resort to trying to be heard or trying to express that healthy aggression that couldn't be expressed and I think this also it can also fall along how people are socialized in these worlds where for me as a woman it was not permissible for me to be angry I could cry I could be sad but I had to find other ways to express my anger whereas most of Y-WAM is very very

patriarchal and I think that males in this world have more permission to have those angry outbursts and everyone else has to deal with it and it's not to say women don't in that world but generally speaking I would say that it's it's partly biological and what's happening in our system and it's partly what the external system of the missions organization is saying is permissible for certain bodies so let's talk a little bit about the cult itself what would it benefit a cult to do this to the people one of the things that I have thought through is as I was developing and turning off

my questions suppressing the critical thought I had no idea that this was a cult indoctrinated mechanism I just you know developing I thought this is how people were supposed to be you weren't supposed to question especially question the authority but now as I'm coming out of this I'm starting to understand well that was the intention they do not want you to question the authority and so by starting at an early age when you manipulate the children if they are trained never to question authority then they develop in they will develop their skills as adults to believe that

this is something that we just don't do as an adult and it becomes condemned and I it isolates the problem essentially you have several adults who are also trained in the same manner whenever somebody does start to question all of the adults can pounce on the person who is asking the question So establishing that at an early age makes the group mold to the cult leaders not only as personality but his entire will.

The cult leader can say whatever he wants, the people will do whatever he says, believe whatever he says, and the ideologies that he is creating, the cult group will adapt to that ideology. Again, by shutting off the developmental skills of asking basic questions, people who might be not aligned with the ideology, who may choose a different ideology, they will align to it because that's how they've been trained.

Yeah. There's a quote, something heb, maybe Donald heb, I can't remember, he was a brain scientist and he said what fires together, wires together. And so if you've had a lifetime of your questions, your desires, your curiosities, firing together with corporal punishment or shame or fear of damnation, then you're going to probably develop a trip wire in your own system that's like don't even go there because that is too scary.

And conversely in the trauma world, we have this idea that we call trauma mastery. Our nervous systems don't like to be stuck in a state of fawn or a state of freeze. And so what can happen is that we actually end up chronically ending up in cycles of abuse with abusive people because our nervous system is going well maybe this time, I can just get out, maybe this time will be different, maybe this time.

And so even when I left Wyam, I moved to Seattle for graduate school, surprise, surprise, I ended up at Mark Driscoll's Mars Hill Church because I'm like, well this is familiar. And it took me kind of working out from my nervous system.

Why do I keep finding myself in these places? Even though I like could not stand that man. And I was like, I don't agree with anything he's saying, but this is, he's preaching biblically.

So I have to stay here and I had to learn to try to stay within the confines of the world that I lived. And so I think sometimes it's, it's even when people leave a certain cult or a certain high control religion, they might end up finding themselves in a domestic violence situation and another community of exploitation.

And I want to say that because I think there can be a lot of shame around that of like, why do I keep doing this? Why do I keep getting myself in this situation?

And there's many reasons, but one is that your body is probably trying to figure out how to master this type of a dynamic and trying to... to figure out how to make this time different.

I recently did a podcast with my cousin, Jesse Collins, who's a psychotherapist, and we were discussing the dark places that people go to because of trauma, a cult-related trauma, cult PTSD, these kind of things.

And he had just been a participant in creating a documentary on self-harm where people are hurting themselves and worse. And many of the things that we're talking about here have some overlap. People who are limited in their ability to make decisions who are trained, they must be obedient, they can't decide for themselves what is obedience.

We're dictated what is obedience, basically. And what this does eventually over time, it develops into low self-esteem. You have no self-trust, you have to trust the leadership, you have to trust the group. And with the low self-esteem comes high shame.

If you're thinking, especially for people like me who have an analytical mind, if you're thinking outside the box, where you're thinking outside the group, if you're thinking outside the group, well, that's sinful. And so there's this cascade of events that happens in your head.

And that cascade of events explodes eventually into a mess. So people who have this, they develop this, they develop low self-esteem, but essentially they're developing in their being in their psyche, this dark place that they're trying to conceal.

Some people can live with it and they can overcome. Other people, they can't live with it. And it turns into a very, very, very bad thing. I worry again, when I'm thinking through youth with a mission, that dark inner being that is being formed, in the years that I was starting to feel my most depression, was about the years that you're talking about is the target group for youth with a mission.

Would you say that people in youth with a mission are experiencing any of this? This feels fresh. I can't remember if I've shared this yet or not. A few months ago, my husband and I were passing through Montana and it was community night at Wyam.

And I actually went with him to experience the community night. My husband was not part of that world. It's open to the public. And so I was like, hey, let's go. I'm curious. I'm hoping I can get some closure.

And it was so tragic to me to really see the level of manipulation in the service. And to see throughout the worship music, throughout the sermon, throughout the worship music, at the end, how many people around the room would just like fall to the ground and crumble and be sobbing and...

Of course, this was projection from my own experience, but knowing how much shame I had when my body was falling apart, I was working 17 hours a day and one thing went wrong in my ministry.

And I'd be in a worship service like I'm sorry Lord, I'm not obedient enough to you. I should have fasted more like it was never, ever enough. And we ended up going to a lake nearby and I saw a member from the base come and just pound some beers and then go back to the base.

And I feel like it is often those folks who are, I don't want to say people aren't brilliant, but I think people that are tend to be brilliant or cerebral or think a lot tend to be more tortured in these environments because you have to strain extra hard to try to conform.

I feel like I'm coming up with so many books today, but the book Understanding and Treating Chronic Shame I think is so helpful for understanding because Pat DeYoung talks about how chronic shame develops in a world that is based on performance and your true authentic self cannot be seen because you have to always do what you're supposed to do.

And one of the experiences of shame is annihilation. Like I just, I need to annihilate myself or I feel like I'm being annihilated. And so that can often lead to self harm and other behaviors that are trying to externalize what feels so real.

Like I, nobody gets me because I'm the problem. And it's really hard when that's your whole world to say nobody gets me because the system is the problem. And the system is now actually designed to see people and care for people.

It's designed to be a system of performance. And I feel like it's important, I think to specify and talk about why we are, and I think we're talking about so many of these religious systems that are able to thrive in the US because of the atmosphere that we've been moving through as the nation that we are for hundreds of years, that it can breed these performances based on how we are socialized, based on what communities we're in.

And so if we don't have these true authentic communal experiences, I think it makes us that much more susceptible to end up in communities of pseudo connection. That's like, well, at least if I comply and at least if I follow the rules, I'll have some semblance of connection rather than feeling that sense of annihilation.

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On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.

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On behalf of William-Brannum Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support. Whenever you're trained in this obedience world, you start to place virtue on the obedience, and it basically replaces other virtues.

So if you're Christian and you understand all of the virtues, all of the gifts of the spirit that peace, love, joy, happiness, those are decreased or diminished while the virtue of obedience is increased, and it shapes the way that people think about life itself.

Whenever you're trained like this, I remember after I had left the group, we weren't allowed to listen to most music. I was only allowed to listen to the 1950s style gospel music. And the first time that I heard Bon Jovi, I was like, wow, this is great music.

When I ran up stairs, my son, who is in his teenage years at this time, he was experiencing new music at the same time I was. So we were like sharing, living on a prayer and all of these wonderful songs.

And it's because I was exploring as an adult, things that other children explore as a child. Do I like this music? Do I not? As a child, I was afraid. I was afraid to know, well, what if I do like it?

What if the devil is in that music? I'm certain that there are listeners who are in the cult who say, yes, the devil is in that music. But you don't get to make that choice is what I'm driving at.

You aren't allowed to make the choice. And so what happens is, as you mature and you're not allowed to make your choices, well, you really haven't made any of your decisions and you don't even know if you agree with the group.

So you're basically there just simply because you're there. That's the interesting part of this. You're not there because you want to. You're not there because you even believe it. You haven't even come to the decision of what it is that you believe because you're not allowed to.

Definitely. I know I've said this quote already on here, but I tend to think in quotes and angelic and says, if someone cannot say no, any yes that's given is meaningless. And if you have someone that their entire life, they were never free to give a no.

As you're saying, you know, they're not gonna really know what their yes is. And that was really, really, really, and probably still is really, really, really confusing for family members of mine that still abide by these more fundamentalist views of Christianity, where when I started to leave and say, this doesn't feel good to me, this doesn't feel right, they're like, but you've always been so happy.

And it just, it could not make sense because I had honestly been really, really good at performing my role as a good Christian woman. And as soon as I started to learn I have a body that has opinions and would literally probably not make it if I kept going, the rate I was going, that caused a lot of disruption because I think it's really hard to grow like an emotional capacity to feel and to tolerate emotions when you've never had permission to feel them.

Absolutely. And so building upon that, whenever you are trained to be obedient and trained at obedience as a virtue, as you become an adult and you start to interact with other adults, if they are adults in the group, everything is a cohesive, we do not question, we must be obedient, it's that weird mindset.

But now, take that into a church setting, you're in a church, you're wanting to spread the gospel to the lost and dying world. Well, what happens when somebody from outside who's never been indoctrinated in this way, who doesn't have the obedience training, they come in and they join the group, what's interesting is watching it play out because I have seen this, somebody comes in, they get instantly their love bombed, they're excited, they're happy, they see all the shiny happy people and the moment that they say something that is thinking outside of the cult's box, they start to see all of the vicious attacks at them

and then they leave. I've watched this happen and the quote that was used by the minister at the platform is they went out of us because they were not, they went out from us because they were not of us and simply saying that they're just not, they're not of the same mindset.

But how can you bring somebody to that mindset if they weren't trained and manipulated from a child? So what happened in the Brannemism cult, basically your growth came from within the cult. You had parents who had offspring and those offspring became cult members, the cult grew internally, was that the same, when you're thinking youth, the mission. I'm looking at all of the different networks that is connected to you. And while you couldn't say it was growing internally from why way I'm itself, I wouldn't think.

But because they're in the new Apostolic Reformation, this network of apostolic churches, I would think that to some extent it is growing internally just from the network. Would you say that's the case? Sure. I, you know, I think I don't know how much pressure there is for leaders to have children or not. But it sure seems like it's very common for folks to get married and have multiple children and that that is celebrated. And as I mentioned, there's what's called a crossroads DTS, which it brings in parents who have children. And usually there are subtle, not so

subtle messages that those families should join Y-Wam. And, you know, I, I led a crossroads discipleship training school to Uganda and had multiple families with children on the trip, like young, young, young children. And we were going out to villages in Uganda and having these experiences that again feel and are so out of the norm that I think once families do this, it becomes really, really hard to go back to normal. And when those children who are coming in from other worlds are being introduced to certain types of indoctrination, you know, Isoxids have a lot of tantrums and normal things that children have. But it

was this emphasis on like we just need to give them time to be able to kind of a comply. And I didn't personally witness like corporal punishment or I have no doubt that probably exists, but I can't say for sure. But it was more of this kind of subtle manipulation of

hive mind. And like we all just need to keep moving in this direction. And if you don't fit in this life's going to be really difficult for you around here. And so I think that there became this way of children becoming more docile and more obedient over time of just a few months.

And I think that's also partly why youth with a mission targets 17, 18, 19 year olds. You know, it's not quite the same as children. And yet we don't have fully formed frontal cortexes at this age. We often haven't had a lot of our own independent experiences. And so there's this sense of just like come in here. We'll just take you in.

And then it's like Hotel California, like, okay, now I just can't leave, I guess, apparently. And I don't know that I realized that. And, you know, I had a passion for Uganda, which is a whole other story because of this documentary style film, Invisible Children, that became huge in the early 2000s among white Christian audiences.

And it was like, it was like a pandemic. Every young white woman came down with a heart for Uganda. Like, it was the flu, basically. And so that's a lot of what I study is how our socialization led to that in the first place.

But I say that because I knew that Uganda is where I wanted to go. And before I graduated high school, I went to a missions event with my mom and my church. And it was all of these different missions organizations.

And there was one booth with a man from Wyam. And he was like, hey, we're going to China this summer. And I was like, no, that's okay. I'm called to Uganda, that's where I'm going to go.

And something happened in that meeting that by the end, my mom and I were both like, we're going to China this summer. And it became this, like, kind of tendril thing, where it was like, well, now that you're coming to China, you should start coming to our community nights.

And now that you're coming to our community nights, you should do your discipleship training school. And then you should join staff. And then as soon as I got back from my discipleship training school, I was asked, do you want to take a team to Uganda?

And I was like, oh my gosh, this is what I've always wanted. And so it was actually using those desires complex as they were. And it was like these little carrots. And I don't know how much of that was thought out in advance, how much of that unfolded.

But I was really in a particular moment where I was susceptible to just following, okay, you're a Christian male authority. I'll probably do what you think I should do, especially if it's an alignment with this heart, I feel, that I have for Uganda.

And so that was my experience. I have to wonder how many of people's desires that didn't grow up in YWAM. Because of new apostolic reformation and the Seven Mountains mandate, YWAM has media schools.

It has journalism schools. It has dance schools. It has outside rock climbing schools. You think about a thing I can probably bet you that there is a YWAM school designed for it. Whether that's a discipleship training school or a secondary school.

And so it becomes such a way of drawing in people who might not have an opportunity to say, hey, I want to make documentaries. Wow, there's a YWAM school to make documentaries. And it's just, it never ceases to amaze me how broad the tendrils are.

That's pretty amazing. And interestingly, we didn't compare notes or anything before this podcast, but that's really where I was headed with this. The, you described it like the carrot on the stick of leading you into what you want to be.

When you're in this mindset, when you're raised and this obedience culture, often the child will develop into an adult and choose a pathway in life that they would have not normally chosen. I have seen this time and time again.

I myself, it's interesting, I can't remember what the test was called in high school, but you took this test basically that would tell you, what is your skill set, what you should, what you should become.

My mindset in the cult, because of the cult way in which it viewed education, et cetera, I was to operate heavy equipment, believe it or not. And that was my, that was my, was an aptitude test or something like this.

Anyway, as I matured and became an adult, I actually went down those pathways. I have done roofing, I've done plumbing, I've done all kinds of constructive work, but mentally my mind was just so numbed because that doing that type of labor, it wasn't suiting for me, it wasn't what I was suited for.

So as I become an adult, I started to break away, but it was difficult, especially because of the education thing and in the brannemism, education was frowned upon, especially higher education. When I married, my wife was not, their family was apparently not aware that education was a thing.

So she convinced me I did start going to college and that's how I became a, got into the software career, higher level consulting, executive level consulting. But where I ended up with so far different from what I would have become based on my aptitude, and it's the carrot on the stick thing, we give you these pieces and then you follow it.

And so the build up that I'm heading to is the pyramid structure that is created. And if you've been indoctrinated in one of these movements, everything that I say is going to just go right over your head because you don't understand, I did not understand until after I broke free and I started, I'm raising my children without the cult mindset.

When I'm raising my children after leaving the cult, my children are my equal. They, I train them as though they are, they're a miniature adult, they're my equal, they just don't have the same knowledge that I do.

I have to give them this knowledge. So in the hierarchy that exists in my house, it is everybody's equal, but you might need a little bit of help learning. In the hierarchies that is created in this cult mindset, it is a, it's a pyramid, the cult leaders at the top.

Up, all the way down to the father, then the mother, which is interesting, the mother is lower, then the child. And when you think of this hierarchy, you can never traverse up it. And there gets to be some nuances of this.

If you're a female child, now you're slightly lower in some cases. So with this pyramid scheme, the cared on the stick doesn't even work because there are places you can't even go in your hierarchy.

And think of the development structures that are broken by this. It is a development mass. I look back and I'm so glad that I was able to escape so that my younger two children experience equality, my oldest child, unfortunately, he was like age seven when we laughed or maybe a little bit older than that.

So he experienced both sides of it, which was also interesting. I look at all of the children who are young adults who are in youth with a mission. And I think of that cared on the stick.

What happens when they leave it? So you escape this. What happened to you after you escaped? Did you feel limited by this? I had a very, very particular experience, which is not the norm.

So I, and before I get there, I'd love to just say I feel like that is that hierarchy and that pyramid is so important and it's one of the things that I think is important for engaging whiteness and white privilege because I grew up as a dancer and a performer.

You might notice I like talking. And so in one world, I actually probably would have become a pastor. It's probably a very good thing I did not, but I knew I couldn't because I was a woman.

And so the next best thing was to be a missionary. And the church, the missions organization had no problem with me going into places that were full of black and brown bodies and preaching, but I would never have that same level of privilege in that pyramid and that hierarchy as I did in the United States.

And I think that that, I know that that was a conscious decision for me in understanding my place. And that pyramid is that I'm not as high as white men, but in that sort of caste system.

I am still above men and women of color, so I can go export being a pastor and using those skills that I have that I love in a way that's still condonable in this world.

So I'm embarrassing myself a little bit talking about the developmental problems of having children, especially one who I experience both. But now I'm going to get a little bit more personal because this is something that I struggle with still.

I have as I'm going through. De-programming myself for the past several years, I try to rewire my brain for things that were wired incorrectly. But there are some things that are more difficult than others.

And the ones that are the most difficult were the ones that were trained in my being from a youth. Again, going back to youth with a mission, this scares me tremendously. Whenever you are under this type of obedience training in this environment, this cult environment, once you become an adult, there is a chronic guilt for any normal mistakes that you make.

And so people who are indoctrinated like this, they'll have a conversation with a friend or a guest who's over, they will actually replay that conversation in their head four days after the guest is left.

I've done this, and then just kick yourself days on end because you might have said something that might have offended them. And I'm using the word might delicately because I don't even know in some cases that I did offend them.

And often if it ever comes up in conversation, they're like, well, I didn't think anything of it. It was just a normal conversation. So to somebody who wasn't indoctrinated like this, they don't understand what you're going through.

But to the people who's in the obedience training that these groups have, you struggle. You struggle with normal things that other people just take for granted. Two people can have a conversation. Another example of this is differences of opinion.

If you have a difference of opinion because of the obedience training, you're not really allowed to have a difference of opinion. When you do have a difference, that difference is sometimes thought of as sinful.

So people are scared to have differences of opinion. They've been trained to be obedient. Now take somebody who was never in this and you get into a healthy conversation. You can have what's called a healthy argument over opinion.

But to the cult member who's been indoctrinated, there is no such thing as a healthy argument. There is only an argument. So this is something that again, there's many things I have in my notes that I want to talk to you about youth with a mission.

But this one pains me because it affects every aspect of my life after having left. Yeah, I think again, I had a very unique experience in leaving. My body was shutting down. I had boils all over for months that wouldn't go away.

My immune system just was not working. I went to the dentist and had like seven cavities. I had chunks of hair falling out in the shower. I was unwell and still kept trucking along.

And so I went with YWAM to the YWAM North American leadership conference. friends. This was back in 2011, 2010, in North Carolina. And there was a man there speaking named Dan Allendor, who founded the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology. And he was talking about longevity and serving professions. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is what I need to talk to him about this. And so I went up to him. And I was like, can you tell me what I need to know about Vicarious trauma? And that was my introduction to the Seattle

School. And I actually ended up getting accepted as a life experience equivalent to a bachelor's degree. I never went to college, but I was able to go to the Seattle School. And the idea was that I would be in Seattle for three years. And then I would move back to Uganda. And I was just learning how to be a missionary sustainably. And I was given a lot of leeway that a lot of people in Y-Wam aren't for whatever reason that is, whether I just took it or they knew like I was going to do it anyways. And then even when I was in Seattle, I would

go back to Uganda during the summers. And through that time became more and more, I didn't have ease going back into Uganda anymore. And so it was right when I graduated that I left staff with Y-Wam. And so I was very fortunate. I had a master's in counseling psychology. And I love my clients, but I never actually intended to be a therapist. I always say I'm like a reluctant therapist still. Like I'm still always like, how can I figure out how to do dance or maybe I don't do that as a career because it would probably ruin it. And so I had a very fortunate

experience. But many, many, many people joined Y-Wam at 17, 18, 19 have no college experience are in it for decades. Leave with no savings. Leave with no formal education, even though they've been working for free for this organization for years, that's really hard to translate to a higherable resume when you're like, I swear, I was actually like running IT for this base of 300 staff, you know. And so yeah. And so I think that in itself becomes a trap for people to leave. And there's just so many hurdles. And then what you're speaking to, what I'm hearing is like even when

we last, the organizations were still in us. And it takes a lot of time to deprogram and move through. I think the rest of my life, I'll be like, oh yeah, that's part of that indoctrination cropping up. Or oh yeah, that's that. Or some things I didn't even realize until I would just be telling my husband stories I thought were fun.

be, and he'd be like, what? You did what? And you experienced what? And I'm like, wait, that's not just funny, or no, I'm like, oh, he's like, no, that's not okay. And I'm sure there's many more of those that I don't even know yet.

I have a lot of those. You know, when you've gone through these experiences, you only can talk about it with other people who have gone through the same. Because people who have never experienced it, they're think, this is the craziest thing I've ever heard.

And you're thinking everything is normal, which is, again, it's related to everything we're talking about, the obedience training, you're trained to be obedient to something that really is not normal in the first place.

So your whole world is not normal. And I have, like I said, there are things that I struggle with, what I have learned to do, and I'm taking notes of all of the many things that I want to discuss with you in the future.

One of the things is tools for reprogramming, because one of the things that I have learned to do, and it's very helpful to other people who are listening if you're struggling with this, you're overwhelmed with this massive amount of things that are wrong.

Everything, when you leave, you suddenly realize that my entire world view, my faith, my religion, my belief set, my actions, how I train my children, I could name off 100 different things, everything is wrong, and you become instantly overwhelmed.

How do you tackle this? And I can't remember the book, but I was reading a book of unrelated, just in research, I was researching something to do with the mind, and it was talking about when you feel overwhelmed like this, you focus on just one thing, take that one thing and rewire it into a way that's helpful.

And what I learned to do over time was I started with the traumatic things, things that were just making me come unglued, I would take a memory that is painful, and then I would try to associate that memory with something that wasn't painful.

Was there anything that I could think of that happened in this experience that wasn't painful? Sadly, there are some experiences that there was nothing. I can't really rewire those, but I focus on the ones that I can and then move to the next one and to the next one.

And the sad part about this is, and again, one of the main reasons, really I was excited to get you for youth with the mission is because every single child and young adult that I see in this, the pains that I have and the lifetime of rewiring that I have, I'm looking at this and I'm seeing every single person is subject to the same problem.

This scares me and it's something that deep inside of me, I don't want this to happen. I don't know enough about it yet to know how bad this is, how if what I'm saying is even applicable to the entire group, but I do know that from the...

limited number of people that I have spoken with from youth with a mission, it is at least applicable within some people that I've talked to, so I know that the problem does exist. So thank you so much. I'm taking notes and my notes are growing quickly, so we've got a lot more to talk about.

I look forward to it. Thank you so much. Well if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-Brandom.org and inwellmovement.com. From more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponize Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle and Audible.