Overcoming: Tools For Healing From Spiritual Abuse

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brannum Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host John Collins, the author and founder of William Brannum Historical Research at William-Brannum.org and with me I have Dr.

Jesse Collins psychotherapist coming to us from Trinity, Florida. And together we're discussing the impact of spiritual abuse, how to process it, and moving on to a more fulfilling life. Jesse it's good to have you on today. I've been looking forward to doing this for quite some time now and there's so many people that have been impacted by not only the religious group that I came out of and you came out of but in general the broader the broader scope of people impacted by this movement and its affiliates is widespread and so many people have sent

questions asking us what where do I go next? What do I do next? And I thought it would be good to have you on the show and start you know talking through how do we move on from all of this? Well thank you for having me on John. It's a pleasure to be here.

And there's a lot of a lot of paths to recovery and each person can find their own individual path. Just a little bit of background I was actually raised in the Brown Tabernacle. And my my father Clyde Collins was a deacon there and my uncle Willard was a pastor there for many many years and I remained part of that organization until I left home at 18 and about 20 I joined the military US Army and decided to leave that organization for a lot of reasons that we could touch on but I unfortunately have lost friends to this and I've

talked to many people about recovering from having been indoctrinated and basically brainwashed by different organizations not just this one and I'm happy to report that you can escape. these organizations, you can recover to a life of health, a life of hope, a life of beauty, the life you wanted and you dreamed of having. It is entirely possible, although sometimes it may seem like a distant dream. I assure your listeners, the listeners hear today that they can find peace and joy and happiness outside of these organizations after you mentioned brainwashing and we've recently had an event that I have to mention

on the show, but several people have committed mass suicide recently in Kenya who were a part of the same message set that we were in. They were in a basically a splinter group of this. It appears from the resource materials that the pastor was using. They were William Brannum sermons, but obviously he was radicalized and the people committed mass suicide is a very tragic event, but could you talk a little bit more about the brainwashing and the impact that it has on a person, not just the people who are the rank and file members of whatever sector they're in,

but even in respect to the minister who's presenting God's information to the people as he claims and the impact that the radicalization has on him as part of the group think or the mind control.

John, cultism is all about control. Control of the members, daily behaviors, control of how they dress, in this case, control even what they eat to the point of intentional death.

Others, the famous Jones town massacre, was control of them to get them to drink on command. They went through that drill many times with regular Kool-Aid before they went through the drill with arsenic-laced Kool-Aid and killed over 900 people in that case.

The bottom line is it's about control, even if it's not controlled to death.

Clearly in the Brannum tabernacle and most of the tabernacle-oriented churches, it's not about control to death. It's about control, period, and control of money, control of the believers' lives, what decisions they make, how they dress, how they don't dress, and to some extent what they do eat or don't eat. But mainly it's about control over there.

money and their behavior. That way the church or organization, whatever the organization is, uses God as the ultimate authority because it's easy to argue about legislative priorities and whether or not Congress or the state or the local policies are proper or not proper.

But when you start talking about God said Acts, well, who can argue with that? That's an ultimate authority and so you must obey because God said to do it so there's no arguing over legislative priority or somebody thought this or that. This is used by many religious organizations as ultimate authority to justify their control stance over their membership, certainly not just in this organization, but many organizations use that as ultimate authority to basically bludgeon the minds of the followers and to submission.

And for our listeners, a lot of people won't realize this, but Jesse and I were estranged for years. I knew who Jesse was. He was part of my family, but in the cult that we escaped, there's a deep level of shunning and it's very strange because whenever you think about shunning, you often think about the way the omnis do it where there is no permission of seeing the person. But in these types of cults that we came out of, there are varying levels of shunning. Sometimes it's emotional shunning or other times it's just cutting people

off from getting close to the family, that type of shunning. For Jesse and I, I think we saw each other at a couple of family events, but not many. But as Jesse mentioned, he grew up in the Brannum Tabernacle, which I came out of. And I'm curious, Jesse, I know that I'm looking back at my time there. I see clear evidence of manipulation that is used for not only indoctrination, but mind control techniques. I see them clearly. And I'm curious what your perspective is on how to establish the mind control. What are some of the things that you remembered as a child or

teenager is the techniques that they used? Well, the shunning or blocking of others who aren't particularly in the organizational dominance is done to limit It's outside influence. It's very similar to domestic violence. Often a domestic violence or abuser will cut the victim away from their family and other friends that support that victim emotionally so that they can establish psychological dominance over the victim.

I'm the only one that cares about you. No one else cares about you. You're lucky I love you because no one else would love you and that they can continue the abuse. In this case, the church cuts out other people cut me off from active believers

because they didn't want me to influence them and say, wait a minute, that it doesn't stand up to critical thinking because one of the things I use to control because often the organization and it was also the case here in the bread of Tabernacle that the positions of the church did not stand up to critical thinking.

And so the church rolls over those objections by simply saying you have to have faith, you simply have to believe rather than explain in a critically thought out logical way why their position is what it is.

And that's how they get people to comply are simply saying brother or sister, you must just have faith and take everything on faith rather than on reasoned logic. So certainly there is a faith component to being a Christian, no question about it, but Christianity itself is not devoid of logic in fact it stands up well in the face of logic as a good example is St. Thomas Aquinas apology of the existence of God where he uses excellent critical thinking and logic to explain the existence of God.

So if we think about the organization's power over us, the organization's power over us, it's given through kind of a side influence rather than logic, it's given through, well if you're a good person you're going to do this the label you as they went from us because they weren't of us, meaning the person who's outside is not going to heaven but we the people inside are.

Therefore if you want to continue going to heaven you will continue to stay in this group because if you leave the group you're not going to have it and who wants to go to hell, right?

Nobody. So there's just another. example of them trying to limit exposures to outsiders so that they can limit exposure to logical thought. That's what helped me. I went to going to a military-based training in the Army.

I began to meet a lot of really good people who are standing human beings and from all over the country and I began to critically analyze all these people in accordance to the church that I was raised in that they were going to hell and I'm like, these are really good people, they're amazing people and they're serving the country and it doesn't make sense that they're going to hell simply because they never heard of this church.

My critical thinking kicked in and I began to question some basic tenets of what I have been told and led me to step further and further away so that I ultimately left the message and realized that I had to answer to my own logical patterns because pretty much everything else works on logic.

So why didn't my religion work on logic? So ultimately they're trying to limit the parishioners exposure to other logical thought to continue to control the parishioners. I'm so glad that John and I were able to reconnect.

You know, suppression of critical thought is key to keeping people in this type of thing and I think to some extent you and I had it fairly easy, you through the military and being exposed to quote unquote normal people and I was immediately shunned simply by asking a question to the minister, my grandfather, and instantly cut off and like you said, they went out from us because they were not obvious as the phrase they used but no, the minister usually shuns anybody who's asking a question because the question is powerful and people wake up as soon as they

realize there's a question they start scratching their heads thinking, wait a minute, that is a really good question so the ministers have to stop this to contain it but you know in reality that made it very easy for me because I was forced into this world that I did not know existed.

All I knew was the cult world and suddenly I'm realizing there's this whole world of people that like you said are really, really good people and I can't fault them for not hearing the quote unquote profit or this church when I mean who's heard of this thing? It's a little time group now. I never will forget my wife and I went out to dinner after church one Sunday and we're sitting watching all of these other people from other churches come into the restaurant and we both looked each other at the same time had the same exact thought. The church of God, the people of God, have increased

by millions of people in our circle now because these are really good people. So in a way, I think it was very, very much easier for me to make that transition because I was forced into it. What would you say to people who are still in it, realize that it's not right, realize that they need to make a transition, but they're, for lack of a better way to say it, they're trapped into this world that has these invisible barriers that they can't really break through? Well, several, several things they can do if, if they have, and

every, we have religious freedom here in the country, right? If somebody wants to remain in the organization, that's, that's the right under the Constitution to believe as they think they should believe. I mean, said that, if someone is questioning whatever organization they're in or belief set or theology that they're under, I encourage them to go start looking at the facts. Go dig, as you have done, John, dig through the real histories, dig through the theologies and countertheologies, and begin to find the answers for themselves, rather than let somebody else tell them what's true, find the truth, begin a

journey of self-exploration because your gut instincts are your friend. And when they tell you something's wrong here, that's probably correct, and you should listen to that. So begin to educate yourself, talk to other people, talk to people who have other belief sets so that you can use many points of reference for coming to your conclusion rather than only the one point of reference, which is the organization you're with. There's, there's an incredible mountain of theological beliefs that's out here, and for many denominations and non-denominations and Catholic and Methodist and Presbyterian and just everything. Finding the right journey for a given person is a very

thing between them and and their spiritual world as as they see it. And so number one I think is go about educating yourself about your concerns, whatever they are. You're a great example of that John. In fact, you've probably done a better job of educating yourself about what was going on anybody I've never known actually. I simply for me it was a much shorter journey in that I began to look around and realize that none of that made sense. So I've just simply separated myself from it and decided that I wasn't going to be part of it because it simply

didn't make sense to me. And I really appreciate the time and effort that you put in John to help educate others as well as me about how to find a better path forward for all of us.

You're not you're not preachy about it. You're not telling people what they must do or must not. You're just talking about the facts and and using critical thinking and that is ultimately mind-freeing and body-freeing to people that have been under the clutches of a controlling organization or whatever organization that was. You know there's so many different faith systems out there and one of the things that I decided early on is that people who are convinced against their will are of the same opinion still. So because I had whatever belief set that I had at the time

I did not want to impose it on upon people who were leaving. Really that's a journey they have to take for themselves and they have to choose and decide. So instead I dove deeper into studying why? Why are there baptists and Methodists and Catholics and all of these different varying groups?

Why do they exist and what did they believe? And to the people who are in the support groups or that I'm working with privately. I usually tell them when they ask me what church should I go to try all of them. Don't just pick one. Go to one. Find you know go go with an open mind. See what you like. See what you agree with. See what you disagree with. Go to the next because we were manipulated to believe a very black and white world. There was either right and there was wrong and there was nothing in between but when you get out of that programmed mindset you realize

that there's this whole world of grace and we were just mentally conditioned to pretend that the grays do not exist. So, whenever people are working with me and they start talking about attending some new church and they don't like it, they don't agree with everything that Pastor says, well, I will immediately say, I don't agree with everything that they say either, but learn what you agree with and learn more specifically why do you agree or disagree with it.

Do you agree or disagree because that was your training in the cult growing up? What is the foundation for your reasoning? And I think that people who have this type of experience, it's good to just explore and learn who you are, learn how you can establish yourself once you move on.

So what do you recommend for people who have tried to establish themselves but are uncomfortable in every single path that they've chosen? There's this, as you're aware, when you first come out of this thing, it feels very difficult to try to adapt.

What do you recommend for people who are struggling to adapt to the non-cult world and what do you recommend for them to make that initial adjustment once they have escaped? The organization, in this case, spoken word, is very oriented towards judgmental approaches and framing things in judgmental ways.

And so I would encourage somebody who is stepping out of that and they're trying to find their own path is to drop the judgments. Now, obviously, we have to exercise good judgment, which is different than being judgmental.

Good judgment means let's not walk down the middle of the street. We might get hit by a car, so we're not going to exercise good judgment and not get hit by a car. We're going to exercise good judgment and not be drinking and driving and getting DUIs and it's smashing into people, right?

But being judgmental is making judgments about other people's lives on a religious basis, whether they're old-hat person that's going to hell for sure. Really? Do you know that? Who said that? Is it your job to be judging other someone that's going to hell or not?

There's only one judge, right? And for spursal matters, and it's not us, okay? That's Jesus' job. So let him go ahead and do his job and you go ahead and try to find people of good will, right?

People that... have good intent, people you can trust, people who have your best interest in heart, and by surrounding yourself with people that care about you and believe in treating other people well, then the path forward will become obvious because people of like mind tend to fall together. In my case, I completely agree with you, John, about, I don't think anybody's going to agree with everything, any organizations, everyone's going to say, whatever that denomination and non-denomination is, the truth is, we just, we don't agree with our own spouse on many topics with them for a life. So, I, the answer for me was, I didn't go anywhere

for many years, religiously, and then I, I realized, well, I do need God in my life and I need relationship with God, and, but I didn't want anything to do with any memory of the tabernacle, as some may know, or some may not know, my brother Tim had committed suicide when he was 16 while he was in the message, and that really was a heavy contributor to me wanting to have nothing to do with that organization. And I, I, I remembered that the, the preaching was loud and long that the Catholic Church was the anti-Christ, and so I learned

to be as far from the brown tabernacles I could. So, searching, I did attend other churches, but ultimately, the Catholic Church was where I wound up at because nothing there reminded me of the brown tabernacle. Not the priest's clothes, not the, not the adornments in the church, nothing was remotely similar to the brown tabernacle. So, and I felt as, you know, with you John, there's a lot of stuff that the Catholic Church does. I don't prove, I don't agree with the current folks making some horrible decisions, but I believe that as you kind of implied earlier,

the body of believers coming from different organizations is who actually makes up

people that are believers, Christian's, right? People who are living Christ's like a lot of organizations make, make decisions. We don't agree with for financial reasons or political reasons, but the body of believers is the actual church in my humble opinion. And so,

people that attend these different institutions who are trying to live and their best effort, a Christ-like life, are the people who, I think, Jesus invested it in, and that's why he came for us to help people believe in him and live a Christ-like Christian.

That's what it means, a Christ-like life. At the end of the day, finding what's right for you is going to take some effort, and it's going to take some time, so I would encourage you to be patient.

In your search, don't think you have to find something by XYZ, be kind to yourself, okay? There's several tools that people can use, psychological tools, to improve their quality of life as they go forward, okay?

One of the things that, one of the tools that people can use to improve their quality of life while they're on their journey, I've got several here, so we can just hit on them as we go through, but within the spoken word, random, tabernacle thing, and this is, again, common across other cults.

People are trained to talk very harshly and mean to themselves inside of their head. They kind of train people to take only condemnatory voice towards themselves inside of their head as part of the control mechanism, conditioning people to believe that they're basically evil, and the only thing they can save them is continue to attachment to the organization.

So you want to eliminate automatic negative thoughts. There's an interestingly named psychiatrist,

who's the next burden on brain health called Dr. A. Men. He's very famous, you can Google it. And he's really intelligent, but he talks about, got to squish the ants, automatic negative thoughts, ants.

So we tend to think negatively, and we do it for several years, we think negatively inside of our head.

Automatically, we abuse ourselves, we tell ourselves, we're the losers, we're never going to mount anything, we're going to hell, we don't have the skillsets, we're not smart, whatever negative aspect you want to take on the self-deprecating type of thought process that leads us to lower our mood and make us more susceptible to suggestion, that's what the organization wants.

So... If we take the opposite of that, become, what's called mindfulness, become aware of your thinking. Are you talking daily to yourself inside your head? If you are, stop. Because beating yourself up is of no use, no value.

What you want to do is support yourself. So think of what you would say to a friend who's going through the same challenges that you're having. And then how you would say to them, right?

You would say encouraging things, positive things, uplifting things to your friend who's going through a similar challenge. So only say those things to yourself, become your own best friend. Refuse to talk negatively to yourself, refuse to run yourself down.

And by doing so, you don't bring yourself down in the given moment, which is usually a pretty good moment, right? So this goes along with some other tools. But the first tool here today that a lot of believers just really are harder themselves and talk negatively to themselves.

There's a common effort of the organizations. Don't talk badly to yourself. Don't run yourself down. And I believe firmly that that can keep you from burning yourself down emotionally on a daily basis. So become aware of your thinking and how you talk to yourself through your mindfulness.

Agreed. I would say that the ants, the automatic negative thoughts are very oppressive. But even more than that, they're extremely dangerous in these groups as we see with the mass suicide. But I'll never forget, you know, I was not that close to my cousin, Timmy, your brother, Timmy, when he committed suicide, but it was deeply impactful for me.

It was something that I struggled with because we're in this religion that is teaching Doomsday theology, we're about to go into heaven at any day. Why would somebody take their life in it? This raised a question that I mean, seriously, it plagued my mind while I was indoctrinated in this thing.

Why would somebody do this? We're about to go to the other side. And now that I'm on the other side of this, I'm starting to realize that this was quite a common trend in the in the message that sex that we, you know, escaped.

There's a large number of people who have committed suicide. There are a number of people who have attempted. Even in our support groups, there are many people who struggled with this until they escaped. It's very tragic.

And a family member who you and I recently lost, my cousin Marcus, as I was going through the most difficult time in my life. He was calling me daily to keep me from committing suicide.

And I asked him one day, Marcus, why don't you believe the prophet? Because this was confusing to me. Why would he leave this religion? And why is he the only one who's keeping me alive?

And he said, John, I believe the cowboy religion, love God, love your neighbors that aren't trying to kill you and be kind to animals. And that's became pretty much my philosophy. You know, I don't care what type of Christian you are.

Christian just simply means follower of Christ, if you're a follower of Christ, I don't care what brand you give yourself. You know, it really comes down to that. Do you love God? Do you love your neighbors?

And the negative thoughts, the automatic negative thoughts were so oppressive that it took lives. But then after people make their escape, because we've been manipulated by cult leaders to have these automatic negative thoughts, now that we've escaped, there are many people that struggle with this in the reverse direction.

Usually whenever they think about the religion, the people in the religion, even good people, there are good people in these cults. Instantly, there's these negative thoughts. And sometimes the cults will have some sort of an event.

Maybe it's a wedding or a funeral or family gathering, whatever it is. Instantly these automatic negative thoughts plague their minds and some people just simply cannot go to these events. What do you recommend for people that are experiencing post-escape trauma with regards to these automatic negative thoughts?

Well, another tool that's very useful in these tools, I'm talking about work in and outside of religious context, they've worked their work in life in general. And another tool that's very, very helpful in dealing with these situations is to depersonalize.

Now, in psychology, depersonalize means something else. I'm just attaching this particular label to this particular cognitive tool because it makes sense. When we depersonalize other people, we learn to separate ourselves emotionally from them and their negative thoughts or maybe their negative statements or whatever.

If a total stranger well passed us and said something very rude and crude or crass. disrespectful. We really wouldn't be affected by that very much because it's a total stranger. But if you move it on into an acquaintance, somebody might know the first name and they say something not terrible and negative to you, then it probably still wouldn't take it to personal. You think, well, maybe they're having a bad day at home or at work. But if you move it on into an immediate family member or intimate partner and they say something really nasty, then we're going to take

that personal and the fight is all, you won't talk to me like that, right? Well, the truth is, from the total stranger to the intimate partner or family member, what's coming out of somebody else's mouth, 99.9% of the time is not about you. If you've done something wrong to them and offended them, you're going to know it and you can fix that. But the vast majority of the time, it's about them and not about you. It's about where they're at at that moment, psychologically, spiritually and emotionally. And so in your head, if you react rather than

take it personally and get upset and become emotional, if you don't take it personally, wait a minute. This is not about me. This person's having a bad day. And if you depersonalize the statements of the members of the organization you came from and realizing they're coming from their own bad place, the statements that these people may lose their power over you. And they can't put you off balanced emotionally because if you're not emotional, you can continue to think in a rational way. But if you take things personally, you will become emotional. You might physically fight to buy you or say some things. You regret. But the bottom line is when your

boss is being driven by your emotions, the boss is squinted probably in the ditch. And if your regular cognitions are driving your boss, the boss is going to stay on the road. So this is a tool like both of these tools and other tools I'll talk about.

They require psychological discipline and things of value pretty much in life in general all requires psychological discipline. So you want to depersonalize the statements of the people that are staying negative things or acting in negative ways. As you mentioned earlier, John, just shunning. Shunning can be something so we would take very personally and be very hurt by that. But the truth is that the person doing the shunning is just doing what they were told to do.

And what their belief set is, it's not about you, it's about them and where they're at. It's not the logic. spiritually and emotionally at that moment. And so by not taking these current believers personally in what they say and do, it removes their power over you to upset you or control you or maybe even try to manipulate you back into the organization. You want to depersonalize the tool of depersonalization. It's very powerful. I recommend people do that with everybody, everywhere, at all times in their life. Their family members, their loved ones, their co-ocollis at work,

their boss at work, whoever they meet, depersonalize everybody. You realize negative things coming out of their mouth pretty much are about them and not about you. So by doing that, you gain tremendous powerances about any dialogue you're going to have if you depersonalize other people.

You know, depersonalizing the situation for me, I think, was the most helpful. My father was diabetic and one of the ways in which I began to help myself look at people who were still in the message called was I began to look at them as though they were all diabetics. They're people just like me. They can't help that they have this condition. They need insulin. Many of them refuse the insulin, the insulin being the truth. I just sort of viewing it like this. It's really, if you look spiritually, it is a spiritual disease that these people have, but it's deeper than that.

They have psychological manipulation into a disease that they don't necessarily have to have. If they could just break free from it, they would not have this spiritual disease. So in a way, I kind of trained myself by accident to depersonalize, but one of the other tools that I began to start using was just taking it one day at a time. I started looking at each situation as brand new.

Whenever I would meet somebody in a restaurant or in a store where sometimes the people were friendly, sometimes they weren't. I began to realize that I can't go into a situation where I'm going to come in contact with people who are in the cult with a preconceived notion that they're going to have malicious intent or insulting language. I have to keep in open mind even with the same person. The same person on one day might be friendly and on the next day, they may be struggling with this internal guilt that they're talking to a shunned person. I have to think, you know,

they themselves can't even help this. They're tormented in many ways that I no longer am, but I do understand. because I used to be of this mindset, what do you recommend for people who are engaging others who were in a religion that they escaped with regards to the friction that can happen between them?

Well, that's a perfect example of where to apply depersonalization, congratulations on your own use of the tool without even having somebody tell you what it is. But that's a perfect example. If you don't take their shunning behavior, like you said, one day they're friendly, one day they're not, if you don't take any of that personally, it loses power over you entirely.

What you also kind of touched on another tool that's the power of now by being present, taking things a day at a time within the message, a lot of power is over the people by getting them to beat themselves up about the mistakes of the past and could them themselves, which is also related to the ants or to project negatively out to the future, to a dark future.

And so they continue to use the organization as the lifeline out of a dark future or a lifeline from the ruminated about the past. The truth is you have to live in the present.

You can't dwell on a negative past. We've all made mistakes. You can't project out to a negative future. We don't know the future. All we can do is hope for the best and plan and work as best we can, but projecting to a negative future is not helpful either.

So you want to stay in the now and stay in the present because usually people will mess up a pretty good present by ruminating about the past or projecting to a dark future. When, in fact, they're very present, they're well-closed, they're fed, they're sheltered, they're in a positive environment around positive people.

So staying in the now, the power of now is really, again, a psychological discipline effort, but it's very, very useful. And living a day at a time goes right with that, as well as another tool, which is called having an internal loss of control.

And what that means is understanding that there's a lot of things that in the world that we don't control. And the organizations often use outside control of condemning you so that they can condemn your behavior or control your behavior.

The truth is there's a few things in life that you do control, and there's a whole lot that we don't control. So what? What is healthy is to focus on the things that we have control over in our lives.

So a lot of people use a lot of cognitive energy, waste a lot of cognitive energy, fretting and fussing and frustrating about things that they have no control over. So the weather is an example.

Sometimes people get quite frustrated that the weather's not cooperating with their plans. Well, the weather's not something that's in their control and so frustrating about the weather, getting upset about the weather is worse than useless just bringing you down for no good.

The weather's going to stay doing whatever it's doing, raining and snowing or blowing or whatever until they don't want to anymore. So you're better off to just go to Plan B. So understanding that anytime you're frustrating about something, ask yourself, is the thing I'm frustrating about in my control or not?

If it is, fix it. If it's not, most of the time that's going to be the answer, then turn and focus what is in my control. Clean the kitchen, wash the car, get on the computer, do some work.

Whatever it is, there are things that are in control that you can go do and not waste time frustrating about something that's out of your control. Now, the number one thing that people frustrating about that's not in their control is other people's behavior choices.

We don't control other people. So frustrating about other people's behavior choices, not helpful. And the best written definition of having internal locus of control is the serenity prayer. Many people are familiar with it and many people are not.

So if we just Google those serenity prayer, it's a two paragraph prayer, but it's really about having an internal locus to control more than it is a prayer per se. And it's just that God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.

I encourage people to just put that out, put it up on their refrigerator, whatever they can think of each day, and think, am I focusing on things beyond my control, or am I focusing on things in my control?

That's really the essence of the serenity prayer of using AA meetings and other therapy and self-help meetings across the United States. So having an internal locus of control is, again, a psychological discipline is required, but it can really simplify your life and help all of us to not waste cognitive energy on things that we have no control over anyway.

And along with the power of now and de-personalization, reducing automatic negative thoughts,

the last one I really wanna touch on is frame awareness. How we frame things that events in our life.

and really impact how the how the event affects our quality of life, okay, frame awareness. For example, there was a gentleman I worked with and I'm retired from law enforcement. I worked with this law enforcement officer for many years and unfortunately he just killed and one car crashed on Christmas morning, about 2 a.m.

one year, many years ago. And he was 47 years old. And his mother was in her seventies and no one would have told her if she would have framed her son's passing as being robbed or abandoned by God or cheesed somehow and wronged by the universe or whatever, no one would have told her that she couldn't frame it that way.

But if you think of that frame with some people choose that frame, think of the emotional wash and anguish and pain as coming off of that frame. She chose not to frame it that way.

She framed it this way. She says, I don't know why God took my son from me. I just thank God for allowing him to be in my life for 47 years, period. Now feel the emotional wash coming off of that frame.

That frames a lot of you should live with in the first frame. So be aware of how you frame things. Is the frame that you put on an event in your life actually accurate?

Does it have to be the frame you put on? Did you frame it correctly? And can you frame it to a frame that's easier to live with? So this requires self-examination and thoughtfulness, mindfulness.

But these are just a few tools, John, that I share with many of my clients, but the members of listeners here today, if they apply these tools to their life, I assure you their quality of life will be improved as they attempt to find the right path for them as a embark on their spiritual journey.

Agreed. It's interesting to hear you put the official names to the things that I've learned some of them through trial and error.

I know that the anxiety that one experiences when they don't have these things framed the right way and when they try to control the things that are so out of their control, it literally adds these weights to your shoulders that you can see.

on a person's face. As they go through life and they're carrying these mental weights, you can see they look like death warmed over. I look like this, you know, whenever I first escape, and that's one of the things that a cult will use to their advantage. When somebody escapes, they'll say, look, you can even see they're unhappy in their face. Well, of course, they have all of these added weights. People are manipulated to be overly concerned of what other people think about them when they're in a cult because that's how the group think works.

Everybody has to be in each other's business. I'll never forget that surprise when I first went to a non-cult church and realized that everybody is individual and there is not this uncomfortable, unhealthy level of closeness like we had. And it really took some time to deconstruct that in my head because whenever you pull away from it, because you've been so conditioned to live in this way, you want to plug back into it. And so there's a lot of revictimization when a person escapes, I call it, but framing it in the right way, like you said, takes away mountains of anxiety.

It's very, very helpful things. I'm glad that you came onto the show. I've enjoyed having you here, and I'm sure our listeners are going to really enjoy hearing some of these tools and how to use them. I'm very thankful that you joined us on the show today.

Well, thank you for having me, John. It's been an absolute pleasure. I hope your listeners can find some value in these simple words. I appreciate all that you've done to try to help those who've been traumatized by these religious organizations. You're doing God's work, John. I appreciate it.

Well, thank you. If they want to contact me, you can just google me. I'm going to have a LinkedIn profile. I'll link in Dr. Jesse Collins and I'll also have a psychology today profile.

You can contact me through either one of those. Dr. Jesse Collins, if you just google Dr. Jesse Collins Trinity or Newport Richie, it'll pop up, but they can contact me through those sites, or they can send the message to you if they want to, and you and I can stay in touch about what I'm concerned they may have. Well, Jesse, this has been fun. I hope this is the start of something that we can continue, and our listeners, I know are going to get a lot of help from it. 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-Branum.org. For Jesse Collins, you can look up Dr. Jesse Collins on Psychology Today, or in LinkedIn. And for more information about the history behind the Laterane Movement, read Weaponized Religion from Laterane to Colonia Dignidad.

Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.