Overcoming: Forgive to Heal

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-Branum.org and with me I have Dr. Jesse Collins, psychotherapist, coming 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 we did a trial run last time and we got some excessively good feedback. I don't think since we aired the show, I don't think we had one single negative comment over the format, the show, the topics, the subject matter, etc. But instead we got a lot of questions wanting to hear more and to drill down into some deeper information on the subjects that we covered. So it's very good to have you back again and I know our listeners are going to be very excited to have you and to discuss these

topics even further. Well thank you for having me on again John. I'm happy to answer their questions. I'm glad that people had a positive reaction. You know it's a very very difficult thing to to be in transition out of the cold and I'm happy and honored to to help them and answer any questions that they have. My heart goes out to them having done this many many years ago.

I'm familiar with how difficult it can be. So let's get right into it. The very first question that we received is it's really a good one because I've been asked this many many times and it's a very difficult question because when you are in a cult and you're programmed into that same mindset everybody's in the same type of group think and whenever somebody is able to break their minds away from that group think and maybe not even clear the brainwashing from their head but just enough to start critically thinking and critically examining what they were in

when they start to break away from that and when they finally do break away there's this sudden backlash and I know you probably experienced it. I know I experienced it. People who are in the programmed mindset in the group think, they are often unforgiving towards the people who are leaving and sometimes to say it bluntly, they're quite rude to the people leaving. And there's this friction that's created. Well, after the person leaves and, you know, there comes a period of time of healing, then they look back to that experience and that experience is very difficult to process. They have a trouble, they have trouble

forgiving the person who treated them poorly as they were leaving the cult. So the very first question we received is how do we forgive our families and our friends, the people who were in the cult who, you know, did not treat us well whenever we made that escape.

Well, I think that's an excellent question, John. And it's a human problem, not just a cult problem. When, when we have been wronged or things have been done to us that we're angry about, the question comes up about forgiveness. And forgiveness is really essential to mental health in that forgiveness, refusing to forgive somebody is basically holding a grudge against them. And it's been said, it's not my phrase, but it's been said that refusing to forgive holding a grudge rather against someone else is like drinking poison and hoping someone else dies because holding a grudge creates the poison within you and refusing to forgive

somebody harbors ill will within you. And that ill will only hurt you. It doesn't hurt the other person. So forgiving somebody is essential to mental health in that you don't hold on to the wrong. Now, using judgment, of course, just because you forgive somebody doesn't mean you expose yourself to more abuse, right? You don't necessarily have to go around that person or be with them or expose yourself to them to their abuse. But at the same time, just forgive them in that they were doing what they thought was the right thing, spiritually, morally, whatever at the time. And they

are strong. And they're walking in darkness and they don't know it. And so they're going to continue in darkness until it's time as they see the light themselves. So rather than holding their

ill be gotten the leaves against them, just for We gave them a go on, doesn't mean you have to be their friend, doesn't mean you have to hang out with them and expose yourself to more problems.

But so, distancing is fine, but not holding ill will towards the person who was doing what they thought is the right thing helps you move on as a person, regardless of what the other person does.

Forgive us is essential to mental health. If you go around mad at everybody else, you're not going to have a happy life. Yeah, fully agree. You know, for somebody like me, it's a little bit difficult because whenever a person leaves the cult, there's this awakening that happens and during the awakening process, people begin to study, you know, what was I in?

What was this thing that I just left? Some people, like myself, go to extremes and studying it, other people don't. And I think the problem is the people who don't and don't fully understand what it is that they left, they also don't understand why people were angry with them for leaving and why the backlash because they don't understand the cult mentality, you know, so to speak.

Then there are another category of person who once they realize how bad it was and how ethically wrong the cult framework is, forget spiritually, forget all of the demonic forces that were trained just ethically, how wrong it is to manipulate somebody's mind.

They try to go rescue people and they will confront them with critical information, not understanding yet that the programmed cult mindset cannot yet process the critical information. And so then there's this ongoing friction and this ongoing acceleration of the ill-willed towards one another, which explodes into even more difficulty and finding ways to forgive because then they bring in the spiritual aspect to this.

If they're not understanding the critical information, there must be something spiritually wrong. For me, I think the biggest help for me was just understanding the cult mindset, understanding the history, how the cult developed, obviously not everybody can go to the extremes of study that I have, but just the simple basics of understanding how a central figure can manipulate crowds of people and then once they're under that mind control or brainwashing however you want to call it, understanding that the person who is giving you the backlash is not, it's more of a cult mindset than it is their authentic person.

And then you have to separate the authentic sub... of from the program to call it mindset. Once I began to understand that, I think forgiveness became a lot easier because it's almost like examining split personality disorder.

You've got the authentic person and if you talk to them about baseball, how we used to like baseball in the cult, they'll open up, they'll be nice to you friendly, but if you say, but the prophet said this and they, you know, the cult teaches this, immediately their defenses come up like any normal human being and you're talking to the cult mindset.

So it's almost like split personality disorder. Well, understanding that they have a right to their beliefs

and your beliefs are not their beliefs anymore, if you can find common ground around the sport or some other activity that you engage in, then if you have to have continued contact with a person, then that's a great idea.

Just stick to the common ground items and stay away from the spiritual life. A common, that's a big reason why people say, don't talk about politics and religion to other people, period, or the same reason.

I would recommend staying out of politics and religion because everybody has their own opinion about it and really their mayor may or may not be common ground in those areas, but at the end of the day,

somebody who's left the cult has every right to say they don't wanna discuss a religion or politics with a former, somebody who's still a member. They don't have to have conversations that they don't feel comfortable having.

It's really common for cult members to press their beliefs on other people. They've actually been ordered to, usually, by the cult, to evangelize the cult beliefs and to convince other people of the wrongness of their ways and that the cult is right and they need to come in and to the quote-unquote light, so to speak.

And in fact, it's not a light at all. So establishing boundaries, respectful boundaries is important to healthy relationships in and out of a religious aspect. Healthy boundaries are important to any relationship regardless of whether religion or politics is involved.

So I think that somebody who's leaving a cult should be very comfortable in saying, I don't wanna discuss it, period. Absolutely, and that actually is very close. mostly tied to the second most asked question that we get. And ironically, it was the second question that was asked after our podcast. Whenever somebody leaves and they're experiencing all of this, what are some good coping mechanisms after leaving? What's healthy? What's unhealthy?

Sadly, there are some people who leave and they have this void that they just cannot seem to fill. A big part of their life has just been removed and they go through all of the stages of grief as of literally somebody died in their head. They're experiencing the death of a person who's still alive in their head. What are some advice for somebody who's going through this?

Well, there are healthy coping mechanisms and unhealthy coping mechanisms. When human minds and bodies are reacting to stress and transition, the psychological term for it is adjustment disorder. When you're going through an adjustment in your life, whether it's a big move or a job transfer or divorce, which is essentially this is a kind of a religious divorce. Even though you're not married to these people, when you're in a cult, you have a much closer relationship and would be normally engaged in a normal parish family. So yes, you're exactly right. It's almost like a death.

Elizabeth Kubla Ross is very famous for her stages of grief. A person goes through different stages as they recover from the shock of the separation. And in this case, I think it's a great question about how to cope in a healthy way. Number one, being patient with yourself that realizing you're going through a transition and a kind of a shock to leave the cult and to enter a new way of thinking, a new way of living. And that's going to require patience for yourself as you adjust to a new life.

Exercise is one of the best coping mechanisms there is for regardless of the condition. As long as a person's physician agrees that they're in a physical capacity to exercise safely, then exercise number one is the first fragmentation because whether you're walking, going for walks or runs or working out at a gym, what's swimming, whatever. Exercise releases and orphans that are literal antidepressants.

That's why when you go to work out, even though you might not felt like working out at first, go to the gym, you do whatever workout you do. After you're done working out, you will literally feel better.

And that's because you've released the orphans into your body that are literal antidepressants.

So that's number one, get some exercise. Number two is socialization. Don't isolate yourself. Don't hide in your house. Don't try to be alone and have pity parties. There's no pity to be had. You made the decision, all the decision, and embrace your new life.

Whatever new life you're stepping into, socialize, reach out to people, have respectful and engaged conversations. You might make new friends. You might go places and engage socially in ways that you didn't when you were in the cold.

But I strongly encourage people to be social, reach out. There's a lot of good people out here and a lot of people do care about how people are doing.

Healthy, unhealthy coping would include excessive alcohol, using drugs, engaging in behaviors that you feel personally are not appropriate.

Those things are not going to help you. We are spiritual beings, and we are emotional and psychological beings, and we have to respect our bodies and respect ourselves. So that doesn't change regardless of what type of organization you're involved with, spiritually or not.

So moderation is key, and being aware of your own limits personally,

regardless of the cold limits and what have been set up before, do think you're comfortable with, but go and do. Isolation is not helpful. Excessive, negative, and we'll get into the ants again,

but be aware of how you're talking to yourself because we can beat ourselves up. But you've got healthy coping mechanisms, socialization, making friends, being out and about, exercising, taking care of yourself, eating healthy.

These are positive coping mechanisms, and it's very, very important that we take care of ourselves regardless of our spiritual worries. there's a there's a few things you mentioned in there that I want to emphasize a little bit further number one exercise like you said it is the greatest thing I've joined a gym I don't know if we've had this conversation or not Jesse but I developed diabetes which runs very much in our family throughout our family and it got pretty bad my numbers were pretty high and I had almost reversed it a few years ago and we went through some very traumatic health struggles in my family

and it came back it worsened and as of I want to say three weeks ago I have fully reversed diabetes I think it's two weeks ago I ate a piece of carrot cake the size of my head in my insulin levels processed it and it feels so good to be over that and I can attribute some of that to diabetes others parts to diet I went on to a you know kind of a very extreme diet to reverse it but things like this in a cult that practices quote unquote divine healing you know they they look at

these things much differently than you do after you leave you have some control over your body and understanding that you have control over your body is significant towards moving on from a cult that emphasizes divine healing but diving just to step deeper on another thing that you said embracing your new life we have a lot of people who leave the cult I myself included after you leave there's this weird notion that you need to become a martyr in other words I'm going to leave and I'm going to live exactly by the same set of rules and standards as

the cult so that they don't think that I'm leaving in order to have freedom from those rules and so a very large number of people leave and they don't embrace that freedom and they oppress themselves for extra biblical unnecessary rules and my saying that is not to you know create an archy you know people need a good set of standards to live by but those good set of standards needs to be within reason and also needs to embrace the new life that is the non-cult life there are things that the cult adds is these weights on your shoulders to carry is your burdens that really don't

need to be there and after you leave you can release those weights if you keep them and try to martyr yourself well you're going to have the mindset of a martyr which is very unhealthy and the last thing I want to emphasize is you talked about the antidepressants of the exercise there are some people that exercise is not enough and you actually need antidepressants.

And Jesse, I don't know how it was for you when you were in the cult. I know you left years ago, but in today's version of it, there's this association between an antidepressant and a demon.

In fact, I struggled severely. I was actually somewhat bedridden with my depression for a while. It was severe while it was in the cult. And I talked to a minister in the cult locally about the depression.

And he said, be careful. Don't go on those antidepressants because there's a demonic spirit in the depressant, antidepressant. We have seen time and time again people who go on these antidepressants and they leave the cult, which in hindsight, I'm looking back at, oh, their mind got healed and they left, it makes sense.

But some people need the antidepressants. For me, I needed it while I was in the cult. After I left, my body started healing and I struggled a bit with anxiety. And I found that just a little, like one cup of wine would cut the anxiety.

Now, a wine addiction or alcohol addiction, I know is the opposite of healthy. But sometimes just, it's even biblical. Jesus turned water into wine. Yet the cult teaches, you know, wine, you're not supposed to drink the wine, it's demonic.

But we find that the wine is, you know, Timothy said, the Apostle Timothy said, drink a little wine for your stomach. I think it was Timothy or Paul. Things like this, your body has the ability to help itself as long as you're not constrained by the cult's rules, preventing your body from helping itself.

So take advantage of the exercise first, obviously. And if the exercise is not enough, you may need some antidepressants and that's, you know, for you and your doctor. The last thing you mentioned, the ants.

And that was actually, I received that question from a few people. They wanted to go a bit deeper to understand more deeply what is this ant thing? Because I think you struck home with that in the last episode.

There are a lot of people struggling with this. So maybe let's dive a little bit deeper with the ants. Okay, John, those are some excellent points. And I do encourage people that are, they're going through a transition, not to hesitate to reach out to a psychotherapist.

To help them with the transition, they might need an ant, and trust me, there's no demons and antidepressants. Ah, that's just crazy. And I'd say most people don't need an antidepressant, but it's online, especially as they move forward.

So, antidepressants or anti-anxiety meds absolutely can help. So, don't be afraid to reach out if you need to talk to somebody. Don't be afraid to get some help from a psychotherapist outside the cold or reach out to a psychiatrist who could prescribe medications for antidepressants or anti-anxiety meds.

Those are excellent resources for anybody that might need them. I had clients who were prescribed anti-anxiety meds and they were assisted in lowering their anxiety by just having the meds available to them in their purse.

First, we have a lot of work anxiety and simply knowing that all she had to do was reach there and grab one of the pills in itself, lower her anxiety enough that she didn't actually have to break the bill.

Wow. So, there's some other effects of medication that are available. The help is available. All I'm saying is, don't be afraid to reach out for help. Whoever is in stress and anxiety and frustration and depression, do not be afraid to reach out for help.

There's a ton of help available out here and to give you some more healthy coping mechanisms, specific to that person's situation, good point shot. As far as the ants, again, automatic negative thoughts are something that we in the cold were trained to do.

We were trained to think negatively, we were trained to have negative beliefs about ourselves that we're evil and we're wrong and we're sinful creatures and so on and so forth. You already have an image of yourself in the cold that is quite negative and in fact, as you said, John, the wine was made for the wedding in Canaan.

The scripture doesn't say, don't drink at all. It says, don't become drunk on the wine. Right. And so, what are they saying? They're saying, be moderate, respect the poison.

I've in my lifetime I've tested that scripture a few times every time I test the scripture it's true. You don't want to get dropped. It's not a good feeling. And so my point is is that when we're talking to ourselves inside of our head, be kind, be loving. Just as Jesus was kind and loving to people, we need to reflect that behavior to other people and to ourselves. And for some reason, people that are getting out of the cult are often the hardest on themselves. And they beat themselves up and trash themselves inside their mind.

So you want to become aware. It's called mindfulness, uh, metacognition is thinking about your thinking. And that's being aware of what you're thinking specifically inside your head and specifically what you're talking about to yourself.

And people will trash themselves out. Especially when they've been doing it for many years, they'll do it in an automatic fashion without even thinking. They will start ripping themselves down in a, in a, how stupid am I? I can't believe that. I'll never finish this. I can't do this.

Uh, what was I thinking? Just really trash themselves out to the point that if they had a friend that talked to them like, like they were talking to themselves, they would be friends with that person.

But they will trash themselves out like that. So a mindfulness is very important to putting negative self-talk in check. What are you saying to yourself? What's the content of your thoughts? And you want to stop that. And people think often think that they are victims of their own.

Whatever thought came in my head, that's what I'm stuck with. That's just my personality. I'm just a negative person. No, you're not. You get to choose what thoughts come through your mind. And you can stop thoughts. You can put other thoughts in check. You can think about something later.

You get to choose your thoughts. So it's very important for people to realize they are in control of their thoughts. And that's it. Now, there are certain circumstances where you're just going to have an emotional reaction, such as you just got bad news that a loved one has passed, right?

You're going to have an emotional reaction to that. And that's just the way it is. And you're going to have to heal from that psychic injury. But on a day-to-day basis, people can completely control their thoughts. Often, very often, people don't realize they are in control of their thoughts, and they can direct their thoughts. So what you want to do is identify negative self-talk.

If you're tracing yourself out, stop that. Do not continue to allow yourself to say anything. negative to yourself. And instead of that, think about what would I say to a dear friend who's going through exactly the situation they're separating it out of the cold? What would I say to my friend? Would I be like Roger, you're crazy, you're stupid, you're an idiot.

How could you have been to Houdam? You wouldn't say these things to your friend. You would say things like, listen buddy, I'm here for you, I believe in you, you're a good guy, you're smart, you're intelligent and you've been through a lot of stuff in the past, you're going to get through this challenge too. I'm here for you, I believe in you, you're going to be okay. Those are the kind of things you would say to a friend, encouraging things, positive things, supportive things, kind things.

So only say those things to yourself, supportive, kind, loving things. When you talk to yourself, be supportive of yourself. There's a psychologist out of Canada that I'm a huge fan of. His name is Dr. Jordan Peterson and I encourage everybody on this podcast that's listening to go to YouTube and Google Dr. Jordan Peterson. He is tremendously wise man and he does commentary on a lot of things, not just psychological matters, but he's a true giant in the field of psychology and he phrases it like this, treat yourself as if you are responsible for taking care of you,

meaning you are responsible for taking care of yourself. Now if you have a responsibility of taking care of another person in your household, you feel duty bound to do everything you can to be good to them, to be kind to them, to protect them, to feed them, to care for them. But we often don't feel that same sense of duty to ourselves and we neglect ourselves, we abuse ourselves and we don't treat ourselves as if we are someone we are here to care for. So Dr. Peterson is exactly right. Treat yourself as if you are a duty bound to take care of yourself, you're

responsible for caring for yourself. And we often put ourselves last and we don't take care of ourselves. Food wise or exercise wise, emotional wise, we just don't support ourselves at all, meanwhile we're supporting everybody else. And that will lead to burnout and depression and anxiety. So support yourself because supporting you and taking care of you, having relaxed times, nurturing times, doing things that are good for you, as well as talking to yourself possibly inside your head, are all engaging support.

Fort systems for you, okay? Now, why is this important? We don't accidentally gas up our car, do we? We don't accidentally change the oil. We don't accidentally put the new brakes for new tires or whatever.

We don't, we all, we do that intentionally. However, we will, we as humans, tend to not intentionally take care of ourselves. We don't intentionally work out. We don't intentionally go for walks. We don't intentionally take time to relax, read a book.

Whatever it is that charges our battery, we often put that last and put everything else in our life first. And we wound up being neglected. We wound up with empty gas tanks. And so that, that's not good for the people that depend on us.

And it's not good for us either. So, care for yourself as if you are responsible for taking care of you. And we don't often have that perspective. And being aware of automatic negative thoughts is all part of self-care.

So please take care of yourself. It's crucial to your longevity and crucial to the other people in your life that are dependent on you to be there for them. I think I mentioned this in the last show.

I did not know some of the technical terms for these things, but through trial and error, I discovered some of them by accident. And the way my mind thinks is I take everything to its simplest form.

If you remove all of the complexity, something of substance can be simplified. And for this, one of the things that helped me is just simply thinking about the way you train a dog. When you have a dog, and if you're constantly be raiding the dog, you're a bad dog, you're a bad dog.

Over and over, well, this dog is gonna get worse and worse because that's all the dog can expect. The more you are down on the dog and just overbearing negative thoughts, the more this dog is gonna pick up this negative energy and this will truly become a horrific dog versus if you give the dog treats and say that's a good, good dog, good girl.

And teach them the way in which the dog should be. Well, then the dog suddenly starts transitioning into an even better dog because the dog doesn't want to be bad. By nature, the dog just wants to please you as the owner.

And so I took it down to that simplest form. Then I built upon that form, children. Same thing with the child. If you're constantly telling the child that the child is, you're a bad person.

Well, this child's gonna grow up to be a bad person because that's what's in their head. You're giving this negative energy that will only produce negative energy fruits, if you know what I'm saying.

Versus if you say that's good, that's good. But let's do this. and make it a little better and teach them the better thing. Well, then I applied this to religion. We left the cult and actually entered into a situation that wasn't a whole lot different, unfortunately.

It was a very fundamentalist style evangelical church. I won't mention which one, but there was a common theme throughout the entire two, three years over there. I don't remember how long it was. This common theme that people are inherently evil and if they weren't Christian, they would become even worse.

And I'm sitting there while I'm sitting that my wife and children here and I'm watching them learning from this and I'm thinking, I wouldn't even train my dog like this, man. But that's what we were doing in this church and what really is surprising for somebody who's in this mentality that only your group are the good guys and everybody else is inherently evil.

The first time somebody who's in this group finds an atheist who has a good set of moral standards, it's this irony that can't explain. Their mind can't process. Well, how's this atheist being good?

It's because the whole philosophy is wrong. You train people with the positive things, not the negative things because when you do, when you train people with the negative things, then they start having these religious, anti, these religious automatic negative thoughts.

And that religious automatic negative thought progresses into, I'm inherently evil, all of these things that I'm doing that they're telling me is sin. Even though I can't find it in the Bible is sin, well, those must be making it worse and it spirals out of control, especially when there's anxiety involved.

And the mind is by nature just spiraling out of control. So for me, the way that I overcame this personally was I just simplified it, think positively. You can find all of these speeches out there on positive thinking and ways to improve yourself, better yourself, read some of them.

I mean, some of them are actually really good. And separating, this actually leads us into the next question we had from the people who watch the show, transitioning from that mindset of being somewhat manipulated into thinking negative about yourself, from that elite group of people that has the special knowledge or the special insight on what it means to be good, versus the entire rest of the world, even in Christianity, this elite group that sees themselves as more spiritual or more, I don't know, more righteous than people who don't have their extra biblical set of rules.

that transition then became my focus and that was the next question we had Jesse. How do you make that transition from being a special or an elite group of people into normal society where if I see a Christian on the street well they're a Christian like I'm a Christian. Well the good news is is that the elite cult mentality puts a lot of pressure on the member to perform certain ways to think certain ways to think about other people in certain ways and when you step back from that and realize that we are all Christian dogs in a much

larger machine it takes a lot of pressure off to behave and do certain things that the cult had demanded and in fact we can live a normal life we don't have to live under those rules and leaf sets that the cult had put upon our lives we can be regular people and that is a great way to relieve pressure and lower anxiety and relieve depression with all the pressure that goes with being a quote-unquote elite religious member it's it's important to understand that once you accept that the cult membership and belief sets are not the ones for

you then take your time and find out what is the right belief sets for you this may take even years so be patient with yourself but the number one benefit of moving from elite to normal is bam there goes the pressure there goes the expectations of performance that you got to do this and say this and speaking a certain way and talk to other people in a certain way and you can just be you just be you it's so much easier to just be you rather than be a certain way that you were told that you had to be which is not you so welcome to the new normal folks

I'm happy to see you here along with that and I'll preface this with I'm probably a bad example but when people leave they tend to be embarrassed of their past not realizing that there are something like I don't know what is it now 5,000 different named cults in just the US if I if I'm remembering that statistic correctly there's an awful lot of people who have had a similar experience and And again, I'm a bad example of this because of what I'm doing, I have to be in this mode.

But what is your advice to people who leave, who are now getting into new communities? Do they embrace their past and talk about it? Do they hide their past and just try to pretend like they were always normal?

I know that for me personally, I can't avoid it because of what I'm doing. But I do, to some extent, try to shield my family from it because I don't want them to be always in this mode that I'm in where I'm having to think about it.

I want them to live normal lives as though I'm not doing this thing. But what's your advice to people who are entering into a new phase of their life? Should they embrace it? Should they talk about it or should they cover it up?

Well, ultimately, it's going to be up to them to decide. Generally speaking, the best way to deal with our past, good, bad, and different, is to own it, accept it as where we were and what we did at that time in our life, and not be judgmental about it.

Just that's who I was at the time. That's how I thought at the time, now I'm different. And just own it because once you own it and you're not embarrassed of it, it's impossible for somebody else to use it as a part of it against you.

They can't embarrass you with it. They can't run you down with it and they can't control you with it. Just own it. Okay, that's what I was because pretty much everybody has, whether they're in a cult or not, they did things in their life that they're not exactly proud of because we're human and we make mistakes and we do don't things.

And if we just own that and accept that, okay, I was in a different place and did things I've no longer believed or correct things, I'm not doing those things anymore because I don't think it's wise.

So owning your past, accepting responsibility for your decisions, good, bad, and then different takes the sting out of it. So I strongly, strongly urge people, just own it, just accept it. Don't be embarrassed of it.

Just say, okay, that was where I was at that time. I made decisions at the time that I would no longer make today, but that's where I was. Okay, and move on because if we understand that life is a journey and it's not a destination and we're just learning as we go along.

Is anybody perfect? No. Have everybody made mistakes? 100%. So understand at the time I was in the coat, I thought that I was doing the right thing. As I matured, as I let more knowledge, more information, I realized that the coat wasn't right for me. And so I encourage people not to be embarrassed of the past to own their past and forgive themself. That's a number one thing.

Is I'm going back to our first point. Forgive yourself for your past transgressions. Forgive yourself is the first step in healthy forgiveness of others. And if we go around trying to hide and be ashamed of our past, then we haven't actually forgiven ourselves of that past.

So let it go. And don't hold it against yourself. Don't hold it against anybody else. Just say, okay, it was part of my learning experience. And I'm a better person for that life experience.

I know more things now that I wouldn't have known if I hadn't made those bad decisions. Right. And so forgiveness of self for mistakes and errors and wrong beliefs or whatever is key to

a new healthy mindset. I agree. Forgive yourself is really the only way that you can move on from this because if you're constantly belittling yourself over this thing that you had no control over, then that blossoms into other negative thoughts. And it just again spirals out of control.

One of the things that has helped me is that a lot of people ask me, what do you believe now? Where are you now? Especially whenever I meet new people who learn, you know, what I do is very public. And the first thing when people meet me, they can easily search on Google or whatever and find me. I tend to have to embrace it because I'm just out there like this. And the very first thing that a new person asked me always without question is, well, where are you now? What do you believe now? And I've had to look at it like this. My past, I had no control over. I was raised

this way. And that was normal to me back then. It may have been abnormal to the whole rest of the world. But to me, back then, that was normal. And then once I realized, once I was able to critically think and examine and realize that, no, this is not normal. And quite frankly, this is unethical what I was in. Then I created a new normal. And so I tell people that was my old normal, and I realize now how awful it was, but I have a new normal. I'm a new person.

And that even can be applied spiritually, because people who were programmed in this mindset, they're given a false foundation. In the false foundation, it's woven through your entire being. Every single thing that you believe was grounded in the cult theology, and you have to rewire yourself. It's like a switchboard. You have to pull the wires out and put them in the right correct places. And you have to do that in your head, which takes a long time. Some people, it's a lifetime. And I found that there are fundamental doctrines to my being that I believed

that were entirely false. And there were other doctrines and ideologies and even personal feelings that were built on top of those false doctrines. And then it's like this never-ending stack of things that are built on something wrong. And what I have to do is realize that something that I believe might still be wrong, and I have to be willing to accept the fact that I can be wrong. Because in the cult mindset is very black or white, you cannot be wrong or you're all wrong.

But there's this weird level of gray in the normal life. It's things that I might believe something wrong, and I have to be willing to accept it, change it, and relearn. And my answer now, when people ask me what do you believe now, well, I believe that I have the freedom to decide what I believe for the whole rest of my life. I don't know where I'm headed now, but what I'm doing is rewiring all of the things that were false, replacing them with things that are not false and healthy.

And everything unhealthy, just washing it from me. And in this way, I depersonalize what was wrong in my life from the way that I was viewing it in a way that was negative towards myself. I take away the personal relationship to the false thing away from my thinking, and I depersonalize that, which is the next question that people ask. We talked about depersonalization. And even during, I think during the show, we had one question come in, somebody asking to explain a little bit more.

So let's go a little bit deeper with how to take the personal aspect away from the people who are we were once close to, and they're no longer close, and sometimes they say some offensive things.

And even the situations, how do you take the personal aspect away from this? Okay, sure. Let me just reiterate what the process is. Um, if you have a total stranger walk past you and say something to your regulatory person, you or whatever, you're not going to take that personally because you never saw the person.

If an acquaintance walks past you and says the same thing, you're still probably not going to take it to personally. You're like, uh, Jimmy's usually not, uh, mean and nasty. Maybe he's having a bad time at home or work.

But if you bring it on into, um, immediate family member or intimate partner and they say something nasty. Well, the fight is probably on because because of the closeness of the relationship, we're going to take it very personally.

And that would absolutely apply to someone that's, it was in the cult with us, saying something negative to us. And so the truth is from the total stranger to the intimate partner or family member or fellow cult member, um, whatever comes out of their mouth 99.9% of the time, it's not about you.

It's about that person and where they are at psychologically, emotionally and spiritually at that moment. So once you're aware that negative stuff coming out of somebody else's mouth is about where they are at, then it helps you to, in your head, say, this is not about me. And so once you realize it's not about you, then you can refuse to take it personally.

And when we take things personally, we become emotional, we get angry, we get upset, we get defensive. And sometimes people attack other people emotionally just to put them off balance. So they can manipulate them and to make an agreement or something that they wouldn't have ordinarily made.

Um, guilt trip them, so speak. So oftentimes that's not the case. The person's just saying angry things out of their own misery towards another person who didn't deserve that treatment. But here's the thing, if you become defensive and emotional, your emotions are driving your bus.

And that will often lead you to make decisions and behaviors that you might have to apologize for later. But if you don't take things personal, your cognitions are driving the bus, not your emotions, and you can remain calm and make good decisions.

So you want to be, again, this takes cognitive discipline. It's not easy to have somebody abusing you and you remain calm. But it's very difficult for somebody to have a fight with themselves. If two people are flaming back and forth, then you can maintain a fight quite well.

But if you say to the person, listen, understand you're having a bad day, I'm happy to help you, but you've got to be civil. I'm going to be civil, you have to be. So otherwise you're gonna have to go cool down and we can talk about it later.

You don't have to send there and let them abuse you by any means. The point is to realize this is not about me, this is about them. And often a current cult member will approach a former cult member and have negative things to say because maybe they believe the person has gone to darkness or sinfulness or love to light or everyone say it.

And they might even be well in tension and their negativity. But the truth is not to take it personally and realize that this is not about me, this is about that person where they are at in their life and not allow it to affect you emotionally.

And I encourage everyone to depersonalize everybody, everywhere all the time, work colleagues, strangers, time members, loved ones of any kind, just depersonalize everybody because as all the dialogue you have, the calmer and more rational you are in the dialogue, and then the more calm, rational decisions you make in the dialogue, the more emotional and upset you are in the dialogue, the less rational and the less calm decisions you make in the dialogue with anybody, anywhere, anytime.

Sometimes people come very emotional about money, okay? So again, remain calm, remain rational, keep it about the facts. So depersonalization is a very, very powerful tool, but it takes psychological discipline to effectively use it on a regular basis.

So you're going to have to practice it. And if you fall off the horse, so to speak, and you get emotional and get upset, just say, whoa, whoa, I slipped off the horse there.

I didn't depersonalize that comment. Let me try again, get right back on the horse and continue. The more you do the technique of depersonalization, the more automatic it will become over time. So that after a while, almost nobody can get on your skin, and you're good at deflecting emotional statements from other people, and you just don't want a body.

You realize this is about them, so don't be. And one addition to that, in the normal world, when you're talking to somebody, and you do become emotionally charged, sometimes you can say things that you don't intend, and you can see it in their face, and they as humans realize this.

And so you can say, well, I'm sorry, I got too emotional there. Let me back up and start that again. And most normal people will back up with you, and they will take that emotionally charged thing you said and just toss it off to the side, because we're starting again.

That's how normal interactions work, which are very... different from the way in which the cult interactions work. But Jesse, this has been crazy interesting. I know that the people listening are going to be helped greatly by it.

We have a lot of people who are healing. And I'm very glad that you came back on the show to do this. And I want to say to the listeners, if you have more questions, please send them into.

Jesse and I will address them in the next episode. But Jesse, thank you again for doing this. It's been an honor, John. I appreciate you having me on. And you know, at the end of the day, it's just about helping people.

And it's always an honor to help people. Absolutely. 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-Branum.org.

And you can find Dr. Jesse Collins on Psychology Today or through LinkedIn. For more information about the history between the Laterane Movement and William-Branum, you can read Weaponized Religion from Laterane to Colonia Dignidad, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.