Overcoming: Establishing Healthy Boundaries

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 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.

Actually today we have one of those subjects that for me personally, it's incredibly interesting because as you know, we have asked people to submit questions to us and we received, you know, several questions. Many of them are concerning the area of manipulation, how and why and what did they do to our heads basically, which, you know, for me personally when I first escaped the cult, it was extremely painful, trying to get the stuff that's in my head out of my head, and it's been a lifelong journey since then of going through the process of doing this,

and I explain it to people who are unfamiliar with this. For me it's like the old switchboard and Andy Griffith where the ladies, you know, pulling the plugs out, and I've got to rewire what they did in my head. But, you know, they manipulated our heads in some very strange ways and we believed some, not going to lie, some very weird things. We just recently had a podcast come out where we're talking about the mythology in the message cult that I escaped from of the magic sword. We literally believed that the prophet guy had a magic sword. And so we've got some questions on how do they do

that to us? How do they make us believe in magic swords and what not? And when you consider the broader scope of cult manipulation, we've also recently put a podcast out on David Berg and the children of God. He convinced numerous people that it was divinely inspired to go flirty fishing, which is basically prostitution for God. And we've talked about Robert Gumbura who convinced all of his message cult believers that he was their spiritual husband. And you Jim Jones, who convinced over 900 people to commit suicide with cyanide laced coolade, recently in Kenya, the starvation to death, and there's just so much

weirdness that they put in our heads. So people have asked us and having you to help explain, how did they make us believe these weird things? Well, they used a combination of tactics. And if you see control as the base and the foundation of everything that a cult does, then it becomes clearer why they do what they do. In this case, a fear of hell was used frequently, right? And as Christians and believers, we should be concerned that we don't engage behaviors as soon as the hell, but we should be a lot more concerned with

living our life as Christians. And if you're focused on trying to do the right thing and live your life as a Christian, you don't have to worry so much about hell because God is taking care of that for you. We're pretty fortunate in that aspect that he died for everybody, not just a small group of people in one little church, not just Baptist, not just Methodists, not just message people.

He died for everybody. And so, in fact, you know, people often forget that the forgiveness applies to everybody. Even Hitler could have fallen under his grace if he had accepted it. I don't think he'll have even believed in God. But even someone as evil as Hitler could have accepted the blood of Jesus Christ for forgiveness and been forgiven. But they use the fear of hell and they use more common things like rejection. Nobody likes to be rejected. And everybody likes to feel an identity belonging to a group. And so they would reinforce your sense of

belonging by using alternative forms of labeling. Notice that people within the group have a group name, a brother or sister. People outside the group, breaking their people, they don't get a special name. And if you leave the group where you don't do what the group said, then you are kicked out. And they very heavily preached that this church has the way the truth is not light.

And everybody else is out in darkness. All the other denominations, all the other Protestant churches of any type were not in the bride. And so you Be in the bride, you gotta do what this church tells you to do.

Otherwise, you're gonna be, you know, somewhere you don't wanna be. And you have to go through the tribulation or maybe you just go to hell or all kind of bad things. But if as long as you do what we tell you to do, then you're good.

When you dress the way we tell you to dress, you're good. And we'll call you brother and sister. But if you don't give the money and you don't give the support and you don't show up to the meetings, you could lose your special name.

All of this fear of not belonging, fear of rejection, fear of, oh my God, if I don't listen to what this pastor says, I'm going to hell. And they tell you that flat out that that is what happened.

All of these things are about control. And they used especially a definition of the special group of people in the bride and then asserting that that church had the only truth, the only answer.

Now, this is not unique to the message. It's all about control, okay? Just as I'm called, you just mentioned about the starvation cult. He had a signature way of convincing people that their eternal destiny was tied to doing what he said, which was to starve yourself to death.

And that's pretty powerful charismatic person. That's immensely powerful. Can Jones again be powerful with huge charisma, convincing people to do his will just to get to heaven? So cult behavior is all about control.

And it's all about doing what the group told you to do when you were told to do it. There are studies that show people who perceive people that are in authority. In this case, it's the authority figure of God, right?

There's a very famous milgram experiment that was conducted after war or two to try to understand why people who've been normal German citizens became soldiers and did horrible things. And they were before the war, they were regular people.

But after the war, they followed orders and then acted in incredibly inhumane ways with civilian murderers as we all know as well documented what they did. Well, the milgram experiment was set up so that they had a test subject who was grading somebody.

They had an actor who they pretend in another room. They pretend to be shocked. And then the person being tested, the test subject had a row of electronic switches. And they had a man with a white coat there, the researcher who would just say, continue.

And so if the guy, if the... if the actor gave the wrong answer, the man was supposed to hit a switch and give him an electric shock. And the shocks went all the way from a very small amount of shock, all the way up to fatal.

And the person to be tested didn't know that he was not really shocking the guy, because the actor would scream and carry on and beg not to be shocked every time he shocked him.

And all he was doing wrong was giving the wrong answer. And so when the person would resist, I don't want to shock him anymore. He's always doing what's given the wrong answer to the guy would say, continue, because he has the authority of a white coat.

And about 60, I think was 68 or 67%. I don't remember the exact percentage. He did this test many, many times, not just once. And he consistently found about 67% of people would go all the way to kill, just because they were being told to do it.

And these were none of them were criminal, none of them were just regular people. So that's one scientific explanation for why people do what they do.

And his fear of going against authority was powerful enough that in their own perception, they killed a person on the authority of the white coat. So when you're looking at somebody who has a authority, look at all the, all the cult leaders, they set themselves up as an authority of God, not to be questions, just like the man in a white coat.

Do what I've said. Right. And we'll talk. Right. Dr. Stephen Hassan in his book, combating cult mind control. He defines it as the bite model of authoritarian control, bite, standing for behavior control, control of information, thought control and manipulation, emotional control and manipulation.

And when you're in this, you really don't think that you're being controlled. You don't really see, for us it was a Pentecostal style cult. And so there were the rules on how women dress and how the women's long hair, et cetera.

You really don't see that as behavioral control, but it is. There are a large number of people who follow and adhere to those rules without critically thinking, do they even believe those rules? So they're just told to do it.

So they do it very similar to the guy who's shocking, you know, the man, the actor in the other room, right? And for me, the big thing is this, in levels, there are varying levels of destructiveness in a destructive cult.

And those that use fear as the means to quickly accelerate themselves to a point of authoritarian control. In my opinion, those are so far more destructive. And... One of the big events this year that I'm really, really looking forward to is the movie Oppenheimer, talking about the development of the nuclear bomb, because in the book that I'm working on right now and in the study that I've done in the past 10 years, there's a huge significance in binding the fear of not the original atomic bomb, but once it was detonated, they started talking about making the super bomb, you know, exploding the nuclear

explosion of hydrogen was considered a super bomb that was a thousand times the blast. And what happened after they started developing this? You had all of these evangelists in the United States, we're talking hundreds, thousands of evangelists who are proclaiming the end of the world is coming, repent or else.

They basically built this whole platform of fear. And it started because it was a real fear, is a world, you know, a world conflict, right? That fear started emerging in various ways into the different churches.

The healthy churches did what you described about, you know, look, if you're a Christian look to Christ for your answer, look for your safety in Christ. And the real Christians were just preaching the simplicity of the gospel.

There's no need to fear, Jesus will save you, but there were a large number of wolves and sheep's clothing that were basing their entire strategy on, you're going to die, or else, join our movement and basically adhere to these rules and we will control you and then you can get to heaven.

So it was that big of a difference. And for us, when we left this movement, we're still living that fear from the fifties and sixties because we're playing these recordings over and over and over again.

When we entered into a new church, there was the absence of fear. And to all of the listeners who've never been involved in this, they'll think, oh, that's a wonderful thing. There's no fear, right?

But for us, it was extremely uncomfortable not having sermons that were whipping us and whipping our minds with fear. And that leads us into the next question. How do you build a community after leaving and overcome these boundaries?

For us, when we entered the new community, we were actually significantly uncomfortable with not having those whips and chains in the back of our minds. And how do you overcome this? Well, I see this question as being correlated with the question on trust.

We learned and the person didn't say exactly what they meant by community. Learning to trust is how you build a community and that takes interaction and takes respectful interaction. It takes honesty, it takes sincerity and it takes believing in yourself. So the number one problem that cult survivors have is learning to trust themselves again because they've been relying on somebody else to tell them when they were good or not good or within the guard rails or outside the guard rails and like you said the psychological weapons had become normalized as a way of making sure that I'm inside the

guard rails and so now that you're you know trying to live life outside of the cult then you have to trust yourself okay your instincts your belief sets you discovered no longer match those of the cult so don't second-guess yourself believe that you're going to get guidance of God on the path you should take and and as you continue on that path you have to trust yourself that your instincts are good you can read you can educate yourself outside the cult and begin to grow your knowledge and and use wisdom and judgment about who you make friends

with are people outside of the cult who are the people that you respect there's gonna be a bunch of them right whether you're the work colleagues or other friends you met in non-cult endeavors look at how these people live in their life and begin to reach out because if you want a friend the way to get friends is to be a friend and be a sincere friend and a kind friend people recognize that they will value that and they will value the connections that you are providing to them because everybody has their own gifts that we were all

given gifts to carry out God's mission here on earth whatever those are so people are physicians or nurses their attorneys or engineers or moms and dads and construction workers will have gifts and he gave us all different gifts because he needs us to do different jobs but by trusting people using good judgment begins with trusting yourself and not second-guessing yourself the second-guessing is how you wind up back in the clutches of the cult as they will feed into that second-guessing trust me and you want to try to try to build a circle where your gut instinct is telling you okay I could trust

this person I can't trust this person because your gut instinct is a friend and thousands and thousands of years of survival you'll know when talking to somebody, okay, and the words and actions will either match up or they won't and if they don't, then okay, we have to find somebody else to be in our community.

Right. Trust for me, I've come to learn that trust is something that is earned not given. In other words, we were trained and manipulated to believe that no matter what the authoritarian figure said on doctrine and scripture, he was the one that we trust and our guards were down. We did not critically think about it. And then when we leave and we escape and our mind starts to heal, there's this tendency to at first try to apply this to whoever is the new pastor or leader or whoever's the one who you look up to the most, right?

And then suddenly you get this realization, wait a minute, I was extremely manipulated. So then there's this barrier that forms in your mind between whoever it is that you're with. Sometimes it's, sometimes it's between you and the leader, sometimes it's even between your colleagues. And I've learned that it takes time whenever we first escaped, I trusted no one. I didn't care who they are. But over time, you learn that trust can be earned.

And it works both ways. You have to also be trustworthy for people to share this trust with you. So for me, it's a pattern that you have to develop and really have to work at it. It's not something that is just going to happen unless you put some effort into it.

So one of the things that people have asked somewhat relating to trust, there are a significant number of people who experienced sexual trauma in the churches that they were in. I first came in contact with this probably about 2000, maybe 12, 2013, but I was a little surprised.

There were a large number as with any church of sexual crimes being covered up, but in this authoritarian control structure, it's not only swept under the rug, but the victims are the one victimized. I have spoken, I know several people actually who they were physically or sexually abused by their spouse. And the minister, especially if it was a woman who was abused, the minister would actually tell the abused victim that it's their fault and that they need to submit to the authority of their spouse. And usually, again, usually this is the woman that this is the case. But there's a large number of people where this has happened,

and they've reached out for help. This is a help that I personally can't give. This is something bigger than what I can handle. So we've had people ask, what are some resources? How can you overcome this?

This also ties to the trust. How can you trust again in a new relationship? It's a very loaded question, Jesse, but how can we offer some sort of help to these people? Unfortunately, there is a ton of help.

And so I encourage anybody that's experienced this, what you were describing was a kind of a combination of domestic violence and sexual abuse, physical abuse. I encourage people to search online particular resources for the type of abuse that they suffered.

Now there's domestic violence resources in local communities and online, and there's sexual abuse survivors, resources, both online and in your local community. Here in Tampa, for example, not only can you Google your particular abuse situation and get both national, state, and local resources forward that particular situation.

We have many communities have resources that we have, which is called 4-1-1. You can call 4-1-1 and get whatever type of assistance you need, they got local counselors, as well as online. So I encourage you to not hesitate, reach out to the resources particular to your situation, whatever you're comfortable with is an online format, or from the safety of your home, or a local shelter that's offering assistance.

The question for those with domestic violence, you can get shelter, you can get out of that situation and get a safety plan going. And I encourage anybody who's been abused in physical or sexual or psychologically, contact resources like myself who are psychotherapists who can help you with that, and to get you back to a state of mental health so you can have the quality of life you want.

These are really broad categories of abuse and stuff that we're talking about here. So you can find counselors online and on-ground depending on your personal preference. And if you go to psychology today, for example, and find a therapist, you can find a therapist in your local community if you prefer to go to an office.

A lot of therapy is available for just about anything you want to imagine is available online. And usually it'd be somebody that's licensed in whatever state you live in. But the key is, and you can also, if you want to let me do medication, there's a problem.

of psychiatrists online from psychology today. And they verify on that site, everybody who's listed on the profile, they verify that the license is current and that they are who they say they are. So that's an advantage for the psychology today listings. I'm listed in there. I'm licensed in the state of Florida. So I help people in the state of Florida.

But that's changing next year. They're going to have a compact just like they have for nurses and people that are licensed in compact states can talk to anybody in another compact state. So that's going to change a lot next year. But the key is don't hesitate to reach out. Don't hesitate to ask for help. And if you if you've selected subtle therapists and you're interacting with them and you don't feel like you're clicking with them or they're quite, quite who you need, don't hesitate to say, okay, let me go find somebody else.

Because therapists are like pairs of shoes, right? There's nothing wrong with a given pair of shoes, but it may not be the right shoes for you. So just go find a pair of shoes that do fit. Sometimes people will just give up at the first therapist. I didn't click with it. I didn't feel that therapists understood their issue. And there are plenty of therapists that specialize in sexual trauma, physical trauma, PTSD, all kinds of stuff. So the help is available. I encourage you to go get it. And you can begin right at your keyboard and in your local community. One thing I'll add to that among those who have suffered

that type of abuse, there have been some who have contacted us and they were suicidal. And my answer to them, which is the same answer I'll give here, if you are, you need to call the suicide hotline immediately. You talk to them. You can Google suicide hotline.

You can find it and don't hesitate to get counseling. You know, if you're in this situation, because this is something, this is not worth throwing your life away over. This is this was a cult. They were abusing you. They were manipulating you. And you can overcome.

So along with the sexual abuse and physical abuse, there's also a very strong level of emotional abuse. And that's a category that not many people really think about. We were in manipulation, you almost cannot be manipulated without having some sort of emotional abuse. And especially in religious context, whenever your entire world is wrapped around this false theology that you're in, any sort of conflicting information to this theology, they will emotionally abuse you to try to corral you to whatever is the theme for the cult in question. So there's heavy, heavy level of emotional abuse, and whenever people pose a threat to whatever is

the cult, in our case, I just simply asked a couple of questions to my grandfather, who was the pastor of the head church. All I did was ask some questions, and they, for me, there were real questions.

For him, I'm learning now they were threats to the existence and survival of the cult, because there were no answers. Immediately after asking these questions, he turned us over to Satan for the destruction of our flesh.

For most people in the cult, this is devastating. I've had people contact us. In fact, one of the people asked this exact question, what do you do when a family turns you over to Satan for the destruction of your flesh?

How can you deal with this? For me, it was not only my family, it was also my pastor, it was my support, it was my everything. This was my church, right? Fortunately, for me, I am one of the few people, one of the few Christians in the United States that actually reads the Bible.

I've read it, I don't know how many times, over and over again. I've read from cover to cover many times. When they did this to us, I could see in my wife's eyes that she was devastated.

Why have they done this? I told her something to the effect of, it's no different than if they were to drive up into our lawn and spray our windows with a water hose. Yeah, I really don't want them doing that, but it's not really affecting me that much.

For me, I wasn't really fazed by it, because I knew where I stood. I had some of the answers already before I asked the question, but there are a large number of people that this is devastating for.

Jesse, how do they deal with the trauma that happens to their minds when their family does this to them? That's an excellent point, John. The thing to keep in mind is that your grandfather of the pastor doesn't have that authority.

He can't decide who goes ahead, all on who stays in heaven, he can. He's trying to control your behavior by excluding you from the group to try to make it go, oh, I'm so sorry, please let me come back here.

There's only one person that has that authority, and that's the person that we face in judgment. He is the side then. Another good way of dealing with stress about other people's behavior is to say, you know what, I'm not the decider.

Jesus is going to handle that when he gets up there. I got to just live my life as best I can. When I believe Jesus wants me to live my life and that takes all the judging and all this and all that Takes it all out leaving up the God. He's gonna take care of it We live our life the way we think the Bible as you've read They want us to live as a Christian in today's world and and just like Jesus handled it because No pastor has the authority to condemn you to hell

Because they're not God. Yeah And so the only way that that carries weight is if you allow them to have that authority right and That's only something you decide so just keep in mind the past no pastor for any church has the ability to condemn somebody to hell And that's another business Right, that's what you do with God and you know called thinking routinely will not stand up to critical thinking so questioning is Really healthy right using critical thinking to question why we do this or why we do that is a way of Have a healthy interactions with other people and to say oh, by the way, you're going to hell now. I saw very respectful. Is it?

I'm It's pretty rude nasty No, unfortunately your case you correct assess that he didn't have that authority and it's like or spring water on more windows There's there's nothing there But a lot of people do think there's something there because they've been trained to think that there's something there That that person does have the authority when they don't it's all about control Right when a family member does this instead of a pastor whenever a you know the father tells the son or daughter that You're being turned over to Satan. It's a different dynamic because the while the pastor

becomes the you know the authoritarian authoritarian figure of the church that he's in and then there's a central figure above this It's still a hierarchy like a pyramid and then you have a father to son and daughter and There's I'll try to find the picture and throw it up in the video feed of this, but there's this one of my favorite Memes or or pictures of a cult leader is They're standing on a cliff on this board and the entire group of people are standing on the board and then off the cliff with Nothing under him is the the cult leader of the speaker and

Literally the only reason he's Not falling off the cliff is because everybody's standing on the board. They're they're holding him up, right? Well people who leave a cult have a tendency to Walk on egg shells around family members and friends and For instance, there are the women in the cult who who wore the you know the long dresses the long hair et cetera years after leaving the cult, they'll, if they go around the family, they're going to put them back on so that they don't offend the family.

And I, you know, it's one of those things you can't really tell somebody exactly what to do because every situation is different. But in my opinion, this works both ways. If the family is still in a cult that pushes this agenda and they want to force you to wear your long dresses and long hair when you're around them, well, when they come to your house, you have the right to tell them, I'm only allowing shorts in my house.

You know what I mean? So, but what I'm headed with this is whenever they take you out from under the blood and whatever is your cult loaded language for, we're cutting you off because you're no longer a cult member.

When a family member does this, you have the right to look at them as though this is a person that you just met them in Kroger one day and you're pushing your buggy along in Kroger and you're getting your, I don't know, your soup and your, you know, whatever it is you're going to eat for the week.

And some person that you don't even know walks up to you and says, you're going to hell. How would you respond? You'd probably laugh at them and think this person's crazy. They don't have this authority over me, right?

Well, a family member is no different. They have no authority over you. And the way that you stop the person in the grocery store, as you say, well, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, you feel that way.

I don't believe that way. And when you're not emotionally faced by it, the person just walks away because they know that they can't get under your skin. Well, when a family member does this to you and you don't show any emotional response, they're going to eventually just kind of give up because they're not getting anywhere with you.

And you just have to put it all into perspective of, am I going to allow them to still remain in this controlling position over my life? Maybe you want this. I don't know. If you don't want this, then you just say, I'm sorry, I don't want to be controlled by you anymore in a nice way.

And then walk away. Another question we've got that came in is about the group itself, in the cult, similar to what I've described with this family situation. There was a really, really unhealthy level of closeness.

Everybody was in everybody's business. And that's kind of what leads to this weird relationship where you don't feel like you can tell the person. I'm sorry, I don't believe that anymore because everybody's so incredibly close together.

And when they leave a cult and they enter into a new church or group or whatever is whatever it is they're getting into. Normal people aren't like this. They're not in each other's business. And when they are, people are usually saying, get back. Don't get in my business.

But for a cult member who, especially like me, who is raised from birth like this, the first time we entered a church and everybody wasn't in everybody's business, I thought, nobody here likes each other. So how do you determine what is a healthy level of in your business and what's an unhealthy level?

Well, I think that's going to vary from person to person. But to explore it, what is the individual, the cult survivor, what are they comfortable with? What makes them feel safe? Because the cult made them feel unsafe, so they left.

And now they've got to find a new level, so to speak. And so they can try a normal church schedule once a week, sermon, or whatever that schedule has, or if they want to just take a break from church for a while and spend time and prayer and meditation, get an idea, you know, whatever it is that they're there comfortable with and be very aware of nobody, not a new church, not a new group or whatever, taking control, trying to control, trying to condemn, trying to manipulate, because there's a whole bunch of groups out there that are trying to do that. But there are a ton of good people

going to good churches that you can go to and feel spiritually fed without being in everybody's business. So that's something you want to have to explore through actual interaction. And going to places, do you feel comfortable in the place or not? Do you feel spiritually fed there or not? And then try to utilize the spiritual food that you feel you need and the interaction you feel you need versus how you were forced to before and condemned if you didn't do it.

Does the church send a decant to your house if you miss the sermon? Son, brother, you're in sin.

Or do they say, hey, welcome back, good to see you, whenever you show up. That's kind of a difference, right? They're happy to see you versus they're condemning you and they're actually controlling you and trying to force you to go. Maybe you're on a business trip, I don't know. But

it's going to depend. But again, trust your instincts on what level you need and where you feel spiritually fed if you even need to go to church for a while. In your healing process, you might need to take a break.

from a church assembly and spend time meditating and as you said, John, reading your Bible, trying to get clarity for yourself, doing a research, and then you can select whatever group you feel is appropriate for you or denomination or whatever that is.

But going forth without fear, going forth with a trust in yourself, a belief in yourself that you are going to find the right answers for you and being patient, okay, because there's a lot of healing that has to happen.

The cult, as you said, John, tremendous psychological abuse, psychological abuse is the ones that take the longest to heal those wounds, because of a cut on your arm, heal within a certain period of time, but it could take years for psychological wounds to heal.

I was laughing pretty hard when you said, sending the deacons out to your house. Most people, if you're in a cult and you're listening to this, you probably don't realize this. If you've left the cult, you probably, there's a good chance that you do realize this.

After you leave, there is a strong possibility that they will try very hard to send a group of men, usually men, to your door and try to bully you back into the cult or bully you into silence.

After we left the cult, my grandfather made one last phone call to me and said that he and a group of deacons and other brethren from the church were going to come and officially take me out from under the blood and condemn my soda hell. I can't remember all of the, you know, he phrased it in this weird way like you would read from a Stephen King book. It was just so weird. We had already been in another church, probably goodness. I want to say it was like two or three weeks. At that time, I was still under this manipulation and in my head. I had not fully

escaped it and there's this still this undue level of respect for a minister in the cult. And so in the back of my head, I was actually almost entertaining the idea of letting them do this and then fortunately for me, I woke up and I said, wait a minute, he has no authority over me, zero percent authority. And I just called him back and said, look, you're no longer my pastor.

I have a new pastor. I have now for two or three weeks and you guys can come, but I'm not letting you in my door. That was my response. Now since then, I've probably would have phrased everything differently. I've grown a bit since then, but I've had numerous people contact me, usually males, usually never females, and their church does the same exact thing. They send a group of men out and they try to bully them into either silence submission or back into the cult. And for every single person that asked me, what do I do? Because they all they all

contact me and say, what do I do? I always answer this answer in this way. Do you want them to come into your house and do this? And ironically, there's a few men that say, well, yeah, it's a good opportunity to share with them that this is a cult. For those people, for those people, I say, well, by all means, you know, if this is something that you want to do, let them in your house.

But you have the power to decide. For other people, they're in mortal fear. Like one guy, I feel so sorry for this guy. He could not eat or sleep. He was in such turmoil. I actually went out to launch with him and just try to give him a little encouragement. He didn't know what to do.

And I said, look, man, you have the power to decide. Don't let them bully you if you don't want to be bullied. If you do want to be bullied and you want to show them that you can be bullied and respond in a Christian way, then let them come. You know, it's ultimately up to you.

Another question we have, and I'm going to admit publicly that I'm a really, really bad example of this. And my wife will probably be listening. So I'll just get it out on the open. How does one build a healthy marriage after leaving a cult? I have, as you know, Jesse, you and I've talked about it. I have this deep, burning desire to help people. And I'm one of these weird people that if there's any way I can help somebody, I'm going to go give my 500% towards them. So I spend way too much time doing this thing I do. I do try to make time for the family. And I set aside hours

and times of the day and days of the week to do this. But I try to work hard, play hard, and try to keep a balance of work life. I actually have a job, I have a day job, and helping people who have escaped a cult life and helping historians find information about it and family. But the question came in, how does one build a healthy marriage after leaving a cult? What's the next question, John?

I do couples therapy several times a week. It's really my favorite thing to do is to provide couples suckle therapy. It's fascinating and never boring. The way you rebuild it is the way you rebuild it in any situation. Love is demonstrated through acts of respect. We can have respect without love with respect to the mayor.

to the governor or whatever or the boss at war, but we don't love them. But if you truly love a person, in this case, we're talking about your spouse, then you're going to respect them and respect their person physically. You're going to respect their psychological state. You're going to respect their hopes and dreams career-wise or family-wise or whatever that is. And you're going to respect the people that they care about. And the respect is two-way street. And as you demonstrate your love through respect for your spouse, communication is key, especially when you've been married for a while. People tend to get into ruts and

doing the same thing over and over again. And then, after a while, they tend to communicate using filters. Meaning, if the husband says X, his wife hears Y because, yeah, he said X, but what he really meant was blah, blah, blah, blah. Right? And this again happens in both directions, especially when people put together for a while. So you use what's called reflective listening. And you sit and talk to each other, give each other at least 15 minutes to describe their day or whatever it is they need to talk about. And then the person listening reflects back occasionally. Okay, so what I hear you saying is blah, blah,

blah, blah. And they say, yes, that's what I'm saying. Or no, here's what I meant. Right? So you can kind of eliminate those filters and have real communication. I encourage couples to use reflective listening on a daily basis. Obviously, without electronics, just looking at each other. I encourage date nights, you know, doesn't have to be a fancy expensive restaurant or you can go to the park, go for a walk or whatever, spending time with each other, showing that love and bonding for each other, showing that respect for each other.

And it's also as cold survivors, remember, everybody coming out of it is psychologically damaged and wounded. And so each person is going to heal at their own weight. And so be kind to be understanding that your partner's growth and survival away from the cold may not be the same direction or even the same pace as your own healing process. So loving, kindness and understanding of the watchwords is you both try to make a new life outside of the cold. And the cold tactic will be the opposite of that, right? It would be fear, intimidation, and more abuse.

So, the more you trend towards love, understanding and kindness and respect, demonstrate respect, the more healing can occur. And obviously, get couples therapist if you need it, depending on your situation, you may need couples therapy or you may not.

The two of you may be able to do it on your own, but don't hesitate to get couples therapy. I help a lot of people and it's a couple of therapy can be highly effective at helping people heal from past injury.

Because quite often, when they're in the cold, males are told to dominate the females and they wound up hurting them so we got that damage right between the couple. Not just in the thing, in particular to the message, males were constantly held up as superior to females and that the females had to listen whatever they said.

So, it varies. There's some healthy couples and some very unhealthy couples, but that's true on the outside too. So, love and understanding with respect and get help if you need it. Right, and one thing I'll add to that, when you're in a cult and you're being manipulated, there's this weird thing that happens because you are manipulated after the psychological profile of the central figure and you, in many cases, take on that attributes of that profile.

You either match him fully or you match certain personality traits. For example, the message cult that we escaped, the central figure, was portrayed as this great hunter and so you had all of these men in the cult who had, some of them had no natural desire to go hunting and they would force themselves to go hunting.

And I have some crazy funny stories about men who had, they were not hunters at all, but they wanted to because that was the imprints of the personality profile. Well, what happens is when you assume this personality profile and you escape it, there are many cases where people who were born and raised in a cult had one psychological personality profile that wasn't theirs.

And then after they leave and some of this programming gets out of their head, they actually shift one or two, sometimes entire categories of profiles. And that can be healthy because you're finding yourself, you're establishing yourself.

But the problem is when you're married and you go one direction and your wife goes another direction, the two people who are married are not the same people that married each other. They are completely different psychological profiles.

And so I've had people contact me in this situation. not a marriage counselor, never pretend to be, I recommend, go get a marriage counselor. But I will say this, you have to sometimes when you're in the situation, you have to learn to love this new person that you're married to.

You almost have to go through the process of dating again and get to know this person who you're already married to, which is, you know, it's a making of a great comedy movie if you think about it.

Well, I would just add to that that sometimes you've got a case where one member of the couple leaves the call, but the other does it. And that can create some serious problems because the continued code member will continue to abuse their partner.

And so in that case, I would definitely recommend going to a psychotherapist who's not associated with the call, who knows how to do couples counseling and provide that service so you can work through what the best answer is.

Now, in some cases that I know of, the best answer was divorce. Yes. And so that might be the case, you don't, whether you're a man or a woman, you don't have to continue to be abused by your partner who did not leave the code.

Yeah. Well, in the cases of abuse, there's no reason to allow somebody to continue to abuse you. It's a terrible, terrible thing. So Jesse, for these people who have escaped a cult, one of the big problems that exists is revictimization.

They'll leave the cult and because they were manipulated and because in their minds, they have grown accustomed to being ruled by fear, the lack of a better way to say it. They're happy with these whips and irons in the back of their heads.

And I'm over emphasizing quite a bit, but you understand the problem, they've been under this for so long that they navigate to other similar, very destructive situations. And what are some red flags for a cult?

But what do you look for to avoid revictimization? Whatever group or church that the person is approaching and maybe get to know or feel, all of it should revolve around, is this group trying to control me?

Are they telling me, well, brother, if you do what we tell you, then you won't go to hell or the condemning aspects of your life or telling you you should drive it to hell.

A different car or you should go to more church services and controlling, telling you what they think your life should be. And they don't have, that's none of their business. Now, if you're exploring a church, Just be aware. Are they ordering me to do things? Are they pressuring me to do things?

Because a healthy church doesn't do that. They simply set an example of Christian love and a Christian life and back in you to follow that. They don't go around pointing fingers and saying you're a bad person. They just don't. So the control aspects are they trying to control me?

Are they trying to force me to give money to disregard the programs or missions or whatever? Most churches are going to ask for money. But if they come and condemn you for not giving the money they think you ought to give, that's a totally different thing.

asking for money and condemning for not or not enough or not fast enough. That's not right? So it's a control thing. If it's a loving community they're not going to run around pointing fingers.

They're just going to set an example of living in a Christian lifestyle. And hopefully they become the light instead of flaming other people. They become the light. The red flags are control. Are they trying to control your money and your behavior and your dress and everything else? You can't see it. My music room doubles as my office and this is the playroom. This is where all the magic happens for the music that you hear in the intro and this podcast and the background music and the others. But through there's a door over here behind my head and right around that door is this nice big bottle of dog treats and whenever people

ask me this question about is it healthy or not? I use the dog example. My dog is a great dog. One of the best dogs I've ever met we were very fortunate. And if my dog if I'm wanting to teach it something I'll give it a treat. And you know this dog will do anything for a treat. I can make I can make her stand up. I can make her do anything. And when she's misbehaving I can train her by giving her a treat. And she's happy. She wants that treat. She will do anything for

that treat. On the flip side if I didn't have this and I were just to scold the dog and say you're the lowest form of a dog. You're the worst dog I've ever had and just you know beat it or whatever would do. There's no way this dog's going to mind me. No way this dog's going to improve in any way shape or form. It's a dog. And the sad shame of this Jesse is that we were in a set of rules and manipulations and strategies where we were actually treated worse than a dog. My dog is treated

better than a dog. was for the first 37 years of my life. I'm sad to say this, right? And I tell people this example, if you go to a new church and they're treating you like a dog, you probably shouldn't be there. Right. And really, in control churches, you'll often see senior people and other people not not living what they say the other members have to live. Rules for thee, not for me.

That happened pretty frequently. When somebody's not in a real Christian, they're going to have their own set of rules for themselves. And a lifestyle they can live, who they can be with, and who they can't be with. And they just, they just make it with their own rules. But they tell everybody else how they got to live. Or they'll pretend to live by the set of rules. But behind the scenes, they're not. Because they don't believe in themselves. It's manipulative effort only.

So, yes, it's on, it's a good analogy with the dog. Yeah.

Along with the rules, one of the problems that exists when we were so heavily bound by rules, we were in a rules-based religion as most cults are. And when you're in this mindset, you're not thinking about the gospel. The word gospel just simply means the good news. The good news that Jesus came and he died for you and now you can be saved. Instead, you're thinking the rules gospel. You're thinking, what can I do to earn my salvation? And this creates a huge problem with regards to parenting. Because we were given all of these legalistic sets of rules of how we

could earn our own salvation. But when you leave a cult and you realize that number one, a majority of these rules have nothing to do with Christianity whatsoever. Number two, a lot of them are just way over the top, way too controlling and really a Christian isn't concerned with some of these things. Then you enter into this weird world as a parent where where do I draw the line?

What do I allow my kids to do? Because you watch your kids doing things that number one, you were never ever ever allowed to do. And if you did, you were going to hell, buddy.

And where do you draw the line? Where do you find normal as a parent? And I'll be honest, this is something that I don't care how much research I've borne to this, Jesse. I can't figure this one out. Well, I often see people struggling with family relations the most who are have an engineering background. Because when it comes to civil engineering or just the engineering of any kind, there's very hard rules for building a computer, getting the right programming, right the program, build the bridge, build the road, and two plus two is always four.

It's not sometimes 5.6, it's not sometimes 3.2, it's always four and that's a very safe thing. However, relationships are not that way. Relationships operate, there's no standard operating procedure manual for relationships.

Relationships happen in gray areas, not black and white of numbers, which are safe, which, like you said, the church's full rules, black and white. Going to hell, not going to hell. But the truth is, the world and people interact in very large gray areas, where there are no rules.

And you, as you move forward, by being understanding and thoughtful and kind, the parenting model, for example, that is authoritarian, is very rules-based, like authoritarianist military style. Shut up. Do what I said. Don't ask questions, right?

That's authoritarian model that's being used by the cult, right? Or by somebody's dad that was in the military, and that's his style he's adopted. But the authoritative model is really the most recognized as the best parenting model.

And it's where the parent is involved. And they do have the fun to say, but they explain, and they teach and instruct and encourage, rather than order, right? Yeah. And they let the child, as it grows, participate in, but they weren't aware, and what toys they were going to play with, and participate in more food selection.

And as they grow older and grow more mature, their ability to participate continues to grow. And it's used as an instructional model, and a guiding model, rather than a bashful and head model. And so that's what I look to use for is how family relationships are not about fast and solid rules.

Now, there's some things that have to be fast and solid, right? No domestic violence, right? We can all agree. That's a hard rule. No domestic violence is completely unacceptable. From brother to sister, brother to brother, or kid to parent, or parent to parent, period, right?

But there's other things about food purposes, about play times, or it's going to vary from family to family, but allowing somebody to be who they are, as long as everything is respectful, then that requires understanding that there's a gray area here and allowing them to be who they are rather than ordering them to read a book even though they don't want to sit right above right now. Well, thank you, Jesse. This has been extremely helpful and I've learned a lot. I know our listeners will have learned a lot. Just, you know, for me, just talking through some of these things, I think talking about what you went through

is just as helpful as therapy in some cases because mentally you're forced to think through it and you're critically thinking about these things and just me talking to you has been therapy for me.

So thank you for coming on and answering these. Well, that's actually a very real thing, John. People talking to their therapist just expressing what they've been through and just sharing their story in the first, you know, a couple of sessions or something is itself therapeutic. I think people, if they felt the fence post was listening and cared, they would get relief from talking to a fence post. Just having somebody who listens and cares can be very therapeutic. I think you're right on the money there, John. I'm glad you experienced that. Thank you. Well, if you have questions

and you want to answer them on the show, send them in to us. You can contact us at William-Branum.org and if you want to contact Dr. Jesse Collins, you can find him on Psychology Today or through LinkedIn.

For more information about the history behind the Laterane movement that I escaped, you can read Weaponized Religion from Laterane to Colonia Dignidad, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.