Overcoming: Understanding Post Traumatic Stress

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 to us from Trinity Florida and together we're discussing the impact of spiritual abuse, how to process it, and moving on to a more fulfilling life. Jesse we've got a lot of questions that came in. It's been a while since we've done this but people have sent us in questions and I've been collecting them and they're focused on a

topic that actually is one of the ones that I'm most interested in discussing because it hits home for me just a little bit and that's the subject of PTSD. I can't say that I had a full I've never been diagnosed as having PTSD but in my sessions that I've had talking to a therapist I do have some of the symptoms and they were mild and by the time that I got brave enough to go to a said session of therapy I'd already conquered a lot of them myself and I did that simply by researching how do you get over PTSD but there are

things in my life that it did severely impact while I had it and even still today there I some of it is old age but some of it I feel is the the PTSD there were large blocks of my memory that just disappeared and most of my memories have started to come back but there there are times where I'll be thinking of something and it's around a painful section of my life and suddenly I realize that may be PTSD blocking it I don't know but let's get into it what are some common symptoms of PTSD that we can share with our

listeners. Well thanks for having me on again John it's good to be back. PTSD is an important topic I'd like to start out by saying I don't like the term PTSD because PTSD is probably a more accurate way to describe it because when people go through trauma whether it's military trauma or a first responder trauma or trauma of abuse whether it's psychological abuse or physical abuse, both all these things, these traumas produce a reaction.

That is natural, that is the way our bodies are designed to react to trauma. And so I think the term post-traumatic stress is a better way to say it. Because when you put disorder in there, people think I'm broken.

Oh no, I'm broken. And the truth is post-traumatic stress is very treatable. And you really don't have to walk around in a quote-unquote broken state. And we'll talk about the treatments and what's available.

Post-traumatic stress is normally when you're having nightmares, you're having flashbacks to the traumatic incident. You're taking evasive action around stimuli associated with the incident. And your physical reactions are related to the stimuli are often not in your control, or barely in your control.

You have spontaneous reactions, negative reactions to stimuli associated with the event. And this lasts longer than 30 days. For example, it's normal, like say you're in a car crash, you're injured, it's normal for you to want to avoid that particular intersection for a period of time.

But if that avoidance of that stimuli lasts longer than 30 days and you just can't drive there at all, then you're technically in the category of PTSD. But fortunately, PTSD is very treatable. And it's something that you don't have to avoid the intersection or avoid that stimuli in the future.

Right. And I agree with that. It is not a disorder. And when you have it, you kind of feel branded with it. When I developed whatever it was that I had, I feel like it probably was PTSD.

And I was able to work through it. But whatever it was that I had, there's this feeling of defeat like I'm broken. And using the word disorder really does impact your psyche. And unfortunately, it makes that last even longer because when you think you're broken, well now you think, well, can I be fixed and that leads into more PTSD.

So I fully get that. I am no therapist or psychologist. I'm fascinated by it. I may one day decide to go to college for it. But I do read an awful lot. And with the people that I work within the support groups.

I try to help as much as I can, but I direct them to CA therapist because this is not something that I really am qualified to help with. But when I do, there are people that are really surprised that they were never in a war.

They were never in, like you said, a car rack or anything that typically is associated with post-traumatic stress. Yet they were in an abusive religion and they have all of the symptoms of what is labeled as PTSD.

And I think it would be good if we discussed just a bit how abusive religion can actually trigger this. Well, no question psychological trauma is a very real trauma. In fact, psychological trauma can be much longer lasting than physical trauma because physical trauma tends to heal in time.

Whereas psychological trauma, it takes its own time to heal and sometimes the effects last for a lifetime. Often people aren't patient with themselves about it that healing process either. I helped law enforcement that had killed someone in the line of duty.

And while it was completely legitimate action that the law enforcement officer took, it was the first time he'd had to kill someone. So he was traumatized by that psychologically. He wasn't physically injured in the incident.

But the trauma, the psychological trauma of taking another person's life was bothering him and giving him classic PTSD symptoms. And what I treated many first responders, law enforcement, military, medical first responders with cognitive behavioral therapy.

That's my primary modality for treating PTSD. There are other treatments. There's medical treatments with SSRIs, EMDR. There's other eye movement related treatments, such as R-22-0, that are very effective. And that's just those eye movement visualization techniques are simply, they're very effective.

And there are simply ways of reprocessing the trauma. What a lot of times people don't understand is the trauma, the reason it becomes PTSD is that it wasn't processed properly. That's why you have two first responders go into a situation and one come out with PTSD out of the incident and the other one's fine, no problem.

Because one processed it and put the... trauma way so to speak package did and put it where it needs to go and the other person didn't really process it fully and quote and quote that experience is still rattling around in the back of the truck rather than being put properly in the trash can.

So these are just ways with cognitive behavioral therapy. I'm a minimalist on medication, sometimes medication is helpful. Generally speaking when we're doing work with psychological trauma we need psychological treatments. Sometimes medications can simply mask the effect or suppress the effect of the PTSD but they don't address the root cause. So I always try to deal with it psychologically and of course if ultimately if somebody needs medication for anxiety or depression then you can make a referral to a psychiatrist for those applications. But you can absolutely have in fact psychological trauma is the larger part of PTSD than then usually the physical trauma by far. Yeah I think that's pretty good advice.

I mean we grew up in a religion of faith healing so medication is this weird thing in the background of my life but I even after escaping this I'm very hesitant to use things unless I really feel that I need them. Just some of it comes from my past but some of it just because I want to know where my body is at. If I have a mild headache for instance I won't take Tylenol but if that develops and progresses towards a migraine I'm gonna take something and ward off the migraine so I think it's a fairly good advice and letting a professional decide where that cutoff is. One of the things

that I've noticed in studying colts in general. Colts typically have a very narcissistic personality, a leader who has a very very defined narcissistic personality and a majority of his followers because they've been manipulated and to some extent brainwashed they really don't recognize it.

You'll hear terms like but this leaders are humble profit. This is the guy that loves everyone. How can we label him narcissistic but when they deprogram and they get away from it they begin to realize, wait a minute, that humility was not real humility. That was all part of the cult mindset but what happens that I've noticed is the psychological imprint of the cult leader as it develops into a cult identity.

that people assume when they became manipulated and under the mind control of the cult, they take with those personality traits of the leader that they have embedded into their cult identity and some of them include the narcissistic traits.

So what you end up with is this pyramid of narcissism where the leader is very narcissistic, sometimes the parents are, and sometimes the children are growing up under this, with their parents, and even though you can say it originated from religion, not all of it is due to the religion, it's just part of the psychological effects of cascading down.

It'd be good if we talked a little bit about the dynamics of how that works and for children who grew up in that scenario, how do they break that cycle so that they don't, in effect, bring this onto their own children?

Well, narcissism is rampant among leaders of humans. If you look across the board at high ranking military officers, politicians, people in senior civil leadership positions,

they often, it's almost a requirement to put that much effort into climbing the social ladder. You have to believe that you are the answer to a lot of problems, and you have to think that your kind of God's gift to mankind to sell yourself that hard to that many people,

and you have to keep repeating it, how much you're the solution to their problem, especially in the political realm, or in the religious realm that you either grow your narcissism,

or you simply reaffirm the very solid narcissism that was already in place.

Even well-intentioned politicians who don't necessarily have able to attend, have to believe very, very strongly that they are the answer to people's problems, and that is the case in most cases, which is a very self-centered view, considering the wide range of talents and abilities that are available.

And so, narcissism often goes hand in hand with leadership of humans. Now, malignant narcissism is where you intend harm to others, you pretend good, but you actually intend harm, you intend to abuse, you intend to take advantage of the people, and you're not just believing in a sincere way that your leadership is for the benefit of the people.

Now, narcissism. justify themselves, you know, oh, I'm going to do this because it's for the good of the people. But that doesn't mean that that's actually true. But your question about the parents taking on in our cystic traits, people, and just about any organization, when they have strong leadership that will take on the characteristics of that leader, whether it's a financial guru or a religious guru or a political guru, if they really passionately believe in that person, they will start taking on their ideas and you'll hear the mantras of the guru coming out of their mouth. And their statements are often simply restatements of what the strong leader

also said. Now, this isn't always a bad thing. If you got a good positive leader, let's just say in the military, you have a good strong leader, firmly believes in

maintaining establishing war fighting skills and team building, they will have mantras to reinforce those values of the military values to that make a strong unit and make an effective unit with highly theality of potential. And so those mantras will be repeated, you'll see them on walls and the unit, you'll see them on church and clothing, your hair coming out of the organization's membership, it's mouth. Now, the same thing applies to negative organizations that have very strong leaders who are demanding of their people that they act and behave and believe in a certain way, they'll have mantras and you'll see those mantras repeated. Often religious leaders

use Bible scriptures or scripture-like soundings or they'll say they had a vision of something and this vision told them X and they'll keep repeating these lines over and over again. And repetition of mantras is a common well-known worldwide control mechanism for people.

Now, in the case of people that are being abused, physically, sexually or psychologically, by these mantras and being forced to accept the mantras, even though they are being damaged by the mantras, then it can be incredibly psychologically dramatizing. And when they begin to pull back from that, often there are costs involved in withdrawing from the organization and usually those costs are are psychological. Remember in a previous session we talked about how some pastors will condemn someone because they're leaving the organization, they'll condemn them to hell or to Satan or to some dark, infernal place.

that they will suffer greatly. Well, first of all, pastors don't have the authority or the ability to condemn anybody to have an oral health. That's even not within the purview of any clergy here on earth.

There's only one person can determine that according to our Christian faith, and that's not a clergyman. And that would be Jesus Christ who decides. But a lot of clergy will take on the authority that they don't have to condemn somebody.

And then now they've psychologically traumatized the person, especially if they kind of believe maybe I am going to hell. And if I leave this organization, oh my God. But their desire to leave is strong enough that they go ahead and leave.

But the part of them that believes, maybe he's got a point, he might be condemning myself. That's very traumatizing. So the next question is, what do I do with that? 100% John, they need to get a counselor.

A very competent counselor. Somebody like me, I'm licensed in the state of Florida. So that's, like you can see, that's going to change next year when we get a compact license for counselors across several states.

But right now, you need to find a counselor. The way it is, there's the compacts aren't full effect yet. So find a counselor that's licensed in your state where you live. And research them to find out how competent they are

with dealing with religious trauma. So there are some faith-based counselors, Christian counselors, that doesn't mean they're necessarily good at dealing with religious trauma. But focus on people that have PTSD and trauma experience because really if you're good at treating trauma, whether it's, whether it's military trauma or sexual abuse trauma, whatever, then the treatments essentially the same because trauma is trauma.

And then you simply analyze the trauma that's going on with a person and then you pick the appropriate intervention. And as a trauma specialist, you should have different types of ways of approaching trauma.

And different types of trauma, whether it's psychological trauma, physical trauma or both, which almost always it's both. So the bottom line is, get help. Don't be afraid, you mentioned earlier, John, you've been afraid to get help.

That's a very, very common thing. A reaction that people have when somebody says, oh, you should say a counselor. But I'm not crazy. If I go see a counselor, they'll think I'm crazy. But whatever.

Well, you know, the counselors aren't trying to decide if you're crazy, they're trying to help you. And so I would strongly encourage everybody, not to be afraid to go to a counselor. And if you don't, first, the counselor that you go to, you don't click with them, they don't seem to get you or understand you, don't hesitate to leave the counselor and go find somebody that you click with more because it's been shown through research that the strength of the rapport between the client and the counselor is the strongest number one indicator of successful outcomes for the client, regardless of the modality, meaning are

they CPT, behavioral, family systems, psychotherapeutic, psychoanalytic rather, whatever the modality is, the strength of the rapport between you and the counselor is the number one indicator of successful outcomes. So get with somebody you click with, don't be afraid to switch counselors.

And another thing is, people often say, oh, I can't afford that counselor, he's too expensive. Well, how much do you spend on dinner? How much do you spend when you go to the mall?

Yeah. You won't think twice about dropping a couple of bills on dinner or at the mall, well, what's the problem with your mental health, right? How important is your mental health relative to dinner, right?

So I encourage people to kind of reassess their financial priorities when valuing their mental health. Yeah. I agree. And you know, it's kind of funny. I was having this conversation with somebody just two days ago.

You know, mental health in the United States, I kind of feel like it's one step above the stone ages in many cities, not every city. And I know where you live, there's, you know, in the larger cities, there's, it's more, more developed, the mental health in the area we live in is actually, it's getting better, but it's not great.

We've had to deal with it with family members and it's not great here. But widespread, there's this weird taboo about counselors, like you said, I'm not crazy. Why don't you see a counselor? And more to the point, people, especially of this type of religious mindset, they don't really see the therapist as a doctor and they don't really understand what it is that they're doing.

I was having a conversation with somebody a couple of days ago and they said that they went to a therapist and just really didn't work out because all this person wanted me to do was talk about my problems and then they wanted me to write a book.

And you know, it's very common because that's how therapy works, you'd express your problems and that's how the therapist can understand, okay, this is what's going on in their heads and I know how to address this, right?

So one of the things that helped me and I mentioned that I never took it to the full depth of taking the test to see if I had PTSD because I really felt, and the counselor, the therapist felt like I was past it at that point. But early on, I was working with a psychologist and we were talking about triggers, which you and I have discussed previously, but I think for this episode, maybe we go a little bit deeper with triggers, because what I was experiencing, the post-traumatic stress, the trauma, the stress that was associated

with the trauma was triggered and then it would get worse and worse and worse and spiral out of control. And one of the tools that they gave me was that take just one at a time, take one single trigger, one thing that you know whenever you hear the phrase, you see the site, whatever it is that triggers you, take it and then re-associate it to a different memory. And it's really difficult time consuming to do, but you basically take one thing and you're re-wiring your head to think something else. So I would take, for example, you mentioned that you're doomed to hell scriptures.

For me, I just researched that passage and that belief set and that mindset through all history, as far as I could go, so there's nothing left to research, really. And then associated it with, okay, this is a belief that has existed in the church and it has been abused by very, very evil people. And I associated that trigger with something entirely different. This is something that a bad guy will do, not a good guy. And I was able to rewire that. Other things I put to happy memories, but what is your advice for people who are triggered and how can they recognize

a trigger? Well, I think that's a fantastic example you just gave John, helping people rewire

is, I prefer the term reframe, okay? You reframe the meaning or the interpretation of an event, which is essentially rewiring it. I believe that, and that is the essence of cognitive behavioral therapy. You take a cognition, which a cognition is a thought. And you change your pattern of thinking to reduce your trauma about the stimuli and to focus on the positives in your life and the good things in your life rather than focusing on negatives. Now, if a person can, I would recommend just separating yourself from stimuli. Don't be around it. That's the quickest, most effective way

to do it. But that's not always possible. I'll give you an example of that. I had a gentleman friend that I was in a social club with. and he was expressing to me how his wife had died a couple years before and he was living alone in the house and but the house was exactly all the things she had all the decoration she'd put in the house everything was exactly as it was before she passed and she had been heavily involved in the decoration of the house and he was there alone and his daughter would get triggered

coming to the house trigger her thinking about her deceased mother and so she wouldn't come and visit him and so here he is home alone and alone alone no one's coming to visit and and then he began to get depressed looking being triggered by the things around the house and all these memories were overwhelming him and he said just sometimes I think about maybe hurting myself because I'm so depressed and so I said buddy you need to sell that house and move out of that you're being triggered by everything in the house all those memories is bringing it down. Fortunately here in Florida

we have a very much hot house market and he sold his house for a full price within 48 hours and he did move to another community a couple hours up the road where there's a lot of people his age he's retired and he has a whole new social network I talked to him later he's really happy he's he's not he doesn't have those old memories haunting him anymore and he's made new friends so basically what he did was separate himself from the triggers and it completely changed his lifestyle and his mood it was financially successful so that was never an issue but his psychological state

was being hampered by living the most triggers a frame of awareness when you have incidents in your life if you have a frame of awareness then you you can you have to assess did I put the proper frame on that thought or that experience and how you frame something can really impact how that incident impacted you emotionally so if you interpret something as being very detrimental to you versus interpreting something that was instructional to you and it was a good lesson that you learned that before this other thing happened right you see it you see a negative

that happened in your life as an important lesson or as a determinant that yes I am a lower value human and I'm stupid and dumb and I can't believe I had this experience and it really you know devalued me and I'm an idiot right if you frame it in such a negative light then the incident can really be detrimental to your psyche if you frame it as an executive I really learned from that incident, I'm so glad that I had that incident at this point in my life, so I could grow from it.

And you can do that with just about anything that's happened to you. And I'll just take a non, well, it's kind of religious divorce, right? A lot of times somebody is very upset, they found out that their spouse is cheating on them and they're devastated and they're just, oh, they're wrecked by the loss of them.

The relationship, the loss of trust. And so they have to move on with their life, but they're moving on in a very crippled state. Well, instead of reframing that as they be trailed and lost, you reframe it as, well, thank goodness the person showed me their real self at this point in my life, so that I could get back, you know, surround myself with people who do care about me.

And get away from people who want to betray me and lie to me. And so they can see a very negative event as an eye opening event that they can be thankful that the person revealed their true nature so that they could get on with their life and not continue to be betrayed and without their knowledge.

So framing is really important and it's directly related. Like you said, what you're doing is rewiring those thought associations from loss and, oh, my God, this is terrible to think goodness. Yes, it was a bad experience, but I learned from it and I'm going to grow from it and I'm a better person for having gone through the experience.

And all you're doing is re-assessing those cognitive patterns and that changes how the cognitive patterns impact you, but here's the beauty of it. We get to decide nobody, not our doctors, not our friends, not our loved ones, we get to decide where the exclusive authority on our thought process.

And what patterns of cognitions that we feed and nourish and encourage and the ones we say, whoop, that that pattern is not good for me. I get sad every time I go down that road, so I'm not going to go down that road.

A lot of people think that they are just affected with their thoughts, whatever came into my head. That's what I got to think. I'm just a down person. No, no, you can choose to think positive thoughts. We can choose to think negative thoughts.

And you have the power and that's what I want to impress on people. How much power you have over your mental state every single day is massive. Yeah. I have, in the support groups that I work with, I've had people contact me from time to time and the framing examples that you gave, I think those are really key to understand.

We had, as you know, we have people who, they were in this religion that taught that psychologists were demons. And it's funny because I know there are people who are looking at our YouTube channel and they're saying you, you Jesse are the demon who's working with me, right?

It's kind of, kind of funny, but that said, there are people who grew up with this mindset, like I did, that you know, that's your programming. The psychologist is a demon. They're the devils out to get you. Well, what happens is when they escape, that mindset kind of sticks with them.

And what happens that I have seen time after time from people in the support groups is they will unload this feeling that they have to somebody who's one of their new peer group. And that person will say, well, oh, I know this great Christian psychologist. And this is a Christian, even though it's a psychologist, you can know, you can trust them because they're a Christian. Not that there's anything wrong with a Christian psychologist, but what they missed was they didn't look to find a Christian psychologist or a psychologist and psychologist in general who understands the cults because there's this, you know, you've got PTSD and you've got cult

related PTSD. They're two different things and they're not treated quite the same way from what I'm understanding. So what happens is in these situations is the people, in fact, I just had one, I want to say three or four months ago, contact me for this very thing.

They went to a counselor who recommended that they get with a healthy support group, go back to church, hear a good, hear a few good sermons. And they didn't really understand that it's the sermons man that's triggering their PTSD. And this person that contacted me was a complete nervous wreck. Like they were in shambles because they didn't understand this.

So I wanted to hear your advice on how to find the right psychologist. What's the difference between, you know, PTSD in general, cult PTSD. How do you recommend people go about finding the right person and understanding the right treatment?

It takes research. You're exactly right, John. A lot of mental health professionals have no experience with a cult. A lot of them are actually atheists and not religious at all and tend to be very politically liberal within the community. That's just the way it is in the field of psychology. So they often look down on religion or don't think people should take religion seriously, certainly not all, but it's very common. And even the ones that do take religion seriously often have no point of relation with a cult, which is very much a mind control business.

And if they'd never been through it and don't have enough dealt with it, haven't researched it and informed themselves and had training in it. They probably can't even relate to somebody who has endured that trauma.

So it's gonna take research. There are psychotherapists who are very effective at treating psychological trauma from whatever source. And it's especially helpful if they can identify with the cult mentality and understanding mentality and how cult controls its membership to the point of giving them post-traumatic stress.

Because a lot of people think that PTSD is, you know, well, you got beat up by a gang and then, you know, that's not, well, PTSD is a lot of things besides physical injury.

And a lot of the people that have never experienced cult behavior, you just can't wrap their heads around how powerful it is. I was describing to my class the other day, I'm teaching a death and dying class and I related to them how much power these cult leaders have with their following and this gave the example of Jonestown in this more recent case where in Jonestown, he convinced a mass of hundreds and hundreds of people to kill themselves and some people were killed at right.

They were murdered. And then in this more recent example that we've been dealing with a splinter group in Kenya where he convinced people to starve themselves to death. Now, think how much psychological power those two leaders had to have and charisma to convince people that this is a way to heaven is to murder yourself in one case, drink poison in any other case to starve yourself to death.

Because your natural instinct is to eat and to survive. And the power of the cult leader was such that he was able to overcome those natural instincts that were born with to survive and eat and take care of yourself.

So people that haven't been exposed to that level of charisma and power often can't relate to it. So you're gonna have to do some research to find a psycho therapist to either has personal experience with it or a lot of training with it and helping victims recover from that level of psychological trauma.

It's a mass, it's a huge deal. So take it seriously and find somebody who's competent in that area. And usually you'll find mental health provider specialized in different things. Some in couples therapy, some in team, some in other things, but you'll find somebody who's competent in the area of cult behavior and...

and treatment recovery from cold is not as common. Yeah, I agree. In my advice, and again, I'm, I will preface my advice with this. I'm not a therapist or a psychologist, find somebody that can help you, but I did advise the lady, if you're being triggered by going to church, it might be a good idea if you take a break for a while and just separate yourself from it, you know, which I'm certain that I'm certain that that's the advice that she would have gotten anyway, had she gone somewhere. Do you know, and this is

just my curiosity, and actually the question did come up, but to do the PTSD treatments differ in different age groups or result the same, like the treat children differently than adults. Well, it's like anything else when you're doing education and psychotherapy is a form of education.

You have to go to the intellectual and maturity level of the person you're helping, because if you talk over their head, you're going to lose them. If you talk under their ability, you're going to lose them. And so you got to talk to them at their level. You got to meet them where they are, so to speak. And so where that teen is, where that young person is, or where the adult is. And as you know, even adults can be at massively different stages. So it requires the ability to truly assess the person, assess what's going on with them, and then bring the appropriate

tools to bear to help them reframe and process their trauma. So the answer is, I mean, even where they're at. And that means you have to be flexible as a psychotherapist to not only insist on one approach for all clients. It's not going to work. The question also came up, and I'm certain it's similarly related to everything we've already discussed getting to the heart of the problem. But it is very common among people who are in the support groups that I've worked with to have night tears or nightmares whenever they first escape. And sadly, because it's a religion

of angels and demons and visions and dreams and all of this weird stuff programmed in your head, they'll see the nightmare as a vision from God or some, you know, a dream from God. And it's just a nightmare from your PTSD. I understand to fix this, you have to get to the root of the problem and address the PTSD, but are there intermediate steps that you can do while dealing with this to ward off the nightmares and night terrors? Well, the key is absolutely get treatment so that your psyche is not utilizing those traumas to create the dreams. I understand that dreams

are, I mean, we're often taught to do that. Dreams are, you know, spiritual experiences and maybe God's talk to us and maybe a demoness talk to us and all this, well, I don't believe any of that.

I believe there's plenty of evidence to show that dreams are a function of the subconscious which never sleeps to solve contemporary problems. For example, if you're having trouble with your spouse, your dream content will probably be related to some type of conflict that you're trying to solve with another person, having financial stress.

If you're having academic stress or if you're having career stress, all these things, your subconscious tries to solve them while you're sleeping. A great example of this is the chemistry, periodic table came to the inventor of the table while he was dreaming because he had been working on it, working on it for several days, he was very stressed about it, so he focused on trying to get the peer-out table correct and he fell asleep while listening to a piano in another room and he dreamed that the notes were flooring in and the squares were flooring in and in his dream he put all of

the squares where they needed to be, he said he only had to change to when he woke up. So his subconscious mind was attempting to solve the problem. His conscious mind had been working on which is the establishment of the periodic table, which is incredibly valuable to chemists everywhere today.

So that's an example of how your conscious mind and conscious challenges, your contemporary challenges right around you are generally the subject of your dreams. Now past traumas can be, if they're unresolved, can create dreams in the present, but it's like the trauma was safe from your teen or younger years and then later you're still struggling with that, it's still unresolved so your conscious is still trying to solve that problem.

The key to solving the trauma is to get therapy for it and then the dreams can take care of themselves and they become more about your contemporary situation rather than the past trauma. So conscious is trying to solve the past trauma and what you need is therapy to help heal that so you don't have to dream about it.

One of the people that asked me this, my first question was, okay, so you're dreaming about the cult, were you thinking about the cult? I mean, it's very obvious if that's what you're dwelling on the most, that's what you're probably going to be dreaming about.

I can assure you that the other night when I dreamed about Bugs Bunny, it's not because God sent Bugs Bunny to me by dream. So. Thank you too many cartoons, Chuck. I will attest. I have watched too many cartoons. It's either Bugs Bunny or Scooby-Doo.

But yes, that's the way that I deal with my triggers. I love cartoons and comic books. We actually did a whole episode on this. It's one of the ways in which you can defeat PTSD is to get your mind on something else that's healthy. And I consider, you know, not all, but many of these things healthy and they relax my mind. So that's why I do it.

But yeah, so the the family dynamics of PTSD was another question that come up. I know that they're, you know, as with any system of religion, you have family units that are healthy, some that are unhealthy, sadly, and the cult that we escaped, it was a doomsday cult. And in a doomsday cult, you have people who had kids who really sadly didn't even want them. They just had kids in there.

They think that they're not even going to raise them because they're going to go to the other side. Do the family dynamics play a factor in this at all? Well, that's true regardless of doomsday cult or not. There's endless cases of families with abuse of fathers, maybe not religious at all. The dynamics of the family, the sexual abuse, of physical abuse, different parenting styles absolutely impact the kids, whether they're involved with cult or not. So 100% the dynamics of the family are relevant. In this case, you got an added layer of power control to the parent, which often has their own, those parenting styles,

you've got authoritarian, which would be a military style, shut up, sit down, don't ask questions, do as I say. And you got authoritative style, which is more participative, explain, help them understand, bring them along, make them part of the process authoritative the parents still in charge, but they let the kid have some input and the input grows as the kid grows in maturity and the skill.

And then you got permissive parenting where the parent doesn't exercise a lot of discipline over the kid and the kid can pretty much do what they want to do. And then you got the worst kind, which is uninvolved parenting, which is the parent doesn't know where the kid is and can care less. Let me continue with my adult beverage and my favorite TV show, which is the worst kind.

So I'll just use that as an example, different, and if you look in leadership styles, those transfer those all those parenting styles transfer into leadership styles and the leadership style of the cult leader usually is more authoritarian.

And I've been given this gift by God to share with you and so you will do, it's not really me telling you, it's God telling you, so you really need to listen. Right, and then God told me to tell you to give me money.

That's always the money. Oh yeah, or sacks or both. Yeah. Dave crash, he's taking their money and their sacks. Yeah. So that compound out west and it's going to happen many, many, many, many times.

Whatever the leader wants, funny house somewhere that is to what God told him that you need to do. So that's what you want to be aware of. As far as the parent installs inside the house as well as the leadership installs inside of the cult.

Well, Jesse, this has been fun. I'm glad to have you back on here and I really feel that this is going to help a lot of people because like I said earlier in the show, this is one of the topics that is widespread, especially in our support groups.

And I'm very glad that you're able to come on here and help us with this. Well, John, it's been a pleasure being with you again. I appreciate your servant heart. You have a passion for helping those who have suffered trauma and it's a passion I share and it's an honor and a pleasure to work with you on these podcasts to try to help these people out who deserve to be supported.

Well, thank you. Yes, it is a passion that we share. 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 behind the Laterane Movement, read Weaponized Religion from Laterane to Colonia Dignidad, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible. Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music