399- Being Bitten 1: Coercive Behaviour Control

As always in my testimonials, trigger warnings apply throughout

Steven Hassan's list is my current reference list for the BITE model used by cults to control their followers. 

BITE stands for the four control types, which are : Behavior, Information, Thought, and Emotions. 

This series budded in my mind when I listened to Drew's video discussing MLM's and how they include many cultish aspects. I know that a lot of people don't really understand what that means, whilst others make jokes. As a survivor, I came to the conclusion that despite a few entries on the subject, I hadn't ever explained in full how cults function, hence this blog series, divided into 2 main parts :

•  general presentation of Steven Hassan's BITE model, using his original list and adding my comments. 
• mirror entries pertaining to the same BITE list, but applied to my own experiences. I call this second series Bitten Bitten, figuratively. 

After post 398 in which I commented S.Hassan's list, I know discuss the points as I experienced them in my father's cult, hence the title : Being Bitten, as an image of the controls I was subjected to, or witnessed. 

The list for Behavior control : 

1. Regulate individual’s physical reality 

2. Dictate where, how, and with whom the member lives and associates or isolates 

3. When, how and with whom the member has sex 

4. Control types of clothing and hairstyles 

5. Regulate diet - food and drink, hunger and/or fasting 

6. Manipulation and deprivation of sleep 

7. Financial exploitation, manipulation or dependence 

8. Restrict leisure, entertainment, vacation time 

9. Major time spent with group indoctrination and rituals and/or self indoctrination, including the Internet 

10. Permission required for major decisions 

11. Thoughts, feelings, and activities (of self and others) reported to superiors 

12. Rewards and punishments used to modify behaviors, both positive and negative 

13. Discourage individualism, encourage group-think 

14. Impose rigid rules and regulations 

15. Instill dependency and obedience (this is noted twice in the original list) 

16. Threaten harm to family and friends 

17. Force individual to rape or be raped 

18. Encourage and engage in corporal punishment

My physical reality (point 1) was very much regulated, with increasing rules and indoctrination (9) as I aged from childhood to my teens. 

One set of such impacts on my physical reality was through, as I mentioned in the addendum in the previous entry : I was to perform a number of slave-like chores and tasks beyond my physical capabilities and age. These included cleaning, washing dishes, laundry, grocery shopping for a whole family and later also for the other followers, carrying with me heavy loads beyond my capacity. This excess, I was told, was to put myself in service of others, to keep me humble, and that pain was good for the soul. 

Subsequent to most of these chores, however, I was also rebuked for doing them far too imperfectly ; that I had to strive to improve myself. I saw my step-mother re-doing the dishes, to further humiliate me. My washing wasn't good enough, that it had to be redone. 

She also decided that I wasn't good AT ALL in laundry-tasks, and forbade me from even being present. 

Off course, you can immediately see that humble souls are oxymorons, and should be replaced by humiliated individual as a way to keep a person under control, perpetually abused and diminished. 

I didn't mind the vegetarian dietery requirement (5) as I felt the need to be 

vegetarian myself and had to consent on the rare occasions where my father forced my to counterveen his supposed own rules, in order to please others. Each time that I had to eat meat (always in the forms of chicken or fish), I felt these as contrary to my own nature and eventually pretended to eat, until I could avoid it altogether by purposefully transgressing rules and receiving punishment (12)  in the form of withheld meals and being sent either to the restroom for a while or straight to bed, in other occasions. 

At first, I wasn't aware of isolating guidelines, but I did eventually had the duty to proseletize to fellow classmates with whom I had become friends, with only two choices before me : either they comply and come follow my father, accepting him as their and THE saviour, or they refuse, and I had to completely cut ties with them. This is how point 2 was expressed in the fullest fashion, but even before this, I realized after the fact, that I wasn't normally allowed to have friends, nor to visit them, a lot before I was required to preach. 

The rare occasions on which I was allowed to visit my classmates were on the guise of school homework that I had to do, and as a reward (12) for fulfilling my tasks (aka my explotation as a child-slave, a bit like Cinderella, a topic mentioned and treated in these entries). 

Other rewards were very tempory, such as allowing me to watch a pre-screened tv episode or movie, before restricting and then forbiding these activities alongside all video games. These, and limiting my musical exposures to religious ones, all fall under (point 8) and serve as a bridge between types II (Information control), III (thought) and have a secondary effect into IV (emotional control) - as withholding outside information, sensations, experiences, images and sounds, ideals and ideas, one controls all of these aspects at once.

At first rewading and then withdrawing such rewards, the cult authorities remove more than a reward : they remove the thought processes and confuse. Now I do this and get that, later, I still do it, and don't get the reward. As a cult member, I was left with the question : why am I treated so incoherently? The first, but wrong answer, was that I deserved it because I was rotten and rebellious, and that I had to accept another's authority to safeguard  my soul from damnation.

Contrary to frienship control which came in stages, control over my eventual romantic interests and sexual awakening as a teen was immediate and preemtive. This covers well point 3 as you can see from a Quote from post 334 : " I was never to initiate any kind of romantic or sexual activity.... Straying from this spiritual path of unity under his guide and rule of thumb came with a death sentence, of which he reminded me often. With this Damocles sword above my head, I was unable to pursue romantic feelings I had towards any of the girls, and later of the young women that I'd met and was interested in." 

The combination of points 2 and 3 was very isolating. I went through severe depression and suicidal ideation as a direct result of my emotional turmoil - growing into a teen, being deprived of experiencing the emotions I was feeling, which should have been normal, allowed and nurtured. This isolation was one of the toughest I had to endure and I still experience the repurcussions of these difficult expriences way into my middle age. I have troubles maintaining friendships, fearing abandonnement and yet, sometimes cutting ties out of this very fear, as well as that of being ignored and unliked.

The Damocles sword referenced here was an actual death threat (tactic 16), aimed to instill fear and ensure my obedience - of which my father reminded me often. He told me that anything I felt (read : emotional affection and physical attraction to any of the girls around me) was temptation from the devil, meant to test my soul, and that I had to remain on the spiritual path. He also "promissed" he'd find me a woman and perform our wedding ceremony himself, when I'd come to that age. (This is another practice in cults, taking the law and rights to marry one another, and keep secrets within the circle of believers). 

Contols over my clothing and hairstyles (tactic 4) was a bit different than one can expect. I wasn't alowed new clothes or shoes until they were basically utterly destroyed, and even then, had to ask permission (10), but my father presenting himself as holly and sacrosaint, said he cannot deal with money, which was seen as dirty, and so, he relegated the care and managment of the houseold + the other followers' money, to my step mother, who was the sole authority in these manners, and since she hated me, permission was seldom granted. On the other hand, my father was a tyrant regarding my hair, and in my teens, my budding beard : there were rules about cutting my hair, and absolutely no-shaving dictatorial decision had been made. One time, my grand father went ahead and shaved my beard, and both he and I received such a fire from my father over it, that I spent a whole lot of time punished, with additional chores to the usual. I spent hours locked in a small dungeon in the restroom. 

What I didn't say about point 5 was that at times, the strict rules had fasting occasions, supposed to cleanse the soul (that is a very common practice in cults and mainstream religions, cults pushing the limits to inhuman and inhumane levels). I was also, as hinted above, punished (18 and 12) by withheld meals (5) but also an assortment of beatings with bare hands or a belt, and/or being locked in the restroom for minutes to hours at a time, on such regular basis that that I occupied my dungeon cell frequently. 

Additionally, sleep (6) was highly impacted by the cult (hence by my father) : I was to rise before dawn, have a shower, usually cold (to shake of the demons out of my sleep),  pray (first individually, and later the communal ones were added to my routine). 

As I was kid and then a teen, financial exploitation (7) didn't entail stealing my hard-earn work money, but I witnessed that happening to my fathers' followers, whom he'd convinced to work. My personal experience included working as a Cinderella : house cleaning, dish washing, doing the grocery shopping, in increasing frequency, weight, duration, and gradually decreasing of rewards (12) that I had been at first given, until their utter anihilation. In this, I was exploited as a child, having to do a lot more than what you imagine from the mere listing, and any gift received from others (family or classmates) was taken away, confiscated, to "save my soul from materialism". 

I was, by defition of my age and lack of ressources, dependant on permissions (10) to buy necessities, but nothing could ever grant me any cultural or other items, deemed materialistic, and un-spiritual, as all of these leisure, entertainement and cultural interests and activities were forbidden (8), especially after the previous rewards (12) had been taken away, and thus, I could no longer watch TV and had never been allowed music or games (regular or video alike). 

The general effect to this day, from these experiences, is that I have difficulty accepting gifts, and even my wife has to push and insist, until I cave-in. 

I have difficulits in spacial oriention, and lack organization skimms that are easy to many people. These are most probably due to the fact that I was denied toys, when I was a baby/toddler, which would have nurtured these skills. I never had to learn to tidy toys and clothes like other kids do. I still lac these organizional skills as an adult. As my puts it, since I wasn't given toddler toys o fit square blocks into square holes, and star blocks into star holes, today I am baffled by fitting groceries in the frigge, or, for that matter, any other item that needs tidying.

One other effect from all these is that, as a child, I never accepted gifts, since they were taken away before I could ever lay my hands on them. I never developped that enthusiasm that comes with accepting gifts - I do so rather mechanically, and after a fashion. The child in me was killed during my traumatic years. I had to grow up into an adult way of thinking for the cult, but also in devizing coping strategies and survival skills in the midst of my ordeals. 

I was born after my father's so-called revelation as the last and "ultimate savior of humanity" (read : self-proclaimed laziness and manipulation of others, after an undiagnosed or denial of his schizophrenia and other mental illnesses that should have been treated, instead of letting the mystic age of the decade give free reign to destructive ideals). So, my indoctrination (9) was done at the earliest possible age, and expanded over the years. I left the cult before reaching the ultimate goal of leading the other followers by being most outspoken word-of-my-father, like he wished me to become. 

I already alluded that permissions were required (10) even for the most unimportant innocuous aspects of daily life, and also discussed some of the aspects of rewards and punishments (12 & 18) both here and other entries. 

I'll therefore add that these were mere examles, and that they were expressed in many other ways, and I'll move straight to point 11, that of reporting thoughts, feelings and acitivies within the cult: we were all supposed to police one another, reporting anything out of the oridinary as perceived by us, after following the set guidelines in discerning these. You can never learn to trust anyone in a cult, because of this fact, where anyone can betray a confidence, or sell you out for a good rapport, lifting their own punishements, or for rising the hierarchy - not that there was much of an announced one there, it was quite hidden. 

My individuality was never nurtured. It was in fact squashed. I recall that when I was a kid, whilst visiting uncles and cousins, that I was forcibly removed from the piano that they had played, because I wasn't supposed to degrade my soul... Not only all my toys and other gift been taken away, I was indoctrinated as soon as I could hear, read, and understand words. I was told that even as a very young boy, I was taken away by my father who'd apparently given me drugs (I assume LSD, his choice of getting closer to god. Read this entry), as, according to my sources, I was dazed, confused and all my demeanor showed this fact. 

It really never helps when a person is born straight into such an abusive and manipulative milieu. 

All the rules of which books and music I was allowed, whilst forbidding anything else, from games to socializing outside of school, to fully immersing me in the cult's teachings, all was designed to keep me at bay from growing into an individual. All of these and other tactics to subvert my natural tendencies fall under the category of depersonalization). 

Promotions of group-thoguht were done by sending me to visit the other followers, to listen to them reading the various teaching my father had given them and which one had transcribed unto paper. In time, I was moved to actually live with these people, and not only attended these weekly readings, but had to be present in their group prayers, before or after my private ones. The indoctrination, at that point of my life, grew from partial to full. 

How to better instill dependency (15) as by withholding anything a child could ever grow any funds to escape the cult as to entrust the money-managing to one person from whom you must request permission (10) that you need something, and be the most convincing about it, but can never rely on a prompt positive response ? How better to further this dependency by confiscating all gifts that extended family members offered ? These are some of the tactics to ensure that even if I had somehow gotten curious about the world outside of the cult, I couldn't join it as I wasn't supposed to have any cashflow to grant my freedom from it ? 

As for obedience (15), this is enforced by punishments (12 & 18) and such severe rules and regulations (14) that I wasn't ever allowed to express any sort of doubt or questionning of these decrees. 

(2711 words)