403- Being Bitten 3: Coercive Thought Control

As mentioned in all the previous parts in this blog series, 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.  

Thus, I have now come to the third type of control experienced : that of my thoughts.

The list, for reminder:

1. Require members to internalize the group’s doctrine as truth 
   a. Adopting the group's ‘map of reality’ as reality 
   b. Instill black and white thinking,  c. Decide between good vs. evil 

d. Organize people into us vs. them (insiders vs. outsiders) 
2.Change person’s name and identity 
3. Use of loaded language and clichés which constrict knowledge, stop critical thoughts and reduce complexities into platitudinous buzz words 
4. Encourage only ‘good and proper’ thoughts 
5. Hypnotic techniques are used to alter mental states, undermine critical thinking and even to age regress the member 
6. Memories are manipulated and false memories are created 
7. Teaching thought-stopping techniques which shut down reality testing by stopping negative thoughts and allowing only positive thoughts, including: 
   a. Denial, rationalization, justification, wishful thinking 
   b. Chanting  ; c. Meditating  ;   d. Praying 
   e. Speaking in tongues ;  f. Singing or humming 
8. Rejection of rational analysis, critical thinking, constructive criticism 
9. Forbid critical questions about leader, doctrine, or policy allowed 
10. Labeling alternative belief systems as illegitimate, evil, or not useful

Let's magnify into how these were used by my father, his followers, and how this affected my childhoold and adulthood.

1. Require members to internalize the group’s doctrine as truth + 

7. Teaching thought-stopping techniques which shut down reality testing by stopping negative thoughts and allowing only positive thoughts

+4. Encourage only ‘good and proper’ thoughts 
     +2.Change person’s name and identity 

My parents had met during a mystical decade, where a lot of people were experimenting with their spirituality and faiths. My father had already proclaimed himself as the last, ultimate messiah that the world would ever know. 

He decided that only those who believe this about him and his other teachings would be in the good camp VS evil one (c) ; the only ones to survive this battle of light against darkness (b). There was no middle ground, you must believe it and show it in following orders, praying, and participating in the various tasks (cf behaviour control) in order to be granted this benefit at the end of the world (he kept changing the supposed date for such a glorious return to god to a further future one once the inital date he had forseen had passed). 

Thus, I was born into an enviroment filled with beliefs that would be indoctrinated upon me very early in my life. I wasn't asked to internalize, but everything was forced upon me via threats and confusing messages. 

This was the map of reality (a), where his truth was the only full truth, encompassing the various puzzle pieces that god had scatted in his previous incarnations on earth as all the previous prophets from the previous religions. My father was the last incarnation of god to ever come, and he'd sit in judgment over all of creation. Soon, soon, it'll be all over. The good/light camp shall win and rejoin god, the evil/dark one would perish into non-existence and burn in hell for eternity, all in the same time... (see the contradiction? he was full of them).

The world and life itself were both presented as lies, illusions. That I was actually a soul, provided by and a parcel of god, with the sole goal of rejoining in the afterlife into the reality that is the bliss of being an un-incarnated soul who doesn't need to come back to experience the lie that is the appearance of life. 'Real life' was the one as a soul, part of god. Not the one here. 

People in this current world were divided into 2 camps, in a black and white thinking of good VS evil, the Light VS all the rest (the dark, the impure, followers of the devil, disbelievers, and so on). I had to be in the side of light, having to express only positive, spiritual thoughts, words, emotions. These aspects reflects 1b, 1c, and 4, in the list above. 

This map of reality was repeated to me every single day and reminded through the numerous prayers and chants  (points 7d and 7b), that I had to repeat thousands of times, first thing in the morning ; prayers had to be done throughout the day, until bed time. 

My mornings consisted of an early rising, cold shower, even in winter ; individual prayers, and then, school (public school and then private religious school in the city, though he hadn't, at least in those days, had created one himself, which many cults actually do, in order to keep even more control of their followers' children). 

As I grew older, I was also to attend communal prayers, first with my father, and when I was moved to his followers' home, with them instead. 

After school, came various chores (see behavior control and how it was applied on me). 

I was never helped with homework, and my school grades suffered consequently. 

Prayers and bed concluded my days when I was young; whilst added indoctrination was on the menue as I grew older. 

Denial, to wishful thinking, prayers, were the usual remedies to illnesses. I was seldom allowed to see doctors, thus mixing here both thought and behavior/physical reality controls. 

My father took the position that human laws were beneath him, because he was divine, and had priority rules to supersede human law, in the name of god, and himself, his direct image and incarnation  on earth. This is where justification came in sight. That of his acts, that of his teachings, escaping the law over countries, changing names, giving his own chosen ones to his followers, annoying them, performing their wedding ceremonies (I saw one of these, to the only couple he took in and accepted their vows to follow him as a unified unit).  

Years after I left the cult, there was only one occasion in which I told my father, point-blank that he'd caused me harm. He denied, and said that he fulfiled his parental duties (much like he told everyone else before I ever said anything), that others were at fault for my pains. These were his forms of denials - that of never taking responsability of his actions, words and all abuse he'd inflicted weren't abuses. 

I was to be given a first and middle names and they were swapped when I was a baby (that part was lucky for me). Once he had kidnapped me from my mother after their divorce and changes in court decisions in my custody, he'd brought me to another country, where he changed my last name, got me a new nationality and lied as much and as long as he could about them. 

I can tell you that I grew up very confused and over 10 years ago I decided to take control and change some of these myself. To take control over what I was forced upon as a child. To some extent, I'm happy, but I didn't have some of the desired effects. But, despite the positives, I can tell you that one of the effects of these changes is that I often don't know who I trully am, and what potentials for my true self have been squashed. 

I'm  often lost and cannot find a proper definition. 

There were no tongues spoken there during my stay, but I recall that he said one day we would speak the only one and true language of god. 

3. Use of loaded language and clichés which constrict knowledge, stop critical thoughts and reduce complexities into platitudinous buzz words 

I was spoon-fed esoteric, new-age words and tools which I thought were true at the time, including astrology, religious meditation with repetition chanting of mantras. I wasn't given proper tools to ascertain things with a critical mind, and it's fortunate for me that I learnt to develop them on my own. 

My frames of reference were constricted during the majority of my life in this cult. It's only thanks to visiting my best friend from class (M. mentioned in a couple other entries), that I saw my father's cult's loaded language (3), presenting reality through these new-age, spiritual eye-glasses, filtering everything, limiting my access to outside knowledge, culture, where rules (see behavior control point 14) generally forbade me from listening to music, reading books, watching tv, playing videogames. (I say generally, because, for a while, some tv was alowed, after it had been previewed, but this benefit/reward was retracted). 

Because of my birth into the cult and early indoctrination, I think the hypnotic (5) aspects to alter my mental states weren't expressed in the same fashion. That said, however, I was given drugs to 'come closer to god', and I cannot know for sure what was done during those moments and hours, under their influence. 

My memory is quite fragmented. This is multifactorial, due to my age, brain-excerice, the above mentioned drugs, my cptsd, and so, I cannot discern how these memories may have been manipulated from the start (6). 

I can, however, mention that 8. Rejection of rational analysis, critical thinking, constructive criticism was a very true factor during my life in this cult. As I said earlier, I was subjected to new-age ideas, phrases, beliefs, including that I a soul and not a body, that I was governed by spiritual laws of god, using the universe and that my access to it was through knowledge of esoteric subjects such as astrology, a topic which had become a passion for nearly 3 decades, even years past my departure from the cult, until I realized that this and other aspects of my uprbinging in this cult were all outside of the critical thinking and rational analysis that I was endeavoring to learn, and to implement, in my new life. 

Another form of rational rejection was the indoctrination to pray as a cure to any and all illnesses. If I remained ill, I must pray harder, because I'd sinned. 

This blended very naturally into  9. Forbid critical questions about leader, doctrine, or policy allowed : I had to remain quiet, humbly drop my eyes to the floor when addressing my father and the other disciples, as looking eye to eye was insubordinate and counter to my spiritual calling of service. I wasn't allowed to have any kind of opinion, and to ask for forgiveness if I ever doubted anything. I was to follow blindly, silently, any order and doctrine of the faith. Any and all infractions were punished. 

As any good cult, my father never said that he was a cult leader. He played into  point 10. Labeling alternative belief systems as illegitimate, evil, or not useful, for all the other systems, with this so-called novelty, that he used a blend of said belief systems, because they had grains of truths, that he was the only one and the last messiah to piece the puzzle together into the sole truth, before the end of the world and the return of the true believer's souls back to god, whilst the others would perish and burn in hell, forever, with no possible reincarnation, because this was the very last opportunity humanity had to save itself from doom. 

(2052 words)