405- Being Bitten 4: Coercive Emotional Control

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. 

Trigger warnings apply in view of content and hyper-linked blog entries

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 fourthand last type of control experienced : that of my emotions.

As a reminder, the list is as follows: 

1. Manipulate and narrow the range of feelings – some emotions and/or needs are deemed as evil, wrong or selfish 

2. Teach emotion-stopping techniques to block feelings of homesickness, anger, doubt 
3. Make the person feel that problems are always their own fault, never the leader’s or the group’s fault 
4. Promote feelings of guilt or unworthiness, such as 
   a. Identity guilt;    b. You are not living up to your potential  ; 

   c. Your family is deficient;    d. Your past is suspect;    e. Your affiliations are unwise 
   f. Your thoughts, feelings, actions are irrelevant or selfish;    

g. Social & h. Historical guilts  
5. Instill fear, such as fear of: 
   a. Thinking independently;  b. The outside world ; c. Enemies ;

   d. Losing one’s salvation;  e. Leaving or being shunned by the group 

   f. Other’s disapproval 
6. Extremes of emotional highs and lows – love bombing and praise one moment and then declaring you are horrible sinner 
7. Ritualistic and sometimes public confession of sins 
8. Phobia indoctrination: inculcating irrational fears about leaving the group or questioning the leader’s authority 
   a. No happiness or fulfillment possible outside of the group 
   b. Terrible consequences if you leave: hell, demon possession, incurable diseases, accidents, suicide, insanity, 10,000 reincarnations, etc.
   c. Shunning of those who leave; fear of being rejected by friends, peers, and family 

   d. Never a legitimate reason to leave; those who leave are weak, undisciplined, unspiritual, worldly, brainwashed by family or counselor, or seduced by money, sex, or rock and roll    e. Threats of harm to ex-member and family

1. Manipulate and narrow the range of feelings – some emotions and/or needs are deemed as evil, wrong or selfish 

2. Teach emotion-stopping techniques to block feelings of homesickness, anger, doubt 

I simply had no right to have emotions, nor to express them. Emotions were deemed sinful, unless they were the expression of gratitude to my father, and to the complex, puzzle god person we believed in. The joy and bliss of being in their service. All other emotions were forbidden.

At first, when I was a child, I had no knowledge on how to supress emotions, so I'd express them and was systmatically severely punished, until I learned to quell my emotional expressions, which helped to reduce punishement frequency, only a little, because I'd still suffer them after transgressing the rules. 

Since I was born into the cult, there was no supposed homesickness to a prior life's condition. However, my father took measures to lie for many years, withholding truths about whence I came from: he had remarried and lied about my real, birth mother, by presenting his new wife as if she was my mother. She hated me even more than her own children and once I learned the truth from my grandfather, my wishes to reunite with my mother were nipped in the bud by further lies about her sanity and telling me she was so immoral and a bad mother, that I was better off to remain where I was and not to seek her out. 

Even once all of it came out, my father stood his ground with these lies; he supposedly not only listened to god and the plans laid out for me, but also, he fulfilled his parental duties to protect me from my own mother's amoral lifestyle - when he was the one in the wrong. He never took any responsibility of the pains he'd caused me, either. He always and systematically blamed others, and kept repeating that he did his duty. 

All these lies had tremendous emotional impact on me. I cannot stand lies and deceit, nor mystery of human interactions with me. I am leery about any sign of treachery and prefer to withdraw from relationships because of it. 

The emotional impacts of my real mother's absence, and, once I learned about her existence, for a time, was the feeling that she'd given up on me and that I was indeed a rotten person who deserved to be ditched. Thus I developped emotional difficulties and fear of abandonment, to the level of ptsd of abandonment. These don't really go away, even after I learned that my mother did all that she could, but was barred in  her efforts to regain custody and to find me.

I was, evidently, not to ever express anger which was seen as a proof of having succumbed to the devil, who could also whisper doubt in my father's teachings, and hence, I was forbidden from doubts as well. 

At school, I was teased and bullied a lot. For a time, I lashed out the inner boiling frustrations in these institutions and especially the anger that built over indoor, cult's rules and the many punishments. I had become, to my astonishment and self-hate, a bully of my own, until I learned to discern these emotional outbursts before they erupted, so I could warn my fellow classmates, and in time, with the help of what I could learn through Mr Spock on Star Trek, I applied techniques to control these outbursts and stop my emotions from hurting others- even those who had bullied me. 

I find it ironic that emotion-stopping techniques were a form of self-protection and improvement, against any that the cult would have used against me had I been an outsider coming in.

Another aspect of emotion control is seen through Behavior controls 1 and 6 : that of limiting my sleeping patterns, by an early rising (often even before dawn) to a cold shower and followd by prayers (first individual, eventually also communal), creating a physical reality of sleep deprivation and forbidden to express my physical and emotional needs to sleep more for additional energy. These were deemed illusory and temptations of the devil. 

3. Make the person feel that problems are always their own fault, never the leader’s or the group’s fault+ 4. Promote feelings of guilt or unworthiness...

This is one is true, especially regarding chores I was given, and about which I kept being emotionally humiliated, telling me that I was never good at any of them - and despite this, being told to do them, again, and again, and again. Not so I could practice and improve, mind you. Only so I could be repeatedly humiliated.

It were my personality (3 +4a) and/or lack of spiritual efforts (4b) that caused me to be this bad in performing these chores. In fact, they weren't chores, they were spiritual duties I had to perform and I had to change my mindset about them. 

The leader, my father, as I said above, never took responsibility about the pain he caused. He blamed my mother, my step mother, the world. He never did anything wrong, only his parental duties and his divine missions.

My mother was immoral and a bad person (4c), hence I was saved to be in this great "divine family of light". 

Since I was born into the cult, my suspicious past (4d) was that of a sinful past reincarnation, for which I had to atone in order to join my father and his other true believrs and rejoin god at the end time. 

Since I couldn't be trusted to choose spiritual friends, my affiliations (4e) were automatically monitored, under the rules to proseletise or to cut ties with those who wouldn't follow me into the cult. 

Any thought, feeling or action that wasn't meant to serve my father and god were automatically selfish, irrelevant and sinful (4f). I was to refrain, and if not, punishements were issued, and indeed, I was summerilly judged and chastized for anything, even the smallest supposed infraction - and often assumed guilty of them once suspicion was expressed, and I was punished without further enquiery to find if I had indeed gone against the rules. 

All and any of these points amounted to severe emotional pain through many abuses, physical, emotional, intellectual and psychological. I didn't mature the same speed as other children of my age, and when I came back to my birth-country, I was severely impaired and lacked so many frames of references, that I'm still rebuilding from them, over 2 decades later!

5. Instill fear... 

Fear was a daily occurence for me. Partially because I witnessed domestic violence, directed from my father to my mother and later my step-mother. Even if I don't consciously recall the ones towards my mother due to my young age, my psyche/subconscious was hurt nonetheless as can be attested in many social and scientific research done over the past 25-30 years. 

The other part of fear was through indoctrination and constantly reminding me that my soul was always hanging in mid-air, as if I was walking on a tightrope. Any infraction could tip the balance of my soul's downfall, towards any retribution chosen in heaven for my afterlife/after death, and by my father in this current life. I was punished on such a regular basis that I couldn't tell you how many, how few, days I didn't get a beating, a verbal abuse, locked in the WC or forbidden to eat my meals. 

Thinking independently (5a) was a sin because separated from god, who was supposed to be unison. I couldn't be a person. I was a portion of this god, and cannot act against him, because I should be like a hand in the body, to act in accordance to the brain- expressed via my father and his rules, because my father was god incarnate. 

The outside world (5b) was full of sinners and enemies of darkness (5c) and would jeaopardize my poor soul and salvation (5d), best avoid it. 

If I ever felt the wish to leave, I'd be left to my own devices, with no financial aid, with no help and I'd be so shunned from my father and his followers (5e) that I'd be left destitute, homeless, and my soul could never be saved from damnation (5d). 

Everyone would disapprove of me (5f) because of my rotten personality (4a) and inability to ever learn anything of spiritual value, especially if I left (5e). 

In view of all these instilled fears, as well as my constant hyper-vigilence in facing multiple abuses and witnessing domestic violence, is it any wonder that I developped a host of phobias, from which I suffer, in varied degrees, to this day ?

These phobias include social phobia and generalized anxiety disorder, and I also find it tremendously difficult to maintain friendships, or to be in one-sided, toxic relationships with people I think are friends, but who use and abuse me. I'll discuss these issues in separate entries.

One last point, the depersonalizing nature of all my trauma and both intellectual (=Thiught) and Emotional controls have resuled in a difficulty to asertain myself as a person, and it took me years to type an "I" with capitals. I used to right it thus 'i', because I was told that any "I" was an insult to god, and that in humility, my soul could be helped - only via an 'i" which remained with me for many years. 

6. Extremes of emotional highs and lows – love bombing and praise one moment and then declaring you are horrible sinner 

My father never told me that I was loved. Instead, he abused me, beat me, punished me, for any and all transgressions against his teachings. He was extreme in his violent overreactions towards me and my step mother ; at least once even towards his own parents. The high and lows weren't so much about love bombing and declaring me a horrible sinner. I was automatically a sinner, unless I complied. So, in my own case, this one is a very different approach. 

7. Ritualistic and sometimes public confession of sins

Everything in this cult, like in others, was ritualized. From getting up before dawn to take a cold shower before private and communal prayers and chants, to those uttered throughout the day, even and especially during tasks - so we never ever forget god is ever present, and in our heart, in our bodies, acting through us, and we MUST always show it through our external acts, and our words, as proof that god is still there. If not, it means we have strayed off the path and our soul is in danger. 

Confessions, on the other hand, were only towards our direct and only superior, my father.  In this confession, we had to show true remorse and willing to improve our spiritual awareness and tasks. 

8. Phobia indoctrination: inculcating irrational fears about leaving the group or questioning the leader’s authority 


There was no expectation that I'd ever leave. I was supposed to take the position of first proselytizer, the right hand and direct subordinate to my father. I was supposed to be the example to his other followers, once I grew of age - and of spiritual consistency. 

The real indoctrinated fear and phobia of leaving was that of the end of my soul and thus of any possible existence, physical and spiritual alike. I wasn't going to suffer natural distastes as seen in (8a) but I would first be shunned (c) by the family, society and humanity once it was saved and not me. I was told and threatened that I'd dissolve into nothingness, with no recourse if I ever did that. 

I was to live, under eternal dominion, or disappear in damnation, into the nothing between god, and the void left at the end of reality, once everyone else was saved or doomed to burn- but, I, the son of the messiah, wouldn't get any of these situations. My fate as one would have left, though born into the truth was that of the worst traitor. 

If, however, I hastened my death via suicide, my penalty would escalate. Suicide was instilled in me as the most sinful of all sins, just about equal to homosexuality (in his views, and for a time, my own sole beliefs, because I didn't know any better at the time, but it changed, ever since). I'd burn with homosexuals' souls, before I'd suffer that traitor's disappearance into nothing. 

You can imagine that these fears remained with me most of my adult life. In fact, these were part of the last items I had to shed before fully committing to my newer choice in life, consisting of secular, humanist, skeptical atheism. The fears that I could be the traitor and lose my soul was a very real and tangible one to me. Until I questioned it. 

Every doctrine, every indoctrinated bit in me, was stirred into motion, right from the start. But, I'll keep the story of my rebellion to another time. This entry has already been much longer than expected. 

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