YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

Hi,

There looks to be a great back catalog, but can anyone let know which episodes feature involvement in a cult?

Thanks!

Episode #230 with Derek Bloch is about a guy who had a bad experience growing up in Scientology. It may be interesting to you.

I just listened to that one and then directly after listened to a woman who is currently a member of scientology - which is a crazy listening challenge to go from listening to someone who had a really negative experience to another who has a positive experience -

I am a survisor of religious abuse one of my exes was pretty delusional and I realize in retrospect that I was in a cult relationship - it is not something that is written about or talked about so I have had difficulty finding others who shared the experience - however he certainly fed on my vulnerability he saw I was eager and needing of hope and something to believe in so he was able easily to convince me he was Jesus and then act like an a$$hole for 5 years and I bought it and blamed myself for all of his bad moods and inabilities to be an adult - I catered to his every whim and then in the end suffered dabilitating sadness when the relationship ended not only feeling the rejection of a heman rejecting me but of a spiritual figure that rejected me - it was heartbreaking and I am attempting to begin to heal but remember the pain humiliation shame and all other feelings that come from being out of that experience was overwhelming and I had to sort of deal with it alone because you can't go around telling people you were stupid enough to believe a random person was Jesus reincarnated...

Mike Carano, episode #65, lived in a Christian cult as a child.

Also, some religious abuse ones but not necessarily cults was Julie J. and Hilary A. I'm sure there are others I just can't think of them.

Here's the one I belonged to way back when. I still have shame.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_Bible_Understanding
(Whoo hoo! There's a Wikipedia page )

It started out really positive for the first couple of years, nothing un-towards at all.
Christian communal living and proselytizing. Figurative interpretation of the bible, which was intellectually stimulating. It filled a deep hole.

When it started to turn towards control and guilt-tripping and wasn't helping me anymore, my depression and negative world view (from before) and stasis is what kept me in for a while longer.

Went home to visit many times during my tenure, and the refrain from S & G's "My Little Town" kept coming back "Nothing but the Dead and Dying back in my Little Town"..

https://youtu.be/_OrGwbRovqg

Thank you SD

Can I ask about control? What kind?

Maybe "control" was the wrong word.

First year, went to meetings at houses in my hometown, where we'd discuss the bible and maybe listen to a tape from the group leader or elsewhere.

Then, moved to Amish country (Pennsylvania) and lived in a few different houses ("fellowships") with a small number of other members for a year or so.

Then moved to NYC for 'training" (since the initial shine had pretty much worn off). It wasn't overt brainwashing, but there was definite peer pressure and control by leveraging our desire to belong and the "be faithful to Jesus". The group leader was convinced that he would spread the gospel thru the USA, and that he had the "key" to scriptural interpretation.

(I've done quite a bit of reading about the methods used by other groups around that time, and there were quite a few. Still are, actually. Scientology is probably the most well-known. What I experienced wasn't the same. I had internal curiosity and a desire to better myself. There was also the social aspect which I wanted, to a degree).

So, it was pretty much the plain-vanilla brand of guilt and shaming that was used and is used in mainstream churches to this day.
The dynamic was to make us feel guilty for not being "X" enough. (Zealous, faithful, whatever the theme of the month happened to be).

But there was definitely a change-up - the carrot-and-stick approach. Some sessions would be about some interpretation about the parables or the figurative prophecies in Daniel or Revelations. (This has much precedent - here's an example)

https://www.amazon.com/Course-Lectures-Figurative-Language-Scripture/dp/0353931403

And sometimes guests from other churches or groups would stop in. These were interesting and enlightening.

But we also spent a lot of time staring at the floor while listening to monologues and being brow-beaten about something or other. Basically, just not good enough, and need-to-be-better. etc.

After awhile, I realized that I'd had enough, and it wasn't helping me. It was a gradual drifting away, but with residual guilt and anxiety for quite a long time afterwards....

And later I needed to break contact with my friends, who, although out themselves, would just rehash old stories and grievances that would wear me down.
I feel somewhat isolated now, in the sense that they would have been my "college friends" if I'd followed the normal life trajectory, but I didn't....

Wow, my jaw has dropped. This time you spent trying to dedicate yourself to this must of been of been somewhat hard.

Reading over your post i immediately that of the book 'Educated' By Tara Westover. Have you read it?

I once had a patient come in many years ago, she noted i looked tired and asked if i was sleeping well or was on a long 24 hour shift. I said i was having very lucid dreaming and wasn't getting restful sleep that week. She insisted it was due to the moon and it's phase. There was a great deal of time that she spent trying to inforce i was being effected by the moon and i needed to have a ritual performed by her green witch friends whom could help me. For a moment there i was wondering if i follow her will i be healed of this restless sleep. I was informed not to have certain objects such as letters from loved ones or plants in the rooms. I must open all the doors when i get home and ask the dark energy to leave. To collect storm water and use that for drinking as it is more powerful.

At that stage i would of milked a snail to cue myself. Instead i learned to live with it and explore the options of therapy to help with trauma. My bird bath collects the storm water on a rough night, the birds drink it and i don't see them flying any faster or higher. If they start shitting gold or flying backwards i will maybe consider drinking some.

Reading over your post i immediately that of the book 'Educated' By Tara Westover. Have you read it?

No I haven't but I'll look it up. Mormonism seems almost mainstream and has been covered quite a bit over the years by Paul's guests. It runs the gamut from conventional (ala Mitt Romney) to out-there, like in that book or the polygamous sects you sometimes hear about. (Side note - "Big Love" with Bill Paxton was a fictional series that explored this stuff. Weirdly entertaining.)

What we were doing was fairly conventional in its way.
Communal living like the early church might have done. (In one of my therapy sessions, the doc said. "But that never worked" which was a relief to hear...)

Since I've been writing about this, it's got me thinking about what kind of diagnosis the leader would have. (He's since deceased).

Definitely a narcissist. Religiously delusional & megalomaniacal are a few other terms that come to mind. Not sure about aspects of sociopathy or other. (But to be fair, at the start it all seemed pretty sincere, and of-it's-time. Post hippie, post-Vietnam era. Very unsettled.
Later came the mind games and the arrogance, which is when I left...

One former member has kept tabs over the years and really dug into a lot of things. I've never had the stomach nor desire to look back too much, but I noticed that he'd interviewed the man's brother and got a lot of insight. His father was a well-educated Protestant minister who basically disowned his son over his starting the "cult". Didn't want him to come to his funeral even. Wow.

So, I'm thinking to take a bit of a dive into the archives. It's a little disconcerting, but I think I need to do it a little to face my shame, and to overcome the feeling of avoidance and knot-in-the-stomach that still arises in me at times.

I think about the quote from Milton - “The mind is its own place, it can make heaven out of hell or hell out of heaven.”

All of this stuff I've experienced is largely from my mind. I've never been abused nor neglected, but I'm still stressing? I have a bit of survivor's guilt or something after hearing about the real torments I've heard and read about from others here, on the podcast, or in the news...

But somehow this experience dug deep.