I'm Liz, and I was brainwashed and recruited into the destructive cult JMS which I subsequently escaped. I am amazed at all the engagement that the previous video Amy and I filmed has received, and I'm overwhelmed at all of your comments. Thank you for being so kind and for engaging and asking questions.

One burning question that kept coming up in the comments was, what are the psychological processes behind getting someone brainwashed and recruited into a cult. And I love that you're asking, because it's a really tough dynamic to understand if you haven't been in it.

It's not an intuitive thing to get, as I said in the spotlight documentary promo. When I was in the cult, if my leader had told me to put a gun to my head and pull the trigger, I absolutely would have no questions asked.

After nearly losing my life, I was deprogrammed, and I escaped 11 years ago. Since then, I've also had the privilege of working with professional deprogrammer Rick Allen Ross (not the rapper) in deprogramming victims of the same cult, and I've worked in the past to help council victims and their families as they go through it.

Now I study psychology, and I'm passionate about helping other people to understand how these dynamics work.

Rick Ross has also written this incredible book Cults Inside Out for those of you who want to dig deep into the history of cults, and exactly how mind control works. So how exactly does brainwashing work? Explaining it is quite complex, and I'll do so in the next few videos. This might help.

Cult brainwashing is almost exactly the same psychological process that's used to trap victims in abusive relationships, except cult brainwashing is usually more systemic, more strategic, and it's scaled to larger groups.

Brainwashing techniques are incredibly covert strategic and targeted to each specific victim. For example, did you know that Jim Jones from the Jonestown massacres actually studied the brainwashing and mind control techniques that George Bowell talked about in his book 1984?

Now psychological coercion is on a spectrum, so it can be as benign as things like education or advertising, or it can be on the other side of the spectrum, a lot more toxic and manipulative, and that is where destructive cults sit.

In the next few videos, I'm going to talk about psychological coercion and the techniques used by cults to manipulate their victims, this will be according to top academics. I'll also explain what that looked like when it happened to me, and explain what it was like to be deprogrammed, and also be on the other side helping the deprogrammer when I was working with Rick Ross.

I love that you're all here and asking questions, because the more that you understand about the dynamics of psychological coercion, the more that you can protect yourself and those that you love from being susceptible.

It's really vulnerable for me to talk about this period of my life, the hardest thing I ever went through, but it's so important to talk about it, and I'm grateful that you're all here.

Source Link : https://www.tiktok.com/@liztheformer/video/7250356728410230017