Survivors Discuss Podcast

Clare: [00:00:00] Hello, I’m Clare Heath McIvor and welcome to another episode of Survivors Discuss. I am so excited about this conversation. Today, we are joined by Dr. Janja Lalich and the wonderful Nikki G from Nikki G Speaks. We are talking about cults and coercive control today. And wow, this is a topic that just doesn’t go away.

And I think during the rise of influencer culture and more independent churches and a less demand on people for qualifications or accountability. We’re living in a really important time to know about the markers of cultism, cult control, coercive control and radicalization. So I can’t wait for this discussion.

But before we commence that, of course, I am joined by my wonderful co hosts, Shari and Cait but Nicky and Would you care to introduce yourselves, Nikki first? 

Nikki: Okay. Hello everyone. I’m Nikki and I’ll start with [00:01:00] my survivor story real quick. Yes. I come from a narcissistic family system and you know, that little what I call my first cult helped to programming to be drawn to and attracted to all sorts of narcissistic relationships.

And because it was a religious family system, I eventually found myself in five different cults over the course of my life. So, 

Clare: I 

Nikki: mean, I guess I couldn’t get enough, but I can joke about it now, but you know, going through it, I did not understand what I was in. I did not know what was going on. And quite honestly, I did not think that I’d be doing the work that I’m doing now.

You know supporting and encouraging those who’ve come out of cults, narcissistic relationships, and dealing with religious trauma. And I’m excited about expanding the work that I’m doing now because now I’m trying to Turn back around and reach out to the black community who I feel like, you know, lack a lot of resources in this area, a lot of [00:02:00] education.

And so I’m excited to do this. So I I took the experience I had and then I went and got some training and I became a certified trauma recovery coach and I love supporting survivors and speaking out about what’s going on in this world, in this area. And yeah, that’s, that’s a little bit about me.

I mean, I can talk more. I do have a podcast called Surviving the Black Church podcast with my two other colleagues. And yes, that is a very robust top topic or title rather. And but we’re not, you know, anti religion and tearing down the institution of the black church. But what we are doing is highlighting a lot of the horrific things that happen within the black church.

And so yeah. It’s my privilege and honor to do this work and to keep healing myself as a survivor. But I am glad to be here. So thanks for inviting me. 

Clare: That’s amazing. That’s five cults. Goodness me. That’s, we’ll get back to that later. Dr. Janja, [00:03:00] am I pronouncing that correctly? 

Janja: Yes, yes, you are. 

Clare: Okay. 

Janja: So I’m Janja Lalich and I was in a cult in the 70s and 80s.

It was a political cult. I joined when I was 30. And, you know, we were going to make the revolution and get rid of racism and sexism and all those isms. And of course I didn’t know it was a cult. It was very appealing at the time because the Vietnam War had just ended and so people on the left were kind of looking for what, what do we do now?

Clare: Yeah. 

Janja: And this group although when I joined, I didn’t even know I was joining a group. I thought I was joining a study group, anyway tried it themselves that it was women led. And that was really appealing to a lot of us because as a young lefty, when I was living in New York and I would go with my friend to these different lefty offices and they’d say, Oh good, the girls are here.

Go make coffee. And you’re like, no, that’s not what I’m here for. [00:04:00] So the fact that this was a women led organization. was obviously very appealing to a lot of people at that time and in San Francisco and initially recruited a lot out of the gay movement, the lesbian movement in particular, but also men.

Anyway, it was very brutal. We basically sat around and I mean, we did some political work once we resurfaced, but mostly we sat around in circles and criticized each other and it was very brutal. I was always in high leadership. I was in the inner circle. And of course I modeled myself after the leader and the second in command who, who recruited me.

And so I was really a big bitch and I did a lot of harm. I hurt a lot of people. I mean, I expelled people. I created punishments for people. I would walk in a room and people would shudder, you know, cause they knew something bad was about to happen. So when I got out. I really, really suffered a lot of what we call moral injury, which is, you know, [00:05:00] what we did to other people.

And, you’ve probably heard me say this in other contexts, but, you know, I believe that all of us, when we’re in a cult, we end up being perpetrators. Because we have to. And then it’s to varying degrees depending on, you know, what level you’re at, et cetera. So I w I was suicidal for a long time. I was like, how did I become this person?

What the hell? You know, trying to figure it out, trying to also just have a job and work. And luckily, I found a really great therapist at the time. There were two cult clinics, one in LA and one in New York that were sponsored by the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services. Mm-Hmm. . 

Clare: And, 

Janja: and the, and they also had meetings for families, but the therapists there were trained in how to deal with cult after effects.

Unfortunately there’s nothing like that today. , right. But I ended up with a fabulous therapist and I mean, I literally, I say she saved my life and she did. And of course, in the beginning, I was very skeptical, you know, she was much younger and [00:06:00] I’m like, Oh, she’s so young. How could she possibly be? Yes.

Yes. Anyway. So once I got my brain back together, I went to grad school, got my PhD. And got it all that time. Once I sort of saw, you know, got better. And I was writing an article, articles, and I was going to conferences and speaking about political cults because at the time I got out in 86 and all anybody talked about was religious cults.

Yeah. Well, maybe we weren’t a cult, you know, we weren’t religious. And so I’d make these lists and I’d say, okay, they have Jesus. We had Karl Marx and Lenin, you know, they have. Bible. Oh, we have the training of the cadre. Oh, they have this. I was like, oh yeah, we’re a cult. Yeah. Yeah. So so anyway, I, I got a job as a professor, a sociology professor at one of the California State Universities which had a very heavy workload.

But in between all that, I still kept doing a lot of work with families and survivors and [00:07:00] running support groups. And The book came out in 94, which is Captive Hearts, Captive Minds, which is now called Take Back Your Life. Yes. 

Clare: Yes. We’ve been seeing a lot of publicity on that one. I’ve got bounded choice over here.

Oh, yeah. 

Janja: Bounded choice is my thing. You know, Take Back Your Life really is my pride and joy because it has helped so many people. I mean, I get messages from around the world saying this book saved my life. But Bounded Choice, which is, which is a sort of user friendly version of my, dissertation, 

Clare: you 

Janja: know, really puts forth this theory of bounded choice, which explains not only what happens to you, but how it happens to you.

And it’s really, it’s really the only original theory that’s been put forth in decades in the, in the realm of cult studies. So I’m very, very proud of that. And, and, and that theory and that concept has also helped a lot of people, like once they understand what [00:08:00] the hell happened, I mean, you know, from your own experiences.

Yeah. So anyway I’m now Approaching 79. I’ve been doing this for 35 years. And everybody’s saying to me, Yanya, you’ve got to bloody retire. You know, it’s like, when are you going to retire? So I am making some changes in the work that I do and I’m cutting back a little bit, but it’s really hard because I know how hard it is.

I know how hard it is to find someone to work with. Yeah, I will be doing courses for therapists. I will still be doing that because I think that’s really important. 

Clare: So I have so many questions and I think we’re going to come back to moral injury and we’re going to come back to bounded choice. But the first thing I want to pick up on in this and, and please, Shari or Cait, Pop a hand up if you have a question to ask, because I’m sure when Nikki said the first cult she was in was her family, that probably pinged off some things for people.

But I’ve often said [00:09:00] that cults aren’t about religion. They are about control. And we have two people here, one who’s come out of a political cult, one who’s come out of several. For me, I’ve, I mean, I’ve publicly called the church my dad runs I’ve said that I believe it’s a cult. I’ve said that on 60 Minutes in a political piece.

So I’m kind of both the family, the church and, and the political kind of scene. Yeah. How does that, how does that statement sit with you that it’s not about religion, it’s about control? Nikki, let’s, let’s throw to you first. Ooh, that’s a loaded 

Nikki: question. I 

Clare: mean, 

Nikki: because in, in my family of origin, it was the merging like you just described.

So it was a little bit of both, you know and, and one played off of, of one another, but I, I call it my, My first, you know, cult is because that’s where a lot of the programming took place. This is when my you know, there was a lot of suppression of my [00:10:00] individuality, my agency, you know, I was disconnected from myself and my intuition.

This is where I learned that my reality was not important, but I needed to connect with the reality of the authority figures in my life. So if they said the sky was brown, 

Clare: Even though I knew it 

Nikki: was blue, I had to condition myself to the point to say, okay, it’s brown. And so, I mean, when you’re a child and growing up in this type of environment, you don’t know this is happening.

But I can look back, because when I started processing a lot of my religious trauma and cult abuse, you pick up that thread and it goes all the way back to your family of origin. So now you’ve got the developmental trauma going on. And I’m sitting here like, oh, I don’t know, I don’t know. Wait, I just want to focus on one church, one time, and then we can deal with that.

But I just saw how it was a copy and paste type of environment. And so when I got in a lot of these different cults, it was so easy for me to just Your reality is what reality is. My reality, [00:11:00] that doesn’t even matter. I don’t even feel it. I’m not even gonna connect with it. And so, you know, in these places, all that control and manipulation and, you know, a NARC family system, it’s very similar to a cult, if you will.

And, you know, my mom being the NARC parent, a lot of guilt, a lot of control. It was not very overt. It was covert. So I didn’t realize a lot of this was happening. Thank you. Until I came out of my last cult, I know that there was always friction between myself and my mom and I quite didn’t understand it until I started unpacking my connection with the the fifth cult leader I was involved in and that’s when I started to see the Thread and said, Whoa, boy, let me sit in a cave and start educating myself because what in the world, you know, so I don’t know if that answers your question, but that’s what pops up for me when you express that.

Clare: Yeah. And I mean, you’ve picked up on the, the narcissism aspect, Dr. Yanya. I. [00:12:00] Obviously as a political cult, you didn’t have Jesus at the center, but we don’t really need that, do we? Because I think the first person that, I mean, cults are not about religion, but the first person that we outsource our power to is God in a religious system.

So then when we have an intermediary come in the middle and go, it’s me, hi, I’m, I’m your conduit to God, it’s a little bit a little bit different. And what do you, like, how do you spot? These non religious cults, what are the, I mean, are they the same kind of central charismatic person, personality, thought reform process?

Janja: Yeah, I mean, I think if we look across the board You know, we see these parallels, and most cult leaders are not in the least original and, you know, that’s why in Take Back Your Life, I have this sentence where I say, you know, it looks like they go to the cookie cutter messiah school, because they all, They all do the same things, right?

And, and each cult might call it something [00:13:00] else. You know, you might call it shunning in a religious cult. Well, we call it expo in my group, we called it expulsion with prejudice. Once we kicked someone out, you could never ever talk to them. It was as though they were doing the same thing, right? So these things exist across, across these systems that make them all extremely similar.

And one thing I really like about Well, both, both the books we’ve talked about is that we, I have these charts where people can kind of go down the list and, you know, this is how my group did it. This is how Heaven’s Gate did it, which was the other group I was studying in Bounded Choice. And then, okay, make a column for your group and see how your group did it.

Clare: Yeah, 

Janja: yeah. You kind of fill in the boxes and you go, wow, you know. So, it, you know. In fact, I mean, I would almost say today there’s more other kind of cults than religious cults. Yes. And really, the ideology or the extremist belief system on one level has nothing to do [00:14:00] with it. I don’t really give a shit what people believe, really.

But it’s that that belief system is weaponized against you, right? Yes. Kind of used as the excuse to keep prodding at you. But like you said in the beginning, it’s all about power and control. 

Clare: Yeah. And I want to pick up on a couple of things that Shari and Cait have just popped in the chat. One is we’ve had, you’ve appeared in a few documentaries of late and there was How to Be a Cult Leader, which was on Netflix expertly narrated by Peter Dinklage.

Gosh, he’s got a good voice for narration, but it, it, it tracked these similarities right across. And then you had the Twin Flames. Escaping Twin Flames. Oh my God. 

Janja: That’s the one I was just in Michigan. I was just there. 

Clare: It was mind boggling. I was looking at this guy going, you are the most unimpressive.

Right, right. Like, you know, what the hell? And then he ends up looking more and more like skinny white Jesus and, [00:15:00] playbook. I, he’s in, 

Cait: he’s in Michigan, which is where I am. I’m in Michigan too. Yeah. Thankfully not, I haven’t joined that cult yet. But I thought it was interesting how it started as non religious and then it became more religious over time.

And he says, 

Janja: he says very blatantly in the video. you know, I’m starting a religion because I can avoid taxes. I mean, that’s why most cults become a religion. They have nothing to do with religion, but it’s a tax evasion. And especially in America, you know, nobody wants to touch you with a 10 foot pole. It’s why I have a lot of problem when I’m expert witness in legal cases and stuff.

Cause the courts are like, no, no, no, no, no, it’s a religion. We can’t go there. And it’s like, no, it’s not a religion. Yeah. 

Clare: Gosh. I mean, that is such a loaded, such a loaded dice. And we’ve got some really important questions. That I want to come back to but before we get there, I, I want to talk about something that you picked up on Nikki.

It was denying your personhood. And then I kind of [00:16:00] heard it when you were talking about moral injury Dr. Yanya, in that you became this fearsome kind of person. There’s this phenomenon, I believe I’ve witnessed it. And I’ve heard about, I’ve heard other people talk about this cult pseudo personality that you have to put off yourself and you have to put on the aspects of personality that fit best with that central charismatic personality.

So I’m going to throw to Nikki first. Have you seen this? Have you experienced this? How do you recover from this? 

Nikki: Oh yeah, I did it five times, at least six times, really, if you want to count my family of origin. But no, obviously I was not conscious when this was happening, you know, but I, when I left, my last cult I left, it was like, you know, the real awakening of, wait a minute, because I, when I came out of the other cults, and most of the other cults were, [00:17:00] The ones in the beginning were just straight religious, right?

But as I started to go through other cults, then there’s a merging of religion and conspiracy theory, religion and political movement. I mean, I was a part of, and you know, I’ll just say it here and just get it out the way now. I was a part of the International House of Prayer in Kansas City, and Dr.

Young, yeah, so they’re really hot right now in the press at this point. There was a lot of merging of the religious and the political. So I was a part of movements when it came to the life being pro life and going to the courthouse, putting the tape on my mouth, you know, rallying and things of that nature and being a part of another cult that was mostly online and believe it or not.

You know, they would pray, they would worship, and then they would put Alex Jones videos up on the screen and people take notes, and then we would pray and That’s a whole nother story. But anyway, so I’ve kind of been in the political and the religious at [00:18:00] the same time, but I was not conscious of this, this pseudo self, you know, and I remember this, this visual that I kind of alluded to, to describe my experience after the last cult, you know.

When other people were still under like, like zombies in it, it’s almost like smelling salt just came and woke me up. And I wanted so badly to connect with my friends and people who were still there, but they still were involved with that other personality and part of recovery. Is actually coming into awareness of that and then actually working through it where you connect with your authentic self Versus you know, the cult self that is is erected in order to survive and coexist in these environments So but i’m so happy connecting with my authentic self because I realized I had never even done that I thought I did, but Family of Origin actually started to help me create this false self that I was not [00:19:00] aware of.

Clare: Yeah. So just a quick kind of TLDR version. The International House of Prayer, Kansas City. IHOP. IHOP. What is, like, for the people in Australia who are going on, I’ve never heard of that. The International House of Pancakes. Well, 

Nikki: I sued them at one point for that. When 

Janja: I first saw that, I thought, no, I love those pancakes.

Nikki: I know, right? But yeah, it is it is a ministry that started in Kansas City, Missouri back in 1999, and there’s a lot to it. It’s very demonstrative, a lot to it. There are sub international houses of prayer globally. Now, the founder of the original one, Mike Bickle, he does not run the other houses of prayer, but they are modeled after the one in Kansas City, which I was a part of, and the whole premise is that Jesus is worthy of adoration and prayer [00:20:00] 24 7.

That’s exhausting. So he said, you know, in Egypt, he went to, he had some encounter and he got this idea to do this. And so since 1999, there is a prayer room in Kansas City that has never stopped. So it is a rotation of prayer and worship, prayer and worship in this room. So in order for that vision to grow and still be existing now, You need warm bodies.

You need people. You need soldiers. And so it is mostly filled with young adults in their 20s and 30s who were encouraged to give their 20s to Jesus and sit in a prayer room 

Clare: and 

Nikki: worship him and pray. And there’s a lot of mind control techniques that are going on in that prayer room. A lot of chanting.

They actually take the ideology and they sing it. So it’s not just, you know, you’re not just hearing it preached. You’re actually singing it. I wrote those songs for 

Clare: the group I was in, I wrote those 

Nikki: songs. It’s very also, it’s also very end time [00:21:00] oriented, so apocalyptic, they believe that, you know how in a lot of Christian church the belief is Jesus comes back, people get raptured, and all this quote unquote bad people remain.

They don’t believe that. They believe that we will all go through some form of tribulation, but that is when Jesus wants his bride, his forerunner messengers, to be equipped to lay hands on the sick and they’re recovered to be equipped to preach the gospel. So you need that spirit. Stamina now. So you can do that then.

And so in this place is where you learn all the strategies. You fall in love with Jesus. You surrender all that you know and love so you can be ready to be a witness for him because Jesus wants a comparable bride when he comes back. And don’t you wanna be part of that? And so the. Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead, go ahead.

It picks up on, it picks 

Clare: up on so much kind [00:22:00] of normal Christian doctrine. Yes. Takes it to 11 but also the other thing that I’m seeing here is the, the exhaustion part of this, like, which is so important to indoctrination is that like you go through this stage of engagement and, Gosh, like, I mean, hands up here who lost their twenties to a high demand group.

You know, like there’s this piece where you, you know, you’re, you’re recruited, your love bombed in, you connect with this central charismatic leader or their, their mystical belief about, you know, changing the world or whatnot, but there’s this exhaustion piece where they break down your defenses so that that indoctrination can happen.

There’s, there’s so, I, I have so many questions and I want to ask you, Dr. Yanya, about this cult pseudo personality, but also about that cookie cutter Messiah thing. Do they accidentally use the same mind control techniques? Does it, do they just fall into this or is there a school for cult [00:23:00] leaders that we don’t know about, you know, gravitate towards?

I have wrestled with this so much. I don’t know the answer. I 

Janja: think it’s a little bit of both. So first of all, first of all, I never use the term mind control 

no one: because 

Janja: it’s not a real concept. It’s not a scientific concept and it implies it’s too mechanical sounding. Right. Yes. So I use indoctrination, which is what it is, right?

We can call it brainwashing, but that’s such a trigger buzzword. We don’t do that. It’s a 

Clare: very sexy word, isn’t it? 

Janja: It’s 

Clare: a big 

Janja: reaction. Yeah. It happens. But there is brainwashing. I mean, I was assigned to brainwash the people in my group. Literally, my cult leader pulled me aside and said, I want you to start a brainwashing program, and I want you to tell them, to get, convince them that they’re, that they want to be brainwashed.

So anyway, but I think cult leaders. First of all, what they’re doing is basic social psychology. It’s absolutely typical influence and control [00:24:00] techniques, right? They, and the most of the, to me, the influence techniques are far more important than the control techniques. Yeah, they can tell you what to dress.

They can tell you what to eat. They can tell you where to live, but it’s the psychological techniques that really get to you, that really change you, that really entrap you. 

Clare: Yeah. And they, 

Janja: and those are just preying on, you know, love, fear, guilt, shame, all the things Nikki mentioned earlier that, that, and so I think what happens is with narcissists.

And almost every cult leader is a narcissist of some sort. If they’re the malignant type, then there’s going to be a lot more harm, obviously. Yeah. But I think narcissists naturally have that ability to Manipulate and influence in that way. They, I mean, my brother was a bit of a narcissist. He wasn’t one of the worst, but he would humiliate me in front of people.

He, you know, but we, we had a very close relationship and I know he loved me, but it’s, it’s like you said, this stuff just [00:25:00] comes to them and they know how to do it, right? And also, Like, my cult leader, she actually, we had someone who was worked in the public library, and I worked in a bookstore. She would assign us to get books on behavioral modification.

She did her dissertation on behavioral modification models, so she studied it. Other cult leaders study it. They read Mein Kampf, right? They, they A lot of cults are offshoots of other cults, so they learn from the cult they were in to go off and do the same thing. So I think it’s a little bit of both.

Some of it comes naturally, some of it they, they see and observe. And then, I think if you watch the Escaping Twin Flames documentary, you see what happens is that the more they get away with The harder they push, the harder they pull. So we saw Jeff, the leader of that group in the documentary, well, he got meaner and meaner, and he was yelling at people more, and ordering them what to do.

And the female leader got quieter and quieter, and [00:26:00] every now and then he’d like shut her up and put her down. I mean, you saw that development of the meanness in him, and I think that’s what happens as they get worse and worse and worse, until they get so carried away, like Jim Jones, who was a drug addled whatever, And when they get to that point, I think then they actually start to believe they are who they say they are.

Most of the time I think they’re straight out con artists. I mean, that’s it. Yeah. Yeah. They may have some delusion like, yeah, I’m God or I’m going to change or I’m the new Lennon. You know, my cult leader thought she was the new Lennon. You know, that’s just part of the megalomania. That’s part of the egotism.

You know, it’s not really a delusion in that sense that they’re having a psychotic episode. So, anything that, that, that, I think that’s, that, I hope that answers 

Nikki: your 

Janja: question. 

Clare: Yeah, yeah, Nikki, Nikki, your comment? 

Nikki: Yeah, just listening to you with sharing that, Dr. Janja, Yanga, sorry. They did that often with the International House of Prayer.

The founder, Mike Bickle, wrote a book called The Seven Longings [00:27:00] of the Human Heart. And he talked about how there’s innate longings in every human person, but he used that to manipulate so many. The longing to make impact. How many 20 year olds and 30 year olds do you know want to make impact in society and make the world a better place?

And the longing to be fascinated. To be to belong. So he wrote a book and crafted this. So you see these, these 20 somethings, they come in, they read this material and they are wowed and saying, this is home. This is where I belong with my peers. We are making impact in society. And I, I believe that’s kind of like the hallmark for so many cults, whether it’s religious, political, you know, it, they, they pull on those strings for us to just be human.

Exactly. You know, and that’s why a lot of times we miss it. Go ahead, go ahead. 

Janja: I was gonna say, you know, I get asked all the time, well, isn’t it stupid, lazy, crazy people who get into cults, you know? I used to go to faculty [00:28:00] meetings when I was still a professor and they’d, you know, and someone’d say, oh, you know, this is Dr.

Lawledge, you know, she’s the cult expert. And then the person standing next to me with their wine glass in their hand would say, oh, you know, Well, don’t just stupid people get into cults. And I’m like, hello, you know, I mean, in all the years I’ve been doing this, all the people I’ve met and interviewed and talked to and observed, if there’s any common denominator, it’s exactly what Nikki is saying.

It’s idealism, right? It’s people who are looking to. Create a better world, have a better family, find a more fulfilling spiritual belief system, whatever. But it’s not out of stupidity. I mean, that’s not who cults want. Cults want smart, intelligent, skillful people who can earn money, make money, bring in their contacts, et cetera.

So, you know, it’s as simple as that. So I 

Clare: want to kind of, and towards the end of this episode, I’d like to talk about. Recovering from cults, regaining the ability to [00:29:00] find your own personality, regaining the ability to talk to connect with others and to have healthy relationships. But I I, I want to kind of just pick up on something here, and that is the Petri dish that we’re sitting in at the moment.

I feel like we’ve got the war happening over in We’ve got this apocalyptic feeling around that. We have the internet, which can become a place that, I’d like your opinion on it Dr. Janja. Like I look, I look at Russell Brand and I think there’s a narcissistic person with a platform and some deeply problematic ideas.

who is charismatic and can draw people, I think. Well, there’s a cult waiting to happen. And, you know, we had Escaping Twin Flames, but, you know, there’s research, there’s Australian and UK research that indicates that radicalisation into extreme groups often starts with attitudes around, you know, or [00:30:00] against feminism often starts when there’s an increase of social, political upheaval, economic upheaval in the world.

We’ve just been through a pandemic. We are not over the pandemic. There is a collective trauma. There’s this petri dish that we’re kind of sitting in right now. What do you think the role of all of this upheaval has And also the internet. How has the internet changed the game? 

Janja: So first of all, when, when societies are in turmoil, obviously that’s when recruits, when cults can recruit very successfully.

You know, we saw that when the Iron Curtain fell, right? And so there were all these countries who suddenly lost their, belief systems, so to speak, or their way of living. And all these cults rushed to Eastern Europe, the Unification Church, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Mormons, the this, the that. They all rushed there because it was ripe recruiting territory.

And so I think what you’re speaking to is that this is, this has been happening now. Not only around the world, but certainly in our [00:31:00] country for the past decade, I’d say. I mean, we have Israel, we have Ukraine, we have the pandemic, we have this, we have, we have fucking Donald Trump. Pardon my French.

And so to me, what I’ve observed happening is because, you know, I thought I 2019. I retired from my job as a professor. I moved back to the San Francisco Bay Area and I thought I was going to retire. Then the pandemic hit and then we were sheltered in. Suddenly I got hundreds of emails. I can’t talk to my uncle, my aunt this.

I don’t know how to invite my brother to Thanksgiving dinner. Everybody’s falling down these rabbit holes. What can we do? What can we do? Help us. Blah, blah, blah. These internet based cults are troubling for two reasons. One is, they’re often very amorphous. Like with QAnon, was that guy in his son really the leader of QAnon?

Who was the leader of QAnon? Is there a leader of QAnon? So it’s not like what I call the old brick and mortar cults, where you know who the leader is, you know where the headquarters is, you know where all their satellites are. This [00:32:00] is like something else, right? So there’s that, that difficulty of grasping hold of it, but also,

because of the topics that got picked up on, like the anti vaxxers, all the conspiracy theory, the, the, the deep state, you know, this stuff that got put out there that people just latched onto. Within that, within all those perspectives, and because at the same time we had that guy in office, whose name I don’t even like to say, but It bred a lot of violence.

He did more than anyone ever could to create this us versus them mentality, which cults are known for, right? Only now it wasn’t just within, you know, we’re a little cult, and we’re us, and they’re them, and we’re perfect, and we’re just going to ignore them unless we can recruit them. But because of the way he did it and the things he endorsed and the things he turned a blind eye to and silently nodded approval, like the white supremacists, right?

Like a lot of [00:33:00] these really violent conspiracy theory people, you know, when they went into that bloody pizza parlor looking for Hillary Clinton’s babies, whatever. I mean, the violence has really emerged out of that, that we’ve, we have not seen from the run of the mill cults of before. Very few cults acted outward towards society.

Some did, like Aum Shinrikyo. They put the sarin gas in the subway, right? We’ve got a few of those who act out the weather underground, blowing things up. 

Clare: Yeah. But in 

Janja: most cases, cults just work on destroying their own members. And they, and they may want to bilk money and things like that from society, or get advantages by applying for a religious status, but they don’t.

attack society in that way, other than verbally, and make you afraid to leave. But this kind of outbreak of violence where, you know, people go into a store and somebody rips their mask off and people are shooting up schools and people, you know, January 6th, all of that stuff, [00:34:00] that to me is what’s really scary about what’s happening with the internet based cults.

Yeah. Yeah, not to mention the reach. I mean, in the past, in the past, and this was true for terrorism as well, so I did a lot of work with the government about that. In the past, it always took that personal contact to get recruited, right? It was a friend, a family, a co worker, you know, two thirds of people were recruited that way.

Now, it doesn’t seem, it doesn’t seem that you need that personal contact. It can all happen through believing that you’ve found like minded people on the internet. So if we go back to Twin Flames again, they have 50, 000 followers. 50, 000 followers. 

Clare: And they still have an immense amount of followers.

And I wonder how many of them are people going, is this, is this shit for real? Yeah, it, it’s terrifying. I think like in Australia, The journo who handled my case on 60 Minutes, he did a this is incredibly ballsy, he’s Jewish, and he did a he did [00:35:00] a documentary where he put an undercover into a neo Nazi cell, and they were using him.

Internet, closed internet groups. They were using Signal, they were using WhatsApp, they were using, using encrypted apps. And the reach was, was really quite incredible I think. But it still somehow ends up in these, in-person meets for the extremely devout, we’ve seen this with. Twin Flames. We’ve certainly seen it with the Neo Nazis and you see it in that kind of the lone wolf actor who is so entrenched into the belief system, the ideology, that they go and take action.

Cait, you’ve got a comment to add into this. 

Cait: I’ve been thinking a lot about the internet lately and what I see is black and white thinking, which I think bleeds into cult mentality. And I think about how algorithms are built. And they reward [00:36:00] black and white thinking. They reward extreme reactions to things.

So you can’t have a very nuanced conversation on the internet and get all the engagement that you might if you have a very extreme opinion. So I think people are pushed into extreme opinions even if they might not have started that way. 

Janja: Oh. Oh. 

Cait: Did you lose me? 

Clare: Yeah. That’ll probably Can you hear me now?

We’ve lost your internet. But I’m hoping that we’ll pick that up once it uploads properly. 

Janja: Can you hear me now? It, in the meantime, while we’re waiting the thing about the pseudo personality, 

The, the really interesting work on that is by Robert Lifton, who you probably know from Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, but he wrote another book called Nazi Doctors.

Oh! And he, and it’s fabulous. And he looked at how these German doctors during the day would go to the camps and do these horrific experiments or send people to the gas chambers, whatever. [00:37:00] And then they’d go home and they’d be just a nice German father with their kids sitting on their lap and eating dinner.

And in fact, there’s a movie out now about that called The Zone of Interest. I haven’t seen it yet. 

no one: My 

Janja: heart hasn’t been able to go there. Yeah. Stop watching, like, you know. Holocaust movies. But apparently this movie hits right on this topic. It’s about, I think it’s Herman Hesse or whatever his name was, Rudolf Hess, he and his wife live next door to Auschwitz and they’re like planting a garden and doing, you know, so it’s like, that’s, that’s where he came up with this, or I don’t know if he came up 

Clare: with 

Janja: it there, but that’s where he developed this idea of the pseudo personality that you can In a way, be these two different people.

And that’s why, like, when I talk to families of someone in a cult, they have, you know, they’re like, I don’t even recognize my kid anymore. They’re not talking the same language. I don’t know. You know, they’re like a completely different person and they always think it’s drugs and I’m like, no, cults don’t have to do drugs.

They just ruin their mind. 

Clare: Yeah, absolutely. And that [00:38:00] indoctrination can so easily happen online. Nikki, a comment on this. 

Nikki: Yeah, I mean just agreeing with what everyone shared already. I think this is a major problem, you know, and I think the pandemic did a lot where, you know, more cult groups have started to, you know, amass, and they’re more hidden and a lot of it because everybody was at home with their phones.

And so how I even got started with this work is the positive part of the internet. I started sharing my story on a social app called Clubhouse that started during the pandemic, and then I created a club on there. And a club is just a place where you have a series of rooms on different topics.

That’s how the the actual app works. And I created something called Spiritual Abuse and Cult, and I just started talking, sharing my story, and survivors got to come up and share as well. But What I noticed on the app itself, and nothing against the app, the people just come in and become who they are. 

Clare: It was an 

Nikki: opportunity where people can just, [00:39:00] you can just start a room, and then all eyes are on you, and you know, a lot of narcissists are like, Ooh, let me, you know, let me get up in there, and let me just shine, and my ego just gets inflated, and people love me, and you know, and I, I, I actually have rooms where I would encourage people, Hey, listen, You don’t have to remain in a room.

If you feel something, your body is one of your greatest messengers and you know, it’s not right. It doesn’t feel right. You may not understand it. Just get out first. Then maybe later on, you’ll start to get the understanding of, you know what? I’m glad I left that room. I say all that to say that the internet, you know, during that time when people were wondering what is happening, the government is not answering our questions.

We still don’t know you know, as a matter of fact, how the COVID started. So I’m going to connect with this group over here because they seem to know the answers. I’m going to go to this meeting over here because they’re talking about, and they have, you know, books from 19 whatever, whatever, and I’ve [00:40:00] never seen this information.

And wow, this is really, this is answering some of the questions I have. And so when there are questions and the government is not responding properly, the people become, you know, kind of restless and they want answers. And like, you know, Dr. Young was saying, People will come in and say, I have the answer.

And we will connect and bond to that because it’s like, well, I have a community. We have shared interests and you’re answering the questions that I need answered. And so I still have to say, we have to understand that the internet now is the cult house. It’s not necessarily the brick and mortar. So, you know, be aware that you can get drawn in just the same as if a brick and mortar situation.

Clare: It’s interesting that you pick up on this, the answer. I tell you what, whenever I hear someone say the answer, I just, my eyes roll so far back in my head because. Because there’s very rarely one answer to a question that’s, that’s worth asking, [00:41:00] you know, it’s a nuanced conversation, but Shari you’ve picked up on something here I’d like to reflect on for a little bit.

Shari: Yeah, it’s I was kind of taking notes, listening to Dr. Janja and Nikki talking about markers of cult leaders and it just, it kind of occurred to me that a lot of the time these, these groups focus in on a person’s need to feel seen, to feel special. You know, these groups are often, they, they, the leader in particular is often framed as someone who has the answer for all the world’s problems.

They, they are God, or they have a special connection to God, or they’re the only ones with the means to change the world for the better. And I think if you’re, especially if you’re a young person, that is very, very seductive. Because who doesn’t want to be part of what God is doing, or you know, what this group is doing to change the world?

Like, that’s That gives your life all kinds of meaning, right? [00:42:00] I even saw this in my own family growing up, which was also a cult unto itself, where my father was someone who told us that he had a special gift of discernment. So he knew what God was saying for whatever church we happen to be at, particularly.

He had special insight. And I grew up thinking, wow, I’m so lucky. My dad has this connection to God. It’s not until you leave and you go, wait a second, that wasn’t God. 

Clare: It’s it’s this whole It’s such an interesting piece, these human desires, which, like it or not, Mike Bickle picked up on in his book, and then obviously preyed on very specifically.

What I discovered in my own life, after having left the group that I was part of, is there’s this Because you’re used to this sense of we have the answer, we are the answer, we [00:43:00] are special, we are unique, we are chosen, we are to take dominion, we are all these things. There’s this there’s this void afterwards that you go, okay, what, who am I now?

What do I do now? And there’s also this feeling When you’ve had artificially close relationships, when you’ve been sat down in a room, and it’s share your deepest secrets, and let’s all have that, that insight, like that, you know, is horrendously exposing and denuding almost. It’s like an emotional de gloving in front of a room of people but there’s this artificial closeness in relationships and then you, you emerge on the other side of this experience.

You’re kind of like, how do I do normal? Nikki, I want to Talk about this cult hopping thing a little bit, if I can do you believe that it, because of some of these aspects of conditioning that it predisposed [00:44:00] you to be at risk in other, to, to fall into this over and over again? And, and, and then I’d like to throw it to Dr.

Yarnier after this and ask whether this is something that people are at risk of. Nikki. 

Nikki: Yeah, absolutely. I don’t know if there are statistics on this, Dr. Young, you can speak on this or not. But I find in religious cults, it may be easier to cult hop. Because there is, especially let’s say Christianity, if you have the belief system that You believe in heaven.

You believe if you live a certain way, you’ll go there. If you don’t, then downstairs you go. When you leave a religious cult environment, you don’t, a lot of times people don’t give themselves time and opportunity to figure out, okay, what the hell was I just in? What was that? How did this happen? How do I prevent that not happening again?

There is this, this obsession of you have to be in the fold. You [00:45:00] have to be with the brethren. You have, so that didn’t work out cool. Shake the dust, go somewhere else. And so it is very easy to continue to cult hop and not sit down and take assessment of what you’ve experienced. I don’t know if maybe if it’s a political cult, after you’re done with it, you’re like, you know what, I’m done with politics right now.

I need to come back home to myself. 

There may not be that prodding that if you don’t go into another political cult, your afterlife. You know, where you go is at risk. Because of that, I kept going and because I was over spiritualizing my previous cult experiences. I just chalked it up to that was a demon or that was a Jezebel spirit or in the Bible it says blah, blah, blah, blah.

And I did not understand how it affected my psyche. It wasn’t until I got out my last, my last cult church. That’s when I sat down. I didn’t touch the [00:46:00] Bible. I went and started. I read Steven Hassan’s book. I read your book. I started learning and I said, wait, what? And so it helped me to come out of the over spiritualization of everything and come to some normalcy and come to my humanity and realize These were abusive environments.

But if you, like for instance, I’m a black woman, and in the black community, 8 out of 10 in the black community in America identify as Christians. So, you don’t leave. You may take a pause. You don’t leave. You, you, you better find another church to attend. And so there’s that pressure, that generational pressure.

And then there’s, I don’t feel like I’m a black person anymore if I’m not in church. There’s so much to our origin story of Christianity and things of that nature as a black person that you better find yourself in another church. So there, it’s so easy to say, well, I’ll go here, I’ll go here, I’ll go here.

And it’s just like dating. If [00:47:00] you don’t take an assessment to the last person you dated, you might find yourself gravitating to that next person, just a different body, same sex. And so it was easy until I broke that same cycle I was doing of over spiritualization and I started educating myself. And I said, you know what?

Heaven, hell, I don’t know the answer to that, but right now, Nikki’s not okay. Nikki needs to find Nikki. I need help and I’m finding it more outside of the church than I am inside. And that’s how I found Nikki. I started to come up for air and, and, and start to recover a little bit. So, yeah. So you, 

Clare: you’ve just picked up on some spectacular things.

I think, first of all, we’ve, we’ve often used that deconstruction is a really white space. And I think maybe what you’re talking about here, this societal pressure from within the community to stay might be contributing to that. Hey, come on Unchurchable, talk about that with me if you want to. It’s my other podcast.

But the other thing that you’re picking up on is thought terminating cliches that [00:48:00] these, these. Phrases that we use to stop a person from thinking too deeply, and the Bible is frickin loaded with them, you know, the, the body, the, the, you know, the carnal mind is enmity with God, and, you know, God uses the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and these can, like, you know, just trust God, or, you know, God’s ways are higher, all this kind of stuff.

That can be to shut people down. Do we see these in political cults, Dr. Like, Dr. Yya, do they, do they have the same ability to kind of create these thought terminating cliches to keep people entrapped? 

Janja: No, absolutely. I mean, you know, we, we were, you know, if you did something wrong, then you were a petty bourgeois running dog and.

You know, we had, you know, the same thing, all these ways to put you down and make you scared. And, you know, I was told if you leave, you’re going to die in the gutter, a dirty communist, because Americans hate communists. You know, it’s like the same again, as I was saying before, it’s the same type of stuff, just different terminology.

You know, and like, [00:49:00] for me, when I got out, I, my biggest concern because I was you know, for social justice, I was a lefty, so to speak. My biggest fear when I got out was I would become a right wing lunatic. Like I didn’t want to swing all the way to the right. And, and so what really helped me was reading the books by the communist dissidents, like those people who spoke out and criticized communism.

And I came to see that communism or the, the, The ideology behind it, of democratic centralism, which is how you’re supposed to operate as an organization. I realized from also reading these other people from Yugoslavian dissidents, Russian, whatever, that it’s all centralism and no democracy. You know, democratic centralism, they might as well just remove the first word, right?

Clare: Yeah. 

Janja: It took me a long time to study all that, to come to see that, oh, okay, that’s a system I don’t want to be part of, but I can still, you know, have liberal or social justice values, and [00:50:00] I certainly never joined another organization again, and I never signed another fucking petition because that was one of the ways we recruited was going around getting petition signatures.

But I, I just want to say to Nikki, I, I think what you said is so brilliant about the, the underlying culture of, of the Black community, and you need to write a book about that. You need to talk about 

Clare: that. Yes. 

Janja: I can say from All the, I would say, I can almost say with certainty. At least 99 percent of every Black person that I’ve worked with as a survivor, which hasn’t been many to tell you the truth, probably because I’m a white person and they don’t come to me, but whatever, 99 percent of them came out of a religious cult, right?

Jehovah’s Witnesses, this little church, that little church, you know, some of them may be Muslim, but mostly Christian. They don’t, I haven’t had black survivors for, from new age cults or, you know, like [00:51:00] Jeff and Shalia and Twin Flames. I know they had a couple black young women in there, but that’s not the norm.

So I just think what you’re saying about the importance of the cultural milieu and the cultural teachings and the underlying beliefs that you have as a black person is really, really important for people to understand. Because one of the things I try to push at is when we’re studying these cults. We have to look at the context in which they grew.

Like, what was going on in society that I wanted to join this cult? What was going on in society that people start, easily followed Charlie Manson? You know, or the Children of God? Oh, well, yeah, that was the hippie era, and we were trying all kinds of things. And yeah, gimme drugs, I don’t care. So, and then it became the 80s and it became all money focused.

So yeah, the MLMs grew like crazy. I mean, I think looking at the social and cultural context is so important. These groups don’t, don’t exist in isolation. 

Clare: They’re 

Janja: part of our fabric at this point. 

Clare: Yeah. 

Janja: Yeah. Write a 

Clare: book, Nikki. 

Nikki: That’s not the first [00:52:00] time I’ve heard that. For that, but just to tag on what you’re saying, you know, And in the Black community, not even just in the church, just on the corner, in the community, there’s this notion that we don’t join cults, we’re not a part of cults, you know?

Or that we don’t drink the purple Kool Aid not knowing that majority of Jim Jones, you know, people tend to be Black, but that’s a whole nother story. Or, you know, we’re not trying to, you know, we’re not hanging out in Waco with David Koresh people. Like, that’s not us. That’s everybody else. And so There’s a heavy stigma when it comes to cults, but in the black community, in the black church, in most inner cities, there are, there’s a black church on every corner.

They’re small, they’re big, and some of those small ones are very cultish, and a lot of people are getting just messed up so bad, and there’s nowhere to go. And like you said, to your [00:53:00] point, many come out and they say, well, I need someone that can speak to my cultural experience. You know, where you have the church mother in the black church who acts like the fashion police and you better not have a skirt that’s too high.

You know, purity culture looks totally different in the black community. So this is why my colleague and I started. started the podcast and then we started the Black Religious Trauma Recovery Network where we’re connecting with survivors and we’re trying to build up resources to be able to help them.

And speak to, support them and speak to their experiences because the other thing is, you don’t talk about it. You don’t go and get help. You know, there’s a mental health stigma in the black community and then even in the cult world. And then mental health professionals is about four to five percent are black.

So we are at a great disadvantage in this topic, you know, I don’t have a problem with learning from Elmo, if I could, about cults, so I can be able to learn from myself, heal, and then pass it off to [00:54:00] my people because you know, it is very important. Very 

Janja: important. Do you know Aldo Martin? 

Nikki: Aldo, he I’ve heard of him.

I think I follow him on social media, but I haven’t had a conversation with him yet. 

Janja: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that podcast is over, but he was in the International Churches of Christ. Ah, okay. He lives in Brooklyn or Queens, one of those. Are you in the States? Yes, yeah, yeah, I’m in the States. Yeah, anyway, he’s fantastic.

He’s now doing a lot of stuff about James Baldwin, which is a whole other story. Yes, 

Clare: yes. 

Janja: Anyway, Elton Martin is fantastic. And I just adore him. We, we got, we spent a lot of time talking to each other for a few years while he was active with that. He came to some But get in touch with him, see what he’s up to.

Yeah, definitely, definitely. 

Clare: I I’m jealous. I’m all the way over in Australia. We have such a paucity of cult services, which has got me thinking, and Dr. Yanya will talk about [00:55:00] this in the future, I’m absolutely sure. But I, there’s just some, there’s so many avenues that I want to go down. And we have about Fifteen minutes left in the interview space on this, so you’ve, you’ve said some things like, Nikki, you needed to stop and ask whether Nikki was okay, and you were listening to the body, and you were reading, and Dr.

Yanya, you were reading, you were reading the things that expanded your, your mind and your understanding of things, which can be tough. Terrifying, if you’ve been in a cult which has limited the communication, the reading material, the type of things that you can consume. So, I mean, that’s a whole thing, believe me.

But I just, I just wanted to pick up on the recovery process, but often the recovery process starts with a foot up the ass and you’re out the door. So you’ve been shunned. Now whether it’s shunned. Whether it’s excommunicated, whether it is dismissed with prejudice, whether it’s, you’ve become a suppressive person, you’ve been bre [00:56:00] you can find that the shutters come down on your friendships, these artificially deep friendships straight away.

Sometimes your housing is, your housing situation is implicated. Sometimes your employment is implicated. I’ve noticed that in cults, often there’s a circular economy when they all start kingdom businesses and then end up all just. Purchasing off each other and, and employing each other and stuff like that, the shunning process, and I want to pick up on the moral injury after that, that sense of culpability.

I’ve done things, I’ve said things, I’ve recruited people, I’ve written the songs, I’ve been part of the PR machine. All of this, how do we handle the shunning, Dr. Yanya, and then Nikki, how do we handle the recovery? And sitting with that, Dr. Yanya. 

Janja: Well, the shunning You know, I think it, it I mean, I think if you’re kicked out or you leave and suddenly you’ve lost everything, [00:57:00] obviously that’s going to be really difficult.

And the problem is, especially for people who are born in cults, and this is one of my big issues, is that you know, those who are born in cults who manage to get out on their own. They get out, they don’t, they don’t necessarily know their name, they don’t know, they don’t have a birth certificate, they don’t know if they have relatives out there somewhere, they don’t know how to get a GED, which is our equivalent of a high school diploma.

So they’re, they’re, and they end up on the streets, and they end up doing drugs, and they end, and the number of suicides is just phenomenal. Or for, I mean, one of the biggest populations is the gay, gay Jehovah’s Witnesses. who get kicked out and shunned. And I’ve worked with a lot of, a lot of that community and and actually even wrote an article about it because in that, you know, the kind of shunning that happens there, which I think probably happens in a lot of those churches is you’re, you’re gone, you’re done for, you don’t see anybody ever again, you don’t know if your parents died, you don’t get to [00:58:00] go to a wedding, you don’t get to go to a funeral.

So you’re out there and you’re all alone. And I, and. And there aren’t any social services that are going to help you, you know, I mean, I’ve had survivors go to domestic violence shelters and they don’t take them in because they don’t qualify, right? So it’s like, where do you go? What do you do? And if you’re lucky, you know, you find my book or you, you know, somehow run into Nikki and can get some help.

But but I think the help today. If it’s anywhere, it is on the internet because there are, there are a lot of, it’s a, it’s a double whack, whatever that expression is, double whammy, whatever.

There’s a lot of information on the internet, and there are survivor support groups on the internet, and you can find, Perhaps people from your own group, if not from other similar groups, and some of these groups help each other, like they gather up money to help you find a place to stay, they have scholarships for schools, things like that.

But it’s tough. I mean, [00:59:00] it’s the shunning and and and I have to say of the of the group of the things I’ve seen, not only postings by survivors, but people who’ve talked to me, like, that is one of the hardest things, and just being so bloody cut off, and just that sense of loss, and, but I have to say, My book, Escaping Utopia, where I interviewed 65 people who grew up in cults, I asked every single one of them, no matter how hard it was for them on the outside, I asked every single one of them, did you ever think about going back?

And only one said yes. And to me, it was like no, they would say no matter how bad it is out here, it was worse in there. You know, I’m not going back. So that’s the dilemma. I mean, maybe Nikki can speak more to that. Please, Nikki, I’d love to hear from you on this. 

Nikki: And I, I [01:00:00] hate to just, well, just talking about, I don’t hate to, but with the Black community is kind of the opposite.

They want to go back because that trauma bond is so severe. And this is where they learn to cope. This is where they saw their grandmothers and their parents cope through religion. So to be out of all of that, it feels like a fish out of water. And, you know, oftentimes it gets too overwhelming. They get an existential crisis and they wind up returning because of it.

And so, you know, the shunning is a hard part. It’s just like, you know, a narcissistic relationship and you go through that discard phase and, you know, you’re out there by yourself. But like, like Dr. Yanya said, the internet, it’s a double edged sword. There are groups now. When I was going through this I wasn’t as lucky as Dr.

Yanya when I first, when I came out the last cult and I got some therapy because I had a lot of PTSD from all that stuff. My therapist didn’t know much about cults. [01:01:00] She didn’t know much even about narcissism, but she helped me and I said, look, I will take what I can get and, you know, just at least help me to come online, you know, let’s get the nervous system, you know, regulated.

And so I received that, but I did not let that stop me from helping me. One thing I did not mention as through most of my whole experience, I was a single mom. My first official cult, my daughter is the grandchild of the first cult leader outside of my family. So that’s, I’ll come back for part two to tell you about that story.

And so, you know, there was looking at her, there was a resilience that rose in me that said, Okay, I am not staying in this. This is not going to be my life sentence. I am out of it. And somehow or another, I’m going to get it out of me. So that determination kind of prodded me to say, well, I may not have a lot of resources, but let me start with these books.

Let me educate myself. [01:02:00] Right. And then there’s that wrestle where good old shame, it’s not good, but good old shame will come and say, see, you’re reading this stuff. It’s your fault. And I have to say, look, go in the corner. Time out. Okay. You tried to protect me when we were in there, but right now I need to embrace that.

This, you know, there’s a whole nother dynamic of, okay, the cult leader, the cult, nasty, bad, abusive. But when I really wanted to get to that deep healing, I have to say, okay, Nikki, what did you come to these groups looking for? 

Clare: Yeah. What 

Nikki: were, you know, those, Unmet needs from childhood. I wanted to belong. And a lot of the reasons why I came to these groups, they were normal, human, basic needs.

There’s nothing to be ashamed about, but I needed to understand. And during those different times, my volume level for needing to be wrong was on 50. 

Clare: And 

Nikki: I wasn’t connected with myself to know that. So, as soon as I met, was [01:03:00] invited into that community, boom! It was like I’m home. So, I really started to lean into that and started to actually give myself permission to heal.

Which meant take off my watch that says okay, you’ve been out two years now, you should be done and you should be moving and thriving. No, I took that watch off and I realized healing is not an instantaneous thing. It’s an evolution day by day. I am healing. I’m learning more about myself. I’m coming home to myself and it’s okay.

You know, I gave myself permission to do that. Obviously, there are more, I think, I could be wrong, more therapists that have a little bit more expertise than when I was going through all of this coaches. Right? Social media accounts that are actually survivors are speaking out, survivors discuss. And so I’m grateful that things are, are, are moving in the right direction.

But, you know, I find that a lot of cult survivors, they want to [01:04:00] talk. 

Clare: Yeah. 

Nikki: They want to connect before they even go into a therapist because some people have been you know, abused in that relationship as well. But they want to find a safe place where they can share because many of their stories are, are living in their body.

Yeah. And they want to open and give voice to it. It may, it’s not a cure, but it is an introduction to, I am not crazy. This is not my fault. This did happen. I want to move on with my life. There are others like me. And You know, it is possible to, to recover and to heal in this area. So I’ll just stop 

Clare: right there.

So many spectacular things that you just say, just spit out in one kind of neat little paragraph. The, I want to pick up on, like before you said, it’s okay to leave groups if your body doesn’t, if you don’t feel right in it. You talked about nervous system regulation. You talked about therapists who don’t [01:05:00] understand cults or religious trauma.

My goodness. But also, I want to pick up on something that Shari’s just written in the chat. Thank you, Shari. Affordability of therapy is one thing, but a lot of us have been indoctrinated against therapists because we’ve been told, well it’s a thought terminating cliche, isn’t it? You know, there’s, there’s.

That the outside is a, you know, it’s an us versus them mentality. And if they’ll, they’ll turn you against us, you’ll lose everything, you know, psychology is of the devil. Dr. Yanya, what would you say to people who are kind of coming up against that sort of head fuck when they’re 

Janja: Yeah, I mean, that is a reality.

And it’s also a very big reality for. The teens who were in the troubled teen industry, those girls, they were told that’s therapy, so they’re like, oh fuck, I’m never going to therapy again, right? So there’s this absolute, you know, hostility and skepticism about that. And, And on top of that is just the affordability of most [01:06:00] therapists is pretty difficult.

But, and this is one reason like I’m, I’m writing a workbook to go along with Take Back Your Life because my, my thing about healing, a big part for me of healing is writing shit down. I swear too much. I’m set away. It’s all good. Writing slaps down, so I think having a workbook like that will really help, keeping a journal really helps, because when you, when you put it in writing, it becomes real.

Right? And, and I mean, I know I wrote things and then two months later, I’d go back and look at, I think I had some great epiphany and then I’d look at my journal and say, Oh, I had that same epiphany two months ago, you know, but it, it, I think the writing is really important. And what, what Nikki was saying about talking, people do want to talk.

I mean, it’s kind of debriefing yourself of the experience is one of the most important things you can do. It’s, I get it. out of your system and talk about what happened. Talk about what you saw, talk about what you did, talk about what [01:07:00] happened to you. And hopefully a good therapist can help you through that.

So on my website, on yanyalolich. com, I have a checklist for how to find a good therapist. If people are able to go that route, like question, cause you have to remember you’re hiring that person. They’re working for you. And if they don’t know anything about cults, Tell them to read my book, and if they don’t want to read my book, then go find yourself another therapist, right?

Yes, yes. You know, that kind of practical help, and I think having these, whatever exists on Reddit, wherever, these various discussion groups where people can maybe connect and maybe find someone in their state who can help them You know, it is the, it is a big problem. It’s what I was saying before.

It’s like, as a society, we have no resources for this. This is public health issue number one that nobody’s talking about. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. 

Clare: I want to talk forever about this, but possibly because I’m a survivor and you’re [01:08:00] absolutely dead right. We want to talk. I just do want to flag something though.

Listen to your. Listen to your nervous system when it’s, when it gives you a warning flag. What I found is people wanted to listen to my story when I left the situation I was in. They wanted to know what, like, they wanted to support me legitimately. They did. But also there was so much of the gory detail that they wanted to look at.

It became this kind of voyeuristic thing of, and then what happened? And then what happened? And oh my gosh, that crazy church that we’ve had suspicions about. And, you know, like, so I had to go, am I being supported right now or am I fueling your need for gossip? And like, Survivors need to know you don’t have to tell anyone your story.

You can find safe people, but if you need to educate your therapist before every session, then you’re getting the wrong therapist. And you’re, you’re, you’re absolutely [01:09:00] right. They work for you. You get to choose who you talk to here. I, I want to keep talking forever cause this is definitely one of my favorite topics, but I need to also respect our guests time and give them time for their tracks to upload.

Cait and, and Shari, your, your reflections on, on this episode. I’m going to throw it to you, Cait, first, while your internet’s stable. It’s not stable. Let’s throw 

no one: it to 

Shari: you first. I’ll go ahead. This. This has been such a good conversation. There’s probably been about like a hundred points where I want to jump in and go, yes, you know, cause you’re, you’re both making such good points.

I found myself relating to a lot of, of what you were sharing in your stories, Nikki particularly since we did both come from families that were kind of cults unto themselves. And Dr. Janja, like, I just love the work that you do. I have learned so, so much from you. [01:10:00] Yeah, I, I don’t really have anything to add because both of you had said so much, so I’m just gonna leave it at that

Janja: Thank you. I appreciate that. 

Clare: And I’m looking at Kate and I’m, oh, she moved. Do do anything to add Kate, you back ? No. 

no one: Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah,

yeah. Yeah.

Thanks. Absolutely. 

Janja: If I could say for a minute about reading what you wrote this past week or whatever, I don’t even know what week it is, but anyway, I was in Michigan for this big event around the Twin Flames group and it was sponsored by the National Writers Series. So they have authors, big, big name authors, and I was like, wow.

And I signed 400 books. I mean, it was amazing. But at one point during, it was mostly an interview with, between, with me and Keely, who’s the subject of the documentary. And but the guy, when we were preparing for [01:11:00] the interview and he said, well, you know, this is the National Writers Series. You should at least read a little something from your book, you know?

And so. I read the part about children the beginning of that chapter, but then I decided I would read my poem, which is in this new edition. I don’t think it was in the last edition. And, you know, it’s about what happened to me, what they did to my brain. And, you know, it’s made me into something other than I wanted to be.

And I started reading this poem and I just started crying. And it was like, Oh my God, I’m in front of like 400 people online. And I’m like, I just got so choked up. I could barely continue. But Because you do, in a sense, when you re look at it, you kind of re live it, re process it, and also, I think, grasp the depth of it, and the enormity of it, and how much we were hurt, and how far we’ve come, you know, and how far we all have yet to go.

Clare: Yeah. Yeah, any, any final words, Nikki? 

Nikki: Yeah, I, I had a similar experience, [01:12:00] not reading a book, I’d have to write it first, but I was telling my daughter a story from you know, the cult I was in where she she was conceived, so to speak. And I told her a story and I could just feel the tears coming up and I could feel that my body was saying, Hey, I know that was 20 something years ago, but there’s still more, you know?

And, and now being able to lean in when that happens and being grateful. I mean, yeah, you don’t want to do that in front of 400 people all the time or while you’re recording, but how precious are our bodies? That it lets us know, not from a place of shame, but a place of, I’m partnering with you. We’re a team.

I went through all of that with you too. And there’s just still more to release and when you get a time, get some quiet time, ride it out. Do some stretching, some yoga, some breathing. You know what you need to do to connect with me, to release that. Our bodies are our [01:13:00] friends. You know, and it, I, that’s something that I’ve learned in my recovery journey when I’ve been told to suppress it, ignore it, purity culture, all that stuff, patriarchy, you know, that’s part two episode, but you know, just being able to connect with our body when it comes up and understand it’s not a punishment.

It’s an invitation for us to release on a deeper level, you know, and so, yeah, 

Janja: yeah. I just want to put in a pitch for a research project related to this. Anyone out there who’s thinking of going to graduate school, one of the things I’ve always wanted to have studied is, when we were in my cult, a number of people developed these diseases.

Like one guy was falling down all the time and they thought he had a brain tumor. One guy started having epilepsy. I became dyslexic. Never in my life was I dyslexic. Like, these various illnesses popped up. And as soon as the cult was over, because we all got out, we had our revolution, we [01:14:00] overthrew the leader.

Once we all got out, everybody’s illnesses went away. So obviously they were stress induced, I would assume. I would love to see a research project on this. I’m too old. I’m not going to do it, but somebody out there do this project because I think it’s a really invaluable study. 

Clare: Yeah, absolutely. Okay. I got to wrap this and I’m going to wrap it by saying, I’m a little bit annoyed at this podcast because I’m trying to Decrease the amount of books I buy.

I try to like every week, I’m like, buy less books, girl, buy less books, but I definitely need to get Escaping Utopia and Take Back Your Life. And I’m, I’m, I’m budgeting some money for when Nikki’s book comes out that we’re forcing her to write. So look, we’re going to put all of your socials in our show notes, but find Dr.

on Twitter and Instagram. Find Nikki G Speaks on Instagram and on. Facebook and, and the, the Lalit Center [01:15:00] for Occults and Coercive Control is also also on Facebook. So find these in the show notes, follow them. Information, knowledge is power. Finding your people is power. Knowing that you don’t have to exist in silence and alone, that is power.

Cured by Jeffrey Rediger is also another one. So there’s some, some brilliant resources out there, but connecting with other survivors and keeping that sacred space of of, of listening to each other, not so that you can get the gory details, but so you can witness each other’s pain and recovery is powerful.

And I say pain and recovery because there are moments of triumph when you can decide for yourself what car you want to buy. When you get there. Yes. That G E D, when you decide to, you know, when you enter into a relationship that is healthy and it’s a person you chose without external influence, these are moments of triumph.

Heck, choosing your own toothpaste when you haven’t been able to make that kind of decision, [01:16:00] that is triumph. And that’s what we want for all survivors. So thank you so much for joining us today. I’m Clare Heath McIvor. This is Survivors Discuss. 

no one: Thank you.