Cult survivors make great little worker bees (and I say this with a lot of love, respect, and a huge dose of sarcasm), at least in the minds of bosses; especially second and multi-generational survivors. But this is because we spent years working in an exploitative and abusive system that formed the basis for our work ethics. While I think that many bosses probably do admire the work ethic of their survivor employees (and they usually are not made aware of the employee’s survivor status, because we often keep it hidden for fear of stigma), I think that there is little recognition of how the culture of the American workplace taps into and triggers the old wiring of survivors. So I wanted to do a post that explores and examines these things.

Some resources mentioned:

• Investigative journalist and Conspirituality podcast cohost Matthew Remski's post The Goodness of a Cult Comes from Those it Abuses.
• Alissa A. Leisure Whitlatch, Ph.D.'s dissertation The Impact of Cult Membership on Career Development and Employment.
• Dr. Margaret Singer and Dr. Janja Lalich’s book Cults in Our Midst: The Continuing Fight Against Their Hidden Menace.
• Edwin Herr and Stanley Cramer's book Career guidance and counseling through the lifespan: Systematic approaches.
• Dr. Janja Lalich and Madeline Tobais's book Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships.
• Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence--From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror by Judith Herman.
• Complex PTSD: A syndrome in survivors of prolonged and repeated trauma by Judith Herman.
• A study called Posttraumatic stress disability after motor vehicle accidents: Impact on productivity and employment.
• A study called Independent living skills and posttraumatic stress disorder in women who are homeless: implications for future practice.
• Amanda Montell’s book Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism.
• A 2019 Forbes article entitled, The Turbulent And Toxic State Of The Nation’s Work Culture: What You Absolutely Must Know And Do.

During a recent podcast interview, my friend and fellow survivor Lisa Kohn shared that while she was on tour to promote her memoir To the Moon and Back: A Childhood Under the Influence, she had the opportunity to be interviewed for a popular daytime talk show.

She said that before she went on stage the producer was doing a pre-interview and asked her ‘were you brainwashed?’

I was tempted to completely derail the conversation and delve into a treatise on what thought reform is, and why asking a survivor if they were brainwashed is a stigmatizing question - at best. But I refrained and decided to explore those issues in this episode instead.

Resourced mentioned:

• Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships bu Dr. Janja Lalich & Madeline Tobias.
• Pseudoscience and Minority Religions: An Evaluation of the Brainwashing Theories of Jean-Marie Abgrall by Dick Anthony.
• Brainwashing and the Moonies by Geri-Ann Galanti, Ph.D.
• Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control by Kathleen Taylor Ph.D..
• Thought Crime, an article on the Guardian by Kathleen Taylor Ph.D..
• Terror, Love and Brainwashing: Attachment in Cults and Totalitarian Systems by Alexandra Stein, Ph.D..
• Deception, Dependency, and Dread in the Conversion Process by Michael D. Langone, Ph.D..
• Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of "Brainwashing" in China by Dr. Robert J. Lifton.
• A 1957 there was a symposium panel of experts at the New York Academy of Medicine to discuss the topic of mind control.
• Psychotherapist Rosanne Henry’s website, https://www.cultrecover.com/.
• Bad Moon Rising, by John Gorenfeld.
• Moonwebs: Journey into the Mind of a Cult, by Josh Freed.
• The Relational System of the Traumatizing Narcissist, by Daniel Shaw.
• How Lifton’s Eight Criteria for Thought Reform applies to NXIVM’s Executive Success Programs, by Paul Martin, Ph.D..
  
  

Some of the tactics that the Unification Church use to train members rolls up into the thought terminating cliché: that if someone is experiencing doubt, it is “evil spirit world invading.” These thought stopping techniques, also called a semantic stop-sign, are a mind control technique wherein loaded language is used to quell the cognitive dissonance that one experiences when encountering contradictory information or thoughts. It allows a person to remove the stress of the cognitive dissonance by avoiding all further consideration of a matter.

The concept was popularized by Robert Jay Lifton in his book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, where he also referred to this technique as the as "The language of Non-thought.”

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Alcoholics Anonymous: Cult or Cure?
• Recovering Agency: Lifting the Veil of Mormon Mind Control
• Mike Rinder’s blog on “Word Clearing” in Scientology
• According to an article on Healthline.com
• The Psychology Group Fort Lauderdale
• And article by Medical News Today
• A 2020 narrative review of 29 studies of domestic violence.
• It's Not Always Depression
• Dan Shaw, LCSW, and his talk with the International Cultic Studies Association, shame is both a cult recruitment and indoctrination tool.
• Whitney Hawkins Goodman and Dr. Caroline Leaf discusses the relationship between toxic positivity and gaslighting.
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