A couple weekends ago, I was looking through an old journal from 1993, and I came across an entry that helps me to better understand a bit more of why I was willing to go along with Jane’s urging to separate from my family and friends , though at the time I evidently still thought it had been mostly my idea.  (This deliberate separation from family and friends will be covered in more detail in Part Six of the Cult Indoctrination Techniques series.)

When I wrote the journal entry, Jane and I had broken up and I was looking for an apartment so I could move, but was having trouble with money issues, among other things, and I was feeling trapped and pretty obviously depressed:

I have no one and no place to go to.   It’s beginning to be less and less worth it to bother trying to fight anymore.  I’ve systematically alienated everyone in my life.  I must have been subconsciously planning something.   If I make everyone hate me, then no one will care if I am gone.

Keeping in mind that I was suicidal when I first began to speak with Jane on the telephone, it follows that I may have seen a separation from those who loved me as a way to justify committing suicide, and to continue holding that out as an option.

Even to this day, the love of my family is the largest part of what keeps those darkest of moments-in-depression from taking over to that extent.

*   *   *

I was asked recently why an accuser refuses to discuss whether or not his or her memories can be real.  I tried to answer to the best of my ability, from my own experience.  I was recalling, among other conversations with family and friends who tried to make me see the lack of logic and verifiable evidence in what I was saying, the conversations my sister and I had about the truck stop story and its glaring inconsistencies.

During the time that I believed my own false memories to be true, I avoided any in-depth discussion about it because I believed that others were trying to talk me out of ‘my reality’ and that they were ‘in denial’ . . . It felt as if everyone I used to know and be close to was the enemy, trying to pick apart my ‘memories’.  I wasn’t able to realize that they were concerned for me and missed me and wanted to help me to be my old self again; I only felt that they were being defensive and trying to discredit me.  That was what I was told, over and over . . .

Once I began to realize that my memories weren’t real, I was so deeply ashamed and sad and lost inside, and I believed that I had inflicted too much pain on my family to ever hope to go back.  I believed they were happier and better off without me.  I believed that to even lay eyes on me would be too upsetting for them, and that it was too late even to apologize.  How could I possibly live with myself if I faced and accepted that I’d made such accusations and they turned out to not be true?

*   *   *

During the time that we were estranged, my mother had a breast cancer scare.

Jane was in the hospital at the time, due to some physical health problems, and her room was over the Emergency Room, the entrance to which was often used to enter the rest of the hospital due to its close proximity to the admitting office and one of the main elevators.  I glanced out her window and saw my father’s car in the parking lot below.  I immediately went down to the Emergency Room and asked a nurse if one of them was there.  Neither of them  was an ER patient, but I learned that my mother had been admitted.  The nurse I spoke with obviously didn’t know of our estrangement, and when I said the patient was my mother, she told me when the results of the needle biopsy were expected and that it might not be cancer.

Cancer. I know my face must have turned gray.

I returned to Jane’s room and debated with myself over whether to go and see my mother.  I know now, looking back, that there should never have been a question, but because I still believed the things that Jane said (that my family was angry and had been disappointed in me for years, and that they really didn’t like me too much, underneath it all), I feared that the sight of me walking into my mother’s room would have been detrimental to her health, not helpful.  All I could imagine, when trying to envision things the way I thought she would see them, was myself walking into the room and my mother seeing me as the enemy, the one who tore us all apart, the one who caused the whole family so much pain.  And I envisioned her asking someone to make me leave because she couldn’t bear to look at me.

My love for her was behind my decision to stay away.

I found out years later that she was very hurt when she found out I’d known she was there and hadn’t gone to see her.  I didn’t know, then, that seeing me would have made her feel better, more hopeful, and relieved.  I had no idea.  I apologized to her for this, again, just a few weeks ago, yet I cannot seem to let go of it in my mind.

Some former friends of mine were “spying” on me (a fact I didn’t know at the time) and going back to tell my parents everything I said to them.  Although I understand, now, why they did that and why my parents encouraged them to do so, I haven’t quite gotten over the feeling of having been betrayed by them.  I also firmly believe that they were less concerned about me and more attracted by the excitement of “spying” and gossip, but that is a topic for another blog and is not relevant here.

Those friends, however, came to the hospital to see Jane (whom they had never met at the time, other than one of them having worked for the same employer as Jane a few years earlier, before I’d met her) during the same period of time that my mother was in the hospital.  It may have been the same day, but my memory isn’t as clear on those specific details anymore.  I told them (not knowing they were in touch with my mother) that she was in the hospital and what I’d learned, and they asked me if I were going to go and see her.  I was later quoted as having said, “If she has cancer, I’ll go see her.”  I cannot find it within myself to believe that I worded it exactly that way, but what I remember having decided was that seeing me at that time would probably not be good for her, but that if the test came back positive, I would go anyway, but would call first or try to get a message to her beforehand, so that my suddenly walking into the room or showing up at her front door would not be a shock.

I will always, always wish that I would have just walked into her room the day I learned she was there.  We could have begun healing so much earlier.

Fortunately, the tests came back “benign” and there has been no cancer, though I can’t help but see the symbolic parallel between the physical disease, Cancer, and the cancerous effect on my family, due to the lies I was told and the falsities I believed.

8. Control their behavior. (”Come live with us”, “Wear these clothes”, “Eat this food”, “All you need is two hours’ sleep”)

These sorts of points (and some others that aren’t listed here) were high on the list my sister and mother found in the book they bought about cult indoctrination.  At the time of our reconciliation, when they told me about the list, and even for several years afterward, I maintained the belief that it was merely a coincidence that some of the things on the list appeared to “fit”.  Only now, almost 14 years after our reconciliation, as I have begun to write this series of entries, am I realizing the full depth of  how insidious her behavior was.  It is as if she used the majority of these 22 points as her personal bible.

Something my parents have said for years, when talking about the months I spent on the phone with Jane while I lived with them, was, “You wouldn’t even eat with us.  Jane insisted that you ate only the food she sent you, and she wouldn’t even let you eat from our plates!”

She’d “sent” a place setting of her dishes to me, by way of our mutual friend, who served as deliveryperson whenever we “sent” anything to one another.

The story I was told was that this friend and Jane sent things overnight by Federal Express to and from wherever Jane happened to be working at the time.  It made things easier for Jane, she’d said, to be able to send items home when she wasn’t using them and have other items sent to her as she needed or wanted them, so that she didn’t have to pack so many things each time she went to a new location.  I didn’t know then that our mutual friend was merely picking-up-and-dropping-off to Jane at home, and this friend perpetuated the lies Jane told because, for her own reasons, she was also taken in by Jane and her small cult-like “family”.

Of course, she didn’t claim to have sent the plates from where she was; our friend was staying with Jane’s mother in Jane’s “absense” (she was actually living there with Jane and her mother until just before I moved in) and she brought the dishes to me.  

The reason Jane gave for sending the dishes was a romantic one.  She’d said she kept a place setting with her as she traveled, as well, because she tried to surround herself with belongings from home in order to help ease the loneliness and feelings of being so far from home for such long stretches of time.  Eating from matching dishes from the set that would be “ours” when we would finally live together, even though we were (supposedly) physically separated by so many miles, could help us to feel less lonely and more connected.  In other circumstances, without the other manipulation and unhealthy behavior, it might seem sweet.  That was the way I saw it for a long time.

She never “instructed” me to wear specific clothes (though she actually rarely “instructed” me to do anything; she was very gifted at persuasion, and often I thought the idea was mine).  She did, however, “send” me a couple of her favorite shirts and a couple ball-caps, which I wore.

She didn’t say that I only needed two hours’ sleep.  I believe the figure was “four to six”.  She used to tell me that, since I was in my child-bearing years, I didn’t need very much sleep, because nature programs young mothers (and women of child-bearing age) to be able to wake up multiple times in a night for feedings.

I will discuss sleep further in Point # 9, and food in Point # 10.

9. Prescribe a rigid schedule. Keep them active, and with as little sleep as possible.

My schedule was simple: I worked during the day all week, and if I wasn’t working, I was on the phone with Jane.  We talked all evening and into the night.  She bought a headset telephone for me so that I could talk for long hours without my neck hurting.  Many, many nights, I fell asleep with the headset on and the phone line still connected, and she would talk to me as I drifted off to sleep.  I would wake up during the night, to find that we were still on the phone and that she was awake, perhaps watching TV or reading.  I don’t know whether I’d naturally just woken up all those times or if she made some noise to wake me up, purposely causing interrupted sleep.  Once we were living together, she often woke me in the night to help her with one thing or another (she was disabled with multiple physical problems and sometimes needed a lot of help getting around).  To this day, I still have scars on my back from the bruises she left, poking me with her wooden back scratcher, to wake me up.

10. If you can, restrict their eating habits to low protein food.

She used to have food sent to me quite frequently while we were on the phone, via our mutual friend who introduced us.  It was a fun, “sharing” sort of thing.  (We both were overweight, both food addicts.  We “connected” in that way the same as two alcoholics might.)

The book that my sister and mother read not only mentioned restricting diets to low protein food; it specifically listed low protein, empty carbohydrate, junk food.  Jane often had our mutual friend pick up fast-food sandwiches and french fries for me, as that was my favorite type of food.  I also remember her sending candy somewhat frequently, and my sister remembers donuts or cookies also.

The thing is, this was the kind of food I ate fairly regularly anyway.  It has always been too easy for me to get into a junk-food-diet rut.  Jane wasn’t addicted to the same types of foods that I was, but she liked them sometimes, too.  For years, I mentally exempted the food-and-plates thing from what I considered to be her intentional manipulative behavior, but now, I can’t say she wasn’t also using my own inclination to eat that way to her advantage.

What my family interpreted as Jane “insisting that I eat only the food she sent” was really a case of my being all too eager to eat what she sent because (a) we were eating together, which felt romantic, and (b) it was the type of food I was already addicted to.  (Once my parents began to complain that I never sat down and ate meals with them anymore, Jane countered that by claiming that they were trying to control me and that they only wanted to have time alone with me so they could try to poison me against her.)

My family wondered if Jane may have drugged the food somehow, to enable her to more easily manipulate me, but she didn’t need to.  To someone who is addicted to that type of food, it offers “comfort”.  It seems that it will make everything better.  It also, especially when not combined with any healthy food to speak of, “dumbs down” the thought process, causes fatigue, and makes manipulation easier, as without proper nutrition the brain is not sharp enough to combat it.

11. Control their thoughts. (”Our ideology answers all questions to all problems”, “Let our doctrine think for you”)

I don’t recall Jane ever coming right out and saying that she wanted me to let her (or her ideology or doctrine) think for me, but that was obviously a big part of her objective.  It isn’t unreasonable to say that control-of-thoughts is often the result of repeating one’s ideology over and over to someone who is emotionally vulnerable and physically and mentally exhausted.

5. Don’t give them time to think. Diminish doubting commiseration by separating your new recruits from each other. Surround them with happy, true believers, so when in doubt, they will tend to do what everyone around them is doing and believe that is normal.

I definitely didn’t have time to think.  I was either working (and sometimes Jane would even call me at work) or at home, on the phone with her, until I was so exhausted I had no choice but to fall asleep.

As I explained before, Jane didn’t have a “cult” per se, by the definition most people attribute to the word, so there was no surrounding me with happy, true believers in the way the video suggests.  Our mutual friend, though, was (and still is, more than six years after Jane’s death in 2002) very pro-Jane.  And Jane did limit the amount of time our mutual friend and I saw each other, which I believe was to “diminish doubting commiseration”.  Our friend was to deliver whatever items Jane asked her to bring to me and then leave, so we could talk about the important plans we were making.

These important plans will be discussed next time, covering points 6, 3, 18, and 4.

The dark-haired child is five years old, though her height gives the impression that she is older.  Diesel fumes permeate the chill in the night air.  While their parents speak with another adult near their turquoise-colored sedan with the boat and trailer attached, her almost-teenaged sister entertains her with a magic disappearing-coin trick.  Insert the nickel, fold the four tabs down to cover it, say your magic words while you quickly and slyly flip the contraption over, your audience’s attention distracted by your delivery of the magic words, and open the identical tabs on the empty side.  Presto!  The nickel appears to have vanished!

* * *

A light-haired child watches through the window of the Tucumcary, New Mexico truck stop restaurant, sitting in the booth and playing Behind Closed Doors on the mini-jukebox while her parents are . . . somewhere.  It isn’t unusual for her to be in a truck stop restaurant with her parents after 10:00 pm.  They travel by car often, her father having business with many people in different places.  She watches the younger, dark-haired child outside, her ankles showing beneath stretch pants that she’s grown too tall for, practicing her magic tricks with her sister.

 * * *

The plastic cap snaps onto the bottle of Coke, but there is a hole in the center of the cap.  Surely, if she tips the bottle, some of the liquid will leak out, but she tries, and it doesn’t!  Amazing, this world of magic and illusion!  Her sister smiles at her as she shows her that the Coke hasn’t spilled.

* * *

The light-haired child slides out of the booth and ventures outside.  She approaches the dark-haired child and her sister, and watches.  She is practicing the coin trick again.  The nickel falls from her hands.  The light-haired child bends to pick it up and hand it to her.  Blue eyes and green eyes meet for the first time, almost twenty-one and a half years before they will meet again . . .

* * *

. . . Except that isn’t the way it happened.

The place wasn’t a truck stop.

It was in Albuquerque, not Tucumcary.

Behind Closed Doors hadn’t been released yet. 

The dark-haired child’s parents were never on the road past dinnertime when they traveled.

I was the dark-haired child.  I’ve had a memory all these years of the little magic kit my sister bought for me, and for most of my life, the smell of diesel fumes made me smile and think of that little magic kit.  That was what led me to assume that we’d been at a truck stop that night, during our November 1969 trek from Oklahoma to California, but based on the best information my sister and I can piece together now, it must have been the parking lot of the hotel where we stayed the night the axle on the boat trailer broke.  My sister, who was 12 at the time, remembers that our parents waited over an hour for the repair man to arrive.  Evidently she kept me occupied while the repair man talked with our parents.  The smell of diesel fumes came from the fact that the hotel parking lot was less than 100 feet from a traffic light on Route 66, where big trucks were stopping and idling at the light.  She also remembers the vending machine that I knew had to have been there, because she’d bought the bottle of Coke for me.

The light-haired child was Jane.  She supplied the details of her “memory” of our first meeting as children during a telephone conversation that took place somewhere in the span from November of 1990 to March of 1991.

This is a perfect example of Point # 7 from the list of Cult Indoctrination Techniques that I began writing about in Part One of this series of entries:

7. Get information and hone their weak spots . . . and then use this information to manipulate them.

In all the hours and hours of talking that we did while getting to know one another over the phone, I had unknowingly given her plenty of information, which she made use of.

My father was in the military and we traveled by car a lot during our moves as he was transferred from base to base.  This particular trip took place over the Thanksgiving holiday and was filled with lots of “adventures” for my family, including Thanksgiving dinner at a Shakey’s Pizza (with my family as the only customers in the restaurant and a fun player piano for entertainment), a tire blowout, and the axle on the boat trailer breaking and needing repair.

Since I was so young when the trip took place, I’d assumed for many years after that that we’d been at a truck stop that night, because of the diesel fumes, and I’d never thought to question or ask my parents or sister.  I simply enjoyed my pleasant memory of a sweet moment between my big sister and myself while she entertained me and kept me occupied that night.

However, being given false information from the start can be a problem for someone who is working to create an illusion of something that never really happened.  The fact that Jane took my “truck stop” theory and chose to build on it, claiming we had met there as children, tripped her up in the eyes of my sister and parents, because when I related to them what she’d told me (“Guess what!  Jane and I met as kids when we were traveling through New Mexico!”), my sister immediately told me, “We wouldn’t have been out that late at night and Mom and Dad never stopped at truck stops”.  (Our parents are very routine-oriented people and we always traveled until it was time to stop and check into a hotel, have dinner, allow us to play and work out some of our pent-up energy, and spend some quality family time together before going to sleep for the night.)  She later called a radio station to confirm her suspicion that Behind Closed Doors would not have been released yet by that time.

(Incidentally, in December of 1990, Jane also began talking with a friend of mine who happened to originally be from Las Vegas, which was where Jane was from.  The theory of everyone involved has been that she was “working on” her as a backup in case things with me didn’t work out.  She’d had this friend almost convinced that they’d met on a playground in Las Vegas as kids, until my friend’s partner became suspicious and intervened, essentially threatening Jane that she’d better never call again.)

By the time the conversations about the truck stop took place between my sister and me, I’d already been taken in by much of what Jane had told me, so while a small part of me suspected that the story wasn’t true, the part of me that clung to the romanticism of the notion needed to believe it, along with Jane’s explanation of why my family was working so hard to sway my belief: they didn’t like Jane and wanted to put a wedge between us.

Meanwhile, in reality, Jane was working night and day to secure that wedge firmly between my family and me (a point that will be discussed further in a future entry, when discussing Point # 17).

* * *

I should preface this post by explaining what was happening in my life around the time I first spoke with Jane.  I was 26 when I went through what was possibly the worst depression of my life.  I’ve dealt with clinical depression since I was a young teenager, but in 1990, at age 26, I went into a financial tailspin as a result of poor planning and overspending (and then-undiagnosed Adult ADD, which I can now clearly see was behind a lot of what led to my financial woes).  My financial downward spiral was compounded by losing my job, and I wound up moving back in with my parents in August of that year.  My self esteem took a beating, as I felt everything from failure at “being an adult” to worthlessness for not being able to “get it right”.  I was as vulnerable as I would ever be in my life, before or since.  I was not only suicidal; my suicide was planned.  I have learned, in the years since, that that level of despair and vulnerability can create fertile ground for manipulation.

And then I met Jane, and she offered me what was the only alternative I could see, in my depression-induced state of altered logic: a relationship that felt predestined by Fate, brought together by forces larger than ourselves for some grand-scale purpose.  Or I could follow through with my original plan and die.

As it turned out, either option would have brought enormous pain to my family.  Fortunately, it is possible to recover from false memories and misplaced accusations, though obviously I had no idea at the time that that was where the relationship would lead.

As I mentioned in Part One, Jane was fascinated with cults and brainwashing techniques, and although she wasn’t trying to start a cult, she used the techniques that she had learned over the years to her best advantage.  Her objective?  I don’t know for sure, other than probably control, adoration, and complete loyalty.

A friend of mine, who I hadn’t known for very long at the time, introduced me to Jane, a friend of hers who, she explained, was working out of state, by passing my telephone number along to her as someone she might enjoy talking with because we seemed to have a lot in common.  Jane called, we began to talk frequently, and we began a five month “long-distance” relationship which led to my moving in with her the next spring, after the long-awaited phone call announcing she was home.

I never called her.  She always called me, because, she said, the company she worked for provided a telephone expense account that allowed her to remain in contact with her family and friends at home, which helped to ease the difficulty of being away for long stretches of time.  She said she moved from place to place and hotel to hotel, providing training to sales and marketing staff working for subsidiary companies owned by her employers’ company, and it would be much easier for her to call me rather than for me to call her.

This was before cell phones were commonly used.  Caller ID was available in our area, but my parents and I didn’t have the service.  I had a separate phone line with its own phone number installed into my bedroom, so that we didn’t tie up my parents’ telephone with our long conversations, but I didn’t add Caller ID.  I remember dialing *69 once or twice, out of curiosity, but the number she was calling from was always marked “Private”.

During our long phone conversations, I’d mentioned to Jane that I’d suspected some sexual molestation in my childhood, based on “sensory memories” I’d been experiencing since I was about 8 years old, as well as some otherwise unexplained fears and feelings, though I had no idea who would have done such a thing.  At one point, after discussing a short story I’d read about a woman who confronts her father for sexually abusing her as a child, Jane commented on how moved I was by the story and said, “Don’t you see?  It was your father.”

Time passed, and I began to have memories that backed up her theory.  Looking back now, from the “other side” of the experience, having seen those memories dissipate like vapor after a period of years (while my original “sensory memories” remained as vividly powerful as ever), I don’t doubt that Jane was able to cause those memories to form, using, among her repertoire of manipulation tools,  a combination of the techniques she had learned in her study of cult indoctrination.

* * *

And the points I’ll be covering in this entry:

1. Structure your cult like an onion, with the most benign and helpful features on the outside and the most controlling, kooky and evil parts at the secret, inner core.  Use deception.   Don’t tell them who you really are.  Lie.   Leave out important information or distort information.

Jane was a master at deception and lies, including but not limited to the fact that she wasn’t actually out of state during those five months.  She was in her home, across town, where she was largely bedridden due to a variety of health conditions, speaking to me from an unlisted telephone number and knowing it wouldn’t show up on Caller ID.  She used the “working out of state” story for two purposes: to buy time and make sure I was emotionally attached to her before admitting her disabilities to me, and to impress me with the importance of her job and the excitement of her travels.  It was a year later that she finally admitted she hadn’t really been away, though by then I had long since figured it out.

There were many things she’d said that a part of me questioned, but my need to believe her was as strong as her desire to have me believe.  A part of me knew that if I dissected things too much, everything our relationship was based on would unravel, and in my weakened state, I saw that leading to no other outcome than taking me right back to my suicide plan.

Jane often said, “If you tell a lie often enough, it becomes the truth,” a paraphrase of a quote which (according to a google search) appears to be attributed to Vladimir Lenin and also misattributed to Joseph Goebbels.  She was fascinated by this concept, and it is interesting.  It’s also disturbingly true.  We see it all the time in politics, but we see it in other areas of life as well.  How many times have you heard someone say, “Well, everyone knows that (such-and-such) is true”?   How did “everyone” come to know this fact, whatever it is?  Because they have heard it repeated so many times it must be true.  

I believe this is one way that false memories can be created as well, which brings us to . . .

16. Induce trance states and self-hypnosis by practicing thought-stopping rituals and repetitive acts like dancing, spinning, singing, over-breathing, and chanting. Practice prolonged hours of meditation. In these trance states, they are more receptive and suggestible. Revert them back to childhood dependence and mindless obedience.

Jane didn’t use acts like dancing, spinning, singing, over-breathing, or chanting, but she certainly used repetition.

Repetition is a powerful tool in how we learn new things.  (I’m 44 years old and can still remember my math teacher when I was a kid, pounding the chalk board rhythmically and saying, “Of means multiply” over and over when he was teaching us how to determine a percentage “of” something.)  How often do you find that you can recite lyrics from songs you haven’t heard in years, because you heard (and maybe sang) them so many times that they now remain easily accessible in  your memory?  (This applies to physical learning as well.  The importance of practice in sports is a good example.)  Repetition is the key in desensitization techniques for conquering fears.  Repetition is the reason Positive Affirmations work, and likewise, is the reason our negative thoughts about ourselves can become our accepted reality.

If my understanding of “thought stopping” is correct, it is based on repetition as well (telling oneself, “Stop” when recognizing unwanted thoughts).  I found that every time I expressed sadness at the hurt my family was feeling or how badly I missed them, Jane would respond with one (or a few) of a handful of standard responses, which I eventually began to hear in my own “voice” when missing my family.

Jane also went out of her way to make sure I remained sleep-deprived most of the time, which helped to create somewhat of a trance-like state at times.  (There will be more on sleep deprivation in a future post.)

15. Claim authority. It can come from a divine source, bogus scientific research, or special knowledge. Make up stories about yourself to boost your importance . . . Start slowly. A good con man takes a little bit of truth and a lot of lies and pulls the wool over the eyes of the ignorant.

Jane was exceptionally intelligent.  She was also very well-read and able to command authority (until the later years, when her personality began to break down due to mental health problems).  She had an amazing ability to remember details from news articles and books she’d read many years before, and to link current information and news trends with those older stories.  What she hadn’t read or heard before, she could make up, almost seamlessly, and it seemed to fit.  She had written an article for a fringe lesbian-feminist publication some years before, when she was just a teenager, and often showed it proudly to others.  It was well written and well thought-out.  She’d also been mentioned in a very favorable light in a book one of her exes had written.  All these things did add to the impression of importance and authority she was able to convey.

The line about “a good con man” could have been written for her.  She often said things very much like this statement.  She used to give me pointers in how to lie.  (Such as, “Include lots of details”.)  The only thing she was unable to teach me when it came to lying was how to turn off my conscience.

Planned point to be covered in Part Three: # 7.

(I do want to point out here that in my reading, I have seen statements to the effect that “Modern Psychotherapy has become a cult”, etc., as if all psychotherapists will, intentionally or unintentionally, implant false memories of childhood sexual abuse.  That is simply not true, any more than it would be true (or fair) to make a blanket statement about “All Christians” or “All non-Christians” or “All men” or “All women”.   There are ethical therapists who do not advocate Recovered Memory Therapy and who are careful about situations in which false memories can be created.  I would venture to guess that there are probably more of the second type than the first.)

For many years, I had assumed that my situation was more isolated than it evidently was.  That belief continued until very recently, when I finally realized that I had not yet fully dealt with my own feelings about what happened and the hurt it caused my family, as well as the missed years.  I recently began to do more reading on the topic and have become aware of what a widespread problem this has been, and unfortunately, still is.

I’ve seen phrases like, “The cult of recovered memory” many times in my reading, and the use of the word “cult” caught my attention and surprised me because when my family was going through our estrangement, my mother and sister began to do quite a lot of research on cults.  (They had no idea, at the time, just what was happening to me.)  When they initially told me this after our reconciliation, my first reaction was to think they’d overreacted and blown things out of proportion.  Next came my understanding that they hadn’t known what to think.  It is only after this recent reading I’ve begun that I finally understand just how close their line of research was to the truth of what was happening.

Both my mother and sister kept journals of what they’d learned, who they’d spoken with, and their thoughts and feelings about what was happening.  My sister and I have had some long conversations in the last month or so about this, and she showed me her journal.  In it, she mentioned having spoken with a police detective whose specialty was cult activity.  He recommended some books on the topic, which she either purchased  or found in the library.  One book in particular that she purchased, she told me years ago and again recently, listed 20 techniques or indicators of cult indoctrination.  She said that as far as they knew of the situation, based on my behavior and things I had said to them and to friends, 15 of the 20 listed items directly related to me and my situation.

My sister isn’t able to find her copy of that book anymore.  I began looking online for something that contained a similar list, and I found the YouTube video below.  It’s done somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but covers essentially the same items my sister remembered from the book she had, plus a few more.

My mother and sister began to follow the cult theory in part because my ex was into a non-Christian religion.  In reality, her behavior wasn’t due to her religious beliefs per se, but she herself was a master manipulator who was fascinated with cults and brainwashing techniques.  Both of her parents were alcoholics when she was growing up (this was confirmed by her mother, who we lived with, and who had stopped drinking when my ex was a teenager).  My ex learned early on how to get attention and manipulate to obtain what she wanted.  As she got older, she began to read about and study cults, and she never missed an airing of Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones on TV.

Although it took me a long, long time to admit that many of the techniques she had learned were used on me, it’s plainly clear when I look at the steps listed in the video.

I’ve typed out the points listed in the video, along with some of the examples given by the various characters, in parenthesis.  They appear below the video, in this entry.

In several future entries, I will take a few of these points at a time and explain how and if they apply to things my ex did, and later, how variations of some of the points may apply to the Recovered Memory movement.

Points Mentioned In Above Video:

1.  Structure your cult like an onion, with the most benign and helpful features on the outside and the most controlling, kooky and evil parts at the secret, inner core. Use deception.  Don’t tell them who you really are.  Lie.  Leave out important information or distort information.

2.  Establish Front Groups (“We’re a Bible study group”, “We’re a management course”, “We’re a meditation center”, “We’re a world peace organization”, “We’re a personal development center”, “We’re a drug rehab center”)

3.  Promise to fulfill their dreams (“Don’t you want a world of unconditional love and brotherhood?  We have the secrets to self improvement.  You can join us and be special.  Join our elite mission to save the world.  We can teach you special powers . . .”)

4.  Offer them something free and get them to feel obliged to give you something in return.  You could tell them time is running out and that they must make their decision now or it will be too late.

5.  Don’t give them time to think.  Diminish doubting commiseration by separating your new recruits from each other.  Surround them with happy, true believers, so when in doubt, they will tend to do what everyone around them is doing and believe that is normal.

6.  Start with a prolonged period of love-bombing.   Surround them with unconditional love and attention . . . (This next part appears after # 7 in the video, but I have separated # 7 from this section because the ways in which Jane used the information she gathered warrants its own topic of discussion here.)  Gradually, over time, you’ll begin to shape the recruit’s behavior by granting or withholding this love and attention.  After they’ve bonded, slowly start making your demands upon them, the message being: “Nothing in this world has value unless it relates to the leader or the ultimate purpose”.

7.  Get information and hone their weak spots . . . and then use this information to manipulate them. 

8.  Control their behavior.   (“Come live with us”, “Wear these clothes”, “Eat this food”, “All you need is two hours’ sleep”)

9.  Prescribe a rigid schedule.  Keep them active, and with as little sleep as possible.

10. If you can, restrict their eating habits to low protein food.

11. Control their thoughts.  (“Our ideology answers all questions to all problems”, “Let our doctrine think for you”)

12. Control their emotions.  Induce guilt.  (“The United States dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima”, “People are dying of starvation”, “You are not living up to your potential” . . .)  And fear.  (“The enemy will electroshock you, torture you, kill you, or carry you off to hell.”)

13. Control information.  Keep them from knowing all the workings of the cult.  Block out any information which is critical of the group.  Encourage members to spy and report on one another.  Separate the recruit from himself by attacking the self and inducing a mental breakdown disguised as a spiritual awakening.  When they start to freak out, have side effects, or hallucinate, tell them they are flushing out the bad stuff inside.

14. Make them paranoid about their own bodies or thought processes.   (“Your body is detoxifying”)   Tell them that there is a part of their mind that they must eliminate in order to find happiness.  (“You must eliminate the toxic mind”)

15. Claim authority.  It can come from a divine source, bogus scientific research, or special knowledge.  Make up stories about yourself to boost your importance . . .  Start slowly.  A good con man takes a little bit of truth and a lot of lies and pulls the wool over the eyes of the ignorant.

16. Induce trance states and self-hypnosis by practicing thought-stopping rituals and repetitive acts like dancing, spinning, singing, over-breathing, and chanting.  Practice prolonged hours of meditation.  In these trance states, they are more receptive and suggestible.  Revert them back to childhood dependence and mindless obedience.

17. Encourage separation from their family.  (“Your friends and family probably won’t understand”, “It doesn’t sound like your family and friends really love you if they can’t support your new decision”, “Maybe you should stay away from them.  It’s unhealthy for you to be around unenlightened people, anyway”, “If you can’t recruit your friends, cut off from them”, “Stop wasting time with non-believers”)

18. Encourage dependency and conformity and discourage autonomy and individuality.  (“The whole purpose must be the focus” . . .)

19. Have confessionals where people demonize their early lives and only praise their life in the group.  Rewrite the past as terrible, even if it was great.

20. Isolate them from the rest of the world.  Make them feel part of a special elite group with an important mission. Tighten your group’s bond by establishing scapegoats and enemies. Demonize outsiders as less-than-human, biased, corrupt, or conspiring against the group.  Develop an “Us vs Them” mentality, fighting resistance.  Tell them their critical thoughts are evidence that they have committed crimes against the group.  Start investigating them and make up crimes.  Make them feel guilty.  (“We’re doing important work here”, “You expect saving the world is easy?”, “We’re all called up0n to make some sacrifices for the cause”, “Just when things get tough, you want to give up”, “You’re weak” . . .”What’s more important, our mission, our family, eternal salvation, or your petty grievances?”, “You’re being negative”, “Ignorant”, “Selfish”, “And sinful” . . . “There must be something wrong with you”)

21. Indoctrinate with fear.  Tell them they could be possessed by evil spirits, or suggest that if they ever leave, something bad could happen to them.

22. Make it easier for them to die for you by calling their bodies “containers” that are shed before they evolve into higher life forms.

Pointing to a man at another table in the restaurant, he gave an example that went something like this: “If that man over there believed that he was being followed by assasins and someone walked up to him in a manner he considered threatening, he would react as if his life were being threatened, and he would be as dangerous as a man fighting for his life.  It wouldn’t matter if the person who approached him just wanted to know what time it was.”

The same can be said for someone who has experienced false memories of abuse.  The abuse may never have happened, but during the time that the person believes it did, s/he is going to react as if s/he experienced that abuse.  It is real to the accuser.

Realizing later that the memories weren’t real can be almost as confusing as having the memories in the first place.  How can something that feels so real and causes so much emotional pain be just an illusion?

I’ll venture to say that those who have experienced false memories of sexual abuse are survivors as well; just of a different type of abuse.

• How could a young woman from such a close-knit, loving family be convinced by another person that her father sexually abused her?
   
• How could something that was actually false seem so true?  (Or the reverse:  How could something that seemed so true actually be false?)
   
• How could the same God/Creator who gave us such an amazing and intricately designed body system (from the chemicals our brains produce, which are responsible for a multitude of organ functions, to our circulatory and respiratory systems distributing oxygen and vital nutrients to our cells, and everything else I am failing at adequately describing) design our memory in such a way that it can’t really be accurately relied upon or trusted in so many situations?
   
• How can I ever truly trust my perception of my own reality?, and
   
• How can I expect someone else to believe that anything I say is true?

These are some of the issues I am still dealing with now, more than 18 years after my accusations brought such pain to my family.