I remember a friend asking our small group, as a way to challenge our ability to think deeply, “Would you follow a leader even when the leader is doing bad things?”
We never really discussed how bad is bad, but I can remember how each of us had conflicting responses—about how we shouldn’t be naive and gullible to follow bad people (even when they are leaders, or especially if they are leaders)—then ended up echoing the indoctrination that terminated our real thoughts about it: we are called to respect the authority so we should follow our leaders even when they are doing bad things.
While it did not feel right at the time, we felt justified just by acknowledging absolute obedience to superiors because individuality is bad and conformity is good. We agreed. I felt like I had to.
But as I recall that day, about how the conversation went stale and open-ended, I felt discomfort about how we reached a resolution (even though we weren’t able to verbalize it): that conformity is better than doing the right thing. It felt like there was an unspoken rule that if you do not blend in with the rest, like be vocal about the things you truly believe in that do not echo what the group believes, things will not end well for you.
After that conversation, it felt like something in me shifted. The conversation sat in my chest like something I’d swallowed wrong. I knew people were leaving the group. I’d hear whispers as someone’s name was quietly removed from the roster with no explanation; perhaps we didn’t need to know. Stories about them travel, always putting them in a bad light, always portraying them as the villain, while the group and its leaders are the heroes.
What if those who left saw something I was too afraid to see?
But then I’d suppress that thought, bury it under all my obligations and responsibilities, and the comfort of knowing what is expected of me. It’s easier to follow than to question. They do not welcome questions anyway, shunning the self-aware member. It’s safer to blend than to stand out. Until one day, I just couldn’t take all the lies anymore.
I didn’t have the language for what was happening in that moment. Not until I had read Steven Hassan’s book Combating Cult Mind Control did I understand that it was mind control: “the process by which individual or collective freedom of choice and action is compromised by agents or agencies that modify or distort perception, motivation, affect, cognition and/or behavioral outcomes.”
When you are under mind control, your voice (or spiritual discernment) becomes a whisper, suppressed deep within you, as the group dominates your everyday decisions, under the premise that “We only want what’s best for you.“
I did not notice when I stopped questioning what was presented to me. Like a willing subject, I trusted the group, the institution. My capacity to freely think deeply, to question things instead of mindlessly obey, did not disappear all at once. It dimmed gradually, as if someone was slowly pushing away the person I actually was.
I no longer sound like me. I started speaking like the group, as if we were one. I got lost in the thought-terminating clichés.
I never knew I was under mind control until I finally broke free from the hive.
And isn’t that the cruelest part? I was unable to see the cage while I was inside it. The control was subtle at first, but as you get deeper into the fold, the control becomes undeniable. Everybody becomes a sleep-deprived yes man, always needing to appease the people above, while being wary of each other, knowing that people from the in-group can treat you well while hiding their real (and often bad and exploitative) intentions.
When did I stop questioning information? I can’t remember. And maybe that’s how it works, the slow erosion of self disguised as spiritual growth.
To some who left, the in-group was told that they had fallen away and that it’s best not to contact them to protect the group. Protect from what? Keeping them from knowing the truth? The lies came easily to those who hold power. They won’t stop at anything, telling lies about those who left, while restricting those who stayed from communicating with former members. Or maybe they believed what they were told, the same way I once believed everything.
Sure, not everyone in those groups is bad. Others were just as misled as I was. But the system—the system protects itself by turning former members into cautionary tales.
Steven Hassan wrote that people leaving mind control groups “may begin to feel shame and embarrassment, then anger and indignation. They move from ‘What is wrong with me?‘ to ‘How dare they do that to me!‘” He calls this normal and healthy. I’m still somewhere in the process, moving between questions with no clear answers.
These days, I’m learning to live in the complexity of life again, seeing the world beyond us-versus-them, beyond black-and-white certainty. I’ve become wary of groups that are too staged or picture-perfect, suspicious of communities that require you to suppress doubt in order to belong. Maybe, that weariness is wisdom now. Or maybe it’s just fear of being disillusioned again, wearing a different face.
I probably just need space to think and relearn how to trust human relationships in organized groups again.
jessa 