How the ICOC brainwashes people

Mind control is real. Brainwashing is real. It isn't science fiction. It also isn't just an "excuse" for regrettable behavior.

MIND CONTROL IS REAL. BRAINWASHING IS REAL.

Brainwashing means being "under the influence".

Under the influence of what?

Under the influence of an ideology, a charismatic leader, or a persuasive narcissistic person.

Another term for brainwashing is mind control.

I know that one of the hardest things to do is to admit that you've been "under the influence" of another person, of a religion, or a group. We kick ourselves for being "dumb", "gullible", a "fool".

"Why did I let myself fall for this?" is a common question we ask ourselves.

Other times the people in our lives are asking these questions of us, which is devastating.

I've been there.

If you're new to this blog, I was a member of a church cult named the International Church of Christ or ICOC for almost 12 years. After finally getting out, the following years have been me processing my own experiences in the ICOC - one of which is how I was brainwashed by the church during the indoctrination process of the ICOC's first principles bible studies.

Brainwashing, or mind control, is fascinating from an intellectual viewpoint, yet it is embarrassing from a personal perspective, especially when YOU are the one who was the victim.

We shouldn't be embarrassed or ashamed. This discussion is meant to debunk the idea that brainwashing is an exaggerated term that only exists in science fiction movies.

Here is what I identify as the key aspects of what is called "brainwashing":

The first aspect of brainwashing is vulnerability. One has to be vulnerable to be brainwashed. Brainwashing takes hold only when a person has a weakness that can be exploited. For example, a person is vulnerable when they are in a major life transition, such as moving to a new city, going away to college for the first time, having a baby, having a near-death experience, divorce, being homeless, being estranged from family, having a debilitating illness, etc.

These types of life experiences are the most common for people being recruited into a cult and indoctrinated. I, myself, was recruited as a college freshman away from home in a new city. I was chronically disabled and struggling in school. As a result, I was severely depressed. This weakness trifecta opened a door to hearing rhetoric that was not in my best interest.

Let's face it: would you have accepted that church invitation if you weren't vulnerable? Would you have said yes to attending that bible study? Gone to that bible talk?

Maybe, maybe not. Just take a moment and think about what you were going through in life when someone "reached out" to you.

As an ICOC disciple, I mastered the techniques of evangelism. Trained by the leadership, I zealously recruited many, from roommates to friends to family members to strangers standing ahead of me in line at the grocery store.

So I know that brainwashing doesn't happen by chance. A free thinking individual must be groomed. They must be taken through a series of steps or phases to mold them into a member of a cult. ICOC members are called "disciples". As I said in one of my you tube videos on the subject, "a disciple is made, not born".

Now, of course I, as a cult member, didn't know 1) I was in a cult and 2) I was brainwashing/grooming people.

That's the crazy thing about brainwashing: you don't know you're brainwashed, so you actually think you are helping other people who you are also inflicting mind control over.

I really was convinced that I was saving people's souls by recruiting them to come to an ICOC event or agree to a bible study.

They say hurt people hurt people. Well, brainwashed people brainwash people.

The second aspect of brainwashing is trauma-based mind control. Be clear on this: indoctrination all has some degree of trauma.

Brainwashing always consists of some level of trauma.

First, your vulnerability opens the door to brainwashing. Then, once you are open to the indoctrination, the way they make it stick is to induce trauma on you to embed the programming. Trauma ingrains any programming. This is a psychological fact.

Think about the day, September 11th. Everyone remembers where they were the moment they saw the twin towers hit by the first plane. That moment is embedded in your individual and collective memory: where you were, how you felt, the smells, weather, clothes you were wearing, the people's response around you, the energy in the room....all these years later and I still can recall it like it was yesterday. That's what trauma does.

A traumatic event is like capturing a moment with the flick of a camera. Our brains take a "snapshot" of all information when trauma is inflicted. That's one explanation of why we remember bad events more than good ones.

To hammer this point home, studies show that it takes 17 positive reinforcement statements to neutralize one negative statement. You know you can hear 100 positive compliments but you focus on the one or two negatives. Think of a Facebook or Instagram page that gets 100 likes and 2 dislikes. You have to fight the intense, almost irresistible urge not to obsess over the dislikes which pale in comparison to the overwhelming positive feedback.

This is how our brains work. A trauma is like the trojan horse for the brainwashing. Trauma disables your natural boundaries which allows the cult ideology to break into -and take over - your mind.

When I was going through the ICOC indoctrination brainwashing studies, trauma was inflicted by the people studying with me. I talk about one of these traumas in my article on spiritual rape.

I posted a poll on my you tube community page asking members which of the ICOC bible studies was most traumatic. The majority answered that the Sin and Repentance study was most traumatizing. If you are not a member of the ICOC, the Sin & Repentance study is a bible indoctrination study where the "student" is given a list of bible scriptures to look up prior to the study as "homework". These scriptures are on "sin". For each sin listed, the "student" must write down if they ever committed that sin. During the study, the non-ICOC member is asked explicitly to describe -in detail- each sin they ever committed.

So, it looks like this: One of the "sin scriptures" used is Galatians 5:19-21. This "sin list" includes "overt" sins like sexual immorality, impurity, and the like. The ICOC members ask "Have you ever been sexually immoral?" You say, "Yes". They ask you when, with who, how, what, etc. The objective is for you to confess all your sins from when you were old enough to know right from wrong in order to "be healed" and bring everything in the dark into the light.

This is why so many people said that the ICOC Sin and Repentance study is so traumatizing. You've got the fact that you are forced to share the most private, vulnerable aspects of your life with two or more strangers who don't know you or care about you. You've got the "godly" pressure to confess using the bible, i.e. if you don't confess your sins you can't be "saved" and will thus go to hell.

Forced vulnerability is part of trauma-based mind control. Opening up to strangers leaves you open mentally, spiritually, psychologically, and emotionally. It gives them the power to make you right with God, the power to make you clean, to make you whole. They mock Catholicism and call it false doctrine, but turn around and demand you confess all your sins to them unless you can't be right with God. Sounds like Catholic confession with a priest to me.

When you are coerced to do something you don't want to do and wouldn't do under natural circumstances, something that violates your personal boundaries, trauma is induced.

Once these people, such as in the ICOC Sin and Repentance study, know all your "dirty laundry", a trauma bond is created masking itself as intimacy, relationship, or even righteousness. I felt so much relief after confessing my most embarrassing "sin" that I'd never told anyone, I thought that sense of relief was actually redemption. I reconciled this abuse internally with the idea that, "No pain, no gain if you want something worthwhile".

...right?

Cults like the ICOC claim to offer "something worthwhile", i.e. spiritual salvation with God. Being raised on a steady diet of fear of hell in Catholic church, I was convinced that this offer by the ICOC was worth the trauma.

Also important: If you have childhood trauma, the ICOC [and similar cults] effectively trigger the pain points that psychologically morph you into the child who was traumatized. Once that occurs, we're open to more abuse and mistreatment. Our defenses are neutralized. That little girl or boy endures the indoctrination studies in hopes (subconsciously) of being accepted and loved.

The ICOC does a great job of love-bombing you just enough to keep you doing the bible studies and attending church functions while withholding the overt brotherly or sisterly affection they display openly to one another in front of you.

This deliberately gaslights you, letting you know that you are NOT one of them (yet). More hoops still need to be jumped through. You have to prove yourself, still. They "breadcrumb" non-members through the indoctrination process, so you don't know what the end game is, nor do you know what exactly you have to do to be considered one of them. So you stick around, waiting to be told what you have to do next.

This is just a snapshot of how the ICOC brainwashes people. It goes after your vulnerabilities and exploits them. It dangles a carrot of salvation in front of you once it convinces you that you are not saved and destined for hell. They break you down until you believe you are nothing, calling this act of trauma "humility" or "having a soft heart" or a "teachable spirit".

But what convinces a person to hand over their power to complete strangers? What makes someone believe that a group knows the answers they are looking for?

Part of it, I think, is a lack of knowledge. We only know what we know at the time. In the case of the ICOC, you may not be versed in the bible. I wasn't, which is why I was so interested when the girl who recruited me asked me to do a personal bible study. I didn't have any knowledge base of scriptural interpretation to compare their interpretation of the bible with.

Another part of this is as I mentioned in the beginning: we are vulnerable. Life transitions and circumstances make us open to things we would normally dismiss or question critically.

Also, life is freaking hard! Period. We so want answers to make us feel better, to comfort us, to give us answers to life's complex, uneasy questions. Cults offer such compact, easy to digest simplicities to these uncertainties. You offer me certainty in a world of uncertainty, I just might bypass all critical thinking and internal resistance to feel a sense of peace and hope.

Low self esteem and unactualized personal identity and purpose are also weaknesses that the ICOC (Cults) use against us. Individuals who have a healthy sense of self esteem and self worth most likely are immune from brainwashing tactics. (Unless the person is convinced by the ICOC (cult) to doubt their self worth). Some of you reading this may have had a good life with self esteem up until being recruited into the ICOC [or other cult] but that's why they break you down so they can build you back up. One way they use this is through the ICOC Denominations study. Recruits who are secure in their christian identity from their upbringing are pressured and traumatized using the bible and ICOC brainwashing tactics to convince him or her that they are not "saved" and that their current relationship with God is non-existent, and is based on "false doctrine".

The ICOC's modus operandi is to break your self esteem down. They call a person with self esteem "prideful". A person who knows who they are and who already has defined their beliefs for themselves has critical questions to dogmatic teachings, such as the ICOC's Kingdom Study, where they teach that the ICOC = God's Kingdom = church = saved. pushing back against this ideology makes you an enemy to the ICOC members. They withdraw affection from you until you conform to their beliefs.

A person who has formed their identity can't be shaped, molded, and groomed into a cult like the ICOC. Many of us, myself included, were young when we were targeted for recruitment. Young people haven't developed their identity yet. They're ideological vacuums to whoever gets to them first or to whoever offers the most enticing bait. I was almost recruited into a sorority before the ICOC. The ICOC offered something the sorority did not: hope. A life purpose. Inner peace.

Brainwashing requires an echo chamber of ideas. That's why the ICOC -and all cults- work hard to isolate you from outsiders. The ICOC persuades single converts to move in with other members, in "kingdom households" to keep the echo chamber going nonstop. They instill fear of having non-disciple friends and from going home to visit family, as they can pull you away from God, supposedly. If possible, they break up dating couples who begin the bible study process. Sometimes they can get a member married to a non-disciple to leave them and become a single in the church, eventually matching with another ICOC disciple.

This isolation of members is done to keep the person from being influenced by outsiders, what the ICOC labels as "the world". This "world" is seen as the enemy to the ICOC's mission and ideology. Once you've been inoculated from any opposing information, any criticism becomes "bitterness" or "persecution".

Look at this video:

The eyes of these church members are literally glazed over. They all act the same. They say the same words and phrases. I titled it, "Meet the ICC's future fallaways" because of the church's high turnover rate. I estimate that at the time I published the video half the people in the video would have left the church. The brutal church culture burns people out relatively fast. The brainwashing/mind control cracks under the pressure to constantly perform and denigrate themselves. Each individual has different breaking points.

The ICOC brainwashes targeted individuals through all of these techniques. It isn't your fault. It isn't mine. No one warned us about these kinds of threats. I never had a conversation with an adult about how to watch out for churches and cult groups recruiting on college campuses. This is why I am motivated to speak publicly about my own brainwashing experiences. It is embarrassing. I'm not excited about my identity being associated with being a cult victim. This is why breaking down cult stigmas is so important.

Brainwashing is real. Mind control is real. Studies have been done. The Milgram experiment is a famous experiment to see how easily ordinary people could be influenced into committing atrocities by the influence of an authority figure. Individuals participating were asked to pull a lever to electrocute a subject on the other side of a wall. Many people complied under orders. If they hesitated or pushed back, they were further prodded that "this experiment requires you to continue".

We're raised in a society where we are ingrained with being an order follower. This begins with parents, then with school, and later in the workforce. It also occurs in our religious institutions. As social creatures who are tribal, we humans desire to be part of a group that accepts us, relates with us and supports us.

All these factors contribute to brainwashing. We underestimate the power of being put on the spot to conform. The pressure is demanding an immediate response, which disallows for time to critically think and respond. Most of us are taken aback and are jarred mentally. It takes us off balance, which makes us vulnerable to brainwashing, trauma-based mind control.

Don't blame people-or yourself- for being "stupid" or "gullible" or "dumb". Brainwashing is real. Your thought patterns can be interrupted and imprinted on by someone else. Ideology is a feedback loop that keeps the person's mind trapped until something jars it loose.