I explored some of the logic of Zion awhile back, but more to do with power structures.

What does it say of a God that erases nearly all trace of a city that managed to eradicate poverty and abuses of power? Such that any knowledge of *how* they did it no longer exists, so that anyone hoping to replicate it will have to start from scratch?

If you've never been Mormon, keep in mind that Mormons do hope to replicate Zion. But that's kind of difficult when its leadership and perhaps even its God keeps putting up barriers.

Essentially that's what my #AbuseCulture model does. It addresses those beliefs, not just within an individual survivor, but for all of us, in how we help abusers with our language, beliefs, preferences, in who we choose to defend, in our moral systems, in our laws and biases.

I've taken what I've learned from my own abuse recovery and therapy of many years, my studies on psychology and trauma, but most importantly, from learning about cults, high-demand groups, coercive persuasion, and religious trauma recovery, and merged those into a unified theory.

There really isn't much difference between domestic abuse and cult membership.

And cult recovery involves deconstructing those beliefs, making yourself aware of them so that you can consciously choose which to keep and which to throw away.

I've been out of Mormonism for 24 years, and I still find beliefs I have not been aware of this whole time. I've been away from my worst abuser for almost a decade, and still find beliefs he instilled in me that I have not yet examined.

The undue influence techniques used by cults are almost identical to those used by abusers and manipulators. These techniques are used at the societal and political levels as well, and can also demonstrate how racism, sexism, etc all work.

I can't tell you specifically which beliefs you have in you, but I can show you the purposes they serve... there will be beliefs about who you can and cannot trust, what you should be afraid of, what punishments await you for misbehaving, and a couple dozen others. Knowing that framework can guide you through discovering your own induced phobias, milieu control, and thought-terminating clichés.

(Brief plug for my book, Recovering Agency, which outlines 31 manipulation techniques in context of Mormonism, but that can be applied elsewhere.)

#ReligiousTrauma #Abuse
#PTSD #CPTSD #cults #MindControl

There's an aspect of #CPTSD I don't see much discussed or even studied, but you can bet that whoever is causing the CPTSD thinks of it this way, either with conscious awareness or not:

Behavior modification.

That's what really separates PTSD, say from a random act of violence, from complex PTSD that affects almost every area of one's life.

CPTSD is a result of a behavior modification program. An abuser or abusive system conditioned you to believe and behave a certain way, often many sets of behaviors across most areas of your life. That's what makes something a cult or a high-demand group. That's what makes for a domestic abuse situation – it's in the things they force you to do.

The recovery focus tends to be on the trauma itself -- ok we're in sympathetic nervous state, let's unpack triggers, get coping skills, EMDR, meditation, calm you down. Fine.

But rarely (outside of cult exit counseling) have I seen much focus on the BELIEFS an abuser or system has instilled in us. Beliefs that modify behavior. That sense that if I touch a hot stove I'll be burned, but it's not a stove, it's normal everyday things that I can't avoid and I'm wandering an inescapable maze of pain-points.

Address the beliefs themselves.

It's a major gap in how PTSD is treated in our culture. EVEN the helping professional community is so bogged down in these abuse culture assumptions (that trauma is "in the past," that the abusers are no longer present, that it's just a nervous system thing, just process the trauma events) that they often ignore the set of interlocking ever-present beliefs, and they ignore the very aspects of society we're just supposed to tolerate (bad workplaces, chronic stress, toxic religious beliefs).

What did my abuser make me *believe* about myself? What did my toxic religion make me believe about the world? How do I view reality through an abuser-provided lens?

#ReligiousTrauma
#fascism #antifa #Abuse
#exmo #exmormon #PTSD #AbuseCulture

lol looks like I was on about this last week when I was editing these letters. Probably the same letter. Because the behavior of a bishop and stake president towards a child in this case is not excusable. *I* am angry at them and I wasn't even there.

But I do understand that impulse to excuse and lay palm fronds in the path of my abusers. Very, very much.

https://defcon.social/@corbden/114275598543827504

#ReligiousTrauma
#fascism #antifa #Abuse
#exmo #exmormon

But that's just a (conspiracy) THEORY!

There's a reason why cults can get away with just about any crime in this society. And it isn't the First Amendment.

Cults serve an important function for the establishment:

They get passionate, principled people out of circulation, directing all that Change-the-World energy towards bullshit. Cults protect the status quo.

(You'll notice it's generally only the cults with large arsenals that they ever go after. I see you Janet Reno.)

idk I guess I'd like to think that some of the folks in that photo read Recovering Agency, got over a bunch of their pain and confusion, and were able to attend that protest because of it.

Based on feedback I've gotten in the past, this is very likely true.

And that's why I want to restore my health, so I can do more of that. That's my calling. That's what stirs my spirit.

That said, there's also a lot of authoritarianism running through Mormon doctrines, and those with authoritarian mindsets glom onto those ideals instead.

They have their eye on a Utah theocracy, just like ol' Brother Brigham once ruled over. And many of them are in Utah government and police. So I also wouldn't be surprised if that comes to blows.

The prophecy about separating the wheat from the chaff has never felt so poignant, so imminent.

#ReligiousTrauma
#Mormon
#LDS
#exmormon
#exmo
#USPol
#UTPol
#HandsOff

That photo of the Utah protest keeps going around. Social media and news outlets are all surprised for some reason.

I'm not. Not at all. That's because 1. I was raised LDS and know the fire they implanted in people like me to stand for what is right, and 2. I've followed activism in Mormon spaces for the last two decades, and know that when educated on these issues, nuanced Mormons and exmormons bring all that fire with them. They've been largely working within Mormon spaces to change the Church and help those wounded by it, and have accomplished amazing things, moving the mountain that is the world's wealthiest religion with hardly a mustard seed.

Most of the base values Mormonism teaches are perfect for anti-Trumpism. The Book of Mormon is anti-monarchy and pro-liberty. The driving core doctrine is "free agency." The world after Jesus returns is basically a functioning global commune.

This is why I've chosen to work in this space as my own activism, my calling, to heal Mormons and exmormons of their trauma, teach them critical thinking, educate them on these issues, expose them to progressive ideas, and then they'll have the energy for changing the wider world.

We were reared to change the world, pushed to magnify our talents, taught to be leaders, shown how to organize, and then they chained us to a hamster wheel of useless activity that did the opposite of changing the world.

Once released from that hamster wheel, we are a force to be reckoned with.

So yeah, folks in Utah are gonna show up. Don't underestimate the Mormons.

After all, the God of the Christian Bible as widely interpreted is awfully authoritarian. You couldn't find a better example of squishy principles, double-standards, might makes right, the ends justify the means, cruelty is the point, justice as defined by punishment, punishment that vastly outsizes the crime, transactional love, exclusion as a definitive value, hierarchy based on birthright as the perfect system, torture as a test of character, speaking love but not practicing it...

Almighty makes Alrighty.

It's a perfect fit for abusers. They shaped God into that figure, as the Bible was being written thousands of years ago, in how it was translated and encoded into traditions centuries ago, and in how they interpret it today. Whether at the top of the chain as a prophet or pope, or in the downline as a impoverished drunk who beats his kids, authoritarians are preferenced in the religious culture that has claimed a monopoly on love and morality.

And nobody really wins. Not the prophet or pope, and not the impoverished drunk or his kids. After a time, the system is the only entity that "wins" as it feeds on every human being involved.

Have you ever thought to yourself, "You know, I could just *stop* trying to be a good person, or stop trying to do X thing they say I'm supposed to do... I could just lie and go on doing that thing"? And then you probably decided, naw, my reasons for doing the good thing are fairly solid, so I will keep trying to do what I'm supposed to even if it's hard."

Yeah, there are people who take the other fork. They stop trying to be kind, or be honest, or be giving, or trying to protect the weak, or any of those things. They decide that so long as they don't *get caught* they'll be fine.

Religion is supposed to help with that problem, because God knows everything and the myth goes that they'll be caught in the end. But there are many, many ways for a determined person to weasel their way out of that threat. Either they stop believing that myth and instead of leaving they stay and *pretend* to believe, or they rationalize that the ends according to them justify the means, or that they're inherently such a good person it's ok if they bend the rules now and then.

They took a different fork than you took. And they exist. They're out there. Or *in here*, wherever here is to you. And they get very, very good a lying.

Religious settings are perfect for them, because it's easier to lie about things that can't be seen, touched, heard, or proven. The Bible says this, God wants that, I had a dream, I felt prompted, and all the people who took the fork of continuing to try, but who believe the Bible and God? They eat it up.

That's why Christianity in the US is a bastion of Abuse Culture. Because this cycle has been going on for thousands of years.

For clarity, I am not dishing on the letter writers. Trust is not a crime. Naivety is not a crime. Giving one's best shot at defending someone from a miscarriage of spiritual justice is not a crime. Processing things with what you know about this world is not a crime. Their words will (editor willing) go into this book and stand as testament against religious authoritarianism, and against President Daley specifically.

I am simply referencing their approach as a way to educate on how we do need to change our thinking, in that someone who acts the way Daley did is not persuadable using ideas like "compassion" because he doesn't understand that worldview the way you and I do. And we need to get wise to that so they can stop running the world.

This is a long way to say: If you don't understand the effects of cognitive dissonance, and don't unpack your own internal contradictions, you can be more easily manipulated into behaviors and beliefs you would not *consciously* agree with.

If you like free agency and are a big fan of free will, this is the sort of thing you need to work on.

#philosophy
#atheism
#theism
#exvangelical
#exvie
#exmormon
#exmo
#ReligiousTrauma
#AbuseCulture

Here's a post I wrote awhile back calling out the Church's white religious supremacy and cultural colonialism, which will have to suffice. They'd have to stop doing this crap, too. For me to be satisfied.

https://recoveringagency.com/elder-jacksons-culture-of-christ-is-a-culture-of-white-supremacy/