cult – i want what SHE has

0:00

01:51:54

#151 Rachel Bernstein LMFT “IndoctriNation Podcast”

Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Spotify Subscribe on Android Leave a Review Download Subscribe via RSS Listen in a New Window

I’m doing cartwheels about today’s guest! Rachel Bernstein, LMFT, has been working with victims of cults and emotional abusers for 27 years. She believes that given the right set of circumstances, it’s all too easy for anyone to fall prey to sociopaths and manipulators. She is the host of IndoctriNation: A weekly podcast covering cults, manipulators, and how to protect yourself from systems of control. She wanted to give survivors a chance to tell their stories and for experts to teach us what they know about high control groups. Her goal for IndoctriNation is to empower listeners to protect themselves and those they love from predators, toxic personalities, and destructive organizations.

Little known fact…I’ve been mildly obsessed or perhaps just highly curious about all things cults this year. I’ll tell you more about that in the show, or you can read about it here. Rachel’s podcast has been extremely informative and healing to me, helping me understand some of my own experience navigating a high control group. Some of the subjects that we get into on the show today are how to identify systems of control, the situations that make indoctrination possible, fervor and awe, betrayal blindness, how to remove yourself from a group, and how to support a loved one who is caught up in one.

Rachel’s approach to this subject is not only effective, but it’s also very informative and very compassionate. I hope you enjoy, and if possible support her work!

Here are the direct links to the shows I referenced: Consolidation of Church and State, Mark Vicente and NXIVM, QAnon, Fervor and Awe with Yuval Laor. And interesting that her most recent is about Kundalini Yoga!

Our show music is from Shana Falana !!!

Feel free to email me, say hello: she@iwantwhatshehas.org

** Please: SUBSCRIBE to the pod and leave a REVIEW wherever you are listening, it helps other users FIND IT

http://iwantwhatshehas.org/podcast

ITUNES | SPOTIFY | STITCHER

ITUNES: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/i-want-what-she-has/id1451648361?mt=2

SPOTIFY:https://open.spotify.com/show/77pmJwS2q9vTywz7Uhiyff?si=G2eYCjLjT3KltgdfA6XXCA

STITCHER: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/she-wants/i-want-what-she-has?refid=stpr’

Follow:

INSTAGRAM * https://www.instagram.com/iwantwhatshehaspodcast/

FACEBOOK * https://www.facebook.com/iwantwhatshehaspodcast

TWITTER * https://twitter.com/wantwhatshehas

0:00

01:34:52

#139 Helen Zuman “Mating in Captivity”

Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Spotify Subscribe on Android Leave a Review Download Subscribe via RSS Listen in a New Window

After some short technical difficulties, I finally connected with today’s guest, Helen Zuman, a tree-hugging dirt worshipper devoted to turning waste into food and the stinky guck of experience into fertile, fragrant prose. She holds a BA in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard and a Half-FA in memoir from Hunter College. Raised in Brooklyn, she lives with her husband in Beacon, NY and Black Mountain, NC.

She is the author of Mating in Captivity (She Writes Press 2018), a memoir of her five years, post-Harvard, in a cult with a radical take on sex and relationships. Mating in Captivity received a starred review from Kirkus, was named a Kirkus Best Indie Memoir of 2018, was a finalist in Creative Nonfiction for the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses’ 2019 Firecracker Award, and was both first runner-up in memoir and a finalist for First Horizon and Grand Prize honors in the 2020 Eric Hoffer Awards. Other work has appeared in The New Farmers Almanac, in Communities and Livelihood magazines, and on the Foundation for Intentional Community’s website (ic.org).

Mating in Captivity: When recent Harvard grad Helen Zuman moved to Zendik Farm in 1999, she was thrilled to discover that the Zendiks used go-betweens to arrange sexual assignations, or “dates,” in cozy shacks just big enough for a double bed and a nightstand. Here, it seemed, she could learn an honest version of the mating dance – and form a union free of “Deathculture” lies. No one spoke the truth: Arol, the Farm’s matriarch, crushed any love that threatened her hold on her followers’ hearts. An intimate look at a transformative cult journey, Mating in Captivity shows how stories can trap us and free us, how miracles rise out of crisis, how coercion feeds on forsaken self-trust.

In addition to cults, we also talk about the journey to trust oneself, the “infinite growth myth,” gift circles, her connection to a well balanced eco-village that is doing intentional living well and how she takes care of herself (no social media!). I can personally highly recommend her book even for those not remotely curious about how one gets pulled into a cult. It’s extremely well written and uniquely empowering to hear some of the more difficult details of her story.

Looking for an intentional community or wondering about the health of one you’re currently in? Helen’s article may be of help to you. And if you do have friends, family or loved ones you fear are wrapped up in a cult, eh hm, political party, then Helen recommends some resources written by therapist and cult expert Steven Hassan. You can tune in to hear the best thing Helen’s Mom did easing her exit from the cult mind-control.

Today’s show was engineered by Nick Panken of Freedom Highway.