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Bookish's Reviews > Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
by
by
Bookish's review
bookshelves: mental-health, ritual-abuse, non-fiction, will-read-again, dissociative-identity-disorder, psychology, living-with-trauma-professionals, cults
May 21, 2013
bookshelves: mental-health, ritual-abuse, non-fiction, will-read-again, dissociative-identity-disorder, psychology, living-with-trauma-professionals, cults
Amazing book. Nothing else like it on the market. It is aimed at counselors only - she recommends Safe Passage to Healing for survivors.
You will get little out of this unless you already know DID well. If you don't know anything about programming or mind control this may not be the place to start either. She breaks down complex and involved things into simple terms, and includes sections written by survivors and uses their words to analyze and summarize the types of actions committed by perpetrators (abusive groups/cults) and how they work in terms of structure.
Her explanation of the "traps" survivors are caught in was great, as was the section on Lies, Tricks and Indoctrination. She mentions the tricks played on young children in terms of costumes and stage magic, as well as the use of props such as the "alien spacecraft".
One real strength is the way she insists that survivors of such abuse should work out things themselves - by asking different parts (alters) each for their own recollection and perspective on the past. Since a single memory is split between several the one remembering the "alien spaceship" may be different to the one remembering the environment around it (in the case she quotes, it's parked in the car park of the building the cult uses).
She explains and gives a clear sequence for traumatic memory processing, and insists on stability beforehand, giving techniques to "put the memory aside" until later. She also explains how programming can be dealt with effectively and comments on the claims of specialist "deprogammers" (as you would expect - its not a long term solution).
She also asks for feedback on the book and any corrections too, so I expect she'll update it after a while.
This really is the kind of book that needs a hardback cover - its the sort of thing you constantly want to refer back to. And you will struggle to borrow a copy, or to get yours back if you lend it.
A quick note - secondary traumatization is pretty likely unless you skip a few parts, like that by Stella Katz. This is explained in the book. A refund is offered by Karnac books if you feel it inappropriate for your needs. And that are no gory, blood thirsty descriptions. Just true reality and horror without the drama and suspense that makes the horror genre sell. Will be boring for horror fans and probably very upsetting.
You will get little out of this unless you already know DID well. If you don't know anything about programming or mind control this may not be the place to start either. She breaks down complex and involved things into simple terms, and includes sections written by survivors and uses their words to analyze and summarize the types of actions committed by perpetrators (abusive groups/cults) and how they work in terms of structure.
Her explanation of the "traps" survivors are caught in was great, as was the section on Lies, Tricks and Indoctrination. She mentions the tricks played on young children in terms of costumes and stage magic, as well as the use of props such as the "alien spacecraft".
One real strength is the way she insists that survivors of such abuse should work out things themselves - by asking different parts (alters) each for their own recollection and perspective on the past. Since a single memory is split between several the one remembering the "alien spaceship" may be different to the one remembering the environment around it (in the case she quotes, it's parked in the car park of the building the cult uses).
She explains and gives a clear sequence for traumatic memory processing, and insists on stability beforehand, giving techniques to "put the memory aside" until later. She also explains how programming can be dealt with effectively and comments on the claims of specialist "deprogammers" (as you would expect - its not a long term solution).
She also asks for feedback on the book and any corrections too, so I expect she'll update it after a while.
This really is the kind of book that needs a hardback cover - its the sort of thing you constantly want to refer back to. And you will struggle to borrow a copy, or to get yours back if you lend it.
A quick note - secondary traumatization is pretty likely unless you skip a few parts, like that by Stella Katz. This is explained in the book. A refund is offered by Karnac books if you feel it inappropriate for your needs. And that are no gory, blood thirsty descriptions. Just true reality and horror without the drama and suspense that makes the horror genre sell. Will be boring for horror fans and probably very upsetting.
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Quotes Bookish Liked
“Those of us who work in the field of trauma and abuse, whether psychologists, psychoanalysts, social workers, doctors, counselors, or psychotherapists, have been provided with beautiful tools for understanding the impact of trauma. We become adept at understanding the dynamic of why the messenger is always shot and broadcast the Bionic insight of why the visionary is not bearable to the group.
However, when it comes to military mind control, abuse within religious belief groups or cults, and deliberately created dissociative identity disorder, we enter the least resourced field of all.”
― Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
However, when it comes to military mind control, abuse within religious belief groups or cults, and deliberately created dissociative identity disorder, we enter the least resourced field of all.”
― Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
“Mind control is built on lies and manipulation of attachment needs.
Valerie Sinason, (Forward)”
― Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
Valerie Sinason, (Forward)”
― Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
“Since the 1980s, therapists have reported encountering clients or patients who had experienced extreme abuses featuring physical, sexual, emotional, spiritual, and cognitive aspects, along with a premeditated structure of torture-enforced lessons. The phenomena was first labeled "ritual abuse," and, later, as our understanding developed, "mind control.”
― Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
― Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
“Denial is commonly found among persons with dissociative disorders. My favorite quotation from such a client is, "We are not multiple, we made it all up." I have heard this from several different clients. When I hear it, I politely inquire, "And who is we?”
― Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
― Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
“I recently consulted to a therapist who felt he had accomplished something by getting his dissociative client to remain in her ANP throughout her sessions with him.
His view reflects the fundamental mistake that untrained therapists tend to make with DID and DDNOS. Although his client was properly diagnosed, he assumed that the ANP should be encouraged to take charge of the other parts at all times.
He also expected her to speak for them—in other words, to do their therapy. This denied the other parts the opportunity to reveal their secrets, heal their pain, or correct their childhood-based beliefs about the world.
If you were doing family therapy, would it be a good idea to only meet with the father, especially if he had not talked with his children or his spouse in years? Would the other family members feel as if their experiences and feelings mattered?
Would they be able to improve their relationships? You must work with the parts who are inside of the system. Directly.”
― Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
His view reflects the fundamental mistake that untrained therapists tend to make with DID and DDNOS. Although his client was properly diagnosed, he assumed that the ANP should be encouraged to take charge of the other parts at all times.
He also expected her to speak for them—in other words, to do their therapy. This denied the other parts the opportunity to reveal their secrets, heal their pain, or correct their childhood-based beliefs about the world.
If you were doing family therapy, would it be a good idea to only meet with the father, especially if he had not talked with his children or his spouse in years? Would the other family members feel as if their experiences and feelings mattered?
Would they be able to improve their relationships? You must work with the parts who are inside of the system. Directly.”
― Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
“What daily life is like for “a multiple”
Imagine that you have periods of “lost time.” You may find writings or drawings which you must have done, but do not remember producing. Perhaps you find child-sized clothing or toys in your home but have no children. You might also hear voices or babies crying in your head.
Imagine that you can never predict when you will be able to have certain knowledge or social skills, and your emotions and your energy level seem to change at the drop of a hat, and for no apparent reason.
You cannot understand why you feel what you feel, and, if you are in therapy, you cannot explore those feelings when asked. Your life feels disjointed and often confusing. It is a frightening experience. It feels out of control, and you probably think you are going crazy. That is what it is like to be multiple, and all of it is experienced by the ANPs.
A multiple may also experience very concrete problems, even life-threatening ones.”
― Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
Imagine that you have periods of “lost time.” You may find writings or drawings which you must have done, but do not remember producing. Perhaps you find child-sized clothing or toys in your home but have no children. You might also hear voices or babies crying in your head.
Imagine that you can never predict when you will be able to have certain knowledge or social skills, and your emotions and your energy level seem to change at the drop of a hat, and for no apparent reason.
You cannot understand why you feel what you feel, and, if you are in therapy, you cannot explore those feelings when asked. Your life feels disjointed and often confusing. It is a frightening experience. It feels out of control, and you probably think you are going crazy. That is what it is like to be multiple, and all of it is experienced by the ANPs.
A multiple may also experience very concrete problems, even life-threatening ones.”
― Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
“It is important to learn about being multiple, and what works for their healing, from your client. To work with the alters, rather than trying to get the ANP to control the rest of the personality system.”
― Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
― Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
“It appears that DDNOS is the intentional goal of these abusers, but DID sometimes results from a failure of programming.
In DDNOS, the ANP is always present, even when another part is in control of the behavior and feelings.”
― Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
In DDNOS, the ANP is always present, even when another part is in control of the behavior and feelings.”
― Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
“Punishments include such things as flashbacks, flooding of unbearable emotions, painful body memories, flooding of memories in which the survivor perpetrated against others, self-harm, and suicide attempts.”
― Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
― Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
“Programming is the act of installing internal, pre-established reactions to external stimuli so that a person will automatically react in a predetermined manner to things like an auditory, visual or tactile signal or perform a specific set of actions according to a date and/or time.”
― Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
― Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
“Also, look for “floating alters.” These are not deliberately created parts of the system, but alters that were accidentally split off at the same time as others.”
― Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
― Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
“The "apparently normal personality" - the alter you view as "the client"
You should not assume that the adult who function in the world, or who presents to you, week after week, is the "real" person, and the other personalities are less real. The client who comes to therapy is not "the" person; there are other personalities to meet and work with.
When DID was still officially called MPD, the "person" who lived life on the outside was known as the "host" personality, and the other parts were known as alters. These terms, unfortunately, implied that all the parts other than the host were guests, and therefore of less importance than the host. They were somehow secondary. The currently favored theory of structural dissociation (Nijenhuis & Den Boer, 2009; van der Hart, Nijenhuis, & Steele, 2006), which more accurately describes the way personality systems operate, instead distinguishes between two kinds of states: the apparently normal personality, or ANP, and the emotional personality, or EP, both of which could include a number of parts. p21”
― Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
You should not assume that the adult who function in the world, or who presents to you, week after week, is the "real" person, and the other personalities are less real. The client who comes to therapy is not "the" person; there are other personalities to meet and work with.
When DID was still officially called MPD, the "person" who lived life on the outside was known as the "host" personality, and the other parts were known as alters. These terms, unfortunately, implied that all the parts other than the host were guests, and therefore of less importance than the host. They were somehow secondary. The currently favored theory of structural dissociation (Nijenhuis & Den Boer, 2009; van der Hart, Nijenhuis, & Steele, 2006), which more accurately describes the way personality systems operate, instead distinguishes between two kinds of states: the apparently normal personality, or ANP, and the emotional personality, or EP, both of which could include a number of parts. p21”
― Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
“Those who are aware of their condition and experience themselves as "multiple" might refer to themselves as "we" rather than "I." I shall use the term "multiple" at times, in respect for their internal experience. It is important to point out, however, that I recognize that someone who is multiple is actually a single fragmented person rather than many people. On the outside, a multiple is probably not visibly different from anyone else. But that image is only an imitation: people who are multiple cannot think like the rest of us, and we cannot think like them. (In fact, since it is difficult for the multiple to understand how singletons think, some of them might think that is is you who are strange).
Just as a singleton cannot become a multiple at will, a multiple cannot become a singleton until and unless the barriers between the parts of the self are removed. Those barriers were put up to enable the child to tolerate, and so survive, unavoidable abuse. p20
[Multiple: a person with dissociative identity disorder (DID) or DDNOS.
Singleton: a person without DID or DDNOS, i.e with a single, unified personality]”
― Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
Just as a singleton cannot become a multiple at will, a multiple cannot become a singleton until and unless the barriers between the parts of the self are removed. Those barriers were put up to enable the child to tolerate, and so survive, unavoidable abuse. p20
[Multiple: a person with dissociative identity disorder (DID) or DDNOS.
Singleton: a person without DID or DDNOS, i.e with a single, unified personality]”
― Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
“Because the problem of ritual abuse and mind control has not gone away - the survivors are still there - many more therapists have learnt about it. Survivors have spoken out and written their stories, and therapists have learnt a great deal from those brave survivors who have discovered what was done to them. There is a large special interest group on Ritual Abuse and Mind Control within the International Society for the Study of Dissociation. Those therapists who have learnt in isolation or in small private online forums are once again sharing their knowledge widely, and books such as this one are beginning to be published again. The work is still very difficult and challenging, but we now know so much more than we did. We know that there is not one massive Satanic cult, but many different interrelated groups, including religious, military/political, and organized crime, using mind control on children and adult survivors. We know that there are effective treatments. We know that many of the paralyzing beliefs our clients lived by are the results of lies and tricks perpetrated by their abusers. And we know that, as therapists, we can combat this evil with wise and compassionate therapy.”
― Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
― Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
“The first generation of therapists doing this work were told by their clients that the one massive cult was everywhere, knew everything, had access to state-of-the-art technology, and was willing to kill both clients and therapists to stop the information from getting out." []
"The reality is that even before stories of ritual abuse and mind control began coming out to therapists, the groups had agreed on what kind of disinformation to spread, so that clients would be afraid to tell their therapists what had happened to them, and therapists would be afraid to work with these clients." [ ]
"We know that there is not one massive Satanic cult, but many different interrelated groups, including religious, military/political, and organized crime, using mind control on children and adult survivors. We know that there are effective treatments. We know that many of the paralyzing beliefs our clients lived by are the results of lies and tricks perpetrated by their abusers.”
― Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
"The reality is that even before stories of ritual abuse and mind control began coming out to therapists, the groups had agreed on what kind of disinformation to spread, so that clients would be afraid to tell their therapists what had happened to them, and therapists would be afraid to work with these clients." [ ]
"We know that there is not one massive Satanic cult, but many different interrelated groups, including religious, military/political, and organized crime, using mind control on children and adult survivors. We know that there are effective treatments. We know that many of the paralyzing beliefs our clients lived by are the results of lies and tricks perpetrated by their abusers.”
― Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
“In fact, rather than being "more" than the others, the ANP is generally one that is very limited, with little power in the system, little memory of what happened, and limited energy or emotions.”
― Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
― Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
“It is unlikely that one ANP will serve as a constant throughout the person's life. Your client is, therefore, likely to have others besides the ones you know, or several who you might think of as "the host". Adults with dissociative disorders often have several ANPs from earlier stages of life inside. They usually have the same name but are of different ages. Sometimes, there are several current ANPs, each of whom assumes she or he is the "real" person and is amnesiac for the existence of the others. Their current knowledge and experience may overlap, while their other characteristics differ somewhat. This makes them glide easily from one to the other, and the therapist can easily miss the switch. p22”
― Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
― Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
“A child who is being abused on an ongoing basis needs to be able to function despite the trauma that dominates his or her daily life. That becomes the job of at least one ANP [apparently normal part of the personality], whom the child creates to be unaware of the abuse and also of the multiplicity, and to “pass as normal” in the real world. The ANP is just an alter specialized for handling the adult world—in other words, the “front person” for the system.”
― Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
― Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
“Besides stage magic props and settings, ritually abusing groups use technology, such as that described by Katz and Fotheringham. Military/political groups have the most sophisticated technologies, and much training or programming is now done with virtual reality equipment. Movies and holograms are used to deceive a child into believing in things that are unreal.
When a client says to you “I don't know if it's real; how can it be real?” remember that there are several options, not just two: (1) It happened just as s/he remembers; (2) it did not happen at all; (3) something happened, but due to technology and/or trickery it was not what s/he thinks it was; (4) the thought that the memory must be unreal is itself a program, as described in Chapter Twelve, “Maybe I made it up."
p55”
― Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
When a client says to you “I don't know if it's real; how can it be real?” remember that there are several options, not just two: (1) It happened just as s/he remembers; (2) it did not happen at all; (3) something happened, but due to technology and/or trickery it was not what s/he thinks it was; (4) the thought that the memory must be unreal is itself a program, as described in Chapter Twelve, “Maybe I made it up."
p55”
― Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
“In my client who had confessed her “alien abduction” experience, an alter had been instructed that if she began to remember the ritual abuse she was to remember the alien abduction, so that nobody would believe her account of the ritual abuse. This program did not work with us, but you can imagine the larger consequences of such a ruse.
p55”
― Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
p55”
― Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
“With programmes such as flooding of emotions, the parts involved might not feel safe in turning the programme off. But you might be able to negotiate that they turn it down so it is barely noticeable. Or you could ask the spinner parts to spin in the opposite direction, so that they spin the effects back into the part who originally held those feelings rather than out to the rest of the system. Or you could insert a hidden drain and start draining out some of the feelings. Or you could find a way for the parts doing their jobs to implement the programme without doing harm. p126-127”
― Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
― Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
“Uneducated therapists often have an inability to cope with the behaviors of persecutory alters. They commonly focus on helping one side of the personality system and battling with the other side. When “Satan” or some similar part talks in a deep scary voice to you or to the client, it is easy to think this is a nasty perpetrator or a supernatural being, and to and to oppose it or fight with it or try to banish it. However, if you do this, you will engender the hostility of this part, who has probably been very badly hurt and told a lot of lies. You will foster internal splitting in this way, and get nowhere fast.
Once you recognize that these alters have a protective intent, you can see that working with them involves enlisting them in the service of healing, just as they were originally enlisted in the cause of safety. You will see examples of these kinds of errors, which often result in clients leaving their therapists, in survivor LisaBri's story: When therapists make mistakes.”
― Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
Once you recognize that these alters have a protective intent, you can see that working with them involves enlisting them in the service of healing, just as they were originally enlisted in the cause of safety. You will see examples of these kinds of errors, which often result in clients leaving their therapists, in survivor LisaBri's story: When therapists make mistakes.”
― Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
“We therapists often make inaccurate assumptions about people living with DID and DDNOS. They often appear to be “just like us,” so we often assume their experience of life reflects our own. But this is profoundly untrue. It results in a communication gap, and, as a consequence, treatment errors. Because the dominant culture is one of persons with a single sense of self, most with multiple “selves” have learned to hide their multiplicity and imitate those who are singletons (that is, have a single, non-fragmented personality). Therapists who do not understand this sometimes describe their clients' alters without acknowledging their dissociation, saying only that they have different “moods.” In overlooking dissociation, this description fails to recognize the essential truth of such disorders, and of the alters. It was difficult for me to comprehend what life was like for my first few dissociative clients.”
― Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
― Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
“One of the most frightening aspects of this alleged technology is the possibility of mind control by “remote control,” that is, through such technology as microwaves and radio waves. There are many stories about this, coming primarily from survivors, although we do know from a variety of reliable websites and mainstream news that such technology is being developed, or at least the technological groundwork laid. Once again, however, we do not know whether this was in place when today's survivors were programmed. It is difficult at this point to determine how much of this is genuine, and how much comes from false beliefs deliberately induced to make survivors feel powerless, much like the “one huge and invincible cult” of whose existence survivors convinced therapists twenty years ago. I know that one of my mind control survivor clients was convinced of technological monitoring during a psychotic period several years ago, but as he healed he discarded such beliefs, along with many other bizarre ones in favor of recognizing that he had been abused by real human beings whose identity he knew.
If some of this remote control it is genuine, we may need to develop technological means to combat it.
However, we should not be intimidated. Even if “voices” are induced in the head by remote control rather than through alters doing jobs, survivors can learn to disobey such voices just as they do those of alters. Competent and compassionate therapy for the dissociation can help survivors to heal. Meanwhile, there are numerous survivors whose mind control is of the kind that can be treated through psychotherapy.
p205-206”
― Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
If some of this remote control it is genuine, we may need to develop technological means to combat it.
However, we should not be intimidated. Even if “voices” are induced in the head by remote control rather than through alters doing jobs, survivors can learn to disobey such voices just as they do those of alters. Competent and compassionate therapy for the dissociation can help survivors to heal. Meanwhile, there are numerous survivors whose mind control is of the kind that can be treated through psychotherapy.
p205-206”
― Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
Reading Progress
Finished Reading
May 21, 2013
– Shelved as:
to-read
May 21, 2013
– Shelved
May 21, 2013
– Shelved as:
mental-health
May 21, 2013
– Shelved as:
ritual-abuse
May 21, 2013
– Shelved as:
non-fiction
May 21, 2013
– Shelved as:
will-read-again
May 21, 2013
– Shelved as:
dissociative-identity-disorder
August 12, 2014
– Shelved as:
psychology
May 1, 2015
– Shelved as:
living-with-trauma-professionals
May 2, 2015
– Shelved as:
cults
