Why Some People Want to Brainwash You

A brainwasher has genuine ill will towards you because they want to make you believe what they believe about who you are, which I learned from If You Had Controlling Parents, How to Make Peace With Your Past And Take Your Place In The World, Dan Neuharth. Many of them mean you serious harm because they want to strip you of what makes you, you. Cults do this for power and control over people who join them. Often, cult victims are lonely people who do not have solid friendships although personally, I’d rather be lonely than in a toxic friendship like I was in three years ago. Control over someone else is a ridiculous motive because no one can have total control over someone else’s mind, body and soul. Although to me, I feel that this occurs in my family, almost as if someone controls someone else’s spirit. Brainwashing happens in cults when control of sleeping habits, and control of access to information can happen. (Neuharth p.100) It is why I didn’t know much about schizophrenia or psychic stuff growing up because my family didn’t provide me with many resources about it.

For one, I didn’t know I was schizophrenic until my 30s anyway. This is because I took one psychology class my sophomore year of high school. I didn’t go to my high school reunion because it was very hot that day in California, and I thought it best not to expose myself to 96 degree heat. I also had thought that for a friend of mine I would have hitched a ride with, it was too hot for her also. My family had the whole school grabbed by the balls, as in telling them that nobody could take me to the hospital if I needed treatment for any reason, or just to plain get a break. I have never set foot inside a mental ward due to parental brainwashing about how I shouldn’t ever seek help. Brainwashing occurs in a family when the access to which people you can talk to is restricted, just like in a cult, (p.101). At least in school, I was able to make supportive friendships while my home life was full of unnecessary conflict. Brainwashing is something that certain types of manipulative personalities are good at doing, in particular narcissistic ones. Sociopaths are very adept at brainwashing. They do it because they want you to believe them, and only them. Brainwashing is insidious the way it creeps into consciousness. A brainwashing victim is someone that sees the world in a positive light, not believing that certain individuals who gaslight them can cause them harm.

Gaslighting involves rewriting the way things actually happened versus the way things didn’t happen. Eventually the victimized person starts believing the abuser, and feels they have to dutifully believe the abuser or else. Controlling people believe that others “will take advantage of them” (p.150). They also believe in their ability to control other people. Controlling people actually enjoy their controlling behavior towards others. Controlling people feel that they are superior to others, and a cult leader will behave like this. I want to become a psychiatrist who treats cult survivors who are trying to make their way in the normal world. Cults do survivors a lot of harm. Controlling people are also very jealous of other people’s “good fortune” (p.151). Neuharth actually mentions that people over control for power, to “1. feed off of the energy of others,” and psychically this is something my family does to me. They just think my energy is food, it’s a snack to them. It keeps their mental illness symptoms stable. I fight this daily and I will keep fighting it until I make significant income.

Works Cited

Neuharth, Ph.D. Dan. If You Had Controlling Parents, How to Make Peace With Your Past, and Take Your Place in the World.