Mind control, like ritual abuse, has both a broad and narrow definition. In a sense, all advertising is an attempt at mind control, an attempt to make people buy certain brands or objects. Propaganda (e.g. my country is right and good and the other country is wrong and bad) is also an example of attempted mind control in the broad sense of the term.
In trauma-based mind control survivors, however, the definition of is much narrower and more sinister. It means that part of a person’s mind has been programmed (that is, trained) to obey another person without question, while other parts of the mind are unaware of this situation.
Programming refers both to the process of training part of the mind unquestioning obedience and to the content of what is taught. Thus you can say that a person has been programmed for suicide under certain conditions, or you can talk about a suicide program that is triggered (activated) by cues – certain words or conditions used within the original programming.
The word programming has a heaviness to it, an aura of machine-like inevitability. It is helpful to remember that programming is something that is done to a human being by another human being, for a specific reason, using certain time-tested techniques, at a certain time and place. If you think of programming as training, some of the heaviness and mystery lifts.
A person who is programmed but unaware of this fact can be made to do many dangerous or illegal things. Such people make perfect spies, for example, because they are unable to reveal their mission if captured. They simply don’t know what they did, or were supposed to do, and cannot give any information. They would also be used as assassins, drug runners, money launderers, sexual slaves for prostitution, pornography, or blackmail, etc. – anything that requires secrecy, or that the person would ordinarily refuse to do.
Many cults that practice ritual abuse use mind control, in that their members are not aware, most of the time, that they are participating in the cult or in abusive acts or ceremonies. Governments also have experimented extensively with mind control, primarily through federally funded intelligence agencies and military research projects.
Government involvement has been documented in Nazi Germany, Canada, United States and a number of other countries. The U.S. CIA mind control project MK-Ultra in particular has freely available documents, all of which have now been declassified. In MK-Ultra, some papers were published in peer-reviewed academic journals describing the mind control experiments, and some private correspondence has become public. And, of course, there is also the testimony of survivors who have become conscious of what was done to them. There are publicly available videos of the MK-Ultra survivor testimonies that were recorded during the U.S. Senate hearings into MK-Ultra in the 1970s, and newspaper archives describing the hearings, especially in the New York Times. Some ritual abuse survivors have had their memoirs published, and some survivors and therapists have published self-help books or manuals describing healing from mind control programming. Due to the absence of access to mainstream publishing companies, self-published books by ritual abuse survivors are a valuable source of information.
There is no parallel documentation for the use of mind control in secretive cults, since cults do not keep records the way governments do. There are peer-reviewed academic papers describing cults and cult activities, and there are cases with clear physical evidence from criminal convictions, and survivor testimonies. But we can surmise from ritual abuse survivors’ accounts and behaviors that mind control is widely used in abusive cults and that the cults and government can network to perfect techniques.
It is impossible to say, because many are totally unaware that they have been programmed and are being used. There is no central registry of survivors who remember and the powers that be seem to have much more interest in hushing up the situation than in doing sound research. The testimony of fifty-two adult survivors of CIA mind control experimentation on children is on record through the Presidential Advisory Committee on Radiation Experiments. One way to get an estimate would be to survey therapists about the perentage of their clients who report childhood sexual abuse and the percentage of those clients who report ritual abuse or mind control.
People who say they are mind-control survivors can be found in every continent. Currently, more people are coming forward as survivors in the United States of America, Canada, certain European countries, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa than elsewhere. It is starting to appear that survivors are clustered more densely in certain parts of a country than others, and some locations appear to be centers for mind control activity (e.g. near military bases and research centers).
Multiplicity (multiple identities within one person), dissociation, and amnesia are key elements of complex mind control. It is easy to imagine that one alter could be programmed to do a certain task and other alters kept unaware of the programming or of the existence of the programmed alter. Different alters can be programmed in different ways, either for different jobs or as back-ups.
Not all people who have been programmed “act like multiples.” Some do not even suspect that have alters. In the absence of an order, cue, or trigger from a superior, they may lead perfectly ordinary lives.
Triggers are situations, actions, or words that bring a memory or feeling to consciousness or that activate a program. They are catalysts, so to speak. Some common devices used to activate programs are telephone calls, emails, internet content including videos, letters or greeting cards, and meaning-laden objects sent as “gifts.”
The word trigger is used in a very broad sense and may mean anything from following a command after seeing a hand signal to having a flashback at the dentist to getting upset when a friend, co-worker, or supervisor is rude or thoughtless. Triggers within mind control may also be called cues. For clarity, it is a good idea to always specific exactly what was triggered (program, action, emotion, memory, etc.)
The word cue is usually used more narrowly and refers specifically to a trigger that activates a mind control program, some people use it in a broader way. Cues within ritual abuse may be from external events but they are often internal or environmental conditions such as life events or ritual dates. For example, every year the days just before May 1st may cue a survivor to return to a specific place where the group always meets for abusive rituals – putting them in danger, or a suicide cue activated when reaching a specific age, or on the death of group’s leader. Both trigger and cue can be either nouns or verbs.
For many years, screen memory meant a sensory memory fragment that carried the emotion of the entire event. Thus a child who was staring down while being scolded might later only remember his or her shoes along with a vivid sense of shame and anger. Or a whiff of cinnamon might evoke all the feelings of watching grandmother cook apple pie.
In mind control terms, a screen memory is a memory that hides, or screens, another memory. The screen memory may be of a real event or may be implanted by the programmer through extreme abuse combined with hypnosis, staged scenes with costumes and props, movies, cartoons, or virtual reality. Some people believe that memories of past lives, satanic ritual abuse, and alien abductions are examples of screen memories. The screen memory is designed to provoke disbelief and serves to protect a programming session or medical or psychological experiment, and to discredit the survivor if they do disclose their abuse to others.
Yes. Alters may be taught to group themselves in different patterns at different times or two or more groups of alters may be used to form different patterns. “Back-up” programs are common and much redundancy is built in. Alters may be programmed to self-replicate or may be created by other alters. Not all alters have names; some are numbered, some exist only as fragments. Traditional methods of working with multiplicity or dissociative identities are not always successful at recognizing the un-named alter systems.
Sometimes many alters are created and arranged in elaborate hierarchical patterns. There are people whose systems resemble a medieval feudal village with nobility, peons, knights, and scribes. Other patterns resemble a corporate structure with a CEO and council of advisors guiding the operation of different departments. Some patterns are more abstract and may resemble an occult or religious symbols, like the pentagram or the Tree of Life, a geometric form, mathematical formula, the double helix of DNA, a computer program, or an elaborate video game.
Any technique that induces a deep trance can be used. In practical terms, this usually means torture, extreme pain, sexual arousal, drugs, and/or electroshock. Deprivation of sleep, food, and water, extremes of temperatures, loud noise, or strobing lights are also trance-inducing. Techniques of interrogation of prisoners of war are used: both torture techniques and psychological ones, including induction of helplessness and hopelessness, trickery and deceit, sudden role reversals (the good cop/bad cop technique). None of the methods are humane.
There is plenty of documentation that government-sponsored research has been done on mechanical methods of mind control. Experiments have been done on control of emotion and behavior by electrodes implanted in the brains of humans as well as animals. Commercially available implantable microchips allow the tracking of pets, and, by extension, people. Experiments consisting of giving unsuspecting people LSD or other psychoactive drugs have been done, and there is literature on using microwaves to eavesdrop or send messages to people from a distance. It is unclear how effective these methods are.
Forcing another belief system on somebody who has been programmed is not really “deprogramming.” It is further programming. Freedom of thought and freedom of choice for the survivor are the opposite of mind control. True “deprogramming” involves consent, respect, patience, creativity, and kindness. Within this framework, there is a reconstructive and a technical approach. These approaches may be blended together judiciously.
A. Reconstructive: Giving alters more knowledge
A humane and effective approach/involves broadening alters’ knowledge of both the past and the outside world. You can “talk through” to hidden alters by saying, “Those listening inside are welcome to repeat this to others who aren’t here right now. No questions are going to be asked, and if someone doesn’t want to listen, they don’t have to,” and then describing the present in simple terms. Describe flashbacks, explain dissociation, describe the kinds of food in the refrigerator, describe day-to-day activities, explain what a choice is, and demonstrate making choices in everyday life.
Basically, you are educating alters about the rules of a world they have never known. Gradually, their interest may be sparked, and they may grow enough to choose, on their own, to act differently. It’s important though, not to get into an argument, but simply to offer more knowledge and options.
Remembering or psychologically reliving the past in more manageable circumstances is also effective. If all alters involved can remember and share among themselves what it was like to be programmed, including the sensations and emotions, lasting change can take place. When they see exactly what was done, by what means, by whom, the compulsion to follow the program will make sense. “Aha! That’s how they did it!” The mystery is gone, and the hold of the program is lessened.
Once a programming session is remembered and worked through, physical symptoms may disappear, emotions are redirected more appropriately, and the person can consciously choose whether or not to follow instructions, rather than having to blindly obey, not knowing why. It is important to remember that this re-learning is a continual process that has to be repeated over and over again as new alter systems gain enough trust to come forward and display or disclose their experiences.
B. Technical: Modifying the programs
Here one leaves the structure alone and assigns the alters a new or modified job. For example, an alter whose job is to answer the phone and get instructions may be re-programmed to answer only after fifty rings. Nothing really changes, but such a temporary measure can be very useful to avoid the program being activated.
If you think in terms of computers, the internal “programmer” alter can be asked to de-activate programs, to de-install them, erase them, or put them in the trash. This can be tricky: some programs are designed to recreate themselves if they are erased, and erasing a program can have unforeseen consequences. You don’t want to erase a suicide program, for example, if erasing the suicide program is the access cue to activate a homicide program! You would need to erase the homicide program before the suicide program.
No. Integration and deprogramming are two separate processes. Integration can mean either the integration of trauma memories that were behind amnesiac walls, or it can mean the two or more alters blending or fusing together. Deprogramming is simply learning more: learning that you were programmed, how you were programmed, that not everybody in the world has been programmed, that you don’t have to act on programming. It’s learning to make choices, learning what freedom is. Of course, somebody may use that freedom to integrate, if they wish, but they may also use it to try different flavor of ice cream for the first time, write a book, do all sorts of things that many people take for granted.
Well, being programmed is not normal. It’s a series of deliberately executed painful experiences involving forms of torture and coercion that were forced upon you without your consent or knowledge. Each human being is unique with different life experiences, and you will define “normal” according to your evolving sense of healing and regained control over your life. It is perfectly possible to live a satisfying, even a happy life, and to be content with quite ordinary circumstances and activities.
You can live without losing time, without being involved in events you want no part of, without being somebody’s puppet. You can choose to be an activist or to raise sheep in some remote place. You can have strong and weak points, satisfactions and disappointments, just like everybody else. But you will always know that your past has included something that, fortunately, does not happen to most people. You will be a survivor, healed and healing, all your life.