Deception by Organized Abuser Groups: Helping Your Front People and Your Insiders Recognize the Lies and Tricks Which Keep You Enslaved by Alison Miller
Deception by Organized Abuser Groups: Helping Your Front People and Your Insiders Recognize the Lies and Tricks Which Keep You Enslaved by Alison Miller
Please note: None of the material on these pages or at the conference is meant as therapy, or to take the place of therapy. This presentation may remind survivors of their programming, so please use caution while reading.
If you are a survivor of abuse by a mind-controlling abuser group, you have parts who have been trained to obey abusers because they believe lies your abusers told you. The abusers deceived you in childhood, using drugs, acted-out scenarios, stage magic, stories and films to control your child parts and prevent you from speaking out about the abuse. Their power over you depends on your young parts believing the abusers’ lies. If you learn to recognize when your emotions and behavior are influenced by these deceptions, and to discover the ways in which you were deceived, you can increase your freedom from the abuser group. (Skype presention)
Alison Miller, Ph.D. is a retired clinical psychologist who practised in Victoria, B.C., Canada and worked with survivors of organized abuse, including ritual abuse and mind control from 1990 to 2017. She has twice chaired the RAMCOA (ritual abuse/mind control/organized abuse) special interest group of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation. She is the author of Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control (for therapists), Becoming Yourself: Overcoming Mind Control and Ritual Abuse (for survivors), and co-author with survivor Wendy Hoffman of From the Trenches: A Victim and Therapist Talk about Mind Control and Ritual Abuse. She has published several other book chapters and articles, as well as being the originator of the LIFE Seminars parent education programs.
Deception by Organized Abuser Groups
Helping Your Front People and Your Insiders Recognize the Lies and Tricks
Which Keep You Enslaved
Alison Miller, Ph.D.
SMART Conference 2019
Note: By “front people” I mean the parts/personalities who live the person’s regular life in the present world. By “insiders” I mean all the other parts/personalities. Sometimes I use the term “parts,” indicating that everyone lives in the same brain.
Simple Mind Control
… relies on knowledge of child and teenage development
Groups like ISIS who recruit teenagers rely on teenagers’ developmental need for purpose and doing something worthwhile which will improve the world. This is not really any different from Christian groups who evangelize teens. But more exciting and dramatic. So their message to the young persons is about the group’s power and their rightness. They teach the teens to suppress emotions and empathy and focus on the importance of what they are doing and the supposed good outcome.
People who enslave children for sexual purposes rely on the children’s fear and their inability to escape. They also rely on the knowledge that these children will dissociate the memories when they grow older. So their message is about the group’s power and ability to punish. In most cases, parents or other caregivers are involved, and children dissociate so parts of them can still love and trust those parents or caregivers without being aware of the abuse.
Complex Mind Control
Sophisticated abuser groups (including Satanic and other ritualistic ones) begin with infants, use torture to split the mind, and tell different lies to different insiders (inside parts of the person) to ensure their obedience.
These perpetrators are aware of dissociation, and deliberately structure their victims’ personality systems.
They are aware of developmental stages, and which deceptions work best at each stage. They rely on inner child insiders to control older insiders through their belief in the deceptions and subsequent terror.
Older insiders are put in charge of the younger ones. Older ones fear the perpetrators themselves. Younger ones fear the older ones.
The Purpose of Deceptions
The general purpose is to control the children and prevent them from speaking out about their abuse, even after they grow up, so that the abusers can continue perpetrating this abuse without being caught.
In addition, each specific lie has a specific purpose, which benefits the abusers but not the victim.
Every lie has one or more deceptions to prove its “truth.”
Methods of Deception
Drugs to distort the victim’s perception
Costumes
Staged scenarios which the victim thinks are real
Story books, nursery rhymes
Movies, video games, virtual reality
Telling a tortured and drugged child the lies he or she has to believe
Repeating at home the lies told during the training
The little kid parts of you believe the deceptions to be real, and the lies to be the truth. So your older parts need to see through the deceptions and lies and help the little kids in you not act on their training and false beliefs. The little kids are too young and too terrorized to understand that grownups lie and deceive.
Drugs to Aid Deception
Some drugs (tranquilizers) increase suggestibility and passivity. They are used to help kids believe lies and keep still when being abused
Some (amphetamines) induce arousal and apparent anger or rage. They are used to help kids perpetrate and believe they want to perpetrate
Some (hallucinogens) distort perception and create hallucinations. They are used with suggestion to implant bizarre lies, like “you are an alien.”
Some (MDMA, ecstasy) enhance pleasure. They are used during sexual events or orgies, including when a child has to sexually abuse others.
Some (antipsychotics) block awareness of other inside people. They are used to convince “front people” that they are not multiple.
Different inside people are in different drugged states, and you may feel these states when you come near them and their beliefs and behaviors.
Mind Control Always Involves Deception, especially the BIG LIE
All abusers know they don’t have absolute power over their victims, and the victims won’t always be with them. But they don’t want the victims to know that, so …
A perpetrator who wants to control someone when they aren’t in his (or her) presence must make them believe the BIG LIE, which is:
He always knows where you are.
He knows what you are doing and thinking.
He has the power to kill you or your loved ones at any time without getting caught.
He and his group are the only ones who can keep you safe.
Do you remember anyone saying any of these things to you? Do different internal parts of you remember different things being said to them?
Some Common Mind-Control Related Beliefs
As I say each of these, check inside whether anyone inside you believes it:
Belief that your memories are not valid.
Belief that the perpetrator group or cult can find you anywhere.
Belief that the group members know what you are thinking at all times.
Belief that your therapist or friend will be killed if you discloses anything to him or her.
Belief that a bomb in your abdomen will explode if you talk about the abuse.
Belief that you are a murderer.
Belief that you have the ability to kill with your mind.
Beliefs that some insiders do not belong to your body.
Belief that your insiders are all separate people with separate bodies.
Belief that you are someone else’s property.
Who inside you believes each of these things? How old are they?
When You Are Affected by Deceptions …
How do you recognize when something you believe is based on a deception?
The belief may be bizarre or something that appears rational. For example, “fake news” is used to convince people of false “facts.”
You may not know exactly why you believe it.
It is accompanied by a lot of fear, and questioning the belief brings on more fear.
There is internal punishment for questioning it. You may feel dizzy, or sick, or have an apparent seizure, or hear a scary voice.
There may be an overwhelming impulse to do some particular thing.
If you start to investigate internally, you may find child insiders with strong emotions.
Challenging the Deceptions
Your front people and internal leaders need to learn to use critical thinking to detect deceptions.
Those in charge of your system need to order that programs be at least temporarily turned off while you investigate. They should keep the highly emotional child insiders out of the way while you try to think rationally about the beliefs.
It may help to know the content of the most common deceptions used by organized perpetrator groups. (I’ll cover these later, even though they may be triggering.)
Critical Thinking
An ordinary life example: I saw a Canadian TV ad praising a proposed pipeline, saying “This pipeline is good for Canada and for the environment.”
Evaluate the context of what is being said. (Canada has been involved in a huge disagreement between the province of Alberta, which wants more oil money, and British Columbia, which wants to preserve ocean life, which means reducing oil tanker traffic. This pipeline would lead to a vast increase in tanker traffic.)
Evaluate the evidence. (In the past, the more oil has been sold, the more oil has been produced, and since oil-based jobs have been available, no alternative energy has been produced. So the evidence disproves the statement.)
Evaluate the logic of the argument. (The ad argues that more oil pipelines will enable Canada to develop more alternative energy sources. That is completely illogical.)
Evaluate the credentials and the honesty (or bias) of the person who makes the statement. (That ad is paid for by the government of Alberta, which used to make massive money from oil and is now losing money.)
Critical Thinking Applied to Mind-Control Related Beliefs:
Context (How was the belief acquired?) is very important.
Evidence (and assumptions behind assuming this is valid evidence)
Logic of the reasoning behind the belief
Trustworthiness of the source of the belief
It is important to distinguish between the actual abuses and the deceptions attached to those abuses, deceptions which are often the purpose of those abuses: to produce certain beliefs and behaviors in the victim. The existence of deceptions does not mean the abuses didn’t happen.
Critical Thinking Applied to a Cult-Related Belief
Belief: The crows report your location and activities to cult members.
Context (How you got this belief): You may have seen a crow come to a cult person who would talk to it and the crow would caw. Then the cult person told you this is how he knew where you were and what you did.
Logic: It seemed to a little child as though the cult person and the crow were actually conversing.
Facts: Crows come to people who feed them and can be trained to caw to get food. Crows can’t fly more than 15 miles from home. They don’t live very long.
Trustworthiness of the source: Zero. Cult people lie.
Other explanations: Inside reporter parts tell cult people about you. Siblings and relatives and “friends” may report on you. You can be tracked by your cellphone.
Critical Thinking Applied to Another Cult-Related Belief
Belief: the cult actually inserted demons into you in your childhood.
Evidence: You hear demonic voices making threats, or you have insiders who speak in demonic voices and make threats.
By what criteria do you judge whether this belief is true?
Some Christian groups have criteria for telling the difference between an alter personality
pretending to be a demon and a real demon: the “real demons” sound meaner and act scared at the mention of Jesus. Are these valid criteria? (Some cult victims are encouraged by family or cult members to join evangelical churches because these churches will reinforce the beliefs the cult taught them as children.)
Their assumptions: There are real demons which can inhabit a person, and demons can actually be put into a child when s/he is tortured into inviting them in during a ceremony. If you accept these assumptions, the belief is logical. But are these fair assumptions?
The Bible actually says nothing about demons being put into children, even though people in biblical times did believe someone could be possessed. “Legion” was a man Jesus healed, said that was his name because “we are many” (which sounds like DID to me). People assumed his problem was demons, just as some people do today.
Who Taught You About This? And Why? (context)
You need to look at the credentials and honesty and the bias of people who taught you that you were infested with demons.
The job of “demons” in survivors the survivors I have treated was to frighten the other insiders into obedience to the abuser group.
To really understand whether this belief is valid, you should look at all your memories regarding demons. What ritual abuse survivors have told me they experienced is:
(1) A ritual in which torture by persons in costumes of demons and/or Satan produced a new insider who was said to be a demon;
(2) “Big demons” (in adult-sized bodies) training “little demons” (in child-sized bodies) in how to behave and sound like demons. Their demon parts were trained in how to behave like demons.
Why should demons need to be trained here on earth by bigger demons? Such a memory should make you suspicious. And why are they human-sized? And why is the Satan survivors have seen the size and shape of a man?
Some More Specific Deceptions
(trigger warning)
As I discuss each of the following deceptions, I will tell you how some survivors I know were deceived. This does not mean the same thing happened to you. Just because I talk about it does not mean it is your experience. Organized perpetrator groups use many different techniques and deceptions.
Some of the deceptions I shall describe involve torture and pain and even forced perpetration. Keep insiders who may be traumatized down deep inside.
As I mention a specific deception, be aware that you are not telling me about this event. I am telling you because other people have been through it. So you do not need to turn on any programs which may be triggered by your telling or remembering that deception. If they get turned on, turn them off right away.
When listening or reading this, you may keep around parts who know whether or not you have had that experience, but not the ones who have the emotions and programs arising from it. You don’t have to tell anyone outside yourself anything, only have your internal leaders become aware of what you discover.
Make sure the insiders who listen or read are the ones who can engage in critical thinking. They should be at least eleven years old and not gullible, but capable of beginning to think for themselves, even if they don’t admit it out loud to their controllers.
Deception: “Your memories aren’t real.”
People tell you:
You got the idea from TV, or from movies
Or from online discussions and reading other people’s experiences
Or from your therapist
Or it was a dream.
If you say such things, you are crazy and will be locked up and drugged.
Facts about this deception:
These things are usually said by parents, when a child starts to remember. Of course, parents are usually (but not always) involved in the abuses.
When an adult survivor starts to remember, he or she will hear the parent’s voice saying these things.
Some victims are actually locked up and drugged (and abused in the “hospital”) as kids when they begin to remember or disclose.
Think: Who said this? Can their words be trusted? Can you remember who first told you this?
Again, if I mention a specific abuse or deception it doesn’t mean you experienced it, or you didn’t.
Deceptions to prove memories aren’t real
The fake murder: This is a memory which is designed to come up if the grown child begins to remember important things. She remembers a child she knew being murdered, e.g. at a ritual. She reports it to police. They investigate and find the person alive. This discredits any other allegations she might make. (Ask your insiders whether any of them remember the person alive at a later time.)
The bizarre scenario, e.g. alien abduction. This is also designed to come up if you remember real things. A staged event or movie. (Gather the insiders involved in this memory from start to finish; find what happened just before and after the event.)
Something which appears to be like a movie: It may have been a movie you were made to watch, and which you were told was about you. (Ask inside about the sound track, the presence of other people, where the body was at the time. Abuser groups use commercial movies and private ones, e.g. black and white ones of Hitler’s soldiers marching, or pornographic scenarios. And they make movies, e.g. of a sacrifice performed by a child.)
Drugged sleep interrupted by abuses, then mother coming in and reassuring you it was just a dream. (Get the story of the whole night by asking all insiders who were conscious some of the time to be present.)
Deception: “We (Abusers) Know Everything About You.” (the BIG LIE)
“We know where you go and what you do and what you say and even what you think. We can always find you.”
“Satan’s eyes see everything; Satan’s ears hear everything.”
“We know things by magic.”
“The crows (spiders, squirrels, ants) tell us.”
“We put a device in your body which tells us what you do and say and think.” (False, except for cellphones: they can now report location or conversations.)
“We can kill you or take you away for ever if you talk.”
“Everyone you know is one of us and will tell on you.” (Somewhat true: Often a survivor’s friends are other survivors forced to report on friends.)
Deceptions to Prove Abusers’ Knowledge
Child is told to hide; abusers find and abuse her.
Hidden cameras, hidden microphone; abusers tell the child what she did or said when they were not present.
Child is put In a room with plastic “ears” stuck on the wall (“the walls have ears”)
“Satan’s eyes” are pictures pasted on the wall or on the child’s crib, and some insiders are instructed to show these if you misbehave.
Simulated surgeries to insert a device or a bomb (Child is anesthetized in a “hospital,” then awakened and shown an X-ray of a bomb in someone.)
All crows or ants look alike. (Find the facts about how far crows can fly, etc.)
Every child in some groups is forced to watch a “traitor” be apparently killed, and sometimes has to take part. (The reality is that it would be too risky for perpetrator groups to kill anyone who has a public identity, as there would be an investigation.)
You can ask each child insider how he or she knows the group know about what the child or adult survivor says and does. Get the essence of the memory, then explain how that trick could be done.
Be Aware of Reporter Insiders
Reporter parts (young child insiders) are trained to report to abusers, because they are told that the abusers know everything and if they don’t report, they will be punished.
Your system leaders and front people are not supposed to know about the reporters, who report to the actual abusers and are not under the control of your system leaders.
If you can get the system to find and identify the reporters (and their backups) they can report to your internal leaders or your therapist instead.
Deceptions about Whom to Trust
“You can trust us; we’re your family. You can’t trust anyone else.”
There is a setup where a child has to choose between people in black robes and people in ordinary clothes. The robed people act as if they are nice, and the ordinary-looking people abuse her.
Child is triggered to tell a “counsellor” or “therapist” about an event, then that person abuses her, or puts her in a hospital where she is abused.
Same deception with telling a doctor about injuries.
Same deception with telling a uniformed police person about crimes: the victim who tells is put in “jail” and abused there. (Police uniforms can be bought at thrift stores, but some, not all, actual police may be group members.)
One or more members of the group, usually family members, become confidantes to whom survivors report, and these people don’t abuse the child; they just tell on her. (Share information internally about who this might be. Find the innocent child insiders who talk to these people.)
Deceptions about Good and Evil
What makes a behavior, or a person, good or bad?
Children are taught that obedience is good, and disobedience is bad. And obeying is “being good.” Many ordinary parents who don’t belong to perpetrator groups teach their kids this. Is it true? Did you ever question it?
But what if you are told to obey someone who tells you to do something awful to another person or animal?
The Golden Rule states: treat others the way you want them to treat you. (“Do unto others what you would have them do unto you,” or “Love thy neighbour as thyself.”)
A double bind—a situation where there is no good choice: damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
A child is given a choice about obeying by harming a person or animal.
If the child refuses to do it, the adults tell the child he or she is bad, and punish the child severely, to the point where a new insider is split off by the punishment. The child is given the same choice again, and again, and again.
If the child finally obeys and does it, the adults tell the child he or she is evil and will end up in hell.
This creates “moral injury.” One survivor says “It hurts my me.”
Many survivors have numerous “garbage kids” inside, child insiders who refused to do evil. If the choice is repeated enough times, an insider will come out and do what is required to get it over with.
A Continued Double Bind
A child is told to harm a person or animal, or the abusers will harm someone the child loves.
Or the child is told to harm a person or animal, or the abusers will harm that victim more severely than the child would do.
The child makes the least harmful choice available, but it is still harmful, the lesser of two evils. This creates moral injury to the child.
The insiders who have done this harm are labeled as evil or “dark,” and other insiders are told to avoid them. When other insiders draw close, they feel the sadness and shame of the “dark” ones, and think they are sensing evil.
This still happens to some adult victims, e.g. if they go home to family who belong to an abuser group, they are forced to perpetrate. They are also told if they don’t attend a ritual, someone else will be punished in their stead.
How can you avoid being put in this situation? In general, the abusers will harm someone “because of you” only if they are present to watch. In some cases they might send a video (which can be fake). If they do, can you overcome your training and hand it over to law enforcement?
It is a deception that all law enforcement people belong to the group. Most do not.
Lies About Loyalty
Loyalty is made a big deal in the perpetrator groups. Children are told they must be loyal to their “family.” Or if the have been trained as “soldiers,” they are told they must be loyal by obeying their superiors.
Disloyal children are told they are traitors and deserve severe punishment or death. Most survivors have seen what they believed was a traitor being killed or severely tortured. (It may or may not have been real.)
Children are made to make loyalty vows or blood oaths under duress. (Such vows made by children are not legally valid. Children do not choose the groups or people they are supposed to loyal to, or married to.)
Children are told that if they obey and are loyal they will rise to high office in the group. (All children are told this, and all have princesses etc. in them. But very few actually rise up like this. Much is predetermined. There are fake promotions with cheap rings and other prizes.)
Deceptions about the Inner World and Inner People
Internal leaders are told they must make their underlings obey or the abusers will find those underlings and punish them, or will punish the internal leaders. (Fact: the abusers don’t actually know who is “out” in the body. The controllers or gatekeepers can put out someone tougher.)
“Non-human” insiders are told they can kill the body and will remain alive.
Some insiders are made to believe they can commit suicide without harming other insiders.
Abusers say they can kill disobedient insiders. They reinforce the illusion of separateness.
The reality is that all insiders are in the same body, and if that body dies, all will be dead. Just because a particular insider doesn’t feel pain if it harms the body, doesn’t mean that insider won’t die when the body dies. It will.
Deceptions about Responding to Abusers
“You must always answer the phone/open the door/come when called. If you do, you will be rewarded. You must always open the door if one of us knocks. If you don’t, something very bad will happen.”
There are specific childhood events with the phone, the door, or being called by hand signals, where severe punishment happens if the child doesn’t obey instantly.
(It’s important to help all insiders orient to the present and realize the situation in which they feel stuck is no longer valid. It helps to have them share what happened so you can point out the difference now. Have them look at the size of their hands so they can see they’re in an adult body.
Have a calendar available so they can see the date.)
Deceptions About Who You Are
An insider is said to be actually the abuser inside the person, often created by his “seed.” It usually carries the abuser’s name and knows his/her history.
Insiders are told they were created only to do their jobs and won’t be necessary if they don’t do those jobs. (They were split off from others, not created. If they aren’t used by the abusers, that’s a good thing.)
Some insiders are told they are soldiers who must obey without thinking, and never show weakness or emotion. (They have been dressed in uniforms and trained as if in an army.)
An insider is said to be an alien, a ghost, a dog, a half-animal, a demon, a monster, a chimera, an evil entity, a sex machine, a robot, or a killing machine … (Drugs, costumes, scenarios.)
Some “dark” insiders are told they belong to the devil and are evil. (They feel dark to the others because they have had moral injuries, were forced to harm others, so they feel a lot of shame.)
You are told that if you love anyone or any creature, you will bring destruction upon that person or creature. (A child is given a puppy to love—and then kill. Or a child is paired with a disposable child who is then killed.)
You are told God hates you and rejects you. (Simulated in various ways.)
You are told that you belong in hell and will go there when you die. (Simulated, with fake hell.)
You are told you have the psychic power to kill people. (Simulated.)
You are told you have a dog’s brain, a rat’s brain, Satan’s brain, a black heart. (Fake surgeries.)
Various Ridiculous Deceptions
Persons who won’t forget things properly are made to appear psychotic so they will be medicated into losing contact with their insiders. They have been told such things as:
You are a character in a movie or video game, a rock star, a celebrity …
The voices in your head are your children who are held by the cult in a special underground location.
You were abused by cartoon characters, or famous people who are not actually perpetrators. (Actual identities of perpetrators are disguised while famous names are substituted through masks etc.)
Truth and Falsehood in Perpetrator Families
Survivors, including their child insiders, need to recognize that perpetrator adults tell lies.
I have found it difficult to explain lying to very young children or child insiders. Although children’s normal lying has been studied, there is no research on whether and when children understand that adults are lying. Regular kids often can’t understand adults deceiving or lying until they are old enough to know the difference between truth and lies in what they themselves say.
In perpetrator families, kids are told lies constantly and expected to both believe and repeat those lies. Perpetrators instruct them to “tell the truth”—which means whatever the perpetrators say is the truth.
All children lie (to avoid “trouble” or just using their imagination) unless they are taught that adults know the truth and will punish all lies. So perpetrator parents teach them to lie to others and always tell the truth to them, as they supposedly know everything.
Child Insiders Believe the Deceptions
They believe because they are children and think like children. Their thinking is concrete, not abstract. “My hand held the knife so I am a killer.” (Not true. Your hand had no more free will than the knife if someone else had control of it.)
They believe because they don’t have access to contradictory information. For example, they think they still live with the abusers and don’t know it’s 40 years later and the abusers are dead and they live 2000 miles away. They live in a very limited bubble of past time and space.
They believe because they have been taught that adults know and speak the truth.
They believe because they are driven by terror and shame. They say and do and believe whatever was necessary to avoid extreme punishment.
What have you found when you try to convince your young parts of the truth?
It is very difficult to convince a young child of the logic or illogic of his or her beliefs. Or of the factual vs. non-factual basis. They don’t understand, or they move into terror as they approach the trauma which convinced them of the truth of what they were told during that trauma.
It is very difficult to move child parts out of the little bubble of past trauma in which they live. Only working through the memory which split off such parts will give them access to a larger picture and allow them to mature.
Older insiders who have experience living in the present may be able to share memories of later life with the child parts to help them understand how things have changed.
Do children know when an adult is lying? It may need to be pointed out to them, with concrete examples.
Challenging the Deceptions
Abusers’ power over victims depends on their victims believing their lies, and that power can be diminished when victims see through the lies told to their young child insiders.
It is important to use critical thinking to discern the deceptions, and to help all your insiders do the same.
Child insiders who believe the deceptions are motivated by very strong negative emotions. These emotions leak through to older insiders, leading them to believe things someone of that age would not normally believe.
Think critically about what your child insiders believe, recognizing that perpetrators tell lies to children and adults. Check those statements against reality.
Many of your insiders may first learn just to think for themselves. They may have been deliberately taught not to think. “Don’t think, just act.”
You Can Learn to Recognize Deceptions and Resist Their Messages
All deceptions by abusers have a purpose, one which is not beneficial to you.
No matter what you were told, you don’t have to believe it now.
Don’t let young child parts be in charge because they are more likely to believe deceptions and act on their messages.
You are an intelligent human being, and together with all other insiders, you can defeat the abusers’ purposes and gain freedom and be in charge of your own life.
That’s why my book for survivors is called “Becoming Yourself.”
A Few Words to Therapists
Helping Clients Detect Deceptions and Lies
The therapeutic relationship can be the venue for your client’s first experiments in thinking for him- or herself. Such clients come in expecting us to be their new handler, and to tell them what to think. We must not accept this invitation. We need to encourage them to think for themselves, and to disagree with us, noticing and appreciating that disagreement.
It’s the therapist’s deep connection with the client’s core self, and validation of that core self, that enables the client to think for him- or herself.
The perpetrator groups usually place 12 or 13 year old parts in charge of the system. These internal leaders have the ability to challenge the deceptions and to restrain the young terrified parts and prevent them from doing their assigned jobs.
Why Therapists Must Understand What Perpetrator Groups Do:
From an online post by Harvey Schwartz, the author of The Alchemy of Wolves and Sheep:
“Demystification is essential to our work. If therapists do not know or understand the specific methods, madness and dynamics of organized perpetrator groups including mind control, bizarre but strategic set-ups, lethal twinning, patterns of interlocking lethal double binding and variations on coerced perpetration … our patients will be insidiously abandoned (without professionals treating them even
realizing it) to their own dissociative worlds of internalized domination, annihilating shame, and soul murder. And, their heartbreaking spirit-crushing isolation will be reinforced without anyone ever realizing this. Then, patients’ acting out, retreat, or other mysterious behaviors in therapy might be misrecognized by ill-informed, or limited informed therapists who may end up frustrated and perhaps even acting out their helplessness and frustration on the patient, further reinforcing the pathological belief systems installed by the perpetrators and cultivated in years of living hell.
How It Helps Our Clients If We Know:
(Harvey Schwartz, continued):
“It is so important for our field to educate the larger trauma and mental health field about what survivors have actually lived through, as well as the what and how of the machinations of the perpetrators so therapists’ minds and hearts can stretch to provide the kinds of holding,
witnessing, containment and demystification necessary for healing extremely malevolent trauma. More than anything it is essential to realize that traumatized patients will not reveal to us or themselves, these extremely bizarre and sadistic experiences if they do not sense that we have some ability to “go there.” And, more than that, an ability to willingly and courageously go there with them, but to go there with a combination of compassion, ferocity, and acceptance.
“This latter combination of therapists’ positioning may sound impossible to achieve or synergize, but it is, in my experience, the best set of ingredients for a therapeutic posture that combines exposure of the patterns of subjugation (psychoeducation/witnessing/deconstruction) with contextualization, demystification, humanizing protest responses on behalf of the patient and a reparative (shame and guilt defusing) relationship experience. Also, from a simpler point of view, all of this will lead to a patient feeling that she or he can be fully known, seen, accepted and loved with all of the shadow and light in her or his life history and identity. Maybe that is the most powerful healing element of all we can offer. As we know inclusivity, human tenderness, and mutuality break down compartmentalization, dissociation, and isolation.”
Alison Miller’s Writings on Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
Miller, A. (2014). Becoming Yourself: Overcoming Mind Control and Ritual Abuse. London: Karnac.
Miller, A. (2012). Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control. London: Karnac.
Hoffman, W. & Miller, A. (2018). From the Trenches: A Victim and Therapist Talk about Mind Control and Ritual Abuse. London: Karnac.
Miller, A. (2019). Therapeutic neutrality, ritual abuse and maladaptive daydreaming. Frontiers in the Psychotherapy of Trauma and Dissociation, 1(3).
Miller, A. & Gingrich, H.D. (2018). The treatment of ritual abuse and mind control. In Gingrich, H.D. & Gingrich, F.C. Treating trauma in Christian counselling. Inter-Varsity Press.
Miller, A. (2016). What’s different about ritual abuse and mind control? Chapter 10, pp. 221 -232 in Sinason, V. & Van der Merwe, A. P. Shattered but Unbroken: Voices of Triumph and Testimony. London: Karnac.
Miller, A. (2016).Reflections on having my name used. Pp. 24-29 in Sinason, V. & Van der Merwe, A. P. Shattered but Unbroken: Voices of Triumph and Testimony. London:Karnac
Miller, A. (2015). Foreword to Breitenbach, G. Inside Views from the Dissociated Worlds of Extreme Violence: Human Beings as Merchandise. London: Karnac (translated from German).
Miller, A. (2012). Dialogue with the higher-ups. Pp. 111-132 in Vogt, R. & Vogt, I. (Eds.) Perpetrator Introjects: Psychotherapeutic Diagnostics and Treatment Models. Kroning: Asanger Verlag.
Miller, A. (2008). Recognizing and treating survivors of abuse by organized criminal groups. Chapter 17, pp. 479-490 in Noblitt, R. & Noblitt, P. P. (Eds.) Ritual Abuse in the 21st Century. Bandon, Oregon: Robert D. Reed Publishers.
Miller, A. (1998). Treatment of a Young Female Pedophilic Offender with Dissociative Identity Disorder, Treating Abuse Today, 8(2), 15-23.
Alison Miller’s Other Writings:
Miller, A. (2017). Dissociation in families experiencing intimate partner violence. Journal of Trauma and Dissociation, 18 (3), The Abused and the Abuser: Victim-Perpetrator Dynamics, 427-440. (This has now been published as a book.)
Miller, A. (2006). The Role of Dissociation in Spouse Abuse. In Jackson, N.A. (Ed.) Encyclopedia of Domestic Violence. New York: Routledge.
Miller, A. (1998). The Dissociative Dance of Spouse Abuse, Treating Abuse Today, 8(3), 9-18.
Miller, A. & Rees, A. (2008.) The Parent-Child Connection: A Manual for Effective Family Living. Victoria, B.C.: LIFE Seminars Press.
Miller, A. & Rees, A. (2007.) Sidestepping the Power Struggle: A Manual for Effective Parenting. Victoria, B.C.: LIFE Seminars Press.
