Rachel Bernstein LMFT, MSEd discusses what it’s like working with survivors from high-control groups. This episode is for survivors looking for a mental health professional or for mental health professionals looking to work with the demographic of survivors of cults, high-control groups, and spiritual abuse. University of SalfordTranscript (Transcript is unedited for typos and misspellings)Katherine: Hello. How are you doing today?Rachel: I am doing really good. How are you doing today? Katherine: I am good. I am a little tired. I went to a midnight book release. On Monday nights, and I don't ever stay up that late, and I'm still sleeping.That was a new thing for me. I was like, this is what teenagers do. These are not what people who are almost 40 do. But it was fun. It was a fun experience. I'm glad. Very excited to talk to you today. I know you have indoctrination podcast, and you do a lot of different work with a lot of different clients, but the particular demographic that I would [00:01:00] love to talk to you about is the demographic of folks who've And cults or high control experiences.And I would love to hear from you, what prompted you to work with this demographic and what was the story that led you to working with this type Rachel: of client? Nice. Okay. So there's so much to this story. I'll try not to make it overly long, but Okay, great. No, go for it. Tell, tell, tell whatever. It's slightly long, longer than it needs to be, not overly.Right. Huh. Right. So, When I was growing up, my, one of my siblings who was eight years older got. Kind of a new friend through a friend, and they started hanging out a lot. Next thing we know, she's not really spending time at home. She has taken the money out of her [00:02:00] account and it's gone.Which she had really worked hard for. In my family, we were supposed to work from when we were young. If we needed cash for anything, even to go to the movies, well, you need to earn it. You know, it was like that. So it, you know, we didn't take spending lots of money all at once lightly. Cause we know how much we had worked to make it and suddenly liquidated gone.And she was speaking differently. She was acting in a very kind of in your face way. And we're like, what is going on? So then she said that she has this friend of a friend who's introduced her to this place. It's called Scientology. Got it. And and it's a church, but we're a Jewish family, but it's not a church church.That would, that became a line in our family forever. It's not a church church. Like what? I'm sorry. It's not a church church, but it's not. So. Because there really wasn't the idea of a word cult that was known at the time, and this was in the 70s. So there [00:03:00] was no one to call. There were no resources that, you know, the books out there at the time before the interwebs, the, the books were written by cult leaders.Like there were L. Ron Hubbard novels out there about Dianetics and his science fiction books, but nothing about what is Scientology and that it is a cult. And the, the cult books that were out there too, were more about like working with POWs who had been indoctrinated and watching the Manchurian candidate and are like, yeah, fit, but not.So the turning point was. And I learned a lot about this. My, my parents responded different ways to stressful events. My mom was more of a kind of in your face, you have to stop this right now, finger pointing. I mean, that, that does sometimes come in handy, right? And my father instead was the, let me link arms with this person, see what they like about it, see what's interesting to them.But also I want to ask my questions about what I'm concerned about. So, They had tension and [00:04:00] she had tension with my parents and she said this group is going to teach me how to get along better with, with all of you. And And my friend said she's gotten along better with her parents since she's gotten involved.And so my father, in a very nice way, said c