Podcast Player Episode 053

Dr. Robin Stern: Welcome to the Gaslight Effect podcast. I'm Robin Stern, co-founder and associate director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, and author of the bestselling book, The Gaslight Effect. I'm an educator and a psychoanalyst, but first and foremost, I'm a wife, a mother, a sister, aunt, and healer. And just like many of you, I was a victim of gaslighting. Please join me for each episode as I interview fascinating guests and explore the concept of gaslighting. You'll learn what it truly means to be gaslighted, how it feels, how to recognize it, and how to understand it, and ultimately, how to get out of it.

Dr. Robin Stern: Before we begin, I want you to know that talking about gaslighting can bring up challenging and painful emotions. Give yourself permission to feel them. Some of you may wanna go more deeply with your emotions. While some of you may hold them more lightly, no matter what you're feeling, know that your emotions are a guide to your inner life. Your emotions are sacred and uniquely you respect and embrace them for they have information to give you. If you want to listen to other episodes of the Gaslight Effect Podcast, you can find them at robinstern.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for being here with me.

Dr. Robin Stern: Welcome everyone to this episode of the Gaslight Effect podcast. I'm really delighted to have with me today Dr. Steven Hassan, um, who is an leading expert, global expert on deradicalization and helping people heal from and get out of the cult experience. Uh, in addition to which this political season, uh, this election season, Dr. Hassan has written a book that many of you will wanna run to pick up. It's called The Cult of Trump, as well as his other books, combating Cult, mind Control and Freedom of Mind. Steven is a returning guest. So, um, some of you have met him before and heard his story, but for those of you who were not here the first time you and I spoke, please, um, I would love for, for everyone to hear your story, how you got interested in cults, and what cults have to do with politics this year.

Dr. Steven Hassan: Right. So, thanks again for having me on your show, and thanks for joining me on the panel for the International Academy of Law and Mental Health. That was in Barcelona, um, where, uh, psychiatrists, psychologists, attorneys, judges, social activists, all get together to talk about the interface between law and mental health. And as you know, Robin, I was encouraged to do my doctoral dissertation on how to update the law regarding undue influence, because the law is basically a hundred years out of date with understanding what we've learned from neuroscience, from social psychology. And the law says if you're a minor, you can be unduly influenced or mind controlled or radicalized, or if you're an elderly person, especially if you have dementia or, or Alzheimer's, uh, the rest they say is a slippery slope. And especially when it comes to groups, one person's, uh, cult is another person's religion.

Dr. Steven Hassan: So the law says, stay out of that. And I say nonsense. Ethical religions give you informed consent, encourage your conscience, encourage questions, you know, don't use control of behavior, information, thoughts and emotions to keep you dependent and obedient. Install a pseudo identity. So, um, I asked you to join, uh, my panel because the gaslight effect in your expertise is particularly important. And there's such overlap in terms of the influencer and the influence and how the influencer disorganizes the person's sense of self and, and sense of reality in order to take advantage of their, them financially, emotionally, sexually, you know, the whole gamut. And so, yes, I am at cult expert on, on social media, but really I do a lot of one-on-one, abusive, narcissistic, controlling relationships. Most are men controlling women, but I have a few women controlling men where they isolate them from family and friends and literally indoctrinate them into their whole belief system and sense of reality. And I'll just add what I'm seeing more and more is the, uh, unethical use of hypnosis, covert hypnotic methodology. And LP neurolinguistic programming, for example, is rampant on the internet, and people can take workshops and learn how to covertly hypnotize people. And Robin, I've had clients who've been hypnotized to believe they were lovers in the past life, for example, as the prelude for getting them to marry them, buy them a Mercedes, you know, le leave their patients and other things like that. But I didn't answer your question. I know, sorry.

Dr. Robin Stern: But I'm gonna, I'm gonna get you back there. But in the meantime, can you talk about, um, NLP Sure. And how people get trained like without long, um, long schooling in hypnosis. That's really terrifying.

Dr. Steven Hassan: Yeah. So the, the, the, I'll just say briefly that I got interested in the subject in 1976, uh, when I was deprogrammed following a near fatal van crash, um, where I had been separated from the Moonies cult. I had been deceptively recruited at Queens College. So I experienced this.

Dr. Robin Stern: Can can you just ride past that without a little bit more?

Dr. Steven Hassan: No, I, I, I, I wanted to give context 'cause people are, are, are, have noticed their friends and family members becoming strangers with new beliefs, new language systems. And people are like, are you crazy? Like, what happened to you? And they're trying to argue people back to reality or, or, or make fun of them. And it's the opposite of what I teach to help people get out. But the reason I'm setting this up is because it was so essential for me to learn Chinese communist brainwashing methods from Robert j Lifton's book, for example, 1961 book Thought Reform in the Psychology of Totalism. And it set me on a journey. He's a psychiatrist, and I asked to meet with him, and he did the therapeutic reframe of all re therapeutic reframes. I was telling him how the Moonies recruit, the three-day workshop, the seven day workshop.

Dr. Steven Hassan: I was expl. And he said, you know, Steve, I've, I just know this secondhand, but you've lived it. They did it to you and you did it to others. And what you're describing is so much more sophisticated than what the Chinese did. You need to study psychology and explain it to people like me. And I'm sitting on his couch with a cast on my leg from my toes to my groin, ashamed, embarrassed for having fallen for the Moonies. And this Yale, he was then at Yale. Yale psychiatrist is telling me I should explain brainwashing him. And here I am, 48 years later. So with that as the setup, I started reading everything I could find on brainwashing, persuasion, attitude change, group psychology, social psychology. I, I befriended and was mentored by Philip Zimbardo, Robert Cini, uh, uh, Anthony Prat, canis, some really huge names. I'm very blessed to have had amazing teachers, but there was something missing.

Dr. Steven Hassan: And I didn't know what it was until a social worker friend of mine, uh, said, I'm going to a hypnosis workshop this weekend, wanna come hypnosis? What? What's that? Oh, this guy named Richard Bandler, he did something called neurolinguistic programming. I hear it's all really powerful. You wanna come? So I went to this workshop in 1980, and I'm pacing back and forth in the back of the room 'cause I'm watching this psychopath on the stage, manipulating people to demonstrate patterns you can do to people and how you can get them into altered states and believe things and and such. But I was immediately fascinated and I was like, that's what they did in the Moonies. Like, I, I was, I was, I was, I I was doing that, but not because someone taught me consciously, but because I was told to model the older members and to model Sun, young Moon, the cult leaders.

Dr. Steven Hassan: So-called Messiah, and uh, I would talk like this and, you know, have eye contact in the moonies. You were taught to look three inches into people's eyes 'cause they were the windows of the soul. Anyway, I got hooked. So I started learning NLPI went to workshop after workshop. I read book after book. I met John Grinder, the other founder of NLP. That was the two of them that modeled psychiatrist Milton Erickson, who came up with this process oriented naturalistic approach to, um, hypnotherapy. But Erickson was a psychiatrist. And Lauren Grinder were not mental health professionals. And this is a key point I wanna explain to your listeners that if you are trained as a mental health professional, you're trained with ethics, do no harm, informed consent, , all of these things that NLP was like, do what works. And they were shifting when I, and I literally was invited to move to Santa Cruz to be John Grinder's apprentice.

Dr. Steven Hassan: I got that into it. And when I moved out there, I met all the top people of NLP. Some of them were, were ethical and good people. And some of them were like out to make money basically. And there was a shift that took place from training therapists and educators to training salespeople and CEOs. And I realized this is an amoral system. In other words, if you're an ethical person, you'll only do it e ethically. But if you're not, this gives an incredible advantage of manipulation and control, uh, for whoever knows it over the vast public who doesn't understand that. And what I've noticed, and so I, I left NLPI was like, this is amoral. I don't wanna do this. Um, but I was, I wanted to learn Ericksonian Hypnosis. So I went to the Erickson Foundation and they're like, we only train men, master's level mental health professionals or other healthcare professionals. You can't come to our programs. And that was one of the things that motivated me to be, get my master's in counseling . 'cause I wanna, I wanted to really understand what Ericsson came up with. And he was a genius.

Dr. Robin Stern: Do you think that what captivated you was the recognition, aside from the fact that you are intellectually curious and, and you were doing this work, the recognition that it had been done to you?

Dr. Steven Hassan: Definitely

Dr. Robin Stern: So effective,

Dr. Steven Hassan: Well, I call it the victim victimizer model. Mm-Hmm. . They do it to you to get you in. And you're, you, you're taught to, to, if you care about people, you'll help bring them into the group. And you wind up creating this cult identity that, that promulgates the ideology. I'm talking about the moonies. But we could be talking about Scientology, ISIS or any number of other cult or mind control, uh, paradigms. And people make a mistake of thinking cults are religious 'cause they're not. They can be political, they can be psychotherapy cults. There can be large group awareness training cults. They can be multi-level marketing cults, what we call commercial cults, which includes, by the way, pimps and traffickers. I call them cult leaders. Um, and it could be this narcissistic or or malignant narcissist person with a one-on-one cult of personality that controls another person.

Dr. Steven Hassan: But what I wanna go back to, just say for your listeners' sake, NLP is it can be used ethically or unethically. And I have, as you know, my podcast is called the Influence Continuum because I talk about characteristics of ethical influence and characteristics of unethical influence. And hypnotherapy done by licensed mental health professionals for specific goals can be incredible. It's a wonderful for pain control. We have an opioid pri crisis. I truly believe that hypnotherapy doesn't have the addiction and doesn't have the side effects. It's, and, and, and the cost. I might add, I'm a big fan of teaching people self-hypnosis. But what what I'm seeing on the internet is, uh, recently this, this UK entertainer, uh, I wanna say his name is McKenna, uh, has created a company called Mindvalley. And he's training coaches. You can, you too can become a hypnotherapist and all you need is, is a credit card and he'll teach you how to do this stuff.

Dr. Steven Hassan: And I want to add one other quick point. And that's just about the nature of social media as it exists today. I, I was interviewed by Tristan Harris and Raskin, um, of the Center for Humane Technology. They're the ones who did the very vital documentary, the Social Dilemma. And we talked about how being online induces a trance state. And what I want to tell your listeners is that trance is a natural part of being human. And if we are athletes, if we're musicians, artists, we need to learn how to concentrate our attention, be absorbed in what we're doing. But what happens when you're in that state is you're critical thinking part of your brain goes offline. And so if you're with somebody unethical, they can install things in that state.

Dr. Robin Stern: That's really terrifying. Are are you talking about the, um, another way to talk about it would be a, the flow state that Shik 70 High was talking about. So when you're in that, like that one channel, everything else is not operating. Is that what you're saying? Yeah. So it could be very powerful for that focus, but if that focus is mal-intent, um,

Dr. Steven Hassan: And I talk about the importance of, of identifying do, are you operating from an internal locus of control in your own body? Or are you following the instructions or the guidelines of some external authority figure? Whether it's a rabbi, a priest, a president, whatever. Yes. Because I believe adults should think for themselves and make their own decisions. and, and good decision making includes looking at data and reality testing and being prepared to change your beliefs if the evidence suggests that what you're believing is incorrect or is, is harmful. Yeah.

Dr. Robin Stern: Yes. Wow. You've been on incredible journey.

Dr. Steven Hassan: We, and it ain't over yet because we have AI now. And, uh, we have also for Americans, it's estimated there's 5,000 data points that have been collected on each voting American without our permission. 'cause there's no mandatory privacy data laws in the United States. At least they have those in Europe. And with ai, they can know, they can develop such sophisticated profiles based on who you like on social media, who you dislike, even the words, the emotionality of, of what you're, what you're conveying, et cetera. They know what kind of food you like. They know what kind of car you drive. They know where you were born. They know your age. So what's happening, it seems to me, is that China's hacking us, Russia's hacking us, Iran, North Korea, and Christian nationalists and Nazis and other people who have a belief that their worldview should be imposed on everyone else. So in general, I just talk about them as authoritarian.

Dr. Robin Stern: Authoritarian. Can you go back to what you were saying a few minutes ago, please? And talk about, um, the, the trance state, because even as you say it, I realize that it, it's different than flow because it does have to do with, it's not, um, necessarily coming from inner control or the inner locus of control.

Dr. Steven Hassan: That's the key. So

Dr. Robin Stern: It happens when you're in a, in a trance state, what happens, and since so many young people now, and, and older people as well, but certainly our young people are online for hours and hours. Tell us the impact of that trance state, and then let's make the connection to, to gaslighting and to cults and to mind control.

Dr. Steven Hassan: Yeah, sure. In the end, Robin, you and I wanna help empower people to be their best selves. Like that's our commitment is to teach, to share patterns that will be useful for people to reclaim their power, their dignity, to know that they have self-worth, and that they should choose their own belief system and not be, uh, buying into someone else's, uh, sense of reality of what they think is going on. So what Ericsson realized is that what had been taught before Ericsson, so-called direct suggestion hypnosis, that was really relying on the authority figure commanding or directing the person to have experiences. So if the hypnotist said, your eyelids are getting heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy, and the person closed their eyes, then they were hypnotizable. If the, the hypno, if the hypnotist said it exactly what that tonality and the person kept their eyes open, then they weren't hypnotized of, uh, high hypnotizable.

Dr. Steven Hassan: Well, Erickson said, that's not right. People are going in and out of trance all day long if you just pay attention to their, to their analog, to their facial state. Because when our pupils are dilating, when our muscle tous gets smooth, , you can tell people are reacting. And it's not, it, it, it's really a naturalistic state. And so what Ericsson realized was that you can tell stories that are so captivating and absorbing that you don't ever give the person the chance to say, no, I'm not closing my eyes. 'cause you're telling a story about a character and how tired they were and how they, you know, couldn't help. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And by watching the reactions, the nonverbal reactions, somebody trained an Ericksonian hypnotherapy, or I should say NLP, 'cause it was based on modeling. Ericsson can take advantage of that again, for, for, for other purposes.

Dr. Steven Hassan: So if you, we all just watch the Olympics. There isn't a single top performer that we didn't see doing a trance state on themselves. there because you mentally visualize the perfect performance over and over and over. And they've done studies where, for example, I'm a basketball man, that's, that was my sport growing up. They did studies where people practiced free throws in real life, and they did studies comparing people with visualizing doing free throws and the people visualizing them performed as well or better than the people who are practicing it in real life. That's really interesting. Mm-Hmm. that the mind has that capacity. And I'm just gonna do one quick diversion and say that a lot of people go into therapy 'cause they know something's broken or something's wrong, or they're frustrated, but they don't think about what's a model of excellence if it was cured.

Dr. Steven Hassan: You know, so I, I like, I'm tired of yo-yo dieting. I've tried every diet under the world, but they don't stop and think who has someone who has mastered their mind, body relationship and relationship to food where they enjoy their food, they eat plenty of it, and healthy and, and yummy and, and sweets too. And it has to do with your mindset. And you're visualizing your future, you at the ideal weight, and you're checking with your future. You, if you're gonna have that second piece of dessert, or you're gonna have one bite of the dessert, but make it last 10 times longer. Mm-Hmm. . And if you can have one bite, make it last 10 times longer, you have the subjective positive experience without the calories. So it's, it's understanding this is a superpower. People can learn. But again, learn from someone ethical. Make sure you nobody's doing it to you that you are in charge.

Dr. Steven Hassan: And I, I just came from meeting with somebody who is really interested in this stuff. I said, you know, we have, we have cell phones where you can record yourself. I said, there are scripts for everything from memory and concentration and better sleep. And you could read it in your own voice. You can put it on a, a little recorder by some e you know, earbuds. And if you have trouble sleeping at night, you can put it in. And you have, you know, in my case, Steve Hasson in my head telling me to relax, everything's okay. Tomorrow's gonna be good. Mm-Hmm. and honestly, self-reflecting over 48 years of doing this work with the most extreme trauma traumatized, uh, clients. Without that, that gift, without that training, without me going to therapists at different points of my life to have help. Like when I had cancer, I went to a clinical hypnotherapist once a week, and max, his name is Max Shapiro, may him, may he rest in peace, but he would be, uh, recording trances for me to, to welcome the chemotherapy, know that it's only killing the bad buggies, that my immune system is gonna get stronger, that when I had surgery, there'd be minimal blood loss.

Dr. Steven Hassan: I mean, and it really works. And I got through my, my cancer in three months. Yes, I had allopathic help with chemo and radiation and surgery, but people were astounded how fast I recovered. And I really attribute the powers of the mind to do this.

Dr. Robin Stern: Yeah. So bring us now into our current reality. So it's August, we have an election coming up. Um, what does all of this have to do with our, uh, the way we address or approach considering who we're voting for?

Dr. Steven Hassan: Uh, so what I wanna say is that the media has done us a great disservice as a country because they're businesses. They want advertising revenue. They want a lot of, you know, viewers. And so they know that if something is extreme, something that's very emotional and reactive, more people will tune in. So there's a bias to sensationalizing rather than thinking about the public good and what's gonna help our country Depolarize. Mm-Hmm. So progressive media puts down maga, maga media puts down progressives, and not only puts them down, but, you know, and I'm one of them. We're pedophiles and traffickers and satanic conspiracy people, you know, we're literally demonized. So what I, what I wanna say is that the, the mind is very powerful. We're being, uh, assaulted with psychological warfare tactics. Mm-Hmm.

Dr. Robin Stern: . Mm-Hmm. How so? What do you mean by that?

Dr. Steven Hassan: Q anon was a psyop. We're, we're constantly being subjected to disinformation where there are elements of truthfulness coming at us that appeals to what's known as confirmation bias. Yeah, that's right. And then they slip in some unverifiable other things to nudge people to be more extreme on the left or more extreme on the right. And to make people confused, disoriented, hopeless, helpless. Um, which is the ideal state for brainwashing and the ideal state for fascism and authoritarianism to take over. Because the, when you're in that state, you're being reduced to childhood. Mm-Hmm. . And you want the authority figure, the daddy figure, in this case, Donald Trump who said, trust me, I've got this. I know more than the generals and more than the economists, but he's so certain and he's so confident, and people don't understand this is a technique. Hitler did the big lie technique Mm-Hmm.

Dr. Steven Hassan: On a whole nation. Why? Because he said it confidently and repeated it over and over and over and over again. And the mind reacts when it keeps hearing the same message, it starts believing it's true, even if it's a lie. Mm-Hmm. . So what I wanna say to the public is, um, it's an error to think only weak people can be mind controlled or troubled people, or people not like us. I want everyone to get humble. We're all human. Our, all of our us can be deceived and manipulated. And the most sophisticated manipulation is done where you make the person feel in control, by the way, not where they, what

Dr. Robin Stern: Does that look like? What does that look like for people who are thinking, oh, this could never happen to me.

Dr. Steven Hassan: So, uh, I'm going to pull this out of thin air, but I'm gonna do, uh, so Robin, you're a very intelligent, educated, discerning co co you know, consumer. So I know that when, given a choice of this type of broccoli and this type of broccoli and this type of broccoli, this one costs more. But you're always gonna want what's best for you. But it's up to you. You can choose Uhhuh . So what did I do? Ifl? I, I flattered you, I said things you were happy to hear from me. And then I, I, I gave, I talked about your choice, right? And then I basically gave two false choices and the choice I wanted you to take.

Dr. Robin Stern: And if I in and you led me to believe where you wanted to lead me to believe that if in fact I I am that person who is intelligent and discerning, then of course I'm going to go for the choice you want me to have.

Dr. Steven Hassan: Right? I mean, if you wanna say you're a dummy, take this one. Right. Exactly.

Dr. Robin Stern: Right.

Dr. Steven Hassan: But, but again, it it, people who understand this stuff, it can be so sophisticated. It goes past consciousness. When I'm, when I'm doing sessions with clients, because I'm an ethical person. I don't do hypnotherapy with clients, by the way. I do psychoeducation about hypnosis and such. But when I wanna show the unethical stuff, I either show AOC cult leaders video and critique it. And then I also rely on a UK entertainer who I think is fantastic, named Darren Brown, who, who wrote a book called Mind Control. I actually saw him on Broadway. He came to the US and did a show, and Darren Brown was on stage going, you know, there's millions of people who believe in faith healing, and they go to their preachers and they spend lots of, donate, lots of money to be healed. Now I'm an atheist. I don't believe in God at all.

Dr. Steven Hassan: But tonight we're gonna do a show and heal people who wants to be healed. And people line up and he heals them. Right. But he, but he's doing it and he's saying, I'm not mystical. I'm not a prophet. God's not doing it. This is psychology. Yes. What I don't like about him is he is not naming it explicitly. I want to hypnotize you, but that's what he does. Anyway, he's on YouTube. So I show excerpts of videos. Uh, for example, I showed one of my favorites where he walks up to people on the street in England. He asked for directions, and within a minute he's walking away with their house keys, their cell phone, and they're even taking their watch off of them.

Dr. Robin Stern: Oh my goodness.

Dr. Steven Hassan: So, and then after he walks away, people are like, and then they run after him. But they gave him all of these things. And so they

Dr. Robin Stern: Gave it to him because he asked for it, because they were, he was

Dr. Steven Hassan: Because he used hypnosis, distraction, anchoring, embedded commands, tech, these types of magician techniques. Wow. Or hypnotic techniques. But I show the video and I explain how he does it. Yeah. Because I want to teach my clients to be aware. Yes. That when strangers come up to you and touch you, it should put you on high alert. Yeah. Your body should not be touched by strangers, even if they're attractive or they're celebrities. If somebody's touching you there, there's a vi a boundary violation immediately.

Dr. Robin Stern: Yeah. So, Steven, I'm, I'm mindful of the time and I really would like you to, to talk about how you came to write the book, the Cult of Trump, since it's of the moment.

Dr. Steven Hassan: Sure. So, um, the bottom line is, I didn't wanna write the book. My agent, Steve Troja, um, said, I want you to write The Cult of Trump. And I said, I don't, I'm not political. And if I write a book by that title, it's going to alienate all of the people in it. And he said to me, the people in it are not gonna read it anyway. And you don't, you have an obligation to educate all the other people about it. The people who have family members and friends who've been radicalized. And it was Simon and Schuster, but I thought long and hard, if I didn't write this book, would I regret it for the rest of my life? And the answer was yes. I if he, if he got elected, or actually, I, I wrote the book after he was elected. I knew he, I knew he was gonna get elected.

Dr. Steven Hassan: That was what was freaky. If you look at an interview I did with Tarn Southern in the summer before the election, she said, of all the cult leaders, who are you most worried about? I said, Donald Trump. And people were like, what are you talking about? Clinton's gonna win. I'm like, I've watched this guy do NLP with the other GOP contenders, and, and he's got a message that's simple that's repeated over and over all of the techniques. So anyway, so all I knew growing up in Queens, and I grew up 1.3 miles from his childhood home. I grew up in Flushing. He grew up in Jamaica Estates on the other side of Union Turnpike. So I knew Donald Trump was a malignant narcissist growing up a womanizer, misogynist, you know, cheat racist. I knew that about him. So when I accepted the task to write the Cult of Trump, all I had to go on initially was he had the stereotypical profile of a cult leader.

Dr. Steven Hassan: The, the narcissism plus the psychopathological features, thinking above the law, pathological lying, sadism revenge. And, and people can come to freedom of mind.com and the learn and download the entire list as they can also download a copy of the Influence Continuum Graphic and my Bite Model of Authoritarian Control. But what I learned, so then I started thinking, okay, what, what do people need to know? And I, I decided I wanna do a chapter on his childhood, on the authoritarian childhood, um, and I, and Peel that he grew up in this cult of positive thinking, which is a mind control cult technique. But I wanted to give the backstory, which I, I decided to start with Edward Bernas, who wrote the classic 1928 book propaganda. That was the basis for Gables in Hitler. I wanted to explain, you know, use that and say the Trump is a result of decades of things that set the plate for him to, to have power.

Dr. Steven Hassan: But what I didn't know at, at the beginning was how many cults, actual cults onto themselves were comprising the cult of Trump. And so chapter seven and chapter eight goes into it, and I will add that my editor and, and, and I submitted the manuscript, uh, right when the Mueller report was about to be delivered, I had put Putin at the top of the puppet masters. And then I put, let's see, I put the family, um, um, um, Opus Day, the right wing Catholic cult that thinks the Pope is satanic. So I listed all the, the puppet masters. When Mueller report came out, my editor said, oh, take off, take out Putin. 'cause there's no Russian collusion. I said, over my dead body, I'm taking out Putin. 'cause I, I had studied Russian, I talked to XKGB people was like, no, no, no, no, no.

Dr. Steven Hassan: In any case. Um, but what I wanna say for our listener's sake, and the fact that there's an election is there's a group of cults under the title New Apostolic Reformation, which the media has mischaracterized as Christian evangelicals. Well, we're now hearing from Christians who believe in Jesus and the Bible who say, no, no, no. But these are people who are self-proclaimed prophets and apostles who claim to speak to God directly, who claim to speak in tongues and cast out demons and do faith healing. And they have bite model authoritarian cults. And it's these prophets and apostles that have brainwashed people to believe that Trump won the 2020 election. So don't believe Satan, God told me. And these people are so programmed to follow their prophet or their apostle. They're not following Donald Trump. They're following Donald Trump. 'cause the Apostle says, so at the minute the apostle says to follow someone else, they'll follow someone else. But we're talking about 30 to 40 million Americans in these groups. 30,

Dr. Robin Stern: 40 million Americans that are,

Dr. Steven Hassan: Um, in new apostolic reformation cult groups around the United States. And there's an estimated 900 million, almost a billion people all over the world in these groups. So what I wanna say categorically is that cult authoritarian countries like Russia can use religious cults and cult leaders to brainwash their followers, to vote whoever they want into power so that they can amass more power and control, and in many cases just promote fossil fuel. Uh, 'cause Putin needs oil, money and, and, and co corporation, which is the second largest private corporation in the us, a lot of what's happening is about keeping control over fossil fuels to the demise of everyone on the planet.

Dr. Robin Stern: Steven, one of the things that I, I'll, um, share with our listeners, but also just wanna say to you is that you are fountain of knowledge about every corner of where coercive control and mind control and, um, uh, I don't even know how to, how else to say it in every corner of this information, uh, of the network.

Dr. Steven Hassan: Well, thank you. I'm fascinated by the minds. And as a therapist, I wanna empower people to get free. And I know we're wrapping up, but I just wanna state categorically, 'cause Trump is melting down. He's becoming more and more what we call in the business decompensated. He's getting more and more irrational. He's not even remembering what he's saying. Um, what's critical is I want everyone who's listening to this to think about people in their life, whether they're friends or family members or coworkers who are Trump supporters. I want you if to think about if you've blocked them, if you have muted them, if you called them names, now is the time to reach out to them and apologize and say, Hey, I miss you. I want you in my life. Can we, can we agree to not talk about politics, but just remember all the good times and that we're family?

Dr. Steven Hassan: If we're family, because people need an exit ramp. Mm-Hmm. . And, and, and they need to know that they can exit without shame, attack that they'll be safe in exiting. And we need to amplify the voices of X members who are speaking out about how they realized that they were conned or that they trusted the wrong people. And let's amplify the voices of former members. And this goes for you. You're, you know, people are, are are wounded healers. Right? It happens to us. We wanna help others, right? Listen to people who've been in cults of any type and encourage them to tell their story if they're ready to. So we can de-stigmatize the idea that only weak, stupid people can have their minds hacked. 'cause everybody's vulnerable.

Dr. Robin Stern: That's so important. And I, and I love that you are ending in on that note of not only extending in ha a hand to people who are there so they can grab onto that hand and feel the care and compassion, but also listen to the voices of people who have been on that journey before you.

Dr. Steven Hassan: Yeah. It's not a winning lose thing where you're trying to stuff it down people's throats that you are. Right. You know, you, you wanna just say, look, we're all human, let's move forward. Exactly.

Dr. Robin Stern: And so thank you Steven, really appreciate your being with me today and so much information. Again, you are a complete fountain of knowledge of every aspect of mind control and coercive control. And, and I admire how much you've read and how much you still read and, and your commitment to learning and to healing. So thank you very much. And where can people find you?

Dr. Steven Hassan: Yeah, thank you. So my website is freedom of mind.com and I am on social media at Cult Expert and I have a course for clinicians at CE or non CE if you don't need CEEs. Um, so my podcast, my course, my books, and, um, and if people want a free email, you can sign up@freedomofmind.com.

Dr. Robin Stern: Thank you again, and I look forward to speaking to you offline and making our next plan to connect. And

Dr. Steven Hassan: Yeah, that's great. Thanks for your good work.

Dr. Robin Stern: My pleasure to have you with me and for everyone listening, thank you very much for being here at the Gaslight Effect podcast and I'll see you next time. Thanks for joining me for today's episode. I hope you found it helpful and meaningful. If you want to listen to other episodes of the Gaslight Effect podcast, you can find them at robinstern.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. And please leave a rating and a review. I also invite you to follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter. This podcast is produced by Mel Yellen, Mike Lens, and me. All of my work is supported by Suzen Pettit Marcus Estevez and Omaginarium, also by Sally McCartan and Jackie Daniels. I'm so grateful to have many people supporting me and especially grateful for all of you, my listeners.