How to Avoid Being Mind Controlled at a Conference

How to Avoid Being Mind Controlled at a Conference - Presentation at the 2016 Annual Ritual Abuse, Secretive Organizations and Mind Control Conference - August 2016  

The information in this article was written with the help and research of several survivors and well-known, well-published therapists in the child abuse, ritual abuse and mind control fields over almost a twenty year period. Participants of several ritual abuse conferences helped research the information in this article.  

Article copied with permission from https://ritualabuse.us

The most recent updated version of this information is at: https://survivorship.org/survivorship-articles/how-to-avoid-being-mind-controlled-at-a-conference/ 

The information at the above webpage was reviewed and written by several people at Survivorship. The article below has direct quotes from this page, which will be cited as “Survivorship article.” Parts added by Neil Brick for his presentation will be in parenthesis. 

Please note: The experiences and triggers mentioned below may or may not be forms of programmed mind controlled for all survivors. Different survivors have different types of programming. Some people do not have severe forms of mind control programming, but they may be susceptible to media propaganda, societal forms of mind control and socialization, and cult techniques of mind control. 

This presentation has been adapted for the Internet. It was presented at the conference by Neil Brick, a survivor of ritual abuse and mind control. His work continues to educate the public about child abuse, trauma and ritual abuse crimes. His child abuse and ritual abuse newsletter S.M.A.R.T. has been published for over 20 years. His articles can be found at http://neilbrick.com All accusations are alleged. 

The ideas I discuss here today are solely my own or where cited taken from specific cited sources. The idea for this article originally came from two presentations written for the early S.M.A.R.T. conferences by several people. It was re-written this year by the Survivorship Board of Directors and can be found on their website. I have adapted and changed some of this article for this presentation. 

Survivorship article: 

“How to Avoid Being Mind Controlled at a Conference 

This information is for educational value only and is not intended as therapy or treatment. Reading this information may or may not help your recovery process, so please use caution while reading this. This may be heavy for survivors.  

Precautions 

While the Conference organizers are doing everything possible to make this conference safe, we are not able to make guarantees, and attendees should also take their own precautions. Because of the controversial nature of the topics covered in this conference, you might want to take additional precautions. You might want to use an alias at the conference, and put that alias on your conference name tag. Do not give your real name or information about where you live or your contact information to other conference attendees. If a conference presenter asks for such information, ask the conference organizer whether this is permissible. If you find this helpful, bring a small object which you find comforting, and can keep in your hand or pocket to hold on to in order to keep you in the present if you find yourself triggered.” (Please note: We strongly discourage going into child alters at this or any conference. Child alters are easier to access with triggers. Please try to stay in adult alters that are fully aware and cognizant of your surroundings. You can use mindfulness exercises to do this.) 

 “Bringing Support Persons 

We encourage conference attendees to travel in pairs with a safe support person as much as possible at the conference. I am not saying this to scare anyone. I believe this is simply more sensible. That way, if anyone does attempt to trigger you, there will be another person there to help you and tell the other person to leave. If anyone has any trouble with anyone at the conference, please let us know either verbally or on paper during or after the conference. We have tried to make the conference as safe as possible, but it is impossible to make anything totally safe. A safe support person can be an excellent help at a conference. Such a person can help a survivor avoid and process post-traumatic and programming triggers. However, sometimes persons that survivors think are their supports are actually their handlers, persons who report their behavior to the abuser group and make sure they are obedient. Such a person can be a therapist, a spouse, a friend or another survivor. If you knew the support person before you knew you were a survivor, this person could be a handler. It is difficult in early recovery to know if a support person is a handler. Someone in your life may be a handler if seeing that person makes you feel overly dependent, in a trance state or addicted to being with that person. Before you bring a support person to a conference, you need to check with your inside parts to make sure that all parts trust this person and do not believe them to be a handler.  

Observing Others 

It is helpful to know the accessing methods of secretive organizations and/or cults. Following are some known methods. Look for odd hand gestures, such as opening a book, making the shape of a gun with the pointer finger and thumb and "shooting" it, using the cut sign (hand drawn horizontally across the throat), tapping something (a book, the wrist (as in asking for the time), forearm, leg, etc., drawing something in the air (like a letter of the alphabet or an unknown sign)). Winks or facial expressions: winks, or eyes shutting and opening in sequence, or eyebrows, weird grins or bared teeth, snarl (raised upper lip), pout (dropped and protruded lower lip), lopsided smile or grimace (corner of mouth down or up). Though some of these may or may not always signify triggers, it is important to be aware of them.” (Also, a common hand signal is covering one’s mouth, to encourage don’t talk programming.) 

 (I was strongly attacked and criticized publicly for discouraging the use of hand signals during a ritual abuse conference. This was done by people working to discredit the research in our field and to silence the work of many professionals who are helping survivors work through their triggers and programming.)

(Those using dishonest debate tactics, will use the words delusional or paranoid to describe researchers who believe in mind control techniques. Name calling is a propaganda technique used to unfairly discredit a person and their ideas without discussing the reality of their ideas. There is no evidence anyone is delusional or paranoid, simply because they believe in the nefarious use of mind control techniques. The concepts I am talking about here today are scientifically proven by specialists in our field (several of whom are speaking this weekend), whose research is backed by the theories of those in the field of behavioralism and those studying cult mind control.) 

(It is important people learn to not use hand signals and also learn to not trigger other people’s programming in other ways at this conference and in their own lives. This is why we emphasize this concept so strongly at this conference. Understanding this is an important part of recovery from mind control.)

(There are two important reasons for learning about triggers: 1) Other survivors can recover more quickly if their programming is not accessed and re-activated. 2) You can learn about your own triggers. In a safe setting with your own therapist you can learn about the subliminal programming you may have.) 

 (If at any time during the conference you have the sensation of your face getting itchy and then your hands go to your face in a dissociated state, you may possibly have programming to use hand signals. You can work on these trauma memories in a professional setting with a safe professional person to figure out why you do this.) 

The following comes from a petition written to defend survivors. This excerpt explains the logic and research behind the theory of the misuse of hand signals. Hand signals function as post-hypnotic suggestions, as anyone who is familiar with hypnosis will know. You might also remember Pavlov’s dog, who salivated at the sound of a bell. This is basic conditioning, stimulus-response. Child traffickers teach such signals to the children they traffic and they condition these children to respond immediately in particular ways and are used in many cults to control members. More complex conditioning can be done on human beings. It is well known that PTSD flashbacks can be triggered by certain stimuli (like sounds, smells or colors) in veterans, trauma and accident survivors. These PTSD survivors may fully believe they are back in the trauma situation and react as if they are in that situation. The concept of PTSD and PTSD triggers is similar to the programmed triggers we discuss at this conference. The concept of triggers and programmed reactions is scientifically proven through years of behavioral research and research on cults and mind control situations. 
There are several excellent articles at the ritualabuse.us website about this concept, including: An article written by me describing this phenomenon:  

How Cues and Programming Work in Mind Control and Propaganda https://ritualabuse.us/mindcontrol/how-cues-and-programming-work-in-mind-control-and-propaganda/ 

This article cites the research of Pavlov, Skinner and Sargant (Battle for the Mind: A Physiology of Conversion and Brainwashing). 

Quotes from the “Cues and Programming” article: 

“Programming is similar to this in several ways. A survivor may be tortured repeatedly until an new alter is created. This alter will be given a cue to let them know when to come out, this could be a smell, word, number, sound, color and so on. This cue is either paired with the alter’s creation and is given to the alter to listen for or to look for.” “William Sargant first looked at combat PTSD and compared it to Pavlov’s classical conditioning. He extended Pavlov’s model to explain how people could change their world view suddenly. This was caused by intense trauma, followed by a person’s personality breaking down, followed by the application of new ways of thinking. Pavlov’s dogs during a flood either forgot or reversed their previous training. First, Pavlov’s “equivalent” phase of brain activity or breakdown occurred. Second, Pavlov’s “paradoxical inhibition” occurred where weak stimuli would produce strong responses and strong stimuli would produce weak responses (inappropriate responses). Third, in the “ultraparadoxical” stage, responses changed from positive to negative and vice-versa. Current models of PTSD suggest that PTSD can be understood as learned helplessness, a set of foci in the brain firing repeatedly and inappropriately. Cognitively, a person’s world view is so changed as to become untenable. Pavlov’s observations on animals breaking down under extreme stress could be applied to humans and survivors. 

Pavlov was able to build up and break down behavior patterns in dogs. Pavlov’s work seems to have influenced confession getting and brainwashing techniques. Pavlov’s dogs had four basic temperaments, strong excitatory, lively, calm imperturbable type and melancholic. Each type reacted differently to stress. Pavlov could cause a dog to break down by increasing the intensity of a signal (electricity), delaying the time between the signal and food, confusing them with positive and negative signals interchanged or tampering with its physical condition. If a dog of stable temperament acquires a behavior after extreme stress, it is hard to break this behavior. The could be compared to a person of strong character becoming a one-track minded fanatic. Some survivors may also become fanatics. The implications for survivors of ritual abuse and their symptoms are obvious. Increased trauma could cause dissociation, making a person more susceptible to suggestion. The delay of gratification could also make one more suggestible. Positive and negative signals interchanged, like praise and insults given rapidly may cause a psychological break. Or the lack of sleep, food or drugging can also make one more suggestible. And once a survivor becomes suggestible, they are easier to program or reprogram.” 

(Let’s take a quick break. Lightly tap your feet, feel the chair under you, move around in your chair a bit and become mindful of your surroundings. If you feel dissociated or spacey at all, lightly shake your head or do other mindfulness exercises to stay present. Later you can try to remember what may have caused you to feel dissociated and discuss this with a support person. ) 

To continue with the different types of programming and triggers: 

Survivorship article: 

“Some forms of programming use Christian or New Age religious phrases or dogma to cue people and remind them of their programming. Other that may be used include Disney themes, like Alice in Wonderland, Aladdin, or The Little Mermaid. Any children's stories or movies which were around during your childhood, such as the Wizard of Oz, may have cult meanings. Other more general methods are any form of double-talk or double entendres, or words or phrases with double meanings, off-color jokes, and so on. Any out of place references to morbid, violent, ugly, sexual topics. Disorienting or confusing speakers: such as those who start a sentence on one topic and use an incongruency to finish it." e.g., "My glasses are red [because/and] it's raining outside." When questioned about what s/he means, the speaker may say something like "I'm hungry" (which may be an excuse for the confusion, or may just be another non sequitur). Disorientation increases suggestibility. Disorientation is used in some forms of hypnotic induction. Word plays or sayings, especially those which could refer to political or famous persons.”

(Shock type techniques may be used to mind control people, to get people to remember or believe an idea without thinking logically about it. Skeptical organizations attacking survivors may use this technique. This is a dishonest way to promote one’s ideology. It is done without the recipient person’s consent or knowledge of what is happening. The person often leaves the situation believing the idea presented by the shock type technique without it being logically discussed with them and usually without their intellectual analysis. This often happens in the United States media. People are scared into focusing on an enemy or another fear causing situation and then they forget about the problems with our political leaders and our economic system.) 

Survivorship article: 

“Survivors may sometimes be triggered without knowing it. Whole groups of people can be put in a trance and given instructions through cues. Use caution on the telephone. If you feel you are getting hypnotized or spacey on the phone, shake your head hard and excuse yourself from the conversation. Texts and e-mails received during the conference may be designed to make you susceptible to your programming. It is wisest not to take phone calls during the conference unless they are from someone you are completely sure is safe. (There are specific technologies that uses tones and sounds to induce meditative states. When used properly, this technology can help people relax. When not used properly, this technology can be used plant suggestions in people. Large cults in the US use a wide variety of techniques to produce suggestible states and eventually new cult personas. These new personas may work twenty hours a day for the cult for free or cause people to totally change their personal belief systems in a few weeks or less. This is scientifically proven and well documented.)

Survivorship article: 

“Attending Presentations 

Some of the presentations might be triggering due to their content. If you feel triggered, please step back and do some self care. To stay present, take deep breaths, touch your clothing, and try to feel the chair you are sitting on and the floor under your feet. Use the small object you brought to let you know where you are. If this is insufficient, take a break but do not go for a walk alone. Tell your safe support person, if you have one, that you are feeling triggered and need to leave with them and go outside. Stand up, making sure your safe support person (if you have one) is leaving with you. Sometimes the safe support person may not know you need to them to be with you. Often perpetrators will corner a person either in the back of a conference room or another room. This may occur when the survivor goes to the bathroom or walks down the hall to another room. Teddy bears and children’s books can bring a survivor into a child state in which he or she is more susceptible to being accessed. For this reason we do not encourage survivors to bring such things to the conference, and we no longer provide them.” 

 (If you feel cornered or uneasy with a person in the hallway or other place away from the conference, quickly walk away from them and come back to the conference area and find me or another volunteer at the conference. It is not rude to walk away and this may greatly help your recovery and help you become aware of being triggered and accessed.) 

Survivorship article:

“Check inside to see which parts of you are upset and why. Inquire internally whether you are having a post-traumatic reaction, in which something reminded you of some past event or person in your own life, or whether programming has been triggered. Try and figure out what the presenter did or said which caused these feelings. Did the presenter use a particular phrase or body movement that was once used as a threat against you or as a signal to deliberately trigger programming? Remember that your perpetrators used common words and gestures and twisted their meaning. It is likely that the presenter used those words or gestures in the regular way, not the cult way, but it is possible that he or she meant to trigger programming. Write down what was triggering and discuss it with your support person or one of the conference organizers. Please report any use of program trigger words or behaviors to the conference organizers, either in person or through a note during or after the conference.  

Dealing with Other Conference Attendees 

Most people are going to act fairly normally, and because programmers/handlers or scouts for secretive organizations or cults are not likely to look any different from most people, it is helpful to be alert to possible signs of attempted accessing. Do not give any personal details about your life to conference attendees, even if you believe you have met them online. Almost every ritual abuse survivor has parts inside who are trained to report on other survivors to the perpetrators. You do not want anyone reporting about you. Don't shake hands or exchange hugs with anyone you don't know. Certain cults use handshakes to remind people of their programming and/or access certain alter states. 
Survivors are in different places in their healing, and their knowledge about programming methods and their ability to recognize such things. There are two ways to catch triggers: one is by your own reactions. If you notice you are suddenly dizzy or foggy, or spaced out, you may be triggered. It is good to know some grounding techniques to use when this begins to happen. Try to remember what just happened around you. The second is by looking for some specific behaviors, odd out of place phrases, or discrepancies between behaviors and words. Pay close attention to hand gestures, winks, taps, etc. 

Most people are probably safe, but it is a good idea to be aware of your surroundings as much as possible. You might want to watch who is around you, who is within your physical space, who brushes shoulders with you, who touches you, who sits next to you, who is near your food, in all areas of the hotel, as well as watch where you drive and what cars are behind or near you. Don’t go off to a secluded area with anyone you don’t know well. One important thing is if you are feeling triggered or dissociated or tired or weak, don’t let people that you don’t know or trust and/or people that aren’t safe ask you to leave the conference room to talk with you. If you see someone you don’t know walking up to you when you are feeling triggered or dissociated you might want to say “excuse me” and quickly walk away from them and find a support person or a conference organizer. Please notify us during or after the conference if you see any of the things, such as deliberate triggering, mentioned in this article. Try to let us know what happened in as much detail as possible.  

Trigger Management Triggers are more than phrases. They can be pictures, sounds, smells, tastes, gestures or touches on the body. The added dangers for triggers for ritual abuse survivors are that triggers can be used to open alter states, or very complex programs. These programs could be used to cause a return to the cult or cause someone to hurt themselves or someone else. 

Triggering can occur in so many forms that it is impossible to delineate them all here. Some signs of triggering may be: feeling like you're looking or walking down a tunnel, feeling "unreal" or invisible, feeling like something bad is about to happen, ominous sense, inability to concentrate, spacing out, blanking, dizziness, fogginess, stomach upset or pain, tingling in arms or legs, twitching on any part of the body, dropping objects, mishearing things or inability to hear (where others appear to hear okay), seeing visual flashes (such as a flash of another object where a chair is), hearing voices in your head, or losing bits of time and not knowing what happened. If you brought a safe support person, let that person know what is happening. Trigger management is one of the keys to recovery. By being able to manage your triggers, you can hopefully keep from being triggered into alter states that could possibly be used to get you to return to the cult. This entails knowing the trigger and the feeling accompanying the trigger, the memory connected to the trigger and the action required of the trigger. 

Working through programming is having the memory in a safe setting with a safe support person and learning the accompanying trigger and subliminal instruction. Trigger management involves learning to recognize the feeling of falling into a deep hypnotic state, snapping out of it, and then trying to figure out why it happened. It also involves learning how not to fall into these states while feeling the “pull” of them. One technique that can be used is: Shake your head side to side (fairly hard) or walk around. Susceptibility to triggers can come from being tired or confused. This is why it is important to try not to be tired or confused in possibly triggering situations. Try to stay awake and alert. Get enough sleep.  

Practicing Trigger Management Techniques. 

Think of a time when you were triggered. It could be a minor triggering event, one that made you feel a little bit scared, or a major event that caused you to switch into a different alter. You may want to start with a more minor triggering event for safety reasons. Practice leaving the room: Pretend you are triggered and need to leave. If you have a safe support person with you, take that person along. Think about the feeling that accompanied the triggering event. This may vary from one trigger to another. Did you begin to feel spacey, like a fog rolling in, or did your ears begin to feel like they were filled with something, so it was difficult to hear? Did you lose a connection to the feelings in your body and your chair? What other feelings or thoughts did you have? Now, think about the physical feelings that accompanied the trigger, while you are writing, think about these questions. Did a different part of you come out? Were you co-conscious with this part, or did you actually lose time? If you switched, either completely or behind the front person, what do you know about the part who came out? Think about what triggered the event in the first place: a sound, smell, picture, word or phrase, a touch or a combination of these senses. 

Safety at Home  

Please remember that your recovery is your own. It is important for survivors to choose their own spiritual systems. Unfortunately, certain religious and healing techniques are used for programming people (to put people into hypnotic states) sometimes and are used on RA/MC survivors. Be wary of those that emphasis that there is only one way to heal. Educate yourself about cults and their techniques also. There are several very good books that can help with this. (Some types of prayer and certain houses of worship are specifically designed to put people into trances. High ceilings, repeated phrases, putting prayers to music, repeating the same phrases, making people feel guilty in spiritual settings are all techniques that can be used to make people more suggestible. Some of the same dynamics may be found at a mall or used car dealership, including the uses of special lighting, high ceilings and other techniques, where the goal is to get people to buy things.) 

Survivorship article: 
Look very closely at the relationships in your life. Does a certain person in your life fit the profile of a handler or an abuser? Can you say something about the profile of a handler or an abuser? Ask inside whether anyone recognizes things the person is doing or saying which indicates they may be one? If they do, find out more about this, work with a safe therapist and if necessary get away from the person, place and/or situation. 

An important part of recovery and not being triggered is to think for yourself. Don’t let others control you or scare you. Scaring you or startling you can put you into a hypnotic state also. Fear can also create hypnotic states. Some people in the survivor movement (from ritual abuse and mind control) appear to have a cult like following. Some speak regularly at conferences, and have lots of books, media support, etc. While this is not indicative of the fact that the person may not be safe, it may be an indicator of this if other factors are in place, especially if numerous allegations are made against the person. 

The important thing is not to have any gurus. To critically analyze everything someone says. This is a learning process. Does the person want to have followers? Are they always overstating their power and connections? Do they have appropriate personal boundaries? How does your “gut” feel when you hear them speak or when you meet them? You might not like someone personally and you may disagree with them from time to time, but how do they really make you feel? Do they encourage you to think for yourself rather than follow them? Or do they tell you there is only one way to heal? Do they try to manipulate you and use you, either financially, sexually or otherwise? Who are they connected with financially, and what conferences do they speak at? A combination of many of these negative factors may indicate an unsafe person. An important thing to realize is that people don’t know they are being brainwashed, because it is subliminal. Often those brainwashed will love and admire their abuser, which is called Stockholm syndrome. 

The important thing is whether the person tells you to think for yourself and find your own answers and whether they really mean this. Speakers at other conferences may prophesy that certain things are going to happen on certain dates. While it is good to be aware of the fact that cult programming can entrain a person to connect a future occurrence with a future date, it is also important to realize that this is only programming. Cults will often move dates up when the expected occurrence does not happen.

Discernment is crucial here. It is also important not to be constantly paranoid, though this can help at times to avoid programming. There are safe people in the world that want to help us. The important thing is figuring out who is safe and who isn’t. Staying present rather than dissociating can really be helpful in this area. 

Make your own decisions. There are good support systems and advice out there, but make sure you make your own decisions. Healthy intelligent change is good. Follow you own path or way and be strong enough to do this. If you do this, you will begin to take control of your own triggers and develop a healthy, trigger management system. Please feel free to let us know how you feel about this topic. 

Our future is up to us. If we keep healing, working hard and getting strong, then the survivor movement as a whole will also get stronger. Once you are strong enough to help others, you might want to do so. By attending a conference which shows the unity of the survivor movement, you are doing this. By being here, you are helping everyone get stronger. 

This information for the Survivorship article was primarily taken from these two articles :  
Safety Management for Conference Attendees https://ritualabuse.us/smart-conference/conf2002/safety-management-for-conference-attendees/ and  
Trigger Management and Conference Safety Presentation https://ritualabuse.us/smart-conference/conf1999/trigger-management-and-conference-safety-presentation/ 

 Copyright Neil Brick and SMART c 2016 unless otherwise cited