WHAT IF HE IS RIGHT

I was watching a television show called 48 Hours where the topic was on a cult leader who named himself Lou Castro. Angels Landing was the name of his cult and he was a convicted sex offender who was hiding his identity with the name Lou Castro. He had many followers including two girls who were 17 and 10 when their mom joined the group.  Lou immediately began working on the two girls using intimidation (he said he was a “Seer” who was hundreds of years old and had 3 “beings” or “angels” residing in him – one was Amy the angel of death and who predicted members deaths, Aaron, the evil one and the other one – Daniel – the “nice” one. He used coercion, threats, intimidation, gas lighting, scapegoating, mind manipulation techniques to keep everyone silent – including the two young girls he was having sex with – forcibly and through compliance. Lou murdered the two girls mother and others in the cult but none reported him.

When the girls finally got away and saw him for who he was through different circumstances and events, the younger of the two, when asked why she didn’t leave and return to her father who she had a relationship with, her response was, “It wasn’t an option for me.  It was more scary to leave and think of what he would do to me then to stay and know what he would do to me.  What if he was right?  What if my father and others would think I was too damaged and reject me? What if I left and Lou found me and killed me?  What if he was right? I couldn’t take that chance and so I stayed thinking it was my only option.”

This type of thinking is common with victims of any type of abuse and trauma. They feel options are limited if nonexistent and they have been so mind tricked that they believe what the perpetrator tells them about their reality. They are the problem and no one cares about them is the message given.

Victims of manipulation and abuse frequently feel responsible for causing negative feelings in the manipulator/abuser towards them and the resultant anxiety in themselves. This self-blame often becomes a major feature of victim status.

 

Victim mentality is an acquired (learned) personality trait in which a person tends to regard him or herself as a victim of the negative actions of others, and to think, speak and act as if that were the case — even in the absence of clear evidence. It depends on habitual thought processes and attribution and perpetration by a predatorial type person.

What victim mentality has is a relatively high frequency of negative emotional states such as anger, sadness, and fear brought on by someone who is using scapegoating, mind bombing, gas lighting and other abusive techniques towards them.

Sociology and psychology

Humans – consciously and unconsciously – constantly make judgments about other people and themselves. The psychological criteria for judging others may be partly ingrained negative and rigid indicating some degree of grandiosity.

Blaming provides a way of devaluing others, with the end result that the blamer feels superior (grandiosity), seeing others as less worthwhile making the blamer “perfect”. “Off-loading blame” means putting the other person down by emphasizing his or her flaws.

Victims of manipulation and abuse frequently feel responsible for causing negative feelings in the manipulator/abuser towards them and the resultant anxiety in themselves. This self-blame often becomes a major feature of victim status.

MIND BOMBING: Process by which someone makes you believe you are not who you think you are with a systematic attack on a sense of self (also called one’s identity or ego) and core belief system.  This process progress’s to self-betrayal.

(It is integrating another’s major judgements of you (true and untrue) and creating self-judgements that agree with that other. Process where the mind has developed into something that does incessant describing, comparing, and judging of self negatively and according to another’s mind games to where one’s inner voice of self-judgment betrays self. Can develop in a young mind with the merging of memory and logic and in grown adults).

The victim gets trapped into a self-image of victimization. The psychological profile of victimization includes a pervasive sense of:

helplessness

passivity

loss of control

pessimism

negative thinking

strong feelings of guilt

shame

remorse

self-blame

depression.

This way of thinking can lead to hopelessness and despair.

Self-blame

Two main types of self-blame exist:

  1. behavioral self-blame– undeserved blame based on actions. Victims who experience behavioral self-blame feel that they should have done something differently, and therefore feel at fault.
  2. characterological self-blame– undeserved blame based on character. Victims who experience characterological self-blame feel there is something inherently wrong with them which has caused them to deserve to be victimized.

Behavioral self-blame is associated with feelings of guilt within the victim. While the belief that one had control during the abuse (past control) is associated with greater psychological distress, the belief that one has more control during the recovery process (present control) is associated with less distress, less withdrawal, and more cognitive reprocessing.

Counseling responses found helpful in reducing self-blame include.

  • supportive responses
  • psychoeducational responses (learning about rape trauma syndrome for example)
  • responses addressing the issue of blame.

A helpful type of therapy for self-blame is cognitive restructuring or cognitive–behavioral therapy. Cognitive reprocessing is the process of taking the facts and forming a logical conclusion from them that is less influenced by shame or guilt.