Mind Control Programming Basics V: Object-Based Programming

As we all know, mind control programming is begun at a very young age – in some cases, even before birth. The obvious reason for this is, that the programmers wish to shape the mind before it has a chance to solidify any identity of its own. Although they are never able to entirely eradicate the original qualities of the self, the programmers will naturally do everything within their power to make sure that they have a permanent ascendency over those natural characteristics.

However, this then requires that the complexity of programming be formulated in a way that will be retained within a child’s mind. No matter how it is pushed to advance, a child can still understand things only in the ways that a child can. It is not possible to force an adult approach to information into a child’s mind.

Children do not begin to develop the ability to reason or think abstractly until they approach their teens. Younger children are much more concrete and literal in their understandings and interpretations, and programmers are required to make use of this concreteness in their work.

As a result, mind control programming will very often have concrete representations on the internal person to whom it is attached, or there will be a concrete internal structure representing a larger and more systemic program. Spin programs, for example, can be represented individually by a hand-held toy that spins, like a top with a spiral painted on it, while a more systemic spinning effect can be represented by a tornado or a centrifugal force machine. Chaos programs can be triggered by an internal child shaking a snow globe or blowing the seeds off a dandelion. The old recorded messages spoken by programmers can often be found playing on literal tape recorders or record players hidden in the internal landscape.

Individual parts may also indicate programming in their physical presentation. Someone who spent a great deal of time in sensory deprivation might appear internally as being deaf and blind (that is, without the use of their senses). People can appear as literal puppets or dolls or animals or have masks permanently attached to their faces. It is not at all unusual for someone’s internal appearance to reveal information about what was done to them.

The internal landscape may contain structures like merry-go-rounds or rainbows, “magic pools” or mirrors, which are also representative of a more systemic mind control program.

The importance of these objects is an interesting and often misunderstood aspect of programming. The mindless bond which forces the ascendency of an action (either external or internal), even against your will or your concerted efforts – is contained in the concrete manifestation. As long as there is the concrete object to shake, stare at, throw, move, enter, leave, turn on, turn off, or in any other way draw focus… the programming maintains its ascendency.

This is because, first, the training which created the program used that object or structure as a means to block out any and all information and input except what was relevant to the program itself, and this usually includes nothing more than the criteria for setting it off and the criteria for shutting it down. Second, it is because the concreteness of the object is a reinforcement to the mind. This is especially true with the structures – when parts of your system can still experience spinning, drowning, torture, drugging, or passing into another world as a literal event, it is very hard for any other parts of the system to resist it.

However, if you remove the concrete representation – turn off the tape recorders, unplug the machines, take away the toys, take down the walls, bar the doors – then the program has already been deactivated.

I think I can feel the waves of disbelief rippling back to me from that statement…
But it is nonetheless true.

On an individual level, the object is what makes the programmed system member impervious to new learning or any effort to change their thoughts or beliefs – not just resistant, but utterly impervious. Remove the object, and then they will merely be resistant – but reachable.

On a systemic level, the concrete structure is what gives the programming its ungovernable power. As long as any part of your system can literally re-experience internally any of the things done to them externally, or as long as any programming objects or structures remain to lend that concrete strength to the program, the programming will likely continue to influence you.

It might sound crazy, but it would be a huge mistake to underestimate the strength of the subjective experience in the internal world. Those of you who live in the outside world might think the internal world is unreal and that it doesn’t (or shouldn’t) have any power over you at all – but that world is very real to the parts of your system who live there – and what happens there can and does affect every part of your life.

The strength of your mind has been used against you all your life. It doesn’t have to remain that way, but it is up to you now whether to harness that power for yourself in aid of your healing, or whether you let it continue to run over you like a steamroller.

If you wish to make use of it, then you need to enter into your internal world and learn to speak the language of your own self. Learn how you have interpreted the things that happened to you, how they are represented in your world and in your system. And look for creative ways to counter the things you see. You don’t have to employ them immediately, but the most effective response will be a response that is emotionally congruent with what it is responding to, and in the internal world, emotional congruence can mean literal congruence.

Your group needs to talk to each other, get to know each other – understand why each of you is there, what experiences have led to your respective beliefs or appearances or jobs – understand the structures and objects in your world, what they represent, and what they do, before you make any profound changes.

Because removing the objects is important, but it is only the first, and perhaps the easiest step. After that, you will have to work with the parts whose beliefs and behaviors were wrapped up in those objects, insulated from any new learning or even from really knowing there was any other way than their own, whatever that was – work with them to help them recondition their minds and their selves. Removing the objects merely makes that possible – but if you are not able to talk to each other and work with each other in this way, then removing the object alone will not really make very much difference at all.

Mind Control Programming Basics IV: Resolving Fundamental Conflicts

The previous article in this series highlights one of the most glaring contradictions I personally have so far encountered in therapy: Our actions and beliefs and choices define who we are, for good or bad – so if I acted a certain way with my trainers, and I believed it was my choice to do so – whether or not programming is involved, doesn’t that define me as the person they made me?

Well – no, it doesn’t. I stuck on this point for a very long time, but ultimately I realized that there truly is a qualitative difference between choice and what I had been doing. If my choice is “do <this> or something worse will happen to you” or “do <that> and you will be rewarded” or “if you don’t do <this> then <so-and-so> will suffer” or “commit to us or we’ll kill you” or anything even remotely along those lines – then those really aren’t choices. They are presented as choices, and I was told they were choices, and I was made to feel as though I made choices – but I didn’t.

A true choice would be something like, “you can commit to us and spend every weekend here getting tortured and torturing others, or if you would prefer, you can join the school soccer team and spend your weekends at soccer games, or if there’s something else you would rather do with your time, then let’s discuss it.” That would be a choice – to be given the open-ended freedom to prefer them or to prefer any other thing out there.

On the other hand, if I am only given the choice between one version of X and another version of X – then where is the real choice? The options given in the perpetrators’ worlds are like presenting the letter X in two different fonts and trying to say that it’s a material difference, when you know that an X is an X no matter what font it’s printed in.

So any apparent contradiction inherent in this series is generally attributable to this point – the choices a person makes in response to torture or threats of torture – or even in response to an outdated fear that the torture could still happen again – are not true choices. Only when freedom to choose is truly understood and experienced can the choice be considered representative of who we are.

This is a useful idea to keep in mind when attempting to resolve the fundamental conflicts that divide our systems and turn us against each other internally – and resolution is not only possible, but necessary, because these conflicts benefit nobody but the programmers who encouraged them.

At the beginning, however, it can seem like an impossible task. System members who live in the “normal world” are appalled and disgusted and ashamed and horrified by what was done to them and what they were forced to do. Those who were originally victimized by the programmers feel rejected and despised by their own system, which is hurtful at best and doubtless confirms their own personal fears, but which might also be a realization of exactly what the programmers told them would happen in such a case. Either way, with their fears confirmed and the rest of the system rejecting them, they will be all that much more willing to remain in thrall to the programmers, who at least appear to accept and even occasionally approve of them for being who and what they are.

It can feel impossible – but resolution of these conflicts is ultimately no different from resolving a conflict between two individuals in the outside world – with the exception that we, as members of dissociative systems, do not have the option of simply agreeing that the conflict is too profound for resolution. There is no walking away from our selves. Consequently, if a system remains locked in rejection or refusal to accept the truths of all members of the system, then they will remain in conflict, and they will be making themselves miserable at best, and potentially more vulnerable to perpetuation of the abuse as well.

Imagine the scene between two outside people, where one rejects and decries the behaviors or lifestyle of the other – what are the likely results? Fracture of any existing relationship, or severe damage to the chances of creating and building a relationship… anger and resentment on both sides… and often enough, the person rejected can be pushed by that rejection into a firmer or more extreme embrace of the thing that is causing them to be rejected. This reaction can be incredibly damaging to individuals in the outside world, and it is no less potentially damaging or dangerous when it happens within a dissociative system.

If we wish to be free of the programmers’ influence and safe from any possibility of their continued control over us, then these conflicts must be resolved. Obviously acceptance doesn’t happen overnight – but at the very least, it is important that we do not reject outright any other member or group within our systems, no matter how devastating their information or how alien their viewpoint. Rejection will not make them go away, or make their memories not have happened. However terrible it is or was, they are still part of the system, and they still represent an important and valid part of your shared life together.

So in that effort, which is admittedly a herculean one, it can be helpful to remember that, however they come across now and whatever they have been doing in recent times – at one point, there was a child being forced to learn those things, a child being forced to do them. Their current-day attitudes and actions are representative of the heartbreak and tragedy and extreme suffering of your entire system – and they can’t help where they are right now. But somewhere underneath all that, each part of the system holds some vestige of the person you truly are – and change is possible for every member of the system if they are given the chance.

Neither side should be the only one to change or “give up” things – neither side is completely right, any more than either side is completely wrong. Neither should be asked to jump further or faster than they are ready to. But if each side can inch toward the middle point between them, that is the point where balance can be found.

The daily living side of the system can inch toward it by not rejecting – even if they can’t immediately accept. The side of the system that was involved with the programmers can inch toward it by not doing whatever particular thing they do.

The daily living side needs to work toward acceptance – of the system members themselves, not of their activities. The side of the system that had been involved in the programming needs to work toward doing something different – because simply not doing, although the necessary first step, can’t be the only step they take, or it will be a temporary reprieve at best.

The daily living side needs to widen their definition of the self to include and embrace all sides of the system – and the other side needs to widen their definition of themselves, so that they can become more than what the programmers made them to be.

The mind is a truly incredible and incomprehensibly powerful tool. We are living proof of the amazing lengths to which the mind can go, and the even further lengths to which it can be pushed. So don’t sell yourself short by thinking that there is nothing you can do to help yourself. The only thing that will make healing literally impossible is your belief that it is.

Mind Control Programming Basics III: Individuality Survives Programming

One central truth of programming, which all programmers know and work with but which we who were their victims can fail to realize, is that no amount of programming can entirely take the you out of you.

Victims of mind control programming can feel like there is nothing left to them that is truly their own – and fairly so. The point of mind control programming is to submit the individuality of the self and dominate it with an external, somewhat standardized set of controls. In order to do this, it invades every corner of the victim’s self and attempts to recreate the whole in accordance with a set pattern.

And this does work to a degree – but every programmer knows that individual characteristics cannot be completely erased. Of course they would like to erase them, and of course they make every effort to do so as much as possible, but it can never be fully realized the way they wish it could.

What this means for us is, that no matter how intensely or thoroughly we were programmed – no matter how early it started or how consumingly it was pursued – programming cannot take away the individuality we were each born with. Even brainwave programming is unable to completely rewrite the self. Underneath everything that was done to us, each part of us retains some vestige of the individual self we were born to be. A blank template is never truly blank.

Notwithstanding all arguments to the contrary, this is absolutely a true statement.

Personal identity is something that programmers must work around, not something that they can completely remove to replace it with something else. However, they will tell us that they have completely rewritten our selves to their own styling – because whether or not it’s true, they want us to believe it’s true – so they will say it often, and they will plant the idea in many different parts of our systems – and on the surface, when programming kicks in and we find our will and our consciousness completely overridden, we will reinforce that message with our own fearful belief – but it is not true.

Programming can foist false beliefs and unwelcome actions upon us. It can make us betray ourselves and the things we truly believe and genuinely want. But it’s like applying a coat of stain to a wooden table. Even the most absorbent wood, if cut in half after staining, will have a central core where the stain has not managed to penetrate. Likewise, even the most absorbent personalities cannot be fully reshaped by programming. There will always be that base imprint of the original personality to be dealt with. And even if the programmers’ “workaround” is to crush the base personality to dust – dust is still something – the base personality was still there, and the dust of it remains there, an eternal invitation to hope.

There are three basic ways in which programmers work around the personality imprint.

First, they make use of the known personality structure of the individual in creating the programming. In its most elementary form, some examples of this include – if the person tends to be fearful, the programmers will focus more intensely on evoking fear to make the program stick. If the person is stubborn or competitive, the programming will be framed as a challenge. If the person has a particular skill or ability, then this will be used against them. This is usually much more complex than the examples given, but for the sake of simplicity, I think they serve to convey the idea.

Second, if the intention is to create a split whose eventual use will strongly conflict with one or more of the individual traits of the person, the split will be created with more degrees of separation from the core splits. For example, a core split might be subjected to brainwave programming, and then a series of other splits created from that programmed core split, to take advantage of the foundational brainwave programming as well as to get a little more distance from the original self. Core splits can withstand more in the course of programming – they are stronger, less likely to fracture or be otherwise destroyed by the rigors of the programming process – but core splits are also, obviously, closest to the core, which means the original personality imprint is strongest in them. In fringe splits, the personality imprint is weaker and can be crushed, broken, or  made to submit more easily – but it still can’t be erased.

Third, the programmers use the anomalous actions and ideas that they have forced into certain parts of the system to create a dissonance within the overall system. With enough drugs and enough abuse and enough training, parts of the system can be taught to do anything and genuinely believe they like it, or need it, or want it – and these parts and their activities provide the tension of conflict against those who not only need or want completely opposite things, but are unable to understand or accept that any part of their system would want those things.

Prior to any therapeutic intervention, these core conflicts are fundamental in keeping the parts of the system controlled by the programmers isolated and outside of general awareness. The activities and ideas of the system members created and controlled by the programmers are so antithetical to the “system-created” (unprogrammed) members of the group, that the system as a whole is very willing to look the other way and determinedly pretend that those things aren’t happening or don’t exist.

Therapy can bring the existence of these conflicts more into awareness – but if one side of the system remains unwilling to accept the other, this maintains or can even deepen the division between them.

Resolution of these conflicts is essential to healing – and in that effort, it may be helpful to remember that each of the members of a dissociative system does share a basic template of self. As much as the programmers might have liked to strip you of all individuality and remake you entirely as they chose, this was not and is not possible.

No matter how different each system member has become over time and through their own experiences, there is still a commonality between each and every one of part of your system, and this can work to your advantage if you choose to make use of it.

More on that next time.

Mind Control Programming Basics II: The Emotional Roots

The first thing to which most people point as the basic root of mind control programming is trauma. To a certain extent, this is true. The various traumas created by programmers are a key element in mind control training. But – trauma is not the actual foundation on which programming is built.

The difference between trauma and programming is that, in programming, there is an end goal toward which the trauma is used, with the trauma itself being merely a step in making the end goal happen. A trauma alone is merely pointless pain, and even in programming, the trauma itself teaches nothing.

Programming a mind (or programming an individual member of a dissociative system) involves shaping the beliefs and the world view of that mind/member, and then using those beliefs to impress an action or a set of actions. This is applicable to something as basic as a sexual slave or something as complex as a computer system that monitors and controls the workings of the larger dissociative system. There is no actual computer that gets implanted into the brain – rather, there is a part of the brain that is trained to perceive itself as a computer and to act accordingly – and while each part of our mind was separated by trauma and then was subjected to additional trauma in the process of learning, the trauma is not the programming. It is the message learned that is the actual programming.

Trauma is used primarily to evoke overwhelming emotion. The emotion is then used to make the programming, the message or lesson that represents the end goal, stick in our minds with tenacity. The emotional foundation allows programming to overpower any acquired logic, common sense, or other resistive measures we employ against it. The trauma is not the programming, but the emotion it evokes is what gives programming its power.

This might seem like a real nit-picking distinction. Who cares whether the trauma is the programming or is just a step in making the programming effective? It sucks either way, so… why does this matter?

But it is actually a very important distinction to understand if one hopes to approach and undo any mind control programming. It is critically important to separate the trauma from the message, and to understand that, although they are linked, they are not the same thing. They form a chain of progress – each link important, but each separate, and each requiring separate attention. Looking at a single link will not resolve the whole issue – addressing the trauma alone will not address the programming.

The chain of progress is: trauma > emotion evoked by trauma > message or lesson to be learned.

The trauma is whatever it is. For some programming, any trauma would be effective. The more complex the intended program will be, the more the trauma will be tailored to provide specific feelings on which the programmer can build.

The unholy triad of emotion on which programming is built is comprised of fear, guilt, and shame. If you think back on a time when a programmed response was triggered and look at the emotion surrounding the urge or idea or need, at base it will be at least one of these three.

Some programs, or some members of the group who have been heavily programmed as individuals, may operate or manifest with absolutely no emotion at all – but this does not mean there is not an emotional foundation. A program can build on the emotional foundation already in place. An individual may repress their emotions, or hand them off or spin them out to other members of the system, or have a mirror image or twin where one feels and the other does not, or some other means of disowning or avoiding emotion – but the very fact that there is a means in place to handle the emotion is evidence that the emotion exists.

The trick in that case is for the person in question to own their feelings, rather than using the habitual means of disowning them – sometimes this connection of the emotion to the person who owns it is enough to shake the programmed responses loose all by itself. This is because actually feeling what has been pushed away for so long, and perhaps in direct contradiction of what they were told (“you will not feel” is a common, if frequently only implied, message in programming)… feeling for probably the first time in decades, is enough to make that individual stop and think – and thought is the enemy of programming.

Programming is intended to undercut thought, to happen before thought can intervene or to be carried out by members of the system so conditioned to obedience that they never think for themselves. This is why programming relies on the emotional overwhelm caused by trauma. Fear, guilt, and shame can short-circuit our logic and make an end-run around our common sense. These feelings can manipulate us with beliefs that are compelling and unavoidable, despite their obvious lack of rationality. They can make us act in ways that logic and common sense would talk us out of, or they can prevent us from acting even when we know we should, or they can skew our perceptions so we see what isn’t there or fail to see what everyone else can in a situation, subsequently skewing our reactions as well.

Tying programming to primal emotions – so that we are afraid to look at it, let alone touch it, so that we are terrified to speak of it, so that we are ashamed of what we have done and don’t want anyone else to know, so that we feel guilty for things that happened to us or to others and don’t want to admit (sometimes even to ourselves) the magnitude of our own feelings of guilt – this emotional bondage traps us into continued obedience. The emotions can remain powerful and strong even decades after the last time a programmer has worked with us.

But the emotions are ours. They are not the programming. They are our feelings – our fear, our shame, our guilt – which we allow to dominate us because we don’t dare to argue with them or fight them or in any way test their validity – or because we believe we can’t bear to feel them and we are willing to “do anything” to avoid them or make them stop.

And so the programming – the actual message that is protected by our own emotional response – also remains alive within us.

Separate the feeling from the message, and the message can be evaluated for what it is without the emphasis and strength and power that our own emotions have added to it.

Trauma drives home the messages and lessons of programming with emotional strength and force – but we don’t have to let the programming keep drawing its power from us. We are giving it the only power it has – and we can take that power away from it too. If we accept the feelings instead of being willing to “do anything” to escape them, then the threat inherent in the programming (“obey me or else…”) is suddenly an empty bluff.

This is a reframe of how programming is commonly viewed – but reframing programming into an approachable and workable phenomenon that is amenable to change (and it is) is part of what healing involves. Healing is possible if we are willing to look beyond our own assumed limitations and risk the discomfort of changing the status quo.

Discrimen etiamnunc porro.
Hazard, yet forward.
(School motto of Seton Hill College)

Mind Control Programming Basics I: Introduction

It has been in my mind for a while that I wanted to write a series of posts addressing the basic principles of mind control programming. These would address some of the foundations on which programming is based and some of the myths I am aware of regarding how programming works, with the intention of providing some useful general information for those who wish to address any mind control programming in their own worlds.

Life has kept me away from the blog for a few months, but now that I have some free space in my head, I am getting my series underway.

Although there are many groups who use mind control techniques, and each of them have their own unique programming focus, designed to suit their own goals and group philosophy, there are still certain basic principles of programming which apply across the board. No matter the group to which your abusers belonged, no matter the relative level at which they were able to employ mind control techniques, no matter the jobs for which your group was created and trained – these basic principles will still be applicable.

Topics so far on the list are:

• the foundational roots of programming
• internal programmers
• the myth of self-maintaining programming
• factors that contribute to keeping programming in place

Should any reader wish to see a specific addition to the list of topics, I would accept suggestions.

A Lesson I Learned From the Soaps

I don’t have the head space for anything serious right now. All I have to write about are the ridiculous things I think about when I’m not being serious, so I guess I’ll post that.

I was watching my soap opera last night and it occurred to me, I never see anyone on a soap really holding on to their problems. Of course, that might be because they have so many new problems coming up all the time, who has time for the old ones — but that doesn’t make them unique. I have problems coming up all the time too.

My life could be a soap opera — of a particularly dark and depressing variety.

But one clear difference between me and the people on the soaps is, they don’t carry yesterday’s problems forward to make a bigger problem for today.

Tonight, Chelsea doesn’t want her boyfriend coming with her to visit her mom. Is that because Chelsea is remembering that, the last time mommy saw this boy, he wasn’t Chelsea’s boyfriend… he was an accomplice after the fact to Chelsea’s commission of manslaughter? Is she afraid that mommy will disapprove?

(That would be what I was worried about!)

But no… Chelsea and her boyfriend both seem to have entirely forgotten about those dark days when there was a body hidden in the sorority basement and the law was breathing down their necks. For them, today’s problem is all about today.

Now, I don’t normally see anything worth learning in a soap opera, but this particular observation got me thinking.

Obviously there are plenty of things I can’t leave behind so easily (or at all). My past drags on my every present step like a weighted chain. There are memories and conditioning and programming of which I will never be free until I do the work required to make it happen.

But there are also plenty of other things that I hold on to more voluntarily — and completely unnecessarily.

For example, the thousand and one examples of my social ineptitude, starting at about age 5 and accumulating through the 30+ years since then. I don’t even remember the earliest examples of this, except as anecdotes that my mother helpfully repeats at family dinners, but even the ones I don’t remember can become clubs with which I batter my own confidence and self-esteem… assuming I have the temerity to develop any. Or else they are just very effective factors in preventing me from developing them.

And that’s just one example, among the many other unnecessary thoughts, feelings, and memories I collect like an emotional packrat.

And the question is — why? Why do I cling so tightly to these absolutely useless feelings and reactions? I’m not gaining anything from them, I’m not benefitting from them… at best, they make me feel bitter and frustrated and resentful without being able to do anything about it, and at worst, they are means to cause myself a little extra hurt and damage.

So why do I hold on to them? Why are they so hard to let go of?

I really don’t know the answers to those questions — but I do know that I would be better off if I could let go of them — or better yet, if I had never picked them up to hold on to in the first place. Like Chelsea and her guy, it would be better to leave yesterday’s mistakes behind instead of carrying every single one of them forward into today. In this instance (if in no other), I might actually benefit by learning a lesson from the soaps.