In 2014, a Harvard grad student found this blog and contacted me.  “School” was courting and baiting him. The “making friends” (cough, recruitment) team met with him for many months, almost a year, if my memory serves me correctly.

He told me he enjoyed the people, the conversations, the ideas discussed, etc. But when they extended the super secret, it’s-very-important-that-you-don’t-tell-anyone -about-this-it’s-private … just-for-you invitation, he balked.

The required secrecy prompted a Web search and he found Cult Confessions. We batted a few emails back and forth and I suggested that he contact student affairs … he said, “good idea.”

I have no idea whether he followed up – but those of us trained in “school’s” art of  “making friends” know that Boston’s myriad of colleges and universities make for great cult fishing. A Harvard Graduate student would be quite an asset! Maybe I should contact Harvard’s student affairs office…

Opinions?

Big storm today and I am content as a kitty. Why, because I’m finally able to accept my innate tendencies towards introversion, with moments of extroversion. At heart, I’m a gentle soul, whose natural affinities lean towards quiet, and solitary activities — writing, reading, long meandering conversations about deep thoughts (sigh) and emotional experiences, hanging with my guitar, my mandolin, writing a new song, etc.

When I was a “school” cog, I allowed the hallowed halls to hollow out my soul. It told me “we don’t know ourselves … thus, you must trust that those who’ve been doing the work longer, know you better than you know yourself.” The longer my tenure progressed, the more empty I felt and the things that brought me joy, made my life feel meaningful started draining out of me until I almost lost my ability to write.

I call that indoctrination process Cultic Identity Theft. Thank God, I left when I did. My writing voice returned almost immediately — some internal part of me said, “Damn, I’ve been waiting for you to come to your senses. Now I can finally say my piece.”

Today, six years plus years “school”-free, I want to share the silver lining with you. Every day – and I mean Every. Single. Day. I am grateful to have my life back. Because each day that passes between me and my last day of “school” brings me back to my core self with a new appreciation for that core self and a new propensity to protect those essential elements of my identity. Cults thieve identity, fashioning members into one-dimensional cogs in the wheel.

But, you Dear Reader, can always retrieve your true self. It doesn’t leave you; it lays in wait and arrives when you’re ready. And it’s a joyous reunion when you discard the cult self and return home. At this moment, I’m listening to Patty Griffin, one of my favorite singer/songwriters, sing one of my favorite Patty Griffin songs, Making Pies (enjoy), and feeling inspired by it!

Inspiration became a foreign concept during my illustrious “school days” — something that other people got to enjoy. “Real” artists. Not me. Man, it feels fucking great to reject that cult doctrine and return home. I highly, highly recommend it and I hope those of you who are reading this blog, because you’re wondering if you’ve been recruited by a cult, will honor yourself, see the con for what it is and rejoin the real world soon, with a more deeply ingrained appreciation for your essential self and identity, never to let anyone try to steal it from you again.

That’s all. Happy snow day, northeasterners!

Good morning, Readers:

Two things. Given that I woke up at 4 a.m., which is really 5 a.m., let’s start with Funny:

For your TIAD, Trump Induced Anxiety D/O, I offer you, Impeachara …

And now, NOT Funny:

Psychiatric/psychology professionals know Judith Herman’s work. Most read her book, Trauma and Recovery in college, or grad school.  Cultic studies scholars have all most certainly have read Robert J Lifton’s, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism. It is the seminal book. In a recent New York Times op ed, Herman and Lifton teamed up say this about Trump’s demonstrated mental instability :

“…we are struck by his repeated failure to distinguish between reality and fantasy, and his outbursts of rage when his fantasies are contradicted. Without any demonstrable evidence, he repeatedly resorts to paranoid claims of conspiracy… The military powers entrusted to him endanger us all. We urge our elected representatives to take the necessary steps to protect us from this dangerous president.”

Read the rest here:

Then, resist: Indivisible

This is interesting … for those who have been hoping to find a cult, but are struggling, visit:

You may have noticed that our narcissist-in-chief has decided that the media is the “enemy of the people”. Apparently, a component of his “Make America so Great!” agenda. He and his spin-spin-spinsters trot it out. You know the cast and crew — K.A. CONning-her-way, Spicey Spicer, et al. The regime keeps insisting that the president, himself, is our best news source.

I shouldn’t be surprised, but the repeated and blatant disregard for free speech coming from our “president” (oath of office defend the constitution, anyone?) continually stuns me. I asked a history professor friend to weigh in and he said: “Portugal’s Salazar and Spain’s Franco… and of course the Castro boys in Cuba. Manipulating and belittling ‘free’ journalism is a hallmark of dictatorial regimes that truck no criticism.“

When I allowed “school” to slowly funnel my voice and mind into a font of cult propaganda, I experienced first hand the psychological damage inflicted when free speech erodes. The book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism — the go-to guide for cultic-study scholars and clinicians who work with ex-cult members — specifically addresses this: author Robert Jay Lifton wrote: “The most basic feature of the thought reform environment, the psychological current upon which all else depends, is the control of human communication … the totalist environment seeks to establish domain over not only the individual’s communication with the outside (all that he sees and hears, reads and writes, experiences and expresses), but also –in its penetration of his inner life – over what we may speak of as his communication with himself.”

Again, I shouldn’t be stunned, but when I see and hear Trump trolls and minions  mindlessly repeating the latest superficial, and baseless, slogan spewing forth from the White House … well, what can I say. A fairly sizable number of Trump voters believe that George Soros paid the millions of Women’s March protesters.

Hey, George, where’s my check?

This song is penned by brilliant, Boston-based songwriter, Jim Infantino. The video is equally brilliant. I’m gonna shut up, because if you listen and watch, you’ll see and hear that there’s nothing to add.

From Wikipedia: “a form of manipulation that seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or group, hoping to make the target question their own memory, perception, and sanity. Using persistent denial, misdirection, contradiction, and lying, it attempts to destabilize the target and delegitimize the target’s belief.^”

Sound familiar? It should.

Good Morning  Readers:

So much to talk about! But this morning I’m keeping it to a short announcement: Due to a hack job, my fellow evil blogger has now removed the blog formerly known as Standing Up To Sharon Gans and re-posted ALL of its contents here: The Sharon Gans Cult News Report.

You see once upon a time, when the cult was unhappy with your blog, it would follow the lead of the larger, more successful cult, Scientology: hire a hack lawyer and bully you legally. These lawsuits are always absurd. Once I received legal papers from a complete stranger who was claiming that I was the “only one” who could supply the name she needed for another “meritorious lawsuit” against another evil blogger. I had nothing for her big case (Sad!) And now have lifelong, pro bono legal protection from a global firm. (that’s a longer story).

Besides being a waste of money, when “the invisible world” files a lawsuit the plaintiff’s claim becomes public record, i.e. very visible. I guess “school” decided to take a new tact when dealing with the above-mentioned blog. Instead of a hack lawyer, it hired an honest-to-God hacker who did something that suppressed the site such that it didn’t show up on Google searches.

Luckily, a reader realized there was something wrong and brought it to the attention of blog authorities. We thank her for that and carry on. Be vigilant, folks. We’ve got to look out for each other these days!

I raise a mug to your “school”-free life! Be careful out there. GSR