Mind Control
Guest blogger Rachel Smeeth analyses the parallels between cults and anorexia nervosa and asks: can the mind brainwash itself?
Back when my daughter was very poorly, I watched a TV documentary series about a group of intelligent, fairly ordinary people who realise that the self-improvement programme they’ve been involved in is actually a sinister cult. Some get out, some don’t, and everything turns very dark. At first, their situation felt far removed from my own life. But I soon began to see similarities between the mum on screen, desperately trying to get her daughter out of the cult, and me at home, trying to pull my daughter from the grip of anorexia.
I’m not suggesting that my daughter was lured into a cult, diet club or any other group by some external force. Her anorexia — complete with its bizarre range of delusional beliefs, extreme fears and rigid rules — was being generated from somewhere within her own brain, like a preset computer programme. What I hadn’t realised, until I watched the TV series and then delved deeper, was that the anorexia ‘programme’ seemed to be using many of the mind-control methods used by cults. I hoped that by understanding these powerful methods, I might better understand what was happening in my daughter’s head, and why it was so hard for her to make rational choices.
‘No one ever joins a cult; they join a good thing’ is a well-worn phrase in the world of cult survivors. People who’ve managed to escape will often say that while they did choose to join something at the beginning, that something was never sold to them as the thing they were really getting into. It could be as harmless as a yoga class or a gathering of like-minded, friendly people. Red flags were usually nowhere to be seen, or if they were they’d be explained away or laughed off with comments like ‘Yeah, I know this is a bit daft, but you’ll get used to it’.
Likewise, I can’t imagine anyone in their right mind choosing anorexia. A person may choose to exercise more or to watch what they’re eating, but these behaviours are generally normalised by our society and often applauded. In the same way that a yoga class may just be a yoga class, most people will do these things and not go on to develop anorexia. My daughter was unlucky: she had the biological ‘switch’ for anorexia, and once it was flicked, she was propelled on a hellish journey that she’d never asked to go on. To me, this was less about choice, more about the luck of the draw.
Steven Hassan is an expert on cults and mind control and created the BITE model, which describes cults’ specific methods to recruit and maintain control over people. BITE stands for Behaviour, Information, Thought and Emotional Control. The model serves as a useful checklist for red flags, many of which overlap with the methods and mindset of anorexia. They include: love bombing, making you feel special, deception, rituals, punishment and reward systems, phobic thinking, guilt-tripping, ‘them and us’ thinking, instilling dependency, creating a new map of reality, being told that happiness is not possible outside the group and that there will be terrible consequences if you leave.
In terms of my daughter’s anorexia, it was the extreme phobic thinking that came as the biggest shock. Before the illness, she’d loved eating. It had never been an issue. Then all of a sudden, she was screaming that all food was poison. One caseworker described it as ‘throwing her toys out of the pram’, but this was no teenage tantrum. There was pure terror in my daughter’s eyes, and she clearly believed what she was saying. Yes, her beliefs and behaviour seemed ridiculous, but so too was the notion that she was waking up each day and actively choosing to put on these performances of rage and fear. I have no idea why a person’s brain would create a phobia of food, but that’s what it looked like to me. She wasn’t choosing to be scared; the anorexia ‘programme’ had chosen for her.
But it can’t all be about the pain. If you really want to get people hooked, you need to ramp up the feelgood brain chemicals too. In the self-improvement cult from the TV series, members were taught powerful emotion management tools which one of them described as ‘hacking the brain’. One ex-member described a feeling of being handed a ‘secret potion of understanding’ and there was talk of ‘feeling high’ and ‘floating’. Many were keen to teach these potent skills to others, but first they had to complete a multi-level qualification system. It was gruelling and took up most of their daily lives for weeks, months and even years, but they were spurred on by a sense of being ‘all in it together’.
I can imagine that the ability to instantly summon up feelings of calmness or euphoria must get pretty addictive. But, like with any drug, there was a flipside. Over time the gratification became intermittent and less predictable, making members even hungrier for the highs. The goalposts would also be moved without warning, so they had to do more to achieve the same reward, maybe something weirder or more extreme. Failure or falling short was always their fault and something to feel ashamed about. The problem was always with them, not the system. They needed to try harder, work harder, be better for the sake of the group and its higher purpose.
As outsiders, we might wonder why members of a cult, or indeed someone with anorexia, would stick with a system that was taking up so much of their time and regularly making them feel miserable, ashamed and guilty. For me, it helps to remember the power and sophistication of the conditioning process they’ve already gone through. It’s also worth considering the following:
The ‘sunk cost fallacy’
Someone might think, I’ve devoted five years of my life to this. If I leave now, it means I’ve wasted all that time and effort. They may find it easier to live with themselves if they ignore the pain and plough on, believing that they will eventually succeed and reach their goal.
The ‘frog in boiling water’ analogy
If you put a frog in boiling water, it will immediately jump out to try to escape the danger. If you put it in cold water and slowly heat it up, by the time the frog notices the danger it’s too late. Likewise, people may not notice the increasing danger.
Emotion-stopping techniques
Blocking feelings of sadness, anger and doubt can prevent you from seeing the bad stuff and listening to your gut. Anger can motivate people into taking necessary action.
There’s no time to think
It’s hard to look at the bigger picture when all your time is filled with rules and rituals, managing emotions and making sure that every little thing you do serves the ‘higher goal’.
Sheer exhaustion
Cults use fasting and sleep deprivation to weaken followers, stop them from thinking clearly and make them more susceptible to mind control. Anorexia has exhaustion built-in.
The illusion of safety
Cults offer potent solutions to fears but also amplify and add to them in ways that may not be obvious to their followers, who have been conditioned to trust. This increases dependency and ramps up the followers’ fears about coping outside the bubble.
Loyalty
The act of giving up on the cause by leaving, or simply talking about leaving, is seen as deeply shameful by a cult. Those who’ve left are often shunned.
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Janja Lalich is a much-loved figure in the world of cult survivors, who regularly recommend her book: Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (Lalich Center on Cults & Coersion, 2023). After extensive research into the Heaven’s Gate cult, Lalich came up with the theory that members are led into a state of ‘bounded choice’, in which they make seemingly irrational decisions within a context that makes perfect sense to them and is, in fact, consistent with their highest aspirations. She also coined the term ‘self-sealing system’, which she describes as ‘closed to disconfirming evidence and structured in such a way that everything reinforces the system’. For me, the state of ‘bounded choice’ within a ‘self-sealing system’ captures the anorexia mindset in a nutshell.
Once again, to be clear, I don’t believe that my daughter was indoctrinated by any person or group. But what I’ve learned has opened my eyes to the powerful forces that could be at play within my daughter’s head at any given time, working together to erode her free will and pushing her into making dangerous choices that her rational self would never have made.
It’s been an enlightening and humbling experience, but it’s also given me hope. With persistence, empathy, love and support, people do escape. Every. Single. Day.