Shunning, one of the most abusive practice of high-pressure groups, is often the most obvious sign that a group is abusive. It tears families and communities apart, forcing many to choose between their faith and their loved ones. Whether it is called Shunning, Disconnection, Ostracism, or De-FOOing, the harsh reality of alienation ensures that those who leave the group are cut off absolutely, often losing their entire community – friends, relatives, and their complete support system.

For one woman in Michigan who had left the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the strain of losing her community was too much, and, struggling under the weight of the shame her abusers had taught her to assume, she drowned the family dog and shot her husband and two adult children, before turning the gun on herself. According to family friends, Lauren Stuart and her husband had left the organization because their children wished to attend college – something the Jehovah’s Witnesses strongly discourage – and she wished to pursue a modeling career. Because she could no longer be a member of the group in good standing, former friends ignored her, looking the other way when seeing her in town, refusing to speak with her or acknowledge her presence. In a small community, such treatment can make life intolerable, and although the Jehovah’s Witnesses have claimed in court that shunning is a “personal choice” and never absolute, their own internal convention videos show a harsh reality, where parents are coached to ignore their own children if they are disfellowshipped.

Although details in this case are still forthcoming, it is clear that such tragedies will continue to happen whenever people are shunned: this is not the first incident of a Jehovah’s Witnesses committing a murder-suicide in reaction to shunning: in 2001, Christian Longo murdered his wife and three young children in response to his expulsion from the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and in 2014, another Jehovah’s Witness father in South Carolina murdered his wife and children before committing suicide. Sadly, the Watchtower is not the only organization that practices this most cruel form of undue influence.

Our friends Robin and Mike of What’s Up Watchtower, themselves ex-Jehovah’s Witnesses, have produced an excellent video discussing the case in depth; it is a deeply personal subject for them, as they have lost their own families to the evil practice of shunning. Also, our friends JT and Lady Cee of Ex-JW Critical Thinker have interviewed Joyce Taylor, a close personal friend of the Stuart family, herself a former member of the group. Both videos are thoughtfully done and provide compelling listening.

At Open Minds, we believe that all people should be able to practice the faith of their choice, or not practice, as their own conscience and beliefs dictate – without the threat of losing their friends, their family, and their community.

The cruel practice of shunning – ignoring a family member or friend on the orders of a group – is a surefire marker of an abusive group or situation. And yet, the Jehovah’s Witness organization persists in using this harmful method of undue influence to emotionally blackmail their adherents to stay in the bubble-world of their organization.

In this insightful article from the BBC, survivors discuss how they have been alienated from their families – one young woman brutally thrown out of her home by her own father – for being “wicked” in the eyes of the organization. According to a representative of the Watchtower quoted in the article, a member of their group is to be shunned if he or she: “makes a practice of breaking the Bible’s moral code, and does not given evidence of stopping the practice.”

But according to their policies, these criteria apply to a woman not willing to continue living with an abusive husband; many former Jehovah’s Witness women tell of how they have been shunned by their families, simply for divorcing an abusive spouse. In this group, where “male headship” is one of their policies, a woman cannot divorce her husband unless either of them has engaged in adultery and is not sufficiently “repentant.” And, although, according to the same Watchtower representative: “violence … is strongly condemned in the Bible and has no place in a Christian family”, survivor groups are full of women who, when they were beaten by their husbands, report being  counseled by elders merely to be “better, more obedient wives,” with absolutely no action taken by those elders against the abusive spouse.

Shunning is also the inevitable fate for those who are homosexual, those who accept certain kinds of blood transfusions in order to save their lives, and anyone who thinks to question the policies of the Watchtower, or, indeed, dares to question whether or not the Governing Body who dictates these rules is, as they claim, the sole voice of God on Earth.

When an organization can hold the power of life and death over its members and even tear apart their families for the “crime” of disbelief, then, no matter what its purported views, it is a destructive, abusive group.

When a predatory pseudo-religious group demands that their members give you the silent treatment after you’ve abandoned their beliefs, it can really hurt. I should know, as I’ve experienced the distress of mandated shunning from my parents and siblings. Please see exhibit “A”, the essence of the message my mama sent me.

When the shunning started, I felt like I’d just been sucker punched in the pit of my stomach and the nagging ache would come and go at the most inopportune times.

Going back in time to 1964, at age 20, I walked away from my family’s utopian beliefs as Jehovah’s Witnesses, with their many rules and restrictions. I made my escape after spending 2 years at the world headquarters for JWs in Brooklyn, NY.

After leaving, my parents, siblings and JWs that I knew treated me with tolerable respect for the next 17 years. But in 1981, shunning was mandated for the first time from headquarters toward people like me. It was a manifestation of Watchtower’s undue influence and framed <gag> as an act of love for me and their god Jehovah.

Had I known in advance how the-pretending-you-don’t-exist experience would affect me, I would have learned more about emotional blackmail. For some people, the debilitating pain from shunning can last a lifetime, when not wisely addressed.

If only we had been able to read Bonnie Zieman’s new book, Shunned: A Survival Guide. In this superbly written easy-to-understand exposé, she elucidates on how our nervous system can and will react to this inhumane experience with the fight, flight or freeze response. While it didn’t happen to me, some victims are catapulted into a state of chronic alarm, even contemplating and committing suicide.

In her ground-breaking book, Bonnie meticulously explains how a person can manage the isolation, loneliness and grief caused by shunning. Not only how to cope with this cruel punishment, but how, if necessary, to rebuild a meaningful life after mandated desertion and repudiation by all of one’s family and close friends.

If you are being shunned, are terrified about the thought of being ostracized, know someone who is being disconnected, or are curious about this method of blackmail, you will be rewarded by reading this book. For me, the highlights of the read were:

• What not to do when being shunned
• How to deal with people who shun you
• How to manage the worst effects of shunning
• How to bounce back from cult dehumanization
• The need for finding a friend like Bonnie’s Mary
• The magic and menace of our brain’s mirror neurons
• How a brain can rewire itself after a traumatic experience
• Strategies and brilliant research on how to activate the ventral vagus nerve

Bonnie’s book is much more than an outstanding recovery guidebook. She makes a strong case for why we need to enforce and change laws about mandated shunning from predatory groups. This form of undue influence must be stopped now!

PS – I prepared the title and opening remarks for this blog to grab your attention. My only concern about using the words the silent treatment is that shunning is much more than that. For someone being shunned, they may well think: “I’m going through much more than the silent treatment. I have been erased, demonized, considered dead, abandoned, deserted, etc. etc.” If you’re that person, I want to apologize, because you’re absolutely right.

 Coercive groups and relationships are all around us  – from domestic abuse and pedophile grooming, to human trafficking and terrorist radicalization – millions of people worldwide are trapped in a web of undue influence, coerced to act against their own best interests.

Sadly, although these people remain caught up between false hope and real fear, most outsiders cannot see the elaborate web of coercion, and assume that the web does not exist, believing that the thirteen-year-old being prostituted to multiple men has “chosen” that life; that the woman staying with an abusive husband could leave if she really wanted to; that the cult member who believes his guru controls the weather is “stupid”; or even that the middle-aged couple who refuse contact with their nonbelieving children are simply “bad parents”.

Undue influence is designed to be invisible to outsiders, so those not in its grasp look for other explanations for the bizarre behavior they see. Because of this, a mass of dangerous misconceptions has arisen, myths about coercive control that need to be debunked. Here are some of the worst:

“If it was really so horrible, they’d leave.”

How much would you sacrifice to save the world? If you knew that, simply by denying yourself some comfort and happiness now, you could help all lifekind to ascend to a new level of enlightenment, wouldn’t you do whatever was demanded of you? Most cult members are convinced that they are working for the betterment of humanity, and through the lens of their faith, what we would see as “wrong” becomes their “right”, harm becomes help, and even murder can be explained away – what is one human life, compared to the fate of the entire universe? Even without the trappings of an afterlife, political extremists can readily contemplate suicide – or genocide – if it means creating a “better world” for their children. The fascist and communist movements of the twentieth century proved this conclusively. As Hannah Arendt said, the surprise was in the “banality” of evil: ordinary people committed atrocities because they believed in a purified world.

Many trapped in a coercive situation – especially those suffering domestic abuse – cannot see that there is anywhere else to go. Janja Lalich calls this bounded choice: whether through exhaustion, misinformation, threats, or a combination of these and other factors, those inside the prison of belief cannot see their options, least of all the option to escape.

“I would never …”

This unhelpful phrase is the bane of all survivors of high-control groups and relationships. Otherwise well-meaning friends and relatives seem determined to tell us that they would never fall for such nonsense, not realizing that they, too, could someday be vulnerable enough – or unlucky enough – to be trapped in a controlling relationship. Unfortunately, the probability of being seduced into a coercive situation has little do with who we are, and much more to do with changes to our everday relationships and routines: first-year university students away from home for the first time, seniors who have lost a spouse, or those seeking a new interest, income stream, spiritual path, or social outlet are all prime targets for manipulative people and groups.

“They must be stupid/ emotionally needy/ gullible.”

 Even in support groups for cult survivors, this phrase runs rampant – someone will mention some point of the cult’s credo they still believe, and others will pile on judgmental refrains: “You must be stupid if you believe that!” Even after years of describing the exact processes of manipulation used to ensnare people into high-control groups, popular vlogger and OMF Advisory Board member Chris Shelton still receives comments on his YouTube channel saying: “You couldn’t be all that intelligent if you were in a cult.”

Friends and family members of survivors speculate that those who were trapped must have been “emotionally needy” or just “plain stupid”. In reality, well-adjusted individuals – often with high levels of education – can and do join cults: Aum Shinrikyo (of the Tokyo sarin gas attacks) and Heaven’s Gate recruited computer programmers, heart surgeons and other intellectuals – the Rajneeshis were called the “PhD cult”; emotionally well-balanced people can be seduced by traumatizing narcissists into long-term, abusive relationships. Like those proclaiming “I would never …”, people who believe this myth have missed the important point – that coercion can happen at any time, anywhere, to anyone, given the right combination of circumstances. Indeed, those who are most confident in their invulnerability are among the most vulnerable. It is safer in this world to realize that we can be tricked.

“All religions are cults/ it’s just another religion.”

Espoused by “New Religious Movement” scholars and atheists alike, this is perhaps the most unhelpful fallacy of all. Whether they choose to ignore the coercion and maintain that those in a high-control group enjoy not having freedom or autonomy, or condemn all religions as equally coercive, such blanket statements only cloud an already highly complex issue. Comparing all religions to destructive cults is like saying that all marriages are abusive – it’s not only a vast over-simplification, it’s simply not true.

While some level of control can be found in any “mainstream” church, temple, mosque, or synagogue, it does not compare with the high levels of control found in a destructive religious group. This thinking also dismisses the reality of the high-control groups with no religious trappings, such as political groups, therapy groups, multi-level marketing scams, gangs, and human trafficking rings, or the many situations where coercion is wielded without the slightest spiritual pretense. On the other side, there are plenty of “new” (and old) religious movements which are not abusive – it is the coercion, not the belief, that is objectionable to those who love freedom. If we help people to think more clearly and to understand the manipulation of emotions, they can make their own choices about their beliefs: autonomy is the goal, not an imposed belief system.

“It’s their choice.”

No one chooses to be abused, degraded, or tortured, physically, emotionally, or spiritually. Those in the clutches of manipulative people and destructive groups did not choose to become the pawns of their captors; undue influence, coercive control, gaslighting, emotional blackmail and other forms of manipulative pressure are in play, bringing otherwise sane people to believe the impossible, to ignore their friends and family, to hide abuse, to lie, cheat, steal, even murder or commit suicide – all from a lack of choice. From the wife who lies to friends that she “just fell”, to parents allowing their children to die for want of a blood transfusion, from the cult operative setting up a “hate page” full of lies about a critic, to the gang member who murders someone from an opposing group, people commit acts against their own self-interest every day – convinced, hoodwinked, and mentally bludgeoned into compliance through a web of fear, lies, pressure and undue influence.

To free society from the plague of undue influence, we must eradicate this fog of misinformation and disninformation that clouds the subject. We should gently correct those who believe them and point them to the evidence. Those of us with experience should speak out about our experiences without shame or embarrassment. The truth is it can happen to anyone, and we can only prevent that by educating the world about the reality of undue influence.

“Humans are tribal. We need to belong to groups. We crave bonds and attachment, which is why we love clubs, teams, fraternities, family.”

But the groups and tribes we belong to can also make us much more vulnerable to manipulation by narcissistic leaders, which is what Amy Chua’s well-researched and timely book, Political Tribes, is all about.

“The tribal instinct is not just an instinct to belong. It’s also an instinct to exclude.”

“Once people belong to a group, their identities can become oddly bound with it. They will seek to benefit their group mates even when they personally gain nothing. They will penalize outsiders, seemingly gratuitously. They will sacrifice, and even kill and die, for their groups.”

Getting specific, Chua warns us that terrorism is above all a group phenomenon: it’s a murderous expression of tribal politics. To understand how group dynamics can so twist an individual’s psyche, she states: “Groups not only shape who we are and what we do; they can also distort our perception of objective facts.”

Members of terrorist and fanatical religious groups don’t become killers or shun family and friends overnight. “They are typically drawn in through a gradual process of socialization, indoctrination, and radicalization—with group identity and dynamics playing a critical role at every juncture.”

J.D. Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy, praises Chua’s book with, “Political Tribes is a beautifully written, eminently readable, and uniquely important challenge to conventional wisdom.”

Other reviewers of the book say it is a clarion call, a page-turner and a revelation that will change the way you think.

The book definitely reads like a cannot-put-it-down encyclopedia with fascinating and expertly-researched information about group dynamics, our tribal instincts and how easily people can be manipulated in a group environment.

Two masters of tribal politics, Chua asserts, are the late Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and America’s Donald Trump, both unlikely political victors with similar personality types.

We will conclude this post with a Friedrich Nietzsche quote in Political Tribes, “Insanity in individuals is something rare—but in groups . . . it is the rule.”