- 6 weeks ago
John and Jenny discuss one of the most overlooked consequences of high-demand religious movements: how they reshape the way we form relationships. From trauma bonding and fear-based community to "project-based" friendships and paper-thin trust, they unpack why so many people struggle to rebuild meaningful connections after leaving a cult.
Why does conflict feel threatening? Why is trust so difficult to rebuild? Were the relationships inside the group ever real — or were they sustained by fear, elitism, and shared ideology? Drawing from personal experience in both the William Branham movement and Youth With A Mission, John and Jenny explore how high-control environments distort friendship, marriage, community, and identity — and what it looks like to slowly build healthy, grounded relationships again.
00:00 Introduction
00:31 Why Relationships Feel Strong Inside High-Demand Groups
02:32 Pseudo Community And Conditional Belonging
05:30 Trauma, Fear, And Learning Relationships The Wrong Way
07:35 Group Identity, Culture, And Borrowed Personality
10:12 Whiteness, Rupture, And Why Communities Cut People Off
12:02 Outsiders As Projects Instead Of Friends
16:56 Discovering Real Friendship After Leaving
19:02 Why High-Demand Systems Leave No Room For Outside Relationships
22:04 All Your Eggs In One Basket
25:05 Repair, Apology, And Seeing People As Sovereign
27:24 Healthy Conflict Versus Fragile Bonds
30:39 Social Ladders, Status, And Performative Connection
33:45 From YWAM To Mars Hill And Repeating Intensity
36:13 Marriage, Calling, And Limited Choice In Closed Systems
40:10 Trust After Betrayal And How To Rebuild It
43:31 Guardrails, Compatibility, And Letting Trust Grow
______________________
Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR:
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCGGZX3K
______________________
– Support the channel: https://www.patreon.com/branham
– Subscribe to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBSpezVG15TVG-lOYMRXuyQ
– Visit the website: https://william-branham.org
– Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WilliamBranhamOrg
– Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@william.m.branham
– Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wmbhr
– Buy the books: https://william-branham.org/site/books
Why does conflict feel threatening? Why is trust so difficult to rebuild? Were the relationships inside the group ever real — or were they sustained by fear, elitism, and shared ideology? Drawing from personal experience in both the William Branham movement and Youth With A Mission, John and Jenny explore how high-control environments distort friendship, marriage, community, and identity — and what it looks like to slowly build healthy, grounded relationships again.
00:00 Introduction
00:31 Why Relationships Feel Strong Inside High-Demand Groups
02:32 Pseudo Community And Conditional Belonging
05:30 Trauma, Fear, And Learning Relationships The Wrong Way
07:35 Group Identity, Culture, And Borrowed Personality
10:12 Whiteness, Rupture, And Why Communities Cut People Off
12:02 Outsiders As Projects Instead Of Friends
16:56 Discovering Real Friendship After Leaving
19:02 Why High-Demand Systems Leave No Room For Outside Relationships
22:04 All Your Eggs In One Basket
25:05 Repair, Apology, And Seeing People As Sovereign
27:24 Healthy Conflict Versus Fragile Bonds
30:39 Social Ladders, Status, And Performative Connection
33:45 From YWAM To Mars Hill And Repeating Intensity
36:13 Marriage, Calling, And Limited Choice In Closed Systems
40:10 Trust After Betrayal And How To Rebuild It
43:31 Guardrails, Compatibility, And Letting Trust Grow
______________________
Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR:
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCGGZX3K
______________________
– Support the channel: https://www.patreon.com/branham
– Subscribe to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBSpezVG15TVG-lOYMRXuyQ
– Visit the website: https://william-branham.org
– Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WilliamBranhamOrg
– Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@william.m.branham
– Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wmbhr
– Buy the books: https://william-branham.org/site/books
Category
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LearningTranscript
00:31Hello, welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast.
00:36I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research
00:40at william-branham.org.
00:42And with me, I have my co-host, researcher, and friend, Jenny McGrath, founder of Indwell
00:47Movement.
00:48Jenny, it's good to be back and to talk about relationships, which is an interesting and
00:54I'll admit it's a little bit of a scary subject for me.
00:58But one of the things that we we've kind of touched on this a little bit in the past,
01:02but one of the things that everybody tells me is that when they're in the high demand
01:07group, they really have trouble forming solid relationships.
01:11Yet at the same time, while they're in the group, they feel like some of the relationships
01:16they have are solid.
01:17And when they break over, you know, when somebody leaves, everybody cuts you off, or sometimes
01:23you can just say the wrong thing and that relationship is so thin.
01:26They begin to realize and after leaving, they just recognize that the relationships that
01:32they thought they had weren't real.
01:34Some of them were they felt solid and they weren't solid.
01:38But then after leaving, there's a whole new world because you have lost trust.
01:43You've lost all of the relationships you had.
01:46And some people I've talked to in the support groups just don't even build relationships.
01:52So I wanted to unpack that a little bit.
01:54And I'll admit, I will be walking a little bit outside of my element because this is an
01:59area I'm still working on for myself.
02:02And I'll be a little bit transparent.
02:04It's hard for me.
02:05And we'll talk through that.
02:07But anyway, good to have you back.
02:08And let's talk through relationships.
02:10Yeah, I really resonate with what you're sharing.
02:13I also struggle with it and don't at all consider myself someone who has relationships figured
02:20out.
02:20I often tell my clients, I'm the biggest learner of what I teach.
02:25That's what drives me to learn more about psychology and embodiment and relationships.
02:32As you were talking, I was thinking about a conversation I had 10 years ago with a woman who was
02:39at our
02:40church who was writing her dissertation about teaching math.
02:44And she was talking about communal ways of teaching math.
02:48And she introduced me to this term called pseudo-community.
02:53And it has been a really helpful term for me for understanding this world.
02:59Because at the time, I was actually on staff at a church and I was thinking about leaving.
03:04And my husband and I kept having these conversations of,
03:07are we really ready to lose our community?
03:10And then the conversation shifted to, if we lose our community because we don't go to
03:16a church or a building on Sundays, is that really community?
03:21And is that the type of community that we want?
03:25And it's tricky because while you're in it, this community can feel so strong.
03:30You know, the meal trains are there immediately.
03:34The visiting in the hospital, the praying and financially donating, if you are ascribing
03:41to everything within that ideology and those high controls.
03:46But the moment that you start to deviate, you actually realize how precarious that community
03:51was from the beginning.
03:53Exactly.
03:54And, you know, the community is a big problem when you think about relationships.
03:59As a child, I was growing up in a doomsday cult.
04:02And so when I was making relationships with other children, even though we really didn't
04:08think about the fear in the back of our minds, it was relationships based on fear.
04:12They're constantly talking about the end of the world and things that no children should
04:17ever hear.
04:18That's how I grew up.
04:20But then as I entered into adult, becoming an adult and going through that change in
04:26life where suddenly you're going beyond the mentality of fear, you're going into sort
04:33of an elitist mentality.
04:34We're the chosen ones.
04:36We're the ones who are going to make it through.
04:37All of the other Christians are not.
04:40Why would I make a relationship with the outside world Christians?
04:44Because they're going to die.
04:45Why not make just relationships with these people?
04:49And the sad truth is some of these people I would have never made relationships with
04:54in the first place.
04:55We really had nothing in common.
04:57It reminds me of these movies.
05:00A good example is, say you're watching a movie about 9-11.
05:03The people in the towers, they know the towers are going to fall.
05:07They just watched the other tower fall.
05:09Horrifically, tragically sad situation.
05:12But there were people who instantly bonded for the last moments of their life because of
05:17fear.
05:17That's the reason that they came together.
05:21And we were sadly in that same mentality.
05:24So as sad as I get about things like these tragic events in the movies, that same sadness
05:29applies to every single person who is in a cult.
05:32Because their bonding is really based on things that are so wrong, so horrific.
05:39And yet at the same time, I escaped this.
05:42Then when you leave, now whenever that is lifted, it's really hard for me because all
05:48of my life, for 37 years, my training on how to form a relationship was based on trauma,
05:56fear, and elitism.
05:58Now, I struggle because what do you do?
06:01How do you make a relationship?
06:02How do people come together?
06:04And it is a problem.
06:06It's a problem not just for me, but for many escapees of a cult.
06:10Totally.
06:10Yeah.
06:11I feel like I often use a similar phrase of trauma bonding.
06:16And I have seen that.
06:17I experienced that largely in YWAM, where you're constantly exposed to life-threatening situations,
06:28places, events.
06:30And it produces a lot of adrenaline and cortisol in your body.
06:35And we can get addicted to cortisol and to stress because our body is producing natural
06:43opiates.
06:43It feels good.
06:44It's the state of a high.
06:47And so, it can be really hard then to retrain your body a new sense of normal and really
06:57growing a sense of a new homeostasis that feels boring.
07:03And I talk about this a lot with my clients.
07:05And I've been working on this on my own is how do I grow my tolerance for what I feel
07:13is boredom if I have been so conditioned to be in these constant states of sympathetic
07:20activation?
07:21And it takes time.
07:23And it's hard work to learn how to slow down and move at a gentler pace in relationships.
07:30I never got to experience missions whenever I was in the group.
07:34After leaving, however, I started thinking about just the organizational structure of the
07:40group itself.
07:41We had, I don't know what's the best way to say this.
07:45We had a different culture about us and that cultural aspect that we had, it was really
07:51weird.
07:51It was unique to our group and it was a result basically of the cult hierarchy, the way that
07:59people adopt the themes that were used by the central figure, basically the personality
08:06of the central figure.
08:07In Dr. Stephen Hassan's book, Combating Cult Mind Control, he mentions this a bit, how
08:12you take on the identity of the cult leader and you become a person that you wouldn't really
08:19have become in the first place, which is odd.
08:23You know, and had I known the background of the cult leader himself, I probably would have
08:28never, I know I would have never, ever chosen that identity.
08:33But people who are in this type of group and in this mentality, they adopt the central figure's
08:40persona, his themes, his likenesses, his dislikes, and that becomes part of your relationship.
08:46It's really, really odd when you think about it.
08:49I would have never, for example, I'm a tech guy and a musician, right?
08:54I'm not a hunter.
08:56I have never wanted to be a hunter, but that was part of the themes.
08:59That was the way that the stories were told by the central figure.
09:04That's what he adopted.
09:05And many people who are in the group, they form these relationships around hunting, which
09:11is really kind of funny.
09:12I know that's different from what you experience in Youth with a Mission, but I'm thinking as
09:18an organizational unit, that's what we had in our group.
09:23Now, Youth with a Mission has a different type of organizational group.
09:26They have different themes, different likes, different dislikes, and the way that they take
09:31on the identity of the group itself, of Youth with a Mission, that culture forms a bond,
09:39forms a relationship.
09:40So it's yet another dynamic of relationships that I don't think many people really think
09:46through, especially when you leave the group.
09:48Once you leave, you're no longer part of that dynamic.
09:51You're no longer in a world where that dynamic even means anything to you, yet at the same
09:57time, you're trying to form relationships.
09:59So I guess what I'm trying to say is the cultural aspect plays a huge factor in the relationships
10:06that you make.
10:07And you would have never made some of those bonds in the first place.
10:11Yeah, and it makes me think, and I know some people will have a difficulty with me saying
10:18this phrase, but please stay with me if you can.
10:22I think that this is an important reason to look at whiteness, because a lot of these organizations,
10:29as we've talked about, are primarily white organizations.
10:33And this phenomenon of cutting people off is part of how whiteness operates.
10:43I have spent time with various folks of color in various communities, and that's not to say
10:48people of color don't cut people off.
10:50But to the degree that white people have been conditioned in this hyper-capitalistic sense
10:58of self and individuation, we have both the privilege and the detriment of being able to
11:05just cut people off, where in a lot of interdependent communities, cutting someone off is existential
11:14and physical death for that person.
11:17And so when I was working in northern Uganda, you know, there was people that had been forced
11:23to kill community members as part of being abducted into the Lord's Resistance Army, and they were
11:32doing reintegration rituals with these people to bring them back into community.
11:38And my very final trip to Uganda, I was like, how is it that this community is strong enough
11:46to withstand things like killing and death, and most of the white Christian communities
11:53I am in can't even handle open conflict without that just turning into a complete rupture of
12:00the relationship?
12:02Darrell Bock Whenever I was in the group, we had what I felt
12:06was strong relationships with people internally.
12:09In other words, if we were of like mind, like faith, if we believed the same prophet, etc., we
12:14had these, what I felt was strong relationships, I learned later are paper thin.
12:19But with those outside, it gets a little bit complicated.
12:23I tried to form relationships with people outside, and usually, if they were, they could be Christian,
12:30but if they didn't believe the same way that I did, I would try to witness to them, did you
12:35know God sent a prophet, that kind of thing.
12:37And so, in some ways, I know it's a little bit different than what you had, but in some ways,
12:44that was my mission.
12:45That was the mission field.
12:47So, if you picture me in the mission mindset of what youth with a mission would have, I
12:56looked at people who were outside the group as, I guess, targets.
12:59They were potential converts.
13:02That's a better way to say it.
13:03The people who I would form a relationship was, they were a potential convert.
13:08And if I built up to this, you know, telling them of what I believe, which took a long time,
13:14because we believe some weird things.
13:17When I got to the point where I could finally tell them, hey, here's what I believe, and
13:22I would like for you to believe it too, that was such an awkward conversation.
13:27But yet, at the same time, it was a make-or-break relationship type conversation.
13:33In other words, I would go through all of this effort to make a relationship, and then
13:39if they didn't come to agreement that my views were correct, then there was no relationship
13:45at all.
13:46They were just an acquaintance and nothing more.
13:50And so, the same paper-thin relationships that I had when I was in the group with people
13:56that I thought were strong, they were even thinner to people who were outside of the group
14:01who, you know, looking back, some of those might have been really strong relationships.
14:07And again, I was never in anything similar to youth with a mission.
14:12But in that, I think there's some similarities because if you're on the base and you see outside
14:20outsiders, you see potential converts, well, these are people who, it's kind of the same
14:25way.
14:26They're your target.
14:27If you can form a relationship with them, it's usually around your religion or your ideology.
14:32And so, you know, looking back, I'm so saddened of the relationships that I could have had,
14:39and some of those might have been really strong, long-lasting relationships.
14:43And now I put myself into the mindset of somebody who's on a base at youth with a mission.
14:50As you're going through the period of life when you should be forming strong bonds and
14:56strong relationships, you're instead looking at potential convert targets.
15:00And I'm wondering how that plays out.
15:03So, for you, what was this like?
15:05Yeah, it makes me think about how I've shifted viewing people from projects to sovereign beings.
15:18And, you know, I think about youth with a mission.
15:20It was always a mission.
15:23If someone wasn't a part of the mission, they were a project.
15:26And they needed to figure out the quote-unquote right way to follow God and to hear the voice
15:34of God and all of these very, very particular cultural ways of being.
15:40And so, you know, it turned people that I had spent my whole life with into projects.
15:48And I didn't have just like an open relationship with them to just be with them and hear about
15:55what they were passionate about because what they were passionate about was competing with
16:00what I thought they should be passionate about.
16:03And so, I could never really just rest in being with someone.
16:10And, you know, this is true for a lot of the people I've interviewed as well as myself,
16:14that there was this sense of like, even on an airplane, you should like sit with your Bible
16:19open so that maybe the person next to you would ask what you're reading and it could be a chance
16:23to witness to them rather than like, maybe you're exhausted and you just need to take a nap
16:28on the airplane.
16:31And so, I think then the flip side of that becomes, you become resentful of people
16:36because people get so associated with obligation and compulsory work
16:43that you never get to just enjoy laughing and just spending time with people in a kind of
16:51un-efforting way.
16:54I hadn't really thought about that until, gosh, it was probably two or three years after leaving.
17:00So, my family, we left the group and we started attending regular churches.
17:05And I formed some strong relationships after leaving in those churches.
17:10In fact, we have left one of the churches where I formed one of those relationships,
17:14and yet we still have a strong relationship with members of that church, which is so odd
17:21when you think about where we came from.
17:23But the point that you just made, you know, this un-effortless aspect of it, when people
17:31form relationships, they form relationships because they can both, both sides can sense that
17:36there's something more here.
17:37There's a spark to a relationship, right?
17:40And yet, whenever I was in the group, that spark didn't really exist.
17:45We were coerced into thinking that because we're all of like mind, we must have a relationship.
17:51We had people who, as I said, we wouldn't have normally formed relationships with,
17:56but it was a heck of a lot of effort.
18:00Whenever you have two people that are incompatible with each other and they try to work things
18:06out as friends, there's always this friction that exists.
18:09And I remember thinking clearly, after I started making my new relationships with new friends
18:16in the churches that we attended, there was no effort at all in it.
18:21Like suddenly, we just realized, hey, I like this guy.
18:23And he said he liked me too.
18:26And as a family, we both go together and we will spend time with each other.
18:31And there was no effort at all in making that bond.
18:34And it's one of the long-lasting bonds.
18:37I don't have many of them, but I do have a few.
18:40And the lack of effort tells me that when I was in the group, there was just something wrong.
18:46It was so hard to form relationships with people that weren't quite compatible.
18:52I think that's the best way to say it.
18:54And yet at the same time, so Youth With A Mission is quite a bit different.
18:59It's very high demand from what I can gather and understand.
19:03From our side, many people call it a high demand group because they had demands of you.
19:09But in Youth With A Mission, you were actually, if I'm understanding it correctly from you and
19:13others, you were worked quite a bit.
19:16So high demand for you meant you were actually exerting a lot of effort.
19:21High demand for us meant we had a lot of demanding rules and regulations, boundaries, etc.
19:27We had to keep ourselves into this hyper sense of hyper vigilance on our faith and our belief
19:34sets, and the world around us was evil out to get us.
19:38Thinking through the high demand nature of your group, however,
19:42whatever, I'm wondering how relationships can even form.
19:45You can obviously form it with people within the group, and those have all of the complexities
19:51that we've talked about.
19:52But what about people outside of the group?
19:54How do you even have time to develop a relationship when you're so exhausted from all of the things
20:00that you're doing?
20:01Just in terms of schedule, like you are busy from first thing in the morning until you go
20:09to bed at night, and you have work duty, you have meals together, you have classes, you have
20:16outreach, you have all of these things that you're doing, and then you probably maybe get
20:21the weekend off.
20:23And so there's not a lot of time to cultivate relationships with anyone outside of the base,
20:30even if you are close to people.
20:33It's not that they're necessarily disparaged, and they say, like, don't be friends with people
20:38out of the base.
20:39But practically, the way that the bases operate and the ways that scheduling operates, you just
20:47can't, you really can't have a lot of time.
20:50And even, you know, it was common for people to go to churches, because that's one of the
20:56things, YWAM is quote-unquote not a church, so you are encouraged to go to a local church.
21:03And yet, most of the bases are far from churches, so you have, like, the bases shuttling you and
21:11your group of 10, 15 people to church, and you all walk in together, and then you all leave
21:16together, and there's not a lot of time to really connect with people outside of there
21:23at all.
21:24And then especially, I think, when it comes to community you maybe had before with friends
21:30or family, there's a lot of emphasis on kind of, like, renewal and being a new creation,
21:38and so your family's not going to get it, your friends you grew up with aren't going to get
21:43it, and there are these very, very highly emotional experiences that then sever a lot of the
21:53relationships that you maybe had prior to YWAM.
21:56And so it is this insidious thing that you don't realize until all of a sudden everyone
22:01you're in relationship with is in YWAM.
22:04Yeah, it was the same for me.
22:06I began to realize after I left that all my eggs were in that basket.
22:11In fact, I think that's one of the boundaries that keeps people in it.
22:14If they were to leave, they lose everyone, and that's really the sad part of this.
22:20And why is that?
22:21I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out why did I have friends who were only in the
22:26group?
22:26And I came to realize that, at least for me, I think it was a lot of effort that I
22:34shouldn't
22:35have had effort in making relationships.
22:38In other words, so we had our set of ideology, our set of beliefs.
22:42We believed in the prophet of the last days, all of that stuff.
22:46Other people who were potential targets we could have went after, they didn't believe that
22:53that way, but they were a project we could, we could, you know, help them learn about the
22:59things that we believed, but our guard was always up because what if they suddenly didn't
23:04believe they weren't brought up like this?
23:06And so relationships became, relationships are always effort, no matter who it is, but
23:13it was exceedingly difficult effort.
23:16In our case, we had to not only have the effort of making the relationship and keeping
23:21maintaining it, but we also had the effort of watching to make sure that they weren't
23:26doing anything that required us to break that relationship.
23:29So our guard was always up, our, the friction level was always quite high because people
23:36just simply, they, they didn't, they didn't know that they were supposed to act a certain
23:41way to have, have our enough favor with us to keep that relationship.
23:47So what happened over time, it just became so difficult to create and maintain relationships
23:53outside of the group that I think myself and a lot of other people, we just simply decided
23:58this is too much work.
24:00Let's just have friends within the group.
24:01And I think that's what happens a lot of time.
24:05But I look back at that and it makes me sad because there were some really good people that
24:10I probably could have had a good relationship with through the years.
24:14I left at age 37, look at all of the people that I encountered and could have made solid
24:21friendships with for 37 years, take it a step further, look at all of the family members
24:26that I could have had relationships with.
24:29And while we weren't, you know, in youth with a mission, you're on a base and that's much
24:33more difficult.
24:34In our case, we were in a compound of our mind.
24:38We mentally, we were cutting people off mentally.
24:41We were isolated.
24:41So in some ways, there is some similarity, but it was just so much work to go outside
24:48of that.
24:49And now I look back at all those relationships and I'm sad.
24:53And what do you do with this?
24:56The family members I would love to have spent most of my years with.
25:00I didn't.
25:01But what do I do?
25:03How do you move past this?
25:04Yeah, I think it takes a lot of time to figure that out.
25:11And for me, it's looked like doing a lot of repair work and apologizing to family members
25:20and saying, I'm really sorry that I turned you into a project.
25:24And I'm really sorry that I couldn't just see you for who you are.
25:29And in newer relationships, it has looked like growing my awareness of my mind's agenda
25:38and this desire to fix or save or heal people that I think has been so conditioned in me.
25:46And I think it's going to be a lifelong, I say I'm a recovering white savior.
25:52And I think that that's going to be something that is a lifelong journey for me to really
25:58trust that people are on their own path.
26:01And I think more and more, a big part of relationships is just tolerating the things that we love
26:10and don't love about people.
26:12And there's no one in life that's going to not have particularities that stress us out
26:18or make us frustrated.
26:20And those same people are going to maybe make us cry with love and joy.
26:26And it's that ability to grow our capacity to bear all of it and to know that relationships
26:32are like seasons and we might have different seasons that we have to weather.
26:39But I truly am more and more believing that people are just really sovereign, beautiful beings
26:48and are really trying their best.
26:51I had a therapist once ask me many times, like, what if you believed that everyone is just
26:56doing the best they can with what they have?
26:59And that has been something I've tried to really hold on to.
27:03And that doesn't mean that I don't hold people accountable or responsible for where there has
27:09maybe been harm or rupture.
27:10But I also try to hold nuances and complexities for people might not do things the way that
27:16I want them to.
27:18And that becomes a point of dynamics in our relationship.
27:24Yeah, it took me a while to understand that we had the we had the mindset that to have a
27:30relationship, you have to see eye to eye.
27:32And the sad truth is that most people don't see eye to eye on every single thing.
27:38Opposites often attract that kind of thing.
27:41But people won't have an aligning viewpoint.
27:45And so what happens is whenever somebody detects that there wasn't the they weren't seeing
27:51eye to eye, suddenly there's it's more than friction.
27:55Now you have a reason to sever that relationship.
27:58That's how thin the bonds were between the people.
28:02And I started to realize after leaving that that just doesn't even make sense.
28:07No two people see eye to eye on every single thing and the world would be a very unhealthy
28:13place if they did.
28:14If you had everybody seeing eye to eye on every single thing, there would be no innovation.
28:19There would be no advancing in technology and culture, et cetera.
28:25It takes two people who are in somewhat of a conflict to come to an agreement of how to
28:32work out and resolve the conflict and and become better for it.
28:36And true relationships, very strong relationships will often have conflict.
28:42So for me, that's a concept.
28:44It was a little bit difficult trying to learn that, especially after leaving.
28:49You're scared you're going to you're scared you're going to lose a new relationship because
28:55relationships for us are so far more valuable than to to people who grew up in a normal life
29:02because for us, we you know, we lost every single person.
29:06I can't lose another.
29:07That's the mindset you take.
29:09And so the first time that a conflict arises within a relationship, you're like, oh, my
29:14gosh, my whole world is about to end.
29:16Please, please don't do don't have a disagreement with me.
29:21But the truth of the matter is disagreements can be healthy.
29:24It's all in how you come to a resolution after that disagreement.
29:29So for me, I came to learn that relationships for me, it was a lot of work in a different
29:36way.
29:36After leaving, I had to work on what I viewed as a relationship.
29:41Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of
29:46modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe
29:51movements into the new apostolic reformation?
29:54You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website, william-branham.org.
30:01On the books page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles
30:07Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio, and
30:13digital versions of each book.
30:15You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those
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30:28And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening
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30:40I just thought about the difference of dynamics between people who form relationships in these
30:48high-demand groups and people who are in what I call the normal world.
30:53And I realize that I'm air-quoting normal because I haven't yet found a normal person.
30:58Maybe they exist, but I don't think they do.
31:00Everybody has their unique individual problems, but they all come together in a society where
31:08people with all sorts of different ideas can come together and form solid relationships,
31:14which is something that I'm still trying to grasp because we were in a world where there
31:22was almost forced relationships.
31:23It's really weird when you think about this.
31:25So for me, I'm a little bit out of my element, but we had this weird social ladder that existed
31:34within the high-demand group that did not really exist when I left it.
31:38And whenever we formed relationships, for example, there were those that were holier than the
31:45rest, and you always wanted to gravitate to those people and form a relationship.
31:49So the relationship, it goes beyond complex because instead of just forming a relationship
31:55with people who are in your group because they're in your group, now you've got this ladder that
32:01you try to go up and ascend and form relationships just simply based on what you thought was their
32:06spirituality, not even your own.
32:10So it gets to be levels of complex when you think about it.
32:15Exit this and go into the real world.
32:17There are people that do this in the real world, and they're unhealthy.
32:20There are people, for example, who might be in the business world, and they target relationships
32:25based on how can I ascend the corporate ladder, for example.
32:30Yes, there are people who do it.
32:31Yes, they do well at it.
32:33But in the end, they will probably end up going through counseling because that's not a healthy
32:37way to form a relationship.
32:39You have other people who have a desire to help people, which I'm thinking through YWAM
32:45and trying to think of the intricate details of those relationships.
32:48I know people who will form relationships just because the person is in need.
32:52Is it bad?
32:53I don't know.
32:54I can relate that somewhat to somebody who's in the mission field.
32:57I'm forming a relationship as they're my mission target.
33:01But in the end, is that a true relationship or is that just you trying to help somebody?
33:06So as I'm trying to evaluate how you form a real relationship in the real world, all
33:13of this complexity is overwhelming to me.
33:16I'll just admit.
33:17So I'm trying to decide how do you move forward in this world?
33:22And I have several people who are asking me the same things who have been in this type
33:26of religion.
33:27So as I'm thinking through Youth With A Mission and thinking of my past, I'm trying to think
33:35about just simply the social ladder that was in Youth With A Mission.
33:39How hard was it to make friends?
33:41And after leaving, how different is it from that social ladder?
33:45Yeah, so many thoughts are coming to mind.
33:49For me, it was interesting.
33:52I think I've mentioned this before, is that I went straight from YWAM to graduate school
33:58and was warned in YWAM that my graduate school was liberal and I should be careful.
34:04So to protect myself, I ended up at Mark Driscoll's Mars Hill Church and was there for several
34:12years and it was a very similar dynamic, very high control, very toxic space.
34:21And I found myself, you know, I think it's like the old saying goes, you know, you can
34:27take the woman out of the cult.
34:29It is much harder to take the cult out of the woman that I just kept finding myself replicating
34:36these patterns of being drawn to intensity.
34:41And so whether or not that was an organization or certain relationships with people that maybe
34:49didn't have such a stable sense of self or relationship, I would be like moth to a flame
34:56to those people.
34:56And it would be like, I'm the one who's never going to leave you.
34:59I'm going to be the one who will answer the phone call at 3am.
35:01And I just kept burning myself out over and over and over again.
35:07And so one of the things I've come to see and that I often tell my clients is that we
35:12are relational beings.
35:15And we first actually need to work on our relationship with ourself and our own body.
35:21And I've said before, you know, for many years, I would say my body is a machine and I treated
35:27my body as such.
35:28And so I have had to come to see if I honor my own body as a sovereign, living, breathing,
35:37moving being.
35:38And I start to know what I need, what I like, what I don't like.
35:43And then I trust that I can build relationships and have more space and more mobility in relationships
35:50for people to like and not like what they don't like and what they like.
35:56And there gets to be more messiness and more complexity, but more humanity rather than thinking,
36:03I need to perform a certain way.
36:06And that's why I'm going to keep finding myself in these dynamics with churches or organizations
36:11or people.
36:12The other thing I'm thinking through is simply when you talk relationships, you almost can't
36:18exclude the familial relationships that develop.
36:23There were people who I fully felt were incompatible who got married because the choices of who to
36:31get married is narrowed down, right?
36:34And I know this is something that you've talked about with Youth with a Mission.
36:37You have these people who are, you know, youth who are of age to try to find somebody and
36:43you've got this shallow pool of individuals to choose from.
36:46We had this same exact thing.
36:49And at the same time, we, I don't know if you had this doctrine or not, but they would
36:52take the verses like be not unequally yoked, but they would take this to whole new levels.
36:59You could not be unequally yoked with another Christian who didn't believe like we do.
37:03You could not be unequally yoked with somebody who didn't have the same ideology exactly.
37:08So whenever you consider all of that, now you're forming relationships that are solely based
37:16on your ideology and your understanding of theology.
37:21And what happened was people got married who just really were not that compatible.
37:26They weren't that happy.
37:27And you could tell the couples that weren't.
37:30Fast forward, after some of them leave, the first thing that they do is separate because,
37:35oh my gosh, the only thing holding us together was that group.
37:39And then once I leave the group, I realized I would have never married this person anyway.
37:44What is that?
37:45Is that similar to what you experienced in Youth with a Mission?
37:48Yes, absolutely.
37:51Yeah, I think I've mentioned before there was this tagline that YWAM actually stands for
37:58young women after men or young warriors after women.
38:02There were so many little like phrases that it was the sense of as soon as you do a DTS,
38:09you should be starting to look for who you're going to marry within YWAM.
38:15And it also, what is not maybe as well known, but it was really an undercurrent of the culture,
38:25specifically in certain bases, was that, you know, YWAM is so big on calling.
38:31What is the calling that God has on your life?
38:34But what really the minutia of that was that a man has a calling and the woman is called to
38:41her husband.
38:42And so it led to a lot of resentment, a lot of burnout, a lot of women not getting to
38:50fulfill whatever they wanted to do because they were just supposed to follow whatever
38:56their husband was supposedly called to, which just so happened to be that ladder like you
39:01were talking about.
39:02It's like everyone just seems to always be called to whatever the next role of power is
39:08in the organization.
39:10You very, very, very, very rarely have someone go, yeah, God's just calling me to like take
39:15a sabbatical and just chill for a while.
39:20And so, yeah, it definitely creates, I think, this environment where there's not a lot of choice.
39:31It can feel like choice, but the choice is based on a very limited ability you have to be relating
39:39to people.
39:40And, you know, a lot of times I think that people would get married for ministry opportunities
39:45as well.
39:46Maybe they wanted to start their own base or they wanted to go to a particular place and
39:52the organization says, well, you have to have a partner or you have to be married to do that.
39:57And so people would kind of get married as means to an end to do what they wanted to do
40:03or especially
40:04women to think that they could get maybe more positions of authority.
40:09But then as soon as they were married, actually their own authority got really subverted in
40:15the gender roles of the organization.
40:18One of the most common things that people say whenever they contact me talking about their
40:24journey out of the cults and into the real world and all of the relationships that they
40:30had is simply trust.
40:32How hard it is for them to trust new people.
40:35And it's understandable because if you're in a group that practices shunning and everybody
40:41cuts you off instantly, what have they done?
40:43They've betrayed your trust.
40:45You trusted them.
40:47You had a relationship and suddenly they betrayed that trust.
40:50When you have a mass betrayal of trust, it makes it very difficult to trust new people.
40:56And so when people reach out to me, they say, how do you how do you approach this, John?
41:01I can't trust anybody.
41:04And my response is usually I am the same way.
41:09I know how hard it is.
41:11And yet at the same time, there has to be some sort of an element of trust, because if you
41:17want to form a new relationship and you don't enable your trust in the new relationship, you
41:23really haven't made a relationship in the first place.
41:26So for me, trust is a huge issue.
41:29It's an issue that we've talked about.
41:31It's an issue for pain and trauma.
41:33But as it relates to relationships, it is a fundamental building block of a new relationship.
41:40So how do we take somebody who has gone through this?
41:45Their trust has been violated.
41:47They some people will tell me I will never trust again.
41:51And what do you say to this?
41:53How do you tell how do you teach a person that trust is a good thing?
41:57Betraying the betrayal of your trust was a bad thing.
42:01But, you know, people need to trust each other in new relationships.
42:06How do you approach this?
42:08Yeah, I would say that makes so much sense.
42:10And you're not alone.
42:13And I would come back to I think we can trust people from a safer place when we have more
42:22access
42:23to ourselves.
42:24And if we have been in a world where we have been conditioned to gaslight ourself or deny ourself
42:31or not listen to our spidey senses, it can be really important to work with a therapist
42:37or a coach or learn some resources for trusting your body.
42:42Because not everybody is trustworthy.
42:45And there are people that are incredibly trustworthy.
42:49And so learning to enter into those places from a place of trust of your own body, I think
42:57it is a gentler and unfortunately, maybe a slower process than we often want it to be.
43:04And I think it's part of how we subvert these types of trauma bonding or fear bonding that
43:11we're so used to is like, how do we enter into a bonding that is gentle and kind and slow
43:19and compassionate and kind of like fruit of the spirit?
43:23Like how do we find those relationships?
43:26I think that really starts with tending to our own really good bodies.
43:31Exactly.
43:32You basically show people how you would want to be treated and they will, in return, feel
43:38comfortable around you because that's how they would want to be treated.
43:41It's part of how relationships work.
43:43You find people who are compatible with your way of thinking.
43:47I'm a person who likes somebody who's laid back, casual, doesn't get easily angered or excited.
43:52That's just my personality and I find people like this very, very more compatible than somebody
43:59who's just flying off the handle at all times.
44:02And yet I have friends who that's their life.
44:05That's how they want to be.
44:06So you find people who are compatible.
44:08But as it relates to trust, the thing for me is I keep people on a short leash.
44:14And what I mean by this is I will let people earn my trust, but I will keep guardrails around
44:20them so that if they betray my trust, my world doesn't come crashing down.
44:25And I think really that's the key because when you're in one of these groups and you're,
44:31you find that your trust is easily betrayed.
44:33You find that your relationships, the bonds that held you together are paper thin.
44:39You fear that your new world after leaving is going to completely come crashing down.
44:44And what I argue is try not to put yourself in a situation where that can even happen in
44:50the first place.
44:51Let people earn your trust.
44:53And what you'll find is there are some very trustworthy people out there and there are
44:58new relationships to be made.
44:59Even though I have these struggles, I have made new relationships.
45:03I find people that I can trust and it's a healthy thing.
45:06You, you find relationships that form bonds that are so far stronger than what we ever
45:13had in these groups.
45:14So thank you so much for doing this.
45:16Yes.
45:17Thanks so much for having me.
45:19Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on
45:22the web.
45:22You can find us at william-branham.org and indwellmovement.com.
45:26For more about the dark side of the new apostolic reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion
45:31from Christian Identity to the NAR.
45:33Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.
46:04Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.
46:14Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.
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