Rachel Bernstein

speaker

90 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Apr 2025 last heard Apr 2025

Rachel Bernstein’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Nobody Should Believe Me · Case Files 15: Everyday Cults with Rachel Bernstein · 10 Apr 2025 podcast

And it's different for everyone. Also, timing plays a role in this. The age of the person, if they are still in their lives feeling isolated.

they don't have a lot of other people and so they're going to go to the people who they know like better the devil you know than the devil you don't um one of the things that can happen too is if you have been made to feel so vulnerable in your life and you see this people who were raised in cults people who are told and taught that left to their own devices, their life is going to fall apart.

They need someone to guide them. They need someone to tell them. They need someone to be the decision maker for them. So they give that over. And that's a whole other form of gaslighting that can be very handicapping for people. If someone has gotten that message that they really are fragile people,

and that they are not able to function without someone at the helm and kind of taking the reins in their life, then they're gonna feel more prone to staying connected with this person who had a very strong will over them and called the shots. It's also true that there are a lot of people

who even after they've been tremendously abused, have so much compassion for the person who abused them that they may have wound up in the hospital many times, but if somebody says something negative about the person who abused them, they'll come to their defense.

That has to do with that person's conscience, but I think also how much self-concept they have, like how much they feel that they have the right to be angry about And to hold on to that, because also with a parent, if you just stay angry with them, then you're also saying, I'm willing to lose them.

I'm willing to not have them in my life because if I don't love them, then I don't have them in my life. So that means that you're also needing a child to be ready for abject loss at a young age, which they may or may not be ready for. And because who is going to fill that space? What's also true is that sometimes the hope of a parent changing doesn't go away.

And so when you see that your mother or father has engaged in something like this. You hope that once they see what they've done and it's been made clear that they're going to apologize, they're going to say something to you that helps affirm for you that they really feel bad, and then you can move on and have a relationship.

And I think the hope of that for a lot of people doesn't ever go away, and it keeps them linked to this other person in the hope that they get it. So there are a lot of reasons why people will stay connected. What I think helps people is when they develop a sense, I think, of real courage, it often comes from a sense of confidence. I feel able to be in the world without this person.

In fact, I'm going to be more able now without this person. This person... may have loved me in her or his own way. But it was that their love turned out to be a poison to me. So I can't accept it. And I can't have them in my life.

But I can still maybe appreciate the time that they made me lunch and appreciate the time that they did whatever they did for me, because I don't want to throw it all away. So I can hold on to parts, like people also who leave cults. I had a whole community there, or I learned this skill, or I had a relationship with God, or whatever you felt. And I don't want to have to throw that away.

And you don't. You don't have to throw it away. You can hold on to those pieces while still keeping yourself distant and safe from the person and their disorder. And if you can also see that you can really detest the disorder, and you don't have to detest the person, so that you don't have to ask...

of them to be these hateful people in order to, in order to break free, that it can be both and that they can love this person, but really know that they need to keep themselves very far away from the disorder. But that person is wrapped up in their disorder so that they really physically.

And I think just in terms of being able to be accessible, even by phone, they have to keep themselves separate. But that they don't have to be they don't have to feel hatred for their parent almost to give them that allowance. that they can have complicated feelings at the same time. And that would be expected.

But I think surrounding that person with community, with parental figures, with family is really, really important. And yeah, giving them permission to have the gamut of feelings that might be happening simultaneously, like the anger and the guilt and saying goodbye, et cetera. And the, I'm so glad I'm free, but I'm also experiencing loss at the same time.

I think people don't know that they can feel all that at once and it's okay.

Yeah, I think it's a really lovely thought that they need that. They need kind of what we kind of call a glide path, something that will make it easy for them to come back in. Because one of the things that sometimes keeps people aligned with the abuser is that they don't feel like they have anywhere else to go.

They do have the sense that they've burned their bridges outside of this relationship. And so they might stay there for longer because of that. So if you then let them know or the word gets out, even through podcasts like this and other times that you might talk about it, that it really is never too late to be able to have insight. It's never too late to suddenly feel brave enough to really see.

And it's never too late, I think, to change your mind. Because it could be that, like with your brother-in-law and anyone else involved in these situations, they weren't ready to see it. They didn't have all the information. And the reason they didn't have all the information was because they weren't willing to look at a lot of the information and really take it in and really absorb it as truth.

So even if it was presented still, it wasn't really presented to them because they deflected it. And then they can at some point say, now I'm willing to look as torturous as that is, but I need to do that. And I need to do that for my child. Then, yeah, they can really, I think, reach out. And it would be such a shame in that moment if when they're reaching out,

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