Show notes
In this episode of *Cults and the Culting of America*, hosts Scot Loyd and Daniella Mestyanek Young delve into the complex dynamics of self-sacrifice within cults and high-control groups. Drawing from their personal experiences and extensive research, they explore how cults exploit their members' labor under the guise of a transcendent mission, enforce conformity through appearance and attitude control, and manipulate emotions to maintain control. The conversation also touches on the parallels between cult behavior and practices in organizations like the military and corporate America, offering insights into the pervasive influence of cult-like tactics in various aspects of society. The episode explores key themes such as cults, high-control groups, and the concept of self-sacrifice, delving into how these groups exploit their members' labor under the guise of a transcendent mission. The discussion also touches on the idea of total institutions, where conformity is enforced through appearance and attitude control, and emotional manipulation is used to maintain control over members. By examining parallels between cult behavior and practices in organizations like the military and corporate culture, the hosts highlight the pervasive influence of these tactics in suppressing individual identity and enforcing group dynamics. Topics like cognitive dissonance, patriotism, social control, and the manipulation tactics used by cults are also discussed, providing a comprehensive understanding of the psychological and social mechanisms at play within these environments. Daniella Mestyanek Young's book: · From Bookshop.org Uncultured Autograph: Connect with Daniella on social media TikTok, Patreon, Instagram Youtube Connect with Scot Loyd's social media (TikTok) Daniella's other podcast: Hey White Women **Scot Loyd:** Welcome to the *Cults and the Culting of America* podcast. I'm Scott Loyd along with my friend Daniella Mestyanek Young, and she's written a book called *Uncultured,* which you should pick up. Both of us are cult survivors, and we're working through a list of characteristics that Daniella developed to help all of you, along with us, process and understand our cult experiences, as well as identify cults and high-control groups. So with that introduction, Daniella, which characteristic are we talking about today? **Daniella Mestyanek Young:** Thanks so much for the introduction, Scott. Today, we are going to be talking about self-sacrifice. Specifically, in cults, there's the constant and continual self-sacrifice of the members. If you're just joining us, episode one has the whole list of my 10 characteristics that make up a cult, and we're going through each of those in detail. Self-sacrifice is number four on the list, but it connects very directly to number eight on the list, which is exploitation of labor. **Scot Loyd:** And you've mentioned before that this is ultimately what cults are all about—free labor, right? **Daniella Mestyanek Young:** Exactly. When I heard cult scholar Dr. Janja Lalich say, "Cults are about labor," it broke my brain and gave me a whole different understanding of what I had experienced and why we were doing the things we did. Labor is your one inexhaustible resource. The cult leader is out for power, but the cult itself is about getting your labor. They tell you it's in pursuit of a transcendent mission, which we covered in episode three. In the Children of God cult, our mission was saving the world for Jesus before the end times. In the US Army, it was protecting American interests overseas. These missions are so grand and unquestionably good that they allow the cult and its leaders to constantly pull sacrifice from their members. **Scot Loyd:** You sent me something to read today, and you mentioned a term—quoting Irving Goffman—called a "total institution." I think when we're talking about cults, they certainly qualify as total institutions that seek self-sacrifice to meet their needs and aims through free labor. **Daniella Mestyanek Young:** Yes, exactly. I was trying to figure out this category for like 10 years. In the Army, when we weren't deployed or away for training, we worked a 6 AM to 6 PM schedule and went home every day. It wasn't that culty. But as soon as we went away together, it became culty. I didn't know how to explain it until I heard of total institutions. Total institutions are places where situated people live and work together, separated from the world, with a formal overlay of life. The military barracks or deployments are textbook examples of total institutions. Other examples include prisons, mental hospitals, hospices, communes, or even a rich person's household like Downton Abbey, which I argue makes the royal family a total institution too. When you're in a total institution, your job is to put the group first, to tamp down your own identity. That's the cult experience. Growing up in it impacts your very personality formation, to the point that I was 33 years old when I realized I never got to form a personal identity. That's the trade-off of growing up in a world where you're always second. **Scot Loyd:** I remember growing up in the United Pentecostal Church and going to summer camp, where we were isolated from everyone. Total institutions require people to suppress their unique traits or identity. Being tired and exhausted makes people highly susceptible to emotional manipulation. That's exactly what we experienced at these summer youth camps. **Daniella Mestyanek Young:** That's a perfect example of a total institution that you can participate in without committing your whole life. For the months you're at summer camp, it's very similar to when a military unit deploys for a year. Even in corporations, when you go off together for a weekend or a week at a yearly offsite, it's more of a culty experience than regular work. The removal from the world is a significant part of it. Group norms become much more important and rigid when there's no connection to the outside world. **Scot Loyd:** That became very apparent at youth camp. Even if you weren't familiar with the group's behavior, a few hours at the camp, and you'd be acclimated to the group culture. You wrote something profound about how conformity is rewarded, and any kind of independent thought is punished. Whether it's in the Children of God, the United Pentecostal Church, or even the US Army, you quickly learn to acclimate, conform, and fit in to avoid standing out. **Daniella Mestyanek Young:** Exactly, not standing out is crucial. This is how they start getting you to self-sacrifice. It's not just a side effect of cults and their mission; it's a primary part of breaking you down. The primary part of identity-breaking indoctrination is getting you into a state where you always put the group first without even thinking. In doing so, you're getting rid of everything that makes you, you. This is often achieved through powerful tools like appearance control and attitude control. **Scot Loyd:** Let's talk more about that. A lot of attention is given to exit costs in cults, but you talk about entrance costs, which include the regulation of hair, body size, body coverage, and even underwear. These are high entrance costs that ensure group conformity. **Daniella Mestyanek Young:** Yes, it's like a total makeover. It's funny to me that people aren't more suspicious of this. When someone moves away, gets wrapped up in a group, and suddenly their whole look and way of talking changes, that's a sign. The group enforces conformity because that's how you get everyone doing the same thing. We often stereotype cults as having uniforms, and sometimes they do. Heaven's Gate famously wore the same thing. We think of white robes or the military uniform, which has pages of regulations. It's all about looking like a six-foot-tall, blonde, blue-eyed American male soldier. The further away you are from that demographic, especially in appearance, the more you stand out. And standing out is the number one rule you don't want to break. With appearance control, we almost always see regulations around hair, body size, body coverage, and underwear. Starting with hair, think of the first day in the military—buzz cut. Only the men, though. So immediately, women stand out. It's a moment where they're showing you, "We own you." Hair is so crucial to coercive control. For most of us, we've never seen our own bald heads, so they're exposing the only part of you that you haven't even seen naked. I advise men to shave their own heads before joining the military to have that moment of ownership. Hair control is always about controlling attitude. In the Children of God, for example, you weren't supposed to cut your hair because it was supposed to be a vessel of God's love. It wasn't about the hair; it was about how you were supposed to behave with the long biblical hair. **Scot Loyd:** In the United Pentecostal Church where I grew up, women were also required to wear their hair uncut, often in similar hairstyles. You talk about the emphasis on a bun in the military, a hairstyle that made it difficult for women to do their job, but was still embraced. It wasn't really about appearance but about regulating behavior. Sermons often tied the submission of women to men to their uncut hair. So, you're right—it had very little to do with appearance and everything to do with controlling behavior. **Daniella Mestyanek Young:** Exactly. The cult always gives you a reason for these controls that aren't about behavior. In the military, they say it's for lice control. But shaving heads doesn't get rid of lice, and I've never heard of gender-based lice that don't infect women. Same with beards—they claim it's for gas mask sealing, but then why do special forces guys have beards? It's about appearance. And this extends into regular America through concepts like professionalism. In the Army, the parallel is "standards." The standard is X, and you need to be this to be professional. In the chapter, I quote the Southern Poverty Law Center, which says professionalism is just racism under another name. It's there to arbitrate behavior and make you change yourself to fit a mold. People don't often realize how much work goes into looking "professional," especially for those who don't fit the mold. Women, especially, are taught that hair, beauty, jewelry, makeup—all the things that are controlled—are frivolous. But if they were frivolous, we wouldn't see them being controlled in coercive environments. **Scot Loyd:** These groups are enforcing constructed identities that aren't authentic to who a person is. They regulate appearance to make it easier for these constructed identities to be sacrificed for the cause. You're expected to give up your authentic self for the group. **Daniella Mestyanek Young:** Absolutely. You mentioned the word "arbitrary," and that's my soapbox. In studying groups and systems, I find that any regulation or legislation that's arbitrarily applied is used to oppress the least powerful demographics. For example, the main road outside my house has a 30 mph speed limit that everyone goes 40-45 mph on. The cops aren't pulling everyone over, so it's legislation that's arbitrarily applied. In the Children of God, we had general appearance regulations, but we also had a catch-all prohibition on "looking cool." Fast forward to the Army, where we have hundreds of pages of regulations about appearance, but there's also a catch-all that allows the commander to say, "You look too faddish." It's arbitrary and used to control. It's not operational, but it's about prescribing behavior and demanding sacrifice. Appearance control is about prescribing attitude and behavior, which leads us to body size and body coverage. In coercive environments, they generally want you to be skinny, small. This puts you in a brain fog and is a visual representation of self-sacrifice. There's a hierarchy in America that thin is better, but you're never thin enough. You're constantly striving, and that's what a cult wants—constant striving. Sometimes it's not about being skinny; sometimes it's about being muscular or even large, as we saw in the Twin Flames cult. But it's always about controlling body size. In the military, they want you to be a skinny, tall runner. Body coverage is another form of control, usually requiring you to stay covered. There's a lot of purity culture in coercive control. Cults often use purity requirements, not just in the way we think, but in not putting certain things in your body, soul, or mind. It's all about self-sacrifice. The cult leader, of course, never has to self-sacrifice—they're always exempt. Sometimes the control is the opposite, like in the Children of God, where it was no bras, and girls and women shouldn't sleep with underwear. Shyness was the sin of pride. It's about controlling what parts of your body someone else is allowed to see. I love that Gen Z has decided, "Forget it, our bodies are our bodies." **Scot Loyd:** That's refreshing about the younger generations—they've embraced authenticity as a value. You mentioned body size, and I want to go back to that point. Your husband, reflecting on his time as a helicopter pilot, realized that it had less to do with his skill and more with the perception of his appearance. **Daniella Mestyanek Young:** Yes, my husband was a 20-year helicopter pilot who retired from Special Operations, the elite flying unit created after the Iran hostage crisis went wrong. His job required incredible skill, but he said his career advancement depended more on his being a tall, skinny runner than on his skill. The Army arbitrarily chose runtime as a measure of a good soldier. In the Army, especially for officers, there's this idea of the "elbow gap"—you need to look skinny in uniform. It's not operational; it's about appearance control. It's about prescribing behavior and sacrifice. This arbitrary standard impacts people's careers, even if they're highly skilled. When I started looking at appearance control, I realized how much it affects people. Readers of *Uncultured* pointed out that I had disordered eating, and I realized I'd had an eating disorder for 20 years—first in the cult, then in the military. It's not uncommon for soldiers to leave the military with serious eating disorders because of the pressure to stay small and skinny. **Scot Loyd:** I also recall from *Uncultured* that you were very fast. You tell a story about outrunning a lot of the men. Do you think that contributed to your success in the Army? If you hadn't been as fast or skinny, would you have enjoyed the same success? **Daniella Mestyanek Young:** Absolutely not. I always joked that as a woman, I had to run faster, jump higher, and shoot better than all the men, so I ran really fast. I was a good intelligence officer, but a pretty garbage soldier. But nobody realized that for six and a half years because I was a really fast runner. It's hard to explain, but growing up in high-control groups, you're taught to be the best, and you'll sacrifice anything—your mental, physical well-being—just to be at the top of the group. **Scot Loyd:** That's interesting because even if you believe the rhetoric of the armed forces—"be all you can be"—what you're saying is that a lot of it is perception. You were seen as the cream of the crop because you could run fast and were a skinny white girl, but that doesn't necessarily reflect skill. That should concern all of us if the rhetoric is that we're the best in the world, but it's happening based on perception and old stereotypes. **Daniella Mestyanek Young:** Exactly. Even when it opposes operational success, appearance control is about prescribing behavior and sacrifice. We're demanding sacrifice, and it must be hard, often visibly hard. That's why skinny is such a common standard in high-control environments—it's a sign of self-sacrifice. And then there's underwear control, which is a common theme in cults. In *Uncultured,* I talk about how the uncles in the cult would do panty checks on the girls at night, and it was as creepy as it sounds. I left it in the book because I realized they inspect our underwear in the military too. If they did it in the cult and the military, it's about programming and influence or power and control. Underwear control is a taboo, it makes us feel shameful, and it takes away individuality. In the military, your underwear is only inspected in basic training, but the regulation is there, so anyone could technically ask to see your underwear. The final thing is that if you can convince your members that the mission is so important that even their underwear matters, you've got them. **Scot Loyd:** That's the most powerful point. If something as intimate and personal as undergarments can be regulated, it's not a far stretch to ask someone to give up their life for the cause. You've already given up control of personal details, so the next step isn't that large. And the fact that in 2024, people are still judging others for their clothing choices shows how deep these ideas of control go. **Daniella Mestyanek Young:** Exactly. High-control groups work by sometimes having written clothing requirements and sometimes not, but the message is always, "Don't stand out." That's true in corporate America, government work, and many other areas. After I sold my book and gained some financial freedom, my first thought was, "I'm going to wear whatever I want for the rest of my life." It's a big part of deconstructing from cults. I wear wacky outfits because I want to, and I've realized that nothing happens when I do. It's a way of messaging to yourself that you're in control of your life. It's also a way to signal to others that you're not playing these games and aren't trying to fit in. I really embrace the idea of "Why fit in when you were born to stand out?" after almost three decades of high-control environments. Appearance control is always about prescribing attitudes, and that leads us to attitude control. There are two aspects of attitude control—emotional suppression and emotional evocation. You're not allowed to have any attitude that isn't happy and bubbly. Everything is good, but when you're told to cry, you cry. This is seen in church cry nights or military funerals, where you're expected to maintain military bearing until the taps play, then you can let it all out. Both constant emotional suppression and evocation are ways cult leaders control us. We often continue these behaviors even after leaving the cult. We've been taught that emotions are dangerous, but we don't understand that we need emotional release, which can lead to breakdowns. There's a reason so many of us like sad ballads or country songs—we have this praise kink because that was the music we were allowed to tap into our emotions. **Scot Loyd:** That's exactly what I experienced growing up in the United Pentecostal Church. There were two emotions that were rewarded: exuberant happiness and sorrowful lament. There was no nuance in between. When you got into the real world, your responses were either toxic positivity or inappropriate lamenting. We didn't understand our emotions because they were manipulated in the group. Being tired, isolated, and dependent increases emotional vulnerability and impairs critical thinking, so when you're in these groups, your emotions are manipulated. When you face real situations, you either don't know how to respond or respond inappropriately. **Daniella Mestyanek Young:** It's so hard when we walk away from these groups. I noticed this when I became a parent—I didn't know how to deal with any emotion that wasn't happy or angry. All of this self-sacrifice, appearance control, emotional suppression, and more lead to isolation, breaking you off from family, friends, and even yourself. Sacrifice is seen as a good thing, but it leads to the cult glaze—the look of cult members who are smiling but have a hundred-meter stare or black eyes. It's a constant state of disconnection from your own emotions, critical thinking, and needs. The promised reward is that the group will win, that all this sacrifice is for something. When we leave high-control groups, we have to learn to be more selfish but less narcissistic. In cults, our sacrifices feed our egos and make us feel superior, but we have no idea how to self-care. **Scot Loyd:** In our culture, sacrifice is celebrated for the sake of sacrifice. The death of an American soldier is venerated and deified. I consider myself a patriot, but it can be dangerous to elevate sacrifice without questioning the cause. After 9/11, we saw toxic patriotism, and we stayed in Afghanistan for years because politicians were too scared to pull out and risk the sacrifice of those soldiers being seen as for nothing. But the reality is that if you constantly ask individuals to sacrifice for the group, they will break. That's why I don't think you can have a good cult because constant self-sacrifice ultimately impacts the individual. **Daniella Mestyanek Young:** Exactly. Every organization's goal is to perpetuate itself, but if you're constantly asking someone to self-sacrifice for the group, it's not sustainable. In cults, one of the things you're asked to sacrifice is your own health—physical and mental. Both in the Children of God and the US Army, I saw the demonization of medical care. When you need medical care, you're saying, "I matter more right now than whatever I should be doing for the group." We see cracks in the brainwashing happen during medical emergencies when people realize the cult will let them suffer endlessly in its name. The amount of self-sacrifice you've done becomes its own exit cost, making it harder to leave. Cognitive dissonance comes from cults, where people couldn't walk away even when the apocalypse didn't happen because they had sacrificed too much. This is why I admire you for walking away and deconstructing after devoting so much of your life to your cult. **Scot Loyd:** That's a great point. It's important to educate yourself and understand that you can walk away from these groups. If you keep sacrificing, whether it's your health, finances, time, or talent, it will eventually rob you of your life. That's the tragedy we see too often. **Daniella Mestyanek Young:** These extreme groups want your whole life dedicated to them. As we said when we started, living under someone else's prescribed identity is dangerous for you. But you can walk away, you can make the decision to stop self-sacrificing. In a healthy organization, you should be able to say, "These are my boundaries, and I'm not sacrificing this." However, in most total institutions, cults, and high-control groups, when you decide you're no longer willing to self-sacrifice, it's time to go. The group will usually push you out because they don't want others to realize you can just choose to stop. **Scot Loyd:** Absolutely. Hopefully, Daniella has piqued your interest, and you'll pick up her book *Uncultured,* available wherever you buy quality books. It's a great read. Follow Daniella on social media—she's all over TikTok, Instagram, and has exclusive content on her Patreon page. Daniella, thank you, as always, for a great conversation. **Daniella Mestyanek Young:** Thank you so much, Scott. Please follow Scott too—he's a very interesting person on TikTok. Speaking of self-sacrifice, Scott works a real job all day and then comes here in the evening to help record this podcast and make it awesome. Hopefully, we'll make sure Scott gets enough out of being involved that it's not constant self-sacrifice. Thank you all so much for listening. *Uncultured* is also on audiobook and available at libraries. On Patreon, I'm reading it out loud one chapter at a time, even if you're not a paid subscriber. Lots of ways to connect with us and access our content. We'll be back next week to talk about isolation and how cults separate you from the rest of the world. **Scot Loyd:** I'm looking forward to it, and I hope that all of you will subscribe, leave a rating, and share our podcast with others. Until next time, I'm Scott Loyd for Daniella Mestyanek Young. We'll see you on the next episode of *Cults and the Culting of America.*