When Cults Go Corporate: Coercive Control Explained (Chris Shelton, ex-Scientologist)

In this compelling episode, Richard is joined by Chris Shelton, former Scientology member of 25 years, cult recovery consultant, and expert in coercive control. Chris shares his extraordinary personal journey from being raised inside Scientology to working for the Church for decades, enduring physical and psychological abuse, and ultimately escaping in 2012.

Chris breaks down the mechanics of manipulation, how coercive control shows up in business, relationships, and politics, and why no one regardless of intelligence is immune to being manipulated. A vital listen for anyone interested in the psychology of influence, group dynamics, and self-protection.

Key Takeaways

Cults Are Closer Than You Think  — Coercive control isn't limited to religious groups. 

How Cognitive Dissonance Keeps People Trapped

Information Control Is The Mechanism - Restricting what people can read, watch, or think about is how destructive groups maintain power.

Emotions Are The Achilles Heel — We are feeling creatures who rationalise, not thinking creatures who feel. Predators exploit that gap.

Trust Your Gut And Slow Down — When someone gets you pressured to decide fast, that's a red flag. 

Episode Highlights

Growing Up Inside Scientology — Chris describes how a childhood inside the Church created a sealed worldview where Scientology was simply "normal."

25 Years, $20 A Week — Working for the Church's inner circle meant sleep deprivation, physical abuse, and near-zero pay 

The Moment Everything Unravelled — Gaining unfiltered internet access in 2013 triggered four months of daily reading: testimonials, FBI files, and historical records that dismantled everything he believed

Cult Dynamics In The Business World — From Enron to predatory entrepreneurship, Chris draws clear parallels between cult control tactics and common business manipulation.

Why Smart People Fall For It — No one is too intelligent to be manipulated. Emotional exploitation doesn't care about IQ.

Timestamps

00:00 — Introduction 00:21 — Chris's background: growing up in Scientology 

03:30 — Working for the Church for 25 years 

05:36 — What triggered his exit in 2012 

08:42 — Cognitive dissonance and the process of waking up 

14:30 — Internet restrictions and thought policing inside Scientology 

18:00 — The emotional aftermath of discovering the truth 

21:34 — How cult dynamics appear in business and everyday life 

28:01 — Family fallout and post-cult recovery 

33:38 — Why emotions are our greatest vulnerability 

35:32 — Red flags to watch for: how to protect yourself 

41:25 — Enron and YOLO business culture as cult behaviour 

43:16 — Why three out of four people go along with the crowd 

48:36 — Critical thinking and emotional awareness 

52:03 — Closing reflections

🔗 Connect With Chris

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ChrisSheltonMsc/ 

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF326xyA0QHI7Z5xAwKQDJg

⭐️ Connect And Subscribe

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Production Credit: Edited and produced by @the32collective_ / https://www.the32collective.co/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome to the Business of Thinking podcast. This is the place for high achievers who want more than motivation. They want mastery. Here we skip the surface level talk and go straight into the psychology of high performance.

SPEAKER_03 0:21

Hi, welcome to the business of thinking. My name is Richard Reed, and today I'm joined by Chris Shelton, who is a former uh Scientology member and he's an expert on cults and coercion. Chris, welcome. Hi, thanks for having me. Great to have you on the show. I I know you've got a very interesting background that has led you into this sphere of work. Do you want to tell us a little bit about where you came from and how you've arrived at this point?

SPEAKER_02 0:50

Sure, yeah. I was basically raised in a cult uh as a child. I grew up with my parents having joined the Church of Scientology when I was about three or four years old. And so my upbringing was pretty normal from the outside, you know, house, dog, brother, parents, schooling, you know, in the public sphere and all that grew up in California. Um but Scientology was always in the background and was always part of my life. And uh, we didn't have photos of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard all over the house or anything. It wasn't quite that situation. But all of our friends, all of our connections were Scientologists. And we were very much in a bubble world of social connection, which I didn't really, this was normal for me. This was just how I grew up. So I kind of thought everybody was like this, everybody thought this way, everybody talked this way, and the concepts of Scientology that L. Ron Hubbard uh came up with in Dianetics, and then you know, when he converted it over into a church, the idea that we are immortal spiritual beings who cannot die, that we have, you know, life after life after life, that um if you do bad things, you know, this comes back on you in a really big, significant way, not karma, but akin to it. Yeah. Um, and a lot of very, very wrong ideas, I have to say, about all kinds of life advice and and methods that Hubbard offers through the church that are not just related to spiritual thoughts or or you know, supernatural beliefs, but how to study, how to get along with other people. When you get sick, why you get sick, the spiritual nature of that, that it's not about germs, it's about your spiritual weaknesses that sort of bring about illness and injury and accidents. And so there's a there's a great I'm sorry, it's all encompassing. It's it's totalist. That's exactly the word I was going toward. Is Scientology is not just about something you do, like Christianity, let's say, or even you know, Judaism or Islam, where it's one day a week, maybe you think of, you know, you have holidays, stuff like that. It's a part of your life, but it's not running your life. And Scientology is a totalist system. And so that was the normal I grew up with. So I had some pretty skewed views about a few things uh just growing up. And then right out of high school, I started working for the church. So I I doubled and tripled down on the belief set and uh was very, very committed to it. And so I ended up my background here is not only growing up in Scientology, but then going and working for the church for a total of 25 years after high school.

SPEAKER_03 4:00

And I guess you stuck when you start to see below the bonnet when uh you start to work for them.

SPEAKER_02 4:05

That's right, very, very much. And in fact, once I went down to Los Angeles at the you know, the big blue buildings that people might see if you look up Scientology, that was my home for 17 years when I was part of the C organization, which is sort of the the the tight inner circle of Scientology that really keeps the keeps it going and keeps it running. And so um I was I was physically beaten, I was sleep deprived, food deprived. Like there was a lot of abusive behavior that went on behind the closed doors of Scientology. So, you know, so at the and on the websites, on the, you know, and all of that, it all looks very slick and shiny and nice, but behind the scenes, it's actually what we call a destructive cult. And so, um, so after I escaped from that in 2012, I've spent my life, I've really dedicated my time since then to understanding what happened to me, sharing that information with others through YouTube and through podcasting and through books, and doing interviews like this, and going and getting a degree in um the psychology of coercive control. Because I really, really wanted to understand what had happened to me, what happens to other people in similar situations, cults, human trafficking, domestic violence. We see coercive control all around us. And I wanted to understand it and be able to educate people about it. And so that's how I arrived here today.

SPEAKER_03 5:36

Okay, okay, thank you for that. And and you mentioned 2012 as being a turning point for you when you moved away from Scientology. What was the turning point, or was it a process?

SPEAKER_02 5:48

It was. Uh, leaving a group that you're dedicated your life to is not a one and done kind of moment. There were a series of moments that led to it. It really was a kind of a 10-year process from the very beginning of if something's not right about this, right? Like this initial idea that something really is wrong here. 10 years later, and like I said, a lot of physical and mental abuse uh was sort of required to wake me up and look around and see what was actually going on. Uh, because it was my normal. I thought this was how things were supposed to be. And and everything is rationalized and justified, right? I mean, it's not it's not just abuse for abuse's sake. You believe this is necessary and important, right? Yeah. And once you wake up from that and realize it's not necessary and it's not important, then you have your wake-up moment. And for me, you know, it's often moral dilemmas or moral conflicts that that bring that about. And for me, it was lying. It was realizing that the church had actually indoctrinated me to such a degree that when I interacted with public Scientologists or with the outside world, I was actually percentage-wise, I was I was way over the 50% line in just outright lying to people. Okay. So there's no ambiguity about it.

SPEAKER_03 7:11

It was it was lying. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:13

It was straight up lying. It was, it was, it was twisting the truth. It was what we called dogmatically in Scientology an acceptable truth. If you can't tell somebody the actual truth, you tell them something that they will accept instead. And this is one of the many twists in the thinking in Scientology that get you in a pretty immoral place thinking, but this is what I need to do, because this is, you know, the greatest good for the greatest number. It's that kind of a of an ethics calculus that goes on in there. And but but the but the joker in the deck is that Scientology is always the greatest number. So whatever it is you're calculating, Scientology has to be at the center of that ethical calculation, right? And so everything is justified. And um, that's why it took so long to wake up to wait a minute, it's not at the center of the universe. This isn't the most important thing in the world. And I'm lying to people. Like, you know, it was a it was a series of of wake-up moments. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:23

And and I guess that must be really tough if you've grown up in that and you haven't known anything else, and then you're surrounded by people who were all brought into that idea. I'm I'm guessing it might have been quite a risky thing to voice that. And um and maybe you even sort of question your own judgment um if you raise things.

SPEAKER_02 8:42

Very much so. That's this the term that is used for this in psychology is called cognitive dissonance. And you and you m many people have heard this term now, and it and it and it really describes the noise, the dissonance that happens in your head when you're faced with two conflicting or mutually exclusive ideas or emotions or feelings or or data points, and you can't you can't resolve it. You're like, well, what am I supposed to do about this? And this is very studied behavior. This this comes out of psychology research around people who believe in end times and doomsday scenarios, and then the date comes and they still keep believing. And you're like, that's that's the bit of fun side critical, right? And and so similarly, when you're in Scientology or in a group that isn't really that great, and you're seeing abusive behavior, you're seeing things that aren't right, or you know, you're like, this doesn't seem correct, or conflicting, um, you have to resolve that. And and and how one goes about doing that is uh is very individual for people, and there's no one and done set method for people. It's it's it's a whole process, but that experience is very uncomfortable, and that's and it and that's why we have to resolve it somehow. And we usually resolve it in the direction of you know our moral principles, right? What's the right thing here, right? And we'll figure it out so it makes sense for us and we can keep going on with our lives and think we're good people, right? Everybody does this, yeah, yeah. So so I was doing that too.

SPEAKER_03 10:18

Yeah, yeah. And what what was it like for you when you finally made that decision to step away from Scientology? What kind of reaction did you get from people within that sphere?

SPEAKER_02 10:27

Well, the the group is, of course, a very tight social network. Um, you know, the word cult really is just short for culture, and it's and it's really kind of a group that has its own culture.

SPEAKER_01 10:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:38

And the culture within Scientology, of course, is that you do not question. You you you do not wonder about if you have confusions or problems or issues or doubts or uncertainties about what's going on, you go clear that up because that's a you problem, right? And and you got to deal with that. That's the church isn't at fault for that. Hubbard isn't at fault for that.

SPEAKER_03 10:58

The you know, the current dialogue or debate, it it is what it is.

SPEAKER_02 11:02

Yeah, it's it that's these are not their problem. This is this is your problem, right? And and they will deal with you as though you have a problem. And and so, and of course, all the social, you know, peer pressure and and uh threats and various, you know, the the you you become uncertain about your standing in the group, and you know, and and and people are looking at you funny now and they're mad at you, and you know, and you get kind of relegated to this sort of lower class, untouchable even sort of status within the group. That's where I was for about nine months while I was trying to extricate myself from the group and and do so in the I didn't just disappear one night or go out the back door. My beliefs, the way my belief system sort of fell apart was at first it was that I didn't like the organization, but I still thought the belief system made sense. Okay. And so I wanted to get out of the organization because I saw it was abusive, it was making me lie, it was making me do things I didn't want to do. But the, but I still thought the dogma and the what we called the tech, the technology, that's how we refer to it in Scientology. It's all very scientific. Um so that I thought still had validity, even if I thought the leadership was off the rails, right? You could separate these things. Yeah, yeah. And that was my process. And that's that's a pretty common process for people, is they'll they'll see something wrong in the very fallible human beings around them, but they can still believe in the dogma or the methodology and it's bad anguish and rather than a bad cultural, bad, bad belief system, yeah. Exactly. And so it took a while for me to first separate from the group and get the okay to kind of leave because I wanted to still do Scientology. So I didn't want to be considered a bad person. So that's why I spent nine months jumping through a lot of hoops, uh, you know, doing a lot of gravity. It's enormously powerful, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 13:10

Social stigma and and and and being disenfranchised.

SPEAKER_02 13:13

Yeah, exactly that. That's exactly what it was. And it's because it was an effort to retain me, it was an effort to keep me there. You know, that this is a you problem, and you need to resolve this because we're all on the same page and you need to get on board, right? That's that's the attitude of somebody who's suddenly on the fence or wants to leave. And so um, they have various processes they do to try to keep you. They believe in Scientology that if you want to leave, it's because you've committed sins, basically. Um they call it, they have other language for it, but basically, like I said, it's a you problem. So we're gonna resolve that by getting you to confess all of your sins, right? And they have a whole process for this, and that's supposed to get you to change your mind. Yeah. Um, but after 25 years of this, I was not changing my mind, and I got myself extricated from that. And it was only at that point, and this is now early 2013, yeah, that I was out of the Sea Org and still thought of myself as a Scientologist. But the difference now is that I was out in the real world, real job, real life, and I had internet access, and I did not have unfiltered, unfettered internet access.

SPEAKER_03 14:28

So internet was restricted previously.

SPEAKER_02 14:30

Yes, that's right. And there's thought policing, there's self-regulation because you believe you're made to believe that if you look at information critical of the group, and this is cults 101, they all do this, right? They the it's called it, it's it's it's a kind of information control where they they they they thought police you and convince you not to look at any of the critics or any of the ex-member testimonials or any of the skeptical critical information about L. Ron Hubbard, and so you don't. You you you wall all that off. Yeah, and you and nope, nope, nope. This it would be spiritually harmful for me, I believed, to look at any of that. So I'm not going to. And once they, once anybody anywhere, uh can get you to do something like that, they pretty much own you, right? Because now you can't know or look at or or be part of things that you know you really should be able to look at. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that kind of thing. And this is one of the reasons we call these groups destructive cults, is because they they really do take a you know a bit of a hammer to your life and and mess it all up. And this is one of the ways that they'll do it is by closing you in to what information you have access to. So once I had that taken away, once I had unfiltered access, I'm a curious person. And I'm and I'm very inquisitive, very reader-y, and always have been. And so I dived into Scientology online and started learning all kinds of things that I did not know when I was in. And and that started clarifying an awful lot of why all those abuses have happened to me for 25 years and why the group acted the way that it did and why it was so controlling. It's all built on a bedrock of absolute lies. L. Ryan Hubbard was a pathological liar, and I did not know that. The the the system inside the church, if you're walled into that sort of information fortress, it's it's circular logic and it all reinforces itself. All the all the stuff that that is that it that is real facts that would make you doubt or wonder what's going on, they've taken all of that out of the story. They rewrote all of it. Yeah. And and when you're and when you think that's the reality of things because you trust the church, you'll have a very skewed view. And that was what I had. So once I got the full view, and it took about four months of like daily, oh my God, you know, up until two in the morning, reading testimonials and facts and history and and uh FBI files. And I mean, there's so much.

SPEAKER_03 17:18

Yeah, with the FBI involved, you know, it's uh it's on another level.

SPEAKER_02 17:21

Yeah. I didn't know any of that when I was in, because the church is not about to tell you about any of that stuff. Uh, you know, they they claim L. Ron Hubbard had war wounds from World War II and he fixed himself, and that's the whole basis of Dianetics. Well, it turns out the man never saw a day of combat and didn't have any war wounds. Oh my god, right? And so you can't you can't reconcile these two things, they just can't both be true. Yeah, and once you see that, it all starts falling apart, and that's what happened to me within the first many months of leaving. And once that was done, I was I was done. I was aware.

SPEAKER_03 18:00

Yeah, I can understand that. I mean, on the face of it, it's it sounds like a positive thing to have this great reveal, but I I'm guessing that it could be quite traumatic to suddenly have your whole life structure and beliefs open for questioning.

SPEAKER_02 18:16

It was it's been what 12, 13 years since that happened, and I still don't have the words to adequately describe the emotional turmoil, the the the the anger, the rage of realizing that I had basically been figuratively, I don't, you know, I don't want to go too far with these with these kind of words, but but it's an but it's an accurate word. I was mentally enslaved for 25 years by a group that actively knowingly lied to me and and made me work 24-7. I mean, I was an incredibly dedicated, hard worker, and I was taken advantage of for nothing. I got I got 20 bucks a week, maybe in pay. I was eating crap food, I wasn't getting enough sleep, and I was martyring myself for this cause, thinking I was saving the world. I was really on a roll, I was like, you know, Jedi Knight kind of we're in the matrix and we're fighting the fight, we're fighting the good fight, and this is what I'm gonna dedicate my life to. And then I find out all of it was a lie. I mean, what words am I supposed to use to describe my state there? Rage doesn't even begin to describe, you know, how I was feeling. And I didn't take a hammer to the walls or anything. I decided, okay, I'm gonna tell the truth about this place, right? It's time to expose this.

SPEAKER_03 19:52

You channeled that into the constructive.

SPEAKER_02 19:55

That's right. And that's how I got on that bandwagon of starting a YouTube channel and writing a book about Scientology and kind of breaking it all down. It's not, it's not my story, it's actually a my book is an actual breakdown of the church and L. Ron Hubbard and the history of it and all of it. So um, so I wanted to I wanted to let people know what nobody had told me, you know, about this group and what it's really about. And having had the inside look and having been in there for decades, I I know this better than most people. So it's really kind of incumbent on me that I that I assume that responsibility and and and do that out out here, right? And and in doing so, my views of this have only expanded and my mission has only expanded, right? Because um Scientology is just one of thousands of destructive cults out there. And once you break down the anatomy of it and you really start studying this, which I have done, then you see that it's same, same, same from one group to the next. And really, rather than thinking about cults as some alien, weird, those people aren't human anymore, kind of thing. And a lot of people unfortunately go there. The truth is that everybody in these groups is just as human as you are, and that everything that's going on in those groups is actually regular human behavior just dialed up because of the extremity of the belief, right? People so commit and they're so emotionally invested. And once you learn that, you realize it happens across all of our behavior, businesses, sports clubs. Um, you know, this can happen to you at work, this happens in families. There are family cults, you know. There's they can it happens in relationships. We we often call domestic violence partnerships a one on one cult. Because the because the dynamics of control and behavior are exactly the same as the codependency that a cult sets up. So so that's where my studies have taken me to beyond. On Scientology and just exposing all of these groups out there, religious, business, it's you know, anything, right? They're all over the place.

SPEAKER_03 22:09

Yeah, so I'm I'm really keen to delve into that in in more detail. Before we do that, I I guess I'm interested to know what having left that that will behind, what has that meant for your connections with your family, or I'm assuming are still still involved in that.

SPEAKER_02 22:32

Very much so, yes. Fortunately, and and I'm so lucky in this, um, my parents actually got out before I did. Ah, okay. And they didn't make a spectacular break. They do, they did what we call going under the radar. Uh in the in the JW world, they call it uh physically in, mentally out, right? You look like you're still showing up or you look like you're still there, but you checked out a long time ago, right? And you just don't want to disrupt or or get all the social backlash and all of that. So you just kind of quietly fade away.

SPEAKER_03 23:07

Yeah, we see that in the business world as well, quietly quitting. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:11

That's right. You stop returning the calls, you stop showing up to the meetings and gradually just kind of you know go out the back door. And so my parents did that while I was doubling and tripling down and going in harder. And what did you make of that?

SPEAKER_03 23:25

Because I'm assuming you you knew that that was what they were doing. Or you're not aware.

SPEAKER_02 23:31

A little bit, but because they were doing it in such a non-objectionable way, I was constantly working on them to come come back. You should come to this event. I called my mom all the time. You should come to this new event, you should hear about the new releases, you should hear all the news. And she was very kind of upfront with me of just like, well, I'm I'm interested in this because you're interested in this, but but actually, I just want to have a relationship with you, right? And she would use this is my the brilliance of my mom. Um, is that she would use Scientology principles in conversation with me to to you know show that uh that that that she's somebody I should remain in communication with, not push away and disconnect from. Interested, right? Um, but she was pretty smart and pretty unique in that sense. A lot of people just kind of go over into the disconnect, get away, you know, the kind of thing. Once I had actually left the Seorg and left Scientology behind after I realized everything and sort of publicly came out, you know, in 2014 is when I actually publicly, under my own name, started criticizing Scientology publicly. Um, I had already been declared by the church what's called a suppressive person. They label you, they they actually write a document because Shelton, suppressive person declare, then it's all very formalized. And uh, you're kicked out, right? This is your get out of town, right? Get out of here, you're shunned. And that happened to me. And I lost everybody overnight. Now, thankfully, when I left, my parents were there for me. They were my initial support system to allow me to land safely outside of Scientology. If they hadn't been there, it would have been very, very hard for me to leave. So um, I got a few months of of you know a place to stay. My mom got me a car and I was able to actually get a job and make my way in the world again, but not with any Scientology help. They had they had completely dumped me and I was persona non grata. Because if you're not with us, you're against us. And that's that is again a cult 101. They're they're all like that. Um, and even after 25 years of dedicated service and working my ass off for that group for pennies, um their thank you was you know, a very rude get out of here and don't ever darken our door again, and none of us are ever going to have anything to do with you. And this is my ex-wife, this was friends I had for decades. I was I I was lucky to keep my family, but I didn't keep anything else. It was all taken from me. Wow. What's it like to talk about that now? Well, it's been a lot of years, and I've had a lot of education and therapy, and so I'm not traumatized by it anymore. I believe that I have reached a place where I am recovered from Scientology, but it's really only because I've spent pretty much every day for the last decade, you know, immersed in this stuff. And so I, you know, there's a lot to let go of. We call it onion layers. You you're gonna strip off onion layers because they come off one layer at a time. You can't just do the whole thing at once. And every time a layer comes off, there's usually tears, right? And so you sort of work your way through your own onion layers because everybody's everybody has their own unique experience of what happens to them. The the cults are very uniform, very authoritarian, very, you know, one size fits all and how they deal with people, but every single person is an individual person. And so when it comes to post-cult trauma recovery or therapy or education, you have to tailor it to the person in front of you. There's no one size fits all approach for for that side of it. And for me, it's been a great deal of education because I'm a I'm a real thinking kind of want to figure it all out kind of guy. Yeah, not everybody is, and that's fine. Not everybody has to be, but I but I am. And and I and I do all this also because I try to help explain it to other people and work with them. Uh as a consultant, I work with people post-cult to help them reintegrate and figure out what happened to them. And so so that's been my own process, and I just try to help other people with a similar process.

SPEAKER_03 28:01

Yeah, yeah. And you you mentioned a few other sort of um scenarios in which the same kind of behaviors play out. I guess a lot of our audience are from a uh a business background. Tell us about some of the ways in which this plays out in the in a business environment.

SPEAKER_02 28:17

Oh, very much around um, well, you know, Scientology has a business front group, and they all actually inject Scientology into a business or corporation. They have a whole administrative system. They call it the the the Hubbard um administrative system or the wise administrative system. And um, and so so you can get straight cult stuff injected right into businesses, and it happens all the time, not just with Scientology. Yeah. Uh, there's a lot of scammy stuff out there. And even uh even without the religious element, like Scientology is a religion. Yeah, yeah, we're gonna bring the secular stuff over here. You also have very similar behaviors with scammy entrepreneurship. I I think of somebody like a uh a man named Grant Cardone, who's very, very in the business world. 10x, expansion, expansion, real estate investment, go, go, go, very bro culture, tech culture kind of people. Um, but they're really just modern day Tony Robbins, right? They're sort of scammy, you know, let's use some mental and social manipulation techniques to rile you up emotionally and get you feeling really pumped, and from that place get you to make a whole bunch of really bad decisions, right? Because it's impossible when you're in that state, every cult knows, right? And every minute pre uh human predator out there knows that if they can get you riled up into an excited, what we call an awe state, um, you know, an emotional peak experience, in other words, right? Um, they can get you to to to engage in things that you really shouldn't be engaging in, right? Doing things that aren't really good for you. Yeah. This this is all over the human transformation movement with groups like Landmark Forum, um, you know, which came out of Est, right? Which also eventually goes back to a lot of Scientology. Um, there are there's these And that's massive, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 30:23

And you know, you mentioned Tony Robbins, and he's got a massive following as well.

SPEAKER_02 30:27

Yeah. Exactly. And his main methodology relies on an earlier set of psychological principles developed in the 70s and 80s called neurolinguistic programming. Yeah. And this is a scammy pseudoscience sort of psychological psychology that has sort of uh methods, you could say, for how to read people or how to deal with people. A lot of it is total bunk, but some of it's not. And when you use it and refine it and work it out for yourself, like Tony Robbins has done, and bring in other dark psychology principles of manipulation, then you can appear to be a very friendly, outgoing, um, expansionist, I'm here to help you kind of person, when in fact all you're doing is emotionally manipulating people into mental states where they're not really thinking as rationally or logically as they could or should be. But you get them thinking they are. That's the trick, right? Is it's the trick is always it's it's no real, it's not really a whole lot different from magicians and misdirection. You think this is happening when in fact this is happening. And um, and that's surprisingly easy to do once you actually know how this stuff works and you understand how people work. It's not there's no cheat code to anybody's brain or their, you know what I mean? It's it's it's not that simple. Uh it's not do one, two, three, and everybody will be your slave. It's it is hard work, but if you know how to do it, it's not as hard as you might think it is. And that's what we see in predatory behavior, whether it's Nel Ron Hubbard or a Tony Robbins or a Grant Cardone, right? Um it this and again, this is in the religious sphere, but it's also very much in the business sphere. And so you'll find business consultants and um people who will come in and do corporate trainings um and will introduce, you know, body language experts. Let's talk about those guys for a second. Here's a whole field of pseudoscience. There are there are a few principles that kind of make some sense, but it's not like this is heavily scientifically studied, validated information. It's just wrong to say every time a person, you know, folds their arms and stands a certain way, right? Or, you know, I'm gonna figure out his baseline. They have all this language they bring into it, and I studied him for five minutes, so now I can read him. And it's like, guys, come on, right? When once you know a little bit more about psychology, you realize that yes, you can read somebody's body language, but only if you know that person. It's not these generalized absolutely, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 33:24

Now, I've sort of um I I work as a therapist, is one of the things that I do. And a number of times I've had to pick up the pieces from people who've done these weekend courses, uh often well-meaning, and and they make it far, far worse for people. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:39

That's right. That's exactly right. And it's all about, you know, again, emotional manipulation. We're we're the the the weaknesses in people are not because we're inherently weak or silly or stupid or ignorant. It's just we're emotional creatures and we are driven by emotion first. We like to think because of the way we experience life, that we're thinking creatures who feel, but the truth is actually the other way around. And so a lot of our thinking is in the direction of justifying or rationalizing our feelings.

SPEAKER_03 34:11

So true.

SPEAKER_02 34:12

And we're being led by our feelings, and that is how they kind of get you is you you don't you don't have to manipulate people that way. You can you can reason with people, you can, you know, lead them, and leadership is a thing, and they're there, it is a skill set, and not everybody has it. But there are people who pretend to have it, pretend to be leaders, but really they're just there to scam and get as much money as they can, or influence or power, or sex, whatever it is they're looking for, and then they move on to something else. And and and that's the pattern of this. So whether it's a culty person or some entrepreneurial kind of person or something who's going into businesses and selling them on something they that's do you have a problem, I'm here to solve it for you. And let me feed you all this, you know, weird, manipulative culty stuff. Uh, and it sounds great. And then next week you try to implement it. And as you just said, you you're picking up the pieces while this person has moved on to some other company, and you know, and you're sitting there going, wow, this was a waste of all of our time and money. Yeah, yeah, and sometimes, unfortunately, it can take weeks, months, or even years to figure that out because sometimes people really can be very convincing about what they're doing or selling to you, you know?

SPEAKER_03 35:31

Yeah, yeah. How do we fortify ourselves against that? I guess when you when you start to recognize it's happening, you've got the option to walk away from that, haven't you? But if it but but what are the signs that people can use to to register this is happening and other ways that they can kind of push back on that without being aggressive?

SPEAKER_02 35:48

Okay, cool. So uh obviously one of the first things is gonna be can you ask questions at all? Is this being force-fed to you? Is this you don't get it yet, you have to fully understand this, and then we'll get to your questions, you know, or is this you shut up and sit down and just you know, listen to what I'm saying, right? Any kind of attitude like that is certainly a red flag. It's not an it's not a, you know, there are jerks out there, so it doesn't have to be that it's a full-on cult just because you can't ask some questions, but it's always a red flag if somebody's trying to shut you down, shut down inquiry, shut down skepticism, um, doubts, you know, what about this? What about that? Um, you know, they don't engage with that well. The people in that field, manipulators and predators, uh, want to overwhelm you with information or fire it at you so fast you, you know, you're you that's another technique, right? It's kind of confuse you a little bit. Um it's a great way to get to get people. So if you're feeling more confused than clarified after getting your questions answered, right? Maybe they'll even make a pretense of answering your questions and then they just mess with you the whole time. So so there's so you can watch for stuff like that. In other words, monitor how you're feeling and how you're thinking about presentations or information or situations that you are being presented with. Um, you know, you should always be able to question what's going on. And you also need to know this is uh this is a little bit of homework, it's a little bit of investment on people's parts, but they really need to understand from a business perspective their rights, what they do and don't have the right to say or do, and when they can say no, and when they can say, yeah, no, I'm not doing that. Uh, I'll give you an example, right? There are many, many businesses uh in the met in the last 20 years that have had Scientology brought in through the front group activity. And now this business, this veterinarian office, is going to implement the Scientology management system. And as part of this, the secretaries and the workers and the office staff are gonna go down to the local church and take classes because the boss says you have to go do that. No, you don't. No, you don't, right? You can say that's I'm not going down to some church to take classes so I can work here. That's illegal. You can't force me to do something like that. But people don't know that.

SPEAKER_01 38:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:23

I I've I've consulted with about 10 people over the years who my boss is trying to force Scientology on me. I don't know what to do. And I go, yeah, tell them straight up, I'm not doing this, and you can't make me, right? And if you fire me for this, we're gonna have a problem because this is an EOC suit now, and that's and and lawsuits have been brought against um dentist offices, vet offices that have tried to implement this and force Scientology on their employees. So I so I can't stress enough that no matter what the group or system or thing is that's being brought in, if it seems weird or strange or not going to work for you, you do have rights to say something about that. And and it's incumbent on each person to stand up for themselves. It I I definitely say that knowing how hard it is for three out of four people to do that.

SPEAKER_03 39:15

It is. Most people want it want to please people, don't they? And they want to they want to comply even if they feel uncomfortable, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:21

Exactly. Social pressure is real, it's not just an illusion, it's not just something you're supposed to magically be able to deal with. Um, you know, we are social creatures. But you have to. You you just kind of in today's world, there's so much scammery, there's so much it's a strong word. I you know, I say I'm gonna say authoritarianism, right? Like these kind of tyrannical us versus them, my way or the highway, this is how it is. This kind of dogmatic approach to almost anything is is a set of things.

SPEAKER_03 39:57

I guess politics is becoming even more that way now, as well, isn't it? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:01

It it kind of is. And I only bring it up because it bleeds over into all aspects of our life. Well, that's the only reason I bring it up. I'm not trying to make anything political here, but I think I think we're all aware of the fact that people are pretty riled up ideologically right now, and that causes workplace stress, anxiety, future uncertainty, unpredictability. And when the boss is uncertain and and can't predict where things are going, of course the employees are going to be nervous about what's going on. They don't know where things are going. So, you know, the stability and the certainty and the predictability that our systems and regulations give us are kind of important. And and we can lose sight of that in the short term of no, we need to rip it all up or we need to make such massive changes because it's all so wrong that it's you know, it's restructured from the bottom up. And I'm like, well, really? Do we really need to do that? It's okay to question things like this because a lot of this stuff, as people's anxieties and unpredictability rises, their impulse control lowers, right? They become more desperate, more, ah, what do I do? What do I do? This sounds good, this sounds good. This is an environment that is very, very friendly to scammy stuff, right? And to manipulators coming in and messing with things. So, I mean, you know, here's some ancient history, but uh Enron. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That old saw, right? I mean, the the leadership of that company was so culty. All right, they were operating so much like Scientology does. The numbers were more important than people. You know, the production on a daily and a weekly was, you know, it was you're gonna get fired if you don't get your numbers up like immediately and at once, right? Yeah. And the illegalities and the the sidestepping of every government regulation and every business law point in order to profit, profit, profit, right? And and live for the moment. You know, would the more, I guess I could say in terms of red flags, the more YOLO, you know, your your business attitude is, right? Yeah. Uh and FOMO, too, actually, if I think about it, right? Everybody getting on board the AI train, for example. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's like, what are we doing here, right? People, people in the business world are just as susceptible to fads and scams and being manipulated as anybody else. So the red flags are kind of, you know, what you think they are, right? And and really the problem isn't so much that people don't see it as they don't act on it. They rationalize it away. No, it's not my place. No, I'm not really seeing what I'm seeing. Oh no, I must be something here I don't understand. I should shut up and just sit down and watch. Yeah. But maybe that maybe you should speak up. Yeah. And maybe that's okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 43:03

And I think, you know, even putting this cults to one side for a moment, I think that's something people struggle with, isn't it? Actually speaking up. And sometimes, you know, what seems like a stupid question is the question everybody else is thinking and nobody's got the courage to speak up.

SPEAKER_02 43:17

Exactly. Exactly. And I mentioned earlier, three out of four people have a hard time with that. This is one of the most researched experiments in social psychology. Uh cross culture, across language, across time, right? For decades we've been studying this. And three out of four people in a group situation will go along with obviously wrong things because they don't want to rock the boat. It's it's actually that bad. So that's and I and I cite those numbers so people understand you know, you don't have to be one of those three out of four, right? You could be the fourth person who steps up and says, uh uh, I nah something's wrong here, right? And even if it's just that, it doesn't even have to be you stand up, ah, this is wrong. It just questioned you know, or it's a private conversation even with the boss or something. I mean something you'll feel better for yourself, about yourself, and for your place in the in the group if you do that. Yeah. Right? As opposed to just sitting in the back quietly hoping it all goes away. It sometimes it doesn't. I mean, Enron collapsed and collapsed hard and brought a lot of people down with it and caused an awful lot of harm in the state of California. Um, because a couple people couldn't stand up and go, uh I don't think this is right, you know. So it's those moments that it really does come down to for people. I've been I've watched enough of this, I've heard enough stories, I've interviewed enough people from uh from cult situations, martial arts dojos. I mean, this shows up everywhere. Everybody, anywhere where somebody can have a power trip, you can cross the line over into codependency and abuse. And so those are the things to to sort of be aware of, right? Uh at a personal level is if it's not passing the smell test or the gut test, say something. And the other piece of advice I have that is that is universally workable, it's it's just almost always the case that this is true, is if you're feeling hyped up, riled up, really excited, right? If you get if somebody can get you into that state, don't make any major stuff. Nope. Right. And this is this is and again, manipulator 101. They they they they purposefully get you into that state so that your judgment will be lower, so they can don't think about it, just do it. Yeah, it's classic sound technically don't do it. Listen to your gut, your gut knows. You know, what was the first thing you thought when you walked in this room? I should do it. Exactly, act on it, right? No, that's when they're doing that, that's the time to stand up and go, you know what? This sounds awesome, this sounds amazing, and I'll see you tomorrow. Just slow it down, yeah. All right, and go do something else.

SPEAKER_03 46:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:29

And and get yourself because no matter how excited you are right now, if it's truly the most wonderful thing in the world, it still will be tomorrow.

SPEAKER_03 46:40

Yeah.

unknown 46:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:41

And the next day.

SPEAKER_03 46:42

Good advice. Good advice.

SPEAKER_02 46:43

You can change your state, and if it's still wonderful, it'll still be wonderful. Facts don't change, right? So so this is what we do. And then I can't stress enough, right? That this is the people lose their minds, uh, you know, in the moment, and they're and they're driven to. Uh they're they're they're push-buttoned. Everybody every one of us has emotional needs and buttons that can be pushed. Every single human. There's nobody above this.

SPEAKER_03 47:08

Agreed. Agreed.

SPEAKER_02 47:09

And and I guess, I guess also in terms of um in terms of deception, um anybody can be lied to. And if you believe it, that's how they get you. I mean, uh, you just have to fall for one person lying to you about a cute a few key things, and your life could be like it could be a crossroads moment that you're not even aware you're having. Yeah. I wish I had known when I was 17 years old being recruited into Scientology about all the things I'm saying right now.

SPEAKER_01 47:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:42

Because that's exactly how they got me, and how they get people generally with recruitment is they'll is they is they get you all riled up. And um, and that's never the place to be making important life decisions. So I made decisions at 17 years old that I had absolutely no business making because I was made to feel that I was the most responsible, most able, most incredible, most, you know, superhuman 17-year-old ever. And I was gonna be this amazing, you know, contributor to this group, and all these adults were were just love bombing. This is the term for this, right? Love bombing me. And I fell for it, hook, line, and sinker. And my entire life took a left turn to Albuquerque at that moment, you know. So it can really be, you know, you don't even necessarily know when it's happening to you how important some of the decisions you can make, right? So I I again I just put all these cautions out there to get people to just think twice. It can really make a difference.

SPEAKER_03 48:46

So it's so important. One final question before we wrap up. Um, I I don't know if this is true or not in terms of the your experience and research, but I've read things that suggest that some people are more susceptible to joining cults. Is that true?

SPEAKER_02 49:01

I should say everybody could join a cult. It all depends on what buttons are being pushed and whether they are buttons that you're gonna respond to. You are not going to outthink it. You're not gonna be too smart for it, you're not gonna be too stupid for it. There, any human being is susceptible to being manipulated. This is, I mean, this is what we do all day, every day, right? Babies do it to parents, parents do it to kids, teachers do it, you know. I mean, what we're all doing it to each other all the time in terms of how we, you know, are trying to get other people to go along with things we want or not go along with things we don't want. Yeah, this is this is happening all the time. Um, so there is nobody immune to being manipulated or I guess that's important to know, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 49:49

So we don't get complacent.

SPEAKER_02 49:51

Oh, very much so. I say these things because I'm trying to sort of knock some people off of a little bit of a of a conceited high horse they can get onto. I'm too smart for that, I'm too this, I'm too that. I gotta tell people, you know, honestly, after all the things I've seen and all the people I've spoken with, some of the brightest, most intelligent people you will ever have anything to do with fall right into it. Um, and they fall into it, and we talk about how they fall into it because they didn't think it could ever happen to them, or they weren't looking for it, or they didn't think about what was actually, you know, right in front of them, uh, because their emotions took over. And this is why I stress emotions versus logic.

SPEAKER_01 50:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 50:36

Um, they're not really two different things in your brain, but you we experience these kind of thoughts differently. And so uh it's important to know that emotions are our Achilles' heel. And and if you have emotions in an emotional life, you can be manipulated with them. So it's important to know that about yourself, not to think of yourself as a weak person, an ignorant person, or anything like that. Just you know, uh we can be pricked and we can bleed, we can be manipulated and we can be moved around. It's it's that order of truth. It's not about how weak you are, it's not about that at all. It's just it's about being about using critical thinking skills, about knowing about your emotional state, and about being aware of that all the time so that people when somebody's trying to manipulate those things, you see what they're doing. Then it doesn't work. When you're aware you're watching the magician and you know how he does the trick, it's not so amazing. Yeah. You know, and that's that's really the the the tricks are pretty simple actually, too. The the way they get away with it mostly is that is that people don't see it for what it is or they don't suspect what's happening to them. So um it's not their fault that they're manipulated, of course. It's just we can do better.

SPEAKER_03 52:03

Yeah. Yeah. Chris, this has been absolutely fascinating. Really enjoyed our talk. Any any final thoughts for people before we finish up for today?

SPEAKER_02 52:14

I I just hope that people will take this information to heart with the with a degree of humility. And hopefully this will spur people, some folks, to learn more about this. There are so many resources out there about critical thinking, about emotional intelligence, about our psychology, about our emotional life. I mean, there's some really championship work that's been done in the last decade in the neuroscience and psychology and psychic psychiatric fields to figure this stuff out. And they are figuring it out. This isn't, you know, mysterious, hard to understand stuff anymore. It used to be. Um, but you really can get a grip on it. And and just knowing a few basics can save you so much heartache. Um, so I think that's what I want to leave people with. Is is hopefully all everything I've said here will only compel you to want to know or learn more. And uh, if I've done that, then I've done my job today.

SPEAKER_03 53:13

Chris Shelton, thank you so much. It's been fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 53:17

Thank you very much for having me. This is the business of thinking. Mastery doesn't end here. See you in the next episode.