Am I Only a "Pseudo Personality"?

for concern over cult-related damage, institutional abuse & psychological problems.
  • Message
  • Author
User avatar

enlightened

ex-BK

  • Posts: 208
  • Joined: 30 Aug 2007

Am I Only a "Pseudo Personality"?

Post30 Jun 2013

There may be light at the end of the tunnel for me and for all of us. Just came across this great article which gives me some understanding and hope. I thought i would share it with you

Am I Only a "Pseudo Personality"?

Enlightened
User avatar

enlightened

ex-BK

  • Posts: 208
  • Joined: 30 Aug 2007

Re: Am I Only a "Pseudo Personality"?

Post09 Jul 2013

See attached file on the Impacts of Cults on Health.

The Impact of Cults on Health.pdf
(51.29 KiB) Downloaded 668 times

The effects of persuasion will be visible to others, and social psychologist Brad Sagarin, Ph.D., identifies nine symptoms family and friends might see in someone under the influence of a cult:

1. Personality changes
2. Dramatic shifts of values or beliefs
3. Changes in diet or sleep patterns
4. Refusal to attend important family events
5. Inability to make decisions without consulting a cult leader or guru
6. Sudden use of a new ideology to explain everything
7. Black-and-white, simplistic reasoning
8. A new vocabulary
9. Insistence that you do what he or she is doing9

One explanation of these symptoms is the development of a pseudo-identity, a new persona the individual adopts to fit into the cult environment.
User avatar

enlightened

ex-BK

  • Posts: 208
  • Joined: 30 Aug 2007

Re: Am I Only a "Pseudo Personality"?

Post12 Jul 2013

I would really be interested to know if ex-bks feel that they have developed a pseudo personality after having been exposed to the BK's and how you might be dealing with this after leaving the BK's.

Thanks
enlightened
User avatar

Pink Panther

  • Posts: 1885
  • Joined: 14 Feb 2013

Re: Am I Only a "Pseudo Personality"?

Post13 Jul 2013

Hi Enlightened,

This is part of what I have come to understand in regards to this topic...

All spiritual paths, "personal development"/"self-realisation" methods are predicated on firstly understanding or sensing that we tend to live out of some inadequate "pseudo" (false) personality to some degree or other. Most of these paths & methods seem to imply there is a specific 'true self", "original self" or "higher self" that is there to be attained - and also implying that, once attained, it's never lost. In the BK case, once attained in one Kalpa, re-attained every Kalpa. But this very notion of a defined/perfected state is itself a false idea, a pseudo-idealism.

There may be others, but I have found only three comprehensive philosophical approaches that are not promising you can replace your (current imperfect) "pseudo" personality with another (future) "true" personality. They describe, in their own different ways, that the deeper endeavour is to realise the nature of self, consciousness and personality are ever-changing.

The three I refer to are the Tao, Buddhism (particularly Mahayana) and Jungian psychology. The last is modern but is premised on the almost Taoi-ist Yin/yYng dynamic that whatever you are "realising" or manifesting and living out now, no matter how honourable, good or adequate, it means that there is another aspect or potential that will therefore be unrealised, unlived, not "honoured" ... causing a seeking for wholeness, or creating a certain tension/stress similar to what is expressed in Buddhism's first noble truth "Bhawa Dhukka".

Our ego mechanism depends on continuity of awareness of what went before - a split second ago or years ago (hence the translation of "smritti" to be literally memory but implicitly consciousness). A certain level of tension & stress is necessary, arising as we try to "get a fix" on the ever-changing world and try to perpetuate that consciousness or sense of self, but it's often no longer relevant,things have changed.

The single certainty is change - large or small, but always change - and Self must change in attunement with it. To think of a 'state of self" - state=static - is to hang on too tightly to a predetermined consciousness and leads to a kind of neurotic personality. On the other hand, to change erratically, without reference to memory of past and current reality, is a kind of paranoia.


These three approaches are all about ways to 'ride the tiger" or to "go with the flow" or explore the "undiscovered Self" - which will forever be changing as Time & events change, so "what I am (conscious of)" has changed, therefore "what I am not (conscious of)" or still to be realised has also changed. That is, it's not a single linear road with steps to be reached, but a dynamic flux of actualities and possibilities.

There is a psycho-emotional instinct to constantly re-balance, the way we constantly adjust our steering ever so slightly even on a straight road. The BK path, like many others, abuses this instinct when, like a bad TV infomercial, it oversimplifies and promises that there is a product, a series of easy steps to become a recognised, certified "perfect self" - and this leaves distorted and abused persons/personalities in its wake.

I suspect that it's an overstretched, psycho-emotional tension desperately straining for rebalancing and wholeness that motivates most BKs to become ex-BKs.

In short, all personalities are "pseudo personalities" to differing degrees, but the ones who suffer most are the ones less open to recognising that about themselves, the suppression by ideology of any instinctive, fluid, changing (maturing) self-awareness.

We are all also, to different degrees, thieves and tricksters, because "personality" is what we present and express to the world. We mask much about ourselves most of the time. A thief & trickster who knows what he is and admits it to himself is better than a one who pretends he is not, always self-justifying his thefts and trickery with all kinds of rationalisations and sophistry.

The BKs' "pure ego" is part of the flim-flam "infomercial" trickery. "Adopt this mask, wear this costume, talk this way, walk this way, think this way, and you too can have success/find peace/have soft manageable hair"".

See here about the idea of the "persona" - I am sure much will resonate with you as it does for me.
User avatar

ex-l

ex-BK

  • Posts: 10661
  • Joined: 07 Apr 2006

Re: Am I Only a "Pseudo Personality"?

Post14 Jul 2013

Pink Panther wrote:The BKs' "pure ego" is part of the flim-flam "infomercial" trickery. "Adopt this mask, wear this costume, talk this way, walk this way, think this way, and you too can have success/find peace/have soft manageable hair"".

Talking about "Walk this way", Steve Tyler is 65 now (Iggy Pop is one year old and Mick Jagger 69). Check them out still rocking and rolling at their age ...

I need to understand the concept of what a "Pseudo Personality" is better. At present it is not clear to me.

Like you, Enlightenment, perhaps, I am also stuck on the idea of what or which the real personality is.

I agree with Pink, BKs make you ask the question "Who am I?" suggesting you don't know and offers you a ready made facade with works within the BK world ... as long as you don't look too close or question. Certainly *that* pseudo personality does not work out in the real world and, on leaving, one needs to start re-learning about life as it is and how to live.

The question then comes to my mind is ... "who do I want to be?".

Life offers us a fairly endless range of options (... which is why I flag up how even grandads live these days).

The BK leaders really have not move that far away from their beginnings. They have created their world and are creating the people they want to occupy it ... how they look, how they act, how they think etc.

A world that supports them without them having to go out and work.

In truth, although they disregard the old Bhaibund ways, a world not much different from how they would have lived as the queens and princesses of Hyderabad and Karachi, e.g. playing court, hobnobbing with the rich and famous, having servants and so on.

When I see BKs although they speak about how "transformed" they are, to me it's surprising how much the same they are. How their personalities have not radically change. They seem to be suffering from severe confirmational bias as to their transformed-ness.

I suppose I called the cult pseudo personality "the mask" ... the facade one puts on to exist within the cult, to conform in order to be accepted, to appear happy even if one was not. I used to defend cults and 'the mask' as something some individuals needed to wear *temporarily* in order to sort out other problems, e.g. family or personality issues, they could not at that time. Now I am not so sure because I don't think cults like the Brahma Kumaris actually do anything to sort out or address those issues.

They just amputate them for the most part ... except, as perhaps Pink might pick up on ... attempting to amputate limbs of one's personality does not work.

I would hate to imagine what growing up in a BK household ruled by distant all powerful but morally suspect Dadis must have been like, even without all the other problems that arose.

The BKs should be paying for your therapy.
User avatar

enlightened

ex-BK

  • Posts: 208
  • Joined: 30 Aug 2007

Re: Am I Only a "Pseudo Personality"?

Post15 Jul 2013

Thank you pink panther and Ex-I for sharing the above.
User avatar

Pink Panther

  • Posts: 1885
  • Joined: 14 Feb 2013

Re: Am I Only a "Pseudo Personality"?

Post16 Jul 2013

ex-l wrote:They just amputate them [personal problems and issues] for the most part ... except, as perhaps Pink might pick up on ... attempting to amputate limbs of one's personality does not work.

I would pick up on it to say that the link I posted below, a short Wikipedia article, goes through some of that, which relate directly to the BK/ex-BK experience and may partly explain why some people transition easily, others not, others revert back.

Be interested to see what you guys respond to from that.

Return to Abuse & Recovery