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Wow. I’ve been on this journey, learning about abuse and psychology, since I was 11. It’s been around 12 years since then and I always discover and learn about something new in your videos, still. Also, thank you for sharing your story ❤ It is much appreciated. I have had issues with revealing my abuse and talking about it with others irk, but videos always help. The part of the video where you talk about watching online content for a validation of the fact that others will not silence or deny these behaviors… is so real!!! It inspires me to do the same one day. To share one related part of my life, I am a grad student in psychology. I would love to keep pursuing this and begin to make videos that help out others on a rational and emotional level, just like you do! Bravo :)

Guess we need to teach kids that it may be okay to be gay, but there's also alternate view that it's not and both are ought to be shown as equal. Teaching children morals is not an indoctrination, It can be if child is discouraged from asking questions, but thats not inherent to religion. I asked my cathesesis teachers a lot of questions and they encouraged it, it made me grow in my faith and see why my religion is true and why others are false.

I look forward to see polish subtitles added, aside from just providing automatic translations, in future films.

Thank you for pointing this out. The issue of us being created in gods image is a HUGE hole in the theology of yahweh.

I have been imagining what I would say to my ex many times a week for the past 11 months. I hope that this video can help me. My therapist told me to tell this spectre of her that it doesn't control me, but it just keeps coming back. I'm going to cease engaging with it completely now. I hope it goes away.

I love your videos, and I know this one is old, but my god the mixing is horrible. My ears nearly bled from the noise when Jupiter started rotating

I'm beige rocking my mother, a narcissistic religious abuser. As she could not get to me anymore, she started to use my kids to hurt me. We can not move away from her yet (we don't live in the same house, but close enough) and, my kids know her behavior is wrong, but it is still a stressful situation.

I've watched this video so many times. I'm very happy to know I'm not alone, and I'm not crazy.

As someone who has had no religious indoctrination, no real doctrines to speak of, no abuse, only love, your videos are still of immense value. Both for understanding those who have had trauma, and to understand the reistance to normbreaking behaviour, and not judging people for norm breaking behaviour. 99% of the time, when someone is shamed for norm breaking behaviour (that’s not harmful) it’s to defend their own behaviour. Understanding that their attack on your behaviour is not in fact an attack, but a defense of their own makes it much easier to deal with. Both in terms of not being angry with them, and in understanding how to get them to accept the norm breaking behaviour. If you’ve never experienced this you don’t have to go as far to break from your religion, change gender or anything huge like that. Simply go vegetarian or vegan and notice how people around you, without you saying a word, starts to justify eating meat and sometimes even go as far as to state how annoying vegans are for pushing their way of life in their face. There are so many norms we are not aware of until they are broken and people freak out trying to defend the norm.

Me smugly pointing out WW2 was just tribalism and both sides were actually one and the same.

Beautiful composition ❤️

And this, to me, is the modern medical system assisted by the pervasive use of technology.

So tribalism is just a result of too much information for most people to want to process?

I'm so sorry❤ Also, thank you for the video. This was great.

This is the thing that always gets me. Is that toxic religious people know certain behaviours are bad but because they didn’t learn critical thinking skills they don’t know the very logical and material reasons as to WHY it’s bad. So because that added layer of understanding is missing if they are having a bad day or a moment of doubt or whatever there’s really nothing of reason stopping them from doing it. For example they might understand in a very surface level way that stealing is bad because “the bible said so.” but because there’s always push back “BECAUSE I SAID SO. DON’T TALK BACK.” when kid ask “why” they don’t know that stealing is bad because people don’t get paid for their hard work of creating or purchasing that product. and if they don’t get paid for it then they might not make rent. If they don’t make rent then they might lose their home!” So if a toxic christian is having a bad day and doubts jesus then they might actually go out and steal. Because they never really thought about the consequences of stealing other than the fact that God frowns on it.

So my father act a little different, and I always try to change his thought in the belief I will change it, so always like to tell him rational story's and how should he act, but irony is and it's so so weird he always act in the same way and speak like he is changed person and when I see him doing this, I just say f**k😂🤯, like for example he is a poet and he wants fame so I would say like may be fame is not for everyone and u can live ur life best even without it, he will agree with me but sometimes later he would say I don't want fame but do every silly things to want fame, sir can u make a video for this psychological disorder ..😅

I'm only 5 mins in but I have never heard anything as powerful as this in all the decades of searching for answers. I will have to do this in small chunks because my heart is pounding and the tears are tearing at my eyes.

21:52 'CULT' hahaha, nice one L

This is a masterpiece. Thank you for the work that went into it, @TheraminTrees.

Yo..the content on this channel is liquid gold!

You are truly one of the greatest resources on the internet for this kind of thing. So measured, so moving, so honest, so evenhand. I am so grateful that your content is here.

I've taken to re-watching TheraminTrees every year or so just to refresh my brain. It's amazing how insidious religious indoctrination is.

Seems that is what the state is doing to the people

I just want to point out that it took a tremendous amount of insight and courage to break the chain of intergenerational abuse. It ended with you both. You and your brother rose from the ashes like a phoenix. I have always deeply appreciated your content and how thoughtfully, compassionately, and logically you share your journeys to help others liberate themselves too.

thank you so much

This video saved my life.

Thank you

Asa former Jehovahs Witness who endured physical abuse from my father, an elder, thank you BCG for your bravery though I did not endure the trauma you did, the abuse and pain of being disassociated was something that's never been acknowledged before. Thank you to this channel for covering this from the bottom of my heart thank you.

when a popular religion does it it's accepted, but when an obscure cult does the same things it's scary

i lost it when i saw people whose reasoning for so many things is "well basically because god". one guy in my college just stopped doing anything in class and when i asked why he said that material and physical isn't important and the spuritual and afterlife is what we should be worrying about

I hate to be THAT guy but this reminds me of that annoying avatar the last airbender episode where Aang is stuck between two tribes that have been arguing for thousands of years. It was funny at the time because I thought it was ridiculous. No sane civilized place acts like this. But now I’m an adult and I’m like “woh I’m right in the middle of all of it.”

The point about a lack of forgiveness in the absence of an apology or making amends being portrayed as a moral deficiency is a good example of the fallacy of the courtier’s reply. The insinuation is that the target has a primitive, childish, atavistic view of morality and the more enlightened, mature and compassionate approach is to “just forgive”. It’s often coupled with an assertion that this unilateral, unconditional forgiveness is necessary in order to avoid being mired in resentment for the rest of your life , or that you also act that way/act in ways that are equally bad. Neither of these assertions are true. The people who advocate this approach are misguided at best and in league with the abuser at worst.

I really love how you present the references as little visual books!

I’m an ex christian that turned atheist for awhile. I guess I’m still technically atheist but I prefer the word secular now. Because frankly the atheism sphere I joined was the extreme opposite. I escaped christianity to get away from bigotry and dogma but it was so weird because when you dig deeper into the atheist culture the extreme ones are just as bigoted ands dogmatic. I found my head spinning realizing I had ran into the exact same problems I wanted to get away from! So when you talked about splitting extremism and the fact that a lot of these problems are often human problems it made me happy. I’m more toned down now. I’m less obsessed with religion, politics or what “other people” are doing or thinking. I’m so much more balanced and I make friends more easily now. I never knew that clinging so hard to these world views was over shadowing my personality to the point that I had become unbearable to be around! But I didn’t know any other way of life because my entire family’s personalities were based around their religion or who they were voting for. I guess a lot of ex religious people fall into this trap because there’s a lot of atheists still carrying these attitudes and behaviours with them. I feel so much better now that I’ve let that part of me go.

These videos are exactly what i needed to hear. Ty

In some level every education is indoctrination. Humanist doctrines are no less prone to that than Christian Faith. There's a set of axions in humanist doctrines (equality being at the same time the starting point and end goal, a very contradictory set of ideas and demanding a multitude set of doctrines to explain the fact of inequality, etc).

This is a very well formed and thought out video. I just have one consideration for you. You makes it out as though the cluster B people are doing things consciously and deliberately, but it could also be that they are just ignorant or incapable of realising what they're doing, because that's how they grew up.

Maybe its important to notice that somtimes the victim in one situation might be an abuser or perpetrator in other. We are contradictory beings. I think realizing this, may help braking the cicle somehow

Institutional religion fought tooth and nail against every step of scientific progress and enlightenment. Now since they lost, they dare to lie to us all by claiming these values as their own.

Edit: Do not read if you are not in a good place. What if they possibly poison you like they did the pets, no one helps, and then whatever cancer you have is treated as psychosomatic? I have night sweats, swollen salivary glands, constant dull pain from the colon and difficulty eliminating. I came out as transgender to my parents and doctors and now I know it wasn't GAHT to blame for my episodic trips to the clinics/ER the past 18 months. I have done what I can, but no will tolerate my "argumentative aggression" because they only see an able bodied and spoiled man. Not a chronically fatigued neglected scapegoat. I don't doubt my own fundamentalist family is sabotaging my attempts for meaningful help from doctors or relatives given all the holiday silence and unnecessary calls mother made before each doctor's appointment or a large sum given to a relative suggesting possible favors in return. People keep offering advice, but it's like I already spoke up. It's the reason I'm now in medical debt and have become unemployed. I don't know if what I feel anymore is real.

American propaganda tells you that Islam has barbaric beliefs, I was weirdly antimuslim as a teenager looking back, until 2016 happened and I started defending Islam, but at some point I realized that there's nothing really different about Islam compared to Christianity, had the ottoman empire gone further into Europe I'm almost certain the roles would be reversed today.

I was shamed growing up because I have tourette’s syndrome. And it is actually very mild but because it didn’t present as it is usually seen in hollywood TV shows they were convinced I was doing it for attention. They even convinced me for the longest time that I was doing it on purpose and if I just tried hard enough I could stop it. At one point though I slowly realized over time this went a lot deeper than my noises when I started dating because they would get so angry and try to discourage every remotely healthy relationship I had. At first I thought they were trying to help me and I allowed them to sabotage those relationships. But I soon learned they were just trying to end my relationships for the sake of it for some reason. When I met my husband I just got out as quickly as I could because I loved him and I knew our relationship would never be allowed to survive in my family. It’s like they were angry that I was choosing to live my life and be happy. They made every excuse in the book to say why he’s a bad choice. Including “you met him online!” and saying that I’m betraying america by marrying him because he’s canadian and canadians are evil socialists. 😂 it sounds really funny now that I’m writing it but it felt humiliating back then. But then I kind of started feeling a strange sense of amusement because I finally figured out they were just angry that I that “st*pid little girl that makes the weird noises dared to grow up and be a happy person and have a successful marriage.” I finally had my last laugh when I had my daughter at 30 and they tried to comment I was too young to have children! 😂 they were running out of put downs at that point.

I recently commented on one of Alex O’Connor’s videos in which he debated Mohammed Hijab and made the point that Islam endorsed violence against women. I commented that it was noteworthy that Mohammed Hijab did not appear to deny this charge; rather, he simply changed the subject. A couple of Muslims replied to me saying that Alex and I had unfairly mischaracterised Islam. But again, there was no actual denial. Rather, they said Islam did not allow men to beat their wives “randomly”, only(!) for the purpose of enforcing obedience. There were also limits on what men were allowed to do (eg they couldn’t hit their face, break bones or leave permanent injuries). Finally, Muslim women had the right to appeal to a judge (called a “Qazi”) or male relative if these limits were exceeded. They genuinely believed this made it ok. I pointed out that this was still outrageous and the one commenter still engaging with me told me he didn’t care about my opinion.

I was raised as a Mormon. I remember being told many times that we shouldn’t look into the things that ex-members said, because they were just meant to deceive us and they could be very convincing so it was safer to just not even look into it. But really they just didn’t want us to look into it out of fear that we might realize they were right. We were always told to be like sheep, and that Jesus was our shepherd so we should do whatever he says and not question it. But really they just didn’t want us to question what the church told us to do. We were also told that if we couldn’t get an answer to a prayer or question we had about the church that we just needed to learn to move on and accept that the answer will come later, and if it didn’t come in this life it would come in the next. That way they got us to stop questioning the things that we had a hard time with and just accept that we weren’t meant to know yet, and gave us the hope that it would all make sense eventually. Now that I’m finally out of that religion I can see just how manipulative all of that was. They basically shut down every way for us to realize that the religion wasn’t true. They shielded us from the truth and closed off every way for common sense to get through. Getting out of that indoctrination was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but it was worth it. I now feel in control of my life instead of like a cog in a machine with no free will.

LioConvoy needs to watch this.

Sometimes people just try to tease out what they want to hear huh

Indoctrinating children is fine -- my group is entitled to ensure the survival of its beliefs. Then you should be able to teach these beliefs to an adult. If adults reject the belief, it is not a sustainable belief. The fact that an adult rejects your beliefs means there's something about your beliefs that take advantage of a child's naivety?

In my early 40's I finally asked my mother to stop calling me "sweet pea" in a childish voice and to stop kissing me on my nose and doing a weird wiggly hug thing. Gross, disgusting and made me feel small. Her response was to rage ("how dare you") and for her to turn around and angrily say "...well you now must call me Judy and not Mum". Harumph. Very childish. I cut contact 3 years ago and though I am still trying to feel self love and looking after my own needs, and being assertive when needed, I wish I had listened to my gut instinct decades ago and cut contact then.

Your mom lied to you about being excommunicated. The Catholic Church was giving annulments to anyone who asked in the 1970s and 80s. She was probably lying about the rabbit pie too. (No doubt her abusive father killed her pets, but her account of it is a scene from Titus Andronicus)

Very biased but you already knew that. I'm so unsure why people cannot offer both sides of the argument without using this lame tactics.