Recorded: 12/04/2022 / Published: May/20/2023

• – Welcome to Kuldrin’s Krypt. I’m your host Master Kuldrin. If you are new to the show we use our combined 35 years of BDSM experience and my 20 years working in the psychology field to dispel myths, get rid of stereotypes, and answer your questions about BDSM. Text in your questions and comments to 865-268-4005 or visit the Krypt at https://kuldrinskrypt.com. 
• – In this week’s episode we are joined by _Rhiannon_ of ShadowWeaversEDU to talk about Coercive Control.

• – Rules to Love By: (https://inclusionwoodworks.com)

• 1: Safe, sane, consensual, and informed
• 2: KNKI: Knowledge, No Intolerance, Kindness, Integrity
• 3: “Submission is not about authority and it’s not about obedience; it is all about relationships of love and respect.” -Wm. Paul Young

• – “Coercive Control with Shadow Weavers EDU-S04E48”

•  _Rhiannon_ ‘s Bio:

1. • •  Rhiannon is a 31 year old Indigenous woman living in Upstate New York with her Master and two cats. She has been a 24/7 slave in the BDSM community since 2015. While serving she also worked as a Pro-Domme online and in person for the same amount of time. In 2021 Rhiannon took over as Co-Director of MAst Rochester- a chapter of the international organization, Masters and slaves together. This organization historically was founded by members of the gay leather community and seeks to help those who are interested in learning more about power-exchange within the lifestyle and authority based relationships. Rhiannon has been leading workshops and BDSM 101 presentations for about 3 years now. She has filled many roles within her submission from babygirl, to slave, to human house pet and identifies as a divine concubine to honor her sacred sexuality within her current dynamic.

In addition to her lifestyle experience, Rhiannon has worked with adults who have severe and persistent mental illness for 8 years. She has served that community in many positions from residential and peer counseling, to apartment programs which seek to help those with mental illness maintain their independence. Rhiannon has worked with a variety of individuals living with mental illness from schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder, PTSD and substance use disorder as well as those with neurodivergence and those fleeing domestic violence. She hopes to serve as an example of a person with mental illness successfully engaging in BDSM to those in the community seeking acceptance and fighting the stigma, as she also lives with bipolar disorder and PTSD. 

Aside from her professional background, Rhiannon also is a survivor of domestic violence and of coercive control. That being said, she is NOT a licensed clinician or therapist or a substitute for professional services. 

• To hear more about her services and groups: https://www.kinkycast.com/archive/2022-archive/459—rhiannon-shadow-weave.html 

• ShadowWeaversEDU Bio and History:
  • Shadow-Weavers Coaching and Lifestyle Education is a freelance Kinky Education Academy. Here you can sign up for online workshops, join a book club committed to studying the lifestyle, and get connected with a community of individuals who are passionate about BDSM.
  • Shadow Weaver’s offers individual coaching sessions for those who need advice, support, or help leaving and healing after a difficult dynamic. Her services are geared toward the following issues:
  • -D/s dynamic struggles and advice
  • -Submissive Support
  • -Mentoring
  • -Coping with a difficult D/s
  • -Resolving Conflict within D/s
  • -Identifying your unique roles and interests
  • -Recovery Support from Coercive Control and Personality Cults
  • -Vetting Support and Negotiations
  • -Drop or Frenzy Support
  • -Gender/sexual orientation and the lifestyle
  • -Mental Illness and the lifestyle
• Coercive Control Defined:
  • Domestic abuse isn’t always physical. Coercive control is an act or a pattern of acts of assault, threats, humiliation and intimidation or other abuse that is used to harm, punish, or frighten their victim. This controlling behavior is designed to make a person dependent by isolating them from support, exploiting them, depriving them of independence and regulating their everyday behavior. Coercive control creates invisible chains and a sense of fear that pervades all elements of a victim’s life. It works to limit their human rights by depriving them of their liberty and reducing their ability for action. Experts like Evan Stark liken coercive control to being taken hostage. As he says: “the victim becomes captive in an unreal world created by the abuser, entrapped in a world of confusion, contradiction and fear.”
  • Source: https://www.womensaid.org.uk/information-support/what-is-domestic-abuse/coercive-control/
• Examples and how to recognize it:
• Isolating you from friends and family
• Depriving you of basic needs, such as food
• Monitoring your time
• Monitoring you via online communication tools or spyware
• Taking control over aspects of your everyday life, such as where you can go, who you can see, what you can wear and when you can sleep
• Depriving you access to support services, such as medical services
• Repeatedly putting you down, such as saying you’re worthless
• Humiliating, degrading or dehumanizing you
• Controlling your finances
• Making threats or intimidating you
  • Source: https://www.womensaid.org.uk/information-support/what-is-domestic-abuse/coercive-control/
• Based on research and theory by Robert Jay Lifton, Margaret Singer, Edgar Schein, Louis Jolyon West, and others who studied brainwashing in Maoist China as well as cognitive dissonance theory by Leon Festinger, Steven Hassan developed the BITE Model to describe the specific methods that cults use to recruit and maintain control over people.  “BITE” stands for Behavior, Information, Thought, and Emotional control.

• Behavior Control

1. 1. • Regulate individual’s physical reality
      • Dictate where, how, and with whom the member lives and associates or isolates
      • When, how and with whom the member has sex
      • Control types of clothing and hairstyles
      • Regulate diet – food and drink, hunger and/or fasting
      • Manipulation and deprivation of sleep
      • Financial exploitation, manipulation or dependence
      • Restrict leisure, entertainment, vacation time
      • Major time spent with group indoctrination and rituals and/or self indoctrination including the Internet
      • Permission required for major decisions
      • Rewards and punishments used to modify behaviors, both positive and negative
      • Discourage individualism, encourage group-think
      • Impose rigid rules and regulations
      • Punish disobedience by beating, torture, burning, cutting, rape, or tattooing/branding
      • Threaten harm to family and friends
      • Force individual to rape or be raped
      • Encourage and engage in corporal punishment
      • Instill dependency and obedience
      • Kidnapping
      • Beating
      • Torture
      • Rape
      • Separation of Families
      • Imprisonment
      • Murder

• Information Control

1. 1. • Deception:
      • a. Deliberately withhold information
      • b. Distort information to make it more acceptable
      • c. Systematically lie to the cult member
      • Minimize or discourage access to non-cult sources of information, including:
      • a. Internet, TV, radio, books, articles, newspapers, magazines, media
      • b. Critical information
      • c. Former members
      • d. Keep members busy so they don’t have time to think and investigate
      • e. Control through cell phone with texting, calls, internet tracking
      • Compartmentalize information into Outsider vs. Insider doctrines
      • a. Ensure that information is not freely accessible
      • b. Control information at different levels and missions within group
      • c. Allow only leadership to decide who needs to know what and when
      • Encourage spying on other members
      • a. Impose a buddy system to monitor and control member
      • b. Report deviant thoughts, feelings and actions to leadership
      • c. Ensure that individual behavior is monitored by group
      • Extensive use of cult-generated information and propaganda, including:
      • a. Newsletters, magazines, journals, audiotapes, videotapes, YouTube, movies and other media
      • b. Misquoting statements or using them out of context from non-cult sources
      • Unethical use of confession
      • a. Information about sins used to disrupt and/or dissolve identity boundaries
      • b. Withholding forgiveness or absolution
      • c. Manipulation of memory, possible false memories

• Thought Control

1. 1. • Require members to internalize the group’s doctrine as truth
      • a. Adopting the group’s ‘map of reality’ as reality
      • b. Instill black and white thinking
      • c. Decide between good vs. evil
      • d. Organize people into us vs. them (insiders vs. outsiders)
      • Change person’s name and identity
      • Use of loaded language and clichés which constrict knowledge, stop critical thoughts and reduce complexities into platitudinous buzz words
      • Encourage only ‘good and proper’ thoughts
      • Hypnotic techniques are used to alter mental states, undermine critical thinking and even to age regress the member
      • Memories are manipulated and false memories are created
      • Teaching thought-stopping techniques which shut down reality testing by stopping negative thoughts and allowing only positive thoughts, including:
      • a. Denial, rationalization, justification, wishful thinking
      • b. Chanting
      • c. Meditating
      • d. Praying
      • e. Speaking in tongues
      • f. Singing or humming
      • Rejection of rational analysis, critical thinking, constructive criticism
      • Forbid critical questions about leader, doctrine, or policy allowed
      • Labeling alternative belief systems as illegitimate, evil, or not useful
      • Instill new “map of reality”

• Emotional Control

1. • Manipulate and narrow the range of feelings – some emotions and/or needs are deemed as evil, wrong or selfish
   • Teach emotion-stopping techniques to block feelings of homesickness, anger, doubt
   • Make the person feel that problems are always their own fault, never the leader’s or the group’s fault
   • Promote feelings of guilt or unworthiness, such as:
   • a. Identity guilt
   • b. You are not living up to your potential
   • c. Your family is deficient
   • d. Your past is suspect
   • e. Your affiliations are unwise
   • f. Your thoughts, feelings, actions are irrelevant or selfish
   • g. Social guilt
   • f. Historical guilt
   • Instill fear, such as fear of:
   • a. Thinking independently
   • b. The outside world
   • c. Enemies
   • d. Losing one’s salvation
   • e. Leaving or being shunned by the group
   • f. Other’s disapproval
   • f. Historical guilt
   • Extremes of emotional highs and lows – love bombing and praise one moment and then declaring you are horrible sinner
   • Ritualistic and sometimes public confession of sins
   • Phobia indoctrination: inculcating irrational fears about leaving the group or questioning the leader’s authority
   • a. No happiness or fulfillment possible outside of the group
   • b. Terrible consequences if you leave: hell, demon possession, incurable diseases, accidents, suicide, insanity, 10,000 reincarnations, etc.
   • c. Shunning of those who leave; fear of being rejected by friends and family
   • d. Never a legitimate reason to leave; those who leave are weak, undisciplined, unspiritual, worldly, brainwashed by family or counselor, or seduced by money, sex, or rock and roll
   • e. Threats of harm to ex-member and family
   • “Like many techniques, it is not inherently good or evil.  If mind control techniques are used to empower an individual to have more choice, and authority for their life remains within themselves, the effects can be beneficial. For example, benevolent mind control can be used to help people quit smoking without affecting any other behavior.  Mind control becomes destructive when it undermines a person’s ability to think and act independently.” -Freedom of Mind.com
     • Source: https://freedomofmind.com/cult-mind-control/bite-model/
     • Artistic cutting does not equal names.
   •  What to do if you find yourself in the midst of being coercively controlled:
     •  Evaluate your Situation
       1. What boundaries and limits did you start out with that were violated without renegotiating or discussion?
       2. Have other people expressed concern about my relationship?
       3. Do I find myself not talking about my relationship for fear that my peers within the BDSM community won’t “understand” or will wrongfully “judge” my partner?
     • Check your surroundings
       1. Is it safe to leave this situation? Do I have support to help me get out or recover from this situation? Who can I trust?
       2. Do not discuss your want to leave with other victims who are still in the situation- they most likely will inform your abuser, even if they think they are doing the “right” thing
       3. Find an advocate or kink aware mental health professional to give you support while you make a plan to leave and while you are recovering from this trauma
     • Cut Your Losses
       1. You may have financial investments or emotional ties to one or more people involved in this situation. If you can legally pursue matters, and you want to, find an advocate (recommend contacting NCSF for help). Otherwise, let everything else go. It is not worth dragging out a potentially dangerous situation which may be threatening your life due to pride, a sense of justice or principle. Get out, get out fast and get out completely FIRST.
   • If there is time talk about the green flag pics from fetlife.

Important Links:

1. Full show notes: https://kuldrinskrypt.com/448
2. National Suicide Hotline: 1-800-273-8255
3. NCSF Kink Aware Professionals: https://www.kapprofessionals.org 
4. https://kuldrinskrypt.com/silentcommunication 
5. https://KuldrinsKrypt.com/survey 
6. https://kuldrinskrypt.com/TeePublic 

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