Episode 3: It's not what you believe. It's how.

In this episode, we're exploring the first aspect of Janja Lalich's Bounded Choice model of cultic control: The Transcendent Belief System.

If you don't understand high-demand, high-dedication, high-intensity, self-sealed, and cultic belief systems, you can fall into one very easily. Or more than one!

We look at multiple transcendent beliefs, which are not exclusively religious or spiritual. Any belief system can fall into perfectionism and rigidity, and any belief system can imagine itself to be the best thing ever. Ways of eating, ways of learning, ways of exercising, ways of doing martial arts, ways of doing business .... if people don't understand cultic mechanisms of high control and high dedication, they can storm down the wrong path and leave trouble in their wake.

Here are ways to understand when the belief systems you value are healthy.

ASPECTS OF HEALTHY TRANSCENDENT BELIEF SYSTEMS

• Members have the right to question, to doubt, and to think their own thoughts.
• The belief system makes room for other beliefs and other ideas.
• Members are treated as equals, and are not expected to be subordinate or perfectionistic.
• The belief system allows for personal autonomy, dignity, and freedom.
• Members retain their identities, finances, relationships, personal time, and private lives.
• The belief system includes rather than excludes people and ideas.
• Members can leave without being shunned or forced to abandon their friends and family.
• The belief system opens members to the world rather than isolating or segregating them from it.

When a transcendent belief system is healthy, people have choices. When it’s not, their choices get tangled up with the group’s rigid visions of perfection and purity.

ASPECTS OF UNHEALTHY TRANSCENDENT BELIEF SYSTEMS

• The group’s sense of purpose is intense and urgent.
• The belief system is rigid, self-righteous, and excludes other beliefs, which are criticized or ridiculed.
• Members are expected to become perfect true believers; there is no room for doubt.
• The belief system is elitist; it is the only true path and the ultimate solution.
• The belief system promotes specific and demanding tools, practices, and rules to turn members into perfect followers.
• The belief system is perfectionistic, with all-or-nothing requirements that must be followed to the letter.
• The group is strongly hierarchical, with an inner circle of true believers who have special access, power, and privileges.
• The belief system cannot be questioned.
• The group creates internal and external enemies who are portrayed as threatening the very survival of the group.
• Members who question, break the rules, or leave are shunned or demonized, and may lose all contact with group members, including their own family members.

In this episode, I feature my book with Janja Lalich, Escaping Utopia: https://www.routledge.com/Escaping-Utopia-Growing-Up-in-a-Cult-Getting-Out-and-Starting-Over/Lalich-McLaren/p/book/9781138239746

And Janja's classic book that I edited for its revised edition, Take Back Your Life: https://janjalalich.com/blog/take-back-your-life/

Episode 2: Your emotions are the foundation of who you are, and in this episode, we look at how advertising, marketing, social media, and anyone who wants to influence you accesses your emotions as a matter of course (and as a matter of business).

Becoming aware and skilled with your own emotions certainly benefits you and your relationships, but it can also protect you from manipulation and help you develop a deep form of social intelligence.

Sadly, in endstage capitalism, our emotions are being monetized, and we're being funneled and fomo-ed into someone else's machine.

When we're going along with the crowd, or losing ourselves in the machine of social media, we need an off-ramp. Thankfully, knowing how to work with our emotions can be the key to finding our way to the exit and back to ourselves.

Also, a flying superhero pig from Tennessee and magical shoes may have something to do with it.

In this episode, Karla features her book, The Language of Emotions: https://karlamclaren.com/the-language-of-emotions-book/

And its accompanying workbook: The Language of Emotions Workbook: https://karlamclaren.com/loe-workbook/

And free! (real free; not internet free)

Her Emotional Vocabulary List (in 10 languages!) can help you track the emotions that are being evoked from you, forced onto you, and expected from you in the unregulated attention economy of endstage capitalism: https://karlamclaren.com/emotional-vocabulary-page/

Episode 1: How do we create (and survive) drastic changes? How do we leave unhealthy relationships, groups, belief systems, or entire identities? How do we take off-ramps when the crowd is pushing us forward, and how can we learn to create off-ramps for others -- especially when we've been taught to see them as our enemies?

These questions are crucial in a time when so many of us have been drawn into polarized belief systems and conspiracy theories that are tearing apart families, friendships, political parties, and the foundations of American governance itself.

But change and reclamation are possible at any time. Researcher, author, emotions and empathy expert, and cult survivor Karla McLaren, M.Ed. explores how we can reclaim ourselves and provide support for others.

We all need off-ramps when we're being separated from each other, and when we're being taught to see enemies in anyone not like us.

With personal stories, extensive research, emotional genius, empathic badassery, and humor, we explore how and why this bold American experiment has become a tragic powder keg, and how we can reclaim our good hearts, our good minds, and our good souls.

We can imagine, build, and maintain off-ramps for ourselves and each other.

In this episode, Karla mentions her newest book, Missing the Solstice (2025), available in paperback and on Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F6TRWRBZ