25/08/2026
Thought control, Brainwashing, or Trauma survival?
One key factor of all of these is a fear response to something that has, in the past, brought painful consequences.
That could have been physical pain, emotional pain, or both.
What I’m interested in today is how many of us have automatic emotional responses that are like a flinch away from something that we fear on some level.
We see lots of examples of this in different lives:
The person who’s left a toxic religious group can often still feel panic when someone criticises the group. Long after they themselves rejected the group, the 1st automatic, response can be the fear of criticising the group.
This occurs with no conscious thought and is often described as something they themselves think as a fair criticism but in the moment where it occurs it is simply triggering a stored ‘emotional flinch’ programmed in by fear or pain or both in the past.
Teaching an art class one time I joked about bringing in a nun to the class. 3 older ladies reflexively put their hands under the desk at the mention of a nun, and the one of them noticed and a long discussion of the physical violence they had experienced in school took place. Decades later, when safe, when no nun was present, when engaging in a fun activity all it took was the stimulus of a word and the ‘emotional flinch’ fired off without thought.
In my own case when I was a grown man in my mid 30’s if I had to speak to a teacher or police officer, I instantly felt small, weak, and in the wrong. No conscious thought, just an instant reaction that controlled parts of how I acted.
Some unconscious responses are genuinely helpful. The mechanism in the brain that creates these responses is designed to learn where real danger is and to get us to avoid those situations.
Learning that the fire is hot teaches us to flinch away from it. In basic survival situations this pain conditioning is useful.
The problem is that the system which does this for us can’t tell the difference between real danger and the feeling of danger.
If something gets linked to the fear, then when the fear is activated, whether the danger is there or not, the automatic response kicks in.
We see this spoken about a lot with religious organisations instilling a set of beliefs that include fear of damnation if the rules are broken. The ‘cult deprogramming’ side is easy to understand.
Huge connection and acceptance which is suddenly replaced with shunning or punishments can shake our psychology and instil huge fear of upsetting the dominant figures. Even years after escaping from a toxic religion people can find the fear come up when they see someone they knew from the group, or a symbol of the cult, or similar.
We see the war-movie version often too. The captured person is sleep deprived, tortured, and conditioned to act against their previous beliefs. Very easy to understand that too.
What is often overlooked is how more common everyday experiences in our communities can have a similar impact.
Children growing up in abusive situations can daily experience huge fear, be subject to lack of food as punishment, be mocked and degraded, be kept on edge and be physically intimidated and experience violence.
In many cases this can be a daily torment that continues for years, yet we seem largely unaware as a society that this can condition responses in survivors of such upbringings.
We can learn lots of erroneous lessons which can be brainwashing-like unconscious reactions.
By that I mean, an emotion decides our reaction in a moment rather than a reasoned response.
We learned emotionally in the past that we don’t do x, and now when x occurs, we have a reaction rather than a choice.
The child who is told they are stupid often enough can come to second guess everything as an automatic response.
The child who experiences lots of anger can panic at raised voices when an adult as they associate any sign of potential conflict with being unsafe.
The kid who constantly has to keep quiet or risk punishment can be tense and on edge when things get loud, even years later in a safe place.
Sometimes it’s a small thing and sometimes it’s huge.
People can find that they are experiencing huge fear and that they can’t think about a past experience because it is too painful. The conditioning around that experiencing can be so strong that even going there in memory triggers the automatic flinch away response.
That is very common in strong trauma.
A system designed to keep us from fire or another real danger doesn’t want us to take apart the conditioning that it thinks is helping keep us safe.
It would make no sense to deprogram our fear of being run over so that we no longer would look both ways before crossing a road.
Even though we can see the logic of that easily, it is still an automatic response, and the other less helpful automatic responses are no less real or powerful to the mind just because they are not reasonable.
This is an emotionally driven response not a rational one.
This protection of the conditioning causes a raft of extra elements for someone trying to change.
The person who escaped the toxic religion and who wants to warn others will often experience intense fear at the idea of speaking out, even when it’s safe to do so.
The survivor of child abuse will often freeze when they try to speak about it even when it’s safe to do so.
Anger, fear, panic, anxiety, upset, crying, etc. can all be triggered by a stimulus of the programmed-in trauma response.
Just as the word Nun was enough decades later for several ladies.
These responses can add to challenges in deprogramming unhelpful conditioning.
First off, the programmed-in fear or pain can seem too painful or too unsafe to think about or deal with.
Secondly, the mind will often assume that it needs to keep the unhelpful conditioning, as emotionally it believes it is still needed.
The level of past emotion when we were hurt or in fear can power this into a strong reaction decades later.
Fears such as ‘I’m not allowed to think differently’, ‘It’s not safe to disagree with what happened’, ‘I’m not allowed to be angry’, ‘I’m not allowed to do anything about this’ and so on can complicate efforts to deprogram the conditioning.
Often recognising these reactions can help.
In some cases, a simple ‘write it down’ approach can help put us in more control over automatic responses.
Bizarre as it can sound, we can sometimes have huge reactions to something that is very obvious but also be very unaware of what is happening.
In my past I often had panic attacks trying to go to a classroom.
Despite the heart pounding, sweating, mind racing panic, the turning around and going home, the sense of failure; I was kind of unaware of it. Just chalking it up to feeling unwell and not seeing the blindingly obvious.
If I could have sat down and gone through that and noticed what ‘automatic assumptions or responses’ were present and listed them
I would have had more capacity to consciously challenge them and begin to find options to change them.
The reactions I had would have included (from more obvious to less obvious):
“I can’t go in there”
“People will look at me going in”
“I’ll look stupid”
“I’ll be asked a question and look like an idiot”
“They will see how much of a failure I am”
Listing these and just asking objective questions like “is that true?”, “why do I think that?”, “does it help or hinder me to think that?” can lessen the automatic power of such emotional automatic beliefs.
If something is holding us back, noticing any feeling of “I can’t” or “It isn’t safe to” around them can give us the building blocks for what is happening.
Seeing them for what they are can remove a lot of the automatic power they get when they are allowed to fire off unchallenged.
We don’t need to convince ourselves they are not true, just forcing rational thought into the reaction helps reduce their strength.
A real feeling is not necessarily a good representation of reality, regardless of how strong it is.
When we are aware of it, we have more control.
I hope this is helpful to someone reading it today. You are not alone if feeling these emotions and reacting this way. It’s natural, and it an change.
Feel free to get in touch with questions or for recommendations for help in your area if you feel the need. I’m always happy to help find someone nearby who can help. I’ve made referrals in Australia, the USA, Trinidad, UK, and Germany lately so help can usually be found in most places.
Change is easier than you think.
All the best,
John
info@JohnPrendergast
085 1313700
www.JohnPrendergast.ie
John Prendergast MA, MBACP, is an award-winning specialist in Anxiety and Psychological Trauma. His area of interest is the fear system of the human mind and body, and his work centres around reducing suffering for individuals one-on-one and in groups. He lived decades of severe anxiety in his own life before finding help and then studying with some of the world’s leaders in reducing anxiety, resolving PTSD, and living happier lives. He sees clients in clinic in Athlone, Westmeath/Roscommon, Ireland, and around the world via Zoom. He also delivers training to businesses and through seminars across the UK and Ireland.
