Dr. Gillie Jenkinson on Thought Reform, Trauma, and Walking Free (Part 1)
About this episode
Dr. Gillie Jenkinson shares her journey from a posh English boarding school girl to a cult survivor and therapist.
This episode is sponsored by Betterhelp. Dr. Gillie Jenkinson—the OG, the GOAT, and the GG of cult recovery work (she needed a definition, we provided several)—finally makes her long-overdue debut on A Little Bit Culty . She’s a therapist, cult survivor, and the author of Walking Free from the Trauma of Coercive, Cultic and Spiritual Abuse , and this first part is all about how she got in. It started in 1970s London: a posh English boarding school girl who grew up in Uganda, wanted to marry a lord, and had no particular ambition or sense of direction. A persistent friend with a sulking habit got her to a meeting, an emotional experience convinced her it was real, and suddenly she was a radicalized born-again Christian baptized in the Leicester Square fountain with a police officer conveniently looking the other way. From there it was a slow drift—au pair jobs, city moves, counseling from a fellowship—until she found herself living in community houses with the Love of God group, a Bible-based cult founded by a charismatic opera singer from Birmingham School of Music. What followed was seven years of escalating control, a second leader who brought in physical beatings with a bamboo…
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