E123 – Transitioning from High Control Groups (w Stephen Mather)

here we are again today with another World of Work podcast. We've got a really exciting one. Jane, what are we speaking about? Well,

today, James, we are talking about high control groups and how you transition out of them, particularly in reference to people's career and work. And we are talking with Stephen Mather, who is has done some research on the area, but is also someone that I met while studying my MSc in Organizational Psychology, and this was his research project, brilliant. It's a subject I'm super

interested in and excited about. So let's get straight into our conversation. You okay, so here we are in the main body of today's podcast, and we're having a conversation today, but I'm really looking forward to we're going to be speaking about high control groups and the process of transitioning out of high control groups. And to help us along this exploration, today, we're speaking to Stephen Mather. Stephen, would you be able to introduce yourself and say a little bit more about yourself and your background to the audience?

Yeah, sure. Thank you very much for inviting me on. I'm Stephen Mather, and I suppose change is really at the heart of what I do. My day job is as a business improvement coach. I work with businesses managers to help them improve their processes, train their people, that sort of stuff. So I guess that's quite well understood. But over the past few years, I've I've been really interested in how organizations, to a greater or lesser extent, try to influence people's thinking and behavior. So the kind of psychology around that, and in particular organizations that go beyond what we might consider to be normal influence into high control or maybe undue influence. So I suppose you know, put it simply, I'm really interested in cults and the people that are involved in those, and what happens to them when they leave, how they transition from that so cults, high control groups, and how, how people manage their process of transitioning. And that intersects with a lot of things, including work,

yeah, and it's a fascinating subject. It's one that I genuinely love to learn more about. You know, as you describe the sort of undue control of potential organizations, and that sort of cult like mindset that that I've seen people have about their organization. It's fascinating, and it's a little bit scary in some ways, in that organizational context. If we start at the very beginning, though, when we are speaking about high control groups and transitioning out of them, could you explain a little bit more about maybe what it feels like to be in that high control group? That high control group, and then what that transition out process

is like, yeah. So I think one of the one of the difficulties in this field is that I tend to use the words or the phrase high control groups, but I suppose cults is a word that's more commonly used, but it's very difficult to define that. And actually, once you start to look into these groups, they are so different. I think there is some question mark around whether it's a good thing to catch them all in the same way, really. But I think that the big thing that differentiates a group, a normal group, if you like, from a high control group, is is literally that that description, it's the fact that your your thinking, your behavior, your attitudes, to a greater or lesser degree, is is controlled by the group. So what you think, what you believe, about politics, about work, about ethics, you know, again, depending on the group, it can be absolutely all encompassing. So when you leave that if you decide to leave that group, you've, you've, you've got a lot of work to do, because you've got to decide about all these questions. And perhaps even more importantly, you've got to decide who you are yourself. So I'm particularly interested in individuals who have been born into these groups, which I think is another niche, really, that isn't explored as much as it should be. So we kind of talk about how people get sucked into these groups, or how they get attracted and so on. But often people are. Born into these groups, and that means that they've never had a life outside of that. So leaving transitioning from that means building yourself from the bottom up, really, and trying to make sense of that experience. So I think that's, that's the hard bit, yeah, and

that's fascinating. And as you're describing those high control groups, I think very much of the sort of prescribed response and prescribed thinking, and the fact that if you're in these groups as an individual, to some extent, your decisions are made for you, or your or your actions are pre defined for you. And there is presumably, and again, I don't, I don't know this area, there's presumably a sort of certainty of path associated with this exogenous pressure that's defined what you are and what you become. And as you said, speaking of moving away from that, if you move away from, I guess, a guide rail system of existence, and then suddenly can navigate a known path and think and decide things in a different way. That must be quite unnerving and quite difficult when it comes to things like our sense of identity and opportunity and belief and all those things. Can I jump in and ask before we get too much further along? You know, this subject's clearly an important topic for you. Are you okay to talk about why it's something that resonates for you? Or is it?

Yeah, of course, yeah, I was born in so I obviously resonates with me, because I was born into a group like this, so I left the group when I was around 30. By that by this time, I was already married to somebody else in the group. We'd got a child, just a newborn, and, yeah, I'd never had any other experience outside of that group, so I knew what my I think you're absolutely right about your you know your past, your future, is all determined for you, and your present is also determined because of all the views that you've been told you need to have and those that you should have nothing to do with.

in some respects, it's it's a very positive existence, but it's also, of course, very restrictive. So yeah, so that's, that's, obviously my experience was going through that, but everybody's experience is different. So individual differences have a big part to play in how individuals respond to that transition. Plus groups are different. So, you know, they all have their own particular slant and different ways of viewing the world. So I think it's such a varied experience. You know, that's one of the challenges of it, really, yeah,

yeah. I can imagine it being hugely varied and and specifically in terms of, I guess, the content and the structures that we live in, but those would be different in those different groups. One of the things that's been on my mind over, you know, the recent past, something that I keep coming back to, is my sense that humans, one of the great things that sets us apart, that I think is fascinating, but is also a challenge for us, is our ability to make sense of and believe as truth pretty much anything. And maybe that's, you know, maybe that's overreaching. But an example I always think of is, you know, we look at clouds and and if you didn't know, and you saw these things rolling around in the sky, you'd say, Wow, that's a crazy thing, but we explain that away, and it makes sense. And we can form these, these definitions of existence around us that feel so right for us, regardless to some extent of what they are and and that consensus that we reach within our groups is hugely powerful. So if we're in that environment, whatever those specific things are that we have, and we look to leave, and, I guess, challenge those definitions and assumptions and accepted shared reality and beliefs that we have. What's it like going out of there? What are some of the challenges you might have in redefining your I guess, your your past narrative, your your current narrative, and your sense of belief? What's that process like?

Yeah, I mean, it's funny. I was talking to somebody the other day, so I've started to do some interviews on on our podcast that, because I'm really interested in this, in different people's experience. And this guy that I was interviewing said, said it felt like it was utterly terrifying. And he said it felt like being and he gave the illustration of, you know, in space, in on a spaceship, you might be tethered to your spaceship, and then suddenly the tether is cut, and you're completely in a void. You don't you're absolutely terrified. You don't know where you are, you don't know what's up, what's down, and you just you're floating in this void. And I think that's a really good way of explaining it. I mean, obviously, as a born in you'll have, you'll have had various points along the way where you perhaps question your beliefs. And so it's not as though, I think for most people, it's not as though it all comes out of the blue. So you'll have been going through a period. Transition, perhaps for quite some years. So you know, whether you count that as part of it or not, it's, it's, it's definitely part of the process, as far as I can see. So that's, that's all part of that. What about this? Then, you know, what do I really believe this? You know. So you know, if you're told that the world is going to end a week next Tuesday or something, then you know you've got to get your head around that. And if, all of a sudden you believe that it's actually don't think that is true, then you can imagine that opens up a whole new world for you, and it's kind of terrifying. I mean, in some respects, it infantilizes you, because you're you don't have to worry about all the things that other people worry about. So I didn't have to think about, you know, what do I think about green issues? Or what do I think about feminism? Or what do I what do I think about

assisted dying? All those questions? Well, you don't need to worry about that, Stephen, because this is what you believe, you're told. So you don't have any skin in the game of the World. You're essentially like an observer of it from the outside. And I should say that not all groups like this. In fact, I would say a majority of groups don't physically separate themselves, which is where work comes in. I guess because, you know, people go to work, they have jobs, children go to school. So they may still be within the community physically, but often they won't be encouraged to or be actively discouraged to associate, you know, after work and socials or after school. Even have friends outside. So it's still very insular. So mentally, they they are going to still be very much within this, this, this group, although they physically might live next door, you know. So it's, it's not necessarily the compound in the middle of nowhere, you know, where people are physically separated, so that can be difficult for for others to understand. Yeah,

no, that's helpful. I just want to say, when you were speaking about that example of being tethered to the spaceship, that really does bring it to life, and my palms actually started sweating a little bit as you were talking about, because I could just imagine that that untethering is such a powerful thing. You know, we have all these anchors and certainty gives us assurance in our existence. And if, if I start to question one thing, then presumably I can question all kinds of things, and we can end up in a very strange place. What's that? What does that feel like? And what's that? What's the sort of timeframe that you go through and and do you reach a stage of future certainty?

Yeah, I think, I think it the time. Thing is, is very much depends upon the individual. I really think that there isn't, you can't really put a time frame to that transition. As I say, I think there's a lot of stuff that's happening before you necessarily even know it. You know, there's a, there's a an element of cognitive dissonance, where you're justifying what you should believe. You don't, you know, you've got doubts, but you're it's just too terrifying, actually to so I remember, in my situation, I was, I was really frightened of allowing myself to ask those questions. So one of the things that these groups tend to do is they again, either discourage or, more likely, really actively stop you from seeking other forms of information, so they control the information you get. So whilst you know, again, depending on the group you might have access to the internet, you're told very, very clearly, don't go onto this website, or don't go looking at these websites. Particularly, people have left apostates are, you know they're going to try and hurt you and drag you away. And so you're conditioned into all these fears. I think the other thing to I should mention is, for a lot of these groups, again, modus operandi tends to be the same. They if you, especially if you're born in you're likely to have family, maybe your entire family is still part of that group. And so there's this weapon that groups often have over individuals, of shunning. So if you leave the group, you're counted as an apostate, or you may be counted as an apostate, and that will, or may mean that your family literally walked past you in the street and will not even speak to you. So there's a there's quite an extreme form of shunning that many of these groups practice. And it's that obviously adds to the stress of the whole thing. Really, not only are you trying to come to terms with your own belief system and what you think and how you should think about the world and the future that you have in front of you now, you're losing your support system, your social support system. You may also be losing your job, because a lot of these groups, they kind of work for each other. You've got little businesses, and they perhaps work for each other. So you may lose your job. You may lose your home, if you're a young person, perhaps an ad. All, but still living at home with your parents again, it's not unusual for parents to say, right, you're not welcome in this house now. You're out on your ear, so you're then trying to find somewhere to live. So it can be homeless as well. So lots of some practical issues and some kind of philosophical and identity issues are not those all come together to create, or can create a difficult time. I should mention, though, I just want to say that it's also can be very exciting. So I don't want to make it sound like it's all terrible, because, you know, suddenly you've you see this, these opportunities ahead of you. And yeah, rather than thinking, well, there's no point in living my life and planning for the future because the ends coming soon, which is what a lot of these groups believe you can, you can start to say, Oh, wow. You know, I can do different things, and I I might want to do this, or I might want to do that. So there are lovely opportunities as well. It's, it's a little

bit as you describe it, it feels to me a little bit like stepping, sort of through the looking glass into a whole world of possibilities, which is interesting. When you were speaking earlier, a couple of things popped into my mind. You spoke about the limiting of information as a power and control tool, and as you were describing that, it reminds me of my interpretation of, I guess, earlier stages of sort of state control when we think Soviet era and places like that, where you're really, you know, when you're burning books and you're doing a lot of that, it's a classic control tool, something that at some point, and it's not for here, but I'd love to explore is, I believe that at a sort of societal and state level, we've shifted from the limiting of information to a flooding with over Information, which makes it impossible to to form a coherent belief and validate your opinions. And I'd be really interested to explore if we see something like that happening there, but I'm going to park that because I get too excited. So if we think specifically about, you know, maybe being in the workplace, what, what do you think then about, you know, this type of transition that you're speaking about being a little bit different from other work related transitions.

Yeah, so I think there's a lot of areas where this, this subject, intersects with work, and I think there are some similarities in the way that work transitions happen, and the way that this happens. In fact, when I was doing some of my literature review for my research, one of the places I went to was research around career transition, so things like Marines who have had to leave because of severe injury, if you've like in your whole life, if you've as a child, you know, I'm I want to be a Marine. It's in my blood. And your whole identity is bound up by being a Marine, being in the forces and serving and all your friends, you know, it's your whole world and your identity, and then if you have to leave that because of injury, then it's, it's very it's very difficult. And I think some of those same problems are there. So there are similarities. I mean, likewise, sports, football, footballers, sports men and women, if they have to retire early, or even when they do get to retire, even at a normal age, they still got a lot of their life left, and that can be quite difficult, because they've got this thing that really defined them, and now that's that's gone. And not everybody goes through that transition very well. So I think there's definitely some similarities in terms of differences, I think it's, I think, like everything with cults and high control groups, it's like the mechanisms are pretty much the same. It's just that everything is turned up to 11. So you think about the difficulties of being made redundant at the age of 30 or 40 or 50 or 60 even, and then not knowing what you're going to do with your life. Well, it's like that, but more so that's kind of, I think there are a lot of similarities to transitions in all sorts of other areas of life. It's just that because you've got all these other things that go along with it, it just generally can make it much more difficult.

That makes so much sense. I'm interested to ask you a little bit about your research. You recently completed some research into this area. Can you tell us, like, a little bit more about what the purpose of that research was?

Yeah, sure. So I would say that, I suppose, at the moment that research, I would say, I caveat everything I say as as it being provisional, because I My plan is to expand the research so that we can publish it at some point in the future. So I've got some data, but it's at the moment I would, I would call it provisional. The purpose of the of the research really is to understand the. Process of transition and the use of, in this case, career and education as maybe a means by which a person can help find their identity and help build themselves, if you like, and make sense of their life. So I've drawn heavily on the idea of the fact that, in order to make sense of our life, what we tend to do is we tell a story about it. So somebody says to, you know, how did you end up doing this? You know? Well, I, first of all, I did this, and I've always been this sort of person, and then I got an opportunity here, and I did this. And so you tell a story about your about your life, and generally, we like a story to make sense, so you can find reasons why you're doing what you did way back in your past, partly because of your upbringing. Maybe, oh yeah, my my mum always used to do this. Encouraged me to do that, or my dad or my grandfather or whatever it is. And then you draw a nice sort of, not necessarily a straight line, but a line from your past into your current, your present. And that has to make sense. I think one of the challenges when you leave a group, and we've alluded to it already, is that it's very difficult to keep that continuity, because you look back and you think, Well, I'm so different. Now you know, everything I believed, everything I thought was true, all my beliefs about politics, philosophy, ethics, everything has changed. Plus, I'm I behave differently. You know, if my friends could only see me now, you know, my school friends would think I was so different. And so what I found in the research so far is that people talk about their past and they say things like, Well, I'm a completely different person now, but then, on the other hand, they'll say something like, but I've found myself. I've I I always liked this or that, and I was never able to do it, but now I am, and that suggests that there was always that authentic self there to begin with. So it's, it's kind of paradoxical, you know, am I a different person now, or am I? Am I? Have I found the real me, you know? And that's one of the real I think everybody struggles sometimes with this idea of, who am I? You know, my identity, and, you know, is it? Is it down to my experiences? And is it something else? And we all struggle with that, but it's particularly salient for somebody coming out of a group. So I suppose my my question, my research question, was, how do people maybe use career and education as a way to help them find themselves or make sense of that transition? So it's a bit of a waffle answer, but hopefully that makes sense and and I think career and education can help an individual find meaning and start to build that bridge between the past and the present. So one of the things that the other research I mentioned about Career Transitions found was that if a narrative like those that did not so well, let's say, uh, the Marine that left because they had injuries, and if their story was a full stop, you know, I've always been a Marine. I love that, and that's me. Always been me. And then that's it. I'm not that anymore. It's over then that they struggled with that transition quite a lot, whereas those people that were able to say, well, those things I learned in the service those skills I learned, I'm now able to apply them in a different way, but it's still part of my experience, and it's still helped me become who I am, and I can use those skills and those experiences in this new phase of my life. Now, those people seem to do better. Same goes for people made redundant and so so transition seems to be, if we can transition is, is we can manage that, so long as we can maintain a coherent narrative, and career and education might just help us do that. So that was really the question of the research. Can I find any evidence for that? Can I see that happening with people's stories that's that's

just me so fascinating. I've got so many questions now, but I'm going to start, I'm going to start with some simple ones. Which is, what was it? What you expected? What was it that surprised you? What was it that you expected you in terms of what you found?

I suppose I. I first of all, I used a method, a methodology called IPA. And IPA is interpretive, phenomenological analysis. So that's a mouthful that I will not say again, but basically that that allows the researcher, or it acknowledges that the researcher has a part to play in the analysis and the interpretation of what's happening. So traditionally, research would try to say, well, I need to have a kind of I need to step back and be an observer. I need to be neutral, I need to be objective. But the reality is, especially when you're doing qualitative research, you're always going to have a way of yourself making sense of the individual sense making. So there's this kind of it's called a double hermetic. It's basically saying the researcher is always engaged in their own sense, making of the individuals making sense of their own life. And that allows me, as as somebody who's had a similar experience to acknowledge that. So this is a long winded way of saying, No, I don't think I saw anything that really surprised me. I identified with a lot of what was said. Obviously, everybody's experience is different. But I think there was, there was that the the findings so far are, I guess what, what I would have expected with, you know, with with the flavor and the color being added in, and, yeah, the way that people describe these things being very individual.

And did you find it like, obviously, researching something that was so personal and so important to you? How was that for you?

Yeah, it's interesting, because it's one of the questions that you have to ask yourself in order to think about the ethics of it. So not only you know, how is it going to affect others, but what about myself is, what effect is it going to have on me? I can honestly say that it's been one of the most rewarding experiences I've ever had, and it's allowed me to think about some of those areas that I probably packed away, because I really did pack it away. I've not thought about this or consciously or talked about it, really for many years. I left over 20 years ago from my experience, so I'm giving away my age, but I suppose I went through a process which is relevant to work. Maybe we talk about that later, but I guess I wanted to put it away, into a box, and not think about it, not talk about it, and just think about the future. And that, for me was, was my career, and I just wanted to do that. And so I, I would say, I I hid it, not in any dishonest way. But it wasn't something I talked about, you know, on my CV or my LinkedIn profile, you know. So I just sort of wanted to just imagine that had never happened, really, but doing this research helped me to, I guess, address it in a really interesting way. And since then, I have sort of explored this area a lot more in a lot more of what I'm doing really, yeah,

I think I just there's, there's something for me, very interesting and thought provoking about the idea of with a with a distance. And I mean, you talk about 20 years for you. But that idea of with a distance and with additional knowledge and expertise, being able to view your past self, it, I guess, is the sense that we're talking about in that identity, break that your past self with a somewhat, I don't think it's I don't think it's dispassionate. You certainly don't sound dispassionate about it. But with a, I guess, allowing yourself, if you like, to investigate it a little bit more, which sounds really powerful to me.

Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the things I wanted to do as part of the research was to talk to people who had left at least 10 years ago. Again, one of the things, I mean, I've got a lot of opinions. Some of them may be wrong, some of them may be right, but I've got a lot of opinions about the research that's currently out there in this field. One of the things I feel is that there's just not very much of it, and what there is seems to be, there's a lot of stuff around young people leaving so or the some wouldn't say a lot. There's some research around how young people leave these groups, which obviously has its own difficulties. And there's also work around, as I say, people who get attracted to cults and the process of that. And, you know, I. The fact that, I think what we understand is that it's not about, you know, people not being very intelligent, getting sucked into these things. It's something that we can all become victim of. So we understand quite a bit about that. But I think what there is a bit of a lack of is research into people that have left quite some time ago and are now looking back over that period and trying to make sense of that experience, and that was really what, what I wanted to do. So yeah, it's certainly, certainly a very salient for me, but I think also just an area we just, we just haven't really researched very much. I couldn't really find any other research about people who had left a high control group over 10 years ago, who, by, you know, very nature of that would have to be in their 30s, 40s, 50s. I just

there's and I do it again, in the same way that James started to talk about some of the questions it provokes that might not be relevant here. I do think it, it also provokes, for me this, this the way that research and academics approach the world, which is sometimes and not all, very segmented, and the idea that work and organization sits in one place and your life sits in another, and we look at them differently. And I just there is so much to be gained from looking at our life through our career lens, for example, just the way you talk about so and and I wonder if, hopefully we'll see that crossover more, because I think it's a really useful one. And I think, you know, I we talked, we talked on the show so much about how when we talked about things like diversity and inclusion and exclusion, we've talked about how often people hang on to their work and their careers as a way to make sense of the world when everything else is changing, for example, and I just, I feel like there's, there's a big, big gap in the way we approach thinking about learning about our human experiences. I

mean, if you think about these two it just so happens that I, as an individual, have kind of ended up in this place where I've I've had that experience, and I've also just finished my masters in Organizational Psychology and worked for the last 10 to 15 years in organizations on management development and change programs and that sort of stuff. So it feels like, you know, there's a for me. I'm looking at these two things thinking, I can see a lot of intersections here. I can see a lot of similarities and a lot of common ground. So I've already talked about some there, about how individuals might use career and education as a way of helping make sense of their own identities. But then there's other areas, like one of the things that I've I'm increasingly amazed at, really, is how they work on cults and high control groups. It doesn't seem to mention any of the mechanisms that I've been studying in organizations. So with the perhaps exception of social identity theory, which gets, gets really a bit of a cursory mention. But other than that, so I'm seeing nothing about self concept theory, I'm seeing nothing about self determination theory, stuff around resilience. I'm seeing none of that in the research into cults. And yet, if you look at the way that those two disciplines are operating, you look at an organization, you know, like a like a business, and you look at a high control group, actually, a lot of what they're doing is very similar. It's just that one group is doing it to a greater degree, and doing it with what we might describe malevolence, and the other group has some ethical kind of boundaries to it, but in terms of, you know, how people are being influenced to follow the party line or to do this thing that they don't really want to do, or to change their attitude or to smile for the customer, or, you know, these are the methods of influence are, and that there are some crossovers. I don't want to, I don't want to misunderstand. I'm not saying that all organizations are like cults, but the psychological and social mechanisms, there is a lot of crossover. And yet they don't, we don't seem to. I just, I'm just not seeing those in the court literature.

So I firstly, I think it's probably taken everything in me and James is self discipline. Not to ask you which group was which, when you were referring to the ones with ethics, because, because we know, and we talk about on this podcast quite a lot, that there are all types of organizations, and some of them are great. Some of them are not right, and some of them do struggle with ethics. And we know that because we've seen crises in the way that organizations have lost their compass, if you like. And I think there is something really, really interesting about what you're saying. And I think James and have I have talked to, certainly, when we've listened to some people not on our podcast talk about employee engagement and the way of extracting more value out of employees without necessarily paying them more and using that, and you see it in sort of common newspaper articles that cult like approach to being a member of your organization, beyond an employed relationship. And I think, I think, without question, there's definitely something interesting there. Yeah,

that's, that's right. I think, I think we've all been in organizations where there's times and you think, yeah, this is, this is a bit a bit odd. It's a bit manipulative. So I think, yeah, you're right. I suppose sport is a potential area. It is one of those areas where, often facts cults, often we think about cults as being religious. But they can be sports related. They can be psychotherapy related. They can be multi level marketing related. I mean, self help is a whole industry where, you know, there are some real question marks over the way that people are manipulated and controlled to buy more of the products and get involved in these, these activities. So, yeah, I think that there's massive areas of crossover. Yeah,

brilliant. Thank you. As always, on the world of work podcast, we, we always like to try and leave people with some positive, practical advice. So I guess this is where I ask you, for people, maybe who are managing, individuals who have previously been in a high control group and maybe have either gone through the transition, or indeed are transitioning, what can they do? What adjustments can they make that might help that person through that period?

Yeah, I think that's, that's a really good question, and there's no easy answer. I suppose the first thing is to like everything starts with awareness, really. So I think being aware that some of your team, so that your employees may have gone through or may be going through something like that, that the added or the difficulty is often people are not going to talk about it because there is a kind of stigma attached to it, I suppose. So it's something that's difficult for you to respond if you just simply don't know what's happening. And also, of course, you can't assume just because you know this person is a member of a group you might consider to be a high control group. You might rightly consider it to be a high control group, but maybe they're quite happy being a member of that group, and you know, unless they are about to do something dangerous, or, you know, unless they've said they want to leave, then I guess we have to respect people's Well, we do have to respect people's beliefs, or they can believe whatever they want to believe. So you can't just go wading in say, Oh, I know I hear you're this, and if you ever need any help, you know, so, but I think just being open to the fact that people might be experiencing some of that difficulty, and being willing to support people, if it's an organization where you have the capacity to provide some mental health counseling and so on, then that seems to be one of the big areas For you know that people need when they're leaving these groups, I should say that my area isn't in therapeutics, so that's an area that I, I always defer to the experts on. And so I think there's, there's a there's a big question around, you know, what's the best way to support people through these transitions, but from everybody I've talked to and from everything I've read and studied, it seems that access to some sort of talking therapies, mental health counseling can be really useful during that period. So that would seem to be a sensible thing to make available. If that's possible, I think the other thing I would say about organizations is one of the biggest challenges for somebody that's just come out of a group, and this, this applied to me and applies to many people. If you're in your 30s or 40s or even older, then your CV is going to look a bit weird. And this would apply perhaps to somebody who moves into a group as well and then goes out again, there'll be a period in their CV or their work history that seems a bit odd, maybe, or just doesn't really add up. And so for recruitment, I think it's one of the really most difficult areas, because as. A somebody just coming out of that your work history is not particularly good. You probably haven't got any qualifications. Because, again, one of the things that these groups do is to try and avoid things like higher education. So for me, going to university was an absolute no no. I managed to do that when I left, but it took me quite some years to do that. So their qualifications are not going to look great. However. They they have some really interesting characteristics, and they've had some experience that could make them incredibly valuable employees. Trying to see that, trying to find that, I think, is a real challenge again, because they may not want to tell you. So when I left, I didn't want to admit that I was a member of a group. But if I could have admitted that, I could have explained that part of my training in that group was I learned how to speak in front of hundreds of people, to give presentations and to talk to total strangers, and to lead groups of people, and to counsel people in how to do public speaking. And so I could have told them all about that, but I couldn't, because I didn't want to admit where I'd learned those skills. So there's no easy answer, really, Jane, but I think somehow, being able to as a society, understand that the individuals within these groups are really just like you and me, and they will have had a traumatic time, but that doesn't mean that they can't contribute, and they might have something extra to add. So I guess that's that's a message I'd like to get across.

That's a great message, I think, and it resonates with some other messages we've heard from from other groups that we've we've spoken about. And two as well. In the interest of time, I'm not going to ask too much more, but I did want to ask one question, which is, you know, we've spoken a lot there about advice for people, supporting others through this type of transition. If you were going to say a few words to individual individuals who were looking to transition or going through this type of transition themselves about ways that they could support themselves or manage this transition to the best impact for themselves and the things that they care about, what would you suggest to them?

So again, I would, I would feel the need to caveat everything I say with the fact that I'm not a counselor, and so what I say is really based upon my own experience and my understanding of the theory around coming out of those sorts of organizations and the people I talk to, I think not to feel like you've got to rush again. If there's something that's that's you're being asked to do that you know is is wrong, and you you don't want to do it, that's different. But if it's just a case of, I'm just, you know, I'm just going through the motions. I'm not quite sure what I think and what I believe, I just feel like there's no need to rush it, and it's worth thinking about the consequences and thinking about how you deal with those consequences. So I think some people talk about having an escape plan. That's not a bad idea, especially if you might lose your home or your work, your job. So just having a think about that, not not to say, don't do it, but just to think about right, how am I going to what do I do in order to to manage that situation? So I think that's probably useful, definitely not to berate yourself. I mean, I did this. I was so furious with myself for wasting what I considered to be the most important years for me in my career. You know, from when you leave school to your 30s, your this is your time when you set yourself up in many respects, and I was furious with myself, really, but I think that's not healthy. So it's completely understandable you are where you are. One of the things that I found useful is to think about this resilience. What How can, how can you be resilient? And one of the things that we know from studies about resilience is that finding meaning in those experiences and finding a way to turn those experiences into something that you can say, You know what that was, that was difficult, but I've been able to use that experience in a very positive way. Again, I'm not I'm not belittling experiences that people might might have, and I must just say, my experiences were very mild compared to some. So some of the power dynamics within these groups mean that all sorts of very unpleasant things can happen that I don't feel that that happened to me. But some. People do experience much, much worse, but yeah, not, not to blame yourself. This is, this is something that happened to you, and to take your time with that, with that transition. One of the other things I found in the research so far, though, is finding a new community is so important, and this is something that's come through other pieces of research as well is that, you know, if you're all alone, you've got nobody else to talk to, and you have nothing, then that's it's very difficult for you to make that transition. So again, this is why career and education can be so valuable. Because you go to education, you meet new people, you start to develop your career, you meet new people, so that can be a really important resource for people in that transition. That's

brilliant. Thank you. I really like the two core messages you led with there about taking your time and not being too hard on yourself about this, because that feels like it's unhelpful in many ways, absolutely, absolutely brilliant. Well, in the interest of time, I'm going to wrap things up. Okay, just before we go though, is there any way people can learn more about you and the research and work?

So I suppose the place to, I suppose I'd like to direct you to at the moment, is, is just our podcast. So my daughter and I have a podcast called, What should I think about dot, dot, dot question mark, which is really about the things I mentioned at the beginning of this conversation, which is, you know, I find myself outside of a high control group. I've got all these opportunities, but I've got all these questions. How do I go about addressing them, from politics through to, you know, what, what films I can watch, through to how I dress and whether I should be a vegan or, you know, all these questions, and our job on the podcast is definitely not to answer them for them, but it's just to, I suppose, talk about the sorts of things that I've experienced and others have experienced. And to, I suppose, try to think about the the method of discovery, one of the things that is interesting because one of the things that one of the leading, one of the, I suppose, most well known academics around courts, is somebody called Margaret Thales singer. And she identifies how adolescents are particularly susceptible, or can be susceptible, to being attracted to courts, because they start to realize that the world and life is complicated, and they're those simple answers they expected are just they're not there, you know? And particularly when they're at university, because we you start to realize that everything's kind of relative, and you know what is real anyway? And it all kind of makes their ground, the ground sort of loose underneath their feet. But if you think about what it's like leaving a high control group, it's exactly like that. So one of the dangers, I think, is for people to leave one group and then get sucked into another. So one of the the ideas of the podcast is to say, you know, just have a think about all this stuff. But you don't need to find an all encompassing truth to replace the one that you've just lost. So the podcast is really about that, but it's light hearted. It's me and my daughter, and we cover lots of different subjects, and we don't, we don't make it too heavy. I've started to do some interviews as well, so that's a good place to sort of pick us up, really. What should I think about on all the major podcast

apps? Brilliant, and we will share that on social media and connect with it. So what should I think about? Yeah, okay, well, it's just time for me to say thank you very much. I thought that was an excellent and it's a thank you for me. Thank you. I've really enjoyed it. You.

Okay, so you are back in the conversation with Jane and myself. That was our conversation with Stephen Mather, all about high control groups and the processes of transitioning out of them and what that feels like. Fascinating stuff in there. Jane, super cool. Was there anything that stood out for you in our conversation. Oh,

crikey, that was a lot, wasn't it. It's so interesting. I could have talked about that. I feel like we only even scratched at the surface to so many other things. I mean, it's fascinating. Yeah, I

think, I think the bit, the bit, I'm going to pick something that we didn't talk about a lot, actually, but Stephen mentioned, which was around when he was talking about other other changes in identity that he looked at and how they relate. And I keep thinking about the point he made about sports people transitioning, which is something that I've looked at quite a lot. And I know organizations that specialize in supporting sports people to transition after retirement. And I just I think when the thing. You do in your life is so interconnected with so much else, then I think transitions are so much harder. And I know that sounds really obvious, but so for example, with sport, your timetable, your eating, the people you work with, live with, spend time with, socialize with, but also the way that you use your body and the way you sleep are all connected, right, in order to be a performance athlete. So when you stop doing that, everything changes. And you know, it's the same as what Steve was saying. You know, the people you socialize with, sometimes, who you work with, the people who are at, you know, if it's a religious group, for example, worship the people that you volunteer with, the people that you live with, are all in that same group. Then if you transition out of it, there's nothing to anchor you on, and there's where do you find and he was saying one of the piece of advice, I think he said was, you know, finding another community can be really helpful. And I think we all need these anchor points in our lives. And you know, we're out, I feel like we're at our best when we've got several of them and they're different, because when they're all in the same place, it feels like the risk is huge to then want to transition away from that. And you know, for some people, that's just, that's just insurmountable to create real change for themselves.

Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. And you see that sometimes for individuals in the workplace, when, to some extent, the anchoring and structuring of their existence is so anchored on their workplace. And I think that can be, can be a challenge in some ways, for bit, but I want to reflect on again, we talked about it, but I'd love to talk about it more is this, this real concept of the stories we tell ourselves and defining our identity and our existence and and you know, the role of rewriting our former life, or rewriting our life to date and our life story, and exploring our current story and and predicting stories for our future, and how those stories help us make sense of our existence and guide us in our decision making and action and all of those things, be it in our individual life or specifically in the workplace as well. So that's something I'd love to explore a

little bit more. That is not what I thought you're going to say. That's really interesting. I thought you might mention James, and I feel like we should chuck in the entire conversation that didn't quite happened, but almost happened, about how organizations trying to get the most out of their their staff and their people and their resources, sometimes they have to, you know, there needs to be some kind of clear ethical boundaries about what feels like overtly attempting control.

Yeah, yeah. Well, there's a whole piece around that as well, but again, we can do Do you think that's organizations? Yes, I think it is brilliant. Okay, let's leave it there. So it's just goodbye for me, and it's goodbye from me.