- Dr Susan Gitau and Benjamin Zulu agree that most people immersed in the cultic chains have a hurting past.
- A child not given affectionate attachment by guardian, caregivers and parents grows with emptiness.
Image: CYRUS OMBATI
If you have psychosocial emptiness driven by a deprived childhood, unaddressed past emotional aches and hurting, you could be susceptible to a cult.
Psychology experts tell the Star that everybody joining a cult has a need, mostly motivated by psychosocial emptiness and is looking for something to fill it, hence gets numb to human feeling and becomes hooked.
With details of the Shakahola cultic deaths continuing to filter, Kenyans are wondering how one could have a unique affinity to deathly pain and suffering and lack natural human feeling of need to save self and children.
Some of the victims of the starvation preached by Pastor Paul Mackenzie found alive in the bush hideout in the 800-acre ranch have refused to be rescued and turned away offers of first aid or food to save their lives.
Dr Susan Gitau and Benjamin Zulu agree that most people immersed in the cultic chains have a hurting past that drilled a hole in their personality and inflicted an inferiority that needs perpetual alleviation.
“The emptiness could be psychosocial in nature. Maybe there are tough times you are going through at the moment and seeking solace or hope, strength or support. It could be personality and most dependent personalities will always look for a person to have an upper hand in their lives,” Gitau said.
Majority of population in Lango Baya sublocation where the Chakama village and Shakahola ranch is located in Kilifi are poor.
The tough economic conditions make one easily trapped in doctrines that suggest an easy passage.
With this condition, Gitau said, it becomes easy to get drawn to someone claiming to be a pastor or getting messages directly from God.
For Zulu, the victims of the cult were not necessarily ill-educated or all poor but have deep emotional and social wounds that they did not deal with.
“Most people do not take emotional damage or psychosocial wounds seriously and despise therapy. So you can be working and earning all you want but having a gaping hole inside of you that you see to fill. That is how psychopaths like Mackenzie come in to trap you,” Zulu said.
Gitau also said that people should take inventory of their past lives and the wounds they may have encountered and deal with them.
“Someone who did not resolve childhood trauma which can be any form of abuse (sexual violence, physical violence, neglect or any that was never resolved) and then later you face a challenge in life, you become more susceptible to anyone leading you around,” she said.
“Maybe it’s a relationship that’s not working; betrayal or mistrust hence looking for someone or something to believe in. It could be upbringing, classical conditioning; conditioned to think about God, men and women in a certain way and when coupled with the said emptiness, or a pressure that you are going through, you easily follow that person,” she said.
In terms of the neuroscience of it, the Gitau explained that the brain is divided into three parts: autopilot brain or cerebellum or simply survival brain which when a stressor comes to your life, you either flee or fight. But in a traumatic situation, you can freeze.
“Some cult followers may have gone through a traumatic event and their brain froze such that the way they react when there is a stressor, it is automatic in nature; always fighting to protect themselves and looking for something to calm them down, and the pastor becomes the easy fall back.”
The other part is limbic system, which is the seat of emotions and attachment. A child not given affectionate attachment by guardian, caregivers and parents grows with emptiness and so anyone who shows you love sweeps you off.
“Majority of women have this mammalian brain or limbic brain very active, that’s why they fall prey to such. It's more feeling and less of thinking. A man on a survival brain and going through things they did not process also tend to have the limbic brain active and will behave like women; subjective and feeling, less reasoning.”
Gitau said the neocortex or thinking brain reasons, imagines and can solve problems. It is easily deactivated in case of a trauma. If this happens, you will see people following blindly without thinking. It is deactivated under high stress and trauma.