Author Topic: My Friend believes in a "Prophetess". How do I help?  (Read 3347 times)

Spiffy

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My Friend believes in a "Prophetess". How do I help?
« on: August 07, 2021, 10:06:26 AM »
Help! My life long friend, who has never before been a nutter, has been following an online "prophet of God" called Amanda Grace. Has anyone heard of this person? I hadn't and I don't follow any religious type people on social media. I took a look at some of the you tube postings from Ark of Grace/Amanda Grace and I am speechless. My friend (life long Christian, as am I) has been worried for a while now about the fate of the country and state of politics (friend is a Trump Supporter, I am not) but this friend recently quoted some weird stuff and I asked who this is coming from. Enter Amanda Grace. I'm worried not just about my friend's mental well being, but financial as well. Friend is wealthy and has talked a lot lately about being able to "give". Is there anything  I can say to my friend that could make any difference? I ended the last conversation with something like "well, I don't know what to say except that I disagree and I love you". Anyone else dealt with this?
« Last Edit: August 07, 2021, 10:15:18 AM by Spiffy »

Metalcat

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Re: My Friend believes in a "Prophetess". How do I help?
« Reply #1 on: August 07, 2021, 10:13:03 AM »
Read up on how to talk to people who have gotten sucked into cults.

lhamo

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Re: My Friend believes in a "Prophetess". How do I help?
« Reply #2 on: August 07, 2021, 10:27:45 AM »
Or if you like to listen to information rather than (or in addition to) reading about it, here is a list of relevant interviews with people who specialize in how to help those/those close to people who have been sucked into cults and scams:

https://www.jordanharbinger.com/starterpacks/scams-and-cults/


SunnyDays

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Re: My Friend believes in a "Prophetess". How do I help?
« Reply #3 on: August 07, 2021, 11:27:27 AM »
I think in general, it's best to ask lots of questions so the person can hear their own rationalizations.  Like, what exactly are your fears, how do they impact you in particular and how are the "solutions" actually going to be implemented?  What is this person doing with the money that has the potential to improve the situation?  Make her think hard about her beliefs without actually saying you think she's wrong.

Financial.Velociraptor

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Re: My Friend believes in a "Prophetess". How do I help?
« Reply #4 on: August 07, 2021, 12:11:40 PM »
@Spiffy

As someone who once inadvertently joined a cult, I have some bad news.  I got in on accident and got out as quick as I understood those people were cray/cray.  Thing is, I WANTED out.  And it was still enormously difficult and I carry the scars still 26 years later. 

Your friend adopted this willingly and probably enthusiastically.  Breaking through the fourth wall is going to be an approximately impossible task.  Fiend has to WANT out.  And I mean desperately.  They do not make it easy to leave.  That's how you know its a cult and not just overly passionate people. 

OzzieandHarriet

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Re: My Friend believes in a "Prophetess". How do I help?
« Reply #5 on: August 08, 2021, 11:46:02 AM »
I don’t want to be insulting so maybe I shouldn’t say this, but anyone who is still a Trump supporter is at least halfway to being in a cult to begin with. There is probably nothing you can do as a friend to help this person unless she somehow sees the light on her own.

bacchi

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Re: My Friend believes in a "Prophetess". How do I help?
« Reply #6 on: August 08, 2021, 12:20:28 PM »
I don’t want to be insulting so maybe I shouldn’t say this, but anyone who is still a Trump supporter is at least halfway to being in a cult to begin with. There is probably nothing you can do as a friend to help this person unless she somehow sees the light on her own.

Amanda Grace is also a huge Trump supporter. Believing in her is just double-dipping into the Trump/Q/alt-right conspiracy beliefs.

"Last night, I posted the name BILL GATES III using the ASCII code, and his name calculated to the number 666." (1)(2)


1: Bill Gates should've used utf-7 for his demonic name instead. It's a less well known encoding.
2: If you ignore spaces, and think of the "III" as 1+1+1, and use all caps, then you get 666.

Spiffy

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Re: My Friend believes in a "Prophetess". How do I help?
« Reply #7 on: August 08, 2021, 12:23:52 PM »
I don’t want to be insulting so maybe I shouldn’t say this, but anyone who is still a Trump supporter is at least halfway to being in a cult to begin with. There is probably nothing you can do as a friend to help this person unless she somehow sees the light on her own.
Oh, I agree. But am not willing to give up this friendship. And if I cut all of the Trump supporter out of my life, it would be many of my family.

Spiffy

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Re: My Friend believes in a "Prophetess". How do I help?
« Reply #8 on: August 08, 2021, 12:29:22 PM »
I don’t want to be insulting so maybe I shouldn’t say this, but anyone who is still a Trump supporter is at least halfway to being in a cult to begin with. There is probably nothing you can do as a friend to help this person unless she somehow sees the light on her own.

Amanda Grace is also a huge Trump supporter. Believing in her is just double-dipping into the Trump/Q/alt-right conspiracy beliefs.


Yes. My friend said she believes the Trump was anointed by God (to do what?) and I think she got that from a dream that Amanda Grace had! And she also says that the person being presented as President Joe Biden is an imposter.

SunnyDays

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Re: My Friend believes in a "Prophetess". How do I help?
« Reply #9 on: August 08, 2021, 02:14:58 PM »
I don’t want to be insulting so maybe I shouldn’t say this, but anyone who is still a Trump supporter is at least halfway to being in a cult to begin with. There is probably nothing you can do as a friend to help this person unless she somehow sees the light on her own.

Amanda Grace is also a huge Trump supporter. Believing in her is just double-dipping into the Trump/Q/alt-right conspiracy beliefs.

"Last night, I posted the name BILL GATES III using the ASCII code, and his name calculated to the number 666." (1)(2)


1: Bill Gates should've used utf-7 for his demonic name instead. It's a less well known encoding.
2: If you ignore spaces, and think of the "III" as 1+1+1, and use all caps, then you get 666.


That's funny.  I have a relative who has said for a long time that Trump is the anti-Christ!

Steeze

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Re: My Friend believes in a "Prophetess". How do I help?
« Reply #10 on: August 08, 2021, 07:24:03 PM »
I was not prepared for her to have a NJ accent. The comments on YouTube are gold. Pray for Charlie Sheen you guys. God showed her Charlie’s contract with Satan in a vision. Written in blood on a tattoo on his back.

ChpBstrd

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Re: My Friend believes in a "Prophetess". How do I help?
« Reply #11 on: August 08, 2021, 08:49:09 PM »
I don’t want to be insulting so maybe I shouldn’t say this, but anyone who is still a Trump supporter is at least halfway to being in a cult to begin with. There is probably nothing you can do as a friend to help this person unless she somehow sees the light on her own.
Oh, I agree. But am not willing to give up this friendship. And if I cut all of the Trump supporter out of my life, it would be many of my family.
It is out of your hands. At some point, the friend will be instructed to avoid outsiders like yourself, and most likely will obey. They will end the friendship with you because they will learn to have a problem with you not being in the cult. Isolation is cults 101.

Think about your reaction to this abandonment by a lifelong friend. It’s OK to feel bitter and want to argue with them. It’s OK to want to say f’em. Counselors for families of addicts suggest setting firm boundaries but bombarding the person with love. Essentially  “I’ll be here if you ever want to come back.”

jinga nation

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Re: My Friend believes in a "Prophetess". How do I help?
« Reply #12 on: August 10, 2021, 08:22:30 AM »
I don’t want to be insulting so maybe I shouldn’t say this, but anyone who is still a Trump supporter is at least halfway to being in a cult to begin with. There is probably nothing you can do as a friend to help this person unless she somehow sees the light on her own.
Oh, I agree. But am not willing to give up this friendship. And if I cut all of the Trump supporter out of my life, it would be many of my family.

Eventually your friend will ask you to join this cult or give to it. You're better off culling this relationship now. Any attempts to convince your friend to leave the cult will probably be in vain; your friend is already "convinced".

I have family that joined such quasi-religious cults; I wanted to break off all contact with them, but didn't. Then they started inviting me to their meetings, asking me to join their group, asking for donations. The constant pestering eventually made me cut off all contact. Verbal warnings didn't work. These folks don't give up.

If I had just cut off contact from the first instance, I'd have been happier earlier to get rid of the nonsense instead of letting it drag on. The end result was the same. The early clean cut is the best cut.

Just Joe

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Re: My Friend believes in a "Prophetess". How do I help?
« Reply #13 on: August 11, 2021, 09:35:07 AM »
This popped up in my You Tube suggestions the other day. Pretty good video if simplistic but simplistic is probably the right approach for opening discussions of the topic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6DfJVjEMlc

Good luck to you and your friend. They need to switch off the media flow and do something else with their time. Listen to strictly music, no commentary. Build something, fix something, clean something. Be active. Reconnect with the natural world around them and avoid the propaganda stream for a month or two.   

J Boogie

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Re: My Friend believes in a "Prophetess". How do I help?
« Reply #14 on: August 11, 2021, 10:33:29 AM »
I think the most important things you can do are:


1. Be patient and stay engaged with this friend, 2. always offer a shame-free way out, and 3. use common ground to help them re-center themselves in reality.


1 - By stay engaged, I mean keep being there for them. But make it clear that if they want to talk about their stuff, you're going to share your thoughts on it too because that's how conversations work. If you need to cut them off for your own sake, ok, but just keep in mind you are one more normal sane person in their life and as much as you might not know it, your perspective matters at least a little to them.

2 - Since many of these Trump/Q cults are chiefly online, leaving probably isn't that hard. That's a silver lining of the loneliness epidemic we're dealing with I guess. But if you use inflammatory language when your share your thoughts on people who believe this stuff, then leaving the cult requires them to think of themselves as idiot suckers who bought a load of crap from a weirdo on the internet.

3 - Invite them to do normal, healthy, outdoorsy kind of stuff with you. Try to get their mind of the usual stuff they ramble on about. Invoke common ground, ie device addiction is bad let's do a detox, or there's too much partisan bickering let's do some local volunteering/community helping. These cult-vulnerable people see a broken world and have been sold ways they can help fix it. If you can focus on some of the things you agree on as broken with obvious uncontroversial solutions those are good options.

Best of luck.




BlueHouse

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Re: My Friend believes in a "Prophetess". How do I help?
« Reply #15 on: August 11, 2021, 07:28:02 PM »
Can you ask your friend to provide a "red line" that if crossed, she will ask for help to get out? 

Ask questions like:  If they ask you to drop me as a friend, are you prepared to do that? 
If they ask you to cut off relationships with your family, will you do that?
If they ask you for money without showing evidence of ....will you do that?
etc? 

Have them write down or agree to a specific line in the sand in writing and keep it. 

Spiffy

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Re: My Friend believes in a "Prophetess". How do I help?
« Reply #16 on: August 12, 2021, 01:46:18 PM »
My friends doesn't know the prophetess in real life, she just listens to her via you tube. I don't think she is in danger of leaving her family or anything, but she now has these really stupid ideas about what is going on in the world. She believes the stories about the Democrats (maybe every one in government?) sacrificing babies and drinking their blood. She believes the Rothschild Family owns and runs all of the worlds governments. I had never even heard that one. Of course she is an antivaxxer now, too. So frustrating to hear her say this crap. She is a well educated, well read person and I can't believe she has been taken in by this stuff.

BlueHouse

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Re: My Friend believes in a "Prophetess". How do I help?
« Reply #17 on: August 12, 2021, 02:20:51 PM »
My friends doesn't know the prophetess in real life, she just listens to her via you tube. I don't think she is in danger of leaving her family or anything, but she now has these really stupid ideas about what is going on in the world. She believes the stories about the Democrats (maybe every one in government?) sacrificing babies and drinking their blood. She believes the Rothschild Family owns and runs all of the worlds governments. I had never even heard that one. Of course she is an antivaxxer now, too. So frustrating to hear her say this crap. She is a well educated, well read person and I can't believe she has been taken in by this stuff.

Sorry, I have zero sympathy for anti-semites.  I would walk away now, using every curse word in the english language, including demonstrating how close she is getting to naziism.  There is ample evidence on the web from legitimate sources such as the ADL disproving all of these insane theories.  start there if you still wish to associate with her.

J Boogie

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Re: My Friend believes in a "Prophetess". How do I help?
« Reply #18 on: August 13, 2021, 12:00:01 PM »
My friends doesn't know the prophetess in real life, she just listens to her via you tube. I don't think she is in danger of leaving her family or anything, but she now has these really stupid ideas about what is going on in the world. She believes the stories about the Democrats (maybe every one in government?) sacrificing babies and drinking their blood. She believes the Rothschild Family owns and runs all of the worlds governments. I had never even heard that one. Of course she is an antivaxxer now, too. So frustrating to hear her say this crap. She is a well educated, well read person and I can't believe she has been taken in by this stuff.

Sorry, I have zero sympathy for anti-semites.  I would walk away now, using every curse word in the english language, including demonstrating how close she is getting to naziism.  There is ample evidence on the web from legitimate sources such as the ADL disproving all of these insane theories.  start there if you still wish to associate with her.

I actually wouldn't start there.

Anti-semitism certainly weaves its way throughout these ideologies/groups but hatred of Jews is by no means the motivating force.

These groups are able to further convince members and potential members of the dishonesty of the mainstream media by pointing to unfounded accusations of anti-semitism like yours.

I would refer her to someone like David Fuller who runs a media outlet called Rebel Wisdom - he is great at pointing out how legacy media has misled the public which has led this issue of people getting their info from the wild west of content creation. He has done interviews and hosted conversations that help people understand the impetus behind these bad and crazy ideas and he holds his new media peers accountable for their questionable statements/positions.





ncornilsen

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Re: My Friend believes in a "Prophetess". How do I help?
« Reply #19 on: August 13, 2021, 02:18:33 PM »
My friends doesn't know the prophetess in real life, she just listens to her via you tube. I don't think she is in danger of leaving her family or anything, but she now has these really stupid ideas about what is going on in the world. She believes the stories about the Democrats (maybe every one in government?) sacrificing babies and drinking their blood. She believes the Rothschild Family owns and runs all of the worlds governments. I had never even heard that one. Of course she is an antivaxxer now, too. So frustrating to hear her say this crap. She is a well educated, well read person and I can't believe she has been taken in by this stuff.

Sorry, I have zero sympathy for anti-semites.  I would walk away now, using every curse word in the english language, including demonstrating how close she is getting to naziism.  There is ample evidence on the web from legitimate sources such as the ADL disproving all of these insane theories.  start there if you still wish to associate with her.

I actually wouldn't start there.

Anti-semitism certainly weaves its way throughout these ideologies/groups but hatred of Jews is by no means the motivating force.

These groups are able to further convince members and potential members of the dishonesty of the mainstream media by pointing to unfounded accusations of anti-semitism like yours.

I would refer her to someone like David Fuller who runs a media outlet called Rebel Wisdom - he is great at pointing out how legacy media has misled the public which has led this issue of people getting their info from the wild west of content creation. He has done interviews and hosted conversations that help people understand the impetus behind these bad and crazy ideas and he holds his new media peers accountable for their questionable statements/positions.

This. You'll find most republicans are generally friendly or at worst, neutral about Jews, especially since 9/11.  Start lobbing around unfounded anti-semitism claims and you're more likely to push them away ANd give them cover to ignore anything else you say about this craziness they're involved in.