Cults to Consciousness
Survivor stories of claiming independence after leaving high-control groups & people. Cults to Consciousness is a YouTube channel and podcast, hosted by Shelise Ann Sola (a former devout Mormon & CSA survivor) and her Producer husband, Jonathan Rosales. C2C delves into the nuanced experiences of individuals who have escaped a broad spectrum of high-control groups and coercive environments. They are not anti-religious but firmly anti-abuse, aiming to shed light on manipulative practices and systems, while promoting compassion, understanding, and accountability. C2C has attracted a kind and engaged community who thoughtfully support their guests. Follow to join them on their advocacy mission.
Episodes
Layla Matson was born into a deeply entrenched, multi-generational polygamist FLDS family with direct ties to church leadership. From a young age, her life was shaped by strict religious expectations, economic hardship, and normalized control, ranging from modesty rules and limited education to chiId labor and rigid gender roles. Sacrifice was emphasized, while serious issues like infant de*ths, lack of medical care, and e...
Mykelti Brown & her husband Tony Padron reflect on the behind the scenes of her upbringing in the polygamist family from TLC’s Sister Wives TV show.
Click here to watch on YouTube
Watch Mykelti's initial interview here
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Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cw/u85780932
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mykeltip/
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Mykelti Brown Padron reflects on her upbringing in the polygamist family from TLC’s Sister Wives TV show, describing both the perceived benefits and deep challenges of that lifestyle. For her growing up, polygamy felt normal and even appealing due to the built-in community, multiple parental figures, and constant companionship, but also reveals significant downsides including emotional neglect, lack of individual attention...
James Luceno is a former fifth degree ranked member of the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), an initially welcoming, symbol-rich spiritual society rooted in Aleister Crowley’s philosophy of Thelema. According to James, it gradually reveals a hierarchical, secretive structure emphasizing obedience, loyalty, and authority through rituals and initiations, while presenting ideals like personal freedom and enlightenment, yet in...
Following up our recent interview @lovina_zook about Amish pregnancies, today we are going LIVE with her to further discuss what it was like being parented in the strictest Amish settlement— the Swartzentruber Amish— versus how she now plans to parent outside of it.
Click here to watch on YouTube
Watch our initial interview with Lovina
Watch our follow up LIVE with Lovina answering your questions
Lovina Zook grew up in a strict Amish community where sex education was virtually nonexistent and anything related to the body, sex, or pregnancy was treated as taboo and often shameful. ChiIdren were not taught basic anatomy or reproduction, forcing her to piece together understanding through secretly reading books, accidental discoveries, and observation, often leading to confusion and misinformation well into her teens ...
Meg was raised in the Jehovah’s Witnesses and grew up under intense pressure, surveillance, and emotional control. Her upbringing lead to isolation, fear, and a lack of understanding around autonomy and consent. After experiencing SA in young adulthood, she blamed herself due to purity-based teachings and remained in the relationship out of guilt before ultimately confessing to church elders, where she endured ...
Sarah & Nippy, creators of the podcast “A Little Bit Culty” and former NXIVM members, reveal how people are drawn into high-control groups and how manipulation operates beneath the surface. What started as an empowering, goal-driven self-improvement program in NXIVM gradually revealed itself as a calculated system of manipulation, where trust, financial commitment, and personal vulnerabilities were leveraged to overrid...
The group's 75 year old ban on blood transfusions is changing. Sort of. It's a big deal, and it isn't. Joined by Jake at @altworldly to give us the full details!
Click here to watch on YouTube
jwfacts breakdown of blood policy evolution
Find and support Jake on YouTube: @altworldly
Other video collaborations:
Désirée Ohrbeck grew up in Denmark in the rigid control of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. She survived CSA from her stepfather, and when she sought help from religious leaders, she was dismissed, blamed, and told to retract her statement to the police. She explains how she went from a house where books were banned, to becoming a professor. However, deconstruction is incredibly lonely and challenging. Lingering effects of t...
Désirée Ohrbeck grew up in Denmark in an extremely chaotic and traumatic home environment that later transitioned into the rigid control of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Her early childhood was marked by instability—an absent father, a violent stepfather, poverty, neglect, and exposure to unsafe situations. When her mother joined Jehovah’s Witnesses, the family life shifted from chaos to extreme control. As Desiree grew older, ...
Briell Decker is the former 65th plural wife of Warren Jeffs. She married Jeffs at 18 while he was already a fugitive and “prophet,” and quickly realized how he exerted control through fear, punishment, and doctrine, particularly around arranged and underage marriages. Briell witnessed disturbing religious practices, resisting participation, and ultimately escaped after years of ab*se and threats of being “blood atoned”.
Ha...
Dr. Christine Marie recounts how her deep religious devotion and a seemingly prophetic dream led her into a manipulative relationship with a man who falsely claimed to be a Prophet. Using her beliefs against her, he gradually groomed and controlled her—convincing her she was chosen to be his spiritual wife, pressuring her into polygamy, isolating her from others, and exploiting her emotionally, financially, and physically....
As seen in the hit Netflix docuseries, “Trust Me: The False Prophet”, Nomz was raised inside the FLDS, a highly controlled Mormon polygamist sect, where her father was removed by leadership and her family was fractured and reassigned to different caretakers. As she reached her teens, she began to question her environment and briefly developed a sense of independence, but this was quickly overtaken when she became targeted ...
Learn about the unaired details and behind the scenes information from @TheAmandaRaeGrant who
personally knows the documentary participants and who also comes from a separate fundamentalist
polygamous Mormon sect called The Order.
Click here to watch on YouTube
Watch pt 2 of this discussion here
Watch our interview with Dr. Christine Marie
Find and support Amanda!
YouTube: @TheAmandaRaeGrant
IG: @amand...
Dr. Sara Glass knew she kept falling in love with women, but that didn’t matter. She knew her place as an Ultra Orthodox woman. She was placed into an arranged marriage to a man shortly after graduating high school and she painfully left her girlfriend behind. Sara vulnerably shares in great detail about what it was like navigating sex as a Hasidic woman who is also gay and how the trauma around intimacy has followed her e...
We celebrate our 300th episode with a panel of 4 incredible women bravely coming forward to share their thoughts and experiences growing up in various strict Orthodox communities. They compare notes while illustrating similarities and differences between the sects and how they left to find a better, more autonomous life for themselves, and in some cases, for their children as well. Deep dives can be found on each of the wo...
Rachel was raised in Israel by Canadian parents who converted to strict Orthodox Judaism as adults. Girls were taught from a very young age that their primary purpose was to become wives and mothers, and the culture emphasized conformity, modesty, and obedience. At 18, after only a few weeks of dating, she became engaged to a man who was in training to become a Rabbi. Not only did she deal with typical hardships that come ...
Rachel was raised in Israel by Canadian parents who converted to strict Orthodox Judaism as adults. Girls were taught from a very young age that their primary purpose was to become wives and mothers, and the culture emphasized conformity, modesty, and obedience. Rachel explains how these systems created strong psychological pressure, particularly around purity culture, body image, and social behavior, while also framing ou...
Shalom’s childhood and education were dominated by intense religious indoctrination. He attended a strict ultra-Orthodox school 365 days a year, where boys studied religious texts from early morning until late at night, with little secular education and frequent physical punishment from teachers. The rigid environment, lack of emotional support, and strict moral expectations led to anxiety, obsessive religious guilt, and d...
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