My Dad Brainwashed Me As A Child. It Helped Me Understand MAGA.

At 13 years old I stepped boldly into my teenage rebellion. It went like this: an adult asked me what my favorite television show was. In full hearing of my dad, I responded, Spenser: For Hire.

It might sound like a “nothing burger,” in the teen-speak of the time, but saying those three words put my whole body on high alert, aware that my burger might very well be cooked. Just a week earlier I’d heard my dad say that this TV show, based on his favorite book series, was trash.

My dad was the sun around which our family revolved, and when his storm clouds gathered there was no telling what might put you in the line of fire. One minute I was making too much noise, and an hour later I was too quiet.

The weird thing was that while I felt as if my mom and I lived in a state of almost constant fear and chaos, the rest of the world saw my dad as a hero. His generosity knew no bounds for those outside our home. He was generous with himself too, regularly buying himself the latest electric keyboard or computer system. Meanwhile, behind closed doors, I watched as my mom had to count pennies to make sure she could buy both food and toothpaste on her next trip to the grocery store.

When I came home with straight-As, he laughed at me for being so boring. When I got a B+, he screamed at me that it wasn’t worth spending any money on my education (even though he’d been telling me since I was a toddler that, come hell or high water, he expected me to go to Harvard.)

In fifth grade, my teacher made silly little awards for each of us. “You get the Silver Tylenol Award!” he crowed as he handed me a piece of wood with a pair of silver-sprayed tablets mounted on it. There was a handwritten caption saying “I’m worried about passing, I’ve got a headache!” In the mid-1980s teachers weren’t wondering why a top-of-her-class 10-year-old might have severe anxiety about failing out of elementary school.

The brainwashing was extraordinarily effective. My dad’s control over my mental and emotional state was so complete that even after he died when I was 26, his voice continued to rule my every thought and action.

I didn’t speak up for myself when others took advantage of me because he’d taught me that I was crazy and shouldn’t believe my own thoughts. I never negotiated a raise or a higher salary because I was stupid and worthless. I didn’t date because I was too fat and ugly for anybody to ever love me.

In the years after his death, I dove deep into spirituality, personal development, and therapy, trying to figure out what was wrong with me and how to fix it. I made small strides in some areas, but the old beliefs about being worthless, crazy, and unlovable wouldn’t allow my brain to grasp that maybe I wasn’t the one with something wrong with me.

One day my therapist asked me to visualize the problem. The image came immediately: an impenetrable black box sitting in the middle of my psyche.

In 2016, sixteen years after my dad’s death, articles appeared in my Facebook feed in response to the then-Republican nominee for president with titles like “Ten warning signs of a narcissist.” I opened them to learn more about what people thought of Trump, but the reading quickly turned very personal.

Most of the narcissistic behaviors listed were a direct match for what I’d experienced with my dad. I finally had a label to put on the big black box. There is no way to diagnose a personality disorder posthumously, so I cannot say with any certainty that he had Narcissistic Personality Disorder. But I can say with confidence that he had behaviors that fit the mold, and more recently my therapist has confirmed that I display all the markers of Narcissistic Victim Syndrome.

Around the same time, I became obsessed with stories of people who left cults. Something eased in my soul each time I read a story of someone bucking the indoctrination and creating a life away from thought control and monitoring.

One night, it suddenly dawned on me, and it was as if I could hear the creak of the black box finally opening: the family I grew up in a cult of three. My dad was the charismatic prophet, my mom could have been the “normie” who had been seduced into the fold, and I was the child who never knew anything but brainwashing.

Since then, I’ve dived deep into rabbit holes learning about cultic messaging, religious abuse, and the clinical behaviors of narcissists as I try to unpack my childhood. From that perspective, in my opinion, it looks an awful lot like a significant portion of the United States voting public is in a cult called MAGA, and I’m not the only one who thinks so.

According to CultEducation.com, cults are led by people who expect absolute authority. This, I thought, might look like a political candidate saying things like, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters.”

These leaders have no tolerance for anyone who questions or criticizes them. Perhaps as if a leader said their political and judicial enemies “should be arrested and punished accordingly.”

To keep people loyal, they paint outsiders as monsters. I immediately thought of the references to people who “execute babies after birth” or are “eating the dogs and eating the cats.”Cult leaders also seem to refuse any accountability, like, perhaps, saying that ABC’s broadcast license should be revoked because they dared to fact-check at a debate.

Have you ever wondered why Jordan Klepper can interview a MAGA devotee who will say that respecting women is an absolute value of American democracy while wearing a t-shirt that says “Hillary sucks, but not like Monica” on the front and “Trump that bitch” on the back? As Klepper says, they "don’t even see the irony in it.”The cognitive dissonance is stunning, but it’s actually an important safety mechanism when you’re inside a system that requires complete allegiance. According to cult expert Janja Lalich, this is part of what keeps you trapped because “each compromise makes it more painful to admit you’ve been deceived.”

I can relate. As a child, I knew something was wrong in my home. But if my dad said the sky was green, I’d perform whatever mental contortions were necessary to believe him, because there would be unpleasant consequences for arguing that the sky was blue. I pushed through the cognitive dissonance to square many insane circles because that was how I ensured my safety.

Unfortunately, it can be near impossible to understand that you’re inside a cult when everything is constructed to convince you that this is heaven – or as close as you’ll ever get unless you work twice as hard and redouble your devotion to the cause. Violating your allegiance to the leader and the group can come with harsh penalties, beginning with (but not limited to) financial ruin and social exile.

Invariably people say, “I would never be stupid enough to join a cult!” But you don’t join a cult – you join a group of people who appear welcoming and supportive, who seem to understand you deeply, and who appear invested in making your life better.

You learn the language so you can be part of the in-crowd. You invest money in classes and rallies to keep moving up the ranks. You drape yourself in merchandise to visibly identify yourself as one of the special ones. Every purchase you make serves the group in two ways: you fill their coffers with your money, while they teach you to believe the very things that make you easier to control going forward.

It can happen to any of us, no matter how smart or discerning we believe we are. There is no shame in being duped by a charismatic charlatan: they have honed their craft on many people before you.

We shouldn’t lump every Trump voter in with those who are actively working for the downfall of Western democracy. When we claim they all share White Supremacist tendencies and Nazi-adjacent beliefs, we’re reinforcing the MAGA talking point that liberals are extremists who want to destroy them.

Think of the last time somebody tried to change your mind by telling you that you’re stupid — it’s wildly unlikely that it worked. The best way to convince them to take off the cult-colored glasses is to treat them with kindness and dignity, rather than shame and derision.

And as uncomfortable as it may be, we’re probably going to have to make the first move. Here’s why: I knew something was wrong, but I couldn’t get out on my own. I needed someone on the outside to see that there was a problem and be brave enough to come in and get me.

My life might have looked very different if someone had sat down with 10-year-old me and gently probed why my anxiety was so out of proportion, taking time to listen as I sorted through the jumble of terror constantly screaming inside my head. Maybe they could have helped me see an answer that was inaccessible from inside the brainwashing I’d experienced.

I don’t remember how my dad responded to my Spenser: For Hire assertion. Saying the forbidden words took so much out of me, that there were no brain cells left to clock his response. But I’ll never forget the feeling of making that tiny rebellion. It was the first stepping stone to my own deprogramming.

Leah Carey is a Relationship and Intimacy Coach and pop culture aficionado. Drawing on her own healing journey from fear and repression, she specializes in working with people from high-control childhoods like Purity Culture who want to unlearn stigmas and unhealthy patterns around intimacy and communication. Her work has been published previously by NBCThink and The Journal of Cancer Education, and she has been quoted by CNN, Newsweek, Cosmopolitan, and more. Find her at www.leahcarey.com or @xoLeahCarey on YouTube.Do you have a personal story you’d like to see published on BuzzFeed? Send us a pitch at essay-pitch@buzzfeed.com.