The Brain People Podcast 2025

Daniel Binus

K'dee Elsen Crews

Beautiful Minds Wellness

Dark Psychology

Welcome to the Brain People podcast, a show where 4 mental health experts team up to bring you practical tools for overcoming mental health challenges.

The Brain people don't replace your doctor or therapist, but we will give you some extra tools to help you on your journey.

So join us as we fight mental illness, 1 episode at a time.

Welcome to another episode on the Brain People podcast.

I'm joined by my friend, colleague, and co-host.

Alrighty, we have a very interesting, and we probably say that often, but an interesting topic today, probably 1 in which people are reading the little title there and wondering, what is this about?

Maybe we should have worn black clothes or hoodies or something.

Dark psychology, what are we talking about?

Well, it's not doing therapy in the dark.

So dark psychology simply put is the science of manipulation and mind control.

Interesting, even just that bit, people are probably still wondering, like, where is this going?

Yes, and so, by sharing this episode, our point is not to help people to become better manipulators.

But 1 thing that I've realized over the years in working in mental health is that many, many people nowadays are subjected to manipulation.

And unfortunately, it seems like just in the world at large, we're seeing more and more manipulation occurring, whether it's on an interpersonal level or on a even broader societal level.

And so I think it's really important, when we're at war and as a Christian, I believe that we are in a spiritual battle, we need to be acquainted with the devices of our enemy.

Otherwise it's gonna be very easy for the enemy to overcome us.

And so, again, it's not that we wanna over-focus on darkness and over-focus on evil or Satan or anything like that, but we need to at least understand some of the principles that are being used in the battle, for our minds, for our hearts, and how those tactics can really lead to all sorts of problems in our lives if we're not aware of them.

I'm sure this is particularly helpful as people in mental health are talking more and more, and I should say people just in general as well, about gaslighting, that being a form of manipulation, narcissism.

So maybe those are the phrases we're more likely to hear, but really that's under the umbrella of dark psychology.

And we're hearing that more, we're certainly seeing that, and it's easy just to be like, oh, well, they're just a narcissist or whatever.

But Again, we need to understand how do we deal, whether it's someone that's narcissistic or not, how do we deal, recognize, and then deal with those situations where we're being manipulated so we can recognize it and then put a stop to it?

And I appreciate that because maybe we're talking about it so much, labeling these things, but a lot of people are not actually talking about the underlying schemes of them and how to actually be prepared.

Or maybe also, maybe 1 goal of our episode is also so that if maybe we're engaging in these tactics and we're not even aware of it, how do I make sure that I'm not manipulating or engaging in dark psychology?

That's very true because we sometimes, and I truly believe that not everybody that manipulates is just like, oh, they're just a narcissist.

Like some people actually engage in some of these tactics because that's maybe what they learned in their own home or relationships and it can become kind of almost a survival technique or a way to get what I want, but that doesn't mean that it's healthy and it's certainly not God's way of doing things.

So let's just jump right in, looking at the tactics that are underlying dark psychology.

Yeah, and 1 thing I did wanna mention before we go directly there is that 1 of the reasons that I've become even more interested in this recently is because I've actually seen several of my patients who have been subjected to really unhealthy religious manipulation.

And that's 1 area that we're like, oh, you know, spirituality is good, religion's good, but it can also be very misused.

And so, you know, as we talk about these things, it's also important to keep in mind, yes, we're in a spiritual battle, et cetera, but that doesn't just mean that all brands of spirituality or religion, or even Christianity for that matter, are going to be healthy and not manipulative.

Like it can even come into under the guise of something that is supposed to be helpful and good for us.

Which we would expect to be more vulnerable to the.

That's right, yeah, so it's kind of scary, but very common for people to get sucked into that.

So, you know, I think it's roots when we think about manipulation, well, understanding that manipulation has a purpose, generally speaking, and that purpose is to gain control, to gain power, you know, over somebody and get certain outcomes that we want.

And so there's certain tactics that have commonly been used and we're gonna talk about some of those examples, but I just wanna give a brief overview as I've studied into this topic, that there's 4 main tactics that I've seen.

And there's sub tactics and there's other aspects, but the 4 biggest things that I've seen very commonly, not only in the research, but then also even talking with my patients and seeing these patterns in their lives.

Number 2, high degree of stress that's induced.

And then number 4, the weaponizing of guilt or shame.

Yeah, my mind already starts going to each of those and thinking of examples of my own clients and how they've been subject to those.

And we could maybe even start by looking at some of the early research in the early 20th century.

So this would have been around the 19 teens and into the 1920s and 30s.

And this really started in a research lab in St.

And so when we look at what happened there, well, I'll just share a story.

So basically there was a great flood that happened in the city.

And there was a bunch of dogs in this research basement.

And so as the water started rising, started rising, it came into the basement of the research labs.

And of course these dogs were terrified, right?

Cause they're stuck in these cages and the water's coming higher, higher, higher.

And so what happened in that situation is that 1 of the researchers remembered, oh, those dogs are in the cages, right?

And so the researcher rushed into the lab And right as the water was getting close to drowning many of these dogs, he had to duck the dogs underneath the water and then pull them out of the cages and bring them into freedom and essentially save their lives.

And what was fascinating is that after that trauma that these dogs went through, these dogs were completely different than they were in the first place.

So some of the dogs that were friendly became aggressive, others that were excited about the day, they would just kind of became listless in their cages and they didn't wanna engage because of the severe trauma that they had gone through.

And so some of our listeners might be wondering, well, who was that researcher?

So when you think about psychology and dogs in the early 1900s, you're right on.

So it was actually Pavlov's research lab where this happened.

So afterwards, Pavlov spent the majority of his life really researching these dogs and essentially seeing how these high levels of stress, which is what happened in this situation where they almost drowned, how that could actually change and basically completely change dogs.

And also he eventually showed how this was also a similar process in human beings.

In other words, these dogs that had learned a lot of things in the lab, et cetera, they forgot almost everything they learned.

They essentially became different dogs through the process of this high degree of stress.

Now that's fascinating to think about like the trauma element and we know that trauma is related to being vulnerable to manipulation and so forth.

Yeah, and so again, looking, thinking back to our 4 components of dark psychology, that really helps us understand how quickly change can happen in the face of high levels of stress.

What was fascinating too after that is that Lenin, who was the leader of the Soviet Union at the time, he came to Pavlov and he met with him and he said, so help me understand better these research studies on dogs and how this actually works to you, the stress affects them.

And essentially Lenin, his question of Pavlov was, can we reprogram the population of Russia so that they're infused with communist ideology.

And if so, how do we go about doing that?

And essentially he understood that, well if we impose a great deal of stress on our citizens, this can actually- And make them very subjective to the person who's the savior.

Because now if you're in that state of like, deer in the headlights, like, oh, I don't know, like how I can even live another day, or I'm at that point where I could die and I'm very vulnerable, they're looking for any kind of hope and help, right?

And so essentially by handing that to them saying, okay, well, we have the answers and we're here to protect you, even though initially they're the ones that are traumatized.

So it's almost like that good cop, bad cop scenario.

And we see that in the history of the Soviet Union.

Stalin also used the same sort of ideology to essentially traumatize their citizens, to brainwash them, to manipulate them into subjection to their ideology.

I know earlier you mentioned an interest in this because of your patience, but also because of your own educational background of taking a class and learning more about war tactics in general, like actual war tactics.

And you see the same sort of thing, even in World War II as well, where Hitler, here's a pretty logical group of people, like Germans are typically thought of as being pretty logical, and yet how were they manipulated to actually become essentially monsters and do so many horrible things, the genocide of the Jews and all of this.

Michigan Camp Meeting 2025: He Must Increase

Prophecy's Final Countdown

Cody Francis

Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

03 Wrestling with God

You're about to enjoy a presentation recorded at the 2025 Michigan Conference Camp, held at Cedar Lake, Michigan.

We pray that the Lord will bless you as you listen.

Father in heaven, we thank you that you have blessed us with this day.

We thank you for the privilege to come and to study from your Word.

We ask that you will guide us in our study now, that your presence will be with us.

All right, so we're looking at major components in our understanding of eschatology or last-day events.

And as I mentioned, I'm wanting to look at what does, what does the Bible and spirit of prophecy tell us are the major things and as we study that.

Because there's all sorts of things that compete for our attention.

I've had many people tell me as I've been doing, as I've done giving Bible studies and things like that, people tell me, oh, well, you know, there's a red heifer that's been born in Israel now and it doesn't have 1 white hair on it and this is a sign of the end.

And, or, oh, whatever's going on over in Israel, that's a sign of the end and, you know, there's stuff going on.

Obviously we know Israel and Iran right now.

Now the Bible does say that there will be wars and rumors of wars.

And so in a broad sense, the national strifes, whether they're Ukraine and Russia or the unheard of strifes that take place in Africa and other places, those are all indicative of the times in which we live.

But we don't see, or at least I don't see, these things coming into a major focus in inspiration.

So I believe we need to focus on what is an inspiration.

And so We looked at true and false revival our first day, fire from heaven, and then yesterday we looked at signs and wonders and how, once again, there's true and false and how God will work and is working through signs and wonders, but how in the last days there's going to be a high degree of signs and wonders that will be performed by the devil and his agents, and we need to discern between them.

Now Today we're looking at something a little bit different.

We're also, we're going to look at a Bible story and see how it, what it teaches us about last day events as well.

But it's more in the area of, instead of what's out in the world, what's more inside, more of our preparation.

And then tomorrow we're going to be looking at specifically things, final events in prophecy and then Friday as well.

We'll kind of put together a timeline on Friday from inspiration and from a biblical story.

But I want to begin to go in, begin with in Revelation chapter 13 and verse 10.

Now actually, let's, yeah, let's go to Revelation 13 10 to begin with.

We don't normally read this verse or focus on this verse, but it is an interesting component in this verse.

We read, he who leads into captivity shall go into captivity.

He who kills with the sword must be killed with the sword.

Here is the patience and the faith of the saints.

So notice here we have a description of God's people.

And what is the description of God's people here in Revelation 13 10.

Okay, so they have the patience here and it says here is the patience and the faith of the saints.

So Here in Revelation 13 verse 10, they have patience or endurance and faith.

Now let's go over to Revelation chapter 14 and this is the 1 we're much more familiar with.

Revelation chapter 14 and verse 12 and Let's read this.

Patients of the saints, here are those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.

Now what is the similarity and the difference between these 2 verses.

Okay, patience and faith are both there, aren't they?

So we have the patience of the saints in both Revelation 13, 10 and 14, 12, and we have faith in Revelation 1310 and in Revelation 1412.

They keep the commandments of God as well.

And so in Revelation 1310, we have patience and faith.

Revelation 14, 12, we have patience and commandments and faith.

Now that's interesting because when we look in Revelation 13, 10, it's talking about God's people during the dark ages.

And the understanding of the commandments was lost sight of during the dark ages, and it was to be restored in the last days, which we find in Revelation 14, 12, where we have the commandments being restored.

During the dark ages, did they need patience and faith?

And in our time, do we need patience and faith as well?

Absolutely, we need patience and faith and we need the commandments of God as well, right?

And so we have all 3 of those components for God's last day people is remnant church and we see that in Revelation 12, 17 as well.

But in both of these components there's a need for patience or endurance.

Children, there's a way to help us grow in our impatience, that is true.

You know, the saying is that we pray and say, Lord give me patience and give it to me now.

Now you can also translate this word endurance.

Now let me ask you, is Endurance something that we like or enjoy.

We don't normally like endurance that well.

But do we need endurance as God's people today?

You know, I think when I think about endurance, this is a picture of Sunday morning.

Do you need some endurance when you're running a 5k?

Now, maybe not as much as when you're running a marathon or something like that.

Before that, I was too busy with AV and things of that nature.

But the first time I ran it, I kind of have in my mind where the course is.

And I come around, and they direct you not towards the finish line, but where do they direct you?

They direct you over by faculty lane and up and past the finish line, and you're going slightly uphill all that time, And then finally you can turn and come back towards the finish line.

Now I was prepared this time, so I knew it was coming.

And so my thought process was, make sure you can try to turn it up a little bit once you get there, which I don't know if that succeeded or not, but at least I knew it was coming.

There's times when I've been in Africa and in Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, And we would be out in the middle going to villages and seeing the churches that were being raised up and things like that there.

And the only effective way to get to these places is by foot.

Every other mode of transportation that I've taken has broken down.

And well, in all reality, my feet have broken down too.

But not as bad as I had once where the transmission broke in the Jeep we were renting, and the hydraulics in the plane broke another time, and another time the taxi we were taking totally, we just had to get out of the taxi and start walking.

I quickly learned the only way to get any place that you could count on was by walking.

But some of these places, they say, oh, it'll only take us about 8 hours to get there.

Why do we need to leave at 4 in the morning if we're going to take us 8 hours to get there?

Presenting Persuasive Appeals During Keys to Revelation

Daniel Towar

03 The Holy Spirit Makes Appeals Appealing

Father in heaven, we want to thank you so much that we can be here.

Each of us are here because you have given us life and breath today.

We thank you for this gift and we would pray that your Holy Spirit would be with us as we meet together.

We realize that without Him, we could not even breathe.

And because of you and the life-giving Spirit, we pray that you would please inform our hearts, Help us to be open to your will.

Help us to understand from the word of God that we also can make appeals to win people's hearts for your kingdom.

So today, you can pick this up as you pass by, Pastor Tariq, that's all right, thank you.

I've asked my son-in-law, Michael Goetz, to share with you on appeals for the first 10 or 15 minutes.

Michael is the pastor of the Centerville, Ohio Church.

He's been there for the last couple years.

He has a wonderful, strong church on the move, growing, planning a major addition to their church.

And Centerville is aptly named between Dayton and Cincinnati, pretty much smack dab in the middle.

In fact, they live at Middletown, so I mean, they're in the center of it all, they're in the middle of it all, and a lot of good things going on there.

Prior to that, he pastored the Campion Academy Church for 9 years, and prior to that, his assignment was at Pioneer Memorial Church as the youth pastor.

So a lot of variety in his pastoral experience so far.

She's a dental hygienist, and we have 2 wonderful grandchildren from them, Kena and Micah.

So Michael, thank you for sharing what the Lord has put on your mind about giving appeals.

We may even have a chance to ask a couple questions of him.

We'll see how our time goes, but since he's my son-in-law, I'll give you special...

You guys have already visited the fact that making appeals is important or you wouldn't be here.

So I use the term preaching as anything that has to do with the verbal proclamation of the good news, which could be a Sabbath school or a Bible study.

If you trace the journey of preaching, that is the verbal proclamation, you can start at least as early as the flood and culminate in of course the 3 angels messages.

But what it has to do in common all through the then the prophets and of course the early church, The common theme is that God will hold people eternally responsible for what they do in response to your verbal proclamation of His gospel.

Now, I want to distinguish between what our part is and what His part is.

It's His gospel, but it's our verbal, He uses our mouths.

That is, if you can just bear the weight of that for just a moment, think there will be people eternally lost or saved based on their response to what you said, right?

It's all of a sudden like, well, wait a minute, maybe we should have a few more classes on this kind of stuff because God views the verbal proclamation of the gospel with such, with such weight, and you can know this, that we're not going to get to heaven and people are going to say, you didn't give a fair chance.

That is, God sees you and I as the fairest, maybe even we could say the best opportunity for people to experience or to hear the gospel, just feel that.

Some people say I'm too young and then we say we're too old.

Like there's this sweet spot that apparently is like about 24 months long that we're the right age because everything before that we're too young, everything after that we're too old, right?

Let me tell you 1 of the inspirations of Christianity.

I'm gonna spare you his name until the very end, alright, because you're gonna recognize his name, but he as a young man became a Christian and wanted to be involved in sharing Jesus.

And so his little church gave him an opportunity to speak.

And after he spoke, they said, the elders got together and said, yeah, no, no, no, no, let's not do that mistake again, right?

He used terrible grammar and he spoke too fast and his physical presence was just, it was just grating, you know, the whole chalkboard and fingernail, kind of like, ah, it just was, So they scrapped him.

Another church gave him an opportunity because he just wanted to share.

And the next church is like, nope, let's not do that again.

Eventually he ends up birthing his own little Bible study group, a Sunday school group in Chicago and then it becomes attractive and galvanizing, it grows.

Lincoln, future president, at 1 point visits it.

And now maybe you've put the pieces together.

The man that maybe influenced modern Christianity arguably the most was tipping the scales at over 400 pounds, used terrible grammar, and spoke too fast, but we know his name as Dwight L.

Moody, the man who just wouldn't quit trying to share Jesus.

I mean he was a bright mind and weight is not a deterrent, but the way he carried himself was not attractive.

But here was a man who was very large, spoke too fast, and couldn't communicate well.

And now he became the voice of Christianity and an impactor of preachers and others.

Our arguments pale pretty fast when we talk about, well, I can't, I can't.

I want to tell you about a preacher that I've never met.

Back to Menu

All Teachings

Dark Psychology

33m

03 Wrestling with God

1h 2m

03 The Holy Spirit Makes Appeals Appealing

58m

The Battle for the Final Generation

1h 2m

02 Talking to Strangers

52m

13 The Tabernacle

22m

02 Signs and Wonders

1h 2m

02 How to Give Persuasive Appeals

59m

The Test of Liberty

1h 4m

01 Talking to Strangers

45m

13 The Glory of God

29m

01 Fire from Heaven

58m

Sound Doctrine