My DH has been brainwashed by tick tock conspiracies

[Stressymessymum]

It’s a bit long but I’m unsure how to deal with this behaviour.

during lockdown my DH ( previously was never into anything like this. was very normal, works in a hospital) fell into a habit of listening to conspiracy podcasts - he thought it was interesting and I didn’t think much of it. This hobby has carried on but increased and the last 3 months his behaviour is really off.

examples

No longer wants to vaccinate our children (oldest 2 are fully vaccinated, baby has had newborn jabs but not one year yet)

wants to home educate because he believes the schools are full of paedophiles and other kids ‘shed’ vaccinations. He doesn’t actually want to do any home ed. I think it’s something called unschooling but we both work full time. I’ve asked him for a plan on how he thinks it will work and he can’t tell me.

won’t let children socialise outside of school. Has removed them from clubs (for the same reasons as above.

wont socialise with vaccinated people (included our families)

wont drink Tap water. Baths in bottled water

refusing to pay council tax as it’s a made up scam (I do pay this 😂)

believes NASA/ moon landing/ 911/ holocaust ( and a long list of other things) is made up

That’s just the tip of the iceberg really…

I’ve tried to talk to him about it but he gets really angry and starts ranting.

who on earth do i talk to about this? I know he’s allowed his own beliefs but he’s dragging our children into it and the way it’s escalated I’m a bit scared xx

based on what the op has put, her dh is wrong on all aspects

He sounds like he has a serious mental health condition! we brave restrictions on cigs and booze and drugs but not on the internet, possibly the most dangerous addiction out there!

my fav author is graham hancock and his various books as i like Egyptology etc

It sounds like he needs sectioning tbh
Can you call his GP to start with? and social services. I’d also be worried he could try to collect the kids from school or take them away and you’ll be powerless

It is very very difficult to legally remove a parent from a child's life. Rightly so, the bar is incredibly high and 'has some weird beliefs including being anti vaxx' is nowhere near it (though I can appreciate he sounds like a nightmare to live with).

Some people on here live in a fantasy world where they think you can cut the other parent out of a child's life at the drop of a hat because it suits them. You can't, fortunately.

Problem with a lot of these things is that they are often partially true. For example vaccine shedding is a real thing with live vaccines e.g. measles, chickenpox, flu etc. But... only for a few days, and it is only a danger to people with a poor immune system.

Incidentally I have a friend who works as a mental health nurse and we've had some interesting discussions about religion and mental health. She said that if someone e.g. believes they are god or joims a cult that isn't sufficient on its own to get involved. It's if it puts themselves or others at risk that it moves from different opinion to being seen as a mental health issue. So similarly you need to show if his behavior is putting him or others at risk.

I am not ridiculous, it does not sound unalike pure OCD. No offence intended to be caused.

www.ocduk.org/ocd/pure-o/

Disagree and have been through family court recently.

no way I’d allow a bloody nut job like this to be around my children.

You can’t talk to anyone, he won’t see sense. Please make plans to leave, quietly get children vaccinated, I don’t think he’d know. Must be so hard to live with,keep safe.

Goodness how ignorant can you be

I think you need to step away from the spliff 🤣

It sounds like psychosis.
please get him to your GP on Monday and they can get an urgent referral to the Early Invention for psychosis team for support.

His delusions and beliefs highlight he is unwell. They can work with him to prevent risk to self and others.

Truly sorry that you had to endure this. It is so hard to crush beliefs when one is adamant. But, removing him from these type of podcasts/videos might be beneficial. Not like take his phone away or something but when he's a sleep clear the cache and browsing history then feed his timeline with more positive things, like 5 places to visit with kids in half term, how a wooden chest is made, more nature more positivity and neutral things.
It is a soft approach, I'm not sure how evolved his thinking by now but sounds like he needs something else to hold on.
And good luck!

Late in life change of personality - most people form extreme views in their youth.

• I'm not sure about that though. Older people becoming radicalised online into conspiracies seems increasingly common.

Moreover, I have a theory that SM can sometimes be used by stressed/worried midlife adults in a kind of 'second adolescence' way. Rod Dreher & Mary Harrington are two middle-aged pundits who seem to have got increasingly out of touch from everyday life since becoming extremely online, Dreher especially. Another example I noted was an English professor, Marilyn Simon, I used to read on Substack. Over the last year her posts got increasingly weird (fairly normal before), as she began writing long essays on sex and submission after getting a new partner. Her readership (mostly middle aged men) seemed to encourage this, and she herself seemed blind to the fact that her teens and former husband were easily identifiable and probably upset by the amount of intimate detail she was giving.

there’s a hell of a lot of other stuff I don’t want my daughter exposed to.

• what kind of things? I can understand re the trans issue, but what else do you think schools teach inappropriately?

Do you yourself want to home educate? Or do you feel pressured to do so? This feels unfair.

I think you need to get him prompt medical
assistance. This sounds like paranoid schizophrenia or similar paranoid mental illness. He needs support and investigation. He sounds very unwell.

She can't stop him having contact with them, but of she can prove the dangers (eg. Cutting off socialising ) then that puts them in a stronger position.

Ugh my sister believes this nanobot stuff. I did a thread a few weeks back about her beliefs about food & people were telling me she must have mental health issues...but she doesn't, she's just gone down the rabbit hole. What to do?

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5479951-is-my-sister-bu-to-say-these-photos-show-little-pieces-of-metal-in-her-food-photos-attached?page=1

Op is being very brave.

But if OP doesn't want or isn't able to homeschool, who will do it? Will he?

And it sounds like he wants to do so to prevent them socialising, so he presumably wouldn't want to do groups.

Denying vaccines is legal, but denying socialising and insisting on homeschooling when neither parent can do so is not on and surely the court will agree

Tiktok is an absolute crazy place. Just today I've seen masses of comments of people claiming both Jim Carey and Britney Spears are clones, I struggled to find a comment that didn't claim they were either clones or other actors pretending to be them. Same for Seleena Gomez. The comments are like mass psychosis and everyone agreeing with eachother.

Now the more time I spent baffled by the comments the more videos im getting. I hope your husband gets help but do not allow him to let this control your family

My husband is a bit like this, not to this extreme though. He's too tight to buy bottled water to fill a bath! 🙈

Mike West's book Escaping the Rabbit Hole: How to Debunk Conspiracy Theories Using Facts, Logic, and Respect is worth reading. It's written for loved ones but includes testimonials from former believers.