Tattoos can be used as a way to assign identity, signal belonging, rank, or loyalty. You can see this in gang dynamics, extremist groups, trafficking networks, and cult structures. In trafficking rings, tattoos are used for branding to make it easier for the buyers and sellers to recognize human trafficking victims. Symbols placed on the body become emotional triggers over time that reinforce the psychological state of the victim.

Whether the symbol is a tattoo, phrase, image or ritual object, the brain links it with memories, identity, threat, and belonging. This is how neurological conditioning works and the permanence of a tattoo can serve as a constant reminder from the handler or owner. It gets even more complicated when a survivor has dissociative identity disorder because the meaning can be compartmentalized. The tattoo may hold different meanings to different parts in the person’s system.

How many kids today hang out with the wrong crowd or even join gangs because they are so desperate to fit in, to be seen and heard, and fill voids left by trauma wounds? Human nature will seek out and accept negative attention because any attention is better than no attention.

The occult goes to great lengths to make their members feel like they belong and when someone finally escapes, there is an emptiness and loss that must be felt and filled. A child will love their parent even if they beat them because their survival depends on it. It’s the same with SRA and mind control. The survivor fully believes that their life depends on it until someone can show them the truth and the way out. Asking someone to leave the occult without giving them something to replace it like assigning them a lifetime sentence to solitary confinement. It never works long term. If you don’t deal with the loss, then triggers and reminders like a tattoo will have a very strong pull drawing you back to the group every time you feel isolated or alone.

In group-based control systems identity is often reinforced through visible and invisible boundaries. There is a strong emphasis on “us versus them,” loyalty, secrecy, and belonging. Symbols, language, and expectations become tools for maintaining that structure. Over time, these tools reinforce trauma bonding and increase psychological dependence on the group. Even after leaving, the emotional imprint can remain, especially when fear or shame were part of the reinforcement.

Ink

Traffic crawled along the coastal strip, heat shimmering off the pavement like a living thing. The air tasted like salt and exhaust, sunscreen and fried food, laughter and impatience. Beachgoers spilled across crosswalks in sunburnt clusters, cars inching forward in tight, restless lines.

She walked beside him, hand looped through his arm, sunglasses hiding the distance in her eyes. To anyone watching, she looked like what people called arm candy, young, polished, and smiling just enough. He liked that and he liked the way people looked at her and then at him.

He made her feel chosen, special and worthless all at the same time.

She told herself she was lucky. He could have been worse. She’d seen worse. But there was a quiet ache of awareness that she didn’t want to be with him at all. He didn’t believe in Yahweh or anything that she stood for. Piece by piece, one gross act at a time, he had stripped those things away from her until she no longer recognized what was left.

Still, she stayed because obedience had been carved into her long before she met him.

They were supposed to be getting food. That’s what he’d said. But instead, he turned into a narrow parking lot lined with flickering neon and blacked-out windows. A bell chimed when they stepped inside.

The tattoo shop felt… wrong. Not just unfamiliar, but heavy.

The walls were covered in designs that seemed to pulse under the fluorescent lights. She scanned the photos of snakes, skulls, symbols, things that looked ancient and angry. The air smelled of metal and antiseptic, but beneath it was something darker, something that pressed against her chest until it was hard to breathe.

Her gaze drifted back to the door as she watched cars fly by like she was observing them from underwater. A strange distance crept in, as if the world outside belonged to someone else. Her heart pounded, loud and irregular while her face started going numb.

Her spirit recoiled. We shouldn’t be here. But there was no voice for that. Only submission and compliance.

The dissociation came quickly, pulling her back from the edges of herself. The artist noticed first evidenced by the hesitation in his hands and a crease in his brow. Something about her made him uncomfortable. They left before anything happened, and her boyfriend’s irritation simmered while she sat silent, trying to find her breath again.

A few days later, it happened again. The same strip, same heat, and the same silent car ride.

He didn’t explain. Didn’t ask. Just turned into another parking lot and told her to get out so she did. This time she was more prepared. She’d already chosen, she thought. A small tattoo. Something simple. A dog bone wrapped with a ribbon; her dog’s name etched across it. Innocent. Manageable. Something she could live with.

It felt like her choice.

Years later, another survivor would look at her ankle and go still. “Why do you have the same tattoo as my handler?” That was when the rabbit hole opened. Nothing simple is ever simple in a survivor’s life.

Survivors don’t make their own choices, not really. They were guided, nudged, shaped until the decision felt like theirs. Handlers were skilled at that. Experts, even. The illusion of control was part of the design.

The tattoo healed. Life moved on. Time blurred. Until the next one.

Josh came into the group from somewhere else, introduced like an asset being transferred. A tattoo artist. Talented, they said. Precise. She was selected for him.

The room smelled like sweat and ink and something electric. He worked with a strange focus, eyes too bright, breathing shallow, like the act itself fed him. The needle pressed deeper than necessary, dragging heat through her skin. He enjoyed it.

She could see it in the way his mouth tightened, the way his body leaned into the pain he was creating. There was no attempt to hide the arousal, no shame, no hesitation.

Her gaze locked onto the bare lightbulb above, unmoving, unblinking. The world narrowed to that single point as she drifted away from her body. Inside, the littles cried. Screamed. Begged for it to stop. But another part stepped forward, steady and composed, presenting exactly as she had been trained. Acceptable, controlled and silent with the job to enjoy the pain being inflicted.

When it was finished, the room filled with praise. The group admired the lines, the color, the way it sat on her skin. He grinned, proud with anticipation. They told him he was lucky he’d chosen her. She didn’t pay for the tattoo, not there and not with money.

Payment would come later, alone with him, at home, in ways no one would witness and no one would question. Outside, the world kept moving. Cars passed. People laughed. The sun blazed overhead like nothing had changed. And she walked through it all, marked in ways no one could see, carrying the weight of choices that had never truly been hers.

Redemption

If you have been branded with a tattoo, you can repent, go to the courts of heaven and ask for any legal rights to be revoked, break soul ties, blood covenants and ask for ownership to be transferred to Yeshua. This process involves separating truth from the imposed meaning placed on you by the occult, and learning your identity in Christ. In order to heal, survivors must learn to separate who they truly are from what was placed on them.

There is a restaurant in my town that always sits a cup with a certain type of smiley face on it out for tips. I noticed that the girl working there has that same face tattooed on her body. When I asked someone that works with survivors about it, they explained to me that it is a branding tattoo. Her owner can give a certain type of coin to someone, and they can “purchase” her by placing the coin in the tip cup. She is programmed to respond to the coin. I don’t pretend to know how all that works or if it is 100% accurate but given all I do know, it would not surprise me at all.

There are parts of healing that are hard to explain unless you’ve lived them. One of those parts is realizing that your body was not treated as your own. I have two tattoos that I did not choose in the way people assume tattoos are chosen. I was coerced into getting them during a time when I was not fully present. A different part of me was brought forward, a part that believed submission was required to survive and abandonment would follow if compliance did not happen. That part got the tattoos under the belief that obedience was safety and that what was happening was somehow connected to love. If you asked them, they would tell you that they did it willingly, but the truth is that they did it terrified because they couldn’t say no.

My tattoos were used to mark ownership and reinforce submission when I was sold from one cult group to another. Over time, different parts also attached their own meaning creating a lot of internal conflict when I started working on reclaiming my autonomy. They represented alignment with a group and belief system I renounce completely. They were evidence of my being born into a cult family and my loss of identity from infancy, not an expression of who I am today. It has been quite the journey to no longer live in the lies of what my tattoos were created to mean. This is the place my heart posture is coming from in writing this post.

Many survivors describe feeling marked, owned, assigned, or defined by something outside themselves. It can be extremely challenging to separate your true identity from the roles, expectations, and meanings that were imposed. The body can feel like a reminder of what happened rather than a place of safety and belonging. Symbols that were created in fear can continue to trigger emotional or physiological responses long after the environment has changed.

Our true identity is rooted in the truth of who Christ says we are rather than our trauma. Belonging is no longer based on control, and the body is no longer seen as an object marked for ownership. It becomes a safe place where the parts living on the astral realm because it was too dangerous in the body can finally return to rest and start healing. Our body is meant to be a temple where we can abide in Christ. When I started to learn to be thankful for my body, as broken as it was, I realized that my tattoos are not of Yahweh nor do they represent His heart for me. They represent a life of pain, heartache, fear, false identity, pride, selfishness, and all the things that open the door to the enemy and give him legal grounds to torment me.

I want what marks my body to reflect redemption and healing. I want what was once used against me to become a testimony of freedom, so I plan to cover my tattoos with something that represents Yeshua. His sacrifice overcomes every attempt the enemy made to define, control, and claim me as his.

My body is becoming less of a reminder of what was done to me, and more of a declaration of Who I belong to as I heal. I want it to be a place of restoration, not captivity.

If you are a survivor who carries marks, symbols, or reminders from a time when your voice was not present, I want you to know that you are allowed to choose and redefine what your body represents. What was done to you does not get the final say and absolutely nothing is stronger than the redeeming power of Christ.