((If you are just tuning in, you may want to start here: http://bayareashrink.blogspot.com/2012/11/cults-pt1.html ))
Cults, pt. 17: Leaving the Cult
At one point, I made the decision to go see the movie Kundun, about His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and when I was shamed for that decision, it added a wallop to my growing recognition that there was something very wrong with this group – consciously admitting that to myself had been growing just below the surface for a very long time. Within days, I was once again grilled about my dedication to the group and was asked a number of questions about my commitment that clearly only had one correct answer, which I did not know and could not guess. Within a week I was expelled from the group, which I did not protest.
As I moved my belongings out, the polarization of member vs. outsider was reinforced by all the other cult members. They had been my constant companions for the previous few years but now treated me as if I was invisible. They would not help me pack or move large pieces of furniture, speak to me or even look at me. As I felt that I was going from part of the group to part of the outsiders – evil, unenlightened – I doubted this decision to leave. Moreover, because I had cut off ties to all outside friends and family – sometimes burning bridges behind me – leaving the cult meant having to make amends, apologies, trying to salvage relationships, risking being totally alone or receiving a lot of anger for how I had cut people out of my life, and trying to explain why – something I did not understand myself, and would not understand for quite some time. But I moved all my things out, and began the process of putting a life together.
Post-Cult Recovery
While the preceding sections have focused on what being in a cult is like, the following sections focus on what particular issues ex-cultists will face as they leave the cult and re-enter society. I not only have the experience of clinically treating ex-cultists myself, but also my own experience and studies help me to include guidelines and suggestions for therapists whose clients are ex-cult members.
In her book, Trauma and Recovery, Judith Herman underscores the need for a victim of abuse to develop a strong, trustworthy relationship with at least one other being, emphasizing that recovery cannot happen in isolation, that it can only happen through relationship (1992, p. 133). Recovery insists that the victim/ex-member become empowered in his or her own life, and that control over their own life is put completely in their hands. The new connections and new relationships with others are a necessary step in learning to come out of the trauma of the cult and learning to feel safe in life.
Tobias and Lalich (1994), in their book, Captive Hearts, Captive Minds, (newer editions of the book are titled Take Back Your Life) offer several chapters on cult recovery, including an entire chapter on therapeutic issues to be faced by ex-members and numerous helpful watch lists. In their chapter on therapeutic issues, they list that therapy with an ex-cult member might include mind control education, relationship and career counseling, PTSD treatment, treatment of psychological and emotional disorders, and medication for depression and/or anxiety, as necessary (1994, p. 264). Through the therapist’s constant and consistent, unwavering and active support of their personal and unique empowerment, the ex-member can come towards healing of their varied and sundry difficulties that often include: emotional volatility; dissociation; depression; loneliness; guilt; indecisiveness; communication problems; fear of retribution (spiritual and physical); spiritual, philosophical or ideological void; or conflicts with their family (1994, p. 265).
The following sections discuss these and more concerns for former cult members and the therapists treating them.
Personal History
After getting out of the cult a few weeks before my 25th birthday, I had a lot of psychological healing to do. I was fortunate enough to find a wonderful and trustworthy therapist who was knowledgeable about cults. As part of healing the cult experience, my therapist helped me to develop the greater ego strength that I needed. Healing from the cult included paying attention to issues that had not been addressed in the cult, such as facing and treating my addictions, and tending to childhood wounds. I had a great deal of healing to do from the cult experience itself – including some dissociative tendencies and a number of social interaction issues, most notably having to do with trust. Although I had started to recognize my serious unhappiness in the group, I still had some ambivalence about leaving, and being pushed out of the group left me with a very confused mess to sort out.
How People Leave
How the member left the cult has a lot to do with what that former member will be dealing with in their recovery. There are basically four ways to leave a cult, in roughly this order of prevalence: 1) to walk away, 2) to be thrown out, 3) to lose the leader or for the group to collapse, and 4) to be counseled out through an intervention, which usually involves the family (http://www.trancenet.org/groups/faq/faqrecover.shtml). Each of these exits leaves the individual with distinctly different issues to resolve and heal. John M. Knapp, on his information-packed website devoted to illuminating people about cults, describes how people leave cults:
Walkaways may leave gradually because of love for family or friends or what is called “cognitive dissonance” – a growing realization that the ideals of the group are at odds with their actions. They may float into new groups or eventually return to their original group. Frequently they do not face the damage that they have endured, and they experience reduced functionality for many, many years. Castaways are tossed out by their leaders or groups for real or imagined offenses – or to keep other members in line. This group may experience the most traumatic reentrance into mainstream society. They usually have not rejected the beliefs or leader of their group and have the added guilt and shame of having been rejected. Someone involved in the disbandment of their group may experience an ego-strengthening sense of power and control. If the group disbanded against their wishes or their leader died, they may experience a depth of despair similar to a castaway. Those who are counseled out, through therapy, exit counseling, in-residence programs, or the like, usually experience the smoothest and quickest recovery (http://www.trancenet.org/groups/faq/faqrecover.shtml).
Being mostly a castaway myself – there were also elements of being a walkaway – I had to come to terms with the shame and guilt of having let the teacher and the group down, of having not lived up to their teachings, and the belief that I failed and betrayed them and myself. Therapists are advised that any castaway would face a similar struggle after being kicked out of a cult, which may be why the slow process of tearing down faith in the teachings is so important.
A therapist will also want to keep in mind that castaways and walkaways may have grave fears that their leaving will result in horrible consequences.
Exit counseling, which educates ex-cult members of the mind control tactics used by their cult as well as familiarizing themselves with the state that they were in when they were introduced to the cult, may be the first time ex-cult members have understood how they were manipulated and may be the first step away from shame and towards understanding and healing. While some exit counselors state the importance of the family’s involvement in helping the ex-member to re-enter society, I think that should be approached with caution. I have heard stories of people’s outrageously abusive pre-cult home lives, after which an abusive cult seemed familiar. I can see the potential healing in involving family members, but therapists would be wise to consider if this is best.
Medical and Health Care Concerns
Cult recovery includes healing in a number of aspects of the ex-member’s life, and, of course, one of the most important is physical health. Ex-members may seriously need to tend to health issues and medical care – and therapists are encouraged to steer these clients to seek care for such issues from the proper professionals, even if there are no symptoms present and it is only for a check-up.
Many cults, especially those that are spiritual/religious in nature, use tactics to induce shame and guilt at every so-called failing of the members, such as pronouncing the seeking of medical health treatment to be admission of one’s lack of faith, or even the arising of medical needs to be signs of one’s spiritual failure. In the cult in which I was involved, one member had a terrible lesion on his nose, which I noticed had gotten dramatically worse over just a few months. I told him of my concerns, but he apathetically assured me that he was going to heal it internally. Often children are held within similar structures, denied any form of medical treatment, including vaccinations, dental care and basic medical attention, any one of which could have fatal consequences.
Many ex-members find that they suffer from consequences of restricted diets that were deficient in particular nutrients, most notably protein-deficient (Shaw, 1996). Such nutritional deficiencies can have pronounced effects upon their ability to perform or even think clearly, which can adversely affect their ability to gain and keep employment, participate in relationships, perform everyday tasks, and seek out education or training.
Other issues may involve physical abuse and work exploitation. Many cults use child and adult members in fundraising efforts, wearing them out physically for days or months on end. Therapists are advised to encourage former cult member clients to tend to their physical needs and to get the medical attention they may need.
Psychoeducation
As long as a cult member has a properly functioning body, most cult recovery is primarily founded upon psychoeducation. Through educating themselves about cults, recovering former cult members can undermine the cult’s power and continued influence in their lives. This process can be assisted through organized, short-term exit counseling, or through less intensive, longer-term psychotherapy in which the therapist helps the ex-member to learn about their experience (Shaw, 1996).
The ex-member is very likely to be unaware of the legacy of cultic abuse, and may not even think that past experience could be causing their problems, focusing more on the confounding inability to come out of depression, their day-to-day inadequacy in communicating or feeling connections with others, or even their difficulty concentrating and keeping a job. It is very important that therapists be aware of what experiences and processes define a cult because the therapist may be in the position of needing to inform their client that they were in a cult, and helping them come to understand what that means. I’ve had clients in my own practice who had come to see me for entirely different presenting issues, but disclosed that they had previously been in a cult only after they happened to learn of my expertise in the area. With such clients, it is a necessary process of discovering the symptom and finding its correlation with the cult experience.
In my first year after leaving the cult, I started the very long and important process of educating myself about cults. This is a very important step for any recovering ex-cult member. It took nearly a year to accustom myself to calling this group I had been so dedicated to a “cult,” as opposed to a “spiritual group,” and equally long to shift from calling it “my group” to “the cult” – a crucial reframing process that I would imagine most ex-members would find very helpful. Therapists are advised, however, that it can be very scary and humiliating for ex-member clients to even consider that they’d dedicated their lives to a cult. They, like myself, may be ashamed of having been fooled. This is why psychoeducation about cult mind control tactics can be so reassuring and healing. Therapists can be a great support to ex-cultist clients by being a resource for information, or even by supporting clients to educate themselves. The client may prefer to refer to their former group by another name forever, or until they are comfortable calling it a cult.
Difficulties Seeking Help
It may be very hard for an ex-member of a cult to seek therapy, or stay once they’ve started. Most cults proclaim that theirs is the only way, often denouncing therapy and process. Also, an ex-cult member’s associations with authority may be decidedly negative, especially while they heal from the destructive approval-seeking position that they were forced into in the cult. It is of vital importance for therapists to recognize the abusive authoritarian structure from which their client is trying to recover and to recognize that the client-therapist relationship bears some similarities, and therefore may be rather triggering. Therapists who can handle such transference, and offer their clients privacy, respect, autonomy and self-pacing create an opportunity for great healing for their clients.
If they do seek therapy, it is of utmost importance that their therapist be sensitive to and savvy about the effects of mind control, thought reform and other cultic abuses, for most ex-members seek therapy with presenting issues of depression and relational difficulties, rather than wanting to deal with the cult experience (Tobias and Lalich, p. 258). The former member may need some encouragement to think for him- or herself, to find out what his or her true needs, wishes, and desires are. This may be an ongoing unfoldment, combined with guidance that lack of certainty and risk of mistake is a normal part of the human condition.
It is also extremely important that the therapist gently work with the client through their cultic experience and abuse, taking it seriously, rather than jumping immediately to other childhood traumas. The therapist’s taking a stand for the gravity of the cult experience itself will help the ex-member client do the same, and will ultimately be very healing.
