One Powerful Question

Comment now » // August 5th, 2009

I believe that the most powerful question I’ve learned to ask myself during my cult recovery is, “What do I need?”

While I was with the spiritual cult I was a part of in the 1990s, this would have been the last question I would have asked myself. What I needed, according to my guru, didn’t matter, and would never matter. Needing to take care of myself or needing to conduct my life in a way that felt aligned with my beliefs and values and passions and personality type was irrelevant. As a good disciple, I learned that the only thing I was supposed to be focused on was what my guru, and therefore God, wanted or needed (she taught us that she was God’s one true representative on earth).

It was a soul-crushing experience, as any cult survivor knows, to develop the deeply ingrained habit of completely ignoring my own needs and desires and likes and dislikes. When I came out of the cult, I had to spend quite a bit of time relearning what my likes and dislikes and needs were. And, in fact, it was uncomfortable for a long while to not have the rules of the cult to follow. I felt at sea trying to decide for myself what I needed or wanted at any given moment.

It’s been almost ten years since I left the cult, and I realized just this morning that I’m still developing the skill of asking myself what I need and, more importantly, giving myself permission to answer completely honestly. Looking back now I realize that for many years I relied on structure and order to tell me what I needed. “It’s noon? Ok that means I need lunch.” Or “It’s the weekend? Ok that means I need some quiet time and maybe a nap on Saturday afternoon.” It’s amazing to me that ten years of recovery have passed and yet I’m just now starting to feel a strong enough sense of self that I can ask myself, “What do I really need?” and if the answer is unconventional (like a nap on a Tuesday at 2pm) that I can give myself permission to do that.

Cult recovery is a fascinating journey, and in many ways it is a journey I am incredibly grateful to be on. I doubt that without the cult experience I had that I would have delved as deeply and as passionately into learning about myself and about being whole. It may never have occurred to me to ask myself on a daily and almost hourly basis, with such honest inquiry, “What do I need?”