Archive for Cult recovery

30 Mar 2013
Cult recovery • How Cults Work

The What vs. the How (a.k.a., Why I left the cult)

“Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.” Mother Teresa

Every cult or high-demand group has a Big What. The Big What is the reason or cause for the group’s being, i.e., saving the planet from alien invasion, ‘clearing’ the planet of negative beings, serving a god or deity, attaining spiritual enlightenment, etc. You know the drill. Your cult had a Big What too, maybe similar to one of these examples, or maybe different.

In every cult, the Big What becomes every member’s reason for being and eventually becomes so important that it overshadows family, friends, education, taking good care of oneself and free will. In other words, the Big What becomes a powerful way to control the members’ behaviour.

For example, if you wanted to take a weekend off from work that you do for the cult to go to a family reunion, you might be guilt-tripped into not going because your service to the Big What would be interrupted if you went.

Or, if you wanted to begin to raise a family with your spouse, you might be told that children would get in the way of serving the Big What, so…maybe you should consider not following that dream.

In a Cult the What Matters More than the How

In a cult, the Big What gradually takes over our lives and begins to change our behaviour. We may notice, or even participate in, verbal and psychological abuse in the cult, but this is justified by the Big What. We may sacrifice time, money and our health, but again, this is justified because the Big What matters more than our ‘petty’ concerns about material matters.

“Why should your retirement fund matter when we are trying to save the planet?” the cult asks, again and again until we have given everything and ask for nothing in return.

In a cult we are always required to shut down and ignore our own needs, wants, dreams, hopes and even basic human rights in service of the Big What.

So over and over again, we observe that in cults, abuse runs rampant because the Big What justifies any and every behaviour. Our loved ones would ask (if they could reach us), “It’s horrible in there. Why don’t you just leave?” But we can’t, because we have been taught to believe in the Big What with every fibre in our being and to turn our backs on it would be to betray everything that matters to us. We would be saying that the Big What doesn’t matter and to a cult member, that is inconceivable.

The Toxic Garden

Each and every cult says that their purpose is to do something great, magical, beautiful and unique. That’s how we get sucked in, after all. The goals are lofty and amazing and we agree with the values these goals reflect, so we join.

Metaphorically, each cult says that they want to build a beautiful garden. They want it to be both peaceful and gorgeous to look at, filled with lush, stunning flowers and trees. It will have something for everyone; quiet places for contemplation, babbling brooks and other water sources, vegetable gardens full of the healthiest and most healing foods. The garden will be the safest place on the planet and everyone is welcome. Being in the garden will fill each person with such peace and love that anyone who enters will be healed from whatever ails them.

That’s the Big What.

Then the cult begins to build the garden. It trucks in toxic waste and dumps it on the soil. It uses child labour to build the fences and till the soil. It doesn’t provide any of the workers with the proper tools they need to do the job. The cult constantly changes the plan of the garden’s design so that any work that has been done has to be pulled out and started over.

Very soon, the cult blames all the workers when the garden is not growing and the plan is not working out. “If you would just work harder, the soil would be healed, the tools would work and all would be well. The fact that this garden is not growing is your fault.”

That’s HOW a cult builds a garden.

How the How Saved Me

Thankfully, in the latter days of my cult experience, I began to notice that HOW we were serving our Big What was in direct contradiction to the values we said our Big What espoused. We said we were bringing love and light to the planet (what) but we did it with anger, abuse, cruelty, callousness, self-loathing and a total lack of any kind of compassion or love (how). In other words, in the name of serving God (our Big What) we were verbally abusive to one another, we shunned each other at different times, we were encouraged to be cut off from our friends and family, and despite talking about saving humanity we were not involved in the communities we lived in, etc. etc.

I began to question this paradox. “Why do we say that we serve God, the source of love, but then treat each other with a total absence of love?” The answer always came that it was my fault if I couldn’t see why this paradox made sense.

I wrestled and wrestled with that until finally I couldn’t live with this unreconciled question inside me any longer.

What We Do Matters Far Less Than How We Do It

Now I try to operate my life from a place of How. I want the things I do to be directly in line with how I do them. For me, if the What and the How aren’t lined up, there’s no point in proceeding.

If I say that I value love and compassion and an open-hearted way of living, then at every moment, even when I’m failing at those things, or when I feel my life is not what I want it to be, I can try to make the choice to be loving and compassionate with myself. Even when I suck. Even when I fail.

How I take every step of this journey now matters more to me than the lofty end goals I might have.

This was a long, hard lesson to learn, but I am so deeply grateful that I finally grasped what the universe was trying to tell me.

May we all be free,
Alexandra

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13 Jan 2013
Cult recovery • Families of cult victims

The Number One Strategy for Family Members

So…you’re the family member or friend of someone who has left a cult. You are thrilled beyond measure that your loved one has managed to get themselves out of a very toxic and abusive, not to mention dangerous, situation.

You are probably aware that the cult leader that your loved one was involved with is an emotionally and psychologically manipulative and abusive controller. You know that your loved one was coerced into the cult (no one joins a cult without being coerced) and that they stayed in that toxic, abusive, dangerous situation because they were taught to believe that if they left their life, their soul and possibly the fate of the world, was in jeopardy.

You know that cult leaders are bad dudes, even when they’re women. They are charismatic, controlling, authoritarian personalities who use and abuse people in the most horrific ways for their own self-serving purposes (to inflate their egos, their wealth and their sense of power and self).

And you’re probably very, very angry at the cult leader that your loved one was involved with. And rightly so. The cult leader has hijacked a portion of your loved one’s life, possibly turned your loved one against you, definitely tied their brain in knots with thought-reform techniques, and caused them trauma and suffering in ways you may never even be able to imagine.

The cult leader is a person who, if life were fair, should be hanged from a tree by his/her toenails and covered in honey and fire ants.

However…and this is a really BIG however…your number one strategy as the family member or friend of someone who has been in a cult is to NOT attack or malign the cult leader in any way when your loved one first returns to the real world.

Here’s why: There is a sense of loyalty that exists between cult members and their leader that lasts beyond the borders of the relationship. The easiest parallel I can draw (although it’s not perfect) is to imagine that you are getting divorced or are leaving a long-term relationship. (Not an abusive relationship, just a regular one that didn’t work out.) You have your reasons for ending the relationship, and even though you are doing so you probably still have feelings for the person you are breaking up with. You remember good times you had with them. You remember their positive qualities. You are probably still fond of them, and may even still love them to a certain extent.

Now imagine that your best friend begins verbally attacking your ex-spouse as soon as you’ve left the relationship. “I never liked your wife. I always thought she was crazy. She was such a bitch to you.” etc.

How would you feel? Defensive probably, right? We all grow out of that as we grow away from the relationship, but under certain circumstances, no matter what the relationship was like, we usually feel a bit defensive about it after we’ve left because it was a part of us. We defined ourselves for a period of time as being in that relationship. We need time and space and healing to take place in order to not feel quite as attached as we did when we were in the relationship.

Now, to get back to our cult scenario: An ex-cult member feels that kind of loyalty to the cult leader, times 50. Among other thought-reform dynamics that the cult leader has set up, one of the most prominent is that cult members are taught to feel that whatever is wrong in the world, or in their lives, or in the cult, is their fault. The cult leader is never at fault. The cult member has existed in a culture of extreme self-blame for as long as they were involved with the cult.

And so, even though they’ve left the cult, they will feel they have failed. The ex-cult member will feel they have let the cult leader down, let the other members of their group down, and possibly let the Divine down. Along with these feelings they will believe that the cult leader is not to blame for what transpired.

It is only with time and healing work that the ex-member will realize these things are not true.

Your ‘job’ as the ex-member’s loved one is to be loving and supportive, ask neutral (not blaming or probing) questions and, above all, offer unconditional love. Attacking the cult leader and blaming the ex-member for his/her involvement will not help your loved one to heal.

In Chapter Eight of his excellent book Combatting Cult Mind Control, Steve Hassan goes into detail about how family members and friends of ex-cult members can help their loved one, and how they can harm. If you have someone in your life who was formerly in a cult, I highly recommend reading this book, and especially Chapter Eight. Hassan talks about taking a “curious yet concerned” posture.

It won’t be easy. I know that. But it will be one of the most healing and loving things you can do for your loved one.

In short, take your anger about the cult leader elsewhere. Vent to friends or other family members or a therapist, by all means. I’m not asking you to not feel angry. But when talking to your loved one, please, please remember to be loving and supportive of them and their feelings, and completely neutral on the topic of the cult leader. A few years down the road, your loved one will be able to see that he/she was in a cult and at that time you can express the truth of whatever you’re feeling.

**

(Photo courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

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02 Dec 2012
Cult recovery • Quotes

Regarding grief and loss and leaving a cult…

…and loving and losing others to the cult:

“The breaking of so great a thing should make a greater crack.”
William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra

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19 Nov 2012
Cult recovery • Movies / Art

The long, long walk

I watched the movie The Way last night; written and directed by Emilio Estevez and starring his father, Martin Sheen. It’s about a man’s pilgrimage on El Camino de Santiago (also called The Way of St. James) – a walk through France and Spain from the French side of the Pyrenees to Santiago de Compostela. You can read more about the pilgrimage here.

Watching the movie reminded me of a couple of things. One, that I became interested in walking the route myself in the early days of my cult recovery. And two, that cult recovery itself is a pilgrimage.

I love a good long walk. Walking and yoga are my two favorite forms of exercise. So the idea of a walk that lasts months really appealed to me. In the end, money and obligations at home kept me from making the trek, but I still hold it as a vague goal on list of walks I’d like to take.

A long walk through sometimes challenging territory is a great metaphor for both life and cult recovery. I have never taken a walk that was quite as challenging as the one I took when I was recovering from my cult experience.

Here then are four tips for fellow travelers:

Tip #1: Equip yourself
Part of the challenge of cult recovery can be that we don’t know what the hell just happened to us. One minute we own a set of very rigid but strangely comforting beliefs, the next we’re not sure of anything. My advice is to explore the information available to you, to widen your mind and begin exploring different thoughts and beliefs. You won’t agree with everything you read about cults and how they work, and some of it might even contradict your experience, but that’s okay. As a traveler your job is simply to explore. Later, down the road, you can decide what thoughts and beliefs you want to keep, and which ones don’t work for you.

Tip #2: Rest is rich
In the cult you were probably worked very hard and even if you weren’t, which is unlikely, you and your nervous system were on high alert 24/7. What you need now that you are out and safe is rest. You may not know how to rest, however, so take this task on gently. When you feel your body’s need to lie down and rest, do it. When you feel a need to ‘zone out’ and the urge to spend an evening watching mindless TV, do that too. If your nervous system was an engine, it has been revving at 1000 RPM for years. Let it slow down. It might take a while to develop this habit, but it is one that will serve you well. Even travelers on the Camino take days off from walking to rest and recharge.

Tip #3: Be in the journey
The cliche is true: it’s the journey that counts, not the destination. There is no such thing as an end to cult recovery. You will feel better eventually, with a bit of introspection and healing, but I don’t think you’ll ever be completely ‘over’ your cult experience. If my experience is any indication, it will always be a part of you. So don’t feel you have to rush to an end point that isn’t there. Try to notice the walk as it’s happening, take it in, even embrace the gifts it has to offer you. Even after travelers on The Way get the final stamp in their Camino passports at the Santiago de Compostela cathedral, the journey continues. Yours will too.

Tip #4: Tend to Your Wounds
On the Camino your feet are your most precious possession. In her book about trekking The Way, Shirley MacLaine talks about lancing her blisters and taking days off to tend to her feet. If she hadn’t, they couldn’t have gotten her where she was going. For cult survivors, it is not our feet we need to worry about, but our minds, our souls, our emotional bodies. Whatever you can do to take care of these things, do it. Because caring for them will only serve you in the end. Lancing a blister is painful and kind of gross, but if we don’t do it, the consequences can be worse than if we do. Wherever it is you want to go in your post-cult life, you will have a much easier time getting there if you tend to the parts of you that are wounded. Talk to a therapist. Read healing books. Talk to friends who will really listen to you. Journal. Cry. Take good care of your physical body. All these things will make your ‘pilgrimage’ so much easier.

May the road rise to meet you,
May the wind be always at your back,
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
The rains fall soft upon your fields and,
Until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.
Irish blessing

**

(Photo courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

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23 Sep 2012
Cult recovery • Writing • Writing Tools

What support does your writing practice need?

If you’re planning on tackling a big project like writing a book about your cult experience, it really helps to have some support in place for your writing practice.

What that often requires in the beginning of the project (or the practice) is a bit of investigative work on your part to find out what your practice looks like and what support it needs.

Here’s what I mean: If you know that you write best in the mornings how can you support yourself to do that so that you set yourself up for success?

Does your morning practice require that you go to sleep an hour earlier so that you wake refreshed?
Does it require that you put a ‘Do not disturb’ sign on the door to the room where you’re writing?
Would your practice be supported by listening to music while you write? Or do you prefer silence?

**
So you see, there’s the actual writing that you do (the practice) and then there are the many ways you support that practice by thinking about what it and you need.

Writing doesn’t just happen. It’s kind of like going to the gym or the dentist. If we don’t schedule the time in to write, often it won’t happen. Resistance will get in our way and we’ll think of a zillion reasons why we can’t write today.

But if we schedule it in, and find ways to support that plan, we’ll be far more likely to succeed.

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08 Mar 2012
Cult recovery • Mind/Body

Our Bodies Never Lie

I’m currently enrolled in coach training with Martha Beck. One message that she’s repeated over all the years I’ve been reading her books, following her articles in Oprah’s magazine and listening to her classes is that our bodies never lie. Not only are our bodies relentless truth-tellers, but they will lead us to the lives we are most authentically meant to live if we learn to speak their language and hear their messages.

When my body said, “No”.

I was involved with a cult from 1989 to 2000. For all those years, at every minute of every day, my body shouted at me that the environment I was in was not safe.

It did this by creating tension in my stomach/solar plexus area that was so persistent and energetic that at times the ‘butterfly’ feeling stretched all the way up to my throat. Sometimes it was so powerful that I thought I would choke.

I misinterpreted these butterflies; I told myself they were a flaw, a failing of mine. That if I was a ‘better servant of God’ I wouldn’t feel them. I told myself that this tension/fear I felt was drawing in ‘negative energy’ and that it was something I had to rid myself of lest I harm those around me. I meditated and prayed and beat myself up about my butterflies.

Despite this self recrimination, my body never gave up on me

The butterflies never stopped, not for one day or one minute. Not until I left the cult.

It took me years to realize that my body had been speaking to me, loudly and clearly, in the only language it speaks; sensation. It was saying, “This is wrong. This is abuse and manipulation. This is not a safe environment. Get out. NOW.”

When I was in the cult, I hated my body for the way it ‘betrayed’ me every day by filling my mid-section with anxiety.

Now, I love it for never giving up on me. For never, ever being willing to see me live a lie without objecting mightily. I can see now that my body wasn’t betraying me, it was trying to save me.

Recovery and self-protection

I’ve been out of the cult for more than a decade. Since leaving, I’ve been a bit armoured. Naturally I haven’t wanted to be drawn into an unhealthy situation again. Fool me once, as the saying goes, shame on you. Fool me twice and I’m really an idiot.

So I did what I thought was the best way to protect myself; I kept myself walled off a little bit from people and groups. I stayed very cautious and kept myself safe by keeping a little bit of my heart and soul separate from everything. I think this was a natural and healthy response to being in a cult, but now I see that there’s another way.

My body, my friend

My body will never and has never lied to me. If I can learn to deepen my connection with it, to listen to it constantly and not be afraid of the signals it sends me, I will always be safe. My body will always tell me what’s going on, even if my brain is saying, “Oh my, this kool aid tastes great.”

I have a built-in, on-board, 100% accurate truth-teller and BS detector that will never fail me. I can use my good sense and good judgment when it comes to knowing if groups or people are safe and healthy. AND I can see now, that even when my brain thinks things are a good idea, I can check in with my body and get the whole truth about what is best for me in that moment.

Just as the great oceans have but one taste, the taste of salt, so too there is but one taste fundamental to all true teachings of the way, and this is the taste of freedom. –Buddha

The cult I belonged to didn’t ‘taste’ of freedom, and my body knew that, even though my brain told me a different story.

I get it now. Finally. My body always knows what ‘tastes’ good, and what doesn’t.

What a relief.

–

(Photo courtesy of graur codrin and FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

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18 Nov 2011
Cult recovery

Emptying Your Time

Doing nothing is a very important part of cult recovery. Doing something is important too (reading, research, therapy, talking about our experience), but doing nothing is equally important.

What do I mean by “doing nothing”? Exactly that. Martha Beck, my favorite life coach and Mormon Church survivor, says that emptying our time is as important as emptying our bladders. We couldn’t and wouldn’t go a day without emptying our bladders, yet we often go days and weeks without emptying our time.

Only when we have some empty time can the healing process we’re going through in cult recovery be fully effective.

Here’s an analogy. Maybe you’ve been to a yoga class which ends with a practice called Savassana. Savassana happens at the very end of the yoga class. All the participants lie down on their backs on their mats, eyes closed, practicing stillness of mind and body. I used to have a yoga teacher who said, “If you don’t have time to stay for Savassana, then don’t come to class. It’s that important.” The theory in yoga is that after we’ve bent ourselves into pretzels and practiced the poses with great attention, our bodies need time to process what has happened.

Just as in yoga class, in cult recovery our bodies, minds and souls need time to process what has happened to us. And we can’t do that if we are constantly filling up our time and our bodies with new information, to do lists and activities. We need to be still, be quiet and be with no obligations, no pressure and no expectation of results.

Yet at times in cult recovery it can be difficult for us to be still. That’s ok. We can be still and mobile at the same time. Any repetitive motion that does not require us to think about what we’re doing can support us to be still in mind and soul and counts as empty time; for example, walking, running, swimming or rollerblading.

The cult I was involved with emphasized meditation as a spiritual practice. Needless to say, when I first left the cult it was impossible for me to meditate given all the negative connotations I had with that practice. And yet, instinctively I knew I had to have some still, quiet, empty time in my life to allow my soul to heal. So I took to the woods. I drove myself, almost every day, the half-hour or so to a huge rainforest park in the city where I live and spent an hour or so walking in the blissfully quiet, soothing, healing woods.

This empty time required nothing of me. I couldn’t do or say anything wrong. I didn’t need to be afraid of judgment or recrimination (as I had been in the cult). I could just walk and let my body and soul repair and grieve and learn to live again.

Empty time is important in every life, I believe. I think it is one reason we get so excited about vacations; they are a chance to have the empty time we crave so desperately.

On your journey of cult recovery, I encourage you to create even 10 minutes each day of empty time. If you are able to sit still in quiet contemplation, great! If not, walk or run or swim. For years my empty time practice has involved staring out the window, letting my mind unspool and my body and soul relax and process what the day has held.

Think of it this way: You can’t fill a glass with new, fresh water if it’s already full of the filth that was poured in their by your cult leader. Strategies we use to empty that glass of the dirty water are therapy, writing, talking, and crying. Emptying your time is another, very important strategy for healing. I invite you to give it a try.

…now that I’ve shared all that, I’ll go have some Empty Time myself!

–

(Photo courtesy of dan and FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

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02 Nov 2011
Cult recovery

The challenges and beauty of cult recovery

I’m not going to lie to you; the challenges when we leave a cult are myriad. And one reason it is so damn challenging is that by becoming free we are also asking ourselves to rebuild that which is at our very core. Our ‘self’ needs to be rebuilt and that is no small thing.

So first let me say, “Congratulations!” If you have left a cult you are one brave and strong individual. Leaving the cult was quite possibly the single-most challenging thing you have ever done or will do. The good news is that the cult experience is now behind you. The news you may not want to hear is that rebuilding yourself is going to take work. But wait! Before I lose you, know this; the rebuilding work is challenging but it is so rewarding and ultimately so fulfilling that you may eventually wonder why everyone doesn’t do it.

Here, then, is a very brief outline of some of what you might encounter in the process of cult recovery. (I’ve numbered these phases below, but they tend to overlap and also stop and start. Don’t take the numbering system literally.)

First, you need to take care of your physical needs. Do you have a job? Do you need a place to live? Are you safe from the cult or do you need to do something to ensure your safety (like moving to a different town/city)? Moving forward emotionally will not be possible until you have answers to these questions and have begun to feel that you know where your next meal is coming from and where you’ll sleep tonight.

When you have what feels like a stable physical foundation around you, the second phase of recovery might be asking yourself questions like, “What is true?” and “Who am I really?” and “Who can I trust?” Depending on the nature of the cult you were involved in questions about God may come up and you may need to think about rebuilding that relationship as well as the one with yourself.

These are deep and important questions and they take time and patience to answer. I encourage you to be especially patient and gentle with yourself at this time (which may be years, if not decades, long). It takes as long as it takes. Often cults instill in members a sense of urgency – that is one technique that contributes to thought-stopping, which is a key element of the control a cult places over its victims – and it may take some time for you to stop feeling like every question has to be answered and conquered now, Now, NOW! I am here to remind you, there is no urgency. Take all the time you want. The universe is in no hurry and it will wait for you.

A third phase you may encounter in cult recovery is what I call the “Information Gathering” phase. When I was a few years into my cult recovery, I came to a place emotionally where I had the strength to look back and think to myself, “What the hell was that?!” That’s when I started to look into the possibility that what I was involved in hadn’t just been a weird meditation group, but something more, something I could define and understand.

If you reach this phase, the internet is a great place to start (and you may be already there, since you’re reading this article. ;-) Information gathering in whatever form that takes, is in my experience, incredibly healing. By reading others’ stories of their cult involvement and by coming to understand how cults work and how you were drawn in you will realize you are not alone, you were not stupid or naïve, and that it is possible to heal and to actually benefit from that healing process.

Yes, it’s true, there are tremendous benefits involved in cult recovery. I wouldn’t trade my experience in cult recovery for anything. I encourage you to get the support you need (preferably from a therapist who is familiar with how cults work) and to give yourself the time and space to dive deeply into the process. You’re worth it!

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30 Oct 2011
Cult recovery

Authority

Another word for ‘cult’ is ‘authoritarian hierarchy’. ‘Authoritarian’ meaning “I know better for you than you do for yourself” and ‘hierarchy’ meaning there is a top-down leadership structure, placing the cult leader at the tippy-top and the one person whose word can never be questioned.

Cult members learn very early on that obedience toward the cult leader is paramount to our continued membership and acceptance into the group. We learn that we must accept what our leader says without question and, perhaps more importantly, cannot pick and choose what parts of the cult’s philosophy to believe; a cult is an all-or-nothing game. (Every cult leader applies this condition to members because it a) stops cult members from thinking and b) trains us to be completely obedient. Critical thinking is not allowed.)

When we leave the cult we begin to learn (or re-learn) what matters to us as individuals, not as a member of an authoritarian hierarchy. We begin to value what matters to us. And eventually, if we work hard at it, we learn that we can value what matters to us even if it means displeasing an authority figure. This is a huge and important milestone for cult survivors and one I continue to celebrate every time it happens in my post-cult life.

Here’s an example: I began searching for a new spiritual community a few years after leaving the cult I belonged to because spiritual community was something I was missing very much in my life. At one point, I took some evening classes exploring a faith that seemed like it might be a good fit for me. The teacher was a retired gentleman, obviously very well read and well educated, who had been a part of this faith since his late teens. He was warm and gentle and kind. He welcomed the group of students I was a part of into his home for the classes and I liked him immediately. This was a good sign, I thought.

Part-way through the series of classes the topic of homosexuality came up and it was revealed that this particular faith believes that the only form of sexual expression should be within a marriage and that ‘marriage’ is defined as between one man and one woman. I was deeply upset right away. I don’t believe that marriage should be defined as being between one man and one woman. I believe that God/the universe/the Great Creator made us all exactly and perfectly the way we are, including those of us who are gay or transgendered, and that we all have the right to express that love via marriage. I left the class that night and wept in my car on the way home, conflicted and disappointed. I wanted so badly to find a new spiritual community and this had seemed like the right one, but I hated it that this particular faith thought there was something wrong with my gay friends.

I continued going to the classes though, wanting to explore my questions further. On the last night of class, the teacher asked if each of the students wished to sign up that night to become members of the faith. All the other students in the class did, but I did not, because of this conflict. I felt that I wanted to continue exploring the faith and to see if I could gain a greater understanding about the issue of homosexuality, and I was not ready at that very moment to commit to something I felt conflicted about.

I could see the look of disappointment on the teacher’s face when I said I would not be joining. He embraced each other student warmly in a hug after they signed their membership cards, calling them “Brother” or “Sister” while I sat, by myself, left out of the celebration. I flashed back to my cult days. The days of working desperately hard to never, ever disappoint our cult leader for fear of being shunned or receiving abuse or any number of other adverse consequences.

But I held on. I held on to my hard won freedom. I realized in that moment that the teacher could be as disappointed in me as he wanted, but I was not now and not ever going to sacrifice a deeply held value in order to make someone else comfortable. I had done that for too long and at too great a price in the cult.

This was a milestone, I realized later. It revealed to me many things. Among them that I had grown a new backbone. That I had learned some of what mattered to me and what I was and was not willing to do to stand behind those values. And also that I had come to know who I was in many ways – something I hadn’t known when I was in the cult. In the cult I was an amalgamation of what mattered to cult leader. It was a good moment, that moment of seeing disappointment in me from an authority figure and choosing to stand by my own values anyway. I look back on it fondly.

In the end, after more classes and discussion I did not end up joining that faith, but even if I had, I would have been proud of my new found willingness to look in the face of authority and say, “I’m doing what’s right for me in this moment. And I don’t need you to be happy about it.”

It was a big deal. Perhaps one only another cult survivor can understand.

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27 Aug 2011
Cult recovery • Writing

Life 2.0

Head on over to The Juicy Life to read my guest post about tips for finding our second wind after experiencing loss.

Many thanks to Anne Melnyk (Ms. Juicy herself) for the opportunity to write the blog post.

Have a great weekend everyone!

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